I’m addicted to pots! I love container gardening because like putting a frame around a painting, a plant in the right pot is suddenly especially special. I started working yesterday with Julie Morris (Blithewold’s Dir. of Hort.) on our container bed. And I just read this morning on Garden Rant that mixed containers are “out” and one plant to a pot is totally the new “in” thing. I’m not sure where I’ve been because after years of resisting mixed containers and only grudgingly making a few weak attempts at combinations now and again, I’m finally into mixing it up. I’m so woefully behind the times!

One plant per pot is definitely the easier way to go. Each plant receives exactly the kind of attention it needs and pots can be placed in artful combinations and shifted according to whim and whimsy or whenever something starts to look scrunky. I may be a frustrated interior decorator (my house is so small that everything has a place – one place – it can go) because I really enjoy rearranging the “furniture” in the container bed.

A mixed container is a challenge. Just like planting a garden with the right plant for the right spot, for a mixed container one must at least consider putting plants with similar needs together. I broke that rule with the pot combo of million bells (Calibrachoa) and blue chalk fingers (Senecio vitalis) but I’m hoping that improving the drainage around the Senecios with turfus will keep them happy even though I’ll be watering the pot whenever the Calibrachoas are thirsty. If either plant fails to thrive (another way of saying “shows signs of dying slowly but surely”) we’ll have to punt and repot. A good imagination is helpful too for being able to picture what your combo will look like when it “grows up”. What will overtake? What will fill in the gaps? My giant Ferry Rd. pot has filled in quite nicely with only one casualty so far (a lobelia). Now I wonder how much longer it will last before competition does them all in… Mixed containers always have the element of experiment – which if you have the time, patience and budget for it, isn’t a bad thing at all.

So I got a little bit into it yesterday and although my first attempts don’t excite me (probably because they haven’t “grown up” yet) I’m kind of loving my last pot combo of the day. I actually almost ripped everything out thinking it was a terrible combination but then looked at it from another angle and decided quirky works too and if these plants were together in a garden I’d probably love it. Once again though I made a hash of the cultural requirements and will have to watch the pot hawk-like to make sure that nobody dies from benign neglect or compulsive over watering…

On a practical note, we use one part (ish) compost to two parts (ish) of soilless potting mix (dampened!) and we’ve just started throwing a handful of Espoma triple phosphate into our mixing bin – we used to use Electra so we’ll have to wait and see if there’s a big difference. For the two entrance pots, which I don’t want to have to check every day, I also added SoilMoist and that seems to have helped keep the pots from drying out completely between waterings. When we fertilize we usually use Neptune’s Harvest fish emulsion but occasionally use blue stuff blossom booster (only on the pots).

Are you a pot addict too? Do you have favorite combinations, tips or tricks? (For those of you who already participated in the conversation at Garden Rant, feel free to say it again here!)

Gail doesn’t want me to admit this but we’ve both hit The Wall. It’s a June wall and I think we hit it every year as we finish planting and every year we think there’s something really the matter with us. We’ve been so wiped out for the past couple of weeks that Gail’s convinced that she has the flu and I’m so prone to inappropriately timed naps that I’m pretty sure I’ve developed narcolepsy. But what ails us is probably nothing more than “the slows”. Our slows generally coincide with summer humidity to which we haven’t yet acclimatized and that has made the blood in our veins turn to fluffernutter. And we’re ready to be done with the digging, heavy lifting and mental strain of design and placing plants. The good news is we’ve almost finished planting and moving out of the greenhouse. We just have one… more… new bed in the Display Garden to plant up as soon as Fred, Dan and Matt (their summer intern) finish creating something magical. Look out, kiddos – this one’s for you!

And we’re starting to move on to the next phase of garden chores that are perennially romanticized for being therapeutic: We’re weeding and deadheading! The Cutting Garden got a thorough going over this morning by the Deadheads who made their way at a steady pace through the beds.

It’s also time to do battle with the bugs – Dick’s veggie garden has a bad case of potato beetles – shown here in the larval stage. He finds drowning them slowly to be wickedly cathartic (though back breaking). Some of the Deadheads who helped him did not get the same degree of enjoyment out of plucking and drowning…

And the gardens are looking amazing – everyone says so – not just me! It’s good for us to take a minute to really gaze at them and enjoy them at their June peak (so long as we don’t take stopping for a minute as a nap’portunity). In the next week we’ll be lost in deadheading the roses and Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) but right now, this moment, they’re pretty perfect.

We’ve been entertained by a rather exciting electrical rainstorm this afternoon that has brought back some chilly breezes and I’m feeling a titch more energetic all of a sudden (which isn’t to say I couldn’t nap on the bench right now). Do you hit a Wall or get “the slows” this time of year? What do you do to get over it?

It’s so convenient that our busiest days of the year are also the longest! There’s so much fun stuff to do in – and out of – our gardens. Tomorrow is the very longest day of the year. What are you going to do?

Number 1 on my list is to get up early – might as well make the most of it, right? You know by now that I prefer early light for pictures of my walk around the gardens – by mid morning this time of year, the sunlight is already bleachy and squint inducing. If only I had sunglasses for my camera too…

It’s also evidently a perfect time to do a little yoga in the great outdoors. Everyone who took this class looked fresh and lively as they were leaving. I heard one yogi say, “That was a great way to start the day!” (This was the first of a six week class in the North Garden: Thursdays from 8 – 9am. Click here for info!)

There are plenty of garden chores to go around – keep planting if you haven’t finished. We set a deadline of July 4th for finishing our major planting projects. We’re in pretty good shape this year and are almost done already! (I still have a lot to plant at home though…)

Cut back your autumn bloomers (like asters, montauk daisies and chrysanthemums) now if you want them to be full, bushy and a little less floppish come fall. They’ll start to set buds in early July so that’s another task with a July 4th-ish deadline. We cut ours back by half or at least a third.

Check out and be impressed by how enormous your plants are already. The teasel (Dipsacus) and the cardoons (Cynara cardunculus) – both biennials – are budded up and nearly as tall as me (not that I’m a giant – but that’s pretty tall for this early in the season!)

Stop and smell the roses and while you’re at it, you might as well deadhead them. The Rose Garden was thickly perfumed today and full of spent blooms. Good thing it’s a long day – Lilah and Ellie worked on these roses (un-named — anyone recognize it??) for hours!

Keep your eyes out for wildlife – the baby katydids are out and about. Have you seen a baby praying mantis yet? Look for problem children too. I spotted spots on our Tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) but have been unable to identify it. (Looks like a bad case of acne to me.)

There’s probably still time in the day to do a little weeding and perhaps after that you might go for a sail… Or at least sit back and think about how nice it would be to have a sunset tour on a boat like the one moored beyond the blooming tamarix…

The most important thing to do on these longest days is enjoy the heck out of them dawn to dusk! And have a very happy solstice. (Some say it’s the start of summer but I’m pretty sure it marks the start of winter’s shortening days. I know that sounds pessimistic now, but come winter solstice – my official start of summer – you’ll see I’m an optimist all over again!)

I have been trying for a couple of weeks to find words to express my sadness – my blues, as a matter of fact – that Mary Philbrick, one of the people who makes this place so special, won’t be walking up the greenhouse steps today saying “Yoo hoo” and “Never get old, Kris” with a smile so bright she really made “old” even more worth shooting for. Yesterday a memorial service was held for her in the tent here at Blithewold. I haven’t seen Mary since before my Paris trip in March (while I was following her advice and visiting God in Ste. Chapelle, she was being diagnosed with leukemia) and it really only started to register that I won’t be gardening with her again as I scanned the crowd (S.R.O – this woman was beloved!) to see where she was sitting. For those of you who don’t know Mary, for 22 years she was a volunteer gardener with the Deadheads on Tuesday mornings (her best friend/husband Dick plants and tends the vegetable garden) and she dug and weeded through the third floor archives for about 21 of those years as well.

I think Mary is waiting for her euloblogy – tapping her feet and saying, “C’mon, Kris!” – (she was one of the first to enthuse about my writing) but she was the writer and wordsmith – not me by a longshot. I wish she would hurry up and write this because it would be wicked funny and probably even rhyme. Alas I’m having trouble channeling her…

No matter. The thing is I don’t think she’s gone far. This was her place and she’s still here encouraging us to make it more gorgeous and more interesting and have a laugh riot while we’re at it. I think we’ll all see her in the color blue she wore almost every day and think of her while we deadhead the mind numbing Balloon flower (Platycodon) and when go in for tea we’ll always have to pour her a cup. She’s still here. She who laughs, lasts.

The heat broke yesterday and I think we’re all enjoying today’s reminder about why it’s worth every cent to live in or at least visit coastal New England – it’s all about the sea breeze! The wind off the water is deliciously cool and perfumed right now with salty beach roses (Rosa rugosa), the awfully invasive yet lovely-when-it-blooms Rosa multiflora and little sips of one of our other favorites invasives – Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica). I feel like I’m walking around nose first. Even during our record breaking heat wave, when inhaling was physically uncomfortable I wanted to be sniffing and smelling and breathing deeply. I have a feeling that the term “Dog days” refers to wanting to lie on the floor with tongues lolling but it’s just occurred to me that it could be about catching summer scents the way my new editorial assistant noses around when we go for walkies (Everyone, meet Nino! Nino, this is everyone). I feel like I could close my eyes as we walk and know exactly where I am:

Under the Japanese snowbell (Styrax japonicum ‘Pink Chimes’)

Strolling by the Fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus)

Passing by the sweet peas (slowly)

Resting near the Sundrops (Oenothera fruticosa)

And working in the (peaking!) Rose Garden – today we put down a layer of buckwheat hull mulch – it’s looking very elegant and smells divine!

All of this olfactory stimulation is stirring my desire for more-more-more scents galore in my own garden (I have a R. rugosa and a lot of lavender coming into bloom soon but most of the rest is for looks so far). But I wonder can there ever be too much? What have you planted for scent this time of year in your garden? Do you have any clashes or is it a symphony of sniffs?