I’m still on seedheads. Yesterday afternoon Gail and I attended a workshop on propagating Rhody Natives (in caps because it’s an initiative spearheaded by the RI Natural History Survey and the New England Wildflower Society to get commercial nurseries involved in propagating Rhode Island’s own native plants both for conservation projects and to sell in garden centers. Really exciting stuff.) We learned a few tricks from Kate Pawling, plant propagator at Nasami Farm Nursery, Harry Chase a wholesale grower in Portsmouth, RI, and Dr. Bryan Maynard, professor of horticulture at URI.

So much about propagation involves a kind of science that makes my artist’s right-brain spin but when it comes right down to it, the most important thing is to simply pay attention to the way the plant works. For instance, plants native to New England that set seed in the spring need a warm stratification period before a cold one to germinate. Interestingly, a lot of spring seeds cannot be stored dry. Some plants, like native ginger (Asarum canadense) coat their seeds in a fatty substance ants love to eat and when they’re finished they discard the cleaned seed in their rubbish pile, which happens to be a perfectly situated nutrient rich place for a new plant to grow. For best results, spring seeds should be sown as soon as possible after collection. Makes perfect sense.

The opposite may be true of fall-set seeds. They often have a tough seed coat that needs to go through winter’s freeze and thaw cycle to crack and germinate. Try to sow them without stratification and they probably won’t come to anything. By leaving seedheads up in the garden to ripen we’re giving Nature the chance to do it her way and we love seeing where they’ll sow themselves next. Whenever we want to take the reins, we just need to mimic nature’s processes as much as possible.

At Nasami farm, Kate sows seeds in December, covers the trays in quartz filter sand to suppress moss growth (it still lets light in for the seeds that need it), puts the flats in a cold greenhouse, and makes sure the soil temperature in the trays hovers just below freezing. The only tricky thing she does is pay close attention to soil and water pH. When Harry sowed his Rhody Native seeds last year, he treated them with the same TLC he gives his commercial crops of annuals and perennials, kept them from freezing and nearly killed them with kindness.

Have you tried sowing wild seeds? Did you give them the tough love they require? Would you buy more locally grown native plants if they were available?

The other day Gail brought in an old book, Designing with Plants by the Dutch designer Piet Oudolf and Noël Kingsbury. As I flipped through it, a little lightbulb blinked. Oudolf says the best way to approach garden design is to consider the plant’s – or flowers’ – form first, then its leaves, and color dead last. I’m pretty sure my mind usually puzzles with design using the exact opposite sequence. Color first with leaves and form to follow. And I’ve been wondering why some of the garden jigsaws have been so difficult to solve.*

This time of year it’s a no brainer. Of course form and structure are more important than color. Color went a while ago; form can last longer. – I have to admit having a little ah-ha about why seedheads are so integral to Oudolf’s designs. (They’re not just about feeding the birds.) But at least lately I’ve been seeing the bones everywhere without needing the prompt, and wishing my own garden looked better naked.

I will also admit to you that I think I am in danger of being too obsessed with filling my garden with evergreens (not that I have many yet.) They definitely give the garden a certain winter weight, and they provide a lovely foil for the deciduous trees and shrubs whose naked form we might want to spotlight. But it’s exactly those plants that I think I have been in danger of forgetting about. I get all caught up in flower color and leaf shape and feel downright lucky if a plant’s winter form ends up being lovely too. Maybe this year I’ll put that requirement a little closer to the top of the list.

*Gail says we’ve had form in mind all along. True. But I hope that consciously making it the priority will be just the shift I need to get in gear and extra excited about planning this year’s gardens.

Are you finding any fresh inspiration or new ways of thinking about the garden this winter?

Over at Gardening Gone Wild, Debra Lee Baldwin (author of a couple of beautiful books on succulents) showed off a few examples of “potting area perfection”, including her own, and it got me thinking about the place where Gail and I spend so much time we sort of take it for granted.

The greenhouses’ headhouse was designed around the turn of the twentieth century as a proper potting shed – with cubbies for pots (and tulip bulbs, come summer), a “desk” with a hinged lid and drawers for storage, seed cupboard, shelve, closet, a dreamy soapstone sink (donated recently), and two benches, one of which is probably not ancestral and holds up the computer I’m working on now.

The other, in front of three beautiful, drafty old windows facing the Display Garden is our potting bench. It stands a good 37″ high, which just right for potting up little things, a little tall for the bigger pots; and is just as wide and long enough that 4 people can work side by side fairly comfortably. Bins for potting soil, peat packs and pots, and a mini-fridge fit underneath.

When I first started working here the bench was covered with a rapidly deteriorating sheet of Masonite and we always kept the soil in concrete mixing tubs like the one in the picture. When the greenhouses were restored in 2005, the bench was bestowed with a new polyurethaned plywood surface. We gleefully started mixing larger batches of potting soil right on it and now it has become cracked and pitted too.

We’ve been pipe dreaming about a new surface – stainless steel, marine-grade plywood – anything that might hold up to our use and abuse. And now after seeing other examples I have even more good ideas – it could have sides and a backsplash to keep us from clogging the electrical outlets…  A soil holding contraption could slide along the counter to make room for whatever else we are using the bench for today…

What is it about potting sheds and benches that invites wishful thinking? If I had to guess I’d say that it has to do with being specifically designed for its intended purpose. There’s a kind of beauty in that and it’s inspiring to see all the different ways there are of creating and using such a dedicated space. Ours might seem merely perfectly functional, often messy, and every-day to us but anyone peering in the windows might see something much lovelier.

What do you wish for at your potting bench?

Last but never least, are the little things I love. You know I am all for outstanding plants – I always have to grow a few big ones that grab attention and don’t let it go for a minute. Fuller’s teasel, castor beans, and my very favorite 6 footer, Gomphocarpus physocarpus ‘Oscar’ (aka hairy balls) should be high on my list because they simply can’t be overlooked.

But flower-an-hour (Hibiscus trionum) can. I know I’ve mentioned it already this year (last year) but I still can’t believe I let this one pass under my radar for so long. This past summer I discovered a love for the way it weaves itself into the August garden here and there and pops open its flowers as if it doesn’t matter who sees how delicate their creamy white flowers are, and how deep their purple throat. But even if I might miss them, the bees never do.

I’m not usually that into purple flowers (or white ones for that matter) but my other diminutive favorite was Cuphea ‘Ballistic’. The ears! We’ve grown C. ‘David Verity’ from cuttings for years and can’t live without it; and we’re becoming just as addicted to ‘Carribean Sunset’ and Mexican giant cigar plant (C. micropetala) – so smitten with that one in fact that despite it nearly breaking our backs we brought our largest specimen back into the greenhouse. But honestly, it’s little ‘Ballistic’ that just gets me. Typical of cuphea, once it starts blooming it never stops and never needs deadheading either.

And what about the plants that would just as soon be walked on as noticed? Gail and I are both consumed with the notion of lawn alternatives and hoping to replace our own sorry looking lawns with anything that won’t waste endless resources – and doesn’t need weekly mowing. My kingdom for a carpet of chamomile underfoot…

Meanwhile, as I look back and we begin to cast forward to next season’s gardens, the eyelash begonias are beginning to bloom, and the maidenhair ferns are sprouting. I simply can’t help focusing on the littlest things.

What little things are you in love with?