For a few hours on Sunday a living room-full of us were spirited away across an (insignificant) ocean to a place where gardeners grow. I’m still suffering (though suffering is definitely the wrong word for how I feel) from something kind of like jet lag. I feel like I was picked up and put back down on earth in a completely different place. I’m still getting my bearings. Nothing Fergus Garrett, head gardener and CEO of Great Dixter, talked about was particularly revolutionary and yet I’m all spun around.

As Fergus Garrett, head gardener and CEO of Great Dixter in East Sussex, England, spoke to us about the history of Great Dixter house and gardens, it was easy to draw some parallels to Blithewold. Both families put particular marks of their very own on their much loved houses and landscapes, and they passed on their passion for the garden to at least one of their children. Christopher Lloyd, an extraordinary plantsman and prolific garden writer learned the Fine Art of flower gardening from his mother, Daisy. “Christo” spent his entire life gardening at Great Dixter. He changed very little of his parents’ design but was never fettered to the past. Through constant experimentation he pursued and taught a method of gardening that is not for the faint of heart: there are no rules. — well, there’s one rule. Plant the right plant. And to that I’d probably add a doctrine: pay attention, stay engaged, take notes, and enjoy! There’s nothing static about a garden – in any season. It’s always changing and the passionate gardener revels in and directs the changes like a symphony conductor.

Walking around the Blithewold grounds with Fergus was itself a lesson for me. As proud as I generally am of our gardens, they seemed suddenly ordinary and contrived. Plants look planted. At Great Dixter there is a balance between the wild and natural – the tall-grass meadows full of East Sussex wildflowers, grasses and orchids – and the cultivated – crisply clipped topiaries and hedges. The same dichotomy grows with wild, meticulously tended abandon in their gardens. Fergus made a bee-line to our shoreline and studied plants there that I have taken so for granted that I don’t even know their names. His mind is wide open and interested in every plant and its potential use in their gardens.

The good news is that passion can be taught by any good mentor and learned by us. The spirit of Christopher Lloyd – and his parents – lives on not only through the tradition of a constantly changing palette of plants at Great Dixter but in the imagination of all the avid gardeners and interns who pass through the Lutyens gate. Fergus’ enthusiasm for gardening is as infectious as his mile-wide smile. Gail and I – and probably most of people who were in the living room on Sunday are ready to cross the pond to visit Great Dixter. We’d like to spend at least a week learning from the mentors there and definitely take Fergus up on his offer of cake. For more information on visiting Great Dixter, click here.

Summer solstice is a perfect occasion for taking stock of the season so far. We’re at a midpoint – at the start of summer – with a lot to look forward to and plenty to look back on with both pride and chagrin. We always like to try new things here and although I have every intention of talking about what works and what doesn’t, I seem to be much more likely to show off our successes (the pictures are prettier). So today I’m joining Susan over at Ink and Penstemon for her Solstice snafu day celebration for a virtual bonfire of disappointments, mistakes and failures.

We tried soil blocks this year thinking that it would be great if we didn’t have to use peat pots or the indestructible coir pots anymore. (Planting this spring we turned up more intact coir pots – it’s like an archeological dig around here.) It turns out that soil blocks are not easy to make. I definitely didn’t get the soil mix right – any suggestions for what works would be welcome. They took every shoulder muscle to jam soil into the maker and a lot of finesse to stamp them into the tray without breaking the fragile clumps. Ours – the ones that held together – were like cement and most of the seeds we tried in them didn’t stand a chance of germinating.

I count it is as a failure that we allowed Lilah (Weed Woman) to take a vacation this week. Not only would we rather be kicking back on a Block Island beach too but the weeds have suddenly taken off as if they knew they were safe. This particular patch of purslane, onions and Berggarten sage (Salvia officinalis ‘Berggarten’) is an example of an intentional snafu. Supposedly onions do not love sage. We want to see if they really won’t grow well or if it’s simply a silly idea to pair such excellent companion plants with each other instead of with plants they might benefit instead.

We were so excited to place the Gunnera manicata in our little cement pond. Gail and I both said, “It’s perfect!” especially paired with our other greenhouse behemoth (Agave americana) in a nearby bed. But then the gunnera started to wilt. My research has indicated that they like full sun to partial shade so I can only think that the poor thing is in re-potting shock. We’ve cut all the big leaves off and might make a last ditch attempt to save it by taking off the flowers too. It just doesn’t look stupendous anymore and I’m seriously disappointed. We might have to take it out and hide it just to keep from feeling so terrible about it.

Plant labels are something I would love to put on the bonfire. Just when I feel like I’m catching up printing them, the entire garden bursts into bloom, hiding the labels I’ve already placed and requiring about twenty-hundred more. The weekend garden docents must have fits trying to find plant names for interested visitors. At least I know which plants I put labels on… And in the last couple of years I never got a tag on this enormous lily. I know that if I’m dying suddenly to know its name, visitors must be curious too. We ordered Lilium ‘Gerrit Zalm’ back in 2008 but perhaps now it’s known as ‘Trebbiano’? Curious.

And lastly, our self-sowers might look to some like an egregious error of judgment but in the case of our pink peony poppies, we meant to have so many. We’ll be saving seed perhaps to sell in the shop. Plus, we and our visitors love them. I did, however, remove them completely from our big Display Garden bed. I have come to the realization that the reason self-sowers are considered such a nightmare is that it’s mentally challenging – heartbreaking and difficult – to edit out something you think is beautiful. But sometimes, just one (or twenty-hundred) will do and make the garden more fantastic than it might otherwise be.

Do you have any snafus to throw on the solstice bonfire? Confess it here and/or head over to Ink and Penstemon to join the celebration.

I’m definitely on a fragrance kick lately. I don’t know if it’s that my nose is compensating for my other senses – I’m near sighted and I don’t always hear too well… Or if it’s just that it’s June and June smells really beautiful.

I have been walking through curtains of scent all over the property and have continued sticking my nose into every bloom to find the sources. Some are obvious – like the sweet peas. They happen to be one of the only flowers I’m willing to cut from my own garden to bring inside just so I can draw in every last whiff of them.

Lilah I think would be happy to take home a bouquet of her declared favorite rose, ‘Sweet Juliet’. Its scent is heavy enough to knock me right over but I can certainly smell why it might be anyone’s favorite.

I keep asking Gail if she can smell the linden trees  – in full bloom here now – and am amazed that she doesn’t much notice it. Even though there are lindens all over the property, Lilah and I took a little break the other day in the Linden Grove (Tilia cordata – Littleleaf lindens) just to twirl in the honey scent, and majesty of those trees.

Aside from the scent of them, which admittedly some people hardly notice, the linden flowers are pretty unimpressive. On the other hand, catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) flowers are amazing to look at but, according to my snifter, are kind of empty, fragrance-wise.

And for a flower that is both amazing to look at and has an intoxicating fragrance, nothing beats a night blooming cereus. It finally dawned on me that if I (and you through me) were ever going to experience an open flower, I’d have to bring a plant home. I took the pictures at about 10:30pm but I did notice that at least one of the (3) buds had started to open at dusk. – Does anyone know, is that when they typically open? I thought it was only after dark… In any case, it wasn’t very fragrant then or early the next morning. But in the dark, it was definitely a  “wow!” If only you could smell it too…

Can you smell the lindens? What’s fragrant in your garden? For a look, if not a sniff, at what’s blooming all over the world right now, check out Garden Bloggers Bloom Day over at May Dreams Gardens.

Since my last post was about sweet smelling blooms, it seems only fitting that  that this one should be about a plant at the other end of the fragrance spectrum. Don’t get me wrong – I love the smell of onions especially when they’re being sauteed in butter. But it’s safe to say that ornamental onions are not grown for their fragrance. –Unless of course you take into consideration their value as a companion plant: the odor of them is said to repel aphids and other garden pests.

The number one reason we grow ornamental onions is because they’re outstanding. Literally and figuratively. There’s nothing like a star-burst on a stick to change the way you see the whole garden.

We’re really pleased with the ones we chose for the Rose Garden this year. Allium schubertii (above) actually seems to alter the atmosphere within and around its enormous firecracker spray. I can’t really explain, but everything near it (through it) seems slightly color shifted. Schubertii stands only a foot or so off the ground but has a large presence and we’ll save the seed heads for Christmas decorations. The stately Allium ‘Ambassador’ stands at least 4′ tall and they have carried large deep purple globes for a good 4 weeks. We’re also growing chives as companion plants in the Rose Garden and so far we haven’t had any major aphid infestations there…

In the North Garden we chose a combination of alliums pictured in the Scheepers’ catalog. Allium multibulbosum and A. atropurpureum really are gorgeous together. The white one (A. multibulbosum) opened first and is beginning now to fade to green. The dark wine color of A. atropurpureum is a perfect contrast – perfect with the rest of the colors in that garden too. Nectaroscordum siculum ssp. bulgaricum, formerly known as Allium bulgaricum, is one of my very faves even if it’s not officially an allium anymore. It’s on the subtle side – perhaps that’s why its name was changed.

In the Display Garden, the Allium ‘Globemaster’ and ‘Purple Sensation’ have all faded but the seed heads are still quietly spectacular. A few years ago we planted a row of them within our peony row – which turned out to be a great idea because the peonies hide the alliums’ one drawback, scrunky foliage. We planted Allium albopilosum (a.k.a A. christophii or Star of Persia) to peep over the edge of our stepped-down center bed. It’s another firecracker and shimmers a metallic lavender.

And finally here’s an ornamental onion only a mother could love. Allium ‘Hair’ is as disheveled as I generally feel. But to my (mother-ish) eye, there are no bad ‘Hair’ days!

Do you grow ornamental onions? Which are your favorites?

The air smells so pervasively sweet right now that it’s almost hard to identify which plants are producing all the fragrance. I have now stuck my nose in so many flowers, it’s probably a wonder I haven’t had an asthma attack or been stung by any annoyed bees.

There are a couple of easily identifiable, all encompassing scents right now – you can’t set foot or nostril in Rhode Island right now without catching a powerful whiff of roses. Rosa multiflora – an invasive plague – smells almost as wildly spiced as the slightly less aggressive beach rose (Rosa rugosa). Beach rose is  my favorite scent in the whole world especially when combined with a sea-salty breeze. So I’m in heaven right now. The fancier roses in the Rose Garden all have distinctly different scents – some almost cloyingly perfumed and some exactly like apricots. And I’m still trying to identify the tropical fruit I ate as a kid that peonies smell just like the taste of…

And around the property there are all sorts of  fragrances both heavenly and heavy. I’ve never before noticed the Kentucky yellowwood (Cladrastis kentuckea ‘Sweet Shade’) in bloom – maybe because I am tethered to the gardens in June. But it smells pleasantly almond-y sweet to Lilah and me. The climbing hydrangea on the other hand is a little more intense. We think that one is close to “over-ripe pineapple”. I’d rather have the yellowwood in my garden – if only I could fit it in. It’s a smallish tree – 30-50′ at maturity – but it branches low and can be nearly as wide as it is tall. (I’m thinking about knocking down the garage…)

What is heaven scent in your garden right now?