Everybody has a different cue for letting ourselves admit that it’s finally spring. For some of us (me), spring officially begins when we sow the sweet peas (back around President’s Day). Others might notice spring for the first time when the forsythia blooms its head off, or when we have that first t-shirt-weather day or when the calendar says it’s so.

For some, it’s all about daffodils and Daffodil Days here at Blithewold. Well, a lot of them (dare I say “most”?) are open and we’re opening for the season starting Sunday, so no one can deny that it’s really truly spring now. The daffodils should continue to be in peak into next week. They love these cooler temperatures.

We’ve been hustling to get ready and have had an extra spring in our step because of opening two weeks ahead of schedule to better match our timing with Nature’s. We’ve fluffed and we’ve puffed and from here on in it’s a work in progress. Like any real garden, ours are in perennial transition and change by the day. Every year we focus attention on a particular garden: this year the North Garden will look quite different from years past. We’re adjusting to a new design that should make the space more welcoming to visitors, and we’ll be in there planting and rearranging every chance we get.

Even if you come just to see the daffodils, don’t miss the Rock Garden. This is the start of its favorite season. And you can’t miss the Rose Garden unless you have your eyes closed coming out of the Visitor’s Center. Open ‘em up. That garden will just keep looking more and more glorious as days go by.

So stick around. Visit as often as you possibly can and celebrate a whole new season by enjoying every bloom of it.

A little more than a month ago in a post about potting bench perfection I mentioned that our potting bench was in a sorry state and that the windows above it were drafty heat-leakers. No longer true! Gail and I are thrilled to be cozy behind a bank of new storm windows and can’t get over the beauty of the shiny new stainless-steel bench topper that one of our favorite carpenters installed in about 2 seconds yesterday.

Winter is definitely the best time for dreaming about projects and for being able to follow through with minimal disruption to the day to day workings, or the visitors’ enjoyment of the property. It was easy for us to clear the bench because we’re more focused on putting our orders together right now than potting up.

And because there are fewer visitors on the property this time of year, we can get to some changes outside too. The North Garden wall repair was completed in record time and has provided us (the gardens and grounds staff) with an excellent opportunity to ask the gardens and grounds committee to consider a few of our ideas. We’d like to re-size some of the beds, improve the soil, add irrigation, and lay a path that will tie the floating fountain, which at one time had been the punctuation at the end of a bowling green, back to the garden. With spring clearly closer than it usually is this time of year, it looks like this next project might get rolling soon. We hope all of Blithewold’s members, visitors, and brides think it’s an improvement.

Are you using this time to make some improvements to home and garden too?

Ever since Gail and I went on a bus trip to Wave Hill – eight or so years ago – we’ve been coveting hypertufa troughs. A year or two after that trip we each made a couple, then a year later a couple more. After that, Fred and Dan made some, including the thyme bench seat in the herb bed and an enormous trough that might never leave the container bed. But we have wanted more. And there’s nothing like wanting something to make you notice it everywhere. They’ve been showing up in every magazine; there are books full of ideas; we’ve noticed them tucked into gardens and out in front and center displays, and they’re all over Kathy and Chris Tracy’s Avant Gardens Nursery, in all shapes and sizes filled with the most luscious combinations of plants.  We’re talking serious trough envy here.

So we hatched a plan to make a bunch more to fill our Display Garden stone bench bed (an abundance of anything in one place can make a gardener feel rich) and if we have enough left over, we’ll tuck them in other beds here and there. We might even leave some on display in front of the pump house because they’re so sweet against the cobbles.

For anyone who isn’t already familiar with hypertufa, it’s a Portland cement mixture that is meant to mimic something called tufa, which is a precipitated limestone (according to wikipedia). Being porous and high pH both real tufa and the ersatz version is a perfect container material for alpines among other little lovelies. It’s also sturdy enough to stay outside over the winter and not quite as heavy to move around as straight concrete.

Gail and I obsessively researched recipes – there are many possible variations – and for our first go we tried two. Both included Portland cement and peat. One batch had perlite, the other vermiculite. To those mixes we also added a handful of microfiber concrete reinforcement and then a whole lot of water. We also obsessively collected molds, everything from a saucer sled to nursery pots to trash cans to jello molds to cardboard boxes.

Now that we’ve done one batch and are preparing for another morning spent wearing rubber gloves and dust masks, we know what we’ll do differently. This time we’ll go with the vermiculite mix – it feels smoother to the touch and more elegant. We’ll also line more of our molds in plastic bags. Even molds heavily greased with vegetable oil didn’t want to give up their stuff. Luckily, almost all of the pots and troughs we made were sturdy enough after curing for 4 days to knock out of their molds. (Only one will live inside its aluminum jello mold forever.) The cardboard boxes were the easiest to release and those troughs are actually pretty cool looking.

Our recipe: 1 part Portland cement; 1.5 parts peat moss; 1.5 parts vermiculite and a small amount of microfiber concrete reinforcement. Add enough water to make mud the consistency of cottage cheese.

Have you made any hypertufa pots or troughs or garden ornaments? Do you have any helpful hints to share – or maybe a different favorite recipe?