Sometimes I still feel like a backseat whiner. I should know better than to complain out loud because as a kid, whenever I asked, “are we there yet?”, my Mom would only reply cryptically, “10 and a little!” But I’m impatient to be done with the planting (10 and a little!); moved out of the greenhouse (10 and a little! – but at least I got the shading on today); and I’m already exhausted and my back aches. (Do you want some cheese with your whine?) But it’s June and even if we haven’t planted everything yet (this week!) and gotten all of the leaf mulch or buckwheat hulls on the beds and gardens before the heat hits (tomorrow), the gardens at least have arrived at their next destination. Just as the rhodies began to fade, the peonies popped. The delphinium are skyscrapers and the roses are so close to a peaking burst of bloom that I’ve been visiting that garden just to ask, “Aren’t we there yet?”

I know I have made the claim in recent years that the roses have never looked better. You already know that over the last several years we have replaced a few weaklings, inter-planted the Rose Garden with perennials, shrubs and annuals, finally put all of the roses on a fertilizing schedule (April, June – last week, in fact – and August), raked up spotty leaves twice weekly and and spent untold hours watering them by hand. This year we’ve been able to give the roses even more of what they’ve been desperately crying out for. Now I really mean it (- funny thing is, I meant it before too) but the roses have really, truly never – ever looked better. Their foliage is untouched, deeply green, leathery and glossy, and there are bazillions of buds.

Last fall we amended the soil with compost, which has almost instantly (if winter counts as an instant) improved our compaction problem. But even better, an irrigation system, generously and anonymously donated, and installed this spring has finally slaked their thirst. – They need at least an inch of “rain” a week for optimum health. We will continue to refuse to use chemistry to combat any pests or disease but honestly, I don’t think we’d even need to. Enriched soil with good drainage and regular watering to push the soil’s nutrients to the roots will keep the roses stress-free and lovely and as close to perfection as we think any gardener or garden visitor could possibly want. (And thank goodness, we won’t ever have to whine about spending hours watering the Rose Garden again!)

Are your roses in peak bloom yet? (Are you able to refrain from whining?)

Along with taking a good look back at last year’s successes and failures (I’ll get to those later maybe) we gardeners take this time to look forward and dream a little. (Incidentally, we are probably at our most optimistic right now: in January – the “dead of winter.”  Just before another storm pig-piles more snow on the garden.) Gail and I have been gathering our thoughts before we open the catalogs, and started to volley some ideas for next years gardens back and forth across the table. (This might well be the very best part of our job.)

We have both come to realize that we’re not interested in gardening just for our own or our (human) visitors’ pleasure. I haven’t forgotten that is a public garden – stick with me here: we have just started noticing that we habitually use words like “nature”, “habitat”, “environment”, and “ecosystem” and of course you already know that we are head over heels for pollinators. In truth, welcoming pollinators, insects and birds into the garden is ultimately self-serving because wildlife is good for the garden and what’s good for the garden is great for its visitors – as well as its gardeners.

So this year we’re considering buying or making bird, bat, butterfly, toad, and mason bee houses and as usual, we’ll be planting a lot of flowers. We’ll also make some changes to our maintenance practices to allow more seed heads to remain. All of these intentions will be part of how we form our designs, which we have every hope, will be as abundant and beautiful as ever.

And because we’re still on the sustainable gardening bandwagon (and can’t imagine ever hopping off of it) we’ll make a concerted effort to reduce our water needs by selecting plants with last summer in mind; we’re researching low growing and steppable lawn alternatives to plant in one of the Display Garden beds; and planning to keep invasive weeds out of the native wildflower area behind the summer house in the Bosquet. And because we love our human visitors too – and couldn’t do any of this if it weren’t for you, we’re imagining shady relief from blazing summer sun in our container bed, and planning to install more crowd pleasing roses as well as irrigation in the Rose Garden.

Are you starting to look forward and plan this year’s garden? Do you have a particular area of focus or any new intentions? Is there anything you’d like to see at Blithewold that I haven’t mentioned?

We know it’s fall – that it’s still only October – by the color of sky and the leaves on -and off- the trees. Temperatures tell a different story. The last few days have so been beautifully warm and sunny that planting the bulbs was a (day)dream-job and not a chore at all. But even though the weather was so mild and spring-like, it still felt a little strange to be thinking so much about that distant season right now. That said, it doesn’t feel half as strange to think about spring now as it did in August when we sent out our order.

Since then I had completely forgotten what we ordered and which gardens all of the bulbs were intended for. Thank goodness we wrote it down. (If only our gardens intern Lilah had pasted the pictures in our garden notebooks like she had done in years past… She wasn’t slacking. I blame myself for misplacing the extra catalog somewhere within the chaos of the potting shed.)

We’ve got some pretty pink and yellow tulips going into the Rose Garden – including many more Lady Janes because we loved them so much, along with chionodoxa and more snow drops for the dry shade bed. The North Garden has a new scheme too that includes ‘China Town’, which is a pink and green tulip with variegated foliage that we trialed in the Cutting Garden last year. And the Cutting Garden was planted with last year’s favorites from the Rose and North gardens along with a few new to try -  like ‘Antoinette’, ‘Perestroyka’, and ‘Lemon Snow Parrot’. We also tucked a few special treats like foxtail lily and fritillaria into the display beds. I’d say I can’t wait to see them all bloom, but the fact is, I can wait. I’m not ready for spring and because fall is so lovely I don’t want to even think ahead to spring quite yet. So I’m going to put the tulip lists and catalogs away, completely forget what we planted, and just look forward to being surprised come April.

Are you thinking ahead to spring? – I know you are if you’re planting bulbs. Are you also trying not to think ahead too much? (Are you thinking of Christmas yet? The mansion is already a whirlwind of decorating activity – I’m definitely not ready for that.)