According to legend, the Rock Garden was Bessie Van Wickle McKee’s favorite place on the property and it’s easy to see why, especially this time of year. But it is a very different garden than when she was alive. Like any garden will, it has changed over the years. By the looks of some of the earliest pictures of it in the archives, she planted a rock garden – emphasis on the rocks – and it looks like it was out in the open, in full-full sun. But Bessie was an enthusiastic plantswoman. Using Louise Beebe Wilder’s Adventures in My Garden and Rock Garden as a reference, Bessie planted a lot more than rocks as time went on. Later pictures show a growing garden with a woodland wildflower feel – with rock paths around good-sized shrubs and under shady trees.

Today’s Rock Garden is one of our best challenges. The amount of sun that reaches it is one part of the puzzle. At least 75% of the garden is shaded at least partially – although since a large English oak was removed recently, some of the shadiest bits are suddenly seeing the sun. And we worry over drainage issues. The whole garden becomes an island in a flood tide – it is located in one of the lowest portions of the property, a stone’s throw from the bay. Most of the garden is wet through the winter and spring but even the soggiest parts of it can bake dry in the summer. It has the potential to be not just one kind of rock garden, but every kind – from mountaintop skree to woodland wildflower showcase to watery bog.

But whatever kind(s) of rock garden it is, scale of it is one of its most important aesthetic considerations – not only because rock gardens typically hold diminutive specimen but also because of the view through the garden’s keyholes. From here Bristol harbor looks like a miniature diorama inside a Fabergé egg. So we’re focusing on making changes that will keep the garden in scale, sweet and low and delicately ornate. This week, with the Rockettes’ help, Gail and I moved some larger scale plants like geranium and heuchera from front-and-center spots to make way for tiny lovelies such as Saxifraga dactiloides and alpine poppies and more campanulas. We’ve added sand to some of the planting pockets to sharpen drainage and a little lime for the saxifrages in hopes of tricking them into thinking they’re at home among the rocks.

As we stand back and look at our work we can tell that we’re not finished adding and editing – for this year, or maybe ever. But we can hope that Bessie and our visitors might approve of the recent changes. I wonder what Bessie’s opinion on metal labels and plants with yellow foliage might have been… (Most of that is Spirea japonica ‘Golden Elf’.) What’s your opinion?

Before doing anything that takes significant creative energy it usually feels very important all of a sudden to make sure that the closets are clean and the dishes have been done. That’s my preferred procrastination technique anyway and I know I’m not alone. (Though given the state of my own closets and the perennial sink-full of dishes, I think my ability to resist the muse must have many complex layers.) But Gail and I have important garden design work ahead of us and because we absolutely must be able to hear the muse when she speaks, this week Gail set to quieting the noise of the mess in the pumphouse.

The pumphouse (so called because it houses the pump for the well) is our tool shed and growing season catch-all, full of left-hand gloves, empty cans of string, stakes, dirty kneelers and squares of burlap – just to name a few of the items one can plainly see through the open door. In the latest issue of Gardens Illustrated, Frank Ronan wrote an essay about garden sheds – he describes them as places that are generally off limits to visitors where the behind-the-scenes machinery that makes the garden grow is stored out of sight. You can have a garden without trees, he says but not without a shed. I’m sure that’s true in a way – in order to really garden, one must have things like loppers, mowers, spades and rakes and they must be kept somewhere within reach but out of the reach of the elements so that they don’t become useless lumps of crusty rust. The shed itself is a necessary tool whether it takes up a wall in the garage or the bulkhead stairs. Of course, the quintessential garden tool shed is a separate little outbuilding tucked into a dark corner of the garden.

Ours is dead central within the Display Garden and an integral part of the visitors’ experience of the garden, whether the door is open or not. When the door is open, our behind-the-scenes hard work is visible and I have to say that I’m not really bothered by that even when it looks a little cluttered. Spades and digging forks and bags of fertilizer and muddy footprints are irrefutable evidence that the garden didn’t just grow out of a puff of fairy dust and elf spit. (I’d much rather that we and the volunteers get the credit.) But over the course of the season, the usefulness of the shed degrades as the clutter becomes more congested.

We’re lucky to have such an attractive tool shed; so lucky that it was recently restored with fresh paint and a gorgeous new roof; and lucky that Gail had the energy and drive to make it tidy and spacious again. And because it’s so well organized now, I like to think that it will be much easier to keep it that way.

Where do you store your garden tools? Are you able to keep everything organized and tidy throughout the season or is it still a mess? (My own shed is a windowless prefab shack with so much stuff on the floor, I can’t walk in without tripping. Maybe I’ll work on organizing it the next time I have the urge to paint…)

A rainy day offers many possibilities to the dedicated gardener. Even though a few of us might see a storm as a welcome opportunity for a break (I’m sure I’d like to wrap up on the couch with a cup of tea, a good garden book in my paws and a dog on my feet), there are others of us who not only have a job to do, but can’t quit fussing with plants. There’s always some kind of gardening to do inside when it’s raining outside besides watching the grass grow. I know this to be true because it’s been raining lately. A lot.

Gail and Lilah and I have been slowly chipping away at moving all of the plants out of the greenhouse. It’s a lot like moving out of an apartment – the hardest decisions are always saved for last when everyone is tired of the whole process. Gail made a couple of the final big pushes out during the most recent rain squalls but we both have a such a hard time getting rid of the dregs and stragglers that we went at it in stages this year.

The last plants in the greenhouse, aside from our array of succulents that can take the heat, are the sick, the dying, the forgotten and the ugly – our failures on display. It ain’t pretty. But it’s the hardest thing to surrender to failure and let them go. So we allocated clemency benches for plants that just desperately needed repotting and a bench for orphan adoptions – most of which seem to have ended up on my back porch. And we designated a pitch-it bench for a good last look at all of the plants we had both “had it” with. I have to hand it to Gail who finally hardened her heart and hurled them while Lilah and I had the much greater pleasure of potting up the keepers.

The greenhouse is mostly empty now. The fans are off, the hose coiled and Gail has earned another week’s vacation. Lilah and I will move the succulents outdoors next week – although if the rain continues, they’d definitely be better off staying put. And if we have to, we’ll move on to other rainy day chores like cleaning out the cellar, organizing old plant labels and ordering tulips. Can you guess which task we’ll tackle next?

Positive visualization is a skill we gardeners get a lot of practice in. I think for any of us, whether we’re planting one or two things or designing beds, visualization goes way beyond garden-variety optimism to a creative knack for soothsaying. We totally have ESP. Gail, Lilah and I placed “the big empty” yesterday for the volunteers to help plant today and we talked about how we can actually see in our minds’ eyes what it will look like in August. Never mind that the plants that will grow the tallest, widest, burliest are the wee-est, spindliest specks now. We can see them in their ginormous glory.

I have heard that there are people in the world willing to pay an arm and a leg for an instant garden – and I freely admit to having a gracious plenty of impatience for a gardener – but would gardening be as gratifying if there wasn’t a process from dream to fruition? In any case, for us this was a really exciting part of the process. It’s one thing to have the plants on lists of paper and randomly scattered throughout the greenhouse and quite another to see how they’re all going to fit together in a big showy – soon to be purple-centric – bed. And if there are surprises and changes along the way, so much the better. (The gardener’s mind’s eye must always allow for some unpredictability.) I know I’ll talk more about our lavender/purple experiment as the garden grows but I can tell already (because I can read the future) that I’m going to love it.

We can see the future too in caterpillars munching on their favorite butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) and we can predict that Fred and Dan’s new creation in the container garden will be one of the visitors’ favorite spots. Lilah has dubbed it “The Tanning Bench”.

Do you foresee your garden’s glory as you design and plant it?

Gail and I look at the North Garden all summer with very critical eyes and every year by this time we’re like discontented apartment dwellers – desperate to clear the clutter and rearrange the furniture.   The North Garden is a kind of living room (pun intended, of course) at Blithewold – or a chapel on most weekends – and we try very hard to keep it looking like it’s in peak bloom all season.  And instead, like any garden, it goes through phases of spectacular and fades of quiet like the “May gap” and “July lull”, for instance.  And every year we try new annuals, and every year we search for a perfect new perennial, and every year we have “had it!” with some of the old ones.  (You have to hear Gail say it with emPHAsis and a roll of the eyes.)

We have both “had it!” with the Phlox (Phlox paniculata ‘David’) which was mildewier than ever this year – at least until we threatened it with expulsion in July and it rebloomed gangbusters and clean in September.  I have “had it!” with the monster daylilies whose suffocating foliage eclipses the few weeks of bloom in my mind.  (Plus, truth be told, I’m not wild about having to come in to deadhead them on weekends.)  And Gail has “had it!” with some of the iris which I have never managed to capture in a picture because they’re in bloom for all of about a week and a half and I miss them.

Fall is a perfect time to do some spring cleaning – perennials that have been cut back are much easier to divide and will focus energy on root growth as they settle in.  For the past couple of days Gail and I have braved high winds and cold fingers to divide phlox, iris and daylilies and do a little moving and removing.   We haven’t taken out all of anything but we we’ve made some space for new ideas.  — And tulips!  A few volunteers will come in tomorrow for one last push to plant 640 tulips in the North Garden – a bigger show than ever.  In August, Gail and Lilah made the final selection of Apricot Beauty, Amazone, Formosa, Cistula, Dreaming Maid and Black Hero.  Should be a beautiful beginning to a brand new season in the North Garden.

Do you go through your garden in the fall to clear the clutter and rearrange the furniture?  Do you have a garden or beds that you try to keep in a peaking succession of bloom?  – And what is your success?