Our Tuesday volunteer group has been known for years — for ever? — as the “Deadheads” because they work in the Display Garden and traditionally, the biggest summer chore in these gardens has been to deadhead flowers to keep them from quitting and going to seed. While we still ask for help deadheading the annuals in the cutting garden to keep them blooming gangbusters, in recent years we have not deadheaded the other beds as rigorously. Now when the Deadheads ask if we want echinacea deadheaded in the pollinator bed we say, “No… let’s leave their seeds for the birds.” And when they ask if they should deadhead the betony, beebalm, cardoon, teasel, and eryngium, we say, “Nah, don’t those look cool?! Let’s leave them up for the winter.” Perhaps the Tuesday group needs a new name…

I know the betony (Stachys monnieri ‘Hummelo’) wouldn’t have bloomed again because we cut a couple of clumps back last year as a test, but the beebalm (Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace’) might have rebloomed, and there are still buds opening along the echinacea stems. But right now I wouldn’t trade any of those seedheads for their flowers. Not only are they beautiful (in the eye of this beholder) but there is more wildlife activity in that garden than I ever remember seeing before. It’s positively mesmerizing – I’ve been so distracted that visitors have caught me gawping instead of working. Goldfinch, wrens, and sparrows are all vying for seeds and hummingbirds, bees and butterflies are still zinging around working all of the flowers that aren’t ready to go to seed yet.

But there’s a fine line between letting the garden go to seed and letting the garden go. Some gardeners and visitors might think the cardoon seedheads look more like the undead than the simply un-deadheaded. And I imagine that it might make some people nervous to watch them self-destruct and send helicopters wheeling on the wind to float with the butterflies and catch in the grass and on bare patches of soil. But that doesn’t make me nervous. As long as the stalks are still standing upright, surrounded by a colorful garden that looks tended (it’s been meticulously weeded and propped, if not deadheaded) rather than abandoned, and the birds are happy, then I figure we gardeners are as golden as the light that falls this time of year.

Do you deadhead everything up until the bitter end or do you leave seedheads standing for their looks and for the birds? Have you found a happy medium? (Have we? – All opinions welcome!)

There’s a particular scent in the air evocative of childhood and candy treats: grapes are ripening on arbors all over town. Almost every garden in Bristol has at least one grape arbor and Blithewold is no exception. Our grape is an one-hundred (plus) year-old Concord, bred from native grapes and selected for early ripening and the sweetest flavor, growing from gorgeously gnarled trunks (I could only hope to look that cool and have a fern growing out of my knee when I’m 100) wrapped around the arbor next to the pumphouse. Despite its age, our vine is healthy, taking the vagaries of the weather on its chin.We have never (not in my time anyway) sprayed it to combat the kinds of fungus that seem to plague other gardens’ grape vines. It gets pruned in late winter and harvested now and has only been unproductive in rare years (last year for one). Most of the time Gail and I beg certain volunteers and staff members to take as many grapes as they’d need to make just enough jelly to share a couple of jars with us. (We’re further benefited by the fact that harvesting greatly reduces the number of funky past-ripe grapes that fall on all of the plants we keep in the shade under the arbor.) This year we were also able to share the bounty with the East Bay Food Pantry. As I picked them today – and sampled – I was struck as I am annually by just how intensely sweet the grapes are. And by just how much grape soda  – my memory of it anyway – tastes like actual grapes.

I also couldn’t help vaguely remembering, as I always do, the story of Ephraim Bull, the unlucky breeder Concord grapes, told in Paul Collin’s book Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn’t Change the World and wishing I could remember the details of how someone named Welch came to make berzillions on that grape while poor Bull died a pauper. I’ll have to go back and reread…

Do you grow any grapes in your garden? What kind? Do you make wine from them, like my neighbors do, or jelly?

I’ve gotten a couple of questions in the last week or two about what we do in the gardens to manage pests and diseases. Although a lot of you already know the answer, I don’t seem to mind repeating it for anyone who doesn’t. The short answer is: Nothing! We do not use any kind of chemical pesticides or fungicides for the sake of our own health as well as that of our volunteers, visitors, members, camp kids, pollinators, beneficial insects, birds and other wildlife. (That said, I believe Dan has sprayed some sort of bunny deterring pepper concoction in the Vegetable Garden. Not that it has worked. Also, the trees, shrubs, and lawns are managed differently.)

The long answer is: In the gardens, we try to keep plants healthy and stress-free by providing them with fertile soil (easy because the soil here is lovely) and adequate water. We amend the soil with compost, both our own and the biosolid and yardwaste mix (top grade and certified pathogen-free) made by Bristol’s composting facility, and we mulch with shredded leaves and buckwheat hulls, both of which add organic matter and aerate the soil as they break down.

We welcome insects, and the birds that eat them. We do minimal clean-up of seedheads and stalks in the fall to leave some habitat and cover for birds and insects over the winter. We have even started construction on an insect apartment house. (They’re all the rage in Europe.) It’s made of white oak, faces south for winter warmth, and we will continue to fill it with bits and bobs that that will provide nesting sites for solitary bees, lacewings, spiders, and any other critters that might find it cozy. The section with the slots is intended as a butterfly shelter but I read recently that they don’t really use those. Looks cool though.

It’s the visitors to our Rose Garden who have the hardest time believing that we don’t spray fungicides, etc. Honestly, we don’t need to. I know I’ve said this a million times already but here it is again: along with choosing disease-resistant roses, and giving them great soil and adequate water (about an inch per week), we also fertilize them 3 times over the season (in April as they break, in May/June just before peak, and in August for their last flush) using a slow release organic granular fertilizer (Espoma Bulb-Tone); we rake out the spotty leaves twice weekly; and we hand-pick Japanese beetles. But the real reason the roses look healthy is because there are other beautifully blooming plants in that garden that draw everyone’s attention away from a few yellow or lacy leaves.

In the gardens, we live and let live. Don’t you?

When it’s pouring rain outside, the greenhouse is definitely the best place to be. It’s not exactly warm on a gray day and it’s not completely dry either but it is full of summer’s promise. Visitors can’t help asking if the plants are for sale. It’s a good question because I’d want them for my own garden too. But, alas, they are not for sale – at least not here. Everything in the greenhouse is destined for Blithewold’s gardens. We have some new plants that I’m especially excited about and just in case you might be too, here’s the scoop on where you can find them:

Avant Gardens is selling a new (it’s new to us – is it new to the world?) hummingbird mint – Agastache ‘Summer Glow’. If it glows anything like the picture on the tag I’m smitten and I don’t even love yellow. Those will go in the North Garden. They are also selling this adorable violet with pewter leaves (Viola walteri ‘Silver Gem’.) Anything that looks like jewelry really needs to be planted in the jewel box of our Rock Garden.

Annie’s Annuals, a mail order source on the other coast, is selling a hook sedge (Uncinia uncinata ‘Rubra’) that promises to turn garnet red in the garden. I suppose they should go in the Rock Garden too but I’ve had my eye on them for a necklace of containers. A speckled leaved honesty (Lunaria annua ‘Rosemary Verey’) from Annie’s will find a spot in the Display Garden and I hope-hope-hope it comes true from seed next year.

Dahlia ‘Kaili’, which came in exactly a month ago as a rooted cutting from Corralitos Gardens, another mail order source from California that specializes in the prettiest dahlias, is already fulfilling its promise. We can be certain that it, ‘Golden Cloud’, ‘Granville’, and ‘Bishop of York’ will be gorgeous planted in the North Garden.

With more and more people planting vegetables, they are easier and easier to find as starts at almost any nursery or farmer’s market. We grew these tomatoes from seed from several different sources including Baker Creek and Johnny’s. I can’t wait for my first Sungold snack…

Have you found plants you’re excited about this year? What are they, and where can we buy them?

… but most spring flowers don’t. It hasn’t yet reached the temperature that was forecast for today (82!) but it’s definitely warmer than most things want to be so early in spring. As much as I hate to have to say it, the daffodils are now officially past their peak. Not to worry though because the tulips have taken over the show. Of course, warm temperatures this week might make some of them a passing  fancy too. But then, that’s what spring is all about. This is definitely the week to take a day off to sit under the cherry trees as they snow, breathe in the heavy scent of winter hazel, listen to the frogs sing, take a photo essay of faded flowers, and celebrate the preciousness of life. Since every day is bloom day from now on, here’s a small sample of passing fancies for a hot and sunny Monday.

To see what else is blooming (and passing by) all over the country and the world, visit May Dreams Gardens.