More Of The Winter Work

Every Saturday from the first week in November until just before Christmas, I pose a question to my landscape crews. The closest answer to the right answer wins a cash prize. The prize money goes up as the weeks go on-as well it should. The work of doing holiday and winter containers, lighting, and holiday [...]

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Tulip or Not Tulip – THAT was the Question by Bob Hill

There is a soldiers and sailors memorial garden near the center of my small Ohio River town that also pays homage to our local police and firemen. Nobody wanted to leave anybody out. It’s just that kind of town.

When we moved here to Utica, IN about 40 years ago the tilted remains of an old house were perched at that corner, an eyesore that gave way to a wrecking crew. It was followed by some local guys with a few thousand bricks who created a semi-circular wall about five feet tall, most of the bricks carrying the names of the local families who donated to the project, not to forget the soldiers, sailors, police and firemen.

A raised bed was created in the middle of all that, and a poured sidewalk led out to the street. The sidewalk was flanked by two long flower beds, which early on were occupied by scruffy rows of very unhappy hostas staring up into bright sunlight –  NOT my doing.

The other previous attempts at memorial beauty included six Knock Out roses, whose alleged resistance to all manner of bugs and bacteria long ago proved to be greatly exaggerated, and some original Stello d’Oro daylilies whose brief spells of beauty were never worth the trouble.

I had donated a couple of dogwoods to the scene, along with some desultory ninebark and a very disappointing crab apple that never seems all that interested in vibrant spring color. All in all, the physical site has mostly been a memorial to horticultural mediocrity, a situation made all the worse as every person in town had to pass the site on the way in or out.

Gardens of Keukenhof

This fall, wanting and needing to begin all over again, I decided to go with vibrant rows of spring tulips in those long rows flanking the sidewalks; the roses to be yanked as soon as possible. Spring would begin a whole new botanic ballgame, with other upgrades to follow.

The inspiration for all this was a trip to Amsterdam early this spring, and the gardens of Keukenhof. My previous experience with tulips was pretty much limited to providing food for squirrels. Yet photos of complete tulip success in other places, and the knowledge that the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden planted 100,000 bulbs for its annual “Tulip Mania,” made it seem possible to succeed right here at the soldiers and sailors and police and firemen memorial.

Kukenhof

But it was Keukenhof, a mere 4,202 miles from home, that did light my tulip bulb. Here was a 79-acre park in which seven million tulip bulbs are planted every year. Yet it is only open for about eight weeks in the spring as its magic takes form in dozens of bright, vibrant beds shaped into animal, vegetable and mineral, the beds curled around long paths and lakes, hidden beyond slopes or raised up on sprawling structures.

The garden hosted a record 1.7 million visitors this year, a number that would have dropped to a mere 1,699, 998 had my wife and I not visited. There are no words to describe Keukenhof. It must be lived, walked, touched, felt, inhaled, remembered – and then taken home to Indiana to give it a shot on a slightly reduced scale.

We did, however, bring a bit of Keukenhof home with us. We ordered about 200 bulbs of various bright colors while we were there in late March, then saw them arrive on our back porch this fall from the necessary American distributor, which did slightly lessen the glow. I was almost willing to pay the shipping cost directly from Keukenhof.

Learning my squirrel lesson, we planted many of them around our house in containers, fancy pots and other collected receptacles which can be easily placed as needed for spring-time viewing. The rest were taken down to the soldiers and sailors and firemen and police memorial and planted in those long beds along the sidewalk. Each planting was covered in chicken wire to keep out the four-legged criminals.

The good news is that when you are planting tulip bulbs in the middle of a small town, lots of people driving by will honk, wave or even stop to talk. You have no idea how many people live in a small town until you are planting tulips at a four-way stop sign at the memorial garden.

Keukenhof

The bad news was there were not enough Keukenhof bulbs to finish the rows. Busy with other stuff, I decided to just go with the half-rows of tulips as an experiment. Then I got a call from a friend who works at a local big box store who said she had 200 screaming-red tulip bulbs left in the garden area; all mine for 85 percent off.

Some things are supposed to happen. She had hidden the bulbs for me in the garden area check-out booth. I snatched them up, checked them out of the store and planted them along the remaining sidewalk space at the soldiers and sailors and police and firemen memorial garden – as well as some up on the raised bed garden facing the street.

It was all so international, so much fun, so rewarding. Amsterdam meets Indiana. I do have to wait until spring to see the show; so will the visitors to Keukenhof.

Tulip or Not Tulip – THAT was the Question originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 29, 2017.

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Rock, me, Kokedama by Elizabeth Licata

Kokedama flanked with hippeastrum and seasonal arrangements really cheers up the winter kitchen.

Most Rant readers are likely familiar with Japanese moss ball plants, or kokedama. I was not, however (or maybe I forgot about them), and when I saw a pre-Christmas email from a local plant store offering kokedama of various sizes for sale, with images, I was there the next day. “I’m here for the kokedama,” I announced, and promptly bought 6 large ones for holiday gifts. As it happens, one of my friends had similar ideas, so now I have a modestly sized kokedama as part of my kitchen plant array.

Here’s a larger one that became a holiday gift.

If you google, you’ll find all kinds of sites devoted to the DIY creation of these things. No thank you! I’ll stick to my store-bought kokedama and put my energies into keeping it alive, which doesn’t seem hard if it stays in a shallow dish and soaks up water at need. (And it’s pretty easy to tell when it’s time to add water.) I will not, as many seem to do, hang the plant from the ceiling. That’s just going to make watering a pain—also, I notice that the moss tends to shed. Ferns are often recommended for kokedama culture, but the ones I bought are mainly sturdy house plants of office-surviving varieties. Ferns are fussy in houses where central heating reigns during the winter.

A new year, a new—to me—winter garden addition. Cheers to kokedama!

Rock, me, Kokedama originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 28, 2017.

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Merry Christmas From Milo

The work run up to Christmas this year had its ups and downs. We were fortunate to have a good many great winter and holiday container and decorating projects. That every one gets done one thoughtful stick at a time means each project takes whatever time it takes. Though we were at it 6 days [...]

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Plant-Based Landmarks at the U.S. Botanic Garden by Garden Rant

The year-old Museum of African American History and Culture on the grounds of the Washington Monument is still so hard to get tickets for, I’ve only seen the exterior (fabulous!) and the landscape (too new to look like much).

But while I’m figuring out how to get inside, at least I got to see the building rendered in plants at the U.S. Botanic Garden, part of its popular holiday display. The exterior crown-shaped elements are all walnut parts. (Learn more about the building in a Facebook video shared on the GardenRant page. )

The conservatory atrium was popular with visitors yesterday, so popular I had to wait in line to get this shot without selfie-takers in the way. This DC icon is the U.S. Capitol, which is probably more popular in plant form than across the street where congresspeople do their dirty work.

This year I didn’t go near the White House replica.

At least the Washington Monument is free of controversy.

Plant-Based Landmarks at the U.S. Botanic Garden originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 25, 2017.

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Season’s greetings from Key West by Elizabeth Licata

Where:

-You would barely imagine that a category 4-5 hurricane had swept past just a few months previously.

(Sorry, no Santa pix)

-Santa is everywhere, as a culture of white-bearded men has already long been in place and just requires a few seasonal tweaks.

-Front gardens are the most creative in the less-moneyed neighborhoods with the smallest houses.

-An organized committee (must be) regulates early morning noise as follows: truck-driven sand comber, 6-8; carts bumping over walkways pulling nothing: 6-9; drilling (doesn’t matter what), 7-10; sawing (doesn’t matter what), 8-10; roosters, at will, from 5 onward.

-People don’t instantly start talking about snow when they find out where you’re from; they’re cooler than that. Plus, everyone is from everywhere here.

-It’s the best place ever to escape from politics as well as winter.

Season’s greetings from Key West originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 21, 2017.

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A Winter Tale

Our winter installations have been accompanied by better than 12 inches of snow in the past week. The snow came on top of several week’s worth of bitter cold weather. I am surprised to have this much snow and bitter cold in mid December, but so be it. Fortunately most of the construction for our [...]

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A Holiday Aspiration by Thomas Christopher

“Disarming Hearts, Forging Peace” is the motto of RAWtools, and who can argue with that, especially at this holiday season?   Taking Judeo-Christian scripture literally, this organization is committed to transforming people-killing weapons into implements of peace.  Send RAWtools a gun and it will re-forge it into gardening tools.

RAWtools.org

This is a mission that resonates with me.  I have been a gun-owner since age seven, when my grandfather, a westerner whose heritage revolved around hunting and fishing, gave me a single-shot .22 rifle to teach me marksmanship.  He subsequently gave me a number of other guns as I graduated to actually hunting with him.

For my grandfather, there was no romance to gun ownership. Guns were just tools, he told me, and dangerous ones.  If, he said, he ever saw me playing with a toy gun or pretending to shoot at people, then he would take away my .22.  My grandfather was also, as a hunter, an advocate of gun control.  It was hunters, after all, who promoted legislation to limit the permissible size and caliber of guns used to hunt waterfowl, and who joined together in the early years of the twentieth century to limit the size of shotgun magazines and protect duck and goose populations.  My grandfather believed that a hunter should be able to bring down his quarry with a single, well-placed shot.

I have never owned a handgun or any other weapon designed to kill people.  Accordingly, I have been increasingly dismayed by the way in which the National Rifle Association has infiltrated hunting.  I quit a hunting club to which I belonged because support for the NRA became more or less mandatory and members were bragging about pursuing deer with handguns and assault rifles. Such guns are designed for killing people and neither would be the choice of someone whose goal is to dispatch an animal efficiently and ethically.  To carry them into the woods is just a way to rehearse people-killing.

I’m not ready yet to surrender the hunting guns my grandfather gave me.  I still enjoy hunting, although these days it tends to be a solitary exercise, just me and my dog.  But I would love to have a hoe forged from the barrel of an assault rifle.  As I cultivated my garden, I’d know that I had taken one murder-machine out of circulation.

RAWtools.org

As the scripture promises:  “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”  That strikes me as an aspiration whose time has come.

 

 

A Holiday Aspiration originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 18, 2017.

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Progress at Good Gardening Videos by Garden Rant

I seem to be passionate about turning people on to gardening and teaching them to succeed at it – whether it’s through writing, individualized coaching, or local activism.

To that end, this past year I’ve had a new and exciting focus – curating gardening videos on YouTube for accuracy and quality and helping people find them. I’m doing that through the educational nonprofit I created – Good Gardening Videos, with its ad-free website, YouTube channel and social media outreach. Here’s a year-end update:

In 2017 I found and hired the fabulous horticulturist and communicator Charlie Nardozzi to find the very best videos available on topics I’m unqualified to cover –  all edibles, and composting, too.

Our collection of curated videos is now 700+ strong and growing.

We’ve got Seasonal Guides – 14 of them! They’re collections of the best videos we could find on particular topics of seasonal interest – like holiday decorating, bulb-forcing and seed-starting this time of year – so that people can find the info they need when they need it.

Good videos showing native plants in gardens are few and far between, so after gathering the best native-plant videos I could find, I guest-posted on a popular wildflower blog to urge advocates to make videos for the cause! (And thanks to Gail Eichelberger for making an exception this once to her no-guest-post policy.)

We’re Getting Sponsors!

Starting with Garden Design and Gardeners Supply, companies with a history of supporting garden communicators are stepping up to sponsor Good Gardening Videos. They see that it’s not just a good cause, but one that’s creating more customers for them.

Your Help?

You, too, can help support gardening education that’s:

• Free online to all
• Evidence-based
• Pro-environment
• Targeted to North Americans (no need to sort through English TV shows)

Click here to donate any amount. Donors of $100+ are credited as “founding sponsors” permanently on our website. It’s tax-deductible. (GGVideos is a 501(c)(3) organization.)

GGVideos is very low-cost, as my work as editor is pro bono. Donated funds go to pay Charlie a modest stipend, and to buy targeted ads on Facebook to reach more gardeners and gardener-wannabees.

 

Questions/Frustrations

How to reach Master Gardeners? They need good videos to further their education and recommend to the public, but how do we reach them nation-wide or even state by state? One obstacle is Extension Universities not wanting to send their residents outside the state for information because it threatens their funding (sigh). And despite our policy of rejecting videos that make claims not based on evidence, there’s the fear that something will slip by us, I guess?

How to reach garden clubs nationally?

Surprisingly, except for a few blogs, the gardening media aren’t telling their readers about this new resource.

And like videos promoting native plants, there’s still a lack of good instructional videos on important how-to topics – like watering, pruning, using rain-garden techniques to slow down stormwater, etc.

We know that more gardening businesses will be making videos next year, and others stepping up their video marketing (thanks in part to Facebook now favoring over other kinds of updates). So we’re helping however we can, including by recommending videographers and good on-camera authorities.

Readers, your suggestions for getting the word out would be much appreciated!

Progress at Good Gardening Videos originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 15, 2017.

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The landscaping potential of snow by Elizabeth Licata

It’s not 12/21 yet, but winter has officially begun in Western New York; I had gotten my final bulbs in just a few days before the season’s first major snowfall hit on 12/10 (making for a really bizarre football game that day).

Photo by Mark Nowak

For the most part snowstorms are no big deal. You can survey a steady snowfall calmly and remark, “Yeah, we got this.” Tornadoes, wildfires, and hurricanes won’t be stopped by roofs and walls; they rage unchecked, wiping out neighborhoods in minutes. But as long as you’re inside with a heat source, a snowstorm can’t get you. If the winds aren’t heavy, it can even be fun to dress warmly and walk out into the snow. We’ve had one or two deadly storms over the past four decades or so, but the casualties were always due to not being inside (and there are usually timely warnings against trying to drive or otherwise travel outdoors during a bad blizzard).

Yes, I’ll take snow over anything else nature throws my way. It’s even pretty. Especially when it covers a landscaping job that seems designed to be blanketed in snow. When we moved into our offices, which had been an industrial complex, this was a weed-tree-filled mudpit. Now it is handy for summer parties and it has beautiful color in fall. But I think I like it best at this time of year.

The landscaping potential of snow originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 14, 2017.

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The Finishing Touch

The moment I saw this winter project, I knew a lighted garland wrapped around the front door surround would bring all of the winter elements together. A garland attached to that limestone surround some 25 feet off the ground that would describe the entrance to this home is the stuff of fairy tales. I told [...]

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The Best Seed Company in the World by Allen Bush

It is time to say good-bye to the wonderful and versatile Jelitto Perennial Seeds—at least in one sense. I’ll be clocking out, for the last time, at the end of the year.

I am grateful to my friend Klaus Jelitto for giving me a job 22 years ago. There has never been a dull day.

A perennial business, with an astounding selection of over 3,721 different seed items, was, from the beginning, right up my alley. All I had to do was convince the rest of North America to buy into my passion for perennials. I approached my work as pleasure, though I’ll admit: I was a little more adrenalized than most about perennials and gardening.

I love growing seeds.

Klaus Jelitto started the company in 1957 on a shoestring. In the beginning, he visited nursery customers between Stuttgart, Germany, and Landskrona, Sweden, in a rusted VW Beetle. He kept a bedroll handy, in case he needed to sleep on the side of the road. The first few years were hand-to-mouth, but hard work and good fortune enabled Klaus and his wife Margot to keep the business afloat. After moving six times, as the business grew, the company settled in Schwarmstedt, Germany, in 1992.

Klaus Jelitto 2004

Jelitto Perennial Seeds today is a small company of 32 gifted, hard-working employees. There is a United Kingdom and a Japan office as well. This year is the 60^th anniversary of Jelitto Perennial Seeds.

I opened up a Jelitto marketing office in Louisville, KY, in 1996. I was the sole American employee until the business expanded in 2002 and the company hired Mary Vaananen. As a moniker, North American Manager doesn’t scratch the surface of Mary’s talents or her devotion to Jelitto’s customers. Mary has a vast storehouse of seed information, plus she is a superb, artful gardener, an inspirational speaker, and a great friend.

Georg Uebelhart collecting seed in Yunnan, China 1997.

Georg Uebelhart now runs the Jelitto show. I first met the precocious plantsman in 1987 when he worked as an international intern for Kurt Bluemel. Georg lives and breathes hardy perennials. Klaus Jelitto hired him after he completed a year with Bluemel.

Georg later confessed to Klaus that, in a move atypical of adolescents the world over, he had put out his own small seed list during his teenage years in Basel, Switzerland. Georg’s selection included wild collected seeds of Swiss herbaceous and alpine plants. He promised his customers that he would beat Jelitto’s prices.

Georg Uebelhart and Mary Vaananen in the Sarah P. Duke Garden in Durham, North Carolina 2016.

I’ll stay in touch with my Jelitto friends and colleagues. Klaus and I email regularly. Mary Vaananen and I will still hang out. My good friend Georg Uebelhart and I will continue travel to beautiful wild places to explore native plants—wherever they grow.

I lucked out in so many ways. I couldn’t ask for more.

But then Georg Uebelhart gave me keys to the candy store.

Retirement never looked better.

I can order anything I want from Jelitto—no cost!

Call me biased. I love Jelitto Perennial Seeds!

Jelitto staff in Schwarmstedt, Germany 2017.

Here’s a short list of my favorite 22 Jelitto pick hits (1996-2017). They’ve all been grown in Kentucky’s Zone 6.

Alcea rugosa—My favorite hollyhock.

Alchemilla sericata ‘Gold Strike’—Littler than the common lady’s mantle and tolerant of Kentucky’s heat and humidity.

Aquilegia canadensis ‘Little Lanterns’—A dainty and durable version of the Canada columbine.

Baptisia australis var. minor—You’ll need to wait three or four years for this to come into its own, but then you’ll have an easy and long-lived plant for years. Don’t sweat it. You’ll never regret this smaller baptisia.

Bigelowii nutallii—A charming and enchanting new perennial for me.

Coreopsis pubescens ‘Sunshine Superman’—A low-growing flowering fool with a long season of bloom.

Dianthus arenarius ‘Little Maiden’— You can’t miss the fragrance. Great for rock gardens and troughs.

Digitalis ferruginea ‘Gigantea Gelber Herold’—A tough foxglove with yellow blooms.

Echinacea purpurea ‘Magnus Superior’—Shouldn’t all coneflowers be grown from seed?

Eriogonum allenii ‘Little Rascal’—Thick, silvery-gray rosettes and long-blooming yellow blooms. Drought resistant.

Eritrichum canum-hybr. ‘Baby Blues’—I’m tossing in a free-flowering, self-seeding annual. Blue flowers from May until frost.

Goniolimon collinum ‘Sea Spray’—White, statice-like blooms with beautiful silver-gray leaves. Excellent for rock gardens.

Heuchera villosa var. macrorrhiza (Autumn Bride)—The fresh, unadorned mother of so many of the newer hybrids. Still one of the best.

Iberis sempervirens ‘Snow Cushion’—Smaller candytuft.

Knipfofia hirsuta ‘Fire Dance’—Easy-to-grow and lower growing.

Penstemon x mexicale ‘Sunburst Colours’—You deserve this penstemon.

Pulsatilla vulgaris ‘Rosen Glocke’ (Rose Bells)—Pasque flowers are terrific, early spring bloomers.

Rudbeckia triloba ‘Prairie Glow’—A later blooming black-eyed Susan with red tones.

Scutellaria resinosa ‘Smoky Hills’—A favorite, well-behaved skullcap.

Thalictrum polygamum—If I had to pick one tall plant…

Thermopsis chinensis—The early spring blue-gray buds open to brilliant yellow.

Tricyrits hirta—No one should be without toad lilies in partial shade.

The Best Seed Company in the World originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 13, 2017.

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Hooping It Up

If you’ve frequented Detroit Garden Works during the winter/holiday season in the past 4 or 5 years, you’ve seen Rob’s light rings. Inspired a number of years ago to wrap a trio of vintage grooved wagon wheels with string lights, he went on to design and have manufactured steel hoops specifically engineered to light the [...]

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Plant-Adjacent Gifts to Myself by Susan Harris

My family stopped long-distance gift-giving long ago, so holiday shopping for me could’t be easier – what does Susan want?

So last week I bought myself a spanking new bike! Not gardening related, but it does let me tour neighborhoods at the right speed for garden-observing, and at a faster clip, see lots more parks by bike trail than I could on my old clunker.

Martina modeling “In Bloom – Burst of Color”

Then over the weekend my shopping at the local Holiday Craft Show took a decided plant turn when I came upon textile designer Martina Sestakova, whose company name is “joy” in Czech (her first language) and has the mission of “sharing the stunning beauty of our world via painting and photography.”

I learned that plants are her primary inspiration, which is true of the two scarves I bought. The tag accompanying “In Bloom – Burst of Color” explains: “I am an admirer of anything flora. Thousands of flower photos on my computer are the evidence.  So, I committed to a watercolor drawing of a bloom, added a few computer-generated magical touches, and now you may have fresh flowers (well, almost) around your neck at all times.”

“Pine Cone”

I also couldn’t resist her “Pine Cone” scarf, especially after reading its story: “I have a thing for pine cones. I love the layers, so immaculate yet so unique. I love the colors, light on the top, darkest black in between the layers. I love the texture. With my camera nearby (always!) I snapped a photo of a pine cone that would prove to be the perfect basis for this striking black-and-white scarf! Are you into pine cones? I think so.”

Wow! I’ll be looking at pine cones in a new way from now on.

The same Holiday Craft Show is my go-to source of jewelry, and I snapped up some “Tree of Life” earrings.

As for actual plants, I’m excited about the hot pink Amaryllis that White Flower Farm sent me.

No Christmas tree for me, though my cats would sure love one. But this year I get to enjoy the smell of fresh-cut conifers – the sadly overgrown junipers I wrote about in “Can these Junipers be Saved?” Most commenters recommended ripping them out but I’m having too much fun pruning them with the fabulous new loppers I bought for the occasion – an actual gardening gift to myself.

Plant-Adjacent Gifts to Myself originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 7, 2017.

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If nature bats last, which inning is it? by Elizabeth Licata

An albino fawn in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn (photo by Alan Bigelow)

The assault on wild places continues. As I wrote about here, two national monuments, both in Utah, are much closer to being (drastically) reduced in size: Bears’ Ears by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by half. What’s next? I would guess plenty; we’ve already heard that drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is part of the current tax bill, now undergoing the reconciliation process.

But we don’t have to look to the far corners of the US for proof that natural habitat is ever-shrinking and pretty much always under attack. We’ve all seen wild places disappear much closer to home. Bruce Adams, a WNY writer that I work with, wrote about this recently in his weekly column, Long Story Short:

These fields were home to rodents, snakes, birds, deer, just to mention the animals I personally encountered. These were my fields, mine and my friends. It’s where we played, hiked, camped, and picked wild berries. I got my Boy Scout fire-starting and cooking badges in the fields.  We made “forts,” and had adventures. I read my first Playboy there.

Then they built Maple Road, and with it came traffic that cut off our neighborhood from the endless horizon. The Boulevard Mall came soon after, and more traffic, and then more streets and houses, and gradually our fields shrank until they were gone. I didn’t know it then, but I was witnessing suburban sprawl.

Other commonplace examples, of course, are the increasing incursions of unwanted wildlife into our urban centers. In Buffalo, we now have a coyote issue in huge Forest Lawn Cemetery, which is located in the middle of the city. The coyotes are eating fawns from the cemetery’s largish deer population and startling the many human visitors who walk there regularly. (The permanent residents seem OK with the whole thing.) The cemetery, with the help of the SPCA, is now responsible for maintaining this ad hoc habitat.

There will be lawsuits regarding the loss of these big wild places. We can support those efforts and speak out against those losses. We can also do our bit to maintain the new, ad hoc habitats that are once again appearing near our homes. Sprawl happened, as Bruce says, but the animals are still here. We can keep our trees growing, plant hospitably, feed the birds, and nurture the insects. Nature will punish us, no doubt, but I’d still rather be in its dugout.

If nature bats last, which inning is it? originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 5, 2017.

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At A Glance: Holiday Garlands

To follow are pictures of garlands we have installed at one time or another. Why so many pictures? I like them. I treasure making them. I like that no matter how different they may be, each and every one celebrates the home and garden. It is just that simple. Winter garlands ward off the winter. [...]

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Insights from Germany by Thomas Christopher

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending a lecture sponsored by the New York Botanical Garden, and it was eye-opening.  The speaker was Cassian Schmidt, who since 1998 has been director of Hermannshof, a combination botanical and trial garden situated on six-acres of in the hill-town of Weinheim north of Heidelberg.   This garden has been redefining the European concept of naturalistic design – Piet Oudolph is one of its disciples – yet it isn’t on the radar for most American gardeners.  That should change.

I’m a member of a generation of gardeners that was raised to venerate the English horticultural tradition.  The impact of this has been useful aesthetically – British gardeners such as Christopher Lloyd had much to teach us about the use of color and the construction of artistically sophisticated perennial and mixed borders.  But meanwhile the Germans, whom American gardeners have largely ignored, were exploring the intersection of aesthetics with ecology, developing a very distinctive style that we could well afford to study.

As described by Cassian Schmidt, the Hermannshof style involves the study of natural habitats and then echoing them in garden design.  This style is quite distinct from our American naturalistic planting in that it does not emphasize an exclusive use of native plants.  Instead, as I understood it, the German tradition, at least as expressed at Hermannshof, will combine plants from similar habitats all around the world.  Thus, a steppe-inspired planting would be likely to include not only plants from Central Asian grasslands but also from the South African veld and North American prairies.

For this reason the German naturalistic planting is not an ecological restoration but rather a derivative.  As such it doesn’t offer the same value to wildlife, but it can offer more aesthetically than a straightforward restoration. Examples of this distinction can be found in Piet Oudolph’s designs in the gardens of the High Line in New York or at Lurie Garden at Millennium Park in Chicago.

It’s significant that both these examples are set in urban locations where reconstructing a native planting would have been Quixotic at best.  But if the German-style “New Perennial” gardens do not offer ecological authenticity, they can provide sustainability.  If the habitat-model selected is well suited to the site, then the plants drawn from habitats of this sort will all be adapted, and, experience at Hermannshof has found, tend to co-exist comfortably.  Indeed, years of studies there have found that such ecologically-inspired plantings flourish with just a fraction of the inputs of material and labor required by similar-sized conventional perennial plantings.

This is a compromise worth considering.

 

Insights from Germany originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 4, 2017.

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Holiday Garnish

A holiday garland is an especially festive and personal garnish to an outdoor holiday display. There are few parameters and no rules about what constitutes a garland, but for the fact that it has length and continuity such that it can hang from something. A garland does for a winter garden what a vine does [...]

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How one Garden Club is Changing with the Times by Garden Rant

“Takoma Hort” dedicates new garden in honor of its centennial.

Who’s old enough to have belonged to a garden club back when they were known as cliques for privileged white women? (The Savannah Garden Club made famous in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil comes to mind – their drunken lunches, their expelling of members tarnishing the club’s good name by getting divorced.)

For years I was active in one of the oldest garden clubs in the U.S. – Maryland’s Takoma Horticultural Club, established in 1916. I used to claim that it may even be THE oldest in the country, though according to Wiki,  that title goes to a club in Athens, Ga, established in 1891. Oops.

Curious about today’s garden clubs and how they may be changing, I asked the gang at “Takoma Hort” how that club has changed because at 101 and counting, it’s continues to thrive.

Out with Flower Shows

The club’s origin story is unusual among garden clubs, as it was started by men, mostly hort geeks who worked at a nearby plant research center.  But women were soon allowed in and the focus expanded to include flower shows, which were elaborate, with 100+ categories, certified judges, and the need for 20+ volunteers. The shows were largely abandoned long ago, and now I only hear of the flower shows put on by plant societies.

New and Continuing Activities

The club’s speaker-based meetings are still popular, but the topics have changed in recent years. Now the big draws are talks that cover food-growing and eco-friendly gardening.

Open Gardens have replaced garden tours, which are more labor-intensive events. Open Gardens are easy because just one member’s garden is open to drop-ins on a Friday night in season. I’m told these social and learning events are very popular, and benefit the club by attracting neighbors and even members of other garden clubs, resulting in new members for Takoma Hort. Membership Chair Carole Galati tells me they’re “great for club PR and show how much fun gardeners can have!”

More social events include a summer picnic and a potluck dinner in winter.

Regular plant swaps are extremely popular, and the activity I miss most since letting my membership lapse. Members go home with free plants and tips on growing them.

Free garden consultations, where experienced gardeners in the club visit a member’s garden to offer suggestions, are an obvious benefit to joining.

July 4 Parade

Marching in the town’s July 4 Parade is back, after a lapse, and gets the attention of the whole community.

I’m told that the jury’s still out on field trips, an event the club has tried lately. They’re a lot of work to organize and so far, the turnout has been low. But they haven’t given up – they’re planning a family-oriented trip in 2018 to the local Audobon Society, something that may attract younger gardeners with kids.

Selling bulbs at the Takoma Park Street Fair

Clearly the most labor-intensive of the club’s yearly activities is the buying and selling of massive quantities of bulbs. It was originally done as a money-saving project (through buying in bulk) but today the savings aren’t so great, yet the project continues because, I’m told, “It’s a tradition and people look forward to it.”

Communicating Differently

Printed newsletters were abandoned at least 10 years ago to save on money and volunteer time, and almost all members had access to computers by then anyway. (Monthly newsletters are now sent out by email and posted to the website.)  Around the same time the club launched its website and started its popular Yahoo group, enabling members to get advice from each other, offer their extra plants, pass on gardening news, and more.  The club has recently created a group on Facebook, where it’s so easy to share images of plants and gardens.

Dues Still Low

Remarkably, club dues are still just $12 a year – a bargain by any measure. That’s the paltry price to participate in all club activities, though speaker meetings are open to nonmembers.

One big improvement in the club’s finances, enabling it to keep the dues that low, is the decision to leave the local federation of garden clubs, which charges clubs $8 per member/per year to be part of the federation. Get that? Takoma Hort had to pass along 2/3 of its dues income to the federation, with little to no benefit. Years ago the club needed the federation to provide judges for its flower shows, but get this – the judges had to be served lunch, specifically on real china, and generally treated like the society ladies they considered themselves.

Takoma Hort happily said good riddance to that nasty bit of garden club tradition.

How one Garden Club is Changing with the Times originally appeared on Garden Rant on December 1, 2017.

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