I have looked at these gardens so much that even though they change everyday I can hardly see them anymore. It’s not that I’m tired of the garden – far from it. I still want to witness every little change. But it’s August and my eyes have grown accustomed. – It’s just like not being able to smell the roses for more than a few minutes whenever I work in the Rose Garden.

One remedy is to see the garden through someone else’s eyes – or camera lens. I love checking out the views that captivate our visitors just in case they’ll be new to me too. Michelle from Fine Gardening magazine posted some pictures on her blog, Garden Photo of the Day, that she took during a visit to Blithewold. For me, seeing her photographs (click here and here) in a different context than I’m used to, is like getting a glimpse of a whole other garden than the one I work in every day.

Another way to refresh the senses is to leave your own garden and look at another. Gail and Lilah and I took a trip to one of our volunteer’s garden in Little Compton where the views are entrancing and the plant combinations exciting. I hope that our visit – seeing their garden through our eyes – was as helpful to Gioia as the change of scene was for us. Gioia’s – and her husband Jim’s – garden will be open on September 11 as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program. Go on tour, if you possibly can.

Gail just got back from her two-week vacation and her enthusiasm about how the garden grew while she was gone has been energizing for me. I can see now that it changed a lot. Lilah and I did tinker with it a bit though: The Allium christoffii are blooming all over again! (Who says a gardener can’t extend the season with a little spray paint?)

Now it’s my turn to go away for a couple of weeks. I’m ready to go – the last items on my to-do-before-vacation list were to fertilize the roses one last time before their final hurrah, and write this post. Check – and check.

I wonder how different the garden will look to me, what I’ll miss seeing come into bloom and what surprises might greet me when I return… Stay tuned. (I’ll be back to fill you in the week of August 23rd.)

Can you still really see your garden or do you find a change of scene refreshing too?

No matter where a group of gardeners may convene, we will always find common ground and inspiration. This past weekend about 70 of us from all over North America got together in Buffalo, NY for the 3rd annual garden bloggers meet-up. If you’re only vaguely familiar with Buffalo’s riches to rags industrial history, or like me, have passed through without stopping, it might seem like an unlikely city for a garden tour. But, believe it or not, Buffalo is definitely on the map as a rich horticultural destination.

Thanks to our hosts Elizabeth Licata and Jim Charlier (and a gajillion sponsors), we were treated to a sneak peek into a few gardens on the Buffalo Garden Walk – over 350 gardens all over the city will be open to the public (free and self-guided) the weekend of July 24-25. Since 1995, this (non-competitive) tour has grown block by block and become a floriferous symbol of urban renewal and civic pride. In every neighborhood that we went to, there was visible proof of gardeners inspiring neighbors to be adventurous gardeners. I’ve never seen such a concentration of densely and diversely planted postage-stamp sized gardens and am left to wonder if there’s a way to achieve the same feeling of intimacy on a slightly larger piece of property like my garden or even within Blithewold…

We also took in Erie Basin Marina University Test Gardens, Buffalo Japanese Garden, Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens, Lockwoods Greenhouses, and Mike and Kathy Shadrack’s (they literally wrote the books on hostas) amazing hosta/hemerocallis garden deep in the woods of North Boston, NY (all pictured below). I feel like I still have a lot to process and learn from seeing these places and hope to revisit them in future posts.

Since there are easily as many reasons to garden – and blog – as there are those of us who do it, the inspiration we can glean from each other – not to mention our surroundings – is infinite. I’m so glad to have had a chance to meet so many compatriots all at once and I’m eager now to see more photos from the weekend and read everyone’s thoughts about Buffa10. For a list of links to posts already written about the event, click here.

Have you found common ground on unfamiliar turf (in Buffalo or anywhere else) and come home inspired?

I’m no doubting Thomas but I can tell it’s spring because I’ve seen it up close, and I’ve smelled its intense sugary sweetness in the air. Spring and I were both in Zone 8 last week. Now that I’m back in Zone 6 (maybe 7) I’m reassured to know that elsewhere in the world the cherry trees are blooming and the daffodils are almost gone by. A little time away also made the changes here at home all the more obvious to me and extra precious.

Maple trees (such as red, silver and sugar) are in full bloom, forsythia and magnolias are starting to open, and leaves are emerging on all sorts of Asian introductions, earlier than everything else – just like Professor Tallamy said they would. Not only that but if it wasn’t raining quite so hard today, I’d take my first Daff Cam picture of the season because a few in the Bosquet have already started to open. Looking back at calendars and pictures from the last few years, I think it’s safe to say that this year we’re all being treated to a little spring preview. Over the last week in the greenhouse, Gail and the volunteers filled benches full of seedlings and the gunnera pushed enormous, weird flower spikes out of its mysterious tangle.

If the rain ever lightens up (we’re calling it Lake Bristol right now) I’ll take you outside. In the meantime, here’s a glimpse of the preview I was treated to at the Washington Park Arboretum and Japanese Garden in Seattle. If only there was an app for scratch-n-sniff…

What has changed in your garden over the last week or two? Is your spring sproinging or already sprung?

I know I’ve said it before but it’s good to get out. Yesterday Gail, Julie (our education coordinator) and I went to the Perennial Plant Conference at UCONN in Storrs, CT and came back jazzed all over again about things like native plants and edible landscaping.

Rosalind Creasy has been advocating and demonstrating edible landscaping –beautifully – since at least the early 70’s and we have certainly been playing with the idea here for the last few years too. But now I’m all over the idea for my own garden – all over again. Truth be told, I haven’t been much into planting vegetables at home unless they’re exceptionally pretty. But I’m coming to realize that they’re almost all exceptionally pretty if they’re worked into the design in the right way. Not to mention the benefits of growing your own food. And she makes such a compelling case for replacing lawn (preaching to the choir) – I don’t even have kids but if I did maybe I’d already know they prefer a garden to a blank expanse of turf. Gardens are always more interesting. Plus I came home with her cookbook …

And Doug Tallamy who wrote Bringing Nature Home (a book I have mentioned being excited about before) made an even more compelling case for replacing sterile suburban wastelands (ie. lawn and other exotics). He of course makes the case for planting native species. Tallamy recommends “flipping the age-old landscaping paradigm on its head. Instead of designing where your flower beds will go in a sea of lawn, design where you need lawn for walking spaces and plant the rest of your property with native ornamentals.” And here’s why we should all do that:

As he puts it, “humanity’s life support systems are failing.” We have to remember that the ecosystem provides services such as the air we breathe, water management and purification, food, weather systems, carbon dioxide sequestration, waste recycling and so on, and we have to quit taking all of that for granted. If we lose biodiversity, we literally lose it all. 33,000 species of plants and animals are considered “imperiled” and unable to perform their function within the ecosystem. Not good.

Everything is connected (just like in Avatar) and “insects are key!”, says Tallamy. They convert the energy from plants into food for other animals. Did you know that 23% of a black bear’s diet is insects? (In my family we always joked about all the protein we were getting every time we accidentally swallowed a bug. Turns out to be true.) Trouble is, most insects are specialists who will only eat certain native plants. If you worry about planting things that will just become defoliated and ugly because of all the insects, he says that doesn’t actually happen – and has the data to support it. Something always comes along to eat the insects. That’s how it works – and why it works. Here are his lists of great natives listed in order of how many butterfly/moth species will be supported by them.

I could go on and on … but instead I’ll just recommend reading his book yourself if you haven’t already. And in the next few weeks, take a look around and make a note of what is leafing out. Asian species are generally ahead of the natives by a week or two. Do you need a few more natives in your yard? In my own garden I have decided to evict a few things including a favorite young styrax tree. For one thing I know it can escape cultivation because mine had originally planted itself where it didn’t belong. And for another, it supports a whopping zero native caterpillars. I’ll also be evicting more lawn for vegetables… You too?

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?