In my quest to transform what was once a large sandpit into a thriving healthy bursting at the brim voluptuous garden, I have come to realize my greatest resources for inspiration , plant suggestions, garden tools, and even gardening clothes are all based in the UK.  Here in the US there seems to be some sort of disconnect reagrding my ideals and requirements and what is available for information, inspiration and purchase.

Let me start where I always do,with  the rabbits. Here in our country  we have crappy worthless repellents , ugly hardware cloth, and basically useless traps. In England  they have these beautiful bamboo cloches to cover vulnerable seedlings, AND useful systemic treatments to make plants unpalatable. Sadly I have not been able to import either…..yet! Determination is my middle name ( well really it is Marie, but I like determination better) and I WILL find a way to get them  .

Moving on to tools, I have worked my way through a variety of edgers  and pruners, until I stumbled upon these made by a company in the UK. Not only are they beautiful and tools I would not mind leaving scattered about the garden like little works of art, but they are FUNCTIONAL!

The angle of the pruners makes  working with them a pleasure, and the edger…well that is plain magic I tell you. It cuts cleanly and easily through the sod leaving the perfect deep spearation between lawn and bed. I use to have  a stockpile of edgers in the garage….manual and power….. all terrible…hard to push through the ground and frustrating as hell…all place in the dumpster after this one arrived here . It is amazing that I should feel so happy when a tool actually does what it is supposed to do , but that is the curse of living in the USA. I showed it to neighbor who gardens almost as much as I do and she was in the car  in a heartbeat, on her  way to the only location in our area that carried them where she  bought their last one. Another neighbor chuckled when Bill offered to lend it to him after seeing him struggle with his, only to have him come back to return it saying he was absolutely floored at how well it worked and sorry he doubted Bill’s word.

Funniest part about it, the company that sells such an item has two websites, one where they sell these beautiful wonderful tools to the lucky people across the pond, and one where they offer a whole bunch of nuthin’ to those of us here in the states. That is just riduculous and condescending, and patronizing and makes me wonder if they are still mad about that whole revolution thing.

As far as information and inspiration  go, well ,we can name drop…Vita Sackville-West, Christopher Lloyd, Rosemary Verey, Gertrude Jeckyll, Helen Dillon ( Ireland counts as the UK ), Beth Chatto, Beverly Nichols, David Austin (et.al) for roses and Mary Toomey for clematis , why even Prince Charles shows up on my Great English Gardeners/writers short list! Two publications The English Garden and Gardens Illustrated are on my must read list monthly, and get poured over, dog eared, and highlighted , then place on a bookshelf where they will be re-visted all over again when I am stumped on a garden design or feeling garden deprived in winter. Here in the states I  crave only Tovah Martin’s quirky and entertaining writing style and occassionally Valerie Easton, Suzy Bales  or Ken Druse for inspiration. All our other  writers seem to confuse preachy -organic-native-homesteading-mumbo jumbo with ornamental gardening. They are two quite disparate entities, and the former does nothing for me. I want to dream in flowers, live in flowers,  revel in flowers and count on my garden to provide  oodles of them for me to do so.

If TV is your thing BBC always has great INFORMATIONAL programming , and beautiful garden tour DVDs for you to get lost in when you can’t be in your garden. The closest thing we ever had here was Gardener’s Diary with Erica Glasener, but that got cancelled in favor of insta-makeover shows where the quick design matters more than the plants and how to grow them well. I think a better show might be a call back to one of the “gardens” made on  a show like Yard Crashers  (HGTV) so we can see just what happened to those poor helpless plants that I am sure never make it past week one .

Which brings me finally  to pretty clothes … try to find THIS is the US of A...Garden Girl clothes are everything a gardening gal could want and then some. Carhartt may be warm and functional, but pretty? I think not!

I have always been certain I was born in the wrong century. I long for a simpler time , where life was difficult but rewarding, and hard work ,honesty and family were respected ( I just happen to also like antibiotics and the telephone, so there is no going back for me!) , but lately I  feel as if maybe I was just born in the wrong country and a house just like Hidcote or Sissinghurst  with all their accompanying history  as well as the to die for gardens  may be just the ticket to happiness for me. Think I can convince Bill to move?

ps here are some garden glam shots 🙂

Last week my garden was on the annual tour for The Holden Garden Club (of which I am a member) and I took it as a great opportunity to not only assess the garden, but to assess the gardener as well.

As for the garden…… given the poor soil in many areas and the cold wet weather we have been having which only serves to encourage the fungal spores here to take over the world …it is really not in bad shape. There are two roses that have been fighting black spot for their second season now, so they will get the heave-ho next spring when the clematis plants that are currently climbing on them can be cut back. I was very annoyed having to pull off all the icky leaves for the tour even thought the roses don’t seem to care at all and are thriving despite the malady.

A few other plants need to be yanked here and there , and several need replacing like the chamaecyparis psifera ‘sun king’  that suffered terrible winter burn and the chamaecyparis  obtusa ‘Nana Lutea’ that has looked sickly since the day it arrived here ( the nursery owner blamed the failure to thrive on me  for removing the burlap wrap from the base even though I argued that leaving the burlap on has been proven to be detrimental to trees and thus I refuse to patronize his place anymore and I am tempted to send him the reciepts of the plants I have purchased elsewhere so he can grieve my absence.)

On the plus side of things , the iris and peony had a great year  as all the now two year old transplants are mature enough to put on quite a show.Many of the groundcovers (moss phlox, dainthus, drift roses and  the awesome new hybriid purple iberis called ‘Absolutely Amethyst’ )are  blooming, as are the penstemons and a few of the lavendar species. The rabbits are still around, but do far less damage when the plants are larger for the most part , although the entire edge of the border in the Dog  Garden was clipped clean of hosta leaves overnight leaving a path of bare stems that elicited a few comments and/or giggles.

.

.

.

.My clematis and roses never fail me when it is time to show off the garden. For this tour I had a large number of both in bloom and they really add so much to the borders they adorn. This is Rosa ‘New Dawn’

and an unknown (gift from my mother) red climber

.

.

.

.

.

.As for the gardener,I have come a long way in letting people comment on my garden without breaking down and thus was able to go into the tour with these two scenarios that in an earlier year would have given me fits of anxiety

1.) in an odd case of I-can’t remember -what- happened- here-itis I evidently pulled out a few plants and failed to replace them. I have a vague recollection that the sprinklers were not reaching this part of the garden and whatever was there was stressed, but then  memory fails. The day before the tour when I was doing a weed check, I glanced at the hole, thought about running to the nursery, then shrugged it off and put it on my to-do list to figure out what plant will fill the space and solve the problem. Not adding a  band-aid -plant of whatever I could find at the nearest nursery  was a HUGE breakthrough for me.

2.) There are several places where I have located shrubs that WILL be large, but as of now are very SMALL ( some due to the rabbit problems some due to the fact that I ordered them online and  shipped plants are generally  smaller ). In the past I would rush to fill this area with temporary plants to fill out the garden while they grow, but the new and improved Cheryl  just let it go. My thought process was, there is a shrub there, it will get big, it needs all that space and if it bothers you…oh well!

Hosting a group of gardeners through my space with that attitude is very unlike me , but felt very freeing in the end.

3.) As I was taking a small group around, someone commented that they  would have not noticed all the negative things I was so carefully pointing out to them, that the garden was beautiful and maybe I should pipe down . Good advice. Thank you.

4.) I have gotten to the point where I have so many separate gardens and spaces that I am forgetting plant names and locations. One member asked me about the clematis I had planted to climb into my lilacs, and I responded that I had no idea what she was talking about, I have no clematis climbing in my lilacs. Which is true….for the lilacs in the Lilac Bed. However,  there IS clematis growing into the species lilac and the ‘Donald Wyman’ in the Dog Garden, I just apparantly forgot even though she insisted they were there. Hmmmmm.

I also can not remember many plant or cultivar names when asked and will work on maybe labeling some things ( ha-ha can you hear me laughing? let us be honest here,that will never happen!)

I will however, and did on the day of the tour, offer to retrieve the book and large ziploc bag that hold all my labels and plant info if anyone would really like a plant name.

I saw many a suspicious look when I identified what was clearly a thistle as a sea-holly, though no one was rude enough to tell me I was not even in the same family let alone cultivar name. Ladies, the plant in question is and always will be echinops and my apologies.

Also, the geranium is question was geranium dalmaticum ‘DragonHeart’, the salvia is ‘Royal Crimson Distinction’  and the dianthus is dianthus gratianopoltanus ‘Firewitch’.

Meet the latest in the cast of characters that make life here in the Burrow so wonderfully  wacky . He is a nestling/fledgeling grackel ( I think) whom we have affectionately nicknamed baby Huey. As you can see by his girth, flying is not his specialty. He has falling and plopping mastered, and he  can hop( kind of ) to low branches when he feels like it. Huey is grumpy, a sour puss and  angry at the world and he  is making me miserable.

Yesterday Huey  thumped out of the plum tree where he was born down into the driveway below ,then proceeded to waddle into the garage bay where I was standing. Huey decided that this space was now his own and began to squawk loudly at me. I tried to reassure him that I am a bird lover, providing  food, shelter, and a lovely space for all creatures avian, and in return quite enjoy the antics and entertainment they provide, and was no threat to him. Huey thought otherwise. When I tried to leave the garage he really  worked up a ruckus and then proceeded to lunge at my ankles and toes trying to peck me. Really.

The whole thing was quite ridiculous and any neighbor that may have passed by while I was trying to reason with an angry bird at my feet must have thought me insane.

Last night Huey tumbled  to the bottom of the flamingo willow near the front porch where Faith and I were brushing the dogs. He launched into a tirade squawking and yelling and generally upsetting everyone including his father ( I say Father because any MOTHER would not let he rolly polly unable to fly fledgling out into the world like that, AND he probably had some splainin’ to do when the Mrs. returned).

We went inside to stop all the drama.

This morning as I went out to leave, there was Huey, behind my car blocking me in the driveway. Huey did not care that I had an appointment, did not give one whit. He stood his ground and when I went in to grab the camera and snap his photo and , he did this alarming 360 degree exorcist like head spin so he could hiss and squawk at me without moving his chunky little body. Things just keep getting weirder around here all the time.

Lots of things in the garden take patience. Plant a seed and time seems to stand still , then poof! one day you have a plant. Many things here take their sweet time getting established ( like our lawn) due to the poor soil and the combination of the lack of water , baking sun and ever present drying winds. Shrubs grow millimeters a year, perrennials clump out after eons, and trees, well trees seem to make time here go actually backwards.

Four yeas ago I finally hunted down a tree I had been longing to add to the front of the house. It is a red horsechestnut aesculus x carnea ‘Briottii’, and my desire to grow one canme first from having a horsechesnut tree in our yard grownig up (although it was white) and second  because the blooms on this sucker are just unreal . Long red spires opening atop those huge palm looking leaves, very cool.

AND the hummingbirds go crazy for them as they have long tubular flowers in their favorite color,red.This tree is not usually available in local nursery trade, and although I looked around I could never find one to buy that was at least 4-6 feet. I had to resort to an online order , which meant shipping, and a very small sapling. I happily planted it in it’s new home and sat back to wait for the first blooms. I knew it would take a little while to get going , but little did I know the obstaceles that would stand in it’s way to tree-hood.

The first year I had to relocate it,(I can’t remeber why now) and it suffered a setback from the transplant. The second winter voles got at the roots and things looked very iffy. Following that , the rabbits gnawed a significant hunk of bark off the bottom and it looked like the effort might have been an total loss. The arborist looked at the poor thing and just shook his head. But I was insistent it could be saved and dutifully kept the grass from growing any where near its base, and gave it lots of compost and water, and put a wire cage around it to keep the critters at bay.

This spring very early on I saw buds and was ecstatic, which quickly took a wild swing to sheer panic when I realized how early everything had leafed out and/ or set buds due to an unseasonably warm spring. I asked one of  the horticulturists , Joanne, at Tower Hill if she thought a frost would kill the buds . Tower Hill has, by the way,  a very large very beautiful specimen, and she said she did not know and only time would tell. She reassured me that all it would loose was the blooms and the tree would be fine, which is all well and good on a older tree from which you have already had many nice years of blooms…BUT NOT FOR MINE!!!!!!

I babied that sucker for the last three weeks, monitoring the frost warnings like a lunatic, and wrapping a sheet around the tree, several times in 4o mph winds which was ridiculous and borderline lock-em-up crazy and……………………………….

.

.

..

.

.

.

.

.

..

.

Look at that will ya???? Isn’t it awesome!

This spring ,because of our unsolved bunny troubles, much of the plant list here in the Burrow is getting a serious look at to see what is worth protecting , what will be left to fend for itself, and what will be added to fill out the places where the damage is not only daily but devastating.

I am letting self seeders like ‘Husker Red’ penstemon and amaranth go crazy as they are filling many holes left by the critters, and to date remain untouched. In the fall I added lots of peony,iris, and fuzzy or  gray foliage plants,which also are ignored.

But , the new golden children  of the garden are the alliums. These easy to grow members of the onion family have the most interesting flowers on tall sticks raised high above the foliage. I planted ‘Purple sensation’ an early bloomer in many spaces and it has thrown out  cool purple flowers that are like small fireworks displays. I also grow a swirly  curly leaved variety , allium senescens , that blooms later .

Chives, also an allium, have been growing in the rock garden for 10 + years, adding a texture contrast to the iris, and never even get a nibble.

My newest trick, and one I am kind of proud of for its ingenuity , is to plant chives circling the new clematis plants. So far, so good. Up until now I have been placing plastic grow tubes over every vine, and removing them later on in some areas of the garden and leaving them all season long in the parts of the yard that border the rabbit entry areas. Plants in these few areas will get eaten constantly and to the ground .In one place after trying a great variety of things I have just decided to settle for mulch and garden art instead of plants as nothing is safe. (They have even taken to gnawing on large shrubs, biting off branches and leaing what they don’t finish on the ground.) But the chives and allium they leave alone. I am gald for now that the allium family has stepped up to help me out and hope it continues, these voracious eaters have challenged many a move  I made, eating lavender and other herbs, sprirea bushes to the ground, and even daylillies.

The  gallery that follow is all the rest of plants that are strutting their stuff on Garden Blooggers Bloom Day  hosted by May Dreams Gardens. The  list includes, lily of the valley, geums, alliums, jacobs ladder, various azeleas, the groundcover mosiacs out front with ajuga , moss phlox and dianthus spcs,cranberry bush viburnum, columbines , armeria, mossy rockfoil, catmint,Bloomerang and species lilac, verbena, honeysuckle ‘Major Wheeler’, the start of the bridal wreath spirea,and by the end of the week there will be many iris in full bloom too. Pictures are labeled (lazily) if you hover over them.

With all the flowers, shrubs and trees I grow, it is a natural feeling to want to bring them indoors  for an up close and personal encounter. I try to have things out in the garden I can cut year round, even if in the dead of winter it is just interesting evergreen foliage and brightly colored branches. But come April, the long procession of flowers begins, and going out to stroll around and pick interesting subjects to arrange becomes a wonderful aside to my hobbies  of gardening and collecting junk.

For years a few friends of mine and I have been yard saling- thrift shop -free side of the road stuff junkies. We all have our own likes and styles, and generally don’t argue over finds, although a few times I have felt quite envious of their scores. Mostly what I pick up ends up working in the garden, decorating the garden, or holding flowers from the garden. One of our most oft-repeated lines as we scout junk is “well, you can aways use it as a planter!” ….and I do…..lots!  I have a growing collection of flower frogs I use to hold the stems in my containers

( BTW:did you know how toxic floral foam is? It contains two known carcinogens , formaldehyde and black carbon, and is not biodegradable which seems to fly in the face of those of us who are so careful to be good stewards of the ground we grow on) , and a vast collection of vases , pitchers,and  containers of all shapes and sizes that has oozed into every storage area in not only my house but the garage and the shed as well. They are placed decoratively on open shelves in the dining room, and out of sight in the hutch as well. They claim space on the storage shelves over the washer/dryer, have their own little red shelf in the mud room, line the wire shelves in the garage, and take up lots of space in the new shed. Some of the larger ones hide out in the cellar utility room .

.

.

.

.

In late winter and spring, I use a lot of woody material in arrangements. Colored dogwood twigs, curly willow, crab apple and apple branches, flowering cherries, and plum trees, spirea, nine bark, lilacs, and viburnum all make it in to many vases. When I am cutting woody stems for arrangements I always use this trick….. take a vegetable peeler and peel off the bottom  few inches of bark from the stem the branch will take up water much better and have a MUCH longer life expectancy in the vase.

This cool sideways vase my mother gave me holds just two varieties of crabapple blossoms and stems on honeysuckle ( a variegated cultivar called Harlequin)..cool huh?

I have really expanded my stash of teeny tiny vases , for so many wonderful spring bloomers are petite and not only beautiful, but fragrant, which we so often miss because they grow so low to the ground.Old bottles are perfect for this, as are cruets, tea cups and small pitchers. Here they hold a single viburnum twig that has a heavenly fragrance, squill (scilla siberica) and pansies with euphorbias..

.

..

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

..

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.This last one I made to bring as a hostess gift .The green pail was 99 cents at Goodwill Store and holds emerging spirea foliage, ninebark branches, fothergilla (the little bottle brushes), tulips, and crab apple blossoms.  🙂 When you head out in your garden, bring a bucket and your clippers, and bring some happiness inside!

As part of my lecture series, I do a workshop involving pressed flowers/foliage . …..ALOT of pressed flowers /foliage. To meet the demands of  the many workshops, I  press non-stop from early spring right through summer and fall. I always  leave a pile of heavy books and paper right on the chest in the dining room in plain sight, so I can snip a few things whenever I am out in the garden and press them when I come back in the house.

Whatever goes in between the papers and books gets shuffled around , in and out of the stack  ,until I am sure they are flat and very dry. Moisture is enemy #1 to pressed flora and I let the papers alternately get pressed and air dried until I am 100 percent positive  they are dry enough to get moved to the large presses downstairs. Any wet plant material can cause mold which will ruin the flowers for print making….like the geranium below

In our utility room I have several large pieces of plywood and old shelving that get “pressed” into service (tee-hee) to keep the accumulated material flat and dry. They are all stacked together and either weighted down or pulled together with ratcheting bungee cords until the stuff is needed.

In the interest of helping both past and future workshop participants, I am going to try to keep a log of what I am pressing as the season goes by. We will see how that goes, but here is the start of the season anyway….

For the first time this year I pressed squill (scilla siberica) , which I discovered upon picking has the most delightful scent. I have shoved it under everyone’s nose in my household trying to get an accurate description of what it smells like, to no avail. Let me just tell you it is wonderful and sweet, and if I had not picked it to press I would have gone my whole life without knowing ….for shame. Anyway , here is what it looks like

I let artemesia (both silver king and lemon lime) run rampant through my perennial borders. they are very shallow rooted and it is easy to pull what you don’t want, and both varieties make a great foil for lots of flowering plants. Anything  with silver foliage looks super pressed, so at this time when I am pulling stray artemesia willy-nilly, I put it in the stack of books where it presses easily and without worry of extra moisture.

Pansies ( and other viola spcs)are a no-brainer, almost everyone I talk to tells me of a faded pansy arrangement in a frame from their grandma or mom. I love the jonnny jump ups, they look very sweet pressed and arranged in little rows like soldiers. The newer ruffly varieties, although beautiful, press pretty wavy and I am not such a big fan.

Crab apple trees offer tons of pretty blooms and colorful young foliage as well.

Heuchera is one of my favorite things to press, and at this time I am cutting the older larger leaves off the ones that persisted through the winter and pressing them in their winter color phase. ( many are bronzy in late fall and winter and various shades of green on the growing season.)

Rounding out the list for early spring are geum, emerging yarrow foliage, and the plant I press year round ….scented geraniums I grow in the house that flower off and on and generously donate all their lovely blooms to my zealous pressing.

In the coming weeks I will start to look for foliage of all kinds as everything starts to grow. Lots of plants have brightly colored emerging leaves (spirea, jacobs ladder, just about any shrub you can think of, and maple trees) and they are well suited to my purposes when they are smaller as well.

and so it begins………