What is it about someone else’s garden that can make even ordinary plants look extra special and precious? Once a month or so during the summer, Blithewold offers a great treat called an Intimate Garden Tour and this past week we were invited for a slow meander inside Wildacre on Ocean Drive in Newport. Wildacre was originally designed by Fredrick Law Olmstead (of Central Park fame) for his brother and has been beautifully preserved and restored by one of Blithewold’s favorite benefactors and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was, for me, the kind of garden that is so extra-ordinary and so site specific that I really couldn’t glean any particular ideas for my own garden but then – I didn’t want to. It was enough just to trespass and enjoy and to borrow the whole of it fully intact inside my mind’s eye (and on digital file too, of course).

The gardens are meticulously tended by 3 gardeners – one of whom we were told spent the entire day replacing moss and sedum that the birds had just seen fit to fling about – and has been decorated with a whimsically elegant sense of folly by its owner. Although it has always been described as being a relatively flower-free garden, the sedums and peonies were in full glorious bloom and a wonderfully floriferous butterfly garden is a work currently in progress. And every plant and every element (unlike my own garden) was in perfect scale with the garden as a whole.

Rocky crags, softly planted and serene cove views beyond a vertigo inducing edge-less infinity pool took our blissed out eyes in all directions and stone steps led us on tiptoe from lookout to lookout. I am so unaccustomed to visiting private gardens that I found myself feeling like a reluctant but obsessed peeping Tom – I wanted to see it all and memorize it and take it with me but it also seemed like such a personal and private place that I didn’t want to intrude either. I think that’s all part of the fun of getting these glimpses of someone else’s garden, whether it’s someone we know and admire or a perfect stranger. And even though I didn’t bring back any specific ideas, seeing Wildacre gave me a fresh perspective on the gardens here at Blithewold and my own at home. I hope that our gardens give a similar impression of being truly beloved and perfectly situated.  Do you ever go on private garden tours? What do you bring home?

Next month an entirely different sort of garden for entirely different perpective will be open in Portsmouth, RI! For more information and to register click here.

With the summer solstice behind us and all of the gardens planted, we’ve officially turned the corner and begun the  slide into summer. Now if we could just switch the weather machine to its summer setting we’d be all set. We’re ready now. Gail and I haven’t been whining much this wet woolly spring because it has been great for all of our tree, shrub and perennial transplants – they’re settling in like champions and we haven’t had to turn the hose on them once. But the annuals are a different story altogether. They’re just sitting there like little lumps and it’s hard not to take it personally. But there’s nothing we can do but wait along with everyone else for a hot stretch and start complaining bitterly about the weather. I have to say that weather like this is a point in favor of mixing it up a little more than we did in the big display garden bed. The other gardens, which are about a third, a third, a third annuals, perennials and shrubs, look gorgeous right now even though a lot of the annuals are still biding their time – and of course later in the summer, when the perennials are quieter, the annuals (fingers crossed) will shine like the sun.

The local newspaper reports that we’re still an inch and a little down on rain for the year which is hard to believe since they also report that April and May had only 3 sunny days each and June has had none so far. I don’t quite believe that either because I know I’ve seen the sun a few times. But then I do dash outside to get more work done and soak it up whenever it makes the barest appearance. And for what it’s worth, I remember to feel sorry for any of you stuck inside deprived of your daily dose of D.

Meanwhile there’s not much to do but put lots of sugar on the watery strawberries, reap an extra harvest of slow-to-bolt lettuce leaves, enjoy the lingering scent of tardy sweet peas and mow the grass about 3 times before lunch. Even though Gail, Lilah, the volunteers and I have completed the major planting projects and it feels like we’re not climbing that mountain anymore, we’re by no means done yet. As every gardener knows – probably especially those of you who grow vegetables – there’s a succession of planting and sowing to do all summer long and our work in the gardens can never be called finished/done/the end. And I have every faith that one of these days the sun will emerge, the annuals will rocket up to their full glory and we’ll call all hands on deck for our summer schedule of diligent deadheading and you never know, maybe even some watering too…

What has your weather been like? Is it cause for complaint?

It’s weird that I’m compelled to write about a lawn when the pink styrax is in bloom and the roses look so pretty but the other day a visitor asked me what turned out to be a provocative question. As we looked out across the expanse of the Great Lawn she asked, “Now, what was that used for?” and I have to admit I was a little thrown by the question. Lawns have become so controversial lately – the Obamas are eating their view and I know I’m not the only gardener systematically replacing the lawn at home with other kinds of plants. I think I sputtered that the Great Lawn was used for the view but the more I think about her question, the more I find to say.

In the gilded day and age when summer “cottages” (read “palatial estates”) were seldom lived in showcases of their owners’ wealth and importance in society, Blithewold was instead, a home – grand and luxurious to be sure – but lived in throughout the summer and other holidays and thoroughly enjoyed. Blithewold’s grounds were designed by John DeWolf, a landscape architect who worked closely with the family to create a varied landscape that was very useful in terms of their leisure activities and pleasure. Because of their interest in horticulture, an arboretum and gardens were cultivated and because of their love of the site, the views were preserved and enhanced. Doesn’t that sound like your garden too? The lawns were part of the package and served to knit the different landscape elements together.

The lawn is much larger than in looks in pictures – actually it’s larger than it looks in reality. Roughly ten acres is difficult to put in perspective without something measurable in the distance. The distance is so great that most of the children in the family used to ride their bikes all-the-way down the lawn to the beach. DeWolf designed the Great Lawn to undulate gently to the bay although, interestingly, one of the original plans includes a “haha” or hidden wall to separate and conceal a proposed cow pasture. (The Van Wickles kept cows – I didn’t know that before today – and with their large vegetable plot in the lawn below where the Display Garden is now, they also ate the view.)

The family obviously enjoyed their view since nearly every room in the mansion looks west toward the water and we know from records in the archives that they used the Great Lawn for all sorts of fun stuff. Fireworks were set off on the lawn every 4th of July to the delight of all of Bristol; tables were set up on the lawn for Marjorie and George Lyons wedding celebration; the enormous sails of the Herreshoff’s capsized America’s Cup contender Columbia were dried on the lawn; and in 1926 a biplane piloted by Julian Dexter, a family friend, landed there and took off again piloted by Marjorie Lyons herself (in the photo ready to fly, wearing a headscarf).

Nowadays the Great Lawn is still enjoyed primarily for the frame it puts around the view and as a gathering place for parties. But there’s nothing like an expanse of lawn to bring out an opinion or two on the subject of its worth, purpose and sustainability. I will say that the lawn this wet June is being mowed once a week – other lawns, twice obviously using a not insignificant amount of gas. Are you finding it difficult to keep up with (and justify) the mowing right now too?

There’s nothing that brings out the inner kid like grass under the toes and no better groundcover for lying back and studying the clouds. If and when you replace your lawn you’ll have to find those pleasures elsewhere. Take a run and tumble on Blithewold’s lawn instead and for those of you who find the ground too distant for a stretch, Fred and Dan’s sod bench in the Display Garden (“what is that thing?”) will be sittable any day now.

What do you use your lawn for?

Once again it’s Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (hosted as always by gracious Carol of May Dreams Gardens) and since it’s June it would probably be easier to show what’s not in bloom – but I would never do that to you. Around here you don’t even need your eyes to know what’s in bloom. The prevailing scent on the wind is Rosa multiflora. None of us should be the least bit proud to have it on our property – I have to admit that it infests a hedge of mine – but that fragrance is truly divine and it’s difficult enough to get rid of that I think we’re stuck with it. But keep your eyes closed – there are other much less obnoxious highly scented treats in bloom today too – things like the sweet peas which have just begun in earnest and the mock orange. And now open up because there are all of the other things we grow simply because we’re visually attracted to the flowers.

Our love of flowers, whether for the scent or the looks of them works out well for the pollinators who are viscerally attracted to many of our same favorites. I have been a little worried about the bees. Last year Colony Collapse Disorder was all over the news but the wild honeybee hive in the stumped Horsechestnut was still active. This year it’s empty. I don’t know what happened to them – maybe they’ve moved off. There are other living hives on the property and it’s always possible that they found a new home. But I can’t help suspecting that they came down with CCD, scattered and died. I have had trouble finding honeybees working our flowers – I finally spotted one on the goutweed near a hive by the Rock Garden. There were none in the Cutting Garden, none on the clover in the grass and it’s truly a beautiful, sunny, bee positive day out there. Gail thinks that we just don’t have enough annuals blooming yet for them and they’re elsewhere on the property. I want to be optimistic too so the only thing to do is to keep planting flowers. And then plant a few more flowers.

We have seen a few other pollinators out and about. A hummingbird has found its way into the greenhouse a couple of times in the last week and poor Lilah disturbed a bumblebee ground nest. She took her sting well and we’ve taken care to protect the hive entrance. We need these guys – all of them, and I hope that the healthy colonies stay healthy and produce enough heirs and spares to inherit our flowery fortune.

Have you noticed a decline in your pollinator populations too?

I like to think that encouragement and praise is the best method for inspiring productivity but must admit that threats and criticism can be pretty effective as well. Spite is such an excellent motivator. Don’t we love to prove someone wrong? – I had a mean as spit English teacher who made it clear that he thought no one in my class could string two words together. I sweated blood to write the finest term paper there ever was and didn’t he have to give me an A? I sure showed him!  I think plants sometimes need the same kind of kick in the pants. All of the roses in the Rose Garden that we threatened with expulsion have never looked better than they do right now. It’s just like last year when Gail and I talked about taking out the moldy phlox in the North Garden and every clump immediately cleaned itself off and rebloomed fit to burst. Of course we still took most of it out… But I can just hear these roses saying “you don’t think I’m pretty? I’ll show you pretty.” And even the blue woodruff that looked like slackers when we planted them perked right up as if they heard us say “We’ll just rip them out if they don’t perk right up”.

The roses we always praise to the skies have never looked better either. It seems like they’re basking in the glow of it like we all do when someone says something nice. They’re totally blushing with pride. I really truly honestly think that plants respond and react to us in a way that seems totally impossible for anything without ears and a brain but I also have to confess that we have physically treated the roses a little differently this year.

We fertilized them earlier than ever (we fertilized them period, full stop!) – right when the experts say we should in April as the buds were swelling – with a slow release organic 3-5-3. We’ve also had a rainy spring into summer, which I guess Gail and I shouldn’t take any credit for, with the magic number of hot sunny days to coax any flower into rapturous bloom. We are being good and sticking to our fertilizing schedule and gave them another round of the same stuff this past Monday as they came into their first bloom. We’ll fertilize again in August right before their next big push. (In case you’re curious, the fertilizer we’ve chosen to use in most of the gardens is Espoma Bulb-Tone because it has the NPK ratio we were looking for plus additional micro nutrients.) We still refuse to use sprays – fungicides or pesticides – and are considering ourselves very lucky that the garden is not infested with the tiny worms that are skeletonizing roses in other parts of the state. We’re also crossing our fingers that the Japanese beetles and black spot won’t be bad this year.

Do you let your plants know when you think they’re doing a great job – and when you’re fed up to here with their behavior? Do you think they listen?