While the weather is still so mild and the nights still so warm, it feels decidedly premature to bring plants back into the greenhouse. I’d much rather keep enjoying all the color out in the garden. (So much color!) But the time is absolutely right. It’s much easier on the plants if they come in with enough time to acclimatize before we close the vents and turn the heat back on. – That’s particularly important for houseplants and advice I really should be following at home, come to think of it…

Over the last few days we have brought cart load after heavy-back-breaking cartload of container plants back inside along with dozens of tender perennial stock plants. We’ve pushed aside the office supplies and made a colossal mess of the potting shed – it’s always gratifying to use this room (where I sit as I type surrounded by muddy tracks of potting soil) for its primary purpose – and it’s been amazing to watch the greenhouse transform from an airy bare-bones space back into a garden. (Click on pictures for larger view.)

Our one consolation for losing the plants in the (outside) garden is that they all look just as beautiful inside. Actually, there’s something about bringing plants indoors that makes them seem extra precious and lovely somehow. So lovely in fact that we decided the greenhouse is too nice not to linger in. We hope we will still have room for the livingroom ensemble after our collection of phormiums comes inside…

Have you started bringing the garden back inside?

The North Garden Star Wall Project has officially begun! (The wall, 100 years old this month, will be restored this winter.) Yesterday Team Rockette dug and hauled hundreds of pounds of perennials out of the two beds along the North Star wall and southeast side and heeled them in the vegetable bed (readied by Team Deadhead on Tuesday) for the winter. They also unceremoniously pitched all of the annuals along with moldy-old Phlox paniculata ‘David’ (it may be mildew resistant for awhile but for us, no longer) and anything infested with goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria), which over the last few years has insidiously reentered the North Garden in a number of places.

As hard as the work was yesterday – we all needed restorative naps afterwards – I kept thinking about how much easier it was, psychically at least, to do a major renovation project now as opposed to spring. As hard as it is to cut back or take out late season flowers that the bees and butterflies are still working, I find it much more difficult to move or destroy anything with fresh growth full of the season’s potential. And fall weather is much more reliably cooperative too. The ground is still warm so plants’ roots can take hold easily and there’s plenty of rain in the forecast. As much as we’d like to be able to get back into the North Garden with Team Florabunda, today’s rain is helping yesterday’s transplants settle into to their temporary home. The timing for that is also perfect. As long as you’re careful to not plant wherever you’d want to sow the early crops next spring (and we were careful) a vegetable garden makes a brilliant holding bed for anyone that doesn’t have space for a dedicated nursery bed.

We still have to get the roses (Ballerina) and hydrangeas (Limelight) out and sundry back row denizens but we’re nearly there thanks to the Rockettes – and the Tuesday Deadheads – (we could not have done this without them) and we’re right on schedule despite the rain. Stay tuned for progress reports and maybe even a discussion about all of the ideas being floated about potential design tweaks. (If the garden is going to be under the mayhem of construction, why not think about making a change or two? – Always preserving the family’s intentions, of course.)

Are you starting a big project now too? Do you prefer to do the work in spring or fall?

It isn’t easy to let go of an amazing season in the gardens but at some point in the fall we will have to. Just not quite yet! There’s more activity and color in the gardens than ever – I don’t think I’ve ever seen more monarch butterflies than I have this week and even the hummingbirds are sticking around (or stopping here for meals before continuing south.)

We have been soaking up the last of the season and taking it all in. Literally and figuratively. This week’s harvest for the East Bay Food Pantry may have been our next-to-last but we managed to tip the scales at a whopping 148 lbs (of cabbage mostly) bringing us so close to our 1000 pound goal for the season we can practically taste it. Yesterday we also picked our next-to-last buckets of flowers for arrangements and even as I write, Crystal Brinson, flower and garden designer extraordinaire, is entertaining and inspiring a full-house with a floral design demonstration in the dining room.

We will begin taking out the cutting bed in a couple of weeks – but only after picking from it one last time to honor our curator Margaret Whitehead, who is celebrating the release of her book Blithewold: Legacy of an American Family. Margaret and a team of volunteers (she herself began as a volunteer) spent years – decades – sifting through the entire collection of letters, bills, journals, etc and transcribed everything. Margaret then spent the past three years putting it all together in a way that offers us all a glimpse into the lives of the people that created this place. It’s been a labor of true love for Margaret and is a fascinating read for the rest of us. Proceeds from the sale of the book go into the Mary Philbrick Conservation Fund to support preservation projects in the mansion. (In addition to storing Blithewold’s archives in her head, Mary Philbrick was also a much beloved garden volunteer, and Dick’s wife.) Buy the book!

The forecast for the weekend is sunny and in the 70′s so there’s no reason not to get out here and take it all in one last time too. That said, this bountiful fall could go on for a while yet and it’s only the mansion that will be closed after this weekend (to be readied already for Christmas!) The gardens remain open year-round and visits beginning next week will offer a behind-the-scenes look at projects and how we prepare the gardens for winter.

Is your fall bountiful? Are you still busy taking it all in?