Each Little World

Plant sale season: 2013

Every year I write about local garden sales and I pretty much say the same thing: I love them! Rather than give you lots of details here, I'm going to link you to more info. The Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society lists dozens and dozens of sales and garden events in their April newsletter. You can access it online here. Sale info begins on page 5.

My personal favorite sales are:

The West Side Garden Club: Friday, May 10, from 8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. and Saturday, May 11, from 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. The sale is at 3518 Nakoma Road (near Seminole Highway and down the block from Thoreau School).

Olbrich Botanical Gardens: Plant Sale with the Pros on Friday, May 10, from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. and on Saturday, May 11 from 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. Find complete details and why it's a must for gardeners at any stage here. I'll be working the Friday afternoon shift, so be sure to stop by and say hello. (Full disclosure: I'm an Olbrich member). 

The Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society: Saturday, May 18, from 9 a.m. - noon, at the West Madison Agricultural Research Station, 8502 Mineral Point Road, Madison. Plants are from members' gardens and there are always some unusual offerings. Before I sat down at the computer to write this, I walked around my garden to determine what I can dig and pot up for the sale. Another benefit of this sale: lots of free parking! (Full disclosure: I'm a WHPS member and am also on their Board).

One of my favorite purchases from the West Side Garden Club sale. I never had any luck with this primrose until I bought some from this sale. 

Double bloodroot

Our garden has been the beneficiary of our neighbor's interest in spring ephemerals, both native and not. We've received many gifts of flower clumps dug up and handed over the fence. Others have arrived via seeds, wind and critters. Each spring our garden is filled with Dutchman's breeches, Merrybells, great white Trillium, checkered lily and Bloodroot — all from our neighbor.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is wonderful at every stage and I never know where they may show up. They are also one of the rare plants whose double form is even more beautiful (all photos). 

I've purchased the double variety of Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis 'Multiplex') four or five times over the years and have had no success with it. No matter where I planted it, it disappeared never to be seen again. That was the case until I got a clump in the mail from fellow-blogger Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening. Whatever the reason, her plant has come back beautifully and the clump seems to be increasing in place.

These photos were taken late in the day when the bright sun made it easier to capture a good shot. What that means is that these flowers actually open even more widely earlier in the day. While their many petals are still obvious in these pictures, the flowers are actually beginning to close up for the night.

Flowers at the CBG Fair

Though the Chicago Botanic Garden calls its annual event an "Antiques and GARDEN Fair" there were not as many items which could actually find a home outside in the garden as I would have liked. On the other hand, there were some wonderful indoor flower and garden displays that we greatly enjoyed. The theme of the show was “Color in the Garden: An Artist’s View.” 

As you can see from the picture below almost all the vendors also had some kind of flowers or plants included in their displays. I thought this was a particularly charming idea with its row of matched pots in ascending and descending sizes.

The artist below actually used dried flowers to create flat patterns that reminded me of Indian textiles with their bright colors and repeated motifs. The yellow one uses cosmos and the pink one at the right uses straw flowers. They are pressed paper thin in a hydraulic press. 

At the entrance to one of the tents were a pair of charming potager-style vegetable gardens by The Organic Gardner.

Craig Bergmann Landscape Design had one of their usual tour de force floral creations on display in the center of the tent. Can't you just fantasize doing this instead of the typical Christmas tree?

Maria Smithburg with Manfredini Landscape and Design created a dramatic tulip walkway with glossy red cylindrical planters. 

Depending on where you stood, the effect of the display constantly changed.

The containers made me think of those painted red trunks in the garden of Jack Lenor Larsen's Long House (below). They both have that same element of scale and drama.

You can see through the doors that the next garden display was equally dramatic but in a much more subtle way.

The space down the center of this gallery has been home to many incredible displays over the years, including this one by William Heffernan Landscapes.

I liked the combination of fantasy with the mirrored reflections and practicality with decorative squares of edible plants. I noticed that someone had added a small square of pink paper on the sign at the beginning of this garden with the hand-written notation "cherry trees." Clearly they'd been getting a lot of questions about the pink branches!

Since there were vendors in the hallways outside the conservatories we took advantage of the location and strolled through three different growing environments.

I've been reading a lot of interior design and decor books lately and the plants above and below both suggested color and texture combinations for paint and fabrics to my eye. 

My other posts on this event:

CBG Antiques and Garden Fair

CBG Antiques Fair: Inside the Tents 

"Inside the Gardener's Head in Spring"

My concept for a fall silhouette using pine needles, seed pods, stones and other natural materials from the garden proved so frustrating that I gave up on it — and decided that maybe my winter silhouette was going to be my lone fiber project. Then, a book I'd placed on hold at the public library came in and changed everything.

"The Art of Embroidery: Inspirational Stitches, Textures and Surfaces" by Francoise Tellier-Loumagne is the most inspirational embroidery book I've ever looked at. It is less about technique and more about how to interpret your ideas in fiber. Great photo illustrations (also by the author) including stitch samples all done on heavy white paper making for the clearest instruction I've seen.

I was so excited by Tellier-Loumagne's book that I sat down and started another textile silhouette. This time I focused on Spring with all the greens pushing through the snowy winter detritus. I cut two silhouettes out of dark green net and then cut them into pairs of puzzle-like pieces. I experimented with a number of techniques for stuffing, stitching and attaching them to the black background. 

They're filled with felt, fabric, ribbon, threads pulled from assorted fabrics, and bits of green plastic bags. Some pieces have small pieces of white lace inside them but most of that fabric is melting across the large silhouette image, held in place with beads and sequins.

I've started a summer silhouette but my concept involves more preliminary background stitching than the first two pieces, and it feels more like a chore than creative work. Hoping to be ready to move on to the fun parts soon!

You can read about my winter silhouette, the first work in this four-part series, here.

Snowdrops!

I looked out the library window this morning and was amazed to see a tiny clump of snowdrops had pushed through the crusty snow. The temperature was only 17 degrees F. so I didn't expect them to open or to see many more for a while. 

But today's sunshine helped two more tiny clumps to poke through the snow by late afternoon. Though it feels like we've had an endless winter, my snowdrop stats suggest they are appearing pretty much on schedule. 

Snowdrop stats:

• 2005: March 30
• 2006: no photos, so no recorded date
• 2007: March 21
• 2008: April 6 (after the winter where we had more than 100 inches of snow)
• 2009: March 14
• 2010: March 10
• 2011: March 14
• 2012: February 17
• 2013: March 17

A new year and a new garden

This is not about what you probably think based on the above heading. We just had the worst storm-related damage that we've experienced in our garden since we started creating it in 1997. This view of the driveway — after we'd spent the better part of two days clearing it out — gives you an idea of the volume of snow we had.

As a result of the Dec. 20th snowstorm, a 60-year-old Austrian pine came down and took out two other trees — the mainstays of my most successful shade garden, formerly known as The Sacred Grove. I won't know how much shade I still have in this garden until Spring when the snow is gone and we can really assess the damage. We are pretty sure that a lot of evergreen shrubs were affected as well.

Sixteen inches of wet, heavy snow with high winds, falling branches and trees played havoc in almost every area of the garden. Not to mention the utility guys clomping around repairing the wires the trees took down. The snow was lovely when you weren't hearing the branches as they broke. 

Our Pagoda dogwood, planted just off the deck in 1997, suffered at least four major broken branches in the center of the tree. After pruning, it will really have that wedding cake look; actually more like a cake with a layer missing! 

A big old lilac had its limbs tossed all over the garden. If you didn't know better you would think it was the top of a shrub buried in the snow instead of the top of a tree.

The evergreen tree in the center of the picture below is an Austrian pine, one of a group of three that were all planted around the time the house was built in 1954. This one lost its leader early on and a secondary branch clearly took over as the new leader. The positive result was a wonderful curving silhouette that added a nice visual punch to the garden.

The negative result is the fact that this growth pattern weakened the tree and made it susceptible to twisting — and breaking — in December's big storm, as you can in the picture below. This image was taken the day after the worst of the snow. Look closely and you can see the break in the trunk in the right side of the picture about 8-10' above ground.

This next picture gives a clearer view of the damage. It was taken from the same location as the photo above but a couple of weeks later, after Mark and a friend had done some pruning and much of the snow had melted. You can see how the trunk is secured by ropes to a neighboring tree. This is to keep is from dropping on a Pagoda dogwood that is growing beneath it.

Amazingly the tree did not damage the fence and gate since its many branches kept most of the tree elevated above ground, hinged in place where the trunk had not completely broken.

Mark took the following shot from the ladder and it gives you a view of the bare trunks of the 15-year-old Washington Hawthorn that the pine took out when it fell. This area is planted with ferns, Hellebores, primroses, dwarf conifers and on and on. The loss of the pine, the Hawthorne and a Magnolia sieboldii may spell the end for this garden which faces south but was always nicely shaded.

Mark bought the orange sled to haul the branches and logs down to the curb where the city told residents to pile their storm debris to have it picked up. After he finished hauling brush over a number of days, he sat down and slid down the 200' of sloping paths he'd created from the back garden down to the curb. 

Our lot is about 100' feet wide and the debris from our downed trees was piled the width of it and about 3' deep. We watched the city worker picking it all up with big claws on the end of an articulated arm and dropping everything into his big dump-type  truck. Mark went out to thank him for his great work and he was really taken aback. Folks are more likely to complain than compliment him, he said. He also noted that he lives outside Madison and that folks in his community don't get the kind of municipal services we have in Madison. We pay a lot in taxes in Madison but we definitely get Cadillac services, worth every penny. 

Now that I've had almost a month to get used to the loss of these trees, I'm beginning to calm down and accept the fact that a big change is coming to the garden. It's too densely planted in that area where the trees came down and too inaccessible to just put in another big tree. I am most likely going to just enjoy my plants when they come up this year and then pack them up for the plant sales. I think this area is about to become a low maintenance sun garden: a few peonies, some evergreen shrubs and groundcovers — and great memories of the glories that won't come again. 

The end of the geraniums

. . .  at least for this year! Pulled out all the plants that had done so well in the hot sunny Traffic Island Garden this summer to save them for next year. This was their second year and I am again following the directions from the Royal Horticultural Society. While Pelargoniums are not wildly expensive, a good-size plant costs upwards of $5 and with five varieties in the garden the money mounts up. If you have Pelargonium varieties you like, try this easy way to over-winter them in a dormant state (Method 3). 

September at ACG

Last week I visited Allen Centennial Gardens on the UW-Madison campus with Julie Siegel, a Chicago-area garden designer, blogger and friend. The garden is a teaching garden for the university but it is also free and open to the public. It was a perfect day for a visit with blue skies and few clouds, evidenced by this shot of the decorative details on the house once used by the Deans of the Ag School. 

On the ground, however, it was a bit sunny for capturing the best photos. I took this shot of Geranium dalmaticum to remind me that mine is planted in the wrong spot in my garden judging by how happy it seems to be here.

Every time I visit ACG I discover something that is completely new to me — like this seedpod of Datura. I've seen this plant growing in many gardens but never at this season when it has these huge pods along with its last few flowers.

Ed Lyon, the director of ACG, always creates exciting mixes of edibles and ornamentals.  

And he's an expert when it comes to color in the garden: whether it's flower and foliage combinations or art objects that he adds for emphasis. Every one of the following images offers ideas for home gardeners looking to do something a little different. (These tubes are painted PVC).

I particularly like blues that have a touch of gray or green as accent colors in the garden, and Ed must also judging by all the ways he employs it at ACG.

When I was at ACG at the end of June, I was taken with the clumps of peachy-pink hollyhocks that picked up the trim color of the Dean's house. This visit, it was the seedheads that matched the Cream City bricks.

Seattle visitors

We had a group of out-of-town visitors to our garden Sunday afternoon after a mostly rainy morning. Though only .15" of rain actually fell, it still helped to perk up the garden. Once the rain stopped, we opened up the tea house and hung up our Japanese shop sign.

And I took a quick last-minute run though the garden to see how everything looked just minutes before they arrived — picking up fallen apples and black walnuts. I decided to wear my brightest shirt so folks could easily pick me out of the crowd to answer questions!

Even though the sky was still overcast there were waterlilies blooming which really emphasizes the pond as the focal point of the garden. Since it's been so hot and dry here in southern Wisconsin, a gray day was actually a nice change.

About two dozen members of the Northwest Horticultural Society came to visit our garden as part of their Chicago and southern Wisconsin tour. The event was arranged by Wisconsin native Daniel Mount. Like the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society (of which Mark and I are members), the NHS hosts lectures, garden tours and plant sale fund-raising events; but they have over 1000 members in the Seattle area while we're about half their size. 

They arrived at 3 p.m. — luckily having called to warn us they were an hour ahead of schedule! But it meant that they had extra time to spend with us as we were the last stop of the day after Taliesin and the Cedar Grove cheese factory. We've had lots of local garden groups tour our garden but this was the first time we ever had a bus pull up across the street from our house with visitors. It is definitely a bit disconcerting!

Just about this time last August, Mark and I were taking Daniel Mount around local Madison gardens, helping him to pull together this NHS group tour. Daniel grew up in Milwaukee and actually went to Luther Burbank Grade School, "which may very well have been the beginning of this whole plant thing," he says. Currently he is an estate gardener in the Pacific Northwest, garden writer, blogger and educator. His column for the NHS recently won a silver award from the Garden Writers Association and one of his gardens is on the cover of the current issue of Fine Gardening magazine.

We decided just to let folks wander around at their own pace and then to answer questions after they'd had a chance to see the garden. Though we have lots of paths winding through our garden they are narrow (perfect for the two of us) but cause a bit of a bottleneck when curious gardeners are walking them. Some of the Seattle folks actually were stopped by a plant unfamiliar to them — Carex plantaginea —before they'd taken more than a few steps.

Carex plantaginea (seersucker sedge) is one of many sedges we have in our garden, and one that is usually familiar to local gardeners. Folks wondered if we grew any native plants and that particular sedge is one of them — growing just a few feet from some of our other natives like Bur oak, witch hazels and Pagoda dogwoods. 

Another attention-getter was our large specimen shrub: Viburnum plicatum var. tomentosum 'Mariesii' (doublefile Viburnum) which is spread out behind the two gentlemen from Seattle. Their presence gives you an idea of its size.

Luckily Mark and I both were doing pretty well remembering the names of plants, trees and shrubs in the garden, so we were able to provide information when people liked something. 

See where I'm standing in the photo below? I'm trying to remember the name of the prostrate shrub on the ground below me near the birch trees. I couldn't do it nor could I find it in my file of plant names. That's because it was mistakenly filed under trees instead of shrubs. It is Pinus sylvestris 'Albyn Prostrata,' a prostrate Scots pine. Ours is more open and leggy than it should be as it needs more sun. Alas I did not get the name of the person who was interested in this pine, so I hope you are reading this!

Eventually we all wound up on the deck and then went indoors for Wisconsin cheeses and brews. Mark and I really enjoyed ourselves and it seemed as though our visitors did as well. They commented on a number of features that most folks don't mention and they wanted the names of some trees and shrubs that don't always get singled out for attention.

Who knows if this is the result of some special Northwest sensibility or just a reflection of individual tastes? What I do know is that I wished we could have spent much longer visiting with each other; everyone I talked to was so interesting and engaging. Maybe the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society will have to think about another Northwest tour.

Finally, a big thank you to whoever gathered up all the dirty dishes and nicely piled them on the kitchen counter by the sink. Now that's our kind of garden visitor! 

. . .

Seattle folks: If you are curious about the design and construction process of our garden, you can follow it step-by-step by clicking on "My Garden Odyssey" in the category list. Just be aware that the most recent posts are first. So if you want to start at the beginning, go to the archives for Nov. 2008 when the first Odyssey post appeared: "All in Good Time." 

Repetition

Sometimes you want one gorgeous speciment plant, but oftentimes it's multiples of the same plant that have the biggest impact. Just one of many lessons learned on our last visit to Olbrich Botanical Gardens this summer.