There are often artists in the garden. Some bring easels and paints, others bring notebooks and pens, or just their imagination. Ellen Hoverkamp brought her flatbed scanner and laptop.

If you did as I suggested back in May and bought Ken Druse’s latest book, Natural Companions: A Garden Lover’s Guide to Plant Combinations, you’d recognize Ellen as the artist who so beautifully illustrated those pages.

For two full days last week Ellen was an artist in residence, camped out in the carriage house making bee-like forays back and forth into the gardens for stems and branches.

She drew the shades and made the room as dark as possible to create portraits of Blithewold’s gardens on the surface of her scanner that have the immediacy of a plein air painting with the detail of a botanical etching months in the making. Given the ephemeral nature of cut specimen, Ellen has to work quickly to capture their vitality but what isn’t obvious, because the images are so fresh, is how much time she takes and how much care she puts into each composition. It’s only when you really stare into their details that you notice the details within the details. How one flower sort of speaks to another and how the eye is allowed to travel around without slamming against anything out of place.

I probably wouldn’t even be aware of how perfect her compositions are (which is part of what makes them so enjoyable) except that when I visited her at the end of my work day, she was taking tweezers to a tiny portion of a petal in a corner of the corner that didn’t hit her eye quite right and showed no sign of fatigue. She’s got serious skill wrapped around the kind of hyper-critical perfectionist temperament artists are often born with, coupled with a patience some of us (I) lack. It was such a wonderful treat to get to get a glimpse of her process and help her pick from the gardens. And I’m thrilled that she’ll be back next Thursday, 6-8pm to show off what she made here. Come if you possibly can. Her work is inspiring on its own but her enthusiasm adds a-whole-nother dimension to it. And if you haven’t bought a copy of the book yet you’ll have that chance as well. I’m hoping she’ll have prints for sale too. There’s one I covet of the pollinator bed, with a sprig of Boltonia ‘Nally’s Lime Dot’ whispering in the ear of a big orange dahlia, that has me seriously reconsidering whether I really need things like lightbulbs, toothpaste, and trousers more than art…

Have you met Ellen or her art yet? Will you come on Thursday?

I finally bought my very own copy of Ken Druse’s latest book Natural Companions: A Garden Lover’s Guide to Plant Combinations and if you don’t have a copy yet, it’s worth dropping everything else – plant those annuals later! – to pick it up. (I ordered mine from my favorite local bookstore and beat feet to get it as soon as it came in.) Truly, you might never look at your garden and the plants in it the same way again. I appreciated Ken’s reminder to pick flowers and foliage to see what would look well together but Ellen Hoverkamp’s digital scans of those pickings are exquisite. And then Ken takes it several steps further to illuminate plants that not only look well together but go together in various other ways, whether they’re related by “blood”, color, place, habit, use, and so on and on for well over 200 beautifully written and photographed pages.

I don’t have Ellen’s patience – or her brilliant artistic eye – or her equipment – to ever be able to create such amazing compositions but I have already started to notice the garden’s own arrangements and natural companions with a fresh eye. Some of these combinations (related more by good looks and cultural requirements than anything more thought-provoking) were planned but I think most were either lucky guesses or pure wind-blown serendipity. (Mouse over for captions, click on for larger views.)

What combinations of plants go well together in your garden? Do you think about different kinds of plant relationships when you’re working on your garden’s design?

This week we just about finished planting 300-something new perennials – with the garden volunteers’ help, thank goodness! – and that meant it was time to pick up another order. One of the highlights of Gail’s and my year is our spring trip to Avant Gardens in N. Dartmouth, MA to grab our order and see if there are maybe a few other things we can’t garden without. We found a lot this year. We should have brought the truck.

The owners, Kathy and Chris Tracey have a love of plants that is obvious and totally infectious and their nursery is like a fabulously curated art gallery. — But less fancy-pants; it’s as comfortable as a kitchen. They grow and sell plants that they know are awesome performers and they trial every new plant that intrigues them in their own garden, which is attached to the nursery. They’re also famous for fabulous pot combinations and the most sublime trough gardens. Seeing their plants so artfully planted and growing gangbusters just makes us want everything even more.

The nursery is well off the beaten track but so easy to find. Just head north (away from the mall) from the Faunce Corners exit off 195 in North Dartmouth and follow the road until it Ts. Take a left there and go winding along the shady country road until you just begin to wonder if you’ll ever get there. Card carrying Blithewold members who visit Avant Gardens will be richly rewarded with a 10% discount but they also have a fabulous online catalog here. If you aren’t already hooked to her feed, Kathy writes one of the most read-ably fun and informative blogs with the best name: Garden Foreplay. The plants she sells are definitely seductive…

Have you been to Avant Gardens yet? Did you find treasures too?

I’ve always wondered a little at the seeming redundancy of the phrase “unexpected surprise”. But I think I get it now. I came back from vacation fully anticipating certain changes and was still caught off guard.

Even though the rain held off until my return, I knew that (unlike at home) the gardens here would grow and flourish on a carefully monitored watering schedule. One shocker in particular was in the Display Garden. The castor bean ‘Pretty Purple’, which is not only supposed to be a dwarf variety but was cut back last month, towers a good two feet over my head now. It takes my breath away (not literally of course – though it would if I tasted it.)

Another unexpected-expected surprise was the green-striped cushaw squash (Cucurbita mixta) in the vegetable garden. I knew we were growing a special squash… but, not knowing which one it was, I had no idea that it would be such a beauty. I have just learned that it typically grows in southern gardens and must be loving our tropical summer. I also had no idea that it is the one with a reputation for making extra super delicious pumpkin pie. – I expect to be surprised by the truth of that sometime around Thanksgiving…

I knew that a sculpture exhibit would be installed while I was away. Last week local artist, Paulette Carr placed several site-specific sculptures on the property for a show she entitled Vestiges: Traces of the Past. Gardeners are perhaps more tuned in than most to how the introduction of a new element – whether it’s a plant or an object – can dramatically change the perspective, mood and view of a space. It’s something we probably think about all the time without even being aware of it – and maybe for that reason the shift in perspective (mood, view) can come as a big surprise. My photos from this morning don’t do it justice – come experience Vestiges for yourself if you can before it comes down (the exhibit runs from now through October 2) and see how it surprises you.

Fill me in – what surprises have been growing in your garden lately?

We can’t – or at least don’t – always live in the moment. The past is good to revisit sometimes for what it can teach us (you know what they say about hindsight and all) and it’s exciting to cast ahead to the future. Right now I’m slightly single minded about the coming week — I’ll be on vacation!! My bag is packed and I’m waiting by the car.

When I’m not busy picturing myself being supremely lazy, dozing and drooling with a book in my lap, I’m thinking about all I’m going to miss here at Blithewold. Highest on the miss-list is Lilah’s last week here. She, alas, is abandoning us for new adventures in academia. I’ve tried to help her with Worst-Case-Scenario projections – she’s oddly confident that it will all be wonderful… – and she’s taken very many unflattering pictures of me (as payback for the W.C.S’s) and some pretty ones of Gail for her bulletin board. If anyone has any sage advice for Lilah as she starts her first semester at Bard College in New York, please share! We will miss her madly and have already asked her to sign a binding contract to intern again next summer. Perhaps by then she will have changed her mind re. ornamental vegetables. College can be a mind-blowing experience after all…

I imagine that I’ll miss a lot in the gardens as well and have taken the befores pictures to compare with the afters I’m back. If I had been away this week instead I would have been so surprised by Fred and Dan’s newest structural addition in the Display Garden. Not 10 minutes after the guys finished installation, visitors were already ogling and photographing it. I haven’t asked if Fred has a name for his creation but to me it’s like looking at a hive in cross section…

And when I get back I’ll have to be at least a little more mentally prepared to acknowledge and accept Julie Morris’ (our Director of Horticulture) impending retirement. She might be ready but I’m for sure not. More on that much later.

For now, this week we are looking forward all the way to spring. It’s time to order bulbs! We cut the pictures out of the Scheepers catalog and played them like a high stakes card game. We came up with several combination selections that we think would be winning in the North Garden and many must haves for the Rose and Cutting Gardens. It will be up to Gail and Lilah to make the final cut next week. I hope they choose my North Garden “hand”! How do you play your bulb choices?

And what are you looking forward to? I’ll be looking forward to finding out when I get back! Have a great week, everyone!