As soon as I published about Stephen Orr speaking at our Garden Design Luncheon, I found out that he couldn’t get out of NYC. We know he would have been here if he possibly could and our thoughts are with him and everyone else whose plans – and lives – have been wrecked by Sandy. We are really counting our blessings, one of which is that at practically the last minute, Tovah Martin very graciously agreed to speak in Stephen’s stead.

Tovah came to our rescue not only by braving a scary, snowy nor’easter herself to get here, but by speaking about infusing the garden with personality, and giving us a reminder that I’d like to have engraved on my hori-hori: don’t worry so much about what other people think about your garden. And then she made a quick and gorgeous terrarium because, “if everybody in the world grew a terrarium, there would be no war.” (It was kismet that we had already made terrariums — temporaryums, actually — for table centerpieces. We’re that much closer to peace.)

Intermixed with practical design advice regarding repetition, textures, and shapes (“You’ve got to have balls. –I do.”) Tovah also told us to “be happy in the garden.” Know who you are and what you love. If, “in your heart of hearts,” you love open spaces and gazing at the horizon, make your garden so. If enclosure is comforting, create it. When speaking about garden art and tsotchkes, she says, “if a miniature golf course moves you, go for it!” Plant orange and pink flowers together if those colors resonate for you (as they do for me) and then don’t worry over what anyone might say about it. All of this advice hits home for me because (at home) I garden with wild abandon in an otherwise well-manicured neighborhood. I do worry a little about getting the hairy eyeball from my neighbors but in actuality, I have noticed returned smiles and what could be interpreted as nods of approval. Perhaps, as different as our gardens are from each other’s, we recognize a kindred passion, just as Tovah does when she visits other gardens. And that’s it right there. Tovah told me she’s never been to a garden that she didn’t think was amazing, just by virtue of it having been created. And the inspiring slides she showed reflected exactly that.

Tovah’s latest book, The Unexpected Houseplant: 220 Extraordinary Choices for Every Spot in Your Home is already one of my faves, as is The New Terrarium (for obvious reasons). Read them and any of her dozens of others and be inspired to be you. And most of all – have fun.

It was a big and busy day yesterday, in more ways than one. We passed another milestone in this year’s garden calendar – the first real killing frost fell finally. And while that marked the official end of the growing season, we were glad for a chilly but sunshiny morning to finish planting — with the assistance of a small group of weather-proof volunteers — a few more ticking time bombs of hope for next year’s growing season. It’s hard to imagine just by looking at this tiny Tulipa clusiana ‘Lady Jane’ bulb, which looks for all the world to me like it has a lit fuse, that come spring it will burst into an exquisitely delicate pink-flamed flower. But that’s the promise so long as the squirrels don’t defuse it first. We also planted 300 wood sorrel (Oxalis adenophylla – I wish I had taken a picture of those hair-coverd fuzzbombs), a few hundred more crocus in the bed just outside the moongate, and 200 tiny winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) nuggets for our earliest visitors’ enjoyment. As much as I don’t just love the down-on-all-fours back break of poking narrow holes between the roots and stems of perennials and roses, I got kind of into it yesterday. There was definitely something cathartic in busting through a just-frozen crust of soil, with the sun warm on my back, and thinking about spring.

And now that the bulbs are all in, it’s time for us to think about winter. We took advantage of our volunteers’ extra hands to put the rest of the frost-nipped North Garden to bed. Gail and I feel a very grateful relief for being able to really focus on the next thing. It would be way too soon in real life to start decorating for Christmas but here at Blithewold, the mansion is almost completely gilded already and will be complete after the garden volunteers hang ornaments on the big tree next week. And here at the greenhouse Gail and I will be spending the next week and a half getting ready for the newest Christmas at Blithewold feature event, Christmas Sparkle. Every Friday night until Christmas the path from the mansion through the Enclosed Garden to the greenhouse will be lit with lanterns. There will be fires in the Enclosed Garden for marshmallow roasting (s’mores!) and hot chocolate in the greenhouse, which will be (as we like to think it always is) a welcoming wintery oasis of green growing things.

Has frost fallen on your garden yet? Are you focused now on the end of this season or are you still planting time bombs for the next?

You might (or might not) remember that a year and a half ago, a few members of Blithewold’s staff were invited to be in Martha Stewart’s Gardening Show studio audience. It was a hoot to sit in those bleachers watching the goings on of (part of) an empire and I have little memory anymore of what it felt like to drive to NYC in the wee hours of a should-be-sleeping-in morning. But I do still have some of the swag she gave away. By far the best thing in the tubtrug full of stuff was a book by her (magazine’s) gardening editorial director. Tomorrow’s Garden: Design and Inspiration for a New Age of Sustainable Gardening by Stephen Orr is full of gorgeous photos (taken by Orr) of inspiring modern gardens all over the country that illustrate a full spectrum of garden-with-nature possibilities. Along with telling his own garden’s story, he interviewed the other gardens’ gardeners on how their designs were created and maintained. And it’s generously peppered with plant lists and tips. The only beef I have with the book is that so many of the designs and ideas appeal to me that I’m no closer to deciding what to do in my own garden.

But it’s time for another look through it because this the time of year, when the season’s successes and problems are still fresh in my mind, is when I do my best thinking about garden design. Just this week, even in the soggy aftermath of the storm, Gail and I worked on a new vision for the moongate bed under the Sophora outside of the Rose Garden. That bed, which is our best example of dry shady conditions, has grown so well it had finally become almost overgrown. The plants we chose for that garden, things like epimedium, liriope, ginger, carex, hosta and tricyrtis, almost all going on 5 years old now, have proven themselves easily sustainable, with minimal supplemental watering during drought, and were finally in need of redistribution to (re)create a more aesthetically pleasing design. Since this is the best time to move epimedium (because it blooms so early in spring) and because this is when our brains are ready for that sort of exercise, we spent yesterday playing musical perennials. (Now that I’ve had a little practice again, I might be ready to make some decisions at home…)

If you are raring for inspiration the way I always am right about now, I say buy the book. –But wouldn’t it be even better to meet the author and hear his freshest thoughts on the subject? I’m so excited that Stephen Orr will be speaking at Blithewold’s annual Garden Design Luncheon next Thursday, November 8, 10am-2pm. A few (a very few) tickets are still available so register here asap. (Our fingers are crossed that his books will arrive in time from storm ravaged New York… If you already have a copy, bring it with you for him to sign.)