Last night Gail and I made a trek to Boston to hear a lecture given by Dan Pearson (co-sponsored by Arnold Arboretum and Trinity Church). If you don’t already know of Dan Pearson, he is one of the rock stars of the horticultural world – a garden designer from the UK who works around the world and has written for Gardens Illustrated, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times as well as a few books – most recently one called Spirit: Garden Inspiration. He spoke about a life-long fascination with the spirit of landscapes and has traveled the world to find the places that resonate for him (and would for any of us): Untouched places like a remote part of New Zealand where trees have grown on trees that have grown on trees that have grown on epiphytes that have grown on trees – for millennia; barely touched places like the ancient Druid altar of Dartmoor; places where nature intersects with human intervention – like the Moss Temple garden in Japan where nothing is extraneous and you must participate in a ritual chant before entering; and places entirely man-made like Chicago’s Cloud Gate sculpture.

Nothing Pearson said was particularly earth shattering – in fact, he’s not really into that sort of thing. His designs have a light touch because he’s not interested in making “indelible marks” on the landscape. He talked about how the landscape – our gardens – can be places that connect us to the earth – in the details, and in the passage of time. Landscapes can humble us and help clear our mind. He mentioned an annual walk he takes in southern Spain, where for 2 weeks he walks the same path (to a remote limestone cliff beach. Please.) and every day as his eyes become accustomed to the landscape, more and more details are revealed to him. I know that people visit (and re-visit) Blithewold for the solace of a comfort-zone connection to nature, and although it might not be Andalusia by any stretch, regular walks here – anywhere – can be every bit as meditative.

Some of the places he’s been -and designed- were spare to the point of austere. But elegant and perfect in every way. Gail and I spent the train ride home talking about the mental toughness test we’d have to keep from embellishing some of these places. We, I think, focus a lot on long seasons of interest (more blooms, no waiting!) whereas he celebrates the ephemeral. – It seems difficult to reconcile being a plant junkie with a nature inspired design and an elegant touch. (But I suspect Pearson’s a bit of a junkie too – he just has more self-control perhaps.)

He is so immersed in his work that by now it is – and maybe it always was – instinctual. When someone asked about his actual design process, Pearson said that it’s like when you meet someone for the first time, you know very quickly if you have things in common and whether or not a lasting relationship will follow. Same thing with a garden. He just knows it. I realize now that I have completely lost sight of the first impression I had of my own garden – before it was mine, which was a sublime feeling of being perfectly “at home”. That is what should whisper the changes I make there.

Do you look for or feel the spirit in places? – Where? Are you a garden whisperer?

The boundary between this world and the next is said to be thin right now. – Personally I think it’s on the thin side most days but it’s good to have a reason to honor the ancestors and welcome them back among us. Blithewold’s family is never far from here and our hearts – they live on through the property and our collective love of it. And I feel certain that they were overseeing our work yesterday as a few volunteers finished burying the undead (the tulips!) in the North Garden.

I thought it was only fitting for this Halloween post to visit the place where some of the ancestors have been laid to rest. Juniper Hill Cemetery is a 19th century garden cemetery, which is a type of burial ground designed as much for the solace of the living as it is to house the dead. Juniper Hill is a place of pure quiet and deep shade on a hill overlooking Bristol harbor and, these days, seems forgotten by all but a few dog walkers (and the Bristol Historical Society which offers grave and tree tours occasionally). I have to admit that I visit this place weekly, if not daily, but I think it has never been more sublimely beautiful than it is right now.

Happy Halloween!

There’s nothing in the world that beats a car trunk full of new plants. Gail and I went off today to try and find a couple of things to fill a couple of holes in the Rose Garden – where three of our new(ish) daphnes bit the dust. – They do that, don’tcha-know. It’s a heart-breaker but we still love them. Anyway, we came back with some things that probably won’t be permanent solutions for that bed but that we couldn’t possibly live without – even though, at least in one instance, we didn’t even know such plants existed. But isn’t that all the fun of going plant shopping?

Along with a thing or two that we couldn’t resist for our own gardens at home (what is it with me and aggressive plants? Don’t even ask about the wisteria peeking out from the truck – at least it’s the native one), we noticed a delicate shrub with a tag that read “Wikstroemia (very rare)”. Well, call it rare and we call it ours: We bought the last two. Wikstroemia trichotoma, I just found out, is closely related to Daphne (hmmmm…) and will grow to a 3′ or so mound and blooms from mid to late summer. The blooms are just visible in the photo – on the branch tips. Use your magnifier because they’re the cutest, tiniest things.

Now is such a great time for renewing a diminished interest in the garden with a little shop therapy. Not only are many nurseries and garden centers slashing prices in hopes of reducing stock before winter but heading into the cool, rainy season just happens to be the most perfect time to plant.

Speaking of perfect timing, we came back to the potting shed to find William Cullina’s latest tome on our desk. In Understanding Perennials – A New Look at an Old Favorite, he goes into the science of herbaceous perennials from roots to stems to leaves to flowers and he answers questions I’ve had like, “why are some leaves fuzzy?” and “why does the pitcher plant have spots?” Not only that but because his chapter called “Cultivation With an Ecological Eye” has the subheadings “They Are My Babies!” and Why Do the Most Expensive Plants Die the Fastest?” I just know from that that he is my kind – our kind – of people. And how happy am I that Bill is coming to Blithewold to speak at our Garden Design Luncheon? – So happy! Save the date (Thursday, November 12th) or better yet, register right now.

What is it about someone else’s garden that can make even ordinary plants look extra special and precious? Once a month or so during the summer, Blithewold offers a great treat called an Intimate Garden Tour and this past week we were invited for a slow meander inside Wildacre on Ocean Drive in Newport. Wildacre was originally designed by Fredrick Law Olmstead (of Central Park fame) for his brother and has been beautifully preserved and restored by one of Blithewold’s favorite benefactors and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was, for me, the kind of garden that is so extra-ordinary and so site specific that I really couldn’t glean any particular ideas for my own garden but then – I didn’t want to. It was enough just to trespass and enjoy and to borrow the whole of it fully intact inside my mind’s eye (and on digital file too, of course).

The gardens are meticulously tended by 3 gardeners – one of whom we were told spent the entire day replacing moss and sedum that the birds had just seen fit to fling about – and has been decorated with a whimsically elegant sense of folly by its owner. Although it has always been described as being a relatively flower-free garden, the sedums and peonies were in full glorious bloom and a wonderfully floriferous butterfly garden is a work currently in progress. And every plant and every element (unlike my own garden) was in perfect scale with the garden as a whole.

Rocky crags, softly planted and serene cove views beyond a vertigo inducing edge-less infinity pool took our blissed out eyes in all directions and stone steps led us on tiptoe from lookout to lookout. I am so unaccustomed to visiting private gardens that I found myself feeling like a reluctant but obsessed peeping Tom – I wanted to see it all and memorize it and take it with me but it also seemed like such a personal and private place that I didn’t want to intrude either. I think that’s all part of the fun of getting these glimpses of someone else’s garden, whether it’s someone we know and admire or a perfect stranger. And even though I didn’t bring back any specific ideas, seeing Wildacre gave me a fresh perspective on the gardens here at Blithewold and my own at home. I hope that our gardens give a similar impression of being truly beloved and perfectly situated.  Do you ever go on private garden tours? What do you bring home?

Next month an entirely different sort of garden for entirely different perpective will be open in Portsmouth, RI! For more information and to register click here.

Nearly everyone is badmouthing the weather.  We are all, universally it seems, ready for spring by which we might all mean summer.  We want to be warm now and surrounded by green growth and flowers now.  We’re ready!  Even Gail and I, enveloped as we are in the greenhouse by warmth and growing plants, need a little hort therapy to hold the crankies at bay.  So off we went today to Roseland Nursery in Acushnet, MA and since we were in the neighborhood, we stopped in at Allen Haskell’s in New Bedford, MA too.

I’m glad I made out a wish list for shopping at Roseland (more on that later).  I knew it would be acres of naked canes but it was truly acres of naked canes!  There were more roses than I have ever seen in one place and  I can only imagine what the nursery looks like – and smells like – in June.  I plan on going back no matter how crazy busy I am then – I’m sure a break and some aroma therapy will be more than necessary.

Same thing for Haskell’s – I will make every effort to get back there because it was certainly worth the trip even to walk through the greenhouses. And seeing the bones and early blooms in their display gardens has me anxious to see it again in full summer dress.  Plus we enjoyed a little ornithological therapy too – I didn’t know about their gorgeous collection of multicolored Asian pheasants. (Gail actually bonded with one of them.)

Of course it’s also therapeutic to walk through Blithewold – even for us and even in the rain.  Daffodil Days begins this weekend and there are already a lot of blooms on the property.  If you’re waiting for the daffodils to peak before you visit, stay tuned!  I’ll put up a “daff cam” picture on each of my posts through Daffodil Days and try to make a prediction or two to help you plan.

Are you planning a trip out for rough-weather hort therapy?  Will you come here?

When Fred (Blithewold’s dir. of hort.) suggested that Gail and I start making our own potting soil, we were totally game.  We had already started looking into alternatives to our peat based mixes and were interested in trying out this coir stuff that everyone is talking about.  Coir (rhymes with foyer) is a coconut industry byproduct – when coconuts are harvested for the meat and milk the fiber (the coir) from the shells is used for all sorts of other things – like rope, doormats, the pots we’re now using instead of peat pots – and the coir dust makes an excellent soil amendment.  It’s on the slightly acidic side of pH neutral, has high water retention and slow release; it’s re-wettable, and biodegradable.  It’s also an easily and sustainably renewable resource.  Peat moss, on the other hand, grows back at a rate of 1-2 millimeters per year and must be very carefully harvested in order to remain at all sustainable.  And the amazing thing about peat bogs is that peat absorbs carbon dioxide and as it’s held in the earth, the bogs act as global coolers.  When the bogs are disturbed however, the gas is released which, as you know, contributes to global warming.  (Very uncool.)

Personally, I’d rather leave the bogs alone but peat moss has forever been every gardener’s go-to soil amendment.  In terms of feeding the soil though, there are much better alternatives – like shredded leaves, mushroom compost, and everyday garden compost – all three of which add nutrients while improving the texture, aeration, and water retention.  Coir is more like peat – it’s a nutrient sponge that retains and releases whatever is added to it. Its water holding capacity and re-wet-ability make it an ideal potting mix ingredient.  (Potting mixes need to be Goldilocks-perfect:  Not too heavy, too light, too wet, or too dry – but juuuussst right.)

The great people at The Good Earth in Hope, RI offered to share a pallet of Fibre Dust, LLC Coco-Coir bales with us – none of us needed all 990 odd pounds – so Gail and I packed my little car with a third of the pallet which should keep us going for a while.  One 12″x12″x5″ tightly packed bale puffs up to 2.2 – 2.5 cubic feet or about two thirds of a 32 gallon container.

For potting up transplants right now, we’ll add it to the potting mixes we already have on hand.  As we start work on potting up the container bed, we’ll mix it with screened compost.  And next year when we sow seeds we might consider trying soil blocks like the ones the Holschers make at The Good Earth – we could reduce our reliance on peat packs and then be very nearly, almost entirely peat free.

Have you used any coir based potting mixes?  (Do you make your own?) What do you think of it?

When I made my winter vacation request for last week I asked the universe for extra warm weather so that I could get a jump on spring.  It snowed instead.  But it really didn’t matter because I was lucky enough to be snowed in at the Philadelphia Flower show.  An Italian spring was in full mid-summer bloom there.  Now, I have to admit to you that, in general, I am not the biggest fan of these spring flower shows.  There’s something that doesn’t hit me quite right when I see delphiniums and daffodils blooming together – my family likened it to my aversion to bent spoons.  They think I’m weird.  (I know I am.)  But I have to say that the sheer florabundance of the show was truly overwhelming and like every one else I was drop jawed at the “Milan” display of horti-couture.  Shoes made from plants?  It’s as perfect a combination as chocolate and peanut butter.  And I would totally wear the twig dress!

My other favorite part of the show was the Horticourt where people – mostly ordinary every day people as opposed to professional growers – had entered their prized specimen plants in hopes of winning … well, a prize.  I can’t imagine being a judge for any of the classes and categories in the Horticourt – all of the plants were beautiful, healthy, perfectly groomed and eminently covet-able.  So of course I stopped through the Marketplace on the way out to … purchase plants (as if I need any more).  Maybe one day I’ll shoot for a blue ribbon at a flower show too.

The really interesting thing is that the Philadelphia Flower Show is produced by the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society and is a fundraiser for an amazing program called Philadelphia Green. According to their website, Philadelphia Green was started in 1974 and is  “the nation’s most comprehensive urban greening program”.  Jane Pepper, president of PHS, showed the group I was with some really inspiring slides of vacant land reclamation and beautification (the befores and afters were truly stunning), thriving community gardens, and their growing (pun intended) partnership with the Philadelphia Prison System – inmates sow seeds for community gardens in their greenhouses and a lot of their produce is distributed to local food pantries.  Coming into town on the train, I happened to notice what had to have been one of the Green’s community gardens in a neighborhood that looked like it might be on the wrong side of the tracks.  I’ll have to go back to get a glimpse of it under cultivation.  And I definitely want to go back.  I’d never been to Philadelphia or the flower show and they’re both high on my list now for do overs.

Did you make it to the show and what did you love about it?  – Or were you snowed in?

I’ve heard Dr. Allan Armitage speak a couple of times now (both times at New England Grows) and he could probably say the same thing over and over again (he may well have) and I’d probably hear something completely different and be endlessly entertained each time.  His topic this year was “New and Useful Perennials for the Northeast”.  He endeavored to convince his audience of green industry professionals to make life a little easier for customers and clients when it comes to choosing the best plants for their garden.  He used his daughter Heather as an example of someone who not only isn’t interested in learning 1000 Latin names (we’ve probably all read his post about using common names on Garden Rant) but also doesn’t want to have to choose from 65 coneflowers when she goes to her local nursery.  –That’s how many images of echinaceas Dr. Armitage has available so far on his images database website.  Heather just wants to know which one is “the best” and she’ll happily buy it for her garden.

I happen to think he’s absolutely right.  Pretty much.  Mostly.   I know what I want (some of the time) and will still leave a nursery empty handed if I’ve been overwhelmed by choices.  Here at Blithewold we’ve been trying to make those decisions easier by trying as much as we can so that we’ll know, and you’ll know when you visit, what works and what doesn’t in this area.  The year I started working here was a heuchera year.  Gail and my predecessor Sheila had planted a dozen – at least – of them in trial.  And unfortunately over the next couple-three years we didn’t find a keeper among them so we let them go as we changed the gardens.  Five years later, there are a few (hundred?) more choices available.  The breeders will never stop breeding – who’d want them to stop? And we might be ready to give heucheras another go.

The flip side is when we find something that works, something that we love, something that we praise to the skies and then discover that no one is actually selling it.  We love Phlox paniculata ‘Natural Feelings’ because it’s mildew free, it blooms for a month and it’s a perfect height and an interesting color.  I guess we were the only ones who felt that way about it or it would be lined up with ‘David’ and ‘Peppermint Twist’ and 10 others at every garden center.  Same thing with Rosa ‘Morning Has Broken’.  If only there were a way to convince the growers and nurseries to sell exactly what we think is the very best…

What’s your opinion?  When you go to a nursery do you want to see an acre of roses or do you want to choose from the 12 or so that have been determined to be the best for your region?

The entire horticultural staff went to the first of our winter conferences this week.  I can really only speak for myself, but I think we get a lot out of these outings.  Not only did we get to pal around with Layanee from Ledge and Gardens and learn scary things about Emerald Ash Borer and Asian Longhorn Beetles but we had the pleasure of listening to Sydney Eddison give her Gardens to Go: Creating and Designing a Container Garden talk and slide show.  We already have a well worn and dogeared copy of the book on the potting shed shelf and it’s one that Gail and I each have at home too.  And even though we refer to the book annually for container bed ideas as well as for new furniture colors every so often, hearing Ms. Eddison talk about her process was like seeing the photographs (by Steve Silk) of her garden for the first time.

She talked about borrowing from her experience as a set designer when she designed her patio container garden and it was like a little light went on in my head.  Of course a garden must have an entrance that entices you in and even doors themselves are important elements in the garden.   You never know who might walk through so she says to make sure to allow for and embellish that mystery.   Frames are very important in sets and gardens because they help draw the eye to vignettes and vistas.   And the flow of movement in a garden is as important as on a stage.  You certainly don’t want the ingenue (especially if that’s you) to trip over any of the props.

A fresh perspective calls for a fresh perspective and I learned this picture trick from Sydney Eddison’s partner in publishing, her favorite garden photographer, Steve Silk.  “Tilt Shift” is a photo editing technique (click here for a Photoshop tutorial or here for a web editor) that somehow magically transforms the view from life size to itty-bitty-teeny-tiny.  It’s like creating a mini model mock-up of the garden complete with flocking grass and paper trees.  (Be careful if you try it.  It’s a little addictive.)

Are you finding any new perspectives on your garden?

Depending on where you live, it can take a treasure hunt to find something blooming during the middle of winter.  Some people go south to find color – the Caribbean, for instance, would be a brilliant treasure trove right about now.  Other people (like me) stay close to home and go out to greenhouses to find blooms.  And we’re the lucky ones who can sometimes bring blooming things back home.

Winter in a cold climate is tough season for houseplants though.  Most indoor heat is too dry for humidity loving plants to thrive.  There are things we can do to mitigate the dryness though, and our bodies (the insides of our noses, elbow skin…) might appreciate the effort as much as the plants.  Place bowls or kettles of water on stoves/heaters/radiators – you’d be surprised how quickly the water evaporates.  Keep your plants in dishes filled with pebbles and a little water – only make sure that the plant is not left in standing water unless that’s the culture it prefers.  And get more plants!  The more plants you have, the more humid your home will be because plants transpire out the water they have taken in.  That’s why walking into a full greenhouse feels so good this time of year.  Sounds skeevy to say it but we crave plants’ moist breath.

Some plants like these Camellias really need more humidity that the average warm home can provide.  Logee’s Greenhouse website recommends 50% humidity and nights below 60 degrees (down to 35) for the plants to be healthy and set buds.  Other than that they’re easy – they only need partial sun, water when dry and they don’t want fertilizer.  (That’s my kind of plant.)

Gail and I and a friend took a quick last minute trip to Logee’s in Danielson, CT earlier this week.  Even if you live with or work in a greenhouse like we do, it’s good to get out and breathe in another.  And that one is amazing.  It’s full of venerable specimens and ginormous stock plants growing, flowering and fruiting like miracles out of the floor.  If you can get there, do!  And, of course, if you’re near to here, you’re more than welcome to stop by our chilly but deliciously humid greenhouses for a breather too – the door is open!  (Figuratively speaking – it’s still wicked cold outside!)

Many thanks as always to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for keeping us searching for blooms the middle of every month.  Where did you find blooms this month?