Long Blooming Hardy Perennial Plants : Prizewinning Series, May 2012

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2012/05/08

May 2012 Awards

A First Prize in the category of

Longest Blooming, Hardy Perennial Self – Sowers

goes to:

Corydalis lutea andCorydalis lutea alba.
……

Easy, long flowering friends can be found among the many perennial choices in the plant world. Among the handsomest of hardy, long blooming plants, these two enthusiastic Corydalines are willing to volunteer whether the locations are easy or difficult. Once planted, either of them will sow themselves ever afterwards into places where it is unlikely that more ‘cultivated’ and well behaved things could manage.

There are 300 or more kinds of Corydalis in the world, but in our Zone 5, these two particular kinds excel by covering themselves with beautiful tiny flowers for the whole summer into fall, wherever they find modest hospitality. Their lacy foliage, standing 12 to 18″ tall, remains fresh throughout the garden seasons with minimal tending, and they reliably return each year for a new summer-long show.

The yellow form, Corydalis lutea, blooms for 5 months at least.
…..

The lovely white cousin, Corydalis lutea alba, has a slightly shorter season, but you can still count on 3 or 4 months of continuous ivory decoration on a beautiful plant.

…..

Corydalis lutea and C. l. alba are sometimes thought of as old workhorses, but I call them
My Best Friends in the Garden.

Why So ?

Whenever a part of the garden is ‘color quiet’, these Corydalines can take up the slack, providing color and beauty in much the way that non-hardy, decorative annual plants do for our zone 5, but without any fertilizer or special treatment.

These willing Corydalines are perennial, self sowing and bloom in their first year from seed, so you only need to buy them once, ever.

In the wild they are opportunists, frequenting disturbed areas. For difficult or unfilled locations or circumstances, where few plants that are pretty for a long season can reside, their beauty and reliability recommend them as useful partners for your landscape life. We have many disturbed places in our personal worlds. Lots of our streetsides, driveways and narrow side yards could do with a little color and freshness. With the help of a few Corydalis, working corners of your gardens, doggy favorite spots and other busy places that get trampled from time to time can be flowering continuously until some happenstance arises. As soon as individual victimized plants are taken away, the babies nearby will carry on as if nothing had happened, and your most modest or difficult places will still be pretty.

Getting Started

If you can give the parents of either of these kinds a couple of particularly good places to get established, they will be happy to sow their babies into improbable places nearby. If there is light ¼ to ¾ of the day, in a place that doesn’t get too hot and some water comes in from somewhere, they will be well pleased. These self sowers especially like places where they can nestle up with stone or even asphalt. They are not fussy about the quality of the earth they reside in, and will plant themselves in the vertical crevices of dry stone walls, ornament ledge gardens, string color along foundations and cluster beside steps.

I sometimes think of these easy friends as place holders, and let them be where they like until I need that spot for some other plant.

You decide whether to enjoy, share or subtract the extras. They look so nice for so long wherever they are that I have to remind myself to be ruthless, or eventually there will be too many of them.

Your principal annual tending task for Corydalis will be taking away the extras each year when they are small.

If you practice this subtractive gardening, and so stay ahead of their (perhaps over) enthusiastic reproduction, you will be rewarded with landscape pictures that always have color in places that otherwise could not.
………
Click on this link for some more long blooming prizewinners , and on this one for further information about establishing and caring for long blooming, self sowing plants.

Posted in A Garden System, Authorship, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts, Plant Portraits | Tagged best friend plants, Corydalis lutea, Corydalis lutea alba, ellen cool, hardy longblooming, long blooming, Naturalising, prize winning plants, prizewinning plants, self sowing plants, stone garden designs, street champions, street champs, street plants, tough plants | Leave a comment

Hypertufa and Stone Container Gardens

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2012/03/07

The Smallest Gardens

Miniature gardens can be very satisfying elements within the small personal landscapes that many of us inhabit.
Hypertufa and stone troughs and pots are very versatile planting containers, remaining in place outdoors through all the seasons, and lasting for many years. After a while, when in touch with the earth’s surface and organic materials, hypertufa containers gradually green up and come to resemble local fieldstone in color and character. Perhaps the nicest compliment mine have ever recieved is that “they look like G-d made them”.
…..
Certain kinds of plants, many of which are choice and beautiful, will return on their own year after year within these containers, without any protection in winter. There are a lot of perennial plants which, it turns out, are preadapted to the kind of life one can have in a trough in New England.
Floriferous annual plants and quite a few useful herbs also thrive in these confines, so there are many choices of how to use these small habitats in your place.
…
Hypertufa is a man-made material which is so named because it imitates natural lime laden, porous Tufa rock in chemistry and in physical properties. Many kinds of plants will grow well in the environs of either one.
If you are very fortunate, an old stone sink or a horse trough may turn up. Such things as these also can make ideal small garden beds, but are very hard to come by. I would start with hypertufa containers, but remain optimistic for the future. It is likely that you may want more than one trough once you get started.
……
When you are choosing the plants, if you will be having multiple varieties in a single container, it will be important to find kinds which share similar biological needs since they will share this small ecotome. The little gardens also will usually look best, and be most easily kept, if the companions are chosen to be similar in scale and speed of growth.
…
For easy sustainability, the trick is to choose appropriate plants for the ecological circumstances you can offer. When the troughs are planted to suit the place where they are sited, they never have to move.
The tending maintenance of well planted and considerately sited containers can be very minimal.
…

Siting Trough Gardens : Zone 5

Basically, these are self-contained ‘raised beds’. You can choose to keep them at a heights which allow you to easily see, touch and tend the residents. A stone wall may provide an ideal place to site them, but they can be set up on a sturdy shelf, or any available structure that can support their weight.
Located by design in places where you can get near to them, each trough can become a whole landscape picture, filling your close view.
…
The troughs allow their chosen occupants to avoid competition from other plant materials. Such miniature gardens can therefore be especially enhancing when sited under trees. With freshly beautiful colonies settled safely in their special ‘beds’, they can ornament rooty places where, otherwise, not many things could manage to grow.

It is perfect when, in their chosen locations, your containers get lightly watered automatically by in-ground irrigation, if you can arrange it. Even if you do, it is advisable to select sites where you can easily provide a little custom watering sometimes. Being small in volume, containers lose their moisture more quickly than earth places do. They don’t need a lot of water, but they need it regularly.
…
Locating your troughs where there is some shade in the hottest times of day will make things easier to manage. Too much sun may cause the containers to heat up and dry out too fast, even for sun tolerant plants.

Making Troughs
Hypertufa troughs and pots can be made in a great variety of shapes and sizes, custom to whatever your spatial needs may be. If you have the ambition and a largish place to make a one month long outdoor mess, you can create your own containers if you wish to.
Basically, the material is composed of a simple mixture of cement, perlite and/or very course sand, strained peat moss and water, whose proportions vary somewhat depending on whose recipe you use. When thoroughly moist, the composite material is simply pressed into a shape with a form or over sand, then allowed to set for a span of days in a shady place. The mixture will be stronger if it cures slowly, so it is kept covered in plastic sheeting.
Although I may take the container off of its mold after a few days to use a wire brush or file on it for shaping and/or texturing before it sets up fully, after this touch up, I turn it upside down again in its curing place, re-cover it with the plastic, and give it a few weeks to sit quietly. At this point I turn it right side up and let it get rained on for a few more weeks, then it is ready to use.
….
An exemplary article by Helen Dawson about making hypertufa containers, with images showing the details of the process, was recently presented by Fine Gardening (.com). The recommendations nearly match the recipes and procedures that I have used, except that I have not added fiberglass. I hope that you will look at her excellent instructions if you plan to do this yourself.
The only additional details in method I might mention would be that I use type 2 Portland cement because it gives a deeper grey color, and I use less perlite and add some very course sand. This way I end up with fewer ‘white dots’ of perlite and so perhaps a more naturalistic appearance overall, but the sand adds a bit of weight to the structure.
I like the walls to be at least 1 1/2″ thick, and in large containers, 2″ is good.
When you cast upside down over a sand mold, it may also be nice if you can make a moat shape in a soft ‘base’ pad of sand where the lip of the container will be formed, so when you eventually turn it right side up, you will have a softly rounded rather than a flat upper edge on your container.
I have made quite a few of these over time, but for the larger ones, I usually give the project over to a professional. Well constructed troughs and pots have typically lasted 15 years and more in my landscapes.

Considerations of Shape and Size
In my experience, the most versatile troughs are 12 to 18″ wide and 20”+ long with an interior depth of 7” or more. I find my most popular shapes are a foot or so wide and 20″ to 36″ long, probably because those sizes sit nicely on many commonly available surfaces. A rough minimum for sustaining perennial plants over time would be an interior depth of 6”, with a 10” width or diameter.
…
Whether you choose perennials or annuals, good surface and bottom drainage will be essential.
A fine ¼” stone mulch at the surface is often ideal. This also makes a receptive seedbed for your chosen things to seed into their home grounds.
For Alpine plants, drainage is extremely important. Many Alpine plants are preadapted to the settings these containers can provide, but often they can’t withstand wet crowns for long, and so must drain quickly when the snows or rains impinge. To this end, I embank the earth in the overall container so as to create a slope gently descending outward from the center . I sometimes use stones in a few places to support this banked presentation to the view.
..
Choosing your Trough Shape
…
In general, more kinds of plants can be sustained through the winters in larger containers than in small ones. Wide and deep containers provide more earth around the plants, which seems to help cushion the extremes of our New England weather.
…
For colonies of things, bigger is also better. It is just that there is more room for your various kinds of plants to develop gracefully into meaningful colonies within your miniature gardens. Whenever the container is big enough, it may be esthetically interesting to give it dominant and subsidiary plants, perhaps choosing ones that flower in various times of year, just as you might if you were organising a larger landscape, on a smaller scale.….
…
Earth for Sustainable Planters
…
I always mix perlite and ¼” stone into the planting substrates to help keep the mix perpetually free draining. I add some slow release fertiliser too. Depending on who you will be growing, what else you use in the container to make up your planting ‘earth’ can be adjusted somewhat. Your proposed plants may prefer more or less lime. Some kinds like lean earth and others prefer theirs to be organically rich. When the plants are generalists, they are easily kept, and there is usually nothing very exact about the mixtures.
There are even some easy Alpine plants. There are fussier ones too, requiring particular care and special ingredients in the mix, but I usually choose the adaptable varieties.
In the end, you will know if things are fine by the apparent well being of your plant materials.
If you need to add more earth or ingredients later, or you want to adjust the pitch of the container’s surface, so as not to disturb the colonies too much, you can work a trowel in underneath the plants, lift the planted group, and tuck in extra substrate below.…
…..
For clues about the best substrate for your planter, you may want to Google your candidate Plants’ names to read about their original and preferred habitats. The North American Rock Garden Societyhas been helping people (including myself) to grow plants in rock gardens and troughs for a great many years. If you have alot of questions, you might want to join the Society for a while. They have local chapters under whose auspices you can see and learn alot, and they will help you to locate plants that might be hard to find on your own. The level of knowledge within their membership is beyond amazing, and always has been.
Babson Boulders, Dogtown, Ma.

Tough Miniatures

Certain particularly durable perennial things can even manage through the winters in very small troughs or pots. Like their full size Hosta relatives, most miniature Hostas are tough enough for just about anything, as long as you avoid hot and sunny places.
For a small or medium alpine trough with partial days of sun, the encrusted silver Saxifrages are an essential group, and fortunately some are very reliable. Many are fully evergreen, and they thrive with the bit of lime hypertufa provides. S. callosa (lingulata), S. cotyledon and S. longifolia in variety have proved especially adaptable. Saxifraga apiculata, which is the first to bloom in spring, has returned here for 15 years.
In shadier places, Saxifraga cuneifolia and S. umbrosa x urbium, in both their green and their yellow variegated forms, are particularly willing and able.

Silver Saxifrages in Variety / Joe Puleo
Little containers can easily be placed in a wind protected place for the cold season, but I rarely find that I need to, if the occupants were chosen for their resiliency.
…,
Annual plants
…
The most important size consideration for the non-hardy decorative annual plants you choose may be that they are in scale with their container for good appearance. Nomatter what size of container they live in, most of them will need some liquid fertiliser every couple of weeks.
….
Some Easy Perennials
….
The ever flowering Corydalis lutea and C. lutea alba, the indefatiguable Kenilworth Ivy including a new pure white form, Cymbalaria alba compacta, Linaria Canon Went and the tiny Thalictrum kiusianum will be readily pleased in these semi sunny places, just to name a few of the easiest and longest blooming candidates.
….latives of the Japanese painted fern…….
I find that containers in hot sun are the most difficult to sustain, but even there, the simple but beautiful Hieracium pilosella will enthusiastically decorate a container forever, though often too aggressive for much companion planting. The flowers are modest but my, what lovely silvery foliage it has..

Special Uses for Hypertufa Troughs and Pots

Encouraging Propagation…

When you have just one or two of something special, keeping these ‘parent’ plants in troughs or other permanent containers allows them to be protected and watched over until the time when they begin to self sow or are divisible.
…
If you locate a trough in a setting which has an inviting ecology for seeds, and you leave the ground around your container undisturbed, next year you may have babies appearing on their own. Many of the Zone 5 hardy annuals and perennials suggested in my articles will happily sow themselves in.
…
After a couple of years, when you have quite a few of your chosen kind established, you can put some of them in the open garden and feel safe.
…Monocultures
…
You could decide to let only one beautiful kind of plant completely occupy a trough or pot, in which case the planting is a monoculture. With this method there is no risk of losing your unique kind of plant to other competing colonists. I keep a lot of very lovely containers this way, letting one particular kind of plant thrive and show well. These are perhaps the easiest kind of containers of all to manage.
….
Mixed Colonies of Plants, some Admonishments
…
If there are multiple kinds of plants within a trough, without intervention, there will probably be winners and losers. As the mixed colonies develop, there will invariably need to be decisions about who has priority over whom.
Certain plants can co-compete somewhat equally, but other types can easily lose their ‘ground’ to rootier or otherwise more vigorous things. If rambunctious plants land themselves in your troughs, you can’t let them stay or your other precious denizens can quickly be crowded out.
…
For each trough I simply establish rules of who gets to stay and who will be subtracted, and then try to keep to them. To be a good gardener, one has to learn to be a bit ruthless.
…
Sculptural Forms
…
In winter, outlined in snow, the trough shapes show their sculptural qualities, and I treasure them for this too. They seem such protective places as I think of their sleeping inhabitants.

Posted in A Garden System, Long Blooming Plants, Plant Portraits, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged container garden, Corydalis lutea, Corydalis lutea alba, Cymbalaria alba compacta, encrusted saxifrage, fine gardening magazine, Helen Dawson, Hieracium pilosella, hypertufa, Kenilworth Ivy, making planters, Mini Hostas, miniature garden, miniature hostas, north american rock garden society, planting troughs, rock garden society, saxifraga callosa, Saxifraga cuneifolia, saxifraga umbrosa, Saxifrage, shaping planters, silver saxifrage, small garden, stone sink, sustainability, Thalictrum kiusianum, trough, troughs, tufa | 48 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day……. Love, Earth

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2012/02/09

A Heartful Potato

Plants are not exactly friends, but they’re friendly.

This potato was born in a heart shape. It was harvested last year in Newtown, Connecticut at the Sticks and Stones Farm. This farm of moss and stone is a living gallery of ideas and instruction on how to design, build and live with natural materials. They sell the produce they grow if there is more than they need. An altogether heartful place.

The black pottery bowl came from Mexico. It was designed by an unknown artist to spin on a flat surface, animating the shapes that are etched into it.

Posted in A Garden System, Plant Portraits | Tagged potato, sticks and stones farm, valentine, valentine vegetable | Leave a comment

Reusing Antique Granites

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2012/01/01

Some of the handsomest granites for residential landscape use are those which were quarried and worked by stone cutters and masons a hundred years ago or more. With the wear of use and coloration from a century of exposure to the elements, these stones have a patina of age.

The granite bedrock formed around 4 or 500 million years ago, but the more recent history of granite as shaped by the hands of man has enhanced the beauty and potential usefulness of the pieces now available for our home purposes. When these shaped stones are brought into landscapes and garden settings, a quality of timelessness is added to our personal places.

The local granite in the past century was custom split and detailed for building and roadway uses, with alot of hand work involved. In this century many of those proud old stone buildings as well as the curbings and cobbles of our 19th and 20th century roads are gradually being replaced by modern constructs, using materials less costly and more easily handled than granite.

If care is taken when the old things are deconstructed, the granites comprising them can remain in perfect condition for reuse. The orphaned pieces may show excellent workmanship, whatever they were originally made for. There are many easily used shapes which require only a good imagination (and maybe a bobcat) to repurpose.

A Waterfall

The waterfall below was made from cornerstones of a New England Church. The building had been dismantled a hundred and ten years after it was constructed. Many granites from that carefully made Church are now embedded in residential landscapes that Stone Garden Designs Inc. has created. They have become parts of newly built steps and walls or have been reborn as seats or tables.

……………………………………………………..

There can be many differently shaped granites in a building, as this Church illustrates.
Built in 1890, happily it is still standing.

A Place to Be

This table and the granite seats alongside of it were brought to my personal landscape, a wish granted for my 40th birthday. Originally foundation stones for a local building, they are now at the heart of my display gardens. The stone retaining walls were codesigned so as to incorporate them seamlessly.

……………………………………………………………….. ……………………… ……D.M.S.
A Simple Seat in a Woodland Margin

One cat,

Two cats.

……………..Just then, in she came from who knows where.

………………………………………………….What do you mean by ‘Granite’ anyway ?

Saying rock, bedrock, stone or granite is like referring to the same Ornithological acquaintance in conversation as
a ‘Bird’, a ‘Passerine’ and a ‘ Sparrow’.

Rock or Bedrock is a large deposit of naturally occurring stone materials.
….
Granite is a kind of rock.
Systematically quarried in New England, it was widely used in the 1800s and early 1900s as building stone, as paving and edging for the roadways, and as the material of choice for shoring up the shorelines.
The composition and so the appearance of granite varies from place to place. The mineral elements and geological history in a particular location make the pieces from there tend to typical colors and a usual courseness or fineness in the enclosed grains.
For example, the bedrock in Barre, Vermont gives us a uniform, fine grained white granite, while Rockport, Massachusetts rock inclines to a coarser mixture which includes clusters of beautiful black biotite. Other quarries might have more pink or more green in their stones. The word granite comes from granum, the Latin word for a grain, in reference to the grained and crystalline structure of this rock. A stone master can often say where a granite comes from based on its individual appearance.
If you are working on your landscape and want it to feel a part of nature, try to get ‘related rocks’ for continuity. In the case of granites, you may prefer a particular kind, so consider the choices as they will affect the whole picture. If you begin with steely grey pieces from Chinese quarries, you may find the stone does not have the local feeling that you were after, though it is a ‘granite’. Look around at your local sources, and try to get a kind that you can realistically get enough of over time as you complete more of your intended projects.
…..
Stone usually refers to a worked or smaller piece of rock, whether granite or any other kind.
It is also sometimes used as a generic term, like ‘rock’ or ‘bedrock’.
…..
Cobblestone
Early cobbles were rounded, but over time, ‘cobblestone’ in New England has come to refer to pieces of granite which have been worked into a size useful for paving. In addition to these simple rectangles being incorporated in buildings of all kinds, different towns and cities commissioned particular sizes for their streets from diverse quarries, so there is variety in the shapes and kinds of recycled paving stone we can find for our uses. For paving purposes, most often the individual cobbles were originally set into the ground so that the largest faces were hidden. This was done to strengthen the paving for heavy use. When I reuse these in residential lighter use applications, I like to let their biggest faces show. In this way, I have various shapes that lend themselves to composition. Being handcut each one has a slightly distinctive self.
Considered as design elements, they can be blended into a composition by patterning the sequence of shapes. Whether an outline for a garden or as a path or driveway edge, this treatment may make the alongside journey more interesting than having all the same size ones set in a soldierly row. One edge of the outline can have a careful line or curve, and the other be allowed to vary. ……
Fieldstone refers to the ‘country stone’, whichever kind comes out of the local ‘ fields’ of a place.
Such stones often have rounded corners from rolling around in the earth and being affected by water over a long span of geological time. Depending on where you live, your fieldstones will have a different character, based on the bedrock they came from. Their color and texture will vary according to their elemental makeup. In one geological area they may tend to be more flat, in another, more rounded.
If they have been out of the ground for a while they will have beautiful colors from the effects of weather, moss, lichens and the like. The classic fieldstone one prefers is that material which the farmers brought out of the land a hundred years ago, and so the stones have had ample time to green up.
If the stones have been locked in the earth until you dig them up, they will typically have less color than if they have been on the surface for a while. Such stones with a rounded fieldstone character but not much color are referred to as pit rocks. You can use these, but they may look like unbaked dough for a few years. The process of coloring up begins once they are in touch with the growing surface of the earth, and happens faster in a shady, moistish place. Feel free to rub mud on them or add a moss and buttermilk concoction once in a while to encourage biological beginnings on the stone’s surfaces.
…
Blasted stone, while created from local bedrock too, has been broken into workable sizes unnaturally in the blasting process, often spitting rock apart where there is no natural seam.
It will tend to have sharp edges, and so this is not my first choice for individual stone placements in gardens, where I avoid sharpness in most things. This material does, however, make up into beautiful stone walls in the hands of a mason who can choose out the stones with the best faces.

I will have much more to tell you about “the long stories of stone”. Meantime, see if you can find some treasure granites for your place. I am sure you will be happy for their company.

Another title for this piece could have been “Low Maintenance Stone”. Once your substantial stones are settled, apart from sweeping them gently when you are so inclined, your only task will be to enjoy them.

Posted in Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged antique granite, barre vermont, granite, granite in the landscape, granite seat, granite table, granite types, low maintenance rocks, olde new england granite, recycled granite, recycling granite, reuse granite, reusing granite, rock and stone, Rockport ma, stone character, stone types, stone waterfall | 7 Comments

Granite Splitting

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/12/28

Reshaping Granite for Reuse

Sometimes the shapes of the old pieces of granite one comes across are not precisely the dimensions needed, and this is where the splitting illustrated below can be helpful.

This curbstone was 18″ or so wide and about 8″ thick, as they often were, and an 8″ x 8″ post was needed, so the granite was split, using the ancient technique of inserting wedges and feathers into a line of pre-prepared shallow holes.

A heavy hammer is used to slowly and evenly embed the wedges further into the stone between the metal feathers. By ‘playing the granite’ with the heavy hammer, much as you would play a scale back and forth on a piano, pressure increases within the stone in all the places where there are wedges inserted, and soon the seam of the stone begins to open.
Once past a certain point the seam opens up the rest of the way completely on its own, splitting the piece from the parent curbstone, and a new ‘old’ post has been created. When you see the small channels in the granite, such as are visible in the photo below, you will know that the granite has been prepared with this technique.

Tools used in splitting granite

I photographed this particularly excellent demonstration of splitting on the site of Olde New England Granite Company in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, a place where old cut granites receive the respect that they deserve. P.S. only the first Youtube you will see is by SGDesigns, Youtube puts up others on a similar subjects after ours is finished. The ones from the UK are especially informative.

Stone master Brad Parker has allowed the irregularities of the natural seam of the stone to give character to the newly exposed side by using this method. If the piece had been mechanically sawn, the ‘new’ side would be unnaturally smooth and flat.

Diamonds would have been used up if the stone had been sawn, since cutting the very hard granite often requires costly diamond – enhanced sawblades.

Saving diamonds has to be a good thing, and we can accomplish the savings by using this traditional method whenever it is suited to the work.

Above shown are the wedges and feathers used, removed after the granite seam fully opens.
This photo and the one of the splitting tools were taken at the old Babson Farm Quarry site in Rockport Massachusetts where, on many Saturdays, they demonstrate this technique for visitors. The Rockport and Gloucester Quarries were very active from 1840 through the early 1900s. By 1929 the widespread use of concrete as a stone substitute and the Depression era in general contributed to the closing of all but a few small sites.

The Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts has a dedicated Granite Quarrying Gallery which displays tools, images and artifacts related to the history of the quarries. Barbara Erkkila’s book Hammers on Stone is a beautiful and informative telling of the life within the quarry towns in those times. It was from her own collections and personal knowledge that many of the tool and image displays in the Museum gallery were established.

Posted in Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged curbstone, diamond saw, granite post, granite reuse, granite splitting, how to split granite, how to use granite, olde new england granite co, posts, reed corporation, stone garden designs inc., wedges and feathers | Leave a comment

Recycling Christmas Greens

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/12/11

Wreathing the Beds

Greens After Christmas

A second harvest purpose for the branches of Christmas trees and other holiday greens is to use them as decorative wreathing for your otherwise somewhat bare perennial beds.
……
One might choose to lay evergreen branches on some beds just to look wonderful through the winter, but these branches can also do the very important job of helping to insulate the plants residing in the earth beneath them. I find this branch overlay technique especially useful wherever it can help to protect small or shallow rooted plants.
……..
Branches 2 to 4 feet in length cut from Post-Christmas trees or post-wreathing materials can be used, whether they are yours or contributed by a neighbor.
Considerate pruning of resident evergreens can provide cuttings too. These greens can all be laid out along the edges of your perennial beds or wherever vulnerable plants are sleeping. I weave these offcut branches together by crisscrossing in an over and under way to help them resist being blown about by winter winds..
……
The insulation is most needed through the late winter thaws.
It is just perfect that these lovely recycle materials are so readily available just after Christmas since the insulation this handsome wreathing can provide is most needed from January through March or so. Setting the branches out any earlier would not be better, since it is good for the plant materials to get a thorough soaking before the deep freezes set in.
If there is some snow on the ground, you can wreathe right on top of it, and as the snow melts, the branches will settle roughly where you wanted them. Adjust as needed.
….
I apply this protective layer religiously to beds where temperature changes tend to be rapid and heaving is a frequent problem. It helps to buffer the temperature ups and downs which cause ground heaving. Snow would do much of the job of protection by itself if there were a reliable covering of it through the freeze-thaw cycles, but in this part of New England you can’t count on a snow blanket.
……….
The evergreen boughs protect the plants in much the same way that hay would if it would stay put. The difference is that you will have green beauty through most of the winter, and a much easier cleanup in spring.
…………
In my experience, if there is any wind at all, hay straw distributes itself absolutely everywhere. Plucking it piece by piece out of the shrubberies, evergreen groundcovers, pebble paths and underdecks can prove extremely annoying. One would prefer not to make this mistake in an ornamental garden setting.
….
Wear Suspenders and a Belt
Even if you have done your best to protect your plants, whenever there are are substantial thaws, you may want to scout around a bit. Locations that get alot of winter sun can thaw out surprisingly quickly. When they do, the the ground may heave up precipitously and the roots of newly established and shallow rooted plants may be lifted up too. Their roots are then out of the ground, exposed, and so could easily be killed by the next cold snap.
…..
To keep such perennials and new plantings safe, you need to
press the individual plants back into the earth while it is soft. Quickly, before the ground gets cold again and closes them out.
…….….
Planning wise, in general it will be best to avoid locating small or vulnerable plants in places that thewinter sun hits heavily.
In Britain, winter protection is sometimes conferred by sheaves of cut deciduous branches, to which the people have given the charming name of ‘twig thatch’.
……
In their famously beautiful and lovingly tended North Hill Gardens, to soften some of the harsh aspects of the climate of Vermont, before winter Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd have cut Miscanthus bundles from their own stands of these grasses and then laid them out as needed to protectively insulate the fruit trees* who also live within their ecotome.

* Don’t use limbs if the needles have begun to dry out. The fresher or moister the better.
Firs and other soft greens will be the most pleasant materials to handle.
Short needled Pine and Hemlock branches don’t last as well as most other evergreen things.

* lecture, personal communication, 2008

Posted in A Garden System, Things They Never Tell You | Tagged insulating plants, joe eck, north hill, perennial bed, protect plants, protecting plants, recycled christmas greens, reuse christmas trees, stone garden designs inc., tree-cycle, winter preparation, wreath | 3 Comments

Halloween Orange

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/10/30

An organised colony of mini Pumpkins for You.

Pumpkins in Kindergarten

Posted in Plant Portraits | Tagged Halloween, orange, Pumpkins | Leave a comment

Long Blooming Hardy Plants : Prizewinning Series 2011

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/08/24

August Awards

A First Prize in the category of

Longest Blooming, Best Standing Self Sowers

goes to:

Linaria purpurea (purple) and to

Linaria purpurea Canon J. Went (pink)

Linaria purpurea Canon J. Went

The pink form of this Linaria is named in honor of Canon J. Went (ecumenical), and was his horticultural ‘goal’ plant. This extremely long flowering plant bequest enhances our gardens with its slender spires these many years later because of his caring attentions. Subsequent generations of gardeners who have treasured this pink Linaria have, each in their turn, kept it going.

Linaria purpurea, the purple ancestral wild form from which the pink was derived, is also a beautiful longbloomer. The pink has perhaps an airier appearance with its light color. For your plant paintings sometimes you may want pink, sometimes purple, so its nice to have a choice.

Both color forms are elegant plants, which strikes me as being in line with their Italian heritage. Refined and delicate in appearance of flower and foliage, slender yet sturdy in stature, they stand 18 to 30” tall, and typically manage without support.

They are easily pleased by a broad range of full to ½ day sun places, and a lean sandy soil is fine for them, though better earth is also suitable. They thrive in association with rocks, sowing happily betwixt and between.

If you occasionally trim down spent stalks as the flowering season goes along, new budding stems will come up. If the place is not too hot and there is enough water, this reflowering can go on for months each and every year, from June until at least October.

I find them easily managed in a garden setting, with some subtractive editing when there are more individuals than you want. They are a nice share since they do well for mostly everyone.

Self Sowing Perennials

Perennial in character, the parents come back, and in addition both kinds self sow quite reliably. The babies typically mature and flower in the first year.

From your parent planting, over time, the seeds will find nearby places to nestle into all by themselves. Once you have established this Linaria, you will probably have it for all of your garden life, if you so desire. The babies will also take care of themselves long after the parent gardener is gone.

It is easy to share their seeds with other gardeners. Roughly collected seed can put into an envelope and site sown in its proposed new home as soon as it is dry. I sow them at the end of the gardening year, after the chosen places have been cleaned up for winter. Baby plants and more mature individuals can also readily be moved to wherever you might like to have them, at most any time of the year.

I use both colors amongst the edge plants in the first and second tiers of planted beds and also in ledge, street and driveway pockets.

To Preserve the Pink Form for the Future

I wouldn’t be without either color of this effervescent plant. The pink form is, however, more rare. Since it is subject to genetic interchange with the species purple form which tends to be dominant, without intervention, the pinks will get married up with purples and that will soon spell the end of the pink strain that Canon Went so nicely set aside for us.

If you isolate a colony of pinks from the purples, in a location out of the ‘bee line’, or otherwise away from the purples so there won’t be much chance of back cross, and if you remove any reversions to purple that do crop up in that pure colony over time, you will help to preserve the pinks for the long future. If you take seeds from these more purely pink groupings and share or otherwise distribute them to places where their own color form can be isolated and thus predominate, that helps too.

As long as you considerately do this isolation in certain particular places, you can freely enjoy having both color cousins together elsewhere in your gardens. Where I want to keep both colors together, I rogue out a larger percentage of the purple babies to keep plenty of places for the pinks.

Recently I have found a source for the white form …which has been very difficult to get ! Once you have one, you will be likely to have quite a few in future, so it is worthwhile to hunt for the ‘parent plant’.

Streetside Champs

Both color forms are also Streetside Champions, looking lovely with little care wherever a suitable crevice can be found.

The Purple form is even more robust than the Pink, but both colors are very easy seeders, and tough enough for along the edges of moderately traveled streets, even with the sand, salt, pee and heaped up snow that affects the edges of our paved places.

Both types are ready, willing and able plants with few pests or problems of any kind, except for their occasional (over) enthusiasm. The bees and company find them irresistible.

Posted in A Garden System, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts, Plant Portraits | Tagged easy plants, Linaria Canon Went, linaria pink, linaria purpurea, linaria purpurea canon went, long blooming, long blooming plants, longest blooming, prize winning plants, reliable perennials, roadside plants, self sowing, self sowing plants, street champions, street plants, tough plants | 22 Comments

Open Gardens in Marblehead 8/13/2011

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/08/06

Ellen Cool’s Garden at 19 Circle Street
and two other
Very Special Marblehead Gardens

will be participating in the Open Days Program to Benefit

The Garden Conservancy

and

The Marblehead Conservancy

At any of the addresses, you just pay $5.00 to go in.

We hope that you will bring your questions, enjoy the landscapes and

go home with ideas.

Good Gardens are for Guidance.

To find out more about the Gardens open on that Day :
http://www.gardenconservancy.org/opendays/open-days-schedule/openday/438-marblehead-open-day

Posted in Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged ellen cool, garden conservancy, marblehead conservancy, marblehead events, marblehead garden tour, marblehead gardens, open days program, open garden days, opendaysprogram.org, parable, stone garden designs, stone garden designs inc., the garden conservancy | 3 Comments

Euphorbia, Beautiful but Sometimes Dangerous

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/07/06

EUPHORBIA WARNING!!! BE CAREFUL OF THE SAP !!!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When you trim ANY Euphorbia variety – and there are many lovely ones among the 2000 or so species in the Genus -

Be Careful not to get the latex like sap that bleeds from cut stems onto your hands or face

……and Oh my Goodness, Don’t rub your eyes !

……and clean your clothing and tools thoroughly.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Many different kinds of Euphorbias have somewhat recently become readily available to gardeners everywhere. In general, their beauty, hardiness and the ease of successfully growing these plants make alot of their varieties ever more popular.
With substantially increased use of garden forms of this Genus, there are more people exposed to the potential of an allergic reaction.
Please make your friends and neighbors aware of this possible drawback, and tell them to be careful………especially if you notice they already have some Euphorbia relatives in their landscapes. Some ‘bleed’ less sap than others, but forewarned is forearmed.
I have been handling these plants for years, as have many assistants and clients, and have never had any allergic response to them, but apparently while some people can handle these plants with no problems at all, other people will react violently to the latex like sap that bleeds out when the plants are cut. It has been reported that some people may also react after touching the plant bodies themselves, even uncut.
Sometimes the area of the eyes can be especially sensitive. As in the case of some insect stings for people with sensitivity to them, there may be swelling, and this can be particularly upsetting and dangerous in the face and throat areas.
I recently witnessed this Dire effect. Not having had any treatment, the person affected became hugely swollen all around the face and eyes. In her case, she went to her Doctor and subsequently Benadryl ™ helped to resolve the symptoms. Since then I have been made anecdotally aware of others who have had similar, if less extreme, painful and disturbing reactions.
Since the individual affected most strongly also has an allergy to bee stings, those of you that share that sensitivity may want to be especially careful.
Any of you who would not want to run the risk of having a reaction may prefer not to grow any Euphorbias.
If you have children of ages where all the world is a tasting opportunity, it will be safer not to grow this Genus, at least until the children are older and wiser. My sister liked sand at an early age, but some children are plant tasters.
..
What to do If……..
If you are exposed, at your local pharmacy you can find a product called Tecnu®, which should be applied to the area of contact before you wash.
Its job is to take up the oils on the skin after exposure to Poison Ivy or Poison Oak, and it can similarly help many people after contact with Euphorbia sap. It is also used also to clean the clothes and tools involved when the exposure occurred.
If Tecnu® isn’t readily available and you have a bar of Fels Naptha® soap handy under your sink, Fels Naptha is reputed to have a better effect than other commonly available kinds of soaps. Could it be the bit of Lye in it?
If you are a gardener or landscape person who is likely to be exposed to any of these plant irritants, it may be best to consult your Physician beforehand for medicine to have on hand in case of an allergic response.
Even some people who are not sensitive to Poison Ivy or Poison Oak may still react to Euphorbias.
Its good to keep some Tecnu where you can get it quickly, perhaps in your first aid kits, just in case.

Tecnu®

So Why Grow Them?
Because there are many wonderful things about Euphorbias to consider.

Most people would agree that Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) are beautiful and useful in ways that no other plant can quite replicate. It is the same for ‘garden’ varieties of Euphorbias.

Among the many other very remarkable kinds of Euphorbias, some have a particular niche in our green world that few other plants can occupy.

And the Deer don’t typically eat them, Yay !…….. Probably precisely because of the irritant in their sap.

Euphorbia graminea Diamond Frost

This lovely floriferous annual is perhaps the single most useful ingredient I have in my repertoire of plant elements for container plantings. It contributes an airy and cooling quality to any planted grouping in which it is incorporated, growing between other materials gracefully, blending them together without disturbing their growth. When other kinds of plants lean with the weight of their summer flowers, E. Diamond Frost will become increasingly vertical (and wider too) through the growing season, continously flowering with very minimal trimming, flattering all the plants with which it resides. It is heat and drought tolerant, tough in character but delicate in appearance, a winning combination.
This one does not return in our zone, but I scramble to get it from the nurseries each year so as to be sure to have it on hand when I am making up my container compositions.

Euphorbia cyparissias
…

Euphorbia cyparissias is beautiful and valuable in the landscape nearly all season. Many self sown generations of this plant have been happily occupying the ledge of wild things on my street for more than 30 years, with no attention whatsoever. That was how we first met, and I just had to find out who that lovely plant was.

The colors of the stems, leaf bracts and flowers contribute to its beauty, but it is in foliage texture and overall adaptability to inhospitable locations that this plant excels, as do many of its relatives. In driveways, ledge pockets and other marginally habitable places, these can be of use. Though individual plants are small, the many tenanted colonies make a broad and satisfying visual statement.
The ‘flowers’ of Cousin Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) are modified leaf parts, so with that precedent I include E. chamaecyparissias in my long flowering self sowers list. I value these feathery plants as much as any otherwise floriferous treasure.
E. cyparissias Fen’s Ruby is an especially beautiful form with its mahogany and lime florets through April and May. Equally importantly, the feathery leaved colonies look excellent for many months with one trimming at most (*** Now be careful of the sap !).
If you prefer, you don’t have to trim them at all, just pull out any plants that brown up, leaving the ones that are green and fresh looking. That is how I usually proceed with them.
Each plant is from a few inches up to 18” high, depending on the ecology inhabited. Their bluegreen color and soft texture contribute a great deal to the beauty of the sunny to semi-sunny places where they like to grow. If you have ½ day sun and some stone crevices, and site them where you don’t mind an expanding colony, you will probably enjoy their appearance and self sustaining capabilities very much.…
…………………………………………………………………..
Euphorbia dulcis Chameleon
…
…..
E. chameleon has been popping up here and there throughout my perennial plantings since I introduced it into my gardens 10 years or so ago. Mahogany leaves at 18″ high dress up garden beds by their contrast against greens, while lyrically echoing the coloration of red Maples and other sundry plants with related russet hues in their foliage and flowers. Appearing in some new places each year because of their naturalising tendencies, they add enhancing surprises to the landscape. They are not nearly as prolific as E. cyparissias in offspring, but you will have quite a few most likely since they are ecologically easy to please, and so seed into a variety of habitats. The minute they don’t look nice, I trim them to the crown, and they dont seem to mind too awfully much, reliably returning.
When there are too many I edit some out, usually leaving the young ones and deleting the older individuals as they become rooty with age.

Posted in Long Blooming Plants, Plant Portraits, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged deer proof plants, deer repellant plants, Euphorbia, euphorbia allergy, Euphorbia chamaeleon, euphorbia cyparissias, Euphorbia diamond frost, euphorbia dulcis, euphorbia dulcis chameleon, euphorbia graminea, euphorbia graminea diamond frost, euphorbia pulcherrima, euphorbia sap, plant allergy, poinsettia, poinsettia sap, tecnu | 17 Comments

Long Blooming, Self Sowing, Comeback Plants

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/04/10

Prizewinning Naturalising Plants :
Annuals and Perennials

.Self Sowing Comeback Plants for Zone 5B

It is a good feeling to have some favorite plants that you know are So Happy in your place that they will be coming back of their own accord, year after year, through generations of new individuals. These are your Naturalisers.

Some kinds of plants, amongst both perennial and annual kinds, naturalise through self sowing. This means that they make new plants by seeding themselves around, with babies growing up and flowering wherever the seeds have found suitable growing places. You can think of them as opportunists.
..
Now, if a kind of naturalising plant is, as it happens, beautiful in both foliage and flower for an exceptionally long span, and has no bad habits except for occasional (reversible) overenthusiasm, it can be a great joy in the garden. Quite a few of self sowing comeback plants are exceptionally wonderful kinds to have, providing color and good foliage for months on end, every year. Wherever self sowing plants of good character appear and thrive, they can provide charming ‘repeating lyrics’ that help to connect your gardens visually.
…………
Naturalising plants provide a bit of serendipity in the landscape, turning up in slightly different places and configurations each year, sometimes planting themselves where we would never have thought to, or even have been able to.

Annual and Perennial Self Sowers

Annual plants are among the longest blooming beings in the garden scene, so most of us like having some of them around to keep us company every year. Though the ‘parents’ of annual plants don’t come back, since by definition an annual completes its life cycle within a single year, in the case of my selected treasures, you may not need to buy new ones each year. The self sown offspring of annuals typically bloom in their first year from seeds.
…
There are also some long blooming, self sowing Perennials who can stand beautifully and flower over a long span, even in their first year. With the self sowing perennials here listed, the parents may well return, and in addition there will be baby plants.

Through many years of trials, I have found certain particular kinds of plants, some annual and some perennial, that are especially hardy and invariably represented by their self sown children every year, if left alone with a suitable piece of earth in an appropriate ecological context.

The Longest Blooming, Handsomest and Best Behaved of the Self Sowing Plants

have been chosen to recommend to you. These
Prizewinning Comeback Plants
have been selected from amongst the all the naturalisers for our ecotome.

LARIX DECIDUA PENDULA, LINARIA CANON J. WENT PURPLE, RUDBECKIA MAXIMA

Photo by Jenn Pedersen

To be on my ‘Prizewinner Lists’, each kind must qualify in all the above mentioned desirable characteristics, also returning reliably pretty much on its own, and needing only a modest amount of tending. The volunteer offspring must also be easy to subtract (move or remove) if there are more than you want, because in some cases you will get both quality and quantity.
……..
Within each Genus there may be other nice representatives, but for various reasons some might not be as easy to enjoy as my selected wonderful cousins. They may have drawbacks as plants, endangering other plant places by greediness or other bad behavior. Some may have unattractive foliage, or leaves that turn brown at just the wrong time. Some are beset by pests or other problems that typically spoil their appearance. Any sign of these things will have kept such lesser kinds off my lists.
…
The Good Guys and the Bad Guys
Just because a kind of plant happens to self sow, that does not make it a bad plant. It’s important to look into the matter case by case.

There are many naturalisers that you probably would not want, inextricably weedy in the worst of ways, and not attractive in our eyes. With aforethought, you can avoid the bad guys.
…
The good guys ask very little, but they have much to offer. They are often able to occupy places where season-long color and soft healthy greenness are hard to achieve with other plant materials. Some are drought tolerant, all are low to moderate maintenance.
Here the purple wands in foreground pictured above are self sown ‘ Linaria Canon Went reversion’, the parent purple genome represented. The Canon’s selected pink form is about to bloom in the left midground. Each of these blooms 2 to 3 months each year.
The other plants in the photo are not self sowing, but Oh ! the Larix d. pendula wreathing the garage, and the Rudbeckia maxima providing yellow daisies at the highest level, shall we say, over that lovely indefatiguable and weed impermeable grass, Hakenochloea aurea. These plants are growing in a surface of 3/8ths inch gravel = peastone, with sandy loam underpinnings at the garage end of a driveway.

All the plants that are included here are both pleasing and easily pleased, and I am sure that you will enjoy any that you bring to your place.

Best Friends in the Garden

In my work as a Landscape Designer over these 30 years, I have met a great many thousands of candidate Plants, and these particular ones, I feel, deserve special recognition.

Each of these kinds of plants seems to me so important, whether they are small or large beings, that I will be putting effort into providing you with individual Portraits. I plan to give you mostly information that you cannot otherwise get readily from other sources, identifying some of these wonderful plants for you and talking about how they behave in the landscape, helping you to see how you may best use them in your own endeavors.
…
Once you know Who These Good Guys Are, you can Google their names for further specifications or to find some parent plants to start you off.

I am the only Juror of these Juried lists, but I have been very choosy. These are just the very best plants I have found amongst the naturalisers and I want to be sure that you get know about them.
Whether Annuals or Perennials, once you have determined which particular excellent plants are likely to self sow for you and have sited them to suit their preferences, their future is ensured, and yours will be enhanced. If you start with wonderfully garden-worthy varieties such as I have listed below, they can become welcome cohabitants.
You may also know of some potential Prizewinners that I have never met, and I will hope that you will write to me and tell me about them, and I will be so very pleased to make their acquaintance.
………..
Making a Beginning.
…
The most reliable way to start out your sowing cycle is to get a few good mature parents of each kind you want. Site each in a particularly propitious place, perhaps choosing a few different places for your best probability of pleasing them, and watch over their establishment. If you make the ground around them welcoming, the original purchased parents will then seed themselves into the neighborhood. Their babies will mature and flower all through the next year. The babies of those babies will cover the year after that and so on indefinitely.
Since these plants can sow themselves directly into neighboring earth for each next generation, there is no ‘potting up’ necessary, ever, unless you want to for reasons of transport or some such. If they turn up in the wrong places in your landscape, you can easily move chosen babies when they are small from wherever they turn up directly to wherever you want them.
In the case of self sowing perennials, the system of establishment is the same, but some kinds take more than one year to get to flowering size from site sown seeds.

Keeping Things Going

You will need to follow certain simple practices in your gardens for self sowing to work, but these things are easily accomplished. The methods are described herein, and contextually in my up and coming Plant Portraits series.

In the meantime, to begin this recurrent life cycle, get your choices from this list at the nurseries when they appear (or grow them from seed, just this once) and Site them in various parts of the garden to see where they may do best, choosing places where you won’t need to disturb the earth nearby too much.
…
When you set about getting these things, you may need to look in at the garden centers somewhat frequently, since not all the ‘best’ plants arrive at the same time. They arrive in batches, different kinds at differing times. Nursery production is seasonal, but whenever some of the best things do come in, they leave at a surprisingly rapid rate, and then you might have to wait till next year to get started.

A Garden with the Best Plants in it is made by a process
which spans some years..

Techniques for Keeping Self Sowing Plants..

Or They’ll March out of the Beds

Self sowing plants, like most plants, grow towards the light, so their blossoms and later their seedpods tend to lean that way too. Over the years your front row plants may thus seed themselves right out of their intended beds, into places where they can’t succeed or you won’t want them.
…
Similarly, if you put self sowing things on the tops of little hills they will somersault beautifully down for a few subsequent generations, and then they may seed themselves right over the edges of the embankment. Unless you intervene once in a while, these treasures can disappear entirely from wherever it was so special to have them.

Suspenders and a Belt Principle

To prevent such losses, I pay special attention to my front row plants and ‘harvest’ seed from these.
Basically, this means that I snip off a few handfuls of seedpods when they are ripe and I am trimming gonebys off the parent plant anyway.
…
These then go into a paper envelope of some kind, with their name and the year of harvest written on it. I let them stay in the envelope till fully dry. At some point I do take out the large chaff, but I’m not a bit fussy about leaving some. I can’t imagine it matters much about the extra bits you also shake out.These kinds of plants usually provide enough seed to sprinkle themselves liberally, and in a natural, undisturbed setting the ground around the parent plant would be made of seed and chaff together, after all.

After the Fall Cleanup.

Once you have finished any raking and cleaning or blowing you may do in your beds each fall, prepare the earth places where you want to have those particular enveloped plants next year and liberally sprinkle the seeds, adding a bit of earth over them.

Another source of seed for site sowing in fall is the old parents themselves. When it is time to remove the seed carrying annual parents, typically after the beds surrounding them have been finally cleaned, you just add back a little earth to the removal indentations you create as you as you take out the parents, to get back to grade. Now shake the old plants upside down in these places then sprinkle the area with a very light overlay of earth, just to keep the seeds from blowing away, much as you would do for the enveloped seeds.
This will add some more seeds to those already self sown, improving the overall odds of germination and thus probably the speed of colonization in your gardens. And it is so easy to do..
….
Listen to the Parents
………
For direct site sowing of a particular kind of plant, I often choose the area around the place where an old parent of theirs succeeded, which helps assure that the babies will be born in an ecologically appropriate context, and this location assists me in keeping track of whose babies are whose, when everything is germinating all at once.
…….
A Please Do Not Disturb Sign
……….
The areas you disturb by cultivating, blowing or heavy mulching may lose some of their seeded inhabitants, so try to avoid these activities in areas you want to colonise. A memory marker of the attended area can be helpful. I use croquet hoops until things are established, just to remind me where to be careful.

Editing

Nature will move your self sowing plants around, and there will be multiplications and losses, so the placements of most of these kinds of plants will change if they are without a guiding hand through the years. Midground plants may end up in the foreground, and background ones in the midground, so some may need to be resited. Just move them when they are young, and this won’t be difficult.

Subtractive Gardening

You can have too much of a good thing.
By character these self sowing plants are all opportunists and easily pleased. They may be so willing that, through the years as their numbers accumulate, the colonies may require a ritual of subtraction.
…
The tending of these lovely volunteer plants is principally in deciding which to leave where they are, which to usefully transfer elsewhere, and which to ruthlessly remove to compost. In these matters you will be the Editor in Chief, a job which you may enjoy. There is rarely only one right way to use your materials, you will just need to decide what you want. As in cooking, when you begin with plenty of good ingredients, you can scarcely go wrong.
….
There are some people who think that
everything comes up in all the right places,
…and others who that think nothing does….

Tricks to Keep Plants Long Blooming

Use Various Exposures

If any given Kind of Plant can thrive in a range of exposures, and you put some in a shadier and some in a sunnier place, you will usually have a much longer season of bloom of this favored thing within your landscape.
If a long blooming kind of plant is sited in various locations, it will have an ultra- long season, overall.

Avoid Extremes

If you have chosen garden places that have No burning hot or parchingly dry episodes, most long blooming plants will flower and stay nicely green their very longest.

Tend to Their Water Needs

All of these plants need attention to their water needs. Some need less than others, but especially when you are establishing any garden place, your attentions to suitable watering are needed from the start.

Keep them Trimmed

While it is not necessary to trim most of these things but once or twice in the season, you will do what you want about neatness, trimming to your taste and preferences.
If you trim, you often improve the performance of the plant. When you want a long blooming plant to spend it’s energy on providing new stems for upncoming flowers, you will be helping it to conserve energy for that purpose if you trim away goneby stems, even if they are somewhat hidden under flowering skirts, after trimming the plant will have a rejuvenated appearance.

Have different ages of plants.

Last year’s plants may start earlier and end sooner than the new young ones, but then the young ones starting later may flower beyond their parents span.
…
Have patience, the colonies take a while to establish. With perennial plants, shrubs and vines, older individuals may flower for a much longer span of time as the years of residence accumulate, which is probably tied to how many roots support them.

So Who are those Long Blooming

Self Sowing

Handsome and Reliable Plants ?

..…

PRIZEWINNERS 1980 – 2010

Part One :

The Front Row Plants = Featherweight Category

Alyssum snow crystals = Lobularia maritima snow crystals

Photo by Joe Puleo

Often used as an endlessly blooming white bed edging, this double form is the loveliest alyssum that I have ever had the pleasure to live with. Her fragrant flowers, though tiny, are visibly larger than those of most alyssums, and they cover her freshly for months on end. A fine textured, low and flowing character allows her to be a beautiful floor-foil for most any plants arriving in the surroundings. As a container plant, these fill in edges and corners nicely, and will often seed themselves into the ground below the container for a lovely naturalized effect the following year. She has returned in every garden I have ever made.
…
If you prepare the ground near the parent plant for the babies to be sown into, your patience will be annually rewarded by some volunteers. Over time, through the snowball effect, these can become colonies. You just have to start that snowball rolling.…
I let the self sown plants proliferate and leave them or move them to wherever they may be needed, but I also usually succumb each year to getting a few more of this alyssum from the greenhouse in May. These will provide their white details for the month before the naturalized babies from last year’s parents are big enough to flower.
…
There are many varieties and also other colors of edging alyssums in the trade, and many of those also return sometimes, but L.m. snow crystals stands out amongst them all in appearance and in reliability, making little colonies in a great variety of places. And white is so useful.

Gypsophila muralis…

This is one of the less well known annuals whose surprise and enhancement value make them beloved contributors in every garden they find their way into.
….
The pixie dust pink chiffon of hundreds of tiny Gypsophila muralis plants can make you a floating, translucent carpet. Muralis is the smallest of Gypsophila, the genus of plants referred to as ‘Baby’s Breath’ for their airy appearances. Though many kinds of plants in this genus are large and perennial, G. muralis is an annual usually ~ 5” tall. The very substantial visual effect she has in the landscape comes via the great number of individuals in the self sown colonies she can make for you. Although this plant is believed to originate from eastern europe, a folk name for this plant in Italian is ‘Nebbia’, which translates as fog or mist, and sounds to me like a term of endearment. The softening outlines this Gypsophila provides enhance the floor of any sunny or semi sunny, well drained place. The older varieties, the soft pinks (g. muralis) return extremely well for me, but I have added G.m. gypsy rose for her darker pink coloration, and am hoping that she will add her gypsy genes for a wider range of pinks overall in the landscape.
Coming back willingly from seed as they do, as many as I can make room for will nestle in between other edge plants. I also grow them in my dry stone walls and between paving stones in footfall protected places.
They are nice to touch, and lovely close up, so I particularly like having them in near to hand locations. I encourage them in my stone and hypertufa troughs which are sited atop stone walls or other surfaces at touching height. They are a great asset in these permanent containers, being a companionable height and scale for the other perennial and annual occupants of these small scale trough worlds.

Delosperma cooperei

Brilliant royal magenta flowers cover this floor dwelling plant all blessed summer, as its graceful foliage rambles happily among stones.
Of all the Delospermas I have tried, D. cooperei is the hardiest and most reliable by far, not to mention the handsomest (just an opinion). In the just right place he will return each year, and the colonies can even increase stoloniferously if you can find a spot to please them. Yes, that means that even the parents come back sometimes.
…
D. cooperei seems to like a hot sunny place with an opportunity to put roots under, and foliage over, stone. Their colonies thrive when receiving overhead water a few times a week, but their succulent leaves allow a lot of heat tolerance when necessary. Some gardens have kept this plant in Z5b for years, but only in the best of circumstances. If you are a bit warmer, perhaps these will prove even more reliable. This plant hails from New Zealand originally, and so may be fine in a good many Zones besides my own.
For landscapes that cannot overwinter this treasure, some plants can come in via the local Nurseries each year. D cooperei has fortunately become widely available, hence easily replaced. I wouldn’t want anyone to have to miss a year.

…
California poppy = Eschscholzia californica
…

The true fruit-orange and lemon colored California poppies are sometimes difficult to site with groupings of flowering plants having gentler tones or otherwise incompatable hues. Eschscholzia blooms for such a long time span that through the season, these neighborhood color disagreements can be many.
…
If you like, you can choose to build your compositions around the bright orange and hot yellow of the common forms of this poppy,
but the good news is that there are ivory, pale yellow and a whole range of pink California poppies = Eschscholzia varieties. These alternate flower colors get along more easily with a wide range of the typical hues of other planted compositions. Like their brightly colored relatives, these less color dominant varieties have a very long blooming habit.
When sited according to their ecological preferences, some babies of these forms will ritually appear through self sowing, if somewhat less prolifically than their bright cousins. But they are easily encouraged. You will need to save seed, as they are notorious for escaping from the front row. They pop, after all, being Poppies, and so the seeds can land up a bit afield from where you meant to have them.

. .Johnny Jumpups = Viola tricolor
…

These very small flowered Pansies are handsome and willing, and they flower semi-endlessly. They have been in cultivation for uncounted years, and are the long ago parents from which most garden pansies were derived. For 4 months or so their white, purple and yellow faces are companionable in a broad range of garden contexts, the purples excluded perhaps where you’re growing more truly blue things in the picture.
These enhance both sunny and semi-sunny locations, as they can manage fine with a few hours of the day’s sun..
All these Violas should be trimmed a bit as the season progresses. Whenever stems get long and rangy and don’t please me anymore, I just trim them back to their crowns and shake their seeds onto ruffled ground. Sometimes these plants then start making new flower stems from their crowns, but anyway there are usually other individuals starting up nearby to freshen the scene.
The word Pansy is thought to come from the French word ‘pensee’ (pon-say), which means ‘thought’. A bouquet of Pansies, in the symbolic language of flowers down through history, has represented a bouquet of thoughts. Flowers that represent thoughts. Wonderful.
…….
Viola tricolor = Heartsease

Another traditional name for this historically beloved European herb plant was ‘ Hearts-ease’. This refers to its medical uses for chest complaints and other physiological problems.
….
Cool Hybrids

Most all of the small faced Pansies seem to intermarry. The outcome color combinations of their faces are marvelously diverse and sweetly surprising. It turns out that a given plant may be self-fertile, that is with both sexes on the same plant, but in addition, they cross pollinate amongst themselves with noticeable abandon.
To add interesting characteristics to the offspring, I have sought out white, pure yellow and near black Violas as well as particularly small foliaged or extra-long blooming varieties, and added these to the landscape as I came across them to refresh the genetic possibilities of my home colonies. My colonies are thus a colorful admixture of every handsome, tiny face I ever met.
I just put some of these prospective parents in the beds with the resident small faced Viola cousins to get some more variety into the offspring of the next generations. Any hybrids turning up with unattractive colors or features are removed. Typically they show a wide range of pleasing variations in their faces and statures.
…
Since I brought all their parents together, and my name is Ellen Cool, I call the ones who live here the ‘Cool Hybrids’. If you similarly arrange marriages, you will have your very own hybrids too.

The List of ‘Longblooming, Self Sowing

Prizewinners Portraits

will continue in my next Posts.

Some of the Upcoming Front Row Prizewinners Are :

Linaria Canon Went pink, and the ancestral purple

Corydalis lutea and Corydalis lutea alba

Viola Koreana

Posted in A Garden System, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts, Plant Portraits | Tagged Alyssum snow crystals, annuals, annuals come back, California poppy, comeback plants, Delosperma cooperei, Eschscholzia californica, euphorbia cyparissias, Gypsophila muralis, Johnny Jumpups, Linaria Canon Went, Lobularia maritima snow crystals, long blooming plants, longblooming plants, longest blooming, Naturalisers, Naturalising, perennials, plants that self sow, prize winning plants, prizewinning plants, self sower, self sowing, self sowing plants, site sowing, subtractive gardening, Viola tricolor | 303 Comments

Snowy Valentines

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/02/14

Embossed Earth

……. Two touching stones in green embossed earth,
moss joined each warm summer -

Now in snow blanketing. Comforted.
Soft impressions of themselves together,
Bonded forms in a wide landscape of white.

……. ……

…..……….

Posted in Authorship, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged snow, snow valentine, snowy, valentine | 5 Comments

Snow, Brooms and Squirrels

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/01/21

The Old Worn Corn Broom

R.S.

A friendly old Corn broom is indispensable for sweeping snow off trees and shrubs in the winter and for freeing frisbees, balls and balloons in the other seasons. Its bristles softened and shortened by time, usually on an angle from all the corner work it has tried to do and the leaning it has experienced, a plain old broom will be gentle on living plant materials. The narrower end allows you to brush off the canopies of trees and the bodies of shrubs without harming them.
Your favorite evergreens (and other above ground plants) will keep their shapes better through the snowy, icy seasons if you can prevent freshly fallen snow from accumulating too heavily.………
…

The business end of a natural fiber broom is typically made of the upper stalks and tassel stems of Sorghum bicolor (or vulgare). These plants are commonly called ‘Seed Corn’, even though they are not related to our familiar edible Corn at all ( that would be a Zea not a Sorghum). In the growing fields Sorghum’s appearance is somewhat Corn like, just no ears. The appelation ‘Corn Broom’ has become descriptively traditional, and so we use it anyway.
…..
Once upon a time, in 1797, Levi Dickenson of Hadley, Massachusetts discovered the fine qualities of these Sorghums, and made a broom for his wife of them. Enthusiasm ensued, and this excellent new material was soon sought after for broom making in general.
…..
Throughout the millenia, in the various parts of the world many different kinds of plants were found useful for sweeping . What was utilised depended on what was growing nearby and the local customs. With long, straight and slender stems, the shrubs we colloquially call ‘Brooms’ (Genera Cytisus and Genista) were found suitable, and these and many other kinds of plant materials were pressed into service. With experimentation over time and the passage of knowledge between cultures, however, Sorghums have proved themselves perhaps the most effective of natural materials for the job of sweeping.
………………
Until about 1820, Brooms were typically round in form. The branchlets of whichever material was used were usually clustered around a stouter central piece of wood.
………..
Since no aspect of the design of tools and furnishings for daily life was overlooked by the Shakers, brooms were taken seriously, along with pincushions and hundreds of other useful things, and improvements were sought.

The Shakers believe that their furnishings were originally designed in heaven, and that the patterns were transmitted to them by angels. Their designs are beautiful and they work extremely well.

The Shakers proceeded to redesign broom configurations, flattening out the brush end, and so making this tool easier and more efficient to use in our home grounds, in their estimation. And then there came the angled form, probably also from the angels...
…
This photo by Grace Jeffers shows the way that the de-seeded and dried Sorghums were flattened in the broom presses of the Hancock Shaker community in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. At one time, a great many brooms were made there. The image comes to us by way of Wilsonart’s Blog, ‘The Statement’, a highly informative online magazine for Designers.
..
Many of our ‘Corn Brooms’ now come from Mexico, where the appropriate Sorghums also grow very well.
………..
Shaker design has provided us with patterns for brand new brooms with either flat or angled working ends. The angled ones are configured that way to do corner sweeping perfectly from the start. Gentled down a bit with floor use for a while, this shape is what you are after for use amongst your trees and shrubs as well as for your corners.

At their tops, Sorghum bicolor plants have seed filled tassels from which the seeds themselves must be manually removed when the tasseled ends are dried for broom making.
………..
A Seed Corn Wreath

There is another less universal but very lovely use for those same upper stalks without removing their seeds. The tasseled tops of Sorghum bicolor, with a foot or two of the stem still attached, make a beautiful wreathing material. The seed laden bunches are tied on to encircle a metal wreath frame in an overlapping sequence. The handsome tassels swirl gracefully, their rich mahogany seeds texturally beautiful against the green tinged khaki of the leaf and stalk matrix. The seeds stay on a long time if noone eats them.

When the hard weather is coming, though, I hang the Seed Corn wreath outside on a strong hook so the squirrels can sit or clamber on it comfortably. The hanging place we have chosen is seen from our windows, so every day for weeks we can watch these companions gathering and enjoying our gift.
………

In the right settings squirrels may be rewarding cohabitants. In a profound way it seems meaningful to bear witness to the life their busy families infuse in to the landscape. A visible parallel existence. Though our small personal land can only support a limited population, as concerns any creatures or plants who are living here, I do want them to live happily as long as they can behave compatably.

Still outlined in snow after the snow has melted everywhere else, the Squirrel’s twiggy nests high up in the trees seem poignant and eloquent now, as I write from the garden shed in cold January. A new snow is falling today, softening the nest shapes still further.

Some years ago my squirrel families discovered pillow batting and fluff. On a neighbor’s moving day one winter, serendipity sent a torn pillow into our yard. I guess that I thought it was just some snow, since I didn’t clean it out of the landscape right away. My squirrels seem to have been experimentally minded, quickly discovering the fine insulating properties of this fluff. When I figured out that it was pillow stuffing and saw that it was being used, I left it there. Every bit gradually disappeared, tucked in as lining in their leaf and twig nests. I know this for sure because, sadly, in a winter gale a few years later, a three foot diameter masterpiece nest, and the 25 foot long ‘home run’ limb leading to it, crashed to the ground. My squirrel was suddenly homeless.

The next day I came upon this small Denizen sitting in praying position at the V base of the broken limb, the tattered nest on the ground nearby. Head tucked into chest, eyes closed, he seemed deeply pensive and, I must imagine, sad for the loss of his long beloved cozy place in the tree. The family has returned and rebuilt, but I wonder if they will ever have a nest as special as that one was. Perhaps some pillow stuffing should appear.
…..

Corn Broom Drawing by Racket Shreve

For more information on broom making see :

http://thefarmersmuseum.blogspot.com/2010/11/broom-corn-harvest.html

http://www.broomshop.com/history/

Posted in A Garden System, Things They Never Tell You | Tagged broom history, brooms, corn broom, edible wreath, edible wreaths, feeding squirrels, Grace Jeffers, shaker design, snow, snow removal, sorghum bicolor, squirrel nest, squirrels, squirrels nest, The Statement | 31 Comments

Landscape Design in Snow

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2011/01/13

DRAWING IN YOUR SNOW

Taking time over the drawing phase of your landscape making journey, whether in snow, on sand, lawn or paper, will strongly influence the quality of the choices you will ultimately make in the design of the things for your landscape.

Drawing in snow is a pleasant way to get thoughts going for your future projects. The great thing about snow as a medium is that it comes right to your house and presents you with a full clean canvas, allowing you to draw everywhere within your connected landscape, at full scale and all at the same time.

As you wander through the snow and mark the outlines of shapes that you are thinking about creating, you will be exploring the tangible ‘footprints’ of your future built projects, planted beds and the paths to such things.

Once drawn out roughly, you can physically experience the relationships of all the landscape elements. Walk everything to see how the flow and the relational shaping feels, from all directions, adjusting your imprinted lines until you are pleased with form, flow and linkage of all the parts of your place.

Play with slow curves, fast curves, driveway apron curves, deck configurations, or anything you like. Site wall beginning and ending points, table and chair locations. You are searching for pleasing spatial relationships both functionally and esthetically. These will endure when the projects come to life.

Now you can check the views of your evolving outlines from elsewhere, indoors and out. Try to avoid random footprints as best as you can until your intended shapes are done, but if the process gets messy, there will likely be a next snow for a new clean canvas. you will have more chances to try various things to find some ideal solutions if you start with the early light snows, This process can be one of the upsides of the snowy season.

With a tape measure in your pocket, when you come to some conclusions you can give yourself some coordinates for key relational points to roughly record what your winter thought process has concluded.
Even without much in the way of recorded measurements though, you will have learned alot from your experience with the snow lines, and the thoughts they engendered.

By Spring you will perhaps have developed some ideas of what you may want, consulting your memory and measurement notes. Once the ground is green or brown again you can be laying things out in an exploratory way using some braided line[1], marking sprays[2] and stakes.
Invariably there will be new or preeminent considerations which come to the fore as your organic things reawaken, become fully three dimensional and your active outdoor life begins again. Add these thoughts into the mix and keep thinking.

While having carefully considered your range of choices before beginning your projects, you may find that you want to adjust and fine tune your compositions right up to and even during the time of building. That’s fine.

Leaving details as flexible as possible until it is necessary to finalise them usually leads to the best custom work with natural materials, if you can continue to pay close attention all along the way.

“If the designer is forced by complications to figure things out on paper, the final result will be better if the plan is then memorized and hidden, and the work laid out on the ground with the help of stakes and string”

…………………………………………………………………………….Fletcher Steele Gardens and People

1] 5/8^”braided marine or arborist’s line is my favorite, in 30’ lengths or so. Tosses well and can be fine tuned in its shaping.
[2]Cans of invertible white chalk or waterbase spray ‘paint’ are my usual choice for marking grass or earth but not for masonry or stone. These wash out of the greens after a couple of weeks , so re-mark as needed so you don’t lose your carefully thought out lines before the work begins. If you arrange to mark after the grass is just cut, the marks will last better.

( Based on my articles ‘The Quiet Season’ and ‘Landscape Design in Snow’)

DRAWING ON THE BEACH

………………………………………………………………………………………Arthur Schwartz

If it happens to be a warm season instead of winter, and you can get to a suitably sandy beach, you can try out alot of your ideas with just your feet and hands and perhaps a ‘pencil’ of driftwood or shell.

Drawing in the sand in a reduced scale can help you think about shapes, curves, intersects and relationships of things experientially. If – Then propositions are easy to experiment with in the forgiving sand.

Contemplating the curves made by the lapping waters of lake or ocean can inform your thinking about naturalistic forms that may be beautifully incorporated into features of your own place.

Since you can’t take the beach to your house, it is only a conceptual exercise, but it can be very helpful. You may want to find a time when there are no other people on the beach, as they probably won’t understand what in the world you are doing and it is a nuisance to have to explain and lose your pleasant concentration. If the sand is just moist enough, your lines seem especially beautiful, so try for the time of an outgoing tide.

“Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake”

………………………………………………………………..Wallace Stevens

All written and visual materials on this site are Copyrighted. (C) Ellen Cool 2010

Posted in A Garden System, Most Popular Posts, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged beginning landscape, design landscape, landscape design, landscape shaping, snow | 32 Comments

Designing Your Landscape : Hard Materials

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/12/28

Choosing your Materials

Select a Family of Hard Materials from the Beginning.

It is best to choose the family of things you will be using together in the landscape for your hard materials ‘palette’ before you try to think about your built projects in detail since, in the end, these early choices will affect the overall appearance of your landscape scheme.
Your initial selections will typically establish the kinds of materials that you will then be using in subsequent work, so from the beginning you will want to make good choices from the range available. This would be the time to consider removing, at least mentally, any unsatisfactory masonry or wood structures whose materials or esthetics are amongst those you will prefer not to duplicate.
The particular materials you choose may also dictate the fundamental ground preparation needed for your projects, and so sometimes can affect the sequence of your landscape development as well as the cost.

Design in Sets

A whole property will need various types of hard materials to shape the landscape and create the structures to serve the many purposes of a place. The component kinds will be seen together in pairs and groups, probably in more than one location on the property. You are after a set of kinds of materials which will look well together in current and future projects, a family of materials, with colors and textures that enhance one another.
…..
Consider the character of the various stone and materials types already in the view or
wanted in the view.….
…
If you are choosing between alternative materials, consider how their color and character will work in relation to whatever else will also be there. You will want what you bring in to be harmonious with what is already on your property, or what will necessarily be in the view.
…
If the family of materials you build with originally came out of the same area as you reside in, or from similar geological earth areas, compositions you create using those particular kinds in consistent ways will help the elements of your landscape belong with one another. As soon as you build them in, they can seem as if they had always been there. Unless you are trying to make a separatist statement, the chosen set of materials may be pleasing if it seems an appropriate part of the local landscape in general...

The enduring materials such as wood, stone, concrete, metal, asphalt and even plastics you choose to build with are invariably fundamental in establishing the esthetic connectedness of your place.
…
.To find out what materials may suit your local esthetic and be available to you, take a look around at nearby built work. A particular vernacular visual character is established by the kinds and colors of materials that have been commonly used in your area, a standard most likely set because they have been available close by over a long span of time. Their character is part of your biogeographical destiny, an intrinsic part of the ecoesthetic nature of your place.
What is beautiful in your eyes and locally available can help to shape the range of good choices for your projects.
Go see nearby stone and hard materials suppliers, quarries and maybe even excavation and blasting projects that might be sources for you.
…
Once you have established some continuity in your landscape, you will be able to insert surprises, kind of like decorating your house after it is built. First you need to build the framing well, to support the life you will breathe into it later.

“ Do experiments with the materials at hand to find out
what you can do with what is locally available…
so that people can do gardens beautifully in that area.”[1]

…..
Multiple kinds of materials will be needed for the various types of projects.……

Bluestone, Fieldstone and Granites……D.S.

You will need to select different kinds of stone and other hard materials to best accomplish the different sorts of building goals. Sometimes the character of the material will need to be flat, sometimes three dimensional. In certain places you will want a free draining surface, in others an impermeable one. Each kind of building material has inherent characteristics which make it suit certain building applications better than others.
…….
Stones or other materials used in horizontal contexts can be consistently a different kind from those used in vertical applications.
…
Those which tend to have durable flat surfaces and are not too thick to handle will be good choices for the horizontal planes you will build as terraces, paths, and treads of steps. An even sturdier flat material may also be needed where cars will drive over it.
….
When the goal is some elevation, another kind of hardmaterial will be needed, one whose character is suitable for your 3 dimensional and verticals work, such as for the of step risers, stone walls, rock gardens, raised beds, fire pits or whatever. You may need some smaller and some larger versions of the 3 dimensional kind of stone you choose.
….
You may well also need a very small kind for gravel or crushed stone needs when making walkways, drives, visible drainage areas, or particular garden mulches.
If this small material is screened out of the same geological location as the larger stone, the color set will probably be complementary.
Gravel, often called peastone in the common 3/8ths and 1/2″ size classes, is naturally weathered in the ground, having come from the parent rock of the same location. The local earth is screened to separate out the various sizes of gravel needed for building uses. Around here, the product typically has rounded contours. This makes it good in garden and path applications, much friendlier than crushed stone to touch.*
Crushed stone is a sharper edged product, having been mechanically created by crushing the parent rock down to a particular size class. It may not be the same colors as your naturally weathered stone and gravel. It is useful in alot of applications, and great for drainage, but you won’t want to have to walk on it or come across it in your garden beds.**……

“Devi Guardare Tutto”

= You need to look at (absolutely) everything.

From the advice of Italian Master Mason, Carmelo Messina.

In stone there are many kinds of beauty, and many levels of size and quality within each kind. Just be sure that you will enjoy that material’s particular kind of beauty in the context you will provide.
…
If the quality affects the durability, as it often does in horizontal applications especially, materials that seem a bit more expensive may actually be a better buy because their landscape lifetime is alot longer. Get the best materials you can afford. Time goes by quickly in a garden setting, and you won’t want to replace things just when the landscape is maturing nicely. Or ever, preferably, which can work out if you do things right the first time, and stone is your medium.
…
The difference in the quality of appearance between your options may be priceless, so you will want to look around to have your opportunity to choose. Sometimes the handsomest kinds of materials may even cost less than alternatives, especially if the source is nearby.

“Oh thou sculptor, painter, poet!

Take this lesson to thy heart:

That is best which lieth nearest;

Shape from that thy works of art.” [3]

Once you realise that everything matters, you will want to pay attention to visual / color details you might need to duplicate in future, just as you would keep track of particular paint colors you chose for your home.
…..
Asphalt, for instance, can have different textures and colors depending on what proportion, size and color range of small stone is embedded in the matrix. The color of the asphalt is swayed by the color of the bedrock that the small stone came from. Nearby here, we see driveways with a decidedly purple caste due to the color of the bedrock in Saugus Ma. and elsewhere we see embedded the range of tans and greys typical of the Cape Ann gravels.
For stone constructs with visible cement or mortar, the components and chemistry of the mix matter for the outcome color.
…
You will want to use the same ‘recipes’ as are established on your property, so ask your source how to specify them in future, and make some notes for your landscape files.

“Constancy (is) generated by the repetition of underlying patterns.”[4]

You can try for truly local materials, but if there is no more local stone or other hard material available of a kind that you need, as is sometimes the case, you may need to find the best match for the typical local material. This will be especially important if there is already some of it in your landscape.
….
If what will be used must be brought in from other areas, your important work may be to locate materials to match and blend with your givens.
…
Carry a few photos and physical samples of stone and materials in your car if you wish to try to find suitable matching material. These will speak volumes to knowledgeable masons, or materials and stone suppliers. Color and character are hard to describe in words.
…..
Keep track of your sources.
….
If you are engaged in making a landscape, you will be needing some matching materials later, more likely than not. Try to get kinds of stone and other hard materials that you will be able to obtain again, as this will be important for your future projects. Find out where each of your chosen kinds came from, and how to ask for that type again for up and coming work.
If you have found a source for any wonderful material, this can mean treasure for your place down the line of time. Many of the most beautiful landscapes are made over long time lines.
…
The hand of the particular mason or builder is important to the character of each built project. It will be best if the style established by an artisan is continued throughout the work in your place. This goal is best accomplished this if you begin with an artisan whose work you love, and can who can probably come back over time for subsequent similar projects. If this isn’t possible, each builder you choose should try to build in good relationship to the style established there, preferably using the same or closely related materials.
Tm….
Lyrical…
a connected composition
with some repeating portions
wherein a person is led on a journey by repeating or related parts.
…

[1] Mien Ruys / Dedemsvaart, Netherlands, ref Beth Chatto
[2] F.A.Waugh, “Propriety is a universal test.”, Landscape Gardening
[3] Longfellow, Gaspar Becerra
[4] F. L.Wright, quoted in Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building

* A gravel or peastone path is not all gravel. The peastone needs to be underlain with the right base materials to be solid enough for walking comfortably.

** Be careful of what you buy as peastone. You will want to check the source pile since some distributors of ‘peastone’ blend in crushed stone of the same size with the gravel, making the product not as nice for garden uses.

Posted in Begin before the beginning, Most Popular Posts, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged bluestone, building in stone, Chatto, choosing stone, Christopher Alexander, crushed stone, design planning, F.A Waugh, gravel, hard materials design, hardscape, kind of stone, land design, landscape advice, landscape design, landscape planning, peastone, Ruys, stone character, stone choices, stone color, stone design, stone garden designs inc., stone types | 108 Comments

Wreathing the Beds

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/12/19

Greens After Christmas

A second harvest purpose for the branches of Christmas trees and other holiday greens is to use them as decorative wreathing for your otherwise somewhat bare perennial beds.
……
One might choose to lay evergreen branches on some beds just to look wonderful through the winter, but these branches can also do the very important job of helping to insulate the plants residing in the earth beneath them. I find this branch overlay technique especially useful wherever it can help to protect small or shallow rooted plants.
……..
Branches 2 to 4 feet in length cut from Post-Christmas trees or any post-wreathing materials can be used, whether yours or contributed by a neighbor.
Considerate pruning of resident evergreens can provide cuttings too. These greens can all be laid out along the edges of your perennial beds or wherever vulnerable plants are sleeping. I weave these offcut branches together by crisscrossing in an over and under way to help them resist being blown about by winter winds..
……
The insulation is most needed through the late winter thaws.
It is just perfect that these lovely recycle materials are so readily available just after Christmas since the insulation this handsome wreathing can provide is most needed from January through March or so. Setting the branches out any earlier would not be better, since it is good for the plant materials to get a thorough soaking before the deep freezes set in.
If there is some snow on the ground, you can wreath right on top of it and as the snow melts, the branches will settle roughly where you wanted them. Adjust as needed.
….
I apply this protective layer religiously to beds where temperature changes tend to be rapid and heaving is a frequent problem. It helps to buffer the temperature ups and downs which cause ground heaving. Snow would do much of the job of protection by itself if there were a reliable covering of it through the freeze-thaw cycles, but in this part of New England you can’t count on a snow blanket.….
……….
The evergreen boughs protect the plants in much the same way that hay would if it would stay put. The difference is that you will have green beauty through most of the winter, and a much easier cleanup in spring.
…………
In my experience, if there is any wind at all, hay straw distributes itself absolutely everywhere. Plucking it piece by piece out of the shrubberies, evergreen groundcovers, pebble paths and underdecks can prove extremely annoying. One would prefer not to make this mistake in an ornamental garden setting...
….
Wear Suspenders and a Belt
Even if you have done your best to protect your plants, whenever there are are substantial thaws, you may want to scout around a bit. Locations that get alot of winter sun can thaw out surprisingly quickly. When they do, the the ground may heave up precipitously and the roots of newly established and shallow rooted plants may be lifted up too. Their roots are then out of the ground, exposed, and so could easily be killed by the next cold snap.
…..
To keep such perennials and new plantings safe, you need to
press the individual plants back down into the earth while it is soft.
Quickly, before the ground gets cold again and closes them out...
…….….
Planning wise, in general it will be best to

Avoid locating small or vulnerable plants in places that the

winter sun hits heavily.

In Britain, winter protection is sometimes conferred by sheaves of cut deciduous branches, to which the people have given the charming name of ‘twig thatch’.
……
In their famously beautiful and lovingly tended North Hill Gardens, to soften some of the harsh aspects of the climate of Vermont, Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd have cut Miscanthus bundles from their own stands of these grasses before winter, and then laid them out as needed to protectively insulate the fruit trees** who also live within their ecotome.

** lecture, personal communication, 2008

Posted in A Garden System, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged ecotome, greens after christmas, heaving, joe eck, north hill, plant protection, protect perennial, protect plants, protecting plants winter, recycle christmas tree, reuse christmas tree, second harvest, wayne winterrowd, winter preparation, winter protection | 10 Comments

Winter Preparation

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/12/12

Anticipating the End of the Year

Some More Things They Never Tell You.

Save the final blowing and cleaning of your diverse planted beds until after the ground is cold hardened.

It is safer for the seeds and plants if you wait until frost solidifies the ground for the final thorough cleaning of beds in which perennial and self sowing plants reside. Necessary walking in the beds and the directed winds of the finish blowing then happen after the hard ground closes and protects the subterranean tenants.
……
I will imagine that you have been lightly cleaning the leafage throughout the fall, now you can safely finish up.
……
Where shallow rooted plants and self sowers you treasure reside, you may want to keep the blower away altogether and just work on those areas by hand.

Don’t let your trees and shrubs go dry into winter weather.

It is very important for your plant materials to have moisture at their roots before the hard winter sets in. Nature usually provides this end of season water, but you will want to be watchful. If nature does not provide at this important time, it will be valuable if you can bucket some water onto any trees and shrubs you have planted within the last few years.
….
Full settlement time for your recent plantings is estimated as at least a year per inch of girth.

Anti Dessicant Sprays

If your plant residents are in the path of extreme drying winds through winter, this can have a damaging effect. Many kinds of evergreens can benefit from an anti dessicant (= anti-drying) spray, which can provide a protective coating on their leaves or needles that helps them hold on to moisture within their sylvan selves.
…….

Winter Work for your Buildings and Grounds
…..

During the cold parts of the year the backmost places can be accessed and tended most easily, with the least danger to the plants nearby. For construction, repair or painting projects on structures and buildings lying behind the planted beds, the safest time of year will be now and soon, or just pre-spring, before the first bulb thinks about coming up.
…….
When the ground is frozen solid you can walk everywhere with impunity, so this is a good time to transport needed things across your planted land if doing so might cause damage to your soft grounds at other times of the year.
….
With a durable hard freeze, you might even get a bobcat in if you needed one.
…
Or move a building across a lake or pond.
In long ago times, before elaborate trucks came along to help us, this was a typical practice, requiring alot of patience, alot of man and beast power and perfect timing. Where it was the shortest distance between two points, buildings that needed to do so crossed the water with specialised boats, or on sled contructs over ice.
…..
Overland night trucking is probably the go-to solution now, especially since some bodies of water in our region used to freeze most years, and now almost never do. Also, we have no oxen and few horses to help.
In places that still have a thick hard freeze transport over ice is still done, but trucks usually do the pulling.

Arrange Your Winter Views

In winter much of the essence of the landscape is expressed through its embedded shapes. Every element in the built and structured landspace reveals the form of its true self when the white overlay of snow arrives to outline all its details.
…
If you arrange all the objects in your landscape thoughtfully; sorting, stacking, coiling and otherwise neatening before snow comes, you can make your landscape appearance more sculpturally satisfying for the whole winter. Try to take care of these things before the ground hardens and the buckets and such freeze solid.
In our climate, the good effect of your end of season attentions will last for several months.

….
Evergreens and architecturally fortunate trees and shrubs, wonderful stone, wood and iron elements are set off at their personal best. You can count on them. If you have placed them nicely, your work will spring freshly to life with the upcoming brushstroke outlines of snow.
….
……* The wheelbarrow photograph was taken next door to one of my favorite nurseries, the Conifer Connection in Pembroke, Massachusetts.

Posted in A Garden System, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged winter building, winter garden, winter preparation | 43 Comments

Winter Arrangements, Indoors and Out

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/11/28

In my landscapes, evergreen branches that will need to be pruned anyway wait for that attention until I can use their lovely offcuts for decorative winter purposes.
………….
You will see your tree and shrub elements alone in the winter, when there are fewer other plants around to distract you. It is a good time to focus on tending them, cleaning and pruning as pleases you and balances them.
……………..
Evergreen and berried trimmings can provide a winter harvest, to arrange however you like.

Before The Ground Freezes

If you want to use the trimmings outside to enliven window boxes or decorate other winter proof containers, cut them freshly and get them firmly tucked into the earth/substrate before the freeze so you can arrange them easily and nicely. When the ground freezes it will hold the stems tightly and the decorative effect will last through much of the winter. You won’t be able to tuck them into the earth any more after the hard freeze, and the branchlets will probably dry out faster without the ‘earth connection’.
……….
In the house, greens and berries will often dry out within a couple of weeks, but outside in draining containers or window boxes, they may last through much of the winter if arranged so that their fresh cut stems are in typically moist ground. If everything freezes later, that’s fine.
……….
To replenish your indoor arrangements through the winter you can trim your evergreens more than once, cutting pieces whenever you need them. It is fine for the plants if considerately done. Just don’t take too much, and cut cleanly to a growth node.
I particularly love Pieris japonica cuttings indoors since their buds gracefully adorn them through the winter, and I can harvest a few as needed.
………..
Some evergreens last longer than others cut and arranged outside. Chamaecyparis, Sciadopitys, Taxus, Firs, Arborvitae, Boxwood and all sorts of Ilex can provide satisfying, long lasting branchlets for indoor and outdoor purposes. So can innumerable other evergreens.
…………
You can most readily find out who lasts well and who doesn’t by trying out evergreen cuttage of whatever plant materials you happen to have or can get a hold of.
Perhaps skip the Hemlocks and short needled Pines, as they seem to dry out and brown relatively quickly when cut. Prickly Junipers and Spruces in general aren’t much fun to handle, so I don’t use them often, though they can be handsome.
…..
The bulk of pruning for certain particular kinds of trees or shrubs may best be done at certain prescribed times depending on that particular plant’s habits and needs, but you can always ‘reserve’ at least a modest number of especially handsome branches to cut when they will be most useful.
……….
The cold season is the dormant season for many evergreen and deciduous sylva, and is a perfectly good time to lightly prune your conifers and certain other residents.
………….
With the evergreen Hollies, pruning nicely before the holidays is perfect, since if you do that, you are not as likely to mistakenly prune them later in their growth cycle, thereby losing their pretty tips, flowers and hence the berries for the following winters. Many Hollies berry on second year wood, so keep that in mind when deciding what parts to prune. Some evergreen Hollies have dark berries or none, but their glistening foliage may still recommend them for decorative uses.

The Right Parentage

There are many different kinds of Hollies, and they have different favorite partners, so when planting them at your place, you need to be sure that you provide one Boy Holly of the right parentage for every Holly grouping you would like to see in berry.
………
For most kinds of Ilex, to berry they need to marry. Ask your nurseryman or Google about your particular kind so you end up with a suitable mate.
…….
While Ilex Boys are not usually handsome, one is all you need for a nearby gaggle of Girls.
……….
If the Girls are downwind it seems to help. Though Hollies are not typically wind pollinated, it would seem that the pollinators are assisted by having the wind at their backs. One upwind Boy manages to pollinate all the suitable Girls on our street.

The Gypsy

If you are lucky, as we are in Marblehead, you may have a wonderful Gypsy * bringing cut stem gatherings of Ilex sparkleberry and its kin to your neighborhood garden center – just before Thanksgiving. Here, the precious bundles of stems carrying shining red berries arrive wrapped in newsprint, tied with rubber bands of all colors and dimensions…..perhaps saved through the gatherer’s year, anticipating the harvest? Makes them all the more precious.
………..
Sparkleberry kin (Ilex verticillata and decidua varieties) are deciduous, which means that they drop their leaves. In our zone that happens early enough to let their staunch berries shine cleanly alone on the stems in November.

The older forms of deciduous Ilex that were planted before the era of Ilex sparkleberry, were in general taller and more spare, with a lighter distribution of berries on their individual stems. Less heavy with berries, the individual stems of those older forms were in some ways more graceful than the more popular current forms.

Being red, they draw your eye from quite far away, winter beacons without electricity. Stems from this late, bright harvest accompany prunings of things I grow in my landscapes in the outdoor evergreen arrangements.
……..
With some moisture at the base of its stems, Sparkleberry lasts more than a month outside, and sometimes two. It is lovely with snow on its branches.

Grow Your Own ?

If you have a large landscape, it may be wonderful to grow your own deciduous Ilex, but I prefer to keep these shrubs at some distance from the close landscape since their habit is rangy. Because of the tendency to prodigious growth, these multistemmed shrubs can be considerately trimmed for berried stems, year after year. Though the place where they grow may need to be much vaster than your own, you can enjoy their berries close to your personal spaces if you can find a source of cut stems, a local harvest at this time of year.
……….
We are fortunate in our dear, reliable, anonymous gatherer, may we call you our Gypsy ? You have been part of our Holiday lore for so long, you represent a cherishable story in our traditions.

* A person who wanders alot and lives close to nature, and thus knows where such treasures may be found, thoughtfully and somewhat magically bringing things to us exactly when we wish for them, each and every year.

** There are also beautiful yellow ( I. chrysocarpa) and orange (I. auriantica) berried kinds.

Posted in A Garden System, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged evergreen branches, evergreen Hollies, Ilex decidua, Ilex sparkleberry, Ilex verticillata, local harvest, pieris japonica, pruning hollies, tree cuttings, Winter Arrangements | 20 Comments

Dear Readers

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/11/24

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving I wanted to thank you all for

your thoughtful comments. They do encourage the work.

I don’t answer comments because if I did I would never have time to write my articles, but I do think about the things you say, and my writing will reflect your input.
Please try to comment at the end of the particular article you are referring to, as that way I will know which one you were especially enjoying.

* The Photo is my own, and was taken in the beautiful landscape of the New England Wildflower Society in Framingham, Massachusetts, fondly referred to as ‘The Garden in the Woods’.

I spontaneously arranged the brick and oak leaves during the very first snow of that year, which came right around Thanksgiving. I took the picture to be able to share my feelings of gratitude for the beauty of such moments with others at future times, and now with you.

Technical Questions
Certain of the same technical questions about my site keep coming in from many of you, so to answer these FAQs for everyone I wanted to tell you that:…………………

My work and all the images are copyrighted, but you may copy a couple of paragraphs from any single post to another location, along with a link to my site for the full article.………………….

My RSS feed is now working, sorry for the delay.………………….

The Theme I chose from WordPress is described below.
My goal was to have the posts seem like the pages of a book.

What appealed to me about this theme was that it was well tested, straightforward and yet extremely flexible. This has allowed me to do my own post and page layouts easily, keeping them simple if I wanted, with only my own chosen shapes, colors and images.
……………
I had alot of help getting my site up and running so that I could readily add my original work. Thankyou specially to Larry Hanapole, Jennifer Pederson, and Ian Stewart.
……………
For the moment, my category panel is not well organised. I’ll be working on it soon, but for now my site searchbox can best help you find things that I have written on particular subjects that may interest you.

Thematic 0.9.6.1 by Ian Stewart

The ultimate in SEO-ready themes, Thematic is a highly extensible, WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, drop-down menus, grid-based layout samples, plugin integration, shortcodes for your footer, & a whole lot more. Perfect for any blog and the starting point for theme development.

All of this theme’s files are located in /themes/thematic.

Tags: white, three-columns, two-columns, fixed-width, theme-options, left-sidebar, right-sidebar, threaded-comments, sticky-post, microformats

There is a new version of Thematic available. View version 0.9.7.7

…………………..

Posted in A Garden System, Authorship, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged design with nature, Garden in the Woods, Ian Stewart, local Turkey, New England Wildflower, Thanksgiving, Thematic Ian Stewart | 7 Comments

Your Ecotome

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/11/22

ECOTOME

This self describing noun is not much in current use, yet it would seem to me by its etymological origins that it could usefully be incorporated when referring to ones own local ecological context.

The ‘local ecotome’ would refer to the surrounding area of which you are a part, the one whose ecological realities affect your place.
….
‘Your ecotome’ would refer to the ecology of your own portion of the land, inclusive of all the ecological factors relating to your area, modulated by the way you handle them in relation to dwelling with and attending to the land, its creatures and green inhabitants.

In some usages ecotome is pronounced ek′tōm (Stedmans Medical Dictionary)
I’d rather pronounce it ecOtome.
Sounds like hOme.

Etymological justifications

I have gathered these from the Internet, Merriam Webster and various specialty lexicons:

Ecotome : Boundary zone between different plant communities, as at yard edges, between forest and prairie

Ecotome : general usage elsewhere in internet, ‘place where 2 ecologies come together’

Eco- : Etymology: late latin oeco- household, from greek oik-, oiko-, from oikos house : habitat or environment : ecological or environmental

Tome 1519 1: a volume forming part of a larger work

Etymology : Greek tomos 1 : part : segment <myotome> 2. Middle french or latin; middle french, from latin tomus, from greek tomos section, roll of papyrus, tome, from temnein to cut; akin to middle irish tamnaid he lops, polish ciąć to cut, and perhaps to latin tondēre to shear.

For each of us, our ecological ‘ tome’ is the piece ‘cut out’ for us, our portion.
The way I am thinking of it, ‘your ecotome’ could mean the inclusive ecology of your particular biogeographical portion of the land of our earth – the part you are tending. The ‘local ecotome’ would be the the inclusive portion which your local community is tending.
I find it a useful word, I hope that you will too.

My Ecotome. This is Home.

Posted in A Garden System, Most Popular Posts, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged ecology, ecotome, local ecology, local ecotome, your ecotome | 233 Comments

Fall Tending

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/11/22

Good Housekeeping

Tending your gardens thoroughly in fall will help all the winter compositions to show at their best. Most herbaceous plants are trimmed down close to the earth now. The cleaning process uncovers areas of ground which have not been seen since May, and invariably little hills and valleys appear in the grade contours of your planted beds.

Each valley represents a place where you, your resident creatures or organic processes removed some earth. Maybe you took a plant out for a friend, and forgot to fill in the hole fully, or a cat visited and made itself a comfortable spot. Through the green seasons, even though the floor is hidden, there are many effects of water, weeding, pets, squirrels, treading, ball retrieval and overenthusiastic blowers. One way or another, there are always pockets needing a bit of filling, and now you can see them..
…….
………….

Replenishing your Earth by Topdressing

In a habitat undisturbed by us, the nutrients contained in the fallen leaves and bits of last years’ plants gradually and reliably feed the earth place from which they originated.

In our tended landscapes, for the sake of continuing health and good grooming of the grounds close to our homes, we often remove this miscellaneous and typically messy looking endemic covering layer, and come back with a covering material having a more even appearance. This mulch that you use for esthetic reasons probably is not a balanced nutrient source for your plants. If it isn’t, you will need to otherwise feed the earth in an ongoing way. Please see my article on Earth Swapping.

You will want to add the amendments to the layer of soil which lies below your mulch. You will be most effective and disturb your grounds the least if you wait until the covering mulch layer is thin anyway, and needs refreshment. After leaf cleanup is usually the just right time since invariably some of the mulch gets cleaned away too. At this point, add your topdressing ingredients; those compost, loam and any earth amendments (including fertilisers) that you may need in the beds.

With a little delicacy of distribution, topdressing your perennial beds with earth x compost can even out the subtle grades in between the resident plants and not cover their sleeping crowns. I use a large aluminum scoop [1] instead of a shovel for better aim in such places.

Late fall is the ideal time of year to take care of these matters, giving winter rain and snow time to melt the nutrients down into the earth for the good health of next year’s gardens.

After topdressing, if particular plants would benefit from an insulating blanket, you can reapply mulch to their places as needed. In general, for larger areas you may want to wait till after the spring cleanup to freshly mulch for a clean summer appearance.

A good fall cleanup will also help your earliest Spring pictures to show at their best. Hellebores, Crocus, Snowdrops, Squills and others may come right up through the snow, giving you little time to neaten up just before their moment to shine arrives.

Tend the High Ground

To keep an ecosystem healthy, plants at the tops of grades typically need more addition of water, earth and nutrients throughout the year than do plants at the bottoms, who receive these things through the ground that lies above them.
In the absence of natural leaf fall and decomposition processes, nothing feeds the top of the hill unless you do. The high ground places are typically the first to dry out, and so are also the first you should remember to water, throughout the year. The good effects of what you do there will naturally be distributed down the grade with time.

What will happen in April depends alot upon what you did the previous November and December.

[1] My favorites are the larger cast aluminum ones. I use one with an 11” by 5 ½” body, 4” handle and another an inch or so smaller in each dimension. They live outside forever.

Posted in A Garden System, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged blowers, compost, December, decomposition, Good Housekeeping, mulch, topdressing, using compost | 4 Comments

November Nor’easter

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/11/14

………………………………………………………………. *

The small grove of Maples

I pass each late night

Today were moon – lit

Cross black blue and star white.

……………

Nor’easter behind them,

Their yellow leaf hands

Waved wildly at me,

Those last leaves of the stand.

………………

Soon to be fallen, tonight was so dear,

“Till next year” we said to each other,

“Till then”.

Sleep well, I will see you in Springtime, Dear Friends.

…………………..

11/14/10

* Drawing by Racket Shreve.

** Maple Leaf stone carving by John Novak, with Corydalis lutea alba alongside.

The parents of this Corydalis lutea alba were a precious gift from Lincoln Foster, from the gardens at Millstream House.

H. Lincoln and Timmy Foster were for me……… and for eversomany others ……….. the gracious American Parents of Rock Gardening.

Please see their wonderful book, Rock Gardening , by H. Lincoln Foster, and Illustrated by Laura Louise (Timmy) Foster, 1968.

Posted in A Garden System, Long Blooming Plants, Plant Portraits, Things They Never Tell You, Your Reasoned Landscape | Tagged Corydalis lutea alba, John Novak, Laura Louise Foster, Lincoln Foster, maple poem, Racket Shreve, Rock Gardening, Timmy Foster | 9 Comments

Pumpkins and Other Long Island Characters

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/10/24

Harvest Holiday

On 10/10/10 I drove slowly through the Orient Point Park and wildlife reserve, which lies like a ribbon stretched out alongside the Atlantic Ocean at the easternmost tip of Long Island, New York. I was on the lookout for my old friends, the box turtles, who live quietly there (with turtle crossing signs to protect them) but was instead greeted by multitudes of dancing Monarch butterflies. The causeway I was driving was apparently also their flyway, and I was in the midst of a migration event. Hundreds of orange wings seemed all to be coming my way, bright and perfect triangles, presenting themselves at every angle and elevation against the blue backgrounds of sky and sea. Flying and floating up, down and sideways in the ocean breezes, looking like matching bits of orange silk, they created a motion picture with me in the middle. Magical.

That was just the beginning of the seasonal Long Island celebration of Orange.

Along the truck routes and farm roads of easternmost Long Island a red, orange, yellow and green palette holds sway at this time of year, the landscape canvas painted by the things growing there. All together they establish an ecoesthetic character for the farms and fields of the Island in fall. Every year I can look forward to the myriads of orange pumpkins showing brightly against the khakis of hay, sand, burlap, bushel baskets and corn fields.

The hand of man brings this harvest together, gathering the colonist pumpkins from the fields and seating them all together like a audience of quiet citizens amid the flattering yellows and russets of shrubs, trees and the harvest produce of the season. The red Radio Flyer ® wagons that you can take to the field to hunt up and pick your own pumpkin citizens seem just right for the purpose, their cheerful red echoing the mellow reds of harvested apples, shallots and the glowing hot red peppers hung to dry.

Hefty sacks of potatoes, hills of onions, tables of garlic and armloads of broom corn stalks line the roads in farmstands. The pumpkins are simply everywhere riding on the farm wagons which are covered from stem to stern with characters of all sizes. Most of these were the usual range of oranges, but I am delighted to report that the Cucurbita maxima Jarrahdale, a gray blue type of pumpkin, is now apparently being freshly appreciated and enjoyed alongside its orange cousins. Though known on Long Island since the 1800s, this kind was not much seen for a long while in the 1900s. Like heirloom tomatoes, there are heirloom squashes, and they too need preservation. It is said that Jarrahdales can easily keep a year in cool storage, and so they are a valuable food.

Jarrahdales are reputed to cross pollinate easily, which can be wonderful or annoying depending upon your purpose in growing them, but some of the outcomes can definitely be exciting from an esthetic perspective. I think certain individual beauties I met may have arisen from crisscrosses with other local varieties, since highlights of cream color or orange shone through some of their lovely gray blue skins.

The Jarrahdales mixed in, fifth and ninth from the left, and balanced in the center.

Another special pumpkin, Cucurbita maxima Moschata, is called the Long Island Cheese pumpkin. It got this name from its resemblance to a 10 pound wheel of cheese, in both color and shape. Deeply furrowed radially and quite symmetrical, it has an altogether elegant appearance.

Hmmm…If a particular Jarrahdale has deep furrows like a Long Island Cheese pumpkin, and creamy highlights in its grey blue overall, what do you think might have happened ? Anyway, I wonder, but these were just lovely, nomatter how they came into being.

Another more distantly related light gray blue Cucurbita squash is the somewhat homely Hubbard. Irregular in shape, but with its quality as a food to recommend it, the Hubbard originated as a named variety in my own hometown of Marblehead, Massachusetts about a hundred and seventy years ago.

The story goes that in 1840, Captain Knott Martin brought a special squash found on his sea travels* back to Marblehead, and gave it to a Mrs. Elizabeth Hubbard. She in turn told her friend and neighbor, the up and coming Marblehead seed trader James Gregory, that it was the ‘best squash she had ever tasted’. Soon afterwards, Gregory developed this gray blue variety, and purveyed seeds of it, according it the name Hubbard squash in honor of Elizabeth. Hubbard kept extremely well in storage, and so by the latter 1800s was popular as a staple food, carrying many families through the long New England winters before the era of prefrozen vegetables and home freezer storage.

Hubbard squash grouped at lower right.

I am always happy to notice that the diversity index of what is grown on the Island seems to increase every year. Some kinds of things once only marginally available are now more visible. There is apparently lots of encouragement these days for rare and heirloom varieties of apples, tomatoes, squashes, chickens, unusual perennials** and other marvelous things.

Some of this years special finds included the most complete collection of pumpkin and squash varieties I have ever seen in one place, artistically arranged for the world to enjoy and purchase. Balsam Farms, in their roadside stand, with the fields and tractor in view, represented to me a sort of summarising of the diversity and beauty of that ecotome. The pumpkin and squash photos were taken there.

I was thrilled by the number of kinds of tomatoes, the multicolored carrots, the purple cauliflower hybrids, and unusual varieties of pumpkins in many colors and blends, warted and unwarted.

And then there were the heirloom apples from the local orchards, many tried and true but unsung varieties and local variations on varieties. Just to have a chance to witness this unique harvest was a privilege. The apples had all been freshly picked that morning. Their tastes and textures were each unique and memorable, though, I apologise, indescribable.
Remarkably there is a Raspberry farm*** featuring just picked and delicious yellow raspberries. If you need to refresh your drawer lavenders to discourage moths, the harvest is in. There is plenty grown on the 17 acres at Lavender by the Sea.

On the South fork in Amagansett there is now even a farm growing wheat. Amber Waves Farm will soon to be able to provide breadmaking flour to the area. In doing so they will be adding a missing grain to the local food web. At the farm there is an ethnically diverse population of Chickens wandering freely about, providing eggs of brown or gray blue, depending upon just whose they are. The farm is part of the of the Amagansett Food Institute, a nonprofit organisation with outreach to adults and schoolchildren, even in the youngest grades. Its mission is to show people how to grow and use locally produced foods, to encourage small farms and to provide food for people who don’t have enough.

Eastern Long Island is very busy on October weekends. If you can arrange to go during the week you will be able to see all the things better, and perhaps to talk to some of the farmers. Try to take a weekday off from your other work.

You will have a wonderful Harvest Holiday.

* The parent squash is thought to have originated in South America

** Glover Perennials, Cutchogue, wholesale only

*** Oyster Ponds Farm, Orient

Posted in A Garden System, Most Popular Posts, Plant Portraits, Things They Never Tell You | Tagged amagansett food institute, butterfly migration, Cucurbita maxima Jarradale, Cucurbita maxima Moschata, Glover perennials, Hubbard squash, Long Island Cheese pumpkin, Long Island pumpkins, long island wheat, Marblehead squash, Monarch butterflies, Orient Point, pumpkin farms, pumpkin stories, unusual pumpkins | 153 Comments

Long Blooming Vines: Loniceras

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/10/06

Favorite Long Blooming Vines:
Some Prizewinning Honeysuckles

If you find a place in each view for one or more kinds of the longest blooming plants, and build your landscape pictures to complement their colors and character, your beds can nearly always be freshly beautiful.
These Loniceras are tough and reliable and contribute substantially to a long, colorful garden year everywhere they reside.

First Prize: Lonicera sempevirens Dropmore Scarlet……
…….

Dropmore Scarlet is the longest blooming vine of the Lonicera clan in our area, taking us through the entire summer season. Scarlet, who is an iridescent orange with yellow and red in it, will keep reflowering prodigiously starting sometime in June and go right through October.
Though she can grow up from locations that have modest light at the base of the plant, she needs sunshine on all the places where you want flowers. If there is less light there will be fewer flowers, but these vines are versatile, and if they can get a few hours of shafts of good daily light in the growing season, either of my prizewinning Loniceras still bloom quite well. In a modestly lit place you might well enjoy the warming welcome that Scarlet can provide all season, even if the flowering is spare.
Lonicera sempevirens is proudly a native North American species. Dropmore Scarlet resulted from a cross between Lonicera sempervirens and Lonicera hirsuta made by Dr. F.L. Skinner at Dropmore in Manitoba, Canada and was introduced in 1950.
Some of the other L. sempevirens varieties are also candidates with great garden promise.**

Second Prize:

Lonicera periclymenum Graham Stuart Thomas……

My second favorite long blooming Lonicera is Graham Stuart Thomas, who is usefully ivory, aging to light yellow, and these are easier hues than Scarlet’s oranges to add to diverse color schemes. While reblooming very reliably over a very long span, Graham is a bit less floriferous than Scarlet. Absolutely rock hardy, with excellent foliage, and nectar for you in its flowers, this is a vine I would not want to be without.
Graham Stuart Thomas was one of the greatest plantsmen and garden writers of this past century. It seems so appropriate that this excellent vine carries on the tradition of quality that his name has always represented.
For years I thought this Lonicera was a sempevirens variety, because the vine behaves like Dropmore Scarlet in so many ways, but Graham is actually a relative of a European wild species rather than our own continental native.
In 12 years of growing this plant I have never had it self sow or otherwise behave in ways that might indicate invasive tendencies.
…….
There are invasive Loniceras, so do be particular as to variety.
………

Growing Loniceras..

Siting Your Vines

These Lonicera relatives are beautiful in nearly every way, but like Clematis and climbing Roses, their legs are not usually their best feature. Providing a handsome skirting planting or a structure in front of their awkward legs will often flatter the overall appearance of your vine in the landscape. Something a few feet high or so will work. If it is something planted, your bed needs to be wide enough to accommodate the stature of all the plants sharing the bed. You want to anticipate providing enough regular water and nutrients for all the residents to thrive. If there is too much competition or too little water for them, Lonicera’s flowering may dwindle.
An airy place and good drainage are necessary as there can be mildew type problems with the leaves, and these are more common if the place retains moisture.
………
Encourage the Climbing
…..
.Both of these Loniceras are easy to please ecologically and malleable in their shape, but they need strong structures to tie them against as they grow along. If left to themselves to figure out where to go, they are bound to get floppy and messy. In fact, if you have a tumbledown wall or other disreputable something you want to cover, let these Loniceras cascade. They will clamber all over the place and take care of the coverage problem floriferously.
They don’t attach to buildings or structures on their own, which is a good thing because they won’t damage your home as self attaching vines do, but it means that if you want to use them in a vertical application, the support structure is very important. Your supports need to be designed to have places to weave through and tie to all along the projected travel routes of your vine. This construct is your way of telling the vines where you do or don’t want them to go, and helping them to get there. The upcoming performance of any climbing plant will depend alot on the support it is given. Hopeful tendrils, encouraged by tying up, will send up more new hopefuls. The further along the vine can get, the more lovely and continuing its flowering will usually be.
…….
If thoroughly supported in their climbs, these Loniceras will happily cover a 6 x 8’ section of fence, or elongate to even double that if encouraged to do so. Scarlet and Graham will also flower well even if kept small or spare by pruning, if such are your landscape needs, but the new shoots will still need structure and guidance. Usually these vines prefer to twine counter clockwise, so respect their wishes if you want enthusiasm.
…
The process of tying can be a lot to keep up with, but it makes all the difference in outcomes. A wonderful invention from Bosmere Tool Co. ® called a ‘Lever Loop’ allows you, in the blink of an eye, to clasp the shoots of a climbing plant to one another or to any nearby slender support without cutting and tying all those little bits of string. You gently pinch these clips to open them, so they can be moved around anytime. They last for years, and are inexpensive to begin with. They will change your relationship to your climbers for the better, but don’t give up your jute twine, you’ll need some of that too.
…………
Pruning Your Loniceras
….
Any stem left on after its flower has passed will begin to go to seed. This tends to take energy out of the flower production end of things. If instead you trim the goneby stems back to the next set of leaves – or further if you want to reshape the vine a bit – this helps the vine to put its energy into sending out new shoots, which will carry the flowers of the upcoming weeks.
Towards the end of the garden year, I stop trimming and so some fruits develop. They color up nicely to red and are eaten quickly by the birds.
…
Later I cut back these Loniceras, often quite drastically, to a base shape that is gracefully pleasing even in winter. I always leave a few long stems that have already accomplished the job of getting where I want them. These old wood stems will send out new shoots from just about everywhere along their length, and then flower on all the new stems. You need to anticipate allowing many feet of growth of in all directions each new year, so keeping a trimmed winter shape can also help to keep your summer Lonicera within your chosen bounds.

Color Worries: ………Uh Oh ……… Orange.
……..

“All colors are beautiful or ugly
according to their quality and place
in relation to other colors,”

Fletcher Steele, Gardens and People

Color is by context difficult or easy.
…..
Most people would agree that Dropmore Scarlet’s iridescent coloring is beautiful by itself, but the overall effect is in the orange range and there is a common prejudice against using orange plant materials.
…
This everblooming orangey red vine is particularly valuable because its warm bright tones draw your eye from a distance over such a long span of the garden year. The best thing about Dropmore Scarlet’s color contribution is that it goes on and on for 5 months, but this is also the difficult thing, because through all that time she needs to be sited with companionable colors.
Orange and orangey reds particularly argue with many ‘blues that have red in them’ and ‘reds that have blue in them’. Scarlet’s tones may make otherwise lovely light pink plants look sickly. Many Rhododendrons prefer to be elsewhere. There are definitely things you may want to avoid having in the same view.
…
Dropmore Scarlet, or any similarly colored plant, can be difficult to simply insert into the landscape because there are many plants flowering in the BIV*** parts of the color range at overlapping times of the flowering year. This steers many gardeners towards complete avoidance of oranges and reds as being the path of fewest potential color disagreements.

If Red is in your Blues or Blue is in your Reds,

Orange will be Safer in Some Other Garden Bed.

…..
Color planning changes everything. …….‘Accessorise Colorwise’

Celebrating the oranges and reds in particular places by making color compositions with them in mind prevents these problems. If strategically planted with only agreeable companions in the view, Dropmore Scarlet can become a beloved centerpiece for a great many pictures throughout the year.

This is not even difficult to accomplish.
.
To avoid color arguments I can suggest that Dropmore Scarlet is easy to partner with plant colors as long as they are on the ROYG*** parts of the color circle, and she also gets along fine with white or ivory.
….
I have sought out pleasant companions for the lovely Dropmore Scarlet, and below are described a few of her best friends in my landscapes.There are never any arguments with Scarlet in these compositions designed with her esthetic comfort in mind.
Chamaecyparis obtusa nana lutea and Chamaecyparis o. cripsii are yellow evergreens and thus all year companions to the ROYG color palette. The white Geranium sanguineum album has been chosen for nearby floors instead of her purplish red, lovely but contextually difficult color cousin. Nearby in the views, the papery light orange poppy flowers of Papaver rupifragum appear daily for two months and more, providing a tinted color echo for Scarlet. Hosta June, with yellow paint swaths on her leaves and colonies of Saxifaga umbrosa aurea provide foliage sunshine in the view. There will be bright orange Arum italicum pictum seedpods in summer, and their painted ivory on green leaves are welcome throughout their visible seasons. The gentle everblooming Corydalis lutea is an yellow enhancer sprinkled here and there on the planted floors nearby. Corydalis lutea alba keeps ivory flowers in a low light landscape alongside Scarlet from June through September.
There are lots of textural deep greens in the background. In mid summer white Cimicifuga plumes, yellow Ligularia Britt Marie Crawford and afterward Anemone j. Honorine Jobert join the composition. All these are lovely with the color set. Clematis paniculata takes us to the end of the year in complementary white floral enthusiasm.
Towards the end of the garden year the red, orange and yellow tones naturally begin to dominate the fall landscape, by then decorated with berries, russeting fall foliage and pumpkins, so Dropmore Scarlet’s flowers and berries are invariably welcome as color allies at this time of year.
…………..
Rules are also made to be broken.
Some purples can be very happy with some oranges.
I’m just saying to be wary, and maybe start with this easy ‘rule of thumb’ way with things that are likely to work well.

* There is a yellow Lonicera sempevirens variety called John Clayton which is smaller in stature than either of my first prize winners. This size class would seem potentially very useful, and the plant easy to site since it’s yellow, but my experience in our local 5b coastal ecotome has shown this kind to be more susceptible to aphid infestation than my aforementioned favorites.

Lonicera s. Mandarin is an exquisite terra cotta corally color but, in my experience, this vine had a disappointingly short blooming season and was overall a weaker plant than the Loniceras herein recommended, so I don’t use her any more.
…..
**L.s. Alabama Crimson behaves much like cousin Scarlet but is a bit redder in color. She appears an excellent candidate for our gardens. I have only been growing her for a few years, not nearly as long as I have my tried and trues, but she’s well on her way to my Best list.

*** Red Orange Yellow and Green = ROYG
Blue Indigo and Violet = BIV

Posted in A Garden System, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts, Plant Portraits | Tagged climbing plants, climbing structure, climbing vines, favorite vines, flowering vines, growing lonicera, growing vines, long blooming, long blooming honeysuckle, long blooming plants, Long Blooming vines, longest blooming, longest blooming vines, Lonicera dropmore scarlet, Lonicera periclymenum Graham Stuart Thomas, lonicera sempevirens dropmore scarlet, native vine, orange plants, orange problems, prize winning vines, prizewinning vines, pruning lonicera | 46 Comments

Plant Names and Why They Matter

By Ellen Cool | Published: 2010/09/30

“Most of us are bored with gossip and photographs

of people we do not know.

The beginner feels the same way about plants”[1]
…

The plant scene becomes more interesting when you understand the cast of characters a bit. To develop relationships with the plant players, you will want to get to know them as individual kinds. The only reliable way to do that is to know their true Botanical names.

These names are the language of the landscape, the working vocabulary that you will need if you want more than a petting and tending relationship with your plants. If you want to think about them on your own and with others, you will need to be able to refer to them.

Information Please
Once you have the Botanical name of a plant, no matter where you gather further reference information about it, the knowledge you acquire will be accurately related to the particular plant you are wondering about.
Learning about the plant materials enables you to choose the best candidates for your place by foreseeing where they will succeed ecologically and pictorially in your landscape.
…………..
Knowing the Name allows you to get more of the same thing again.
If it turns out that you grow and love a plant, you will be able to get more just like it or to guide others to that wonderful kind you have found.
……….
The most Beautiful Plant You have ever Seen.
To obtain a plant you want for your own garden, you could beg some seeds or a baby from a place where you see it, but otherwise, you will need the full name to get the plant you expect to get from anywhere else.
………..
There are Madison Avenue plants. [2]
Plants may be substantially more or less gardenworthy. There can be a great qualitative difference between one variety within a species and the others, yet the better ones often cost pretty much the same as their lesser relatives, both in cash and in effort to grow and keep. The less wonderful ones always seem to outnumber the best ones, but there are a great many plants to be choosy with, and noone can grow them all, so why not be discriminating ?
The best plants may be harder to get a hold of initially, but once you realize that the difference is substantial you will want to know which is which.

“Difficult plants if not successful after a fair trial

should be abandoned for easier subjects of which there are plenty”

Sir Peter Smithers of Vico Morcote

By carefully choosing the best, you will be protecting and propagating the exceptional ones for the future.
To understand the importance of the differences in the names, you can compare this to your type and brand name choices in groceries. You’re off to the store for your favorite cereal.You may want flakes, but do you want large ones or small, wheat, corn or bran? And you may prefer the one with the raisins, so you will search for the one with all these characteristics, and try a few different ones. Which one you end up liking best is up to you, but Kelloggs Raisin Bran ® and Post Raisin Bran ® taste different from each other.
Once you know your favorite, you want to be able to get the one you like so much again.
You can only do that with plants if you know their Botanical names.

“Without names there is no recognition,

without recognition there is no minding,

and without minding there is no future.”

Geoffrey Grigson[3]

Bottlephorkia spoonifolia (11)

The only Plant names which are accurate are

the Botanical Names,which are the

Generic names accompanied by their Specific Epithets.

Some people will refer to these names with terms such as

the ‘ ‘True names’, the ‘Generic names’, the’ Specific names’,

the ‘Latin names’, ‘the Binomial‘ names or the ‘Taxonomic’ names……

The Good News is that

All these terms refer to the

Same Plant Name,

= Which is the Botanical Name.[4]

Each plant is by its full Botanical name unique.
By considering the qualities and propensities of particular plant materials your informed choices can make all the difference in the world to the level of beauty and sustainability you can hope to attain in the landscape.
..………..
Common names
While charming, and sometimes informative, these names usually apply to a broad group of similar plants. These kinds of names may vary from place to place, from culture to culture and change over time. For such reasons common names don’t help you much in getting to know the special plant you were curious about any better.
……….
Some of the very best plants of all time are no longer in commercial cultivation.
Purchasing plants is kind of like voting. If people don’t pay attention, they may be buying and thus multiplying just the most popular plants of the moment.
You help the ones you acquire stay in commerce, and often the others do not stay.
You wouldn’t want to neglect the very best plants that have ever been, who would be so satisfying in the garden context. The better ones deserve to be remembered and asked for by Name.

“The Common is more Supported than the Rare.”[5]

So you will want to know Who’s Who.

Botanical Names Tell Stories.

“Each Plant has a Generic name and a Specific Epithet” [6]

The specific epithet is often a descriptive or characterizing word or phrase composed of multiple words.
This means that the true Botanical name of a plant may be a piece of descriptive prose, if only you know how to translate some pieces of the Botanical language.

These Three Things about your Plant will be parts of its Name:

1. The Genus, or Surname of the larger clan to which your plant is related.
This is given on the Left Side of the Botanical name
( = the opposite of the human name way)

2. The Specific Epithet
This follows to the Right of the Surname. The species and subsequent names of the epithet are often adjectives.
A species has traditionally been partly defined as a group closely related enough to intermarry.
Through these marriages there can ensue a great many closely related forms, some which are distinguishable by some meritorious characteristic from other close kin within that species. This may be, for instance, desirable color, texture, stance, shape, duration of bloom or pest resistance in this particular offspring.

3. The Variety
If there is merit to the differences between kin, that special kind of plant will perhaps get a subspecies or varietal name of its own and then will be separately propagated.
This third name is a very important bit because with only the genus and species names, you won’t know which offspring you might end up with from all those marriages.

Clues Within the Names
The species and subsequent names often work as adjectives. For this reason, embedded in the Botanical names are often partial descriptions of the particular kind of plant. They may contain clues to notable particulars of character, appearance in color or texture, and sometimes to behavior or ecology of origin.
Sometimes the variety name references the ‘Human story’ of that kind of plant. The plant name may honor the people, places or particular nurseries involved in either originating, finding and/or perhaps propagating the plant you are getting to know.

Manypeeplia upsidownia

As an example of descriptive naming,

from A Nonsense Botany by Edward Lear.

Botanical names are more easily remembered when you understand their intrinsic meanings.
The appended adjectives help you to understand things about your plants, so you will probably enjoy learning some of this vocabulary.
The plant below is related to all Clovers = Oxalis but note the appended adjectives. This particular kind has some special characteristics as described in its name.
Vive la Difference.
.…….
A Translated example from the Real World :

[8]

Oxalis triangularis papilionaceae ‘Atropurpurea’

Triangularis = shaped like triangles, = three angles
Certainly describes the leaf shape well.

papilionaceae = like a butterfly
In the night this plant closes up its leaves and they look like butterflies at rest.

Atro = dark, purpurea = purplish color
Dark purplish leaves which contrast beautifully with green foliage in the surroundings.

Your Translations

You will need a Plant Lexicon or a Naturalist’s Lexicon[9], whether paper or Cyber, to ‘decode’ the information within the Botanical names.
Whether the words came from Latin, Greek, old English or wherever, a Lexicon can help you translate the specific epithet to find out what the adjectives at hand actually mean.

If you can just be brave enough to begin to think in ‘plant language’, start with your few words. Add more words to your vocabulary little by little as you go along, just as you would with any language you were trying to learn. Having learned a little of the vocabulary, when you come across new plant names that contain this word you will automatically know something about the plant at hand, though you have only just met.
The important thing is to decide to put yourself in a milieu where the language is used, and pay attention. Make a beginning, do the best you can, and all will be well.
Learning a language takes time. Expect to take notes.

Never mind perfect pronounciation or exact spelling, ask about it later.
Just try for enough of the spelling to subsequently get Google’s help in the matter.

In “Winnie the Pooh” Christopher Robin made a sign for Owl’s door which said “Ples nok if rnser is reqrd”. [10]

We readers figured out what was meant.

[1] Fletcher Steele, Gardens and People
[2] Madison Avenue in New York City is renowned for having shops with the highest level of beautiful merchandise for sale, but the things are invariably expensive.
[3] From an article in The English Garden, By Plantlife International
[4] It seems to me that if we capitalise the terms “Latin” names and “Greek” names that we ought to capitalise “Botanical” names, as it refers to the language of the Plant Kingdom.
[5] Andrea Bocelli
[6] Michael Dirr, who always says things well.
[7] and (11) From A Nonsense Botany by Edward Lear
[8] Watercolor by Racket Shreve
[9] Horticulture Publications has recently (2005) published such a volume, calling it Plant Names Explained. It has lots of useful Botanical terms in translation.I also have a lovely old volume from 1944 called The Naturalists Lexicon by R.S Woods, and it serves me very well much of the time, though less complete for Botanical references.
[10] A.A. Milne

Posted in A Garden System, Long Blooming Plants, Most Popular Posts, Plant Portraits, Things They Never Tell You | Tagged A Nonsense Botany, beginning gardener, beginning landscape, Botanical names, Christopher Lloyd, Edward Lear, Fletcher Steele, gardenworthy, generic names, Geoffrey Grigson, identifying plants, landscape plant names, landscape plants, Latin names, Michael Dirr, naming plants, oxalis triangularis, plant information, plant names, Plant Names Explained, plant naming, plant varieties, Racket Shreve, species names, taxonomic names | 69 Comments

………….Your Journey Begins.

Hypertufa and Stone Container Gardens

The Smallest Gardens

Siting Trough Gardens : Zone 5

Making Troughs

Considerations of Shape and Size

Special Uses for Hypertufa Troughs and Pots

Happy Valentine’s Day……. Love, Earth

A Heartful Potato

Reusing Antique Granites

………………………………………………….What do you mean by ‘Granite’ anyway ?

Granite Splitting

Reshaping Granite for Reuse

Recycling Christmas Greens

Wreathing the Beds

Halloween Orange

Open Gardens in Marblehead 8/13/2011

To find out more about the Gardens open on that Day :
http://www.gardenconservancy.org/opendays/open-days-schedule/openday/438-marblehead-open-day

Euphorbia, Beautiful but Sometimes Dangerous

EUPHORBIA WARNING!!! BE CAREFUL OF THE SAP !!!

So Why Grow Them?
Because there are many wonderful things about Euphorbias to consider.

Snowy Valentines

Embossed Earth

Snow, Brooms and Squirrels

The Old Worn Corn Broom

Wreathing the Beds

Winter Preparation

Winter Arrangements, Indoors and Out

Dear Readers

Thematic 0.9.6.1 by Ian Stewart

Fall Tending

November Nor’easter

Search

Recent Posts

Categories

Pages

Archives

………….Your Journey Begins.

May 2012 Awards

A First Prize in the category of

Longest Blooming, Hardy Perennial Self – Sowers

goes to:

Corydalis lutea andCorydalis lutea alba. ……

The Smallest Gardens

Siting Trough Gardens : Zone 5

Making Troughs

Considerations of Shape and Size

Special Uses for Hypertufa Troughs and Pots

A Heartful Potato

………………………………………………….What do you mean by ‘Granite’ anyway ?

Reshaping Granite for Reuse

Wreathing the Beds

August Awards

A First Prize in the category of

Longest Blooming, Best Standing Self Sowers

goes to:

Linaria purpurea (purple) and to

Linaria purpurea Canon J. Went (pink)

To find out more about the Gardens open on that Day : http://www.gardenconservancy.org/opendays/open-days-schedule/openday/438-marblehead-open-day

EUPHORBIA WARNING!!! BE CAREFUL OF THE SAP !!!

So Why Grow Them? Because there are many wonderful things about Euphorbias to consider.

Prizewinning Naturalising Plants : Annuals and Perennials

.Self Sowing Comeback Plants for Zone 5B

Annual and Perennial Self Sowers

The Longest Blooming, Handsomest and Best Behaved of the Self Sowing Plants

Best Friends in the Garden

Techniques for Keeping Self Sowing Plants..

Subtractive Gardening

Tricks to Keep Plants Long Blooming

So Who are those Long Blooming

Self Sowing

Handsome and Reliable Plants ?

..…

PRIZEWINNERS 1980 – 2010

Part One :

The Front Row Plants = Featherweight Category

The List of ‘Longblooming, Self Sowing

Prizewinners Portraits

will continue in my next Posts.

Some of the Upcoming Front Row Prizewinners Are :

Embossed Earth

The Old Worn Corn Broom

DRAWING IN YOUR SNOW

DRAWING ON THE BEACH

Choosing your Materials

“Devi Guardare Tutto”

Thematic 0.9.6.1 by Ian Stewart

Harvest Holiday

Favorite Long Blooming Vines: Some Prizewinning Honeysuckles

First Prize: Lonicera sempevirens Dropmore Scarlet…… …….

Second Prize:

Lonicera periclymenum Graham Stuart Thomas……

Growing Loniceras..

Color Worries: ………Uh Oh ……… Orange. ……..

The only Plant names which are accurate are

the Botanical Names,which are the

Generic names accompanied by their Specific Epithets.

The Good News is that

All these terms refer to the

Same Plant Name,

= Which is the Botanical Name.[4]

So you will want to know Who’s Who.

Botanical Names Tell Stories.

Search

Recent Posts

Categories

Pages

Archives

Corydalis lutea andCorydalis lutea alba.
……

To find out more about the Gardens open on that Day :
http://www.gardenconservancy.org/opendays/open-days-schedule/openday/438-marblehead-open-day

So Why Grow Them?
Because there are many wonderful things about Euphorbias to consider.

Prizewinning Naturalising Plants :
Annuals and Perennials

Favorite Long Blooming Vines:
Some Prizewinning Honeysuckles

First Prize: Lonicera sempevirens Dropmore Scarlet……
…….

Color Worries: ………Uh Oh ……… Orange.
……..