It’s garden bloggers’ bloom day and I’m distracted from blooms! Not a day went by this summer when I didn’t try to see up the skirt of a bloom with the macro setting on the camera but lately I’m all for the wide angles. Working in the garden I get so focused on the details that just like when I spend too much time in front of the computer, it feels good to stretch my eyes on the distance. (That said, I did look for some perfect close-ups in honor of bloom day – the Enkianthus is not blooming, I know, but isn’t it so bloom-day pretty? As usual, click-on for a larger look)

This has been a long fall so far at Blithewold. We are getting eased into the bare distances of winter. This is the time for gardeners to get a broad look at our gardens and then retreat inside for mind’s eye dreaming. The Annual Garden Design Luncheon is perfectly timed to provide a fresh thought palette for those dreams. Today Douglas Reed (preeminent landscape architect from the firm Reed Hilderbrand in Watertown, MA) spoke to us about designs that fully “connect” us to the place. In his work, Doug evaluates each project site based on its history, the lay of the land and its natural attributes and rather than eradicating any of that (which LAs are perfectly capable of doing) he works to enhance our personal experience within – and looking out from – the site. He talked about how our own childhoods also help to create a connection to a place. Kids spend the first few years taking in and processing their surrounding environment. What we learned then (the shape of a tree, the size of the sky) never leaves us and instead informs how we build and inhabit our adult world. I hadn’t really thought about it that way before! And only yesterday I read an interview (sent as link in comment on yesterday’s post – thanks, Max!) of a California based garden designer who talked about how his Newport childhood influences his work.

As a landscape, Blithewold fits its place in the world (Doug beautifully illustrated this point) and because of the views within and out, we are personally grounded in it. I suspect the Van Wickle/McKee’s probably felt an even deeper connection to the place and worked with the site (not against it!) to create something that felt viscerally familiar to them.

Do you feel that kind of “connected” to your own garden or any other landscape? Do you see childhood views in your gardens/landscapes? I’d love to hear from anyone who attended today’s luncheon – don’t be shy! – and I put the question out as a possible meme too if any fellow bloggers feel tempted to write a full post… (Please put a link in a comment so we’ll all know if and where the conversation continues!)

We planted a lot of cardoons this year. A lot. And now that the season is done, Julie (who doesn’t love giant horsey things in the garden – especially when they’re everywhere flopping big leaves on delicate things – but who generously let us plant them all in the first place) has been asking us, “When are you going to cut them back?, Can you cut them back today?, How about now?, Are you going to dig them up?, Maybe you should dig them up.” So yesterday when they looked frost-flat I did a little research to find out what to do to them for the winter (Gail and I would like *some* to come back…) and I learned all sorts of new things about cardoons. To give credit where credit is due, most of what I learned I found on this site.

Cardoons are winter hardy perennials to about zone 7b but with protection might come back into the zone 6′s (Gail had one come back a few years ago). They are best planted by seed and the first year they establish their tap root, grow gorgeous gray and spiny foliage (some might call it horsey) and the second year they become even more gigantic (they can reach 7′) and they flower. The flowers are thistle-ish, artichoke-like wildlife magnets – birds and bees, etc reportedly can’t get enough of them. But once they flower, the foliage goes downhill for at least a month before sending up new leaves from the base (I suspect that happens more reliably in long growing seasons.)

I have all sorts of appreciation for their ornamental function in the garden but had no idea about the culinary uses and frankly the spiny stalks are about as appealing to me to eat as a fully clothed porcupine. I found out that cooking them for supper is more complicated than just breaking off a stalk and sauteing it up. They must be blanched first. A couple of weeks before the first frost you tie them up in a wheatsheaf bundle and wrap them in burlap or cardboard so just the top feathers stick out. Restricting photosynthesis evidently sweetens the stems and cooked up, they’ll taste like artichoke heart. The entire plant is harvested after the 2-3 weeks of blanching by cutting the base just below soil level. Cook prep is a little high maintenance too – you must remove the spines (duh!), cut the stalks into sections and submerge them in “acidulated water”. That was another learn-something-new-today thing for me – acidulated water is, well, just what it sounds like – lemon water. And that keeps them from turning ugly oxidized colors before cooking. My interest flagged at the recipes because I’m not a cook but if you are, there’s probably all sorts of ways to make tasty things (that I would love to eat) from this most outstanding (horsey?) ornamental vegetable! Have you ever eaten cardoon? Is it worth the wait and the work?

After all the reading up, I’m still not ready to put them to bed for the winter. The flattened leaves popped back up as the temperatures rose and I think they’re still too architecturally pretty to behead. When the leaves really go to mush, we’ll cut them off, throw a little mulch around our favorites and hope for the best!

Is it long winter’s naptime yet? I’m bushed tuckered pasted wasted fried asleep on my feet! The gardens are done. Pretty much. Mostly! And we can cross more off of Gail’s to-do list. Yesterday the Florabundas came in for a last go through of the Rose and North Gardens. We weeded and cut the dead out of the roses. The weather isn’t reliably cold enough yet for us to be sure the roses are totally done growing (and there are still bloomable buds) so we decided to wait to do the winter whipping-cane cut back. The North Garden is ready for bed – we gave the Nepeta a little haircut, the Geranium ‘Rozanne’ a trim, cut the wall ivy back out of the beds and took the dead out of the Rosa ‘Ballerina’s too. Gail and I went back to do a little futzing around with daylilies – why are they never in quite the right spot? – and then pronounced that garden “done”. (wahoo!) Today Gail and I relocated more Idea Bed plants to the newer Display Garden beds because it’s looking more and more likely that Fred and Dan will be able to get started on phase 2 of the redesign this winter (wahoo times two!). I’m sorry I don’t have illustrations of this week’s work – it was chilly and busy and aside from perhaps my last praying mantis portrait of the season (it was a frosty day slow mover on the most robust ‘Rozanne’ ever) I kept forgetting that I should be documenting all the activity!

Next week we’ll be inside decorating the front hall christmas tree (it’s an 18′-er – and yours truly will have tree top scaffold duty. I will remember to take pictures from up there!) and we’ll be attending the Garden Design Luncheon on Thursday. Have you signed up yet? I’m going to work on getting my fingernails clean as soon as I have a little lie-down first…