This weekend the  Garden in the Burrow was open to visitors on the  City Spaces Country Places garden tour to benefit Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston ,MA. Every time any gardener has visitors who are also gardeners it s always interesting to see which  plants get asked about ,and on consistently   there is one that surprises me every tour ; yellow loosestrife or lysimachia punctata.

This plant from the primrose family  has been grown as an ornamental since Victorian times  and is a very long bloomer. Sometimes called whorled loosestrife because of the arrangement of the strikingly bright yellow flowers, it could just as easily be called the whorled thug, .

My original plants were lysimachia punctata‘ Alexander’ which is delightfully variegated and far less agressive than lysimachia vulgaris (which given good moist soil will take over just about any space very quickly.)

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The spread  of ‘Alexander’ may have been slower, but like many variegated plants they started to revert back to all green ( green=more chlorophyll=stronger growth)  and although I tried to keep pulling the green shoots eventually I lost the battle in all but one small space. No matter though because just a few minutes during growing season pulling the growth where it is not wanted is all it needs to keep it in check. Be warned , any root pieces left in the ground will sprout into new plants so if you are trying to eradicate it permanently you work will be much more difficult and take more than one season.

where I let it remain in it’s all green leaved version is in front of a black wrought iron  fence where it fills out under   my collection of eucomis or pineapple lily  grown in pots and several very vibrant daylily varieties. Yellow loosestrife produces  no nectar but does offer lots of pollen to bees and flies . This loosestrife joins it’s family member , the purple leaved lysimachia ciliata ‘Firecracker’ which I let spread all over the back 40 as it so easy care, rabbit proof and great for foliage in arrangements( and it gets just as much attention when in bloom).

While i do not recommend adding either of these to small gardens , in mine they serve a purpose and are definitely eye catching. Every tour I get asked numerous times what the plant is , and I always honestly tell people it’s aggressive nature  so they are informed before they plant. I am sure it turns many away , but they can always enjoy it here.

The second most asked about plant is a little more uncommon and completely different in just about every way from the lossestrife. It is a plant that has undergone so many name changes i actually don’t know where it ended up finally but I bought it as Centaurea pulchra major and after a few shifts the Beth Chatto Gardens website lists it now as Rhaponticum centauroides

. It is a lovely yet harmless thistle looking plant with gray jagged leaves and the flowers look very artichoke like except they are quite squishy. Every tour when they are in bloom I never fail to see someone standing there curiously squishing them then looking for a label. I know of no  nursery that regularly carries this plant , nor a reliable seed source to offer you. This year for the first time I am going to try to save and germinate some because the three I have are not enough.

“Thistle” is a sort of general garden term referring  plants that have jagged and often prickly leaves with flowers that have share that unique thistle form we are all too familiar with when we weed. I grow globe thistle ( echinops spcs) and sea holly (erygium spcs) and cardoon (cynara cardunculus)   which all have the same sort of leaves and curious thistle- like flowers and I would love to have more “thistles” scattered throughout the garden as a foil to the more typical flower forms. .

cardoon

Echinops in particular is a pollinator magnet and I have seen some cool cirsiums featured in Garden’s Illustrated magazine , my brain is spinning with thistle ideas and I think a new Pinterest board keeping track of them all is in order.

Back to the tour: we had about 175 visitors who all seemed to enjoy the various garden rooms , the unusual garden ornamentation, and of course the pool.

Curious that very rarely grown plants like the climbing asparagus, the climbing aconitum, the many herbaceous clematis, never get any love. It just goes to show you that  if used well any plant can be a show stopper in a garden and common doesn’t have to be boring.

Thanks for all who visited , your support for Tower Hill is appreciated  and I hope you left if a little inspriation to take back to your own gardens.

2017 has been pretty good to the garden so far ( am I jinxing myself?)

a pretty mild winter and late spring meant no late kill of buds on trees and shrubs and we had minimal loss of plants in general, there are even flower buds on ALL the hydrangeas! ( please don’t anyone eat them !)

unlike the past few years we had a wet spring so everything got of to a good start and I actually had time to compost and fertilize like I should instead of battling hoses and watering routines ( I like rain, let it rain, to whom should I direct my rain dances?)

at the start of bunny sex season( does that ever even stop?) when it seems litter after litter of the little buggers appear hellbent on garden mayhem,we had a visiting owl who left their beheaded carcasses all over the walkway Apparently , owls eat the brain and head and leave the body which is frankly disgusting even to this bunny hater but it meant the plants could get growing and bigger plants tolerate their chomping better. ( is there anything worse than rabbits ? , did I just invite it here by claiming victory?)

it is not all fun and games though as gypsy moth caterpillars did quite a bit of damage to the river birches and wisteria  , rose sawfly larvae attacked a rose with vicious determination , and a wet spring always means apple scab and dropped leaves for one of my crabapples that is not resistant to it. ( that seems like such  a short list, have I missed something?)

Blooming right now are 10 different roses with more in bud, within the week a bunch of  new clematis should open, with any luck the peony show will still be going , lots of weigelas are in flower   , we still have lilacs and hellebores whose show started in April , and  salvias, foxgloves, dianthus, gaillardias, sedums, smooth hydrangeas, penstemons, yarrow, lillies, mock orange, columbines, siberian iris, trandescantias, comfrey, spirea, geraniums of all sorts, honeysuckles, wisteria, calycanthus,  are all giving the bees, hummingbirds and other pollinators just what they are looking for.

Should I be waiting for a powerful storm or hail or onslaught of deer or whatever fresh hell may be  around the bend so I can eat my words . Isn’t that always the way in the garden?

On Sunday June 25th  the garden is part of Tower Hill Botanic Garden’s City Places, Country  Spaces tour from 10-4.  If you are local you can get tickets on their website and come visit .

Seriously?   i am so happy to see  beautiful roses, peonies and clematis all blooming in tandem and right behind them all the summer bloomers gearing up for quite the show. Because it all looks spectacular, I am , of course, very worried.

. One week, one week, one week….that is all I need with no new threats of weather or varmints…one blessed week  is that too much to ask? Until then I shall be knocking on wood, crossing all my fingers and toes, looking for 4 leaf clovers, collecting horseshoes and searching for rainbows,

and weeding , always weeding 😉

ps every day I post to Instagram , you can follow my feed here to get a daily dose of beautiful blooms!

This spring , something really exciting( for me) is finally happening. I have been working with several other Master Gardeners in the Mass Master Gardeners organization to bring our training class to Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston. It all sounded good when we planned it, the class material, homework , and instructors  and are already established . so I just needed to scheduled the physical classrooms, line up some helpers and we would be off! Well, in reality those few things were the least of my work.  We require lots of apprenticeship hours for our students and those all needed to be planned and staffed, a few instructors needed to be replaced so I had to research interview and hire,  a budget needed to be made and followed, we needed a projector and laptop and books and name badges and dry erase markers etc., the schedule and paperwork needed to written and loaded on to flash drives,  and on and on and on. None of these things ( except the shopping) are my forte, I hate to type and hate even more document formatting, I am not great on the phone , and generally write my emails in a very informal style often eschewing capitals and correct punctuation. Contracts necessitate an attention to detail I lack.  Needless to say the amount of hours that I have put into this is astounding, and has been the focus of my time.  It has taken over  the free time I have for garden visits and photo taking and writing here.

But, we have made it through the initial set up and first few weeks and things are starting to get a little easier. We are making list after list of things we will change and do differently to streamline  and make it a better experience for all. I see a light at the end of the tunnel and am back to spending more and more time in my own garden and my work researching , writing and planning new presentations ( including a day long lecture on perennial growing for the class)   and  speaking to loads of garden clubs and other groups which is my favorite kind of work.

One of the best things that  happened  in the midst of all this, is that the weather was simply fantastic in early April and since we host Easter dinner at our house every year including an egg hunt and King Egg contest outside, I felt a great sense of urgency  to get the garden up and running so by the early part of spring the pool was opened and all the furniture out and the garden cleared and ready for it’s spotlight. Physical labor felt oh so much better than sitting at my desk typing and answering emails  so a few long days of cutting, chipping, raking and burning   were actually a joy.  Now, we have been having cooler and wetter weather so all the transplanted perennials are happy and I can just stare out at all the spring bulbs , trees and shrubs that are going gangbusters and not feel the need to grab the rake or hose.

Speaking of the weather,  the odd  weather made my usually pitiful spring garden look lavish as the few spring plantings all erupted at once making for a spectacular display, since I have been on hiatus posting this was zero fun as I could not get the photos to load properly ( that is why they are at the beginning) , words were suddenly changing to italics and I gave up trying to fix it all. Going back to the garden to bend things to my will:)

Dear February,

You got it all wrong. All 28 (or29) days of you I have a plan, and it doesn’t involve the garden.

I call BS on the daffoldils sprouting

the lilac buds showing green

the honeysuckle leafing out.

I am furious at fully open pussy willows

and almost missed the witch hazel bloom 

and seriously never care that I don’t see the snowdrops because where they are planted they are covered with snow usually until May

February, you need to embrace who you really are……snow, cold , and most importantly down time for those of us who garden intensely for so many of the other months of the year. I have things to knit, a stack of books to read, classes to plan and seeds yet to order. Heavy sweaters, hot cocoa, shoveling and dormancy. That is what I expect from you..Get it together,

I don’t need to be obsessed with all the snow and ice damage and certainly am not ready to face the fact that ALL the  young fruit trees were girdled by rabbits despite their tree guards. 

You need to give me back my snow cover and my peace of mind that all is well out there at least for a little while longer.

Maybe March will give us what you so clearly could not be bothered to provide, I am Ok with that, I will will tell it how appreciative I am for stepping up to the plate.

February, I am very dissappointed in you, although I do love what you have done with the heather

December is usually a pretty light work month for me  which is nice because I get to focus on other things. This past weekend I had got to cross an item off my bucket list when my sister, nieces, daughters and I hit NYC to see the  Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Show with the Rockettes  and we had a fantastic time.  We have also already decorated the house and tree and made our annual visit to Symphony Hall to see the Boston Pops, so I am well into the holiday spirit.

Tonight I will be speaking at the Bet Shalom Garden Club in Needham  about seasonal arranging, so it was time to get back to the life without sparkly dancers in long kick lines and peppy christmas music.

This time of year is probably the toughest time for seasonal arranging. It has been c-c-c-cold ( a few nights in the teens and single digits) and  three snow events  , with the most recent one giving us about 4 inches. Add to that  the stuff I force and grow inside is not yet ready and I find myself  hunting for the elusive spark of inspriation that will start the process of creativity.

I put on my boots and headed out to the garden, and immediately was reminded that nature does all the work for me and there was loads of beauty to work with. I cut

stems of red and yellow dogwood

these beautiful stems of Flamingo willow 

chamaecyparis and euonymous’ gold splash’

branches of Harry Lauders Walking Stick (complete with mysterious animal hairs I really don’t want to think about)

the last few flowers on the daucus carrota ‘Dara’ from the pot I had thrown in the garage in November and some foliage from a “not dead yet” scented geranium

cardoon and santolina

blue spruce

stems of ilex vercilata ‘Wintergold’

pinecones from  mugo pine

and some branches of a Korean boxwood called ‘Green Velvet’ that curiously get these lovely yellow edges,randomly as far as I can tell. No one seems to be able to define why . It is not all of the leaves on any plant, nor for that matter every plant, nor does it seem to have to do with stage of growth or temperature . Must be garden fairies at work I guess.

Once inside I still felt I lacked a direction so I headed back out and stumbled upon a rose called ‘Carefree Spirit’ ( you may have heard me mention in one of my talks) that was sporting this amazing redish foliage , glossy and perfect despite the cold. Violia! 

Back inside I hit the office where overwintering plants live and cut a few stems of coleus and a few leaves from the Red Shield Hibiscus

once I had all the foliage ready , I headed out to the market and spent $4.99 0n a bunch of white alstromeria , and put it all together. I ended up keeping the winterberry out as I like the reds and golds alone now I have the rest of the day until I leave for Needham to wrap presents while singing Christmas carols with my new friend Winston. He loves Christmas music! One more reason I believe I was meant to be his bestie !

This has been a pretty difficult growing year . We are down 7 inches from our usual rain total and have had 12 days over 90 degrees so far this summer. There is now a mandatory water ban and many plants are suffering from the dry heat.The focus has been on triage watering and cutting back  things that can go dormant , which for while made me forget about “The great fruit crisis of 2016.”

Way back when the fruit trees were just budding up , we had two nights that the temps plummeted to 18 degrees. In my yard that meant cherry and peach blossoms were toast and, unusually, it also affected the apple and pear  trees. The big apple tree out front is a biennial bearer and had a bumper crop last year so the crop was expected to be on the smaller size, but you have to look way up into it to see the very few apples( less than 10) that are growing there,

and the pear nearby has only a couple dozen small dry pears. 

The apple tree in the Rock Garden has only a  few apples that  are small and malformed ( I think from lack of water).

Of the 3 espalliered trees , only one has fruit, and even then it is just three apples.  Of those three , one looks entirely perfect and it is killing me watching it ripen.

The chipmunks, voles and rabbits prevent me  from ever enjoying the fruits of my labors. Off 6 blueberry bushes I ate maybe 4 blueberries,  from the bazillion strawberry plants I got not even one.( Next year they are beng moved to vertical planters). In the only good news , the raspberries which were  very late in flowering and are just starting to be pickable now and no critters bother them.  Last year at this time  all the espalliered fruit trees were hijacked by chipmunks right before I was ready to pick them .

My one perfect apple is on an espalliered tree that is visible to me from my seat on the couch in the living room. Whenever I get a chance to sit and knit or binge watch netflix ( did you see Stranger Things or Marco Polo??? You must!)   I have a direct sight line to it

view out the window from my seat on the couch

.One perfect apple, so many threats. It might even be better if it was hidden out of sight so I could forget about it. Watching and waiting , worrying and wondering if and how I should protect it  is getting to me. It is my apple, my one perfect apple….. I may just pick it and eat it unripe. The stress is giving me a stomach ache already so what do I have to loose?