One of the issues that has come up in our Master Plan process is the need to identify and preserve Blithewold’s “character defining” views — because it would be a rare garden or piece of property that did not borrow at least some of its beauty from outside of itself. And the views within the property or into it from outside are every bit as important and in some cases – probably for most of us with small urban gardens, even more worth preserving.

The vistas with the most obvious significance to Blithewold visitors have to include the views from within the property (both broad and keyhole) of Narragansett Bay. The property’s placement at the edge of Rhode Island’s shoreline is part of what makes us so special. There’s a view of water at the very end of Love Lane that we glimpse driving in the main entrance; the sweeping view across the Great Lawn from the terrace and North Garden all the way to Poppasquash and beyond; and the view of Bristol harbor from the Rock Garden that’s as precious as the inside of a Fabergé egg.

There are also important views of the buildings, like the view of the porte-cochère from the top of the driveway, the mansion’s front door from Ferry Rd., and across the Enclosed Garden to the summerhouse. Add the glimpses we get of important landscape elements as we walk through the property and there are a dozen views altogether that can be called “character defining”. (Of course, if it were up to me I’d add a few more – like any view of or into the Rose Garden and Moongate in June, and through the bamboo to the Display Garden and greenhouse…) The scope of the Master Plan reaches into the next 10-15 years but I imagine that we and those who follow us in this work will endeavor to never plant or build anything that will block the view.

In my own Master Plan process at home (don’t we all need a Master Plan?) I have identified a few views worth preserving – the most important being the view of my back border from the window over the kitchen sink. But I have even more views that need screening, like the ugly view of the compost pile from where I sit at my desk. Have you identified views worth preserving – or blocking – in your own garden?

Do you have favorite views into or of Blithewold?

Like any gardener, I am desperate to know the names. As much as labeling the plants in the gardens is a thorn in my side (they’re photo-wrecking shiny eyesores and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to keep up) I fully sympathize with interested visitors who inevitably gravitate to the unmarked plants. The name – Latin and common – reveals all sorts of mystery behind curtain number one.

I used to sit here with the enormous American Horticultural Society A-Z encyclopedia of Garden Plants on my lap and now its spine is held on with painter’s tape and the pages are loose. But it hasn’t been updated since 2004 and in an attempt to replace it, I ordered the more recently updated Royal Horticultural Society A-Z (2008). That encyclopedia is very nicely divided into two less-cumbersome volumes tucked in a pretty sleeve but I wish I had realized that because it was compiled for European gardeners, it wouldn’t have zone information. And zone hardiness (along with basic cultural requirements, size, flowering time, maintenance needs, country of origin, etc) is one of the things I’m dying to know.

Nowadays I pull more books off our library shelf – such as Dirr’s Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, Annuals and Tender Plants for North American Gardens by Wayne Winterrowd, and Weeds of the Northeast by Uva Neal and DiTomaso. I also study nursery catalogs like Rare Find, Broken Arrow, Forest Farm, and North Creek just to name a few; and I check websites like Avant Gardens (since their catalog is on line now), Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder and the UConn Plant Database. By cross referencing, I probably end up with a much closer look behind the curtain.

As a new year begins in the gardens, I’ve renewed my annual resolve to keep up with the labeling and to that end they’ve been freshly organized (thank you, Anne!) and will no longer rest in unruly piles down cellar and poking out of my in-basket (thanks to Gail for opening a cubby!)

I already know you have to know the names too, so what is on your reference desk? Do you label your plants? (in the garden or more discretely somehow?)

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?

Usually when people enter the Rose Garden they take a deep breath in through the nose and heave a big blissed-out sigh of appreciation …

Not today. The roses are still blooming; they are still sweetly fragrant, but the smell of the compost we started to spread yesterday is a little overwhelming. We decided to use Bristol’s own compost made from yard waste and … biosolids. If you’re not already familiar with the term, biosolids are the byproduct of sewage treatment. It’s nutrient rich and once it’s been thoroughly composted, pathogen-free. And pretty stinky.

Earlier this week, Gail and I visited the Bristol compost facility – which helped to facilitate deciding between spending the moon on our favorite organic compost that has to be trucked from all the way across the state, and getting Blithewold’s truck filled with the free compost made less than 2 miles away from here. We have both used the rich, dark biosolids compost in our own gardens (because it’s free!) but had never gotten the full scoop, so to speak.

It’s Class A, top grade compost made in a 20 year old facility (soon to be solar powered!) and is free to home gardeners who are able to pick it up themselves and sold to landscapers and garden centers all over the state. Sludge is trucked in from the sewage treatment plant, mixed with finely chopped yard waste, cooked for a minimum of 28 days and aerated by the most enormous rototiller on the planet (says me.) It’s tested for pathogens (fecal coliform) periodically throughout the cycle and the content is fully analyzed for heavy metal levels. Each batch must be within allowable limits – and 100% pathogen-free – before being released from the process. The people who make it are very proud of their product and seem to have good reason to be – plants love it.

We have been talking about amending the soil in the Rose Garden for years now. The soil is probably better than average, evident by the size and health of some of the plants in the garden, but has become more and more compacted and cement-like as we’ve all trampled it over the years. Some roses have struggled to thrive and it’s getting harder and harder, especially in a dry season, to water the garden well. I love thinking that this fall’s rain will really soak in right now rather than run off. And the unpleasant odor, which should dissipate within a few days, to me is a harbinger of next season’s sublime fragrance of a garden full of healthy plants. (Healthy soil = healthy plants.) We’ve taken so much – pleasure, plants and soil – from that garden over the years, it feels really good to finally give something back.

Have you given anything back to your garden yet? (Fall is the perfect time…) Have you ever tried compost made with biosolids? What do you think of it?

This morning a fellow dog walker said to me, “Ugh – this rain is horrible!” To which I replied, “yeah… but we need it.” She looked at me a little sideways. And to myself I said, “Are you kidding me? This is GREAT!” My dog was as muddy as hers and I couldn’t see past the drops on my glasses but gardeners are a breed of human that take the bad with the good. And rain? It’s a good thing! Especially in the dusty wake of a drought. “Some days must be dark and dreary”*. — It’s about time. And it’s part of what I love about October. Nothing sets off the colors of fall like a fine mist on a gray day.

It is a heavy rain today giving us a welcome chance to catch up on greenhouse work and to hash out our annual assessments of the gardens. We’ve worked out a schedule for October and provided it doesn’t rain the entire month (and of course, we need it to) we’ll start taking the gardens apart to make way for projects.

We’ve already started to bring in stock plants – tender perennials from which we’ll take more cuttings – and we hope to have all of the container plants in the greenhouse by the end of next week. It might kill us to do it, but Gail and I will also harden our hearts to take annuals – still in glorious bloom – out of the North and Rose Gardens next week, right after the house closes for the season. (Remember, Columbus Day is last day to see the house before Christmas – and all of the gardens in full glory, come to think of it.) The week after that we hope to turn a load of compost in to the starved Rose Garden. And we’ve got to play musical perennials in the North Garden – the lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) needs dividing (it’s been 3 years and the plants are huge) and to be moved back to keep the flowers from blurring the garden’s ultra-crisp edges. And we have to do all of that of course before we plant the tulips, which we have to do before we lose our volunteers for the season. Whether a little rain, or a lot of rain falls in this life, we have a schedule to keep.

What are your plans for October? Is it raining?

*quote and post title from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow