Throw leaves away? Perish the thought. I wish I could preserve fall’s leaves for color therapy sessions in the middle of winter. Right now I’m particularly taken with the changing colors on some of the shrubs and vines. I’ve never squinted at such a fluorescent color not in a highlighter marker as the redvein enkianthus (Enkianthus campanulatus). The Fothergilla gardenii is even prettier than a brand new box of 64 colors, and the Boston Ivy is as shiny and intensely red as fresh blood (who isn’t secretly enthralled by a bloody-gusher papercut?) What is your favorite shrub – or vine – for fall color?

Even if the colors will fade, the leaves are still worth keeping as the winter blanket and soil amendment that nature intended when she dropped them on the ground in the first place.

“Back in the day…” according to Gail, the Blithewold grounds crew vacuumed up all of the property’s leaves in mowers and dumped them in giant piles on the vegetable bed. Gail remembers spending blissful December days distributing the piles of shredded leaves and grass clippings (after walking on her knees three miles uphill in the snow to get here) throughout the Display Garden beds – and she doesn’t remember having to do nearly as much weeding in the spring as we (and by we, I really mean the volunteers) have done lately. This fall Gail’s wish for a return to the old-school method was granted, at least in part. If it ever stops raining, we’ll still be given a lofty pile or two of blown leaves to shred and use in the spring, but last week we were also given a few slightly grassy piles of pre-shredded leaves to spread immediately on the gardens. With any luck – so far the leaf layer hasn’t blown away – in spring we (again, the volunteers) will be able to plant the gardens without having to do major battle with the weeds first. On the down side, some of our volunteers – self-sowers, that is, such as emilia, poppies, talinum, snow-on-the-mountain, and blue spice basil – may be no-shows in the spring.

Do you cover your garden beds with leaves now or in the spring? Do you notice a difference in the amount of weeds or self-sowers?

It’s kind of astonishing that an “immense sense of abundance” was, for Gail and me, a take-away theme from the Garden Design luncheon given that Joe Eck, our speaker, so recently lost his partner in life and gardens, Wayne Winterrowd. Joe and Wayne spent their lives together creating gardens and Joe showed us a few examples of their designs – all labor intensive (“labor intensive gardens are our speciality”, says Joe) and all exuberant, lush celebrations of nature.

Joe approaches garden design from an intentionally theoretical angle – something that a lot of us plant junkies, Wayne included, do not. In the preface to Elements of Garden Design (by Joe Eck), Wayne writes, “I knew there was a difference in our approaches, mine tending to be from the plant up, and his from the hedge down – or, to put it another way, from dirt as opposed to theory.” Incidentally, after reading a quarter of the way through this book last last night, I have already added it to the stack of books I wish I had read before starting to pack plants randomly into my own tiny property.

Joe showed slides from four projects: Hanover, NH; Henry County, KY; Smithfield, KY; and Southern California (clicking the links takes you to the project photo albums on the North Hill website.) The gardens Joe and Wayne made were unified by particular aesthetic elements like rooms, themes (a room of mostly-daisies in Smithfield, KY!), frames, hedges and walls, and Joe says, “there need always be a vegetable garden.” After all, we only ever started to garden in order to eat from it. Their effort to make use of the local vernacular – native plants and materials made each garden entirely unique and site specific. And in all of their gardens, plants are allowed to exuberantly fill the confines – blurring edges, leaning on and growing through each other – with what Joe called an “immense sense of abundance”. The gardens were also designed and planted specifically for their gardeners with the affirmation that to a gardener, when some is good, more is better.

Blithewold too was designed for its gardeners with obviously careful thought for harmony, balance, contrast, scale and structure among other theoretical considerations. A light bulb flashed when I realized that, by Joe’s definition – and mine too now that it’s been validated – the whole property is a garden, not just the gardens (the flower beds) framed within it.

Have you given this kind of thought to your garden’s design? (Like me, do you wish you had?) Does your garden at least give you an immense sense of abundance?

Back in June 2008 I wrote, “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.” Then I went on to talk about breaking that rule. (It didn’t work out well. I’m pretty sure I never mentioned those particular pot combos again.)

This past April – the 8th to be exact if I can trust the scrawl in my calendar that reads “k – front porch pot” – I planted a container that I wasn’t sure would make it past Daffodil Days. I was so unsure of it that I didn’t even take a picture after I planted it. But not only did it make it through spring, I just took it off the porch yesterday, looking more beautiful than ever. My temptation is to take zero credit for it and say it was just dumb luck – one of those happy accidents that happens sometimes in the garden. But actually, the plants played very well together and there’s a (remote) possibility that I might have had an inkling when I planted it. The plants I chose could all take the kind of “evenly moist” that is easy to maintain in a glazed pot (watered twice a week); they all appreciate a little morning sun and afternoon shade. And here’s where I really lucked out – they almost all grew just enough to fill the pot without being bullies.

The plants:  Pinus palustris (Longleaf pine) – in any container it’s guaranteed to turn heads. (I planted one in the pot by the road too.) Farfugium japonicum ‘Aureomaculatum’ (Leopard plant) – another stunner, finally blooming now. Hypericum calycinum ‘Brigadoon’ (St. John’s wort), Asparagus densiflorus (asparagus fern) and a couple of tiny Campanula ‘Elizabeth Oliver’. The campanula were the only plants that, after they were done blooming, were overtaken by the rest. It was almost as if I planned it that way.

I know there’s something to be said for redoing containers periodically throughout the season to keep it all interesting – and keep a gardener on her toes. But my goal is always to get it right the first time. (And this was the first time.)

Have you planted a container combination that stood the test of time and maintenance? What worked? (Was it carefully planned or a happy accident – or a combination?)