The Lengths We Are Willing to Go

When I ordered twin-flower (Linnaea borealis) in 2007 from Arrowhead Alpines for my new rock garden I was skeptical of its potential for success. I have tried many boreal plants in various hot Midwestern gardens and have had many failures. These boreal plants are native to the acidic soils and cool summers of the far north and suffer from our hot humid summers, and heavy clay soils. With the rock garden I can address the soils issue, but there isn't much I can do about hot weather. To my pleasant surprise the three plants I bought all took off and continue to do well as they begin their third growing season with me.

The "bad" part of this success is that it encourages me to continue to try plants that my experience tells me will not do well. I am sure that most will, in fact, not do well, but it is that chance that is going to cost me time and money. (Ah, but the thrill of success!) And then there is the question of how do I advise others. I answer horticultural questions all day long at work and, if asked, by a caller I would say, "No, twin-flower is not likely to grow well here in north central Ohio. I recommend you not buy it." It is the sort of "don't try this at home" warning. I think hard core gardeners are conditioned to accept the many failures of gardening and understand the specialized needs of some plants. I worry that my callers, who are usually tentative gardeners, will quit if they don't have success. They don't want to go to great lengths to make something grow, and even when they say they will I suspect they don't really understand the lengths we hard core gardeners actually go to make some, "lowly, insignificant, disregarded, flowering for a brief time..." plant like twin-flower survive.

Are Gardens Beautiful?

Is the above garden beautiful? While not the work of a designer it emulates something we admire in nature for its beauty, doesn't it?

Is this cowslip (Primula veris) a design element? Probably not, but I get great satisfaction out of its vigor and successful colonization of my rockery. It is beautiful.

Can you imagine a landscape architect ever specifying a Jack-in-the-pulpit like this Arisaema sikokianum? But it still offers beauty doesn't it?

I read a blog (Garden Rant) today that asked the question, are ornamental gardens really about beauty? They said that if beauty were the primary ambition there would be careful restraint unlike the exuberant excess of most keen gardener's gardens. She said, "My feeling is that beauty is a side product of gardening, but not the ultimate goal, which is vigorous exercise and pagan nature worship." I agree with the idea that beauty is a side product of gardening, but the rest of that sentence is a bit airy for me. Instead of vigorous exercise (occasionally) and pagan nature worship it is more about a sense of achieving understanding of natural systems through model making. I think we all love to build things and what better challenge is there than to build something out of living, growing, plants. It is a life-long pursuit of mine to learn about plants and their associated life forms. My favorite vehicle for learning is gardening. The garden also offers living space (comfort, as sense of place), and yes it offers beauty. Gardeners find their beauty in more than the quick scan of a carefully groomed minimalist landscape. There is also beauty in a tiny nook, an individual plant, a sense of enclosure, or any of a multiplicity of levels of scale. That's why we like the weird jack-in-the-pulpit or the fine details of the rock garden or the great sweep of a meadow-like planting. They are beautiful in their way and they are fascinating as well for anyone who wants to look beyond the superficial.

Rooting Around in the Spring Garden

Glaucidium palmatum

Iris x robusta 'Dark Aura'

I am covetous of the way many gardeners can simply bend at the waist and work at soil level in the garden. My mother could do that, and I recall her bending over in her long Guatemalan skirt searching the garden for newly emerging sprouts. She seemed to get great pleasure in personally greeting each returning guest. In our zeal for flowers we often overlook the fascinating world of emerging plants. I have included two that I photographed this spring. The first (Glaucidium palmatum), with the absurd common name of Japanese wood poppy, is subtle. At this stage this is almost a "belly plant." The second (a hybrid iris called Iris x robusta 'Dark Aura') won't let you ignore its intense color as it presents itself in the spring.
For the best views of the images click on them to enlarge to full size.

High End Nurseries That Keep Me Coming Back

Jeffersonia dubia

Have you seen those high-end specialty plant nurseries that must believe their arcane stock is so unique they can price their stuff at prices about two or three times higher than what others would charge for less rarefied plants? I admit, I have fallen under the spell of a few of those nurseries, and their apparent high prices are actually much higher when I look back and see the substantial attrition rate of what I bought. But yet, I go back, and Jeffersonia dubia is a perfect example of why. It's the Asian counterpart of our native Jeffersonia diphylla (Twinleaf) except that it has vividly colored flowers. When I spotted the plant pictured above this spring I was awe struck. I bought three of these Jeffersonia dubia seven years ago. Only two plants are still with me and one of those two is only barely alive. The third is thriving as the photographs suggest. That reminds me of another reason these high-end specialty nurseries are even more expensive than they seem. It is usually a good idea to buy at least three of each selection in order to increase your chances of finding that "sweet spot" where it will thrive. Why, for example is one of my Jeffersonia thriving while the other two, planted in what seemed to be comparably suitable environs are dead or dying? At least now if someone tells me they tried Jeffersonia dubia without success I can smugly say, "It's doing great for me."

It's Alive!, It's Alive!, It's Alive!

A lifestyle garden is all about simple pleasures, especially the many tiny simple pleasures of a day to day life. One of those simple pleasures is the discovery in the spring that the questionable plant you put in last year actually made it through the winter. The tiny sprouts pictured above represent one such pleasure. It is the sprout of a groundcover raspberry (sold as: Rubus arcticus subsp.x stellarcticus) I bought last year from a mail order nursery that did not evoke much confidence in me. But the nursery had this curious plant that was said to have been developed in Sweden and would grow as a groundcover in a wide variety of conditions while producing a crop of raspberries. Its description was irresistible to me, and I couldn't find anyone else offering it (which also made me suspicious), so I took a chance. The plants arrived in horrible condition. I fussed over them until they became established, but a few never did. Throughout the summer the survivors grew modestly. I continued to wonder if they were going to amount to anything or were they just part of yet another exaggerated marketing claim. Seeing them emerge this spring has given me some assurance that at least they are viable plants. Now we will have to see if they produce those promised raspberries.

Patience

Narcissus 'Ghost Dance' from Mitch Novelty Daffodils

Narcissus 'Icelandic Pink' from Mitch Novelty Daffodils

I was recently putting together an illustrated lecture called "Low Budget Perennials & Annuals for the Home Landscape", and I was reminded of the virtue of methodically building up stock in a plant that does well, such as by frequently dividing it, allowing it to spread on its own, or propagating it by seed. It is a practice that is not only a cost saving measure, but an important technique in developing a satisfying garden. While there are plenty of people who have the means and the drive to install a virtually finished garden, I think the gardeners who love the process of gardening are more patient than that. The garden evolves over time as the gardener reacts to successes and failures while patiently accumulating stock for bold initiatives that would be too costly (or rash) to acquire by other means.

Pictured above are a couple of scanned slides of daffodils I bought from Mitsch Nursery, a specialty daffodil grower and breeder. For some reason I am fascinated with the rarer (and more expensive) daffodils which I buy in small quantities, line out in a little daffodil nursery, and divide in a few years when I have enough to make an impression. I also find out how well the plants are going to do before I make a commitment to use them in the garden.

Hope Confirmed

Snow drops (Galanthus) pictured on top, are rather common bulbs, but for the lifestyle garden they play an important role. Every year for as long as I have been an adult I have eagerly looked for the first signs of spring by seeking out the first blooming plant. More often than not they have been snow drops. We may take it for granted, but I think it is an important emotional lift to see those first spring flowers. I know at Kingwood Center on the first warm day of March we get a sudden little surge of visitors, and I suspect most have their heads down looking for some sort of floral assurance that spring is on the way. It is a rare spring indeed that I don't hear someone almost breathlessly announce the first snowdrops, hearing the first spring peepers, hearing the first red-wing blackbirds or some other sign of spring. These things are important to us, and having one of those gratifying signs of spring right outside your back door, like I have my snow drops, is very satisfying.

I included a second picture of Christmas rose (Helleborus niger), because it blooms as early as snow drops but more spectacularly for even more end of winter gratification. I grow this clump outside my back door as well.

Garden Hoars

An image of a hoary frost highlighting the exquisite "bones" of a garden seems to be an obligatory winter picture in English garden magazines. There are also many pictures of hoary frosts on wild gardens illustrating the winter interest of ornamental grasses and and other weather resistant perennials. Pictures of the morning dew sometimes fill the same niche.

I have always been a bit ambivalent about images of these ephemera unless I think about what they represent. While pretty in their own right I think they are representative of the wonderful emotional satisfaction of being out in the early morning garden. For me they represent the morning when everything is fresh (you, the day, the air, the light...). It is always a struggle during the week to walk through the garden to my truck in the exhilarating atmosphere of morning and drive off to work. I am grateful, however, that I have the garden setting that can evoke those exhilarating feelings. It is part of the lifestyle garden.