Gardening With Confidence ™

With Thanksgiving behind me and rain in front of me, my puttering today consisted more of indoor than outdoor fun.  Although I did manage to steal an hour here and there this week to do the following:

• Planted Red Tulips – Darwin Hybrid Apeldoorn in 2 pots in the garden: one in The Crinum Bed, the other in The Mixed Border.  Helen’s Haven is a hot colored garden, and nothing heats up the spring garden more than this tulip.  I like them in pots for the added height the pot provides, allowing me to see better from a distance.
• Added another box in the front border shape I created last weekend…it needed just one more.
• Had to move the variegated abelia to make room.  Now I’m happy with the placement of both.
• Also moved another Veronica ‘Georgia’ so they could all be together.
• Moved the Smith & Hawkin bench from the front to the back to an area where I was planning to put another fountain.  However, I’m holding out for a greenhouse and this area will be the entrance to the greenhouse.  When the time comes, it will be much easier to move a bench than a fountain.
• Moved a black wrought iron bench from the back to the front.
• Moved the big urn that was to become a fountain into The Mixed Border.  Not happy with where it is; will fry that fish another day.
• Planted a bunch of bulbs I received from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs – a series they call Spanning Spring into Summer.  This will be a future post.
• I did all this feeling puny.  My body aches.  I hope I’m not coming down with something.  My husband had sympathy for me yesterday, but this morning I got up to work in the garden, so even though I still feel puny, I realize I gave up my right to whine…it was worth it.

Then there was a project I’ve been putting off since I began gardening….I’m finally identifying all the plants in each of my gardens.    Several years ago, getting ready for a tour, I named my gardens and many of the plants in the beds, also creating labels for many of the plants.  But I still didn’t make a chart.

When I first started gardening seriously 35 years ago, I didn’t think it would matter, since I only cared about the overall design and if I liked the plant in the design.  I didn’t value the name.  When I got to the point that I DID value this, I was living in London and building a completely different garden then I would ever have back in the States.  As a sidebar, I really wish I had that plant list today, for sentiment, if nothing else.  When I gardened in Oakwood, again, I went back to valuing the design more than the plants.  As such, I felt that I couldn’t be burdened with knowing the cultivar of each.  Now that I garden in the garden where I raise my children, I think it’s time.  If ever I can expel some advice, it is to write the name down.  Even if you can’t remember it or pronounce it, have it on hand somewhere!

I wish someone gave me that advice.  Why I didn’t do way before now, is beyond me.  What I did do though, was keep all the plant labels in a shoe box…a big shoe box.

Today was the day I sorted through the shoe box and put the labels in a pile per garden…The Red Bed, The Office Border, The Herb Garden, The Back Porch One, The Back Porch Too, The Mixed Border, The Woodland Garden One, The Woodland Garden Too, The Crinum Bed, The Secret Garden, The Rose Garden, The Mailbox Garden.

It was Nancy Goodwin of Montrose (a project garden of the National Garden Conservancy), in Hillsborough, who taught me to name gardens.  Nancy makes a good point – it is so much easier to give direction of where to work by saying we will be working in the Mother-in-Law garden than to say the garden down the path, left of the big tree.  This way there is no confusion.  In fact I suggest to my clients to name their gardens.  First the challenge is to name their overall garden, then to name the individual gardens.  This way if they have something they want me to address, it makes it easy to communicate.

Just recently, my client was telling me not to plant Tulips in the bed up by the porch, but not the one in front of the path, but the one at the end of the front entrance.  Ah, you mean the Upper Container Bed?  This was the name I had given it.

It was at this point I suggested that it was time to name her garden.  Both an overall name, just because it’s fun to do, and each individual garden.  Not only does this help in communicating, but also elevates the status of the garden and makes it more personal.  My client reported it to be a difficult task, but glad she did.  She spends a lot of time in her garden and has created something special.  Naming it makes it personal.  I even went so far as to suggest getting stationary and note cards with a title something to the effect “From the garden of Jessamine Hill”  her new garden.  Why not?  So much of who she is is identified with her garden.  She is new to gardening (only 4 years), having raised two beautiful children and now a grandmother, she wanted to continue to nurture.  And nurture she does.  She is the best dead header I know!!!!!

I named my garden Helen’s Haven, but it’s really all our haven.  I get my name in the title since I’m the one that does the work.  It only seems fair.  My family agrees.

To say my husband isn’t into gardening as much as I am would be an understatement.   At least he tolerates me and often times encourages me in the garden.  This encouragement is never expressed while in the garden, but rather when I trapped him into a conversation in the kitchen and he agrees to whatever I say so he can move on to a more interesting topic, to him at least.

We met through our environmental engineering circle 21 years ago.  He also has a second undergraduate degree in agronomy.  One would think he would have at least a superficial interest in gardening.   This degree was one of the reasons I was attracted to him.  What I didn’t realize at the time was his interest was more in plant breeding and it would appear seed collecting.  He is a seed collector.  If I allowed it, we would have every seed he collected in the 20 years of married life.  I have no idea where they all are.  Just as well, he hasn’t missed them.  See, he only collects seeds; there isn’t (near as I can tell) a purpose to saving them.

Getting to the point of this post, I only ask him for help when I really, really, really need it.  Early on when I realized I was alone in my garden forays, I established a chit system.  Realizing if I was to keep him encouraging me in the garden, or rather, not to have him complain about me in the garden, I would have to not rely on him.  As such, this system of establishing a lifetime chit system was born.  I’ve use chits at varies level, some mundane others major. 

Over the years, I’ve narrowed my focus and now only use him if I really need him.  For example, he helped me level a fountain that I found at the flea market at a great price only to find out it was all wicky-wacky and would require someone with patients (not me), mechanical skills (again, not me or at least compared to him), and determination (all me.)  This fountain now sits as the gem in Helen’s Haven Red Bed and is the star of the show.

On Thursday, my hort group, with the Raleigh Garden Club, went to Architectural Trees in Bahama, NC.  After I returned, I had a garden mishap.  When I realized what I did, all that occurred to me was that would need to ask my husband for help and that I would have to use a chit for something stupid. 

One of the gems I picked up at Arch Trees was a Buxus Sempervirons  ‘Aureo-Variagata’ Variaged Boxwood.  As I was rolling it to the planting area on the hand cart, I was thinking the last thing I needed right now is to hit a bump and the box would roll into the fountain.  Even before I could finish the thought, I hit a bump and the box rolled into the fountain. 

Already at 150 pounds or more, it was only getting heavier by the minute soaking up water like a straw, there was no way I could pull it out by myself.  I would have to use a chit.  Rats.  But I guess that’s what they’re there for.  The irony, and I love irony, was the box rolled into the very fountain that I used a chit to get installed.  Actually, looking back, the fountain probably took up 3 chits.  As they say, you get what you pay for. 

That evening, I tell my husband, “Honey, I had a garden mishap and I wanted to see if you will help me.”  “What kind of mishap?” he asks.  I show him, and he agrees it’s a mishap.  Better yet, he didn’t even take the cheap shots I set myself up for.   He just helped me pull it out, no questions asked.  A bonus.  I even offered to clean up the kitchen after dinner as a return favor.  He declined, another bonus.  

Each day, this weekend, started out so cold that I had to split puttering in Helen’s Haven over Saturday and Sunday.  It was a good couple of days in the garden.  Here’s some of the fun:

• Planted my Arch Trees purchases including a Cedrus Deodara ‘Feeling Blue’ a dwarf weeper,  Cryptomeria japonica ‘Elegans’,  Juniperus communis ‘Gold Totem Pole’, and the box above.
• These all went into the southern most side of my property along the Red Bed.  These are the beginning to a privacy hedgerow I’m creating.  I also added a cherry red double Knock Out® rose ‘Radiko’ pp#16,202 that I pulled out from another spot in the Red Bed, a Lindera glauca silver spicebush and a Rose of Sharon ‘Diane’ that were in my holding area waiting for a new home.  It’s a start.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.
• Cut back Cannas and giner with knife acting as a machete
• Pulled last of annuals
• Pulled purple salvias
• Popped and move a mugo pine to make room for dwarf Deodar
• Cut red caster bean back, spread some seed in back and saved rest to give to friends or to add for next year.  As a side note, when I save seed all over the house, my husband doesn’t mind;-}
• With all this planting going on and the filling out of existing plants, the path inside Helen’s Haven Red Bed needed redirecting.  Did this and leveled pavers
• Water newly planted and transplanted plants
• Popped some box and reset the curve at the front porch bed.
• The fabulous Lavender I found in Charleston this past spring was not hardy.  Pulled after the killing frost.  Made note to get again.
• Pruned roses
• Pruned Miss Huff Lantana
• Picked off the last of the leaves of the Burgmansia  angel trumpet.  I cut it back to shape it, but din’t cut all the way back.  I like the sticks for winter interest.  This year I may paint red or green to jazz them up some.
• In order to reset the curve of the box, I needed to move some plants they would displace.  Popped Albelia ‘Conti” moved just 3 feet away.
• Popped Vernocia ‘Georgia’ moved three feet the other way.
• Cut back Ruellia brittoniana

That was enough fun for the weekend.  Things are looking good despite the loss of the lush seasons.  Luckily, I have a winter garden.  Still, it’s not dressed for winter.  I usually wait until after the first of the year to lay mulch.  There are three reasons for this.  The first is the most important – I wait until after the killing frost.  The other two reasons are aesthetic:  Waiting for all the leaves to fall from the trees and waiting for all the cut-back and die-back in the beds to occur.  If I cover with my mulch of choice, a composted leaf mulch, to early, I will harbor disease and critters and the leaves still falling will litter my pretty beds.

So I have to contend with a month of uglies before it will start looking rested.  If you haven’t guessed, I may be a wildlife gardener, but I’m also a tidy one.