Do you ever round a bend in your garden, maybe coming from a direction you don’t usually, and gasp at how pretty it looks? I hope so because it’s the best, most giddy feeling. Yesterday I walked up to the North Garden from the water side of the house, not my usual route to the garden, and even though it was almost too hot to care, I was amazed at its colors and exuberance. When the garden was redesigned this past winter I was a little nervous about the new corner bed by the stone bench, imagining that those right angles might feel a little harsh. No longer. Now I can’t believe there ever wasn’t a bed and path there. I’m thrilled about how everything has grown in so quickly and am head over heels for a few of our new plants too.

I never really appreciated yarrow until we planted Achillea millefolium ‘Pink Grapefruit’ in the herb bed a couple of years ago. Now I can’t get enough of its clouds and wouldn’t mind seeing them in every garden. There are enough varieties and color choices that we could really shake it up. The one in the North Garden is ‘Terra Cotta’. It’s more golden than I thought it would be but just orange enough for true love.

Turning that corner in the garden I was also able to re-appreciate a couple of plants that I’ve become bored and annoyed with. Long leaf speedwell (Veronica longifolia) is one. I can’t stand that it needs hooping to stand up straight and absolutely hate that we forgot to do that this year. But look at how sublime those blooms are in this monochromatic combo with Geranium ‘Rozanne’. I’ve had just about enough of that one too because we planted it in so many gardens (food for thought regarding my current obsession with yarrow) but removing her is not an option because she’s too darn perfect and willing to bloom for practically ever. As for the speedwell, we’ll have to sacrifice a few flowers and try whacking it back maybe next week. (Annie at Annie’s Annuals recommends offing it 10″ from the ground for a later rebloom.)

Has your garden surprised you lately? What are the plants you’re especially thrilled with right now? Are you patting yourself on the back for making excellent choices? (Or kicking yourself for missed opportunities?)

I believe every day is a flower show but an honest-to-goodness Flower Show like the one at Rosecliff in Newport this weekend is a true extravaganza of floriferousness. And I’m not just saying that because we have an entry in one of the competitions. What makes a flower show showier than an everyday flower show in an everyday garden is that every combination of plants – every plant and every leaf of every plant, and every flower is perfectly perfect: scrutinized and meticulously groomed and then judged accordingly. Each designer’s garden is amazing, no leaf out of place and no weeds allowed (not like at home); the containers are all stupendous; the flower arrangements are out of this world; and the cut specimen are always truly outstanding. I think that’s my favorite part of this show and I might just have to go back tomorrow to see what beauties were entered. It’s a great way to learn about new plants.

Competition makes a real Flower Show especially intense and that’s why when we were first invited, along with 5 other professional gardeners, to fill an enormous container with a “Samba Parade” theme, we balked. But then we totally got into it. Gail, Tricia and I put our heads together, floated all sorts of ideas and crazy hare-brained schemes over weeks of lunch breaks, cleared a large corner of the greenhouse to pair plants with ideas and decide on colors, and then went shopping.

We’ve actually been trying to beef up our own container show here with new pots and an exciting mix of plants but strive for sustainable combinations – either one plant or species per pot or just a few different things that will play nicely together, with nothing overtaking and not packed so tightly that they’ll need to be watered more than once every day or two or three. But the Samba Parade container only needs to thrive until we pick it up Monday morning so we jammed 10 different species in and hoped for the best: the plants survival and a blue ribbon.

Fingers are still crossed that the plants will make it through a warm weekend but I just found out that we won a red ribbon. Second best is nothing to sneeze at when the competition is so fierce. The judge’s comment on our entry card reads, “Festive choice of plant material. Design is divided by airy hopbush and dense group of tropicals.” We’ll take that and shoot for cohesion next time. We definitely had an advantage of a greenhouse full of mature and interesting plants to choose from – the purple-leaf hopbush (Dodonea viscosa) intrigued everyone who walked by as we worked – but we felt at a disadvantage to those professionals who are practiced at creating beautiful pots for clients every season and who are in the habit of ranging further afield than we do to find fabulous plants. What’s cool is that all of the containers in this class were winners. The blue ribbon went to one of our very favorite philanthropists, Mrs. Hamilton who employs a team of geniuses; two second place ribbons were awarded, and three were given third place.

Have you ever entered a container or cut specimen in a flower show? Would you do it again?

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?

As we’re blown toward a new year, I feel bound by tradition – or is it just habit? – to take a look back at the past year and make endless lists of plants to know and grow (and not grow). Below is a continuation of a list I started the other day of the plants I was particularly impressed with and want to see more of. They’re in no particular order, and as always, I hope you’ll click on pictures for a better view or hover over for captions.

Clary sage (Salvia sclarea) stopped everyone in their tracks – not just because at the edge of the path it was in anyone’s way, but with its large fuzzy leaves topped by enormous luminous green(ish-white) salvia spikes. This is an early-summer bloomer with a reputation for being chock full of medicinal properties – perfect for an herb garden. Or a cutting garden if it happens to plant itself there…

Clary sage’s large soft leaves couldn’t hold a candle to wooly morning glory’s (Argyreia nervosa) though. Gail spotted this plant twined 30′ high in a friend’s garden last year and resolved to find one for Blithewold. She planted ours mid-summer, babied it through the heat, and it did its best to cover the vegetable bed arbor by September. It appeared to flower, sort of. We think. But it’s really all about those silver heart-shaped leaves unfolding…

I really can’t believe that Nicotiana didn’t make it onto my Fine Gardening list last year. I am so in love with all of them – maybe I have a thing for large soft leaves. I always thought it was the flowers… Either way, they’re great plants – so easy to grow, so lovely, so long lasting (they only just got hit by an extra hard frost) and so generous with their seeds. I’m always especially thrilled to see N. mutabilis and ‘Lime Green’ come back but I can’t help order more varieties of seeds every year – every available variety, please and thanks.

While I seem to be on the subject of awesome leaves I’ll just add one more (two more) to today’s post. Licorice plant (Helichrysum) is totally in keeping with some of the above for having really great wooly, silvery leaves. What I especially loved about this plant was how it wove itself through its neighbors in the North Garden – it’s never just for containers.

And now for something completely different: We’ve had sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina) in our entrance bed for a few years now so I’m not sure why I noticed it with fresh eyes this year. It could be because the mosquitoes were particularly persisitant and a visitor pointed out how you can use the leaves, lovely leathery, rick racked and fragrant things, as a natural bug repellant (rub on skin). Brilliant. Sweet fern is one of our natives too and if you can give it full sun and terrible soil – say that slope where nothing else grows – it colonizes beautifully.

There are a few more plants on the post-it note next to my keyboard and I have the feeling I’m forgetting something important, so this again is to be continued. Next year. — Happy New Year!

Last year Steve Aitken, the editor of Fine Gardening magazine, sent out a survey inspired by the list of 100 essential country-music songs Johnny Cash shared with his daughter Rosanne. Steve asked for a list of top 10 (plus one) essential plants that we thought every newbie gardener ought to know about. I’m thrilled to see my original answers here (scroll down) and in the January/February issue. It’s funny though to see my list a year later – it could easily have changed 365 times between then and now – and although I stand by my selections because they’re tried and true faves, I have at least 11 more to add (or a baker’s dozen) this year. In no particular order:

(click on pictures for larger view – hover for captions)

Euphorbia x martinii  ‘Ascot Rainbow’. I can’t get over the gorgeousness of this plant. There really does seem to be a rainbow’s worth of colors in the leaves – even more pronounced as the nights got cooler.

I’m really surprised that I didn’t put Eryngium planum on my Fine Gardening list. I adore its prickliness, its stem-to-stern true-blueness, and the fact that at any given sunny midsummer moment there are at least a dozen different species of bees and wasps working it.

Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace’ was a new beebalm (or wild bergamot) for us this year and although I hope it is every bit as thuggish as Jacob Cline, I suspect it’s more mild mannered. It started blooming in early July and stayed upright, mildew-free and lovely as it formed seedheads, which incidentally are now providing us with winter interest Piet Oudolf-style.

Another new one (to us) that I loved and never deadheaded was Agastache ‘Black Adder’. It’s listed as hardy from zones 6-9 so my fingers are crossed that it comes back (no worries when winter continues to act like fall) and if it does return, the only thing I’ll do differently next year is pinch it early on to encourage compactness. (Let go, it grew to a tilt-y 4 feet in our nice soil.)

I can’t leave this genus without tooting a horn for Agastache ‘Acapulco Orange’ and A. x ‘Heatwave’ too. They pick up major speed late summer and carry the garden on their slender shoulders all the way to frost. Can’t beat the tender perennials. And sometimes they come back too – Acapulco Orange did.

Stay tuned for part two. I look forward to finding out if the list I jotted down and started today, changes tomorrow… And I really hope you work on a list of your own and share it – or a link to it – here.