Each Little World

Each Little World

For the mind, by nature stagey, welds its frame

Tomb-like around each little world of a day.

We jump from picture to picture and cannot follow

the living curve that is breathlessly the same.

— Louis Mac Neice / 1907-1963

What little world?

EACH LITTLE WORLD that collides with mine:

The world of interiors and exteriors; bibliophiles; china and dishing; feasts and fests; food; flowers and gardens; material possessions and textile obsessions; worldly goods and bads.

Your worlds and mine.

Let the collision begin.

The above two paragraphs and accompanying two photos announced the arrival of my blog exactly three years ago today. Though collision is certainly not the right word — more like a whisper — given the few folks who actually read it in those days.

In the beginning I posted daily; sometimes even twice a day. It seemed easy compared to putting out two editions of a daily newspaper as I did in my pre-blogging life. I considered the blog to be more colorful versions of the myriad topics I covered in print. But when I went to the garden bloggers' 2009 meet-up in Chicago, they told me myriad topics were a blogging no-no. It's all about niche marketing and staying on topic. If you've been reading this blog for the last year — or week — you know that's not what you'll find here. I veer off track easily and often.

While I love to garden and write about it, I am equally adamant about art and reading. I am passionate about politics and history, and have been fascinated by food, fashion and fiber long before I ever picked up a trowel. In fact, I came to gardening through Elizabethan embroidery. I have been steadily writing about those topics since 1981 with a couple of short breaks between publishers. I've said it before and I say it again: To limit my blog to gardening is to limit my life. 

If you live in Wisconsin — or pay attention to politics — you know my life, like that of thousands of others, has been turned topsy turvy by the actions of our governor. Some of you were not very happy when this mostly-garden-blog suddenly went political in February of this year. I wish I could say you've seen and read the last passionate political post but I know the fight's not over, and thus neither are my takes on current events. I spent part of my newspaper career as an editorial writer and editorial page editor — professionally opinionated as I like to say. I was writing about politics right along side of home and garden stories. And that's how I see the blog — the place where all my worlds can come together.  

I've been lucky to discover a world of readers whose pursuits are equally diverse. Some of you I've known for years in my pre-blog life, some of you I've met in person post-blog and some of you I look forward to meeting one of these days. I picture all of you when I write, when I decide what to write, and when I look to see what you've written. 

Thank you for continuing to visit my little world. I'd love to hear what you think so don't be shy; leave a comment. If you do comment, be sure to scroll down and type in the crazy combo of numbers and letters that let's me know you are a real reader and not a robot. Here's to another year of sharing our worlds.

Thank you ...

. . . to everyone who came to hear our talk, "Asian Serenity in a Midwest Garden," on Friday at HopsiceCare, Inc. as part of Olbrich Botanical Gardens' annual Home Garden Tour. And to those who came down to MMoCA early Saturday morning for our presentation on "Collecting as a Couple." We especially want to say how surprised — and pleased — we were to note a number of our friends in the audiences; folks who already are familiar with our house and garden and who actually paid money to hear our presentations! We even re-connected with the realtor who sold us our house, thus making the garden possible.

We also want to let everyone at Olbrich and MMoCA know how honored we were to be asked to be part of the program for such respected Madison institutions. Both days, everything was organized and ran smoothly, and all the people we dealt with were helpful, thoughtful and friendly. It made our events more fun than work.

On Friday, I said that big trees, shade and lots of green are the ingredients I consider necessary to create a serene garden. At the time, I did not realize how many of the gardens on the Olbrich tour embodied that statement. 

We loved the garden that celebrated Black Walnut trees with breathtaking specimens whose limbs almost touched the ground. These gardeners had no trouble creating an oasis under such majestic beauties and we had a great time talking with them about the best way to build a teahouse/meditation space. We discovered the perfect house color to complement orange daylilies and I was entranced at the gardeners who went to the effort of creating beautiful table settings and bouquets for the dining areas of their decks. 

We had a lot of lively conversation with collectors of every age and interest while we all partook of a summery buffet breakfast before the Art Fair on Saturday. We're looking forward to more talk about textiles, teabowls and collecting with you at MMoCA's First Fridays and upcoming openings.

Thanks again for making our marathon weekend such a success and a pleasure. But now that it's over, we're looking forward to getting back to the garden and feeling free to spend an afternoon daydreaming!

Waiting for Spring

At the beginning of March, when we felt so demoralized by the cold, snow and politics here in Wisconsin, I splurged on a breath of Spring at our local source for orchids, the Orchids Garden Centre and Nursery just down the road in Waunakee. I brought home two orchids: Phalaenopsis stuartiana 'Sogo' and this gorgeous Phalaenopsis 'White Dream' (below) which is almost in full bloom a month later. This week we are having warmer temps which are finally thawing the edges of the garden down by the street. A little thaw really helps when you're trying to get all those political yard signs stuck firmly in the ground.

Floral delight

HE SAID:

Our garden is all about structure, stone, water and green plants. At least that's the way I perceive it in my mind's eye. I would, if asked, deny that it was a flower garden. And yet, to my surprise and delight, flowers from the garden keep finding their way into the house.

In the last week alone these four arrangements appeared as if by magic in our bathrooms, our front hall, and on the dining room table. What a wonderful thing it is to be married to someone with a talent for growing and arranging flowers. I'm a lucky man!

 

 

 

Easter Parade

Easter is the last refuge for those of us who love hats. I'll take all three of these, though I confess these bonneted beauties were actually snapped at Ascot — where else?

Hope you have the perfect hat and a perfect day!

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: 2.15.2010

Winter continues to hold sway in our garden, with trees and shrubs still bowed down from the first big December storm. Last week's snow merely added insult to injury, and nary a bit of Spring in sight. We're keeping sane with stacks of garden catalogs, accompanied by piping pots of Earl Grey tea, served in my pink lusterware cups and my mother's favorite hand-painted floral designs.  

 

 

 

 

To see who's actually got flowers in bloom, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens. 

A Martha Stewart bouquet

Someone brought the October issue of Martha Stewart Living to work the other day, so I flipped through it during a lull between customers. I was immediately captivated by Martha's arrangement of seedheads and dried flowers from her late fall garden. 

I am not concerned whether Martha actually grew the flowers used or made the arrangement herself. I think she's a brilliant entrepreneur who's surrounded herself throughout her career with other creative people (think Margaret Roach). And Martha loves flowers and gardens as much as I do — as much as all of us garden bloggers do — which makes her magazine a font of ideas. 

Of course, I looked at the beautiful urn on a pedestal in the photo and thought about how much that contributed to the arrangement. That and having a big, bountiful garden to provide the materials. And then I thought about my garden and how bedraggled it was from the frost and wind and rain.

But then I remembered that image as I was cutting everything back and starting my end of season garden clean-up on Sunday. So I went into the basement and pulled out my most traditional urn-shaped vase and set it on the driveway where I was working. And as I worked, I plopped clippings into it. 

Everywhere I looked, I found wonderful seedheads from peonies, Martagon lilies, Dodecatheon (shooting stars), Carex greyii, Hostas and coneflowers. But I needed filler and a bit of color to pull it all together. That's when I remembered the Sedum in the traffic island bed, the Annabelle Hydrangea bordering the moss garden and the Artemisia still in the driveway border. 

Et voila, a Martha bouquet! Best of all, when I took another look at Martha's inspirational arrangement, I realized that I liked mine better — a very satisfying end to a day in the garden.

All images are of my bouquet, not Martha's.

Naming gardens

My interest in gardening initially grew out of my interest in U.K. history; horticultural and otherwise. In my readings I noticed how often people with noteworthy gardens lived in houses that had names; and the gardens were called by those names as well, like Rosemary Verey's garden at Barnsley House or Christopher Lloyd's at Great Dixter. Later I realized it wasn't limited to England, as places like Wayne Winterrowd and Joe Eck's garden at North Hill prove. Then there's Lisa at Greenbow and Frances at Faire Garden and Nan at Hayefield House. The list grows longer the longer I consider the subject.

But more than just naming the house and garden, each area within these gardens was named: the Bluebell Wood, the Lime Walk, the Long Border, the Rondel. So it seemed perfectly natural to me to name the various areas of our garden. Even before we moved in, I had christened the area under the three old and twisted Austrian pines: The Sacred Grove. Walking there always made me feel like the Delphic Oracle was about to appear with a cryptic message for me.

The Lime Walk at Sissinghurst (Photo by Susan Mahr/UW-Madison)

Naming is a highly personal choice and something that is probably most often seen as a romantic gesture. But as anyone with a garden knows, names have a practical purpose as well: letting us describe and discuss and plan our gardens in a way that everyone understands and can visualize. Our garden — with the house running right across the middle of it — is half an acre. And early on, the two of us often found ourselves confused — if not in the midst of an actual argument — about how to handle a specific spot or feature in the garden. 

Naming the areas of the garden solved those problems. We both knew where the other one was weeding or working or wanted to add a tree or site a bench because we could refer to those locations by their individual names. Naming also made it seem like the garden was larger than it was. But most of all, it let us see ourselves as part of the long tradition of gardening. 

That said, my overall garden and house still don't have a name. I considered "West Green House" since the house is painted a very dark green and is on the west side of Madison. It's also the name of one of my favorite English houses. The number of crows attracted to the pond suggested the name, "Blackbird Pond." Then I could be the resident witch, just as in my favorite children's book. We also considered Gaelic names as a nod to our Irish heritage and Japanese names since that's the dominant influence in the garden. But so far, we remain nameless in general, but not in the particulars.

The Oak Savanna

The garden spaces are almost all named. Those names fall into four self-explanatory categories: symbolic (Sacred Grove), descriptive (Oak savanna), function (bog) and location (East gate). 

 The Moon Garden.

SYMBOLIC

Moon garden: this area has its own story.

Sacred Grove

Buddha Mound and Turtle Mound: These are the hills above the pond whose names refer to the stone groups on each.

The Long Border.

DESCRIPTIVE

Gravel gardens: Beds of raked gravel in the front and back gardens.

Katie's Crescent: The curved bed that began as the pile of sod we removed when we dug the pond. Home to a spring-blooming Carolina Silverbell tree; a memorial to our niece who died too young. 

Long Border: This began as the "Hendrix Border" because it was going to be a floral purple haze. The color scheme changed somewhere along the way but it still has some strong purplish trees and shrubs.

Oak Savanna: the grassy area under our Bur Oak and a nod to a native Midwestern landscape type.

Serpentine Path: Covered with pine needles and usually how we refer to it despite it's more descriptive name.

Wild Time Garden: An ironic nod to Will Shakespeare and the bank that slopes down to the street where folks in cars toss their McD wrappers.

The Birch Grove.

FUNCTION

Birch Grove

Black Stairs

Bog

Dry Stream

Header Pool

Moss

Pebble Beach

Pond

Stream Bog

Teahouse

Tsukubai

Under the Spruces.

LOCATION

Compost corner: Compost bins are long gone but we have never found a suitable new name.

Library window: The area below said window and to the sides of it.

Tim & Mary's Fence

Traffic Island 

Under the Spruces

West Gate and East Gate: These two gates have yet to be built. They will define the entrances/exits on each side of the house.

The Sacred Grove.

So, is it pretentious to name an urban American garden? Mark would say yes; but as the resident Anglophile, I disagree. The fact that we've never decided on a name for our garden also might suggest we're too democratic to do something that reeks of privilege. I think it's a case of still searching for the perfect name; something we may never discover as the garden continues to grow and change.

What about you? Does your garden have a name and how did you choose it?

Principles of design: On the table and in the garden

It always amazes me how people we never meet, whose names we can never remember — assuming we even knew them in the first place — can influence our lives. Ted Nierenberg, who died last Friday at age 86, was such a person. A master of both photography and garden-making, Nierenberg was also the founder of Dansk International Designs. As such, he was a seminal figure in bringing Scandinavian design to the U.S. in the years following WWII. 

Dishes from Dansk have been on my table since my first post-college apartment. This 3-piece set came stacked and tied together with twine. It was a great marketing ploy since you could only buy the pieces as a set. But it was an even better piece of cultural education since it introduced me to the inventive realm of Japanese packaging. The pieces were actually produced in Japan.

My initial service for four is now down to not quite two place settings. I've found replacement pieces on-line but have not yet been able to bring myself to pay what they now cost. Still, the cool gray and navy color combination has never gone out of style. Nor have I ever grown tired of it. I love it today as much as the first time I saw it in the store.

My everyday white dinnerware is TC100 (Thomas compact china from Germany via Design Research) but that's another story. It was being used in a chic little restaurant in a boutique hotel in Toronto in the late 1960s. Though the cups and bowls were attractive and stackable, I wasn't as happy with them as with the plates. So I turned to Dansk again.

Mark and I bought a dozen Dansk plain white Bistro cups at the fabulous George Watts & Son store while we were on our honeymoon. They're small so we can have three cups of morning coffee instead of the one we'd need to confine ourselves to with most of today's large mugs. Twenty years later we're still using these cups every day (though they're beginning to show it).

Somewhere along the way, a friend gave us Nierenberg's book, "The Beckoning Path: Lessons of a Lifelong Garden / The Photographs and Garden of Ted Nierenberg." The book is a visual essay about his lakeside natural style garden, with its collection of Japanese maples, located in the Hudson Valley region of New York. Suffice it to say the book, the photos and the garden are all stunning. 

Nierenberg's friends included famed designers and photographers who taught and advised him in the area of photography. Among them were John Szarkowski, head of MOMA's photo department for almost 30 years. Szarkowski's advice: Take 10,000 photographs a year for five years and then cull them down to 150 images. And that, said Nierenberg, is how the book came into being.

Nierenberg's garden comprises many acres and is designed on a grand scale. But the lessons he offered in his book are valuable no matter the size or location or style of your garden. We still find them as useful to return to as when we first read them:

LESSON 1: Respect your assets and surroundings
LESSON 2: Create beckoning paths

LESSON 3: Provide refuges and overlooks

LESSON 4: Mingle clearings and plantings

LESSON 5: Layer plantings

LESSON 6: Plant in groups

LESSON 7: Create mystery and surprise

LESSON 8: Control variety

LESSON 9: Provide for seasonal interest

LESSON 10: Focus on change

Inspiration: Terence Conran

"Growing is like designing: you start with a small seed, which then draws on everything around it  — sun, water, minerals from the soil, and the care and attention you put into it as a gardener. The whole process is one of the most inspirational things in life and when you can eat your produce or admire a jug of flowers on your table, there is nothing more rewarding. Planting a garden is one of the best lessons in creativity that anyone can have."

— Terence Conran

I've been a fan of Terence Conran for more years than I care to remember. So it was a pleasant surprise to discover his latest book, " Terence Conran's Inspiration," which documents how his home of almost 40 years (a former boys' school) has been the source of his inspiration, the lab for his cooking and design business, the backdrop for photo shoots and more.

The book is divided into eight chapters — more like themes — that have one introductory page of text followed by photos that bleed to the edge and have no captions. Those are all grouped together in the back of the book in a section called "data bank," so those of us who always read the fine print have all the details.

Among my favorite images in the "growing" section are a page of 2006 U.S. stamps from the "Crops of the Americas" series and this dual purpose wheelbarrow — named "Juliette" — by U.K designer, Chris Eckersley, who was inspired when he saw a photo of a woman sitting in an "upturned builder's barrow."

According to the Burford Garden Company which sells the wheelbarrow/seat, it's made from rust proof zinc-coated steel with a "solid European oak frame which is extremely comfortable." It must be very comfortable to induce folks to pay 895 GBP ($1,422.07) — even if it is dual-purpose. Though I have to admit that I'd get one for my garden if money were no object. Juliette also comes in "vibrant orange," but I can't resist the charm of this sky blue version.

BURFORD GARDEN COMPANY (used without permission)