We’ve been so intent on planting the Display Garden that we’ve – not forgotten exactly – and not neglected certainly – but perhaps put off the Rock Garden a little lately. Since it’s at its very cutest now we made sure that the Rockettes (after planting the entire checkerboard bed in the Display Garden) got a chance to fuss a little over the precious Rock. I’m not entirely sure what makes the Rock Garden so “cute” – it’s not really diminutive, and although rock gardens are often a showcase for tiny alpines that you have to bend down with a magnifying glass to see, ours is not that exclusive – there are sizeable clumps of geranium and iris and columbine and hosta of an average rather than microscopic size along with the wee Alchemilla alpina and tiny campanulas and dianthus. I think there must be something about the poetry in the relationships between the plants and rocks and light and shade that makes this garden too adorable for words.

Lilah and I saw the poets themselves in some of the plant combinations. The ghostly pale spirea and skeletal columbine is Poe of course and the fleshy hosta combinations are as evocative as Neruda. Edna St. Vincent Millay recites the geraniums and Emily Dickinson always has something to say about an “admiring bog”. The violas remind us of Blithewold’s own dearly missed poet, Mary.  And for me there was at least one painterly association but then who doesn’t see Monet in the waterlilies?

Do you ever find yourself reminded of an author or artist as you look around your garden?

For the first time ever I remembered to pay attention to the Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) and caught it in bloom up close and personal. And I’m happy to say that I know now what has been missing from my life. As shade trees go, the tulip tree is certainly stately and occasionally graceful but not particularly outstanding – unless you consider that it has one of the more identifiably distinct leaf shapes of anything growing. I’ve been thinking “flipper” which makes a certain sense now that I’ve read Michael Dirr’s discription of the leaf buds: “entire bud resembling a duck’s bill”. But no one calls it the Duck Tree and that’s probably because the flowers trump all other associations. Is there anything more sublime? (Don’t answer that – or better yet, do!)

I’ve been keeping my eye on the few flower buds that the trees on the property deigned to display at eye level – most are on the second story which is one of the great general complaints – and love that something so indubitably blue could open up into my two other favorite colors. I’m not the only one who is enjoying the blossoms right now – the squirrels seem to find them tasty enough to take at least one bite from each and drop the rest but I can say from experience that their debris is a great way to discover whether you have unknowingly been walking by one of these great trees in your own neighborhood all along. I’m glad that people years ago had the foresight to plant a few in town because there’s no way I could make room for now it in my garden. The tree, in the Magnolia family incidentally, can reach a magnificent 150′. Dirr rates its growth as “fast” especially in rich, moist conditions and it’s hardy from USDA zone 4-9 – though he says it may not reach such extreme heights in the colder zones.

And it’s worth remembering that when the tulip trees are in bloom, so is the Chestnut rose (Rosa roxburghii)- at least this year. Anyone who has persevered through the scavenger hunt of construction detours this week has been rewarded with one of the rarest sights on the property. The Chestnut rose only blooms for a week or two at most so if you’ve never seen it, there’s no time like the present. This is another massive beauty that would eat my own garden so I make a point to enjoy it vicariously here. And I would never ever never plant bamboo either but I love to watch ours (Phyllostachys aureosulcata – yellow groove bamboo) shoot up over the course of a few June weeks.

Do you have a favorite tree or shrub that you enjoy elsewhere because it would consume your own garden?

Positive visualization is a skill we gardeners get a lot of practice in. I think for any of us, whether we’re planting one or two things or designing beds, visualization goes way beyond garden-variety optimism to a creative knack for soothsaying. We totally have ESP. Gail, Lilah and I placed “the big empty” yesterday for the volunteers to help plant today and we talked about how we can actually see in our minds’ eyes what it will look like in August. Never mind that the plants that will grow the tallest, widest, burliest are the wee-est, spindliest specks now. We can see them in their ginormous glory.

I have heard that there are people in the world willing to pay an arm and a leg for an instant garden – and I freely admit to having a gracious plenty of impatience for a gardener – but would gardening be as gratifying if there wasn’t a process from dream to fruition? In any case, for us this was a really exciting part of the process. It’s one thing to have the plants on lists of paper and randomly scattered throughout the greenhouse and quite another to see how they’re all going to fit together in a big showy – soon to be purple-centric – bed. And if there are surprises and changes along the way, so much the better. (The gardener’s mind’s eye must always allow for some unpredictability.) I know I’ll talk more about our lavender/purple experiment as the garden grows but I can tell already (because I can read the future) that I’m going to love it.

We can see the future too in caterpillars munching on their favorite butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) and we can predict that Fred and Dan’s new creation in the container garden will be one of the visitors’ favorite spots. Lilah has dubbed it “The Tanning Bench”.

Do you foresee your garden’s glory as you design and plant it?