A Gala Comes and Goes

Mar10

Last weekend Downingtown Pennsylvania played host to a ‘Galanthus Gala’, an American version of the late-winter gatherings which have tended to form amongst growers and admirers of the brave little snowdrop. As a grower and admirer I felt it was my duty to attend, and true to form I arrived late and stayed too long. Also true to form I forgot to take pictures, which really cuts into the the basis for any of my posts, but content and quality have never stood in my way before so here goes!

My only photo of the vendor area. Thank you Timothy for this one, when he stopped talking for a second to take a photo, I was inspired to do the same. The crowds have thinned and there’s bare table. This is several hours after the frenzy of the doors opening.

I was glad to be there talking to friends, going on and on about plants and snowdrops, listening to talks, getting expert advice, soaking in the atmosphere, enjoying the auction… it was the return of the gala I had missed during the two year pause from Covid.

A little bit of celebrity at the Gala with the famed author David Culp alongside a friend who came to join him. Many thanks to my friend Bridget Wosczyna for this photo, she has enough sense to photograph people as well as all the plant treasures.

So to stick with the important highlights let me just mention that David Culp has read my blog but I don’t think his friend Martha has. But… David’s partner Michael Alderfer admitted he had read the last post about our visit to his garden and that’s one of the highlights of my day for sure. I hope I wasn’t too awkward when he said it though, because for a few seconds I thought he was joking with me and so I of course tried to change the subject pretty fast. Fortunately the Galanthus Gala’s artist-in-residence, Gerald Simcoe, was also there and we started talking about his amazing gala centerpiece. I don’t know if Gerald reads my blog, but I do know that if you click the link for his name you’ll not only access images of some of his artwork, but you’ll also be able to find your way to his online snowdrop listings. All the galanthus in his display are out of his own woodland, and to add to the fun he’s listed some for sale on his site.

A corner of this year’s centerpiece featuring ‘Walrus’ and ‘Blewbury Tart’ behind. ‘Walrus’ struggles here, and to hear Gerald say he divides it and spreads it around just in case a clump decides to pick up and die made me feel a bit better about my own clump’s failure to thrive.

At times during the Gala events there was an air of sadness, as the recent death of Alan Street was still fresh on the minds of many. Alan was Head Nurseryman of Avon bulbs and is one of the great names of the snowdrop world. He was one of the featured speakers at the last in-person gala, and to hear him talk of special drops and the stories behind them, peppered with references to art, literature, and mythology, was a treat to everyone in the audience. I didn’t know him personally, but he struck me as a fun person with a spark of mischief, but also a plain nice soul. At the last gala I stumbled upon him and his friends eating lunch, and tried to be unobtrusive on a bench in the corner, but he spotted me and insisted there was still plenty of room at the table for another chair or two. And that’s how I ended up eating lunch next to Alan Street. I don’t think he ever read my blog, but he was so polite that day asking about my little backwater garden and what I was growing, that I felt like a brilliant grower, on par with one of the greats, and it was my highlight of the day.

A growing legacy in the Downingtown Friends Meeting House cemetery. Each gala, attendees are encouraged to bring and plant a few snowdrops in memory of loved ones. It has been heartwarming to see the plantings of past years begin to grow and flourish.

Of course these things end too quickly and before I knew it I was back in the mountains spending the evening taking kids for ice cream and dropping them off at basketball games. Just for the record these kids do not read my blog.

The Gala haul, a mix of trades and purchases but all purely excellent. For some reason I bought one more pot of gravel which claims to be an expensive peony seedling, and it’s things like that which you never see coming.

All the hardier purchases were planted out the next day, which is unusually prompt for me, because it was such a nice day (in spite of being just 24 hours after the latest slush and ice storm).

It took me a number of years, but I can finally appreciate ‘Modern Art’. This is after several years of a ‘just meh’ opinion.

‘Armine’ is particularly large this year. Here it usually colors more yellowish than deep green, and as it gets paler, takes on the airs of a much more expensive ‘color changing’ irrlicht drop.

Galanthus ‘Lapwing’ in front with his distinctive inners, and ‘Erway’ behind with his odd ovary and overall paler foliage and stems. I don’t know if ‘Erway’ looks the same everywhere, but here he’s pretty consistent in his pale coloring.

As you’ve probably guessed, the rest of this post is just random snowdrops around the garden. It’s been a long, drawn out season with few destructive cold spells, and no loads of heavy snow, so the drops have never looked better.

‘S. Arnott’ clumping up from his original single bulb. This is one to divide and spread around, I can’t imagine ever having too many.

‘Good Blue Leaf’ is one of my favorite forms. Everything about it is perfect and I’ll divide this one as well, more so you can enjoy the uncrowded blooms and foliage.

If all goes well I’ll be investing some time this spring into dividing and moving crowded clumps, and addressing wayward seedlings. I can’t possibly complain about volunteer plants, but I don’t want them confusing the names of my purchased bulbs.

Yellow snowdrop seedlings are marching away from the original mother clump of ‘Primrose Warburg’. I’m surprised by how consistent the seedlings are, nearly all of them could pass themselves off as the original… which they are not.

Perhaps I shall start a ‘good’ seedlings and an ‘average’ seedlings bed, in addition to my North Pole bloodbath bed and my white trash bed. Last weekend a friend traded me a ‘Beluga’ to swim with ‘Narwhal’, and threw in a ‘Polar Bear’ to see what happens. Hope it doesn’t get too ugly adding such a predator to the mix.

Lest you become too impressed by this year’s snowdrop photos, this view shows something a little closer to reality. Closeups and careful cropping make things look far lusher than an in-person visit would show.

Speaking of visits, the dog has become a regular even though he’s always a regular, and a total of two children have toured the garden. Although they haven’t mentioned being impressed by the snowdrops, I’m sure they are and that brings this year’s tour total to three. Perhaps this is the reason I enjoy the Galanthus Gala as much as I do. It’s always nice to escape the eye rolls for a day!

Snowdropping ’23

Feb26

It’s a shameful fact that for as much as I talk up the year’s snowdropping adventure, I also drag my feet in getting the post up. It’s been a week. A week and a little, and I need to stop going through the pictures again and again, reliving the day, and just get them out there with as little babbling as possible. Fortunately the morning is cold so maybe for a few minutes I can be productive while the flowers here soak in the sun before standing back up… and again completely distract me.

Naturalized snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), winter aconite (Eranthis hiemalis) and spring snowflakes (Leucojum vernus) in a Pennsylvania park.

I started the morning on my own, wandering through a Philly area park admiring the century old blanket of snowdrops and other spring bulbs which carpet the now neglected former estate. There used to be a dream that I’d stumble upon some priceless new variation in white here, but over the years I’ve become satisfied with just seeing them greet the spring each year and carry on unbothered. Between my crawling through the underbrush and bending over backwards to admire trees it’s a miracle I haven’t yet left the park on crutches after tumbling down a rocky embankment, but so far so good.

When planting trees always remember proper spacing and mature height.

I survived, and so off to meet Paula at her garden. It’s been a few years since I’ve had a full-sun, comfortably warm visit there, and this year we made it a priority.

The patches of snowdrops are becoming sheets!

I always get stupidly excited to see all the bulbs in bloom, but this year to see it all in full sun with the blooms wide open I may have let out a naughty word as I got out of the car. That’s a lot of &*^@g snowdrops was my eloquent first impression.

I always love the mossy bed surrounding this ugly old ‘Kwanzan’ cherry tree. There’s so much character in the tree and even though it’s a pain fighting the roots and keeping it in shape I hope it stays for a number of years.

It’s hard taking it all in yet finding the time to focus on all the different forms. She has quite a few and there’s a story behind nearly every last one. Fortunately Paula knows me well enough to not get offended when we’re talking about one clump and suddenly I turn to take a picture of something else or jump over to a new plant!

A big clump of a big drop, ‘Rodmarton Regulus’.

My wish list always grows during these garden visits.

One of the greenest of the greens, galanthus ‘Green Mile’.

A growing clump of ‘Amy Doncaster’

The witch hazel Hamamelis x ‘Princeton Gold’

There was something other than snowdrops which really caught my eye (besides the hellebores and witch hazels), and that was the pink viburnum (Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Pink Dawn’) in full bloom. It actually caught my nose, and I followed the scent over to where the shrub was tucked into the shrubby edge of the garden. Of course I’ve already looked for a source 😉

The fragrant pink blooms of Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Pink Dawn’

With all the distractions, this visit was running into our typical behind-schedule run-mode, but because we sometimes know our limits we made sure to pencil only one more garden into the day.

White snowdrops, blue reticulated iris, and a bunch of other things spread around the driveway slope of Paula’s garden.

It’s almost time for the Galanthus Gala, and Paula’s got a bunch of stuff dug and potted for the day, but that doesn’t mean there’s not more planning and preparation needed. I knew she was headed over to David Culp’s Brandywine Cottage to meet with David that afternoon and discuss, so of course I invited myself along.

The fenced in vegetable garden feels like the heart of the gardens at Brandywine Cottage, and even in the middle of February there’s a jewelbox bed of floral treasures outside the gate.

The gardens were at a snowdrop peak and I don’t even know why I’m bothering to post since books have been written and photos taken which are far superior, but it was an exciting visit and David was nice enough to say ‘post what you want, I enjoy reading your blog’…. um, did you catch that? David Culp said he knows I have a blog and says he might have read it? Honestly I’ll probably try and work that into nearly every conversation I have from this snowdrop season beyond, and I hope it’s not too embarrassing when he finds out.

Yellow on yellow with winter aconite and a nice yellow hellebore with just a faint blush of speckling.

Oh and also these pictures. David’s last two books, ‘The Layered Garden’ and ‘A Year at Brandywine Cottage’ were photographed by Rob Cardillo, so I hope I don’t embarrass myself on that level as well since all my photos rely on luck rather than skill.

Plantings along the driveway. There was actually an apology that we missed the lavender sheet of crocus which had mostly ended.

Not the fanciest view of the cottage, but this view shows how every bed of the garden is layered with snowdrops, snowflakes, winter aconite and other goodies which shine before the perennials and shrubs take center stage.

David and Micheal know how to live, and ‘A Year at Brandywine Cottage’ sounds real fancy with decorating suggestions, planting ideas, and delicious recipes and all the things you like to see in a book, but the crazy thing is that’s just Tuesday to them. You pull up on a Wednesday and there’s a bowl filled with floating hellebore blooms, celeriac soup with a crème fraîche, a toasty living room with fire burning, cutflowers, winter arrangements inside and out, friends pulling into the driveway… It’s pretty cool.

Paths through the garden, snowdrops are settling in everywhere.

There was a bunch of snowdrop talk. There was also snowdrop work which was in progress, but you’ll have to wait until the gala to hear more of that since the heart of it was going on in the growing beds. Clumps were being selected for dividing and potting up in order to fill the sales table, and for the sake of honesty I had to steer clear of any place where shovels and fancy snowdrops were close to one another. We headed round to the meadow and up through the hillside instead.

Paths meander throughout the sloped areas of the garden. If you’re familiar with ‘The Layered Garden’ you’ll know this all began with a noxious, weed-filled slope and a run-down shell of a cottage.

Treasures are tucked throughout the hillside.

Of course we stayed too long. The light was already dimming as we meandered back off the hillside.

Hellebores and a million other things cover every inch of the slope, and there’s much more slope than you can see here. In another week or two the scene will completely change as all the narcissus come in and the hellebores really get blooming.

The hillside is filled with hellebores, and for many people ‘Brandywine’ is more a strain of hybrid hellebores rather than a cottage. There’s a reason for that. Early on in the development of modern hellebores David asked friends overseas for the best and brought back a bunch of these to the US to start ‘dabbling’ with his own hybrid strain. He wanted a few “nice ones” for the slope and needed more than just divisions could supply, so over the years the ‘Brandywine Hybrids’ came into being. They were my first experience with a more upscale hellebore and the strain made plants with clearer colors and more outward facing blooms available to even the more average gardener.

A red section of the slope just getting started. Notice they’ve all been trimmed back of their old foliage. Thousands of plants all trimmed neatly and the debris removed…

A perfect combination of structured shrubs, background evergreens, and spring enthusiasm.

So hellebores are awesome, but for a little while longer all my focus is on snowdrops and snowdrop galas. David Culp’s snowdrop gala is set for this upcoming weekend (March 3rd and 4th) and will again make Downingtown Pa the epicenter of American galanthophiles, either in person or in spirit. There will be online events, in-person and virtual talks, auctions, and Q&As, plus my favorite part the specialty vendors. I’ve been good and only contacted one seller for a super-special plant, but that doesn’t mean my budget ends with that. There’s a reason I’ve been holding back with online sales 😉

So maybe I’ll see you there, maybe I’ll see you online, maybe I’m glad this weekend worked out well and didn’t disrupt my plans on attending, but however it works out I hope you’re having a great end of February!

No Apologies

Feb19

The contractor was supposed to put sheetrock up in the closet, and I did have plans to get a few coats of spackle on it and hopefully be able to paint by Monday, but he didn’t. Thank goodness for that. All of a sudden he’s the bad guy and I “can’t do anything more until the sheetrock is up”, and spent the whole Saturday looking at snowdrops. To make it look good I cleaned the kitchen while waiting for the sun to warm things up outside, but for the most part I was 100% unproductive. Maybe I needed that today. We’re dealing with a child who can now ask about borrowing the car, and that’s somewhat traumatic since all I can think of is never having a full tank of gas again.

The first of today’s favorites, ‘Kildare’. An elegant Irish snowdrop with a nice green lined tip.

Actually he seems to have gotten it in his head that he’s also buying a car. Maybe now is the time to break the news that their car/college fund has been “invested” in snowdrops and there’s not much left in the cupboard for things like insurance, gas, and new vehicles.

Finally. The ‘like a weed’ snowdrop which thrives for anyone and everyone has quit being miserable here and is now growing like he should. ‘Flore pleno’ is the basic double form of the common snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) and can quickly make large, showy clumps… for most gardeners.

He’s not getting the car tomorrow though. Tomorrow is Snowdropping ’23 and the car and myself are heading South for a full day of snowdrop overload. Hopefully it will be like pre-gaming for the Galanthus Gala, although if next Saturday’s snow materializes it will tragically erase my gala dreams by rescheduling a school competition to conflict with the gala. Oh the irony of a nearly snowless winter bringing a storm on the exact day when I need it to not snow. Grrrrrrr…..

Alongside the potager a more recent snowdrop bed is beginning to fill with goodies. ‘Long Drop’ is quite a nice snowdrop even though I don’t really need another plain white drop becoming a new favorite. It is though…

Whatever. The weather started out cold and ended up beautiful and that’s all that mattered today. Many drops are up and many are at their peak, and I’m going to quit commenting on how remarkably early this is for us even though it is.

‘Bloomer’ has become a nice patch, and I’m pretty sure I share a photo of this favorite every spring.

Next week is supposed to be cooler and if it is I might not even complain as much about missing garden time and going to work. With the Monday being a holiday that’s also a great thing. I think I’ll celebrate it as Galanthus Day this year rather than President’s Day.

A new one for me, Galanthus fosterii, is a species snowdrop with large flowers and fresh green foliage. It’s supposed to be a little picky about its spot in the garden so if you don’t see a photo next year you can probably guess what happened.

Whatever. The garden season is off and running and I could get used to this.

Snowdrops still a little floppy after a 23F night wilted them all down. Hopefully real cold and a dump of snow don’t still come to visit this winter.

‘Blonde Inge’ sprouted up in three days. I guess things are done waiting it out and just growing as if it’s March. The warm weather tomorrow will open these up and should reveal their glowing yellow inners.

So of course I’ll have more to report after tomorrow’s excursion and hopefully it’s as good as they normally are. I’ll be with snowdrop nuts all day, how can it not be? Enjoy!

A Beautiful Day in February

Feb17

Wednesday was beautiful and I got home just in time to see the latest blooms opening under the soft glow of evening night. That sounds exceptionally fantastic. In reality I ran into the house, ignored the family, grabbed the camera, and rushed outside to grab some pictures before it became too dark for my mediocre photographic skills. I almost made it all around the garden before dusk. Things are great and beginning to enter the territory of full bloom, and it’s disgusting I have to work for a living.

‘Diggory’ is completely up and open and has taken on his distinctive ‘puff’ shape. He’s really an exceptional snowdrop.

I’ll try to be quick today.

Alongside the driveway snowdrops and winter aconite are now joining with the pinks of the first cyclamen coum flowers. This is my favorite early spring combination of blooms.

Alan Street’s ‘Blewbury Tart’ is a favorite of many snowdrop lovers. For good reason.

‘Green Brush’ is picky here, and I’ve had to take up offers for replacements twice already, but he still stands out as an excellent green tipped snowdrop. I hope he continues to multiply in this spot.

There was no begging an offset of ‘Ronald Mackenzie’ from anyone. In a moment of insanity the gardener bought one of these “difficult to please in the garden” yellow snowdrops and is still holding his breath on year two, even though Ronald seems to tentatively approve of his planting site.

An orange snowdrop? I almost gave a little gasp when I saw the tinted glow on ‘Anglesey Orange Tip”. Last year I missed it (the color fades as the flower opens fully) but this year it’s unmistakable.

More snowdrops are yet to come, but today the front border along the street is beginning to gain a respectable show of yellow winter aconites. As an aside, it appears the gardener tried to get a stepping stone path started last year, but it also looks like he came up a little short…

‘Rosemary Burnham’ comes up with her deepest saturation of green and then fades either slowly or rapidly depending on the sun and temperature. If it gets cold tomorrow (which is predicted) this color should last nicely!

‘Brenda Troyle’ is one of the first named snowdrops planted here, and it’s nice to think that all the single bulbs will eventually become similar clumps given nine years of growing.

Hopefully that wasn’t too bad. This weekend I’m planning to get in my annual snowdropping adventure to points South, so of course that always deserves a post of its own, and in just about two weeks (March 3&4) there’s David Culp’s Galanthus Gala in Downingtown Pa. That’s a lot, so don’t start looking for a break in the snowdrop posts just yet. If all goes well there are many more to come so keep that “oh nice Frank, good for you” comment ready ’cause I’m barely getting started.

Earliest Spring Ever

Feb14

We can usually squeak our last day of local skiing in during the first week of March, but this year the middle of February will be stretching it. Spring seems to be here. Not Easter dress, bouquets of tulips spring, more of a garden waking up, could still get buried in snow kind of season where you’re somewhere after mud season but not yet ready to put the winter coat away completely. None of that makes sense, but maybe it does, and I suspect that’s a reason you still read this blog rather than just skim the pictures… not that I could blame you for skimming, it’s all just snowdrop nonsense again!

Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) and snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) next to the driveway.

Although it’s been remarkably warm the plants still don’t seem to have that urgency you see after a March blizzard melts and everything erupts. Tulips and daffodils are still lying low and only a few crocus have started sprouting. The snowdrops seem eager but a few are still holding back as if they’re also a little apprehensive regarding the calendar. Whatever. I declared spring last week and spring it is. The entire garden was finished off this weekend and nearly every bed is cleaned of winter debris and cleared of tired hellebore and epimedium foliage.

Just like my definition of spring’s arrival bucks the trends, my ‘cleaned up’ beds will also not please everyone out there. There are still leaves everywhere, but at least the birch trees were power-washed last fall, so thank goodness for that!

A good amount of rain is forecast for Thursday and that combined with more warm will likely get everything sprouting. Even a cold Friday night (just in time for the weekend) won’t be enough to stop the progress.

More leafy beds. ‘Richard Ayres’ in the center is looking better than he ever has, the mild weather has spared this early bird from his normal beatings.

You may have noticed I allow quite a few leaves to stay on my beds and if you really insist on knowing more I’ll be happy to go on and on about it. Around here my autumn cleanup has been reduced to barely cleaning out beds, mowing all the leaves up from the lawn, and then just dumping the chopped mulch over whatever lays there to cover it all up in a nice consistent chopped leaf look. I act like it’s a careless activity but to be honest I’m almost neurotic about stray grass seedheads falling into the mulch and having their beige-ness contaminate the brown-ness, and having spots where there are too many whole leaves, and not enough chopped bits to settle everything down, and…

This spot by the compost has just enough broken bits of twigs and small leaves to look like it just happened. Even the bit of brick looks like it was just left where it fell rather than placed there because I liked the mossy look of it.

So is it obsession or just some elaborate story being spun to cover up a sloppy cleanup? Maybe I don’t even know myself, but I do know my policy of mowing whatever I can saves me from a ton of trips to the compost pile. Weeding and compost turning and digging and hauling are a bunch of work so why not throw everything on the lawn, suck it up with the mower and then use it elsewhere (or back in the same bed) as a mulch to keep down the weeds? Saturday there were piles of hellebore leaves heaped on the lawn, Sunday there was a nice mulch smothering the bittercress in the tropical bed. I think that’s a win-win.

This is the first spring I’ve ever actually seen ‘Egret’ show it’s distinctive upward curl to her petals. Exciting? Of course. It doesn’t take much with snowdrops.

So it’s not even mid February and the garden is already tour-ready. I’ll be spending the next few weeks leading tours through the garden and reminding visitors to follow the official snowdrop path and to not stray into the moss garden. I’m sure everyone will be thrilled with my snowdrop stories and of course be amazed by my name dropping. Boy will I be busy.

A few years ago a friend gave me a tiny sliver of the yellow snowdrop ‘Dryad Gold Bullion’. She’s done well and even if she looks similar to her ‘Wendy’s Gold’ parent, I think she’s slightly more vigorous.

When the tour buses stop I wonder if they’ll notice the still-not-repaired bulldozer tracks across the yard, the scaffolding, and the piles of gravel and scrap siding. And the mud. Hmmm. Maybe in my enthusiasm I’m missing a few things but such runs the passions when spring comes knocking, even if winter was all of 8 days this year 😉

In With the Old

Oct26

I’ve been ignoring the colder temperatures long enough. A sudden freeze would have made the great autumn migration much, much easier but I’d surely miss a few things next year. The weather Saturday was beautiful and it’s the first weekend in a month where I didn’t spend most of my time emptying closets or running to the Salvation Army or painting or moving furniture… So spending an afternoon moving a few plants was (almost) a treat 😉

Putting everything on the driveway as a staging area seemed like a good idea… until even the driveway was filled.

Earlier in the month I’d already taken cuttings of coleus and other favorite annuals, hauled in the caladium pots and lugged the amaryllis in, and really thought I was on a good path… but then the plants started to accumulate. Hmmmm. Shame on those plants for growing so much.

By the end of the day things looked downright tame. A few things to shove into some dark corner of the garage when it really gets cold, and my precious tree fern which will stay out as long as possible.

So right now there’s no room in the winter garden for a January coffee, but I have a few months to straighten that out. I’m sure it will all work out just like I’m sure over the next few days I absolutely won’t find a thing or two more to bring in or a handful of ‘just in case’ cuttings.

Decent temperatures and beautiful autumn light made spending all day outside a treat. It’s amazing how things have recovered since the rains returned.

I wasn’t lugging all day. It was just nice to be outside and I’m quite talented at just wandering around ‘thinking’ or sitting around and ‘contemplating’. I guess we all have our superpowers even if we don’t all get to wear the fancy tights.

The late asters are nice enough but of course I’m still far too impressed with the purple stems of the ‘Sunnyside Up’ pokeweed.

One low point to this autumn is that nearly every last chrysanthemum in the potager’s chrysanthemum bed died out this past winter. In the spring I was almost happy about all the open space, but now I miss them, especially the big football forms with their huge, shaggy blooms. Who knows. The winter wasn’t all that bad and many of them had been with me for years, but these things happen. Fortunately I have backup plants, sadly not the same forms, but seeds are easy and if I want I can just collect a few seedheads this fall and within months I’ll have more than I lost… (as if I hadn’t already filled all that open space)

A mix of seedling chrysanthemums in the neglected former rock garden. Even after a summer of no-care and searing heat and drought they’ve come through with a nice show!

Who knows why chrysanthemums just die. Many of those big bushelbaskets of color sold in the fall aren’t actually hardy, and many more dry out too much to establish after the show is over, and some are just planted too late, but other times? I know all the autumn rains last year had mine extra soggy going into winter but I was still surprised every last one died. Wait, that’s not true. One plant which was decimated by some foliage disease and went into bloom nearly leafless last fall had two tiny sprigs survive. So the weakest plant survived… go figure.

The lone survivor in the the potager. The color on this chrysanthemum reminds me of the dahlia ‘Cafe au Lait’ and I’m beginning to like it, plus strong stems make it great for cutting.

Drifting aimlessly around the yard reminded me that for as productive as I was hauling other things in for the winter, the succulents that accumulated on the new stone wall this summer are still all out there. They’re all in heavy clay pots on top of that. Ugh.

Time to pay the piper. Free pots and extra cuttings sounded so harmless when I put together another 20 containers. Now they all need winter homes.

Wisdom has not followed age. I bought three more (big) terracotta pots last month when I just happened to ‘stumble upon’ a 30% off clearance sale, and I have every intention of filling them next spring. Sunday all of these came into the winter garden, even the ones I was going to leave out because I really don’t need them. Someone gave me another succulent which he knew I was eyeing. I know my mom has one which I’d like a bit of and my nephew as well. I give it two more years before this whole fiasco collapses. It’s going to be a great two years 🙂

The first snowdrops. A new season begins before the old has passed.

And then there are snowdrops. I was lukewarm for a week or two in August but now I’m just obsessing again. Snowdrops and cyclamen because they’re sprouting as well, and for a winter garden they’re also essential. And witch hazels. I see buds on those, wow it’s going to be an exciting winter. I hope it doesn’t fly by too quickly 😉

Hope you have a great week!

October

Oct7

September flew by and now it’s October. Autumn, and for maybe the first time in forever I’m glad to be done with summer. Maybe.

Colchicum ‘Lilac Beauty’ coming into full bloom against the blue of leadwort(Ceratostigma plumbaginoides). I think I show this scene every year, I like it.

It’s been chilly and gray and rainy and within 5 days I had my fill of autumn and started thinking about snowdrops and even colder weather. Cold I don’t really mind, it’s these depressing dark days which wear me down and I can’t imagine “living” somewhere with endlessly gloomy weather.

A colchicum speciosum which came as ‘bornmuellerii’ but might not be. The yellow next to it is a Sternbergia lutea, a fall blooming crocus look-alike which I need more of.

The gloom and rain also makes the lawn explode into growth and I’ve mowed it more times in the last month than all summer, and between that and the endless construction, and cleaning out the house next door, and making room for another person’s everything, and work, and lawyer talk, and explaining geometry and biology every night to a 14 year old, well I guess I know why September flew by. Good thing for colchicums and all those other autumn goodies, they sure make up for a less than complete daylily farm!

Colchicums by the driveway and a few 40% off goodies which I of course don’t need, but at least won’t need cramming into an already overfilled basement.

So it’s busy here and a new normal is setting in and a change of seasons might not be the worst thing to keep everyone moving along. The colchicums kicked off autumn and now hardy cyclamen and autumn flowering crocus and chrysanthemums are making it into a party.

Most of this would be fine in the open garden, but I do like having the most special of things all in one single protected space. Maybe next year I’ll evict the camellia seedlings and give them a try in the open garden.

Besides the miracle of copious rain, and its explosive effect on the lawn, the rain also performed a little miracle in the potager. It’s nothing to impress a Southerner, but having any kind of red spider lily in bloom this far north is something I did not expect to ever actually have happen but it did. Maybe there’s hope for it establishing. I wouldn’t complain if it settled in here, but knowing that the second bulb was also doing well up until it rotted last summer is giving me a few serious doubts.

Lycoris radiata, the red spider lily. Winter foliage will grow in another few weeks and then look miserable all winter as it wishes it were still south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Elsewhere in the garden the colors are all autumn and the vibe is all seedy.

Along the street the ‘Sunnyside Up’ pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is as lovely and promiscuous as ever. Unlike everything else here it didn’t even seem to mind the heat and drought this summer.

Even after a summer of neglect and weeks of triage watering there were still plenty of things which bounced back. The front border looks full and the potager is an overgrown mess. It might not be as tusnami-of-chlorophyl as previous years but I can deal with it.

I didn’t expect Geranium ‘Rozanne’ to endure the drought like it has, but it looks great and seems to have been reborn this October.

Maybe the thousands of dollars spent watering were worth it here in the potager… things limped through the heat and then made for one last hurrah now that it’s cool and wet.

For the last two or three weeks you can’t even tell the cannas and dahlias spent all June and July in misery. Stunted plants aren’t the worst thing for a gardener who never got around to staking.

Progress on the daylily farm hasn’t been as swift as I had hoped for. My sole employee gets a list each weekend, but then when Sunday afternoon rolls around it’s like he didn’t even have a list, since it’s been mostly ignored for two days and nothing was done. Last weekend he made a good point about taking a few cuttings and carrying in a few pots instead but he really could have done a little more in the digging department on top of that. Perhaps this weekend I’ll take him out back and give him a serious talking to. Hopefully he’ll see the light, and hopefully back there no one will see me mumbling to myself again.

Ok, I distinctly remember my mother in law saying ‘I don’t care, as long as it looks nice you can plant whatever you want’ a couple months ago when I asked about planting some coleus in her planter. Maybe I took that out of context, but so far there have been zero comments about a daylily farm going in on the side of her house.

So maybe the daylily farm will be ready by next spring, and maybe it will not. Whatever happens I’m sure it will mostly complement the tropical bed which has also somewhat revived from the rain… and is also just across the property line, in my mother in law’s yard…

Not a whole lot of tropicals in the tropical bed this year, but even the tropics have their run-down, abandoned-farm kind of areas. Thankfully there’s more yellow pokeweed here weeding around and complementing the red roses and purple verbena.

While the stunted cannas here bring me down a bit, it’s my Queen of the Prairie statue which brings on the only commentary about this bed. The statue has been called creepy, and it’s been questioned as to why it faces her kitchen window but that’s just coincidence and I think she looks pensively thoughtful and pleasant.

Although no one insisted the Queen remain in our living room I don’t think anyone expected her to be evicted to the back lawn once we bought the house. Personally I think she’s enjoying her trip back to the earth.

Something else who’s days are numbered are the tropical pots. Time to start thinking about who is freezing, who is becoming a pot of cuttings, and who is getting hauled back in for the winter garden. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that things have multiplied and been added to.

Obviously this begonia needs to come inside. What soul-less heathen would let frost touch it while it’s flowering its head off?

The new angel’s trumpet in a (heavy)20 inch pot looked much less alarming as a little free cutting last fall, and a couple elephant ear divisions were never expected to fill one entire half of the garage but then it happened. Better safe than sorry is what I always like to think, so of course they’re all going to get safe winter homes.

In May I almost let spider mites kill this. “pinch off all the leaves, soap it down, and fertilize and water the sh!t out of it and it will be fine” was the excellent advice I received. It would look even better if i didn’t forget to fertilize the last few weeks and missed a few waterings…

Other things are also finding their way in for the winter. If it’s an early freeze things might be easier, but if it’s a late freeze I’ll have way too much time to soften up and say what’s the harm in one more?

I hope this red mandevilla can survive the winter with me. Previous attempts have failed but how can I not try?

There’s always room for one more and it’s good to have all these things going on to carry us through the next month. Each month has it’s own surprises, and even if I didn’t need the surprise water heater replacement yesterday, having hot water again is almost as nice as a house packed full of somewhat appreciative houseplants and a garage full of sleeping bulbs and tubers.

Hmmm. I didn’t even think about digging things yet. That might be a November, as the snow flies, kind of project and I’ll wait until then to worry about it. One month at a time, right?

Planned Surprises

Aug23

Saturday I suddenly found myself on the road to Ithaca NY. It’s about a two hour drive from here and of course I have better things to do locally but wanted to see a few friends, and you know… there was a plant sale. Just a small thing done among members of the Adirondack chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society, but they have some pretty cool plants and for just two or three dollars a piece all the plants (donated out of member gardens) find a new home that morning. Of course I was more than happy to help out, and a couple alliums, ferns and a violet are now here in Pa with me and even better, all the extra daffodils I dug this summer are GONE… or at least most of them. Stupid me thinks I should replant some of the smallest ones to give them a chance to grow out so they won’t be too small to give away? Don’t ask. My accounting brilliance is matched only by my business sense.

Cornell Botanic Gardens. It was nice to stop into a garden which I’m guessing has a couple feet of topsoil, annual mulches of compost, and just the right amount of watering to grow sickeningly well. Here’s Hydrangea cumulonimbus mocking the approaching storm clouds.

The plant sale was followed by a luncheon and I just want to say that in between garden talk there was an invite to a garden which I really wanted to see, but I actually opted out of going. Weird, right? I think it was a combo of poor sleep, impending bad weather, and an overall end-of-summer-I’m-sick-of-drought-my-garden-is-a-disaster malaise. In hindsight I wish I’d gone, but at that moment I just wasn’t up to being social any longer so passed. That was an actual unplanned surprise, since on the way up I had a conscious thought of the possibility of being invited somewhere, and how excellent that would be. I hope I’m not actually getting old(er)!

I found this sedge to be far cooler than you would imagine a sedge could be. Carex muskingumensis ‘Little Midge’ I believe, even though the label said ‘Little Midget’ which would also be fitting. Quite the geometry on this little guy.

Apparently I was still young enough to add one side trip to the trip by pulling into the parking lot of the Cornell Botanical Gardens. I did want to see how their tropical plantings were coming along, but then surprised myself by liking the shade plantings even more.

Mukdenia rossii ‘Crimson Fans’. Seeing this was a first for me, and I always thought the red color was an autumnal, perfect storm, enhanced for catalogs, color effect, but here it is in late August doing its bright crimson thing as if it’s no big deal. Very nice!

And then it was back home. I pulled in at a suitably responsible and mature arrival time of 6pm, just in time to enjoy the evening light on the Lycoris. If you want to talk about surprises the fact any of these are blooming would be the premier surprise since they did not look all that happy this spring, and baked-clay dry summers are not supposed to encourage good bloom with these temperamental divas.

The most common surprise lily, or Nekkid lady (Lycoris x squamigera), is blooming more than it’s ever bloomed before. I heard they like derelict, neglected properties so perhaps the random construction debris and bits of trash I’ve thrown here are the secret to a good show.

There’s actually a second magic lily surprising me this year. I thought I was successfully killing off most of my plantings, but suddenly there’s an almost clump of Lycoris x incarnata flower stalks poking up between the squash leaves. If only I knew what went right with this spot I’d repeat it with the other bulbs growing just inches away but worlds apart in flowering-power… as in they’re not flowering at all… Perhaps they’ll also surprise me but I doubt it. Someone might have already poked around and found several have lost their roots to some kind of rot, and even though they’re sometimes called magic lilies, I think a miracle is closer to what we need.

Lycoris x incarnata, aka the peppermint spider lily, is a hybrid of two other Lycoris species. There are other forms, but this striped version is one of the more common garden forms. I think it’s quite awesome this year.

These two Lycoris and a few others are the cold-hardy members of a bigger family of bulbs which do well in the warmer Southern states and aren’t all that uncommon down there. Sadly they’re not hardy enough for this garden, but of course since I’m doing so well with the other ones, I also thought I’d try a few of the more tender types such as L. radiata, the red hurricane lily. With a bar already set so low by their cousins, it’s not hard to imagine that just the fact they’re still alive counts as a fabulous success.

Other not-cold-hardy things filling space on the sand terrace. With a timed drip irrigation system this at least is one part of the garden not miserable for rain.

I’ll take whatever fabulous successes I can get. Today it rained, and although the 0.06″ is not the 0.50″ forecast, it should green up the crabgrass a bit and at least give me a day off from watering… assuming I still even water. This weekend I almost moved from ‘trying to get a few things through’ to ‘maybe save a few perennials and shrubs so they come back next year’. That’s basically giving up for the year, and with school ramping up again, and construction crawling along, and with money evaporating faster than the rain, it’s never sounded better… until you consider the alternatives. Being stuck in front of the tv from now until snowdrop season or taking up a trowel and helping tile, or sitting through an entire football game? I think even a bad day of looking at weeds and wilted plants has its bright spots and I think I can do it for a few more days. Lycoris season is always full of surprises, and even if the surprise is in how disappointing they can be, the colchicums will be here soon and I can always count on them.

Have a great week, and may your garden get all the rain it needs 😉

A Few Things

Jun23

I’m watching the weather radar with my fingers crossed for some rain tonight. Its the typical summertime story for gardeners, where everyone else is hoping for another day of blue skies, while we’re sitting here hoping for a completely washed out day (or if it’s not too greedy, night, followed by a day perfect for weeding and planting but…). Things are’t too bad, but there’s some heat on the way and without a little rain the garden will start complaining. As it is the lushness has been sapped out of the lawn and the shade plantings are wilted, but to be honest I blame greedy maple roots for most of that.

It’s an oxeye daisy year in the front border. Winter killed off much of the fennel, and the daisies appreciate the open real estate. It’s not a fancy look, but still better than more yawn to mow.

A few plants don’t mind, in fact prefer, the drier soils. Here are a few of the more interesting things popping into bloom and looking quite good while they do it. Thing one is this red Echium.

Last year at the NARGS Ithaca plant sale I picked up an Echium russicum seedling and was a little unimpressed as it tried to flower amidst the lush chaos. This year I’m loving its look in the sparseness of a drier flower bed.

The milkweeds always put on a decent show, and I wouldn’t complain if more show up, although one clump of the common milkweed is plenty… which of course doesn’t explain clumps two and three and four throughout the garden.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is a weed not suitable for the cultivated garden. I like the fragrance though, and don’t mind pulling up every sucker which pops up in a 20 foot radius… every week… After bloom finishes I’ll cut them back to about 1.5 feet and the new growth will attract the Monarch butterflies.

The purple milkweed (Asclepias purpurescens) is quite showy and quite a responsible flower border inhabitant. This one hasn’t run around for me like it’s common cousin, and I actually may have to dig and divide it in order to spread it around. That will be a new one for me and it makes me a little nervous since to get this one going took a few failed seed attempts and then quite some nursing along before the clump flowered for the first time. Sadly I have yet to get a seedpod on this one.

Asclepias purpurascens, the purple milkweed. Nice form and foliage and doesn’t mind a little bit of a dry spell, unlike it’s similarly colored swamp milkweed relative.

Another cool new thing in the purple color family is this knapweed. I don’t like the most aggressive roadside-weedy ones, but this well-behaved perennial with the purple topped knobby buds is worth growing. I was so excited to find it through Nan Ondra’s Hayefield Seeds. If you haven’t already visited her site you should, the summer seeds are ripening and going on her list, and now is a great time to scatter them about for when the summer rains come (they will either sprout now or wait until cooler weather returns).

Centaurea atropurpurea, the purple knapweed. Purple flowers poke up from scaly flower buds, and they’re quite popular with the bumble bees.

The knapweed seed was sown last summer and is blooming now, but the next plant has been inching along for at least 6 years. Three small bulblets came in a ziplock bag with a note that they should be hardy for me, but I’ve heard that song before. They were planted in a couple spots, one died the first winter but the rest slowly grew and grew until suddenly this week I had a flower stalk appear. Honestly I was only just last week cursing the bulbs, because seriously I know it’s not the nicest garden but how long are we going to drag this out, and then all of a sudden a stalk and flower were there. It’s my first blooming of the Orange River lily (Crinum Bulbispermum) and I’m not at all annoyed that it was the smaller bulb which bloomed and the larger bulb is still just sitting there pretending to be exotic.

Crinum bulbispermum, a plant which may need to be beaten with a water hose to induce blooming since that’s what our contractor did to it… and the un-beaten plant is still just foliage.

Someone might remember I planted a few other, less-hardy Crinum lilies last summer, and shockingly they all survived with only some pitiful attempts at additional winter protection (I threw a bucket over them in January one cold night when I was feeling guilty about spending a bunch of money and not protecting them better). Those bulbs are far less-likely to flower this summer since they all appear to have lost much of their bulbs to the cold, but maybe next winter will be different? Maybe I’ll mulch and cover them and give them what they deserve? Maybe…

The lighter blooms darkened up by the end of the day to the typical Crinum bulbispermum color. I like them, even though I suspect they’ll be finished flowering by the end of the week. These bulbs by the way receive no winter protection and have been perfectly hardy to just under zero Farenheit.

So is three as far as interesting things go here? On to more mundane things. I think I will give up and rip out the tomatoes poisoned by the herbicide-laced grass clippings mulch from next door. They are all still sending up stunted, curled and twisted foliage and one plant is beginning to brown and die so I don’t think there’s much of a chance for any miraculous recovery. New plants are in the next bed over and although I nervously mulched them with grass clippings from my own yard, they’re still doing fine, so I guess eventually there will be tomatoes for sauce this summer.

The sad, stunted tomatoes. I haven’t noticed any damage in other plants, although some of the larkspur in this bed might be stunted, and thankfully the cabbage/cauliflower bed also looks fine in spite of getting the same mulch.

I’m wondering if it would be weird to fertilize the lawn and water it just so I can mow it and bag the clippings to put down as mulch in the vegetable garden? I guess it wouldn’t be much different than a hayfield that gets cut, and it’s still better than bagging the clippings to dump them in the trash, but maybe I should just work a little to keep the weeds down. Nahhh. Mulch is better, plus it conserves moisture and the earthworms eat it up and produce worm-manure all while aerating the beds with their worm-tunnels. It would just mean more lawn mowing, which in theory I am against 😉

The meadow garden where mowing is still a no-no. It’s drying out so tans are starting to show up. There’s some rudbeckia opening, but the white is nearly all Erigeron anuus, the annual fleabane. It’s an awesome weed for me and I let it grow wherever it wants, and I don’t think it’s greedy to hope for a blue or pink seedling to show up.

Tomorrow I’m repairing brickwork so that new siding for the addition can come right up to the old construction, where the bricks were pulled down. I’m not a mason, so hopefully it turns out good enough that nobody notices my mistakes, but the reason I’m doing it is so I can move on to powerwashing the deck and moving deck pots into position. Then I can re-do the drip lines and then hopefully no more hand watering the pots this summer. It will be nice finally getting the deck clean and ready for summer since it’s been somewhat neglected with all the debris out there and the mess. I sat out there on one of the chairs this afternoon and finally moved because a stupid wasp kept buzzing in my ear. That’s when I noticed the other wasps and turned the pillow over to find the nest I was sitting on. Hmmm.

It’s still not raining. There are downpours to the East and downpours to the West but nothing here so I hope tonight’s not a bust. In any case it’s still better than a February polar vortex 🙂

Rocking Ithaca with NARGS

Jun19

Last Tuesday I made the trip up to Ithaca, New York to put in my time as a volunteer for the plant sale being held for the annual general meeting of the North American Rock Garden Society (NARGS). It’s an easy two hour drive for me and although you wouldn’t be the first person to question a two hour drive just to work a plant sale, I did it anyway and thought it was an excellent way to splurge on gas money!

Mom: “It sounds nice, and don’t volunteers get all kinds of free things?”

Me: “They gave me a hat”

Mom: “Oh… >pause<… how’s the construction going?”

I arrived an hour early in order to make a quick run-through of the Cornell Botanic Gardens and the Robison Herb Garden. The weather was perfect, the gardens well-tended, and I even learned a few things.

‘These flowers were thought to grow in Paradise’ which after my own shoddy online research seems to refer to the sweet william version, but I’d rather think they meant Dianthus plumarias and that’s whats growing in my garden and thats clearly evidence I’m creating Paradise next to my garage. Boom.

So I learned my garden is a tin version of Paradise and I also learned that I need to grow Good-King-Henry. If one plant can create Paradise, maybe another can post an invite to a household elf named Heinz. Hopefully Heinz can help out with the dishes or something, and not be a mischievous troublemaker since we already have a dog for that.

I believe I would be a good caretaker of Heinz’s plant.

Maybe I didn’t learn quite as much as I should have from the herb garden, but sometimes people only hear what they want and of course I’m no exception. I did make it to the plant sale though, and I think I was somewhat helpful although for much of the afternoon I just kept running through a list of plants I wanted and then keeping my eye on people who seemed a little too interested in those same plants. I tried to be sociable but mostly bothered the vendors and other volunteers. Some new plant heroes are Ted Hildebrant of Coldwater Pond Nursery (Coldwater might have been the “Oh yeah, I’m there” clincher for luring me to the sale) from where I added three new witch hazels but not a variegated hydrangea paniculata or a variegated horse chestnut or red chestnut or hardy fuschia or… there were many temptations… There was also Karen Perkins of Garden Visions Epimediums who chose two epimediums which will be perfect for me, but hopefully not too perfect that I need more and more varieties…. and then there was Karma Glos of Kingbird Farm who I probably bothered the most. She had porcupine tomato seedlings and that’s all it took. In addition to the porcupine a few other seedlings joined my box and it was fun finding all those weird things which most people aren’t willing to take a risk on growing and selling. Those and a passionflower vine. Apparently I needed to pick one of those up at a rock garden plant sale so I did 😉

Yeah the sale was fun, but I could see myself getting into one of these get-togethers if the chance comes up again. The garden visits and excursions sounded and looked awesome, and the evening presentations sounded great. Attendees looked like ‘my people’ and I regret not talking to more of them. Maybe next time.

Don’t try digging in your dead sedge for the winter if it’s in a clay pot. The pot will still break.

Once home again it’s been a week of get the garden in order and do all the planting most people finished by Memorial Day, starting with my lovely little dead sedge. If the last five years have taught me anything it’s that doubling down works and deny deny deny. My sedge is not dead it only looks that way, and now I’m dividing and repotting it so I can make a nice mass display of what I believe is a still-living plant of ‘Red Rooster’ leather leaf sedge. It’s beautiful. It’s a sedge more beautiful than any other and everyone is going to want one and now I have five of them.

Division was a brutal process, I hope they don’t die… any more than they already have.

Speaking of dead things, one plant which I forgot about on the day my front yard was bulldozed has chosen life rather than the great unknown.

Hammamelis ‘Angelly’, a clear yellow witch hazel which might be back to beautiful in another 13 years if I’m lucky. I’ll wait 🙂

And a surprise flower amongst the amaryllis pots…

Better late than never, I do like how this *forgot the name*(edit: on good authority we will label it ‘Dancing Queen’) double amaryllis looks blooming in June. All the rest look a little Christmassy and out of place, but this one fits right in!

There has been a lot of progress this week. The gardener was mostly focused and had nearly all week to get things cleaned up and ready for summer. The driveway can hold a car again and hopefully the cannas and other things appreciate their return to soil and will soon explode into growth. I have high hopes.

All the best for a good Sunday and excellent week!

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Tag Archives: pennsylvania garden