The other day during lunch I cast my eyes around the room as I always do and instead of looking through it to my own messy thoughts I actually saw the clutter and made a mental note of it. And rather than just noticing a mess in need of a tidy – which it most definitely is – I saw how interesting the day to day clutter of our work is. Now, before you think this is just an ingenious way of procrastinating neatening, let me reassure you that I have no intention of making a permanent museum-display out of the stuff. But part of me does, of course, want to interpret it for you. I’ll spare you that too though and only confess that I did take a little license and removed a box of Miracle-Gro Miracid from one of the still lifes. (I’m loathe to give that company any placement in a picture but have to admit that Miracid, applied by Gail a couple of times over late summer, is responsible for the re-greening of yellowing citrus leaves.)

Heading full-speed as we are into the Thanksgiving/re-opening-day week it’s abundantly clear that life is not still at all. In fact, isn’t this when we’re all in a big hurry to clean up the residual unintentional still lifes of summer (if we haven’t already *ahem*) and make new intentional ones? Maybe one reason we decorate and go through all of the hoopla of setting tables and carefully laying out food, is for the glimpse of stillness we get in the microsecond before plates are heaped and passed. And maybe one reason to visit the mansion over the holidays is to take a moment’s pause in the freeze frame of lavish decoration and sparkle.

The onset of winter itself begins to resemble a still life too – some life is dormant anyway – and we gardeners at least might take a little solace in quiet winter landscapes during the frenzy of the season. I know I will (probably right before pie). You too?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I think I probably speak for most gardeners in four-season climates when I say we don’t really mind if our first, second and even third favorite season lingers a bit longer than usual. It gives us a chance to remember to revel in the change and pace ourselves as we complete the season’s tasks. I also think a late start to the next season makes us all the more ready for it and I would go so far as to say that a late start might bump the coming season up in my estimation – even if my least favorite season is up next. (Generally speaking, the season I’m in is always my current personal favorite but Gail might tell you I shiver more and complain of cold hands during the winter.)

As we head full-steam into late November I’m thrilled over the idea of Thanksgiving roses but I’m also starting to feel a little disconnected from the calendar. It doesn’t quite jive that there are dahlias still blooming outside and Christmas decorations up already inside. (The mansion is very nearly fully decked out for the holidays – the garden volunteers trimmed the big tree yesterday!) But I suppose that kind of juxtaposition isn’t at all weird for gardeners with a longer growing season. Do you – or would you – prefer colorfully blooming summer-like winter holidays?

In honor of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, better late than never, here are some of Blithewold’s better-late blooms. Although frosts have been only patchy so far, I think we’ll go back to the calendar today and finish putting the dahlias to bed. As sweet as a lingering fall is, it’s time for us to get inside.

Open any one of William Cullina’s books and you’ll get a good idea of the sort of person he is (our kind) and if you’re me, you’ll read cover to cover and learn something new on each page. Invite him to speak, and you’ll have the pleasure of meeting one of the most articulate, knowledgeable, and down-to-earth horticulturists on Earth. For Blithewold’s annual Garden Design Luncheon fundraiser yesterday, Bill tailored a talk drawn from both his latest book, Understanding Perennials: A New Look at an Old Favorite, as well as his latest design work as Plants and Garden Curator at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (where a single garden’s plants budget exceeds our wildest dreams by many 10’s of K’s). I’m still trying to process all that he packed into his lecture and although I’m inclined to use this post as a memory jog, I’ll try my best to stick to a few highlights instead.

From bare-dirt beginnings of garden design all the way through to the whys and wherefores of fuzz and variegation on foliage, Bill illustrated no-brainer suggestions and basic botany in a way that I think, like me, everyone must have been having “Why didn’t I think of that?” and “Oh, now I get it!” epiphanies at each turn of the slides. One slide from Bill’s own garden illustrated exactly how a layer of good compost on terrible hardpan has the power to transform mere dirt into soil plants will thrive in. With another set of slides Bill suggested layering a photograph of the garden site with tracing paper to sketch rough ideas. (- Now, I take dozens of pictures almost daily and I have a roll of tracing paper in my closet, but have I ever put the two together? Have you?) And because texture, much more than color, is a major garden design consideration, he also suggested using photo editing software to blur the focus and desaturate color to work out what textural elements are working in the garden and which ones aren’t. (Another idea I wish I had already had.)

He said that one way to add contrast into the garden is to include shrubs and trees in the design – something we’re all inclined to do lately for ease of maintenance reasons – the only danger being that eventually the garden could become a woodland. He recommends preserving the garden’s scale by coppicing or cutting back to the ground those shrubs and trees, during dormancy, every year or two or three. To me it really seems worth fearlessness and further research to determine which plants (such as his example of Magnolia macrophylla) respond especially well to that treatment.

I remember some of what I learned in the botany survey classes I took in college but Bill has a way of making the biology of plant processes relevant to our gardens, utterly fascinating and useful from a design standpoint. The next time any of us buys a plant we’ll be thinking of where it was grown and whether it’s been forced into a fragile stage of life. We have a better understanding of the mechanisms of foliage and how that determines placement within our gardens, and he illuminated some of the paths bugs – good and bad – use to find our plants. All of this is and much, much more – “everything you ever wanted to know about perennials but were afraid to ask” – is covered in his latest book and if you couldn’t make it to the luncheon, I hope you’ll at least treat yourself to a copy of that.

Did you attend the lecture or have you read any of Bill’s books? What were your favorite highlights?

Sometimes it’s all about timing. John and William Bartram were in exactly the right place, the coastal shores of the Altamaha River in Georgia, at exactly the right time, 1770, just a few years before the tree they discovered there became extinct. They collected seeds, propagated a few plants and named it Franklinia alatamaha for their friend Benjamin Franklin and the site of discovery (a variant spelling of the river – or was it dyslexia?). And even though they and other plant hunters kept searching for the tree, it was considered extinct in the wild within 30 years of its discovery. All of the Franklin trees in cultivation today are descendants of the Bartram’s original collection. Although enthusiastic collection may have contributed to the tree’s early disappearance, it was on its way out already due to a rapidly changing environment. (Sound familiar? Let it be a lesson.) Perhaps if the cultivation of cotton in the area hadn’t spread a debilitating root pathogen, it might have been able to crawl back by layered limbs to cooler climbs where it seems happier today. Franklinia is listed as hardy in USDA zones 5 to 8(9) and has Goldilock’s cultural requirements: Full sun to light shade; rich, acidic and moist but well drained soil; not too dry, not too wet – juuust right. But we easily forgive its persnickety-ness and even give it pride of place because it has the extra-special distinction of extinction.

Timing is everything. Although our Franklinia (a sizable well-established specimen planted in 1969) usually begins blooming in August, it was never ever more beautiful than it is right now. A delayed frost has the flowers continuing to open bright creamy-white against a frame of brilliant reddening fall foliage. Dirr says, “it is best not to become smitten with this plant.” Too late. I brake for Franklinia alatamaha – do you?

I remember walking to school in the fall with a beach-comber’s lurch looking for the most beautiful leaf. When I found it, I memorized it and then kept looking for a more perfect one. I don’t remember ever making anything from my found leaves – some people probably like to press them or make wreaths – I just kept them as bookmarks until they faded to boring or disintegrated. Now that I have a digital camera I collect only pictures of leaves and I have to say it’s not nearly as gratifying and I end up with way too many to look at when just one perfect real one tucked in a book would do.

I also remember that the most strenuous garden chore I had as a kid was raking leaves and I thought that the whole point was to make a giant pile to jump into (preferably before the dog noticed it). It’s funny, the whole raking leaves issue. Why do we do it, really? This article from the Fine Gardening E-newsletter makes the claim that raking is actually unnecessary. The author, Terry Ettinger, recommends mowing the leaves into little bits and leaving them to break down on our lawns and in our gardens. I can think of two reasons not to do that. 1, I have had it with mowing by now and 2, the neighbors already give my garden the hairy eyeball for looking a little wild. I think tidiness is the main number-one reason we all collect leaves and I’m pretty sure Fred and Dan, now into their second or third pass with the blowers around the property, would agree. It’s bred in the bone. Gail and I also rake leaves out of the garden beds and our main reason for doing that is so that we can see beds as blank slates when we do our fall planting. Ettinger says, “observation shows that unraked leaves in planting beds don’t smother shade-tolerant perennials.” You know me – I’ll happily test that theory at home but here we’ll continue to mulch beds with shredded leaves instead which break down much faster than whole ones.

The great debate ends when all agree that collecting the leaves – not just one for a keepsake but as many as you can use in the garden – is what’s important. Whether they stay in bits on your lawn or in your garden beds, are added to the compost or shredded for mulch, we gardeners know that leaves are way too good of a soil amendment to let go of.

How do you feel about raking? And do you collect leaves too?

There is definitely something to be said for the fruits of the fall garden clean-up labor: As the bumper sticker puts it, “Compost Happens”. We have been chipping away at the gardens adding more and more debris to the Mother of All piles. At home my compost scares me a little. I can work for an hour, easily filling one or more wheelbarrows full of weeds and debris and then wonder where the heck to put it because my bins are already long past full. It’s hard to believe now that when I’m ready to use the compost there won’t be enough. Part of my problem is my chosen method. Bins – even big ones – are too small, too confining for the kind of compost my garden – probably any garden – is capable of generating unless I was very very diligent about snipping debris into smaller bits and then turning it regularly. Being a lazy gardener at home, I am rarely diligent about anything. I also have trouble keeping myself from adding fresh debris to the bin that’s nearly finished. (There’s space in that bin!) But even though I am willing to fill up a truck with town compost whenever I don’t have enough of my own, I’d rather keep my own debris in hopes of not having to borrow from the town again. (I know what goes into my own compost – and what stays out…) So now I have piles by my bins and piles by the piles and a deep desire for an easier system and better discipline. What do you do when your garden generates more debris than you have space for? Have you settled on a compost method that works?

Here at Blithewold we make giant piles as opposed to filling bins. Piles are a perfectly acceptable method, though a little unruly/ugly for most home gardens and on the slow side unless they’re also turned regularly to aerate and speed up decomposition. But if you’ve made it through the first 18 months or so waiting for black gold, you’re golden for good as long as you keep on heaping on. Fred and Dan, using the tractor’s front-loader, periodically turn and shift our piles and I wish they’d come to my house too. Our piles are rarely hot – we don’t make lasagna layers of brown and green debris or pay any particular attention to ratios – so weed seeds do tend to survive and I’m noticing that fact much more now that I’m using the compost in our potting soil mix. A layer of black plastic for a few months covering a nearly done pile might do the trick though, we’ll see.

Another bonus fruit of garden clean-up labor is the harvest of, in the case of our Display Garden potager, the Mothers of All beets (Bull’s Blood) and cabbage (Deadon Hybrid). Many thanks to Cathy “Harvest Maven” for providing scale and making sure those final harvests didn’t go anywhere near the compost. Happy Borscht season!