It doesn’t get any sweeter than s’mores and hot cocoa, and the night is never brighter than a bonfire. Or three. Blithewold’s new event, Christmas Sparkle, kicked off last Friday and as someone who is occasionally accused of being a humbug around the holidays (you might not know that about me…) I have to say it was just the sweetest, brightest, best thing. Maybe ever. And I didn’t even have a chance to hang out by the bonfires in the Enclosed Garden, roasting marshmallows and listening to carolers. Instead, I spent my evening with beaming visitors in the greenhouse, which we lit like a fairy house with tiny lights and tea candles.

Every year “the guys” (Fred – director of horticulture, Dan, and now Nick) create some kind of amazing light display on the grounds, and every year we say they outdid themselves. Well. They placed the bar pretty high this year. The magical icicles in the front lawn ginkgo, and handmade copper and jelly jar lanterns along the path from the mansion all the way to the greenhouse would have won the prize for best ever but there are more lights than that and at least one strand (or ten) in a very high place indeed. So you really should come by for a look. But not just a drive-by. This is the year to take a tour through the house if you haven’t yet — or even if you have — because everyone is saying it’s the prettiest ever. Then, either come back or stick around for a Friday night ramble down the path to the greenhouse for a cup of cocoa, stopping in the Enclosed Garden on the way to warm your fingers and marshmallows by the fire(s). If I love it, you will really love it. For more information about Christmas at Blithewold, click here (or here for concerts in the Living Room, and here for the Christmas Sparkle chorus lineup).

Right at the cusp of a season full of overwhelming delights, I discovered a teeny-tiny one. It’s a very small thing but for me, it was kind of huge. Ever since I found out that Aspidistra elatior, the famously boring Victorian houseplant, also known as cast-iron plant, has a flower, I’ve wanted to see it for myself. But I was never sure of the timing, and most days poor Uncle is way off my radar. It hardly ever even wants watering, for goodness sake. So just try to imagine the moment when I went to evict a pair from their pots (to use the containers in a Christmas display), and noticed the flowers! Picture me, all alone in the greenhouse, doing a little dance.

The flowers, right at soil level and mostly such a dark purple they practically match the soil, are completely incognito. Also since they open so close to the surface, the flower cups were full of bits of soil and perlite. It’s really no wonder I’ve been missing them all these years. But they’re so pretty. And while you might think that I’d leave them be and find a different pair of pots, I wanted a closer look at their full structure. (Click on pictures for a closer look yourself.)

I understand that this particular delight might not provide the same kind of thrill for anyone else but if you happen to visit the greenhouse – or for that matter wherever your travels take you throughout the holidays, I offer you the challenge of finding at least one small surprise to be delighted by. Maybe it will be these very same flowers…

Yesterday, Gail and I had the pleasure of a road trip to a garden in the wilds of southwestern Rhode Island that would have felt as far away as Borneo or any other exotic tropical place if it weren’t for the assortment of familiar native plants tucked in with the hundreds of pots of eucomis, colocasias, bananas, flamboyant trees, and gingers. We were treated to a personal tour led by this garden’s owner and designer, Louis Raymond, who is easily one of the most enthusiastic self-described plant geeks I’ve ever met. Even under the weather with a fever, Louis practically jumped out of his socks every time we noticed a particularly awesome plant or already knew of one of his fabulous finds by name.

I’m not sure many people garden the way Louis does. For one thing he gardens large. He has a Tetrapanax paperifer ‘Steroidal Giant’ planted next to his back door that surprised him by sending out a sucker that popped up in the dirt floor of his cellar — not to mention all of the pups that have come up in his terrace like unexpected dinner guests. But does its propensity to travel far and wide bother or worry him? Not one bit. He LOVES that plant and he’s thrilled that a couple of them didn’t die to the ground over the winter last year, which means he might get flowers this fall. Woot!

A lot of what Louis grows, big or small (mostly big) he grows in nursery pots, which give him all sorts of control. He can rearrange the furniture whenever he wants (I’ll have to go back to see if he does that), he can monitor the wildly different water requirements, and he can more easily overwinter all of the tender things he loves. I would wonder why he doesn’t choose to live in a southern climate except that I bet he’d be compelled to find cold storage for all of the northern climate plants he also dies for. Now he uses his cellar to overwinter some things and rents a cold greenhouse for the rest. If you look at his garden and only see how much work it would take to move everything in and out, you might be overwhelmed and miss its magic. Clearly it’s a labor of true, mad love — as is any great garden.

Louis’ enthusiasm is inspiring. We gardeners don’t mind the work we put in (we can still complain about the weather) because the process is almost the best part. But we all have different thresholds and tolerances for effort. I don’t mind pulling out shoots of rambunctious plants by hand when they go too far but someone else might prefer to confine the same plants to pots dug into the ground. What’s a lot of work in the mind of one gardener is a piece of cake to another and vice versa. I haven’t always enjoyed schlepping plants in and out of the greenhouse but Louis even made that seem like it should be a super fun thing to do — as long as you love the plants you’re moving. Suffice to say, Gail and I both left inspired to be even more adventurous. Stay tuned.

What kind of hoops do you jump through to grow the plants you love?

Despite knowing that pinching new growth makes plants branch into full and sturdy clumps that promise extra flowers, it can be one of the hardest things to do. Somehow it goes against the grain to nip healthy new growth and I just can’t do it sometimes. But then I always wish I had. The nepeta at my house grew so fast I missed my chance to pinch them before the flowers budded and now they’re splayed open and not-so-very pretty even though they’re blooming away. If only I had pinched them back in … April. Or if not in April, then a couple of weeks ago when I realized they were about to bloom. It would have been better to set the bloom timing back a bit for the sake of sturdier, bushier growth. Mental note for mental toughness next year.

Last year our Agastache ‘Black Adder’ and ‘Blue Fortune’ were tall and a little rangy so we determined to remember to pinch them this year. They should end up being a little shorter, the blooms might not be quite as large possibly, but the plant will look much better in the garden and there will be even more flowers for the bees.

We also pinched Aster ‘Lady in Black’, which we bought as spindly single-stemmed plugs. Cutting off the apical meristem, the tip of a new shoot, will send energy into the side shoots and make the plant branch. It feels barbaric to lop off their heads but they almost instantly respond – within a few days anyhow – by starting to branch out from every axil. I hate to think how weak and unattractive the plants might be if we didn’t decapitate them.

And the consolation prize for following through with this necessary but weirdly difficult task is that the pinched tips of annuals and perennials make the best cuttings – as long as they’re not blooming yet. Spring cuttings take much more quickly than fall ones – fast enough that we should have more plants to tuck in later where we need them.

Make sure the cuttings are neither floppy nor woody. Trim off the second or third set of leaves from the top right at the stem using a sharp knife or razor blade. Trim the remaining leaves in half, dip the end of the stem in rooting hormone, and stick it in dampened  sterile rooting medium like perlite or vermiculite. If you don’t have a high-tech mist system like we do, put a low-tech clear plastic bag over the cuttings and mist them with a spray bottle occasionally. Keep them in a bright warm spot out of the sun and they should root in 2-4 weeks. Pot them up for few weeks before planting them out.

Other plants on our pinch-now list are the ones that bloom late in the season like chrysanthemum, which can be pinched again around Father’s Day; Boltonia – I swore last year that I would pinch ‘Nallie’s Lime Dot’, and Helianthus – ‘Lemon Queen’ to keep them from keeling over; and rabdosia (trumpet spur-flower). We also sometimes pinch summer phlox – but only if we don’t want them to get too tall (otherwise we’ll just thin out some stems to give them better airflow); dahlias if they’re up and leggy, Salvia, and potted annuals when we plant them even if they’ve already been pushed into bloom.

What plants are you pinching back now? Are you squeemish about doing it too?

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?