Is The Journey The Destination?

I’m planting like crazy in my new gardens…a front perennial bed is just about finished, and more shrubs and trees go in every day.  I’m trying to get the big stuff in first: specimen trees, screening plants and many shrubs. A few of these new plants I’m buying large, but many I’m buying small. I want to be able to look at the photos and say “Oh! Look at how small that Cotinus was when I planted it!”  

I am not as limber a gardener as I was when I started my last garden 15 years ago. After speaking to a woman’s group this afternoon I came home and planted the following: 15 Campanula poscharskyana (Serbian Bellflower), 3 “Lee’s Purple” Rhododendrons and 17 Geranium cantabrigiense ‘Bikovo’. Then I potted up 15 Calamintha nepetoides that were just too shrimpy to put directly into the perennial border. I watered a few newly planted trees and after that I was pooped. But such a feeling of satisfaction!

As I worked in the garden the wind finally died down and I watched the birds coming back and forth to the feeder. I get the biggest kick out of the crows - I think the best garden ornaments are a few shiny, black American crows strutting through the plants and generally showing themselves off. 

The garden is far from finished. It will take several years to get all the areas planted. It is such a perfect process, however, whether I’m limber or not. 

Plants and Mother’s Day

As we approach Mother’s Day I think, as always, that it seems a holiday that is promoted by the greeting card and cut flower industries. Are there special days for positions that we really respect after all?  Is there a “Doctor’s Day” or a “Movie Star Day”? Is there an “Oprah” day?  

This gets me wondering if there are any people who automatically get respect in this day and age, and I’m thinking perhaps not.  And then, being a gardener, I start to wonder about the plants that get no respect. The Oak trees, for example. These are the trees that built this country and yet people view them as large weeds that take up space that could be filled with a spring flowering crabapple or dogwood. In Oak - the frame of civilization by William Bryant Logan, he talks about the central place that the oak has played in this country. A good read.

And how about the weeds that hold the soil on roadsides?  Not to mention the scores of plants that clean air and soil without any fanfare at all. 

It is spring, and time to celebrate Mother’s Day… AND, I hope, the amazing world around us.  Let’s get out of the card shop or florist’s and into the outdoors. 

Changing Tastes

As I plant the gardens at our new house I’m reminded how tastes change. I take the weeping pear (Pyrus salicifolia) out of its pot and put site it so that it’s framed by the three Irish yews behind it, and remember that about 15 years ago I told my husband that “I don’t like weeping plants.”  And the yellow-foliaged plants that are repeated through my lakeside perennial border are reminders that I once thought all plants with yellow foliage looked sick…now I can’t get enough of them! 

I once planted the garden with my focus on the color of the flowers and their blooming period, aiming for a show of flowers from spring to fall.  Now I still include that range of flowering times, but I place plants according to their foliage color and texture, and the flowers are almost a secondary consideration. 

In the garden and in life we are constantly called on to change - to examine our opinions and occasionally change them. 

It is May - “Gifts from the Garden Month” - and one of the gifts that the garden gives me is to keep me flexible.
 

Are You Sure That You Want That Plant?

      In the spring it’s easy to get seduced by the wide selection of plants in the garden centers. The many pass-along plants available at garden club sales are also tempting, and there are shovelfuls of free offerings from friends and neighbors. But free or not, do you really want these plants?

       The best practice is to match the right plant for the right location; if a plant is happy where you’ve placed it, it will be more likely to grow well and be less work for you. A perennial or shrub that likes sun won’t do as well in deep shade, for example, and plants that get windburn won’t thrive in exposed locations.

       Those offerings at plant sales are likely to be perennials that either self-seed or need frequent dividing. They might be fine if you’re the type who likes to work in the garden, but if you want a low-maintenance landscape there are better choices for you.

       And beware of falling for a plant based on flowering alone. Most plants in this region are in blossom for a short period of time, and may or may not look good before or after bloom. So what’s a home-landscaper to do?  Research.

       A trip to the local garden center, library or bookstore can help you make the right choice.  So when someone asks “Do you want this plant?” the answer should be, “Maybe…let me look into it.”

 

Cultivating Kids

When I was in the 5th grade in Muncie, Indiana, we had a television in the classroom. This was a big deal back then…a pilot program. There were educational programs broadcast from a plane - early satellite television I guess.  In any case, the program that I remember 45 years later is one that showed how to take a cutting of a geranium.  You could grow more plants from a stem! I was impressed. Later that year we had to pick a science fair project, and I decided to do something with plants - I grew beans and covered each pot with a different color film to see if the color made a difference in how the plants grew. 

What I wonder now is how much the geranium cutting program influenced my choice of science fair project, and how much these activities contributed to my love of plants today. 

When you expose kids to information about plants and gardening, you never know what seeds you are planting. What are you doing to create future gardeners?

Low Maintenance Doesn’t Mean Easy

When my boys were young they would whine when one got to do something that the other didn’t. “That’s not fair!” they would cry. I would frequently find myself saying “Fair doesn’t mean equal.” 

I find myself thinking of this when people tell me that they want a low maintenance landscape. I’m happy to help them by choosing plants that don’t require pruning or, in the case of perennials, frequent editing or dividing. I will recommend that the plants be placed so that they can grow to their mature height and width so that you won’t have to trim them to “keep them under control.”  But I’m afraid that these clients are asking for apples and expecting oranges. They say they want fair but they’re really asking for equal.

This is the truth: When you ask for a low maintenance landscape it doesn’t mean that you are going to get an easy landscape. Even a well designed, well planted yard requires some work. Weeding for a start… every piece of land will always need weeding. Spring and fall cleanups are necessary for all but the most naturalized (aka: wild) properties, and in every garden some plants thrive while others will die.

Every garden will need work. Life itself requires effort. You want low maintenance? Fine. You want it easy?  Snap out of it.

Pet Peeves - Email

OK, Ok… this has nothing to do with gardening as such.  But in life’s garden, metaphorically speaking, it’s driving me nuts.  I hate when someone responds to an email I have sent and puts my email text (and perhaps other’s emails on the same subject) FIRST - at the TOP of their letter.  Their response is then placed at the END of this column of text so that you (I) have to scroll down to see if they have actually said anything at all.  This is a weed that keeps popping up in my internet garden and it’s driving me nuts. 

Starting Again

After 30+ years of gardening I’m starting over on a new property.  This is my third “blank slate” and the largest I’ve had.  When I started my last garden, I was careful not to use any plants that are enthusiastic spreaders…’Goldsturm’ Rudbeckia? No thank you.  But now I have space!  And it’s a tad intimidating I must say.   I draw out plans for other people’s gardens all the time, but for myself, it’s done in my head. Thinking it all out is part of the fun.  The curly willow here or here?  And where to place the weeping Parrotia that’s been in a pot for three or four years?   In order to protect all the potted plants in the winter I grouped them together, piling small pots on top of large ones, and surrounded the entire group with hay bales.  The garden center had them leftover from a Halloween maze, after all, so they were a good deal.  I broke some of the bales up and scattered the hay over the pots. A perfect plan, right?  ”Yes!” the mice cheered.  Now that I’m pulling the hay off the pots I see that I created the perfect, protected place for rodents to live, and eat over the winter. Every Echinacea is gone (The mice probably heard that the roots boosted their immune systems…)  and I’m fearful that they ate all the Hosta as well.  Oh well - I’m starting over…with a new garden, new plants, and new  (wellfed) mice.

In Praise of An Un-Hip Flower

So why are marigolds “out” in this country?  Too common? Too orange? Too easy to grow?  The marigold, used elsewhere in the world for everything from wedding garlands to dyes and cooking, has become an un-hip flower in the US. Except, perhaps, for planting in veggie gardens where people mistakenly believe that it repels insects.  (Plant them because they look nice and add color to your veggie garden, plant them to sprinkle the petals on your salads, plant them because they smell like summer, but forget about planting them to repel bugs. Come to the horticultural conference listed below and find out why! ) Marigolds are one of the easiest annuals to grow unless you have a big slug population. And let me tell you that the color orange is becoming quite hot, so give up on your “blue and pink only” garden and get with it!  Have fun with this plant - make strings of marigolds for your next party or to entertain the grandchildren. Interplant orange marigolds with Verbena bonariensis or ‘Blue Horizon’ Ageratum and stand back and enjoy.  And sure, plant them in the kitchen garden because they are edible and it’s become traditional.  Yellow, orange or rusty-red, make them “in” again.   

Garden Conference in April

I’m hoping that you who love plants and gardening will join me at a horticultural conference on Cape Cod - April 5th from 8 AM to 3:30 PM.  Sponsored by the Master Gardeners Association of Cape Cod.  Learn more about it by downloading the flyer from the extension service website:

http://www.capecodextension.org/doc.php?26,580,90230p,www72279,,,Doc,page.html