Gwinn, A Lifestyle Garden

I recently spoke in Cleveland at the annual meeting of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers on the history of Country Place Era homes in the Cleveland area. The preparations for the talk reminded me of what an amazing creation William Mather's former home (Gwinn) was, and what a loss it seems to be now that it is no longer available to be seen and presumably is being gradually dismanteled.

My appreciation of Gwinn was enormously increased by Robin Karson's 1995 book The Muses of Gwinn in which she describes its fascinating history. Constructed in 1907, it survived longer than most all homes of its type. The gardens were considerably contracted as the property passed through generations of heirs, but the house and garden continued to inspire into the 21st century. Now this is what I call a lifestyle garden.

I had a chance to visit the garden at least three times before it was sold and will post the following pictures as a sort of memorial.

The house is set so close to Lake Erie that from the front it feels like it is part of the lake.

Although the lake front is lined with houses, viewers from Gwinn get the feeling they are the only ones on the water.

It is another world on the other side of the house where a comfortable sense of enclosure within the garden contrasts starkly with both the lake side and the world outside the garden walls.

Plants Grown for "Interest"

Three years ago in 2008 my Cardiocrinum cordatum bloomed.

Here it is this spring (2011), two of the three surviving offshoots from the monocarpic bulb that died after flowering. Maybe this will be the year it blooms again, but I would guess I'll have to wait another year or two.



Several years ago Tom Yates at Lantern Court at Holden Arboretum gave me a start of Cardiocrinum cordatum. It has become one of my most enjoyable plants. I believe I have written about it before, but it is worthy of multiple mentions. First of all it is not the famous giant lily Cardiocrinum giganteum which is just a bit too tender for us here in north central Ohio, but just by being in the same genus should attract attention. Secondly Cardiocrinum cordatum emerges from the ground in the spring with bright red veined leaves (see above) such as might be depicted on plates, they are so colorful. The red quickly fades and the plant goes about growing for the summer unless it is a flowering year. They are monocarpic. That is they bloom once and die. In several years of growing them mine flowered once. After finishing I dug it up and replanted the offshoots of the dieing central bulb. Three survived, two of which are pictured above growing in 2011.

I have also attached an image of the flowering year; it was so exciting. So I guess I grow Cardiocrinum cordatum mostly as a sort of curiousity, but that term does not do the plant justice. It give me more pleasure than most of my plants because I am drawn to it to see what it is doing now. For me gardening is mostly about growing plants, and this one is definitely fun to grow.

The Blight of a Tidy Garden

Here is my planting of Lamium maculatum doing very well without having the "ugly" autumn leaves raked out from around it in spite of looking like the planting of geranium below each spring.


Here is a geranium planting with the leaves left in place all winter and not removed in the spring "clean-up". Notice how the new growth is doing just fine emerging through the leaves, and think about how it will enjoy that nice mulch of leaves around its roots this summer after the autumn leaves have disappeared beneath the geranium's new growth.


Fastidious tidiness is a habit that can lead to dysfunctional garden cultural practices. The example that drives me particularly crazy is the habit of raking out all the autumn leaves from perennial plantings in the spring. It's almost never necessary, it damages the emerging perennial, it robs the perennial of a valuable mulch, and I never cease to be amazed at how many people insist on doing it!!!!!

A Hardy Clumping Bamboo

Fargesia rufa in September four years after planting.

I was getting rather skeptical that any of the clumping bamboos were actually hardy here in zone 5. Its not that I made a massive survey of them, but the cost of four or five failures over the years stung enough to make me wary. When my own organization (Kingwood Center) offered Fargesia rufa tradmarked with the name Green Panda,I had to try again. That was in 2006. The plant has survived in my garden for five winters, so I guess I have to call it hardy, although we have not had the minus fifteen or minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit we get periodically. It is difficult both mentally and financially to keep trying new and different things in the garden. Not only are the new plants more expensive than most, but their failure rate is much higher as well. Whadareyagunnado.

German Goat's Beards

I enjoyed the sparse nature of this small garden in Breege with its imposingly large goat's beard.

A university public garden in Greifswald had this giant clump of Aruncus dioicus on its campus.

The largest stand of goat's beard I recall was at this former estate which is now a park in Putbus. How old is this?


I took two trips to Germany twenty-eight years apart, and curiously one of the common impressions I had from both trips was of seeing a lot of enormous clumps of Aruncus dioicus (goat's beard). I see the plant with some degree of regularity in the U.S. but not like in Germany. I wish I corresponded with a German gardener who I could ask, "Hey, what is it with the Aruncus dioicus?" My impression is that it is very popular, often an integral part of garden designs and is often preserved for what must be decades judging by the size of some of the clumps I have seen. I like the plant; I have been growing it at my house for years, but I don't think I will live long enough to build a stand of goat's beard like a couple of those pictured above.

More of the Karl Foerster Garden

rhythm



venerable



color



impressive stands



organization

There seems to be interest in my posting more images of Karl Foerster's garden that I visited last summer in Potsdam, Germany. I decided to think about why I liked the garden so much and to post images that represented some of those reasons. I hit upon organization, impressive stands, color, venerability, and rhythm as a few that could be readily illustrated. The five images are posted above.

Community Building - Progress Report

An instant community from a spring plug planting

Eupatorium coelestinum sorting itself out from the mix to form a nice stand

Aster cordifolius 'Avondale' looking especially blue and floriferous in the late fall


As many of my previous entries have indicated I am working in my garden to better understand the practice of developing more-or-less self-sustaining plant communities as gardens. I have what I call my meadow that is several years old now and fully planted, but I continue to introduce new things, especially when I can insert ornamental interest into an otherwise down time of year. I have another similar garden in which I have a very minimal palate of plants on about half of the designated site. I am watching how these self-seed and interact with each other while experimenting with various weed control techniques. Weeds seem to be the biggest impediment to success.

Today I want to report on my newest efforts. In the spring of 2010 I purchased flats of plugs of five species of shade growing native perennials that I thought might get along in an attractive self-sustaining community. (Aster cordifolius 'Avondale', Eupatorium coelestinum, Solidago caesia, Stylophorum diphyllum and Polemonium reptans) I chose three seemingly similar shady locations and planted a mix of the five selections in each spot. After one growing season the plants' response to each of the three sites was vastly different, which is what I regularly find. It is a bit early to make conclusions, but one of the three sites grew some excellent stands of most of the five selections. The three images show a collective image of the aster, eupatorium and solidago growing nicely together but perhaps looking a bit rough. The other two images are of particularly nice stands of the aster and the eupatorium considering they are only one growing season from relatively neglected, newly planted plugs.

I will monitor to see if the polemonium, the weakest performer, does better next year; whether one or more of the selections tends to dominate (my bet is on the eupatorium); and whether the other two sites improve or have elements of the planting die out. Of course, I am especially eager to see if they can dominate the weeds and look good while doing it.

Clothes Make the Gardener (Update)

On December 4th in 2008 I posted a bit on clothing for gardening and how integral it can be for making gardening a pleasurable experience. I described my favorite inclement weather clothing while asserting that the proper clothing can make gardening fun not only in spite of but sometimes even because of nasty weather.

I have a couple of new favorites. I am aware of how silly this may seem to some, but these cloths really do make an enormous difference. My first new favorite is a case in point. They are lightly insulated Gore-Tex bib overalls. They offer warmth in all but the coldest weather while not being too hot in temperatures as high as the upper 50s, but what I like the most about these overalls is that they are waterproof, and they breath. I can get down on my knees on cold wet ground and stay dry and warm. That is invaluable. They are perfect for late bulb plantings, cutting back dormant perennials in the fall or spring, cutting firewood in the winter, or any of the innumerable garden and yard jobs that involve getting down on your knees on cold and/or wet ground. I have tried rain pants, knee pads,and Carhartt overalls, but nothing is as satisfactory as these for protecting against cold wetness. I bought them from Cabela's where they are marketed for hunters.

My other new favorite is a brand-name boot called Muck Boots. In my previous log I described my L.L. Bean rubber bottomed leather topped boots as my favorite. Their shortcomings were their tendency to become clammy with prolonged wear and the tedious process of lacing and unlacing to put them on and take them off. The Muck Boots do everything the insulated Bean boots do and they slip on and off easily while not making your feet clammy. They help keep my wife happy too by minimizing the dirt I track in by making it easy for me to take them off before coming in. I used to have generic high topped rubber boots styled after the famous Wellington brand. They were satisfactory for warm weather but not the cold, and they were less comfortable. Muck Boots can be purchased directly from www.MuckBoots.com.

Good work cloths are like having just the right tool for the job.