There’s a Thing Called the World’s Largest Gardening Lesson

Time for some international news!

From the Kuwaiti Times we learn about a “gardening lesson” hosted by HGTV (so they’re everywhere now?) at which 286 participants attended and were “taught the essentials of growing their own organic produce.” The lesson also “debunked myths surrounding gardening in Kuwait, helping to inspire residents to get their hands dirty all year round.”

So first, I wonder about those gardening myths, which seem to include one about Kuwaitis not being able to garden all year round.” But what else?

The turn-out for the event and the fact that some waited for over an hour is also cited as showing “the great interest of the local community in gardening and planting.” Okay, cool.

Guinness

The teacher for the event (Alzainah Al-Babtain), who created the PlantNMore website and Instagram account, declared it “an honor to be involved in this historic event.” Which raises the question – was the whole point to break a “record” and get some press for HGTV?  Coz it worked!

And how did they DO that? By inviting an “official adjudicator from Guinness World Records” to attend and “verify the attempt and present a certificate to the organizers.” The official declared that “I can confirm that a new world record has indeed been set today and that Kuwait is Officially Amazing.”

So Guinness isn’t just confirming the breaking of ridiculous records but also gets to name whole countries as “amazing”!

HGTV

From the Kuwaiti Times we also learn that the channel we call HgTV and love to rant about is “the Middle East’s leading home and garden channel,” with such “globally popular home improvement and transformation shows as “Property Brothers,” “House Hunters” and “Flip or Flop.” The same crappy, nongardening shows as here!

There’s a Thing Called the World’s Largest Gardening Lesson originally appeared on GardenRant on January 31, 2020.

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Monty, Monty, Monty

Cue the swelling music, and then …

Huge!
Magnificent!
Spectacular!
Astonishing!
Extraaaooordinary!

Count on hearing those superlatives and more over the course of Monty Don’s three-part American Gardens, which aired on the BBC earlier this month and can be seen stateside here and other sites. A book is on the way.

As Don states in the intro to each hour-long episode, he’s trying to define the American garden, though doubting from the outset that this is possible. The first hour is devoted to the Northeast and (some) Midwest, the second to the South, the third to the West.

A longtime garden presenter (Gardener’s World in the UK) and writer, Don sticks mainly to large public gardens, some well-known private gardens, and a couple community gardens. In my view, this dooms the entire mission. Is it possible for places like Longwood, Chanticleer, Lurie, and Lotusland to represent American gardening practice? While I’d agree that many US gardeners gain education and inspiration from these destination beauty spots, the sites themselves, in their near-perfection and studied showmanship (as Don states repeatedly), say very little about we garden—those of us who do.

Still, what was Don to do? Take a tour of average gardens in average neighborhoods? He’d likely lose his audience for this and jeopardize his other gigs. Maybe best for us to sit back and enjoy Don’s journey, which is full of luscious videography of desert gardens, wildflower meadows, tropical jungles, and stately European-inspired formal landscapes. An elementary school garden and a Bronx community garden are nods to ordinary gardening. I do admit that prairie meadows are intrinsic to our recent focus on native plants and that many US gardeners are warming up to the wonderful world of cacti, which are showcased in the immaculate desert gardens. But these spaces do not define what we’re trying to do in our gardens, if such a thing is possible; they never could.

It gets interesting when Don breaks into gentle criticism, calling Longwood “a circus,” and wondering about the long fenceless expanses that characterize suburbia. Mind you, he hardly mentions the L word, choosing instead to speculate that a lack of fences might represent our yearnings for neighborliness and community. Ha. There are also a few words (very few) about water use when discussing the estates and golf courses of Palm Springs. That said, Don’s undoubted knowledge and expertise inform every visit, so it’s possible to learn more about even the most well-known properties.

At the end of the third episode (spoiler), Don decides to go for it: “I came to the conclusion that the American garden was one that was characterized by an attitude: the pioneering, bold spirit of trying new things, and pushing outwards.”

That’s a safe thing to say. I have to wonder what would happen if Don accompanied garden bloggers on a couple of Flings, which focus mainly on private gardens, many not professionally designed (as almost everything Don saw is). I think he would have come a lot closer to a working definition.

Strangely, Don’s discussion with Adam Gopnik in Central Park rang the truest. No one area dominates or defines it. No rhyme, no reason, just cool stuff.

Monty, Monty, Monty originally appeared on GardenRant on January 29, 2020.

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Great Courses with Linda and Melinda

I was researching a blog post about my local library, digging deep into its online resources, and came upon something I associate with a high price tag –  Great Courses. Yes, if your library system, like mine (but not others in the DC area) subscribes to it, there’s lots on offer there for free (though not all courses). The courses claim to offer “unlimited video learning with world’s greatest professors.” Oh boy.

Eager to see if they deigned to cover gardening, I scrolled to the  Hobby and Leisure category and, along with photography and dog training, found some actual gardening courses and experienced a gasp of anxiety over the possibility that they’d hired a know-nothing to do the job. (Memories of bad information from “experts” on “content mills” never seem to fade.)

But oh no, Great Courses is legit! Their two gardening teachers are none other than Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott and Melinda Myers, and I couldn’t have chosen better myself. They’re both up-to-date on the best, evidenced-based gardening know-how, and great good communicators, too.

Having now watched a few lectures, I was impressed with the company’s high production values, too, including great graphics (possibly the best graphics I’ve ever seen illustrating pruning – a task not easy to demonstrate).

Linda’s “Science of Gardening”

This course should be required viewing – for Master Gardeners, garden communicators, and most of all, anyone who’s ever portrayed plants or products in a black and white, binary way. (You probably don’t know who you are.)

Linda’s chapter on “Weeding out the  Myths” could be especially impactful if the right people watched it – with an open mind. Which is required if you already have strong feelings one way or the other about permaculture, glyphosate or native plants.

On the great native/nonnative plant debate, Linda challenges the claims of native-plant superiority and argues against mandates requiring their use in landscapes (as opposed to in ecological restoration projects). She has a great list of things that benefit wildlife even more than focusing on plant origin, in her view – like creating vertical structures, and reducing the amount of highly managed lawns.

Melinda’s Courses

Melinda has four Great Courses so far: on food gardening, container gardening, “Make your Trees and Shrubs Thrive,” and “Your Best Garden and Landscape in 6 Lessons.”

As a pruning geek and shrub advocate, I homed in on her tree and shrub lectures and was thrilled to learn a few new things about pruning. And having followed Melinda’s teachings in print and YouTube over the years, I don’t doubt her advice one bit.

A fun part of watching Melinda’s videos was recognizing photos of some of the gardens I’ve seen with her, as part of garden blogging or writing events over the years in various cities. Like the garden in Buffalo above. (Right, Elizabeth?).

More Great Courses I Want to Take

The company soon found me and sent me their fancy print brochure, in which I found a few off-topic courses I’d like to take:

• What Makes Music so Powerful and Stirring?
• Writing Creative Nonfiction
• Gain Strength and Flexibility at Any Age
• Improve your Writing by Rediscovering the Lost Art of Crafting Sentences
• Master the Art of Moving Meditation and Improve your Physical Fitness and Mental Well-Being

The Cost of Great Courses

Here’s where I’m honestly confused because the cost seems to vary between free (if they’re available through your local library) to $16 on sale to a full price of over $500 per course. For example, “Science of Gardening” is on sale now for just $25, the “regular” price of $234.95 having been crossed out. Or you can subscribe to “Great Courses Plus” for $49.95 monthly or $360 annually. Or just use the free 14-day trial to binge-watch quickly or start paying, for more.

What it’s Like to be a Great Courses Professor

Just curious, I asked what it was like to work with Great Courses. Linda wrote:

I really enjoyed working with the Great Courses staff. They recruit lectures..and they don’t tell you who recommended you. So that’s rather intriguing. Normally it’s faculty with academic teaching, so it’s interesting that they found me. I am apparently the first faculty from WSU invited to do a production.

They built me a great set and I worked with two content editors to make sure that all the demos and props were just right. I can’t say enough about the professional quality of the production.

They are located in Chantilly, VA and that’s where their studios are (part of The Learning Company). Field filming was obviously as local as possible. They pay all travel and expenses, and then you collect royalties every year, just like with books.

And from Melinda:

The first two were shot in Virginia just outside Washington DC where Great Courses are headquartered. We worked on two properties owned by employees – one large and one small as well as a botanical garden and garden center.

The next two were shot in WI with the production company I use for Melinda’s Garden Moment TV. This was much easier, as I could create, monitor and tend the gardens throughout the season. Most of the food gardening video was shot at my place, as well as the trees and shrub planting. Since I regularly produce video in the area, it was easier to find nearby locations where I could shoot other demonstrations.

This was a long term goal for me – track and demonstrate gardening and landscaping planting and care throughout the season/year to help gardeners understand gardening concepts for greater success and satisfaction.

 

Great Courses with Linda and Melinda originally appeared on GardenRant on January 24, 2020.

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Winter Sun & Guilty Joy: A Letter to The Midwest

From the editor: Rant readers following the verbal sparring between our own Scott Beuerlein and guest ranter Marianne Willburn may be wondering if the daggers had been sheathed for good or just for the holidays. This week, after the two met up at the Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show (MANTS) and Scott spent an evening good-humoredly roasting her at Maryland’s Brookside Gardens, Marianne offers an olive branch with a few thorns and a tough topic for discussion….in letter form. Will he answer? 

Lovettsville, Virginia

January 22, 2020

Dear Scott,

I’m trying to remember now how we left things in November. It’s probably safe to assume you were bitter; and I believe I was sitting in front of a roaring fire stroking a cat, reading Lloyd and quietly chuckling over a sharp sentence or two.

In truth, it is a Jack Russell that I stroke, though the fire exists, and so does the chair. I have an unreasonable love for these little dogs which I must admit was fostered by a friend in England and her series of intelligent, ball-obsessed terriers.

Mungo.  Garden dog. Vole killer. Part-time writer.

The love affairs one experiences in one’s twenties – be they man, beast, plant or country – make a deep impression on the psyche, and are tough to shift. I foresee an equally long series of JRTs in my own life (Mungo is my second), punctuated by my husband Michael’s desire for sloppy, loveable labs. I would tell you to try the breed, but they can be little devils and you certainly need no further reason to give in to that opioid addiction you keep mentioning.

How we left matters as the sun shone on a little house in Maryland on Sunday is far easier to remember, as is the loveliness of your wife Michele, who, as you say, is far too good for you and has an incredibly sweet smile. I’m thrilled the two of you were able to venture East for MANTS and even happier that you were able to attend the dinner party held in your honor, deep in the country, and referred to by many of the DC Beltway Crowd as “way the hell out there.”

I did warn you to keep driving until the banjos started playing. If you thought it was tough getting to the festivities on Sunday, my house is just across the Potomac River and down a two-and-a-half mile gravel road. Many of my friends have had to buy four-wheel drive vehicles just to keep drinking our wine, and complain bitterly up until the moment they are sitting on the deck surrounded by the night sky.

I wonder what Michele thought of that motley Mid-Atlantic group of pedants and plantspeople, yards deep in an 1840’s Federal – and many of them exhausted after a week trudging through the wonders and warrens of a Baltimore nursery trade show? Michael can only handle a half an hour’s discussion on epimedium foliage before he begins to lose consciousness and begs for a glass of single malt.

Did you switch dinner partners between courses as instructed? I’m afraid that I interrogated a very decent native plant nurseryman and his wife a bit ruthlessly during the salad course, but I love a good discussion and he brought up a few excellent points that I will file somewhere in this poor brain of mine.

Soaking up the sunlight on that wide porch with you and Michele and a very nice gentleman named Paul, and not discussing global warming was one of the joys of the afternoon. It has disturbed me over the last few years that it is widely considered flippant or insensitive to take some pleasure in the weather when it is unseasonably warm; or to do anything other than discuss the impending apocalypse when a massive snowstorm forces us to unplug and unwind.

Well he’s happy, anyway.

Instead we must rend our garments and gnash our teeth and shake our fists at the sky or a passing politician (there’s always one within arm’s reach in this part of the world). Guilt and Anxiety I suppose to be our constant companions from here forward, whether or not our sinks carry the weight of compost bins (I have two), and we regularly use ancient green tools such as clothes lines. (Can’t beat that fresh scent.)

I like to think I have changed enough cloth diapers on the back seats of vehicles in Mid-Atlantic winters to earn me the ability to turn my face to the sun with pleasure during a January warm-up. Even if it means there will be no tight, touchable blossom heads on Hydrangea macrophylla again this year.

A handful of joy.

It is an interesting question don’t you think? If we somehow find the ability to turn off all the voices in our own heads shouting about the mortgage, the hydrangea, a new suspension system for the Subaru, and a pressing deadline (or five), are we allowed to turn off the voices around us and be happy in the short life we are given on this Earth – living as responsibly and as carefully as we can as individuals?

I feel increasingly that as gardeners we are soldiers in the literal trenches.  Forced to cope with what is, while our generals bicker over another political win or loss, and civilians weigh-in from armchairs far away.

We learn to remediate early springs, late frosts, 35-inch-above-average annual rainfalls, a greenhouse full of lost stock, a crop devastated by blight, or bugs. We are adaptable in a way we should be proud of – and for that matter, so are many of our horticultural charges.

If we must cope with the effects of a changing climate, can we not admit to moments of joy in the midst of adversity without being shamed? Our anxieties will only line the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies.

Rainfall that did not stop – The summer of 2018.

…and Mungo could not have been happier.

Drugs aside, gardening is obviously the answer when it comes to quieting the soul. For all your bitterness over meconopsis, you and I both know this.

I have watched a cutting of Atlas cedar root over the last several months and felt the weight of the world melting away when I look at the tiny grey tufts of new foliage happily protected under a cloche. You could bottle and sell the endorphins coursing through my blood in those moments.

But I fear we are making our gardeners, and worse, potential gardeners, nervous wrecks with the sheer number of rules they must follow or be damned.

For example, I sat through a Master Gardener meeting not so long ago where hellebores were touted, only to have a freelancing health and safety officer making sure we all knew they were poisonous and that we might want to make other choices.

I’m afraid my exclamation of disgust was not as under-my-breath as a room of that size might have merited.

Hellebores for God’s sake. Call out the National Guard. Contain the area. Kiss your children.

Chris Martin put it best I think in Coldplay’s Don’t Panic:

“All of us are done for. And we live in a beautiful world.”

Did I mention that he and I started at UCL the same year? You were dropping so many names on Sunday I probably couldn’t get a word in.

Perhaps I am only feeling the weight of living so close to the constant turmoil in Washington. Friends in Missouri say their dinner parties rarely turn political, and when they do, there is no shouting over the bread pudding – only discussion.

Is this your reality? What did you call yourself… “a simple gardener from the heartland?” Are you viciously throwing miscanthus plugs at each other out there; or are you pushing chairs back from the table like Browning’s Bishop Blougram and settling in for a lively debate over your Big Gulps?

Speaking of which, I thoroughly enjoyed the roasting at your talk Friday night. Yes, there was a lot of palaver about African savannas and something about a woman with her white-trousered leg in an open pit toilet – the image of which I can never erase – but overall, a lot of laughter, and I do think we need more of that in this world right now.

That, and good red wine. I didn’t tell you (or anyone else for that matter) but I’ve gone off the grape for the month of January, and by the time you read this the horror may well be over. Even Michael doesn’t know. I can’t bear being watched. If you knew the temptations I have overcome these last two weeks. MANTS alone. Dear God. Gardeners and writers can drink, damn them.

Warmly,

 

 

P.S.  There is new UK plant porn on the market – I knew you’d want to be informed at once. Jimi Blake’s A Beautiful Obsession has come to American shores.  I can guarantee I will be able to grow less than a third of what he’s fondling with those magic Irish fingers, but I shall read it anyway.

P.P.S. Beth Chatto’s biography by Catherine Horwood is also here. I enjoyed it, and revere St. Beth perhaps a little more.  Little pink pills and a lover, as it turns out.  I guess none of us is superhuman.
_________________________________
Marianne is a gardening columnist and the author of Big Dreams, Small Garden. Read more at SmalltownGardener or follow @smalltowngardener on Facebook and Instagram.

Winter Sun & Guilty Joy: A Letter to The Midwest originally appeared on GardenRant on January 22, 2020.

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Ready to release beneficial insects indoors?

Yes, this is a thing. When I posed the question to a few close gardening friends, I got either or both of these responses: “Huh?” and “NO WAY!” However, I know someone who does this and says it works.

While chatting with a houseplant hoarding collecting friend of mine, Johanna, about how people will do anything to get rid of houseplant pests, she mentioned she had ladybugs indoors for pest control and had just found a nymph, which showed they were breeding. Naturally, I was intrigued. “Tell me more!” I urged.

It turns out Johanna initially brought some jumping spider indoors from her garden; they don’t build webs and, she says, “keep to themselves.” After that, she ordered green lacewings—notorious aphid eaters—but was disappointed when these simply vanished. Finally, she ordered 1500 ladybugs (the minimum order from Arbico Organics), and after distributing some to friends, released them in her closed off plant room/study (shown above). At first, it was a bit disconcerting. “That’s a metric fuckton of ladybugs in a confined indoor space,” she notes.

But after a day or two, she reports they settled down and got to work. She’s also introduced a few predatory mites to control spider mites on her alocasia collection. All of these insects were ordered online (the primary plant/plant supplies shopping method of choice for the new houseplant devotees).

Johanna is the first to admit that hers is not a scientific trial, but she’s made some observations that lead her to think at least the ladybugs are working. She saw a mealybug on her calathea lancifolia only because a group of ladybugs had congregated near it. She’s also noticed that ladybugs seems especially drawn to her hoya compacta, which is known to hide pests in its curly foliage. Finally, she says that the few fungus gnats she had disappeared.

Follow Johanna and her houseplant adventures @lakeeffectplantlover (Instagram)

This is all academic as far as I am concerned. My husband would look upon a household insect release in the same way he would look upon welcoming the ten plagues of Egypt.

What about it though? I did search the Garden Professors Facebook group, and could find no discussion of this. It will not surprise many that eco-model Summer Rayne Oaks has talked about this in her blog, Homestead Brooklyn. (Oakes has 670 indoor plants.)  And, as many have pointed out, we’re already sharing our homes with more insects than we want to acknowledge.

Photos by Johanna Dominguez

Ready to release beneficial insects indoors? originally appeared on GardenRant on January 21, 2020.

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Hatching call duck eggs

The post Hatching call duck eggs appeared first on Miss Smarty Plants.

More than anything, a post on hatching call duck eggs might be just to show off some of this incredible cuteness. I mean, it is really too much!

If you are receiving your eggs through the mail, unwrap them carefully and allow the eggs to rest (blunt end upward) for 24 hours before setting in your incubator.  

Eggs may not be perfectly clean, but that’s okay. If there are large chunks of debris on them you can remove them with a fingernail. I have also used a small piece of very fine grade sandpaper to clean. The key here is to avoid using liquids that could allow bacteria to enter the egg.

Much of the information available on incubating and hatching chicken eggs can be applied to ducks, as long as the important differences between these two species are taken into account. Since duck eggs take 28 days to hatch instead of 21, you may need to adjust your incubator.

Hatching call duck eggs should be turned (either by hand or by a turner) from days 1-25 with a relative humidity of 50-55% (52% is ideal). For the last three days of the incubation period do not turn them or open your incubator if at all possible. During this time increase your humidity to 60-65%. Some folks will recommend up to 75% humidity but I find that this lower amount works for me.

I do like to “cool” my eggs for 15-20 minutes each day by removing the lid of the incubator for a little bit. When I put the lid back on I give the eggs a light spritz of water. I do this from day 8 until day 25.

The pencil line on the eggs that you see here shows where the air pocket is at in the eggs. I mark this right as the eggs go into “lock down” for their final three days. I’ve found that the ducklings will unzip themselves right along this line when hatching. If I am hatching call duck eggs and I see a pip outside of that mark I can keep a close eye on it to see if assistance is needed.

There is lots of information online, but I really like the details at https://www.metzerfarms.com/ They have a very nice visual of what hatching call duck eggs should look like when candled during their development.

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Trade Shows Turns 50. Garden Writers Party.

Lord Baltimore lobby before the arrival of 30+ boozy garden writers.

GardenRant has covered the Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show several times, and I hope readers are ready for more because two Ranters attended this year, the show’s 50th!

For me the show started Wednesday night with a boozy meet-and-greet of garden writers in the lobby of the historic Lord Baltimore Hotel. I could show you photographic evidence of the general debauchery, using shots I’ve seen on Facebook, but in deference to people’s careers and marriages, I demurred. The empty lobby will have to do.

Now look how well they sobered cleaned up by the next morning at the MANTS breakfast for media! You won’t see me there, though – I’d already left to hit the floor of the Convention Center, a task I managed to finish before lunch, thanks to speed-walking past the almost 1,000 exhibitors. It helped that so few of them (mostly growers and suppliers for growers) are of interest to retail customers, like Rant readers and ME.

(Unless I’m way off-base and you want to know more about products like arborists’ ladders?)

As to the booths I’m actually interested in, I stopped for Garden Comm (formerly Garden Writers), where C.L. Fornari was spreading the good word (with someone whose name I didn’t catch).

Carolyn Mullet has stopped designing gardens and now works exclusively on European garden tours (with a focus on good design) and writing about well-designed gardens throughout Europe. (Her Timber Press book is coming out this fall).

Insect protection from Bugbaffler caught my eye because the fabric alone is a tight enough weave to “baffle” the bugs without the use of chemicals! On the right above is the sleeve they recommend using with a good leather glove.

There’s even protective clothes for dogs. (Just thinking about a dog romping through the brush and then coming inside my house makes me glad I have cats – indoor ones.)

At the AmericanHort booth I got to meet one of the famous Garden Professors – Holly Scoggins, Ph.D., recently retired from Va. Tech and now director of educational programs for the organization. Good hire!

The Perennial Plant Association booth was manned by Taylor Pilker of Canavo’s Perennials, Janet Draper of Smithsonian Gardens, and designer Mark Peterson of E. Erbs Fine Gardens.

Janet’s such a good salesperson, she may have talked me into attending TWO of their conferences this year – the national in Lancaster PA and regional in Baltimore. Having loved every PPA event I’ve ever attended, I guess I’m an easy sell.

The National Arboretum was showing off its introduction of a Woolly Adelgid-resistant hemlock. Named Tsuga ‘Traveler’ (T. chinensis x caroliniana), now patent-pending after 20 years of evaluation. I’m told its “expected release” is roughly 2020-2021, because you can never tell with the Patent Office.

The USDA booth presented a somewhat less hopeful face, though I suppose that poster for HungryPests.com is appropriately uninviting. I was morbidly drawn to it and went to the site in hopes of vivid images to share here but the link didn’t work.

I stopped by the Organic Mechanics booth to ask Mark Highland what’s up and he showed me two exciting developments – insect poop fertilizer, and the new “Rodale Institute Approved” label on their popular potting soil bag. It confers so much authority that some chain stores are stocking stock all such labeled products. So congrats to Mark!

Personally, this hat company was my big find of the day. That’s because as my haircuts have grown increasingly short, my interest in hats has also grown. Some of their hats are for gardening, but most are not (need a fascinator?) and they’re all affordable. (I shopped for hats on a recent trip to Nashville, where prices started at about $130!)

Some GardenComm members whose names I remember are Kathy Jentz, John Boggan, and Natalie Carmolli. Photo by Kirk Brown.

After speed-walking through the show, I joined a bunch of GardenComm members for lunch and once again, the cameras didn’t come out to record the event until after I’d left. Is it me?

MANTS-related events continued after the show ended, and there was one that I wouldn’t have missed for anything – GardenRant’s own Scott Beuerlein talking to the Four Seasons Garden Club at Brookside Gardens. What brought him to the club’s attention was his on-going “feud” with local writer Marianne Willburn. 

This is the guest rant that started it all. Somehow I missed the comment by a “Willburn follower,” calling Scott “Trumpian.” Hilarious!

Marianne sat quietly through Scott’s talk (mostly quietly) and posed afterward for this photo of the dueling bloggers.

Trade Shows Turns 50. Garden Writers Party. originally appeared on GardenRant on January 17, 2020.

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Hire Help or Lose My Sanity. Confessions of a Garden Writer Who Doesn’t Medicate. Yet.

Guest rant by Marianne Willburn 

The office is lightly scented with pencil shavings and old coffee mugs this morning. Not an unpleasant smell, but an unfamiliar one. I have ignored this room for two weeks over the Christmas holiday, and come back to it apologetically now – watering the parched papyrus tub and mindlessly straightening piles of to-do on three separate desks.  They threaten to overwhelm me if I let my eyes linger, so I tidy instead and finally move to my writing desk where a screensaver has danced for days.

Outside we are being treated to unseasonably warm weather, which brings out the deep tawny reds and browns of still standing grasses, and contrasts them against turf grasses and weeds responding to warmth in shades of bright green. It is the only time I feel any fondness for Japanese stilt grass (Microstegium vimineum) whose dead, russet foliage sharply marks the lines between cultivated and wild; and – perversely perhaps – gives shape to the landscape.

From the window it is oddly beautiful. In the summer, the same weed will take on height and vigor, and leave me as a gardening Sisyphus – beating back multiple germinations, ever mindful that there may be no end to it.

 Microstegium in July – besieging a too-old bed filled with rhododendron and forsythia.

January’s garden beckons after a month of rest and I am excited over projects on the docket: a cleared woodland garden, an expanded mini-meadow, an ornamental grass-filled berm to direct storm water. For that matter – another year of growth on juvenile trees, and the knitting together of established beds.

It has been six years since we moved to this lovely property, and it is glorious. But for all my excitement, there is a creeping feeling that it may be time to hire a few hours of help with rough work going forward.

It may actually be time to make a tough resolution – and keep it. For there are new projects in that quiet office just as pressing as those outside the window and only so much time.  My sanity is on the line.

Decision Time

“You are at a point,” a garden designer friend said last winter, “that what you want to achieve in the garden is impossible without extra help. You can stay where you are, or move forward. You must make a choice.”

Weeding, pruning, mulching…these jobs never end on a large property.

There was no value judgement either way, just a choice – the same choice I outline for groups when speaking on matters of garden maintenance: Constantly assess your resources and do not work beyond them.

And “resources” can mean everything from back muscles to bank accounts.

My friend and I were only discussing a few hours of help a week. So why did this feel like such a massive conversation to have? Why am I sharing it here?

Because gardeners rarely have it. And I think we should.

Indeed, this particular conversation only came about when, faced with the incredibly busy life of my friend, her upcoming manuscript delivery, and the fact that she had her own garden on top of everything else, I finally broke down and asked her that which is never asked:

“Do you have help?”

She was very quick to answer – in fact, I think her exact words were “Are you kidding? Of course I do.” But up until that point, I thought she did it all.

All Is Not Always As It Appears

Many of us make similar assumptions when visiting gardens, and garden writers may be culpable of setting that tone. Private gardens are often written about in terms of what the owners did, and, unless a designer is involved, not who they hired to do it.

Perhaps that is as it should be – the details could get unnecessarily complicated – but when gardeners and owners speak of “I did” and “I planted” and “I dug” and use terms that intimate full communion with the process, and then one finds over direct questioning and the soup course, that the ‘I’ is really ‘we’ twice a week and on Sundays, and isn’t it a shame there is only that? ….well, one feels misled. There are few direct references to help unless the garden is public.

As if it is a dirty secret.

Ironically, non-gardeners do not play these games.  If you don’t like yard work, and you live in the twenty-first century, it is obvious you hire it out along with the grocery shopping and dog walking. You may even brag about it to friends (as a friend did to me recently over 2000 bucks worth of grounds crew and a tidy front yard). It is only the gardeners that keep such details under wraps.

I will never forget reading a June [personal] calendar of daily tasks in a magazine that-will-not-be-named, that scheduled a plowing of the back fields on Thursday and a garden party for forty on Friday, along with some miscellaneous flower arranging and incidental television appearances on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Not: “Have the back fields plowed.”

but,

“Plow the back fields.”

Not: “Have Wolfgang prepare the menu for forty. Have Sasha design and build tablescape. NB get a Xanax refill”

but,

“Prepare menu for forty and set table.”

It is subtle and it is clever and it can have the effect of making mere mortals feel a bit inadequate.

It is also an extreme of course. But conscious or not, there is a reticence to discuss the help one has in the garden, or indeed in the home.

In wealthier circles I appreciate that the issue of “staff” is understood. One has land: ergo, one has staff. But in middle class squares, where I solidly reside, it feels as if you’re cheating.

It is an expense. If you’ve DIYed all your life and never seen a problem you felt you couldn’t solve at some level, it can feel as if you’ve given up.

When Garden Help Makes Sense

Over the years I’ve found that those of my acquaintance in retail horticulture who have their own private gardens (and display gardens) share an unspoken understanding that help is required. Period.

Staff hours may be used in personal gardens when business is slow, both to keep them employed and to take advantage of employees already sourced and hired. It is not so easy to find good labor, and if you are lucky enough to have found good people, it is wise to keep them employed.

Furthermore, if you are a garden designer or landscape architect, your garden is your calling card and there is no sense in mulching beds for eight hours when you should be sketching plans.

Since that eye-opening conversation last winter, I have made a point of asking gardeners when I tour gardens two important (if impertinent) questions. First, how many hours do they spend in the garden each week, and second, do they employ help – from basic ground crews to fine gardening. If it is a public garden, I ask about current staff, both permanent and temporary.

Those questions are in no way asked judgmentally, but instead, serve as reference to help me understand what is possible and what may be impossible with current resources – and indeed what I can in good conscience, recommend to others.

And there have of course been gardens and gardeners where I felt it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Lycoris squamigera in July at Oldmeadow — making all that microstegium elsewhere on the property disappear from my brain for just a moment of gardening bliss. But what if someone else was making it disappear for real?

So, today, a few short days into the new year, this gardener/writer is faced with a decision. I can either resolve to stop creating new areas and maintain what is – perhaps even letting some beds or areas drift back to a natural state (which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do); or,

I can get over my hang-ups and control issues and hire out the mulching.

I’d add weeding, edging, mowing, watering and clearing to that short list, but there’s no sense in completely losing my head. One must have aspirations.

After a lifetime of DIY and making do, and faced with ten acres of rampant Virginia stream valley and a whole lot of dreams, it might just be time.

Marianne Willburn is a garden columnist and author of the book Big Dreams, Small Garden. Read more at Small Town Gardener.

Hire Help or Lose My Sanity. Confessions of a Garden Writer Who Doesn’t Medicate. Yet. originally appeared on GardenRant on January 10, 2020.

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Snorkeling Past Solstice to Spring

Rose and Story prepare for the sea hunt at Hanauma Bay on Oahu.

Rose and I stared out the kitchen window, last month, while fat robins feasted on our deciduous hollies and a glorious evergreen 40-foot American holly. Once the berries were picked clean, the robins hung around for a few hours. They splashed around the cement pond and crapped all over the place.

American holly, Ilex opaca.

I am accustomed to the berry heist but wish the greedy robins would hold off until after Christmas and go crap somewhere else. Cut branches make beautiful Christmas   decorations, but you’d better harvest them before mid-December. Rose and I weren’t bothered too much as a week later we flew to Hawaii. We left the day before the winter solstice so we could enjoy Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas) with Molly, Story and our longtime friends who live there.

Deciduous holly berries with red cedar foliage, berries and lichen-covered stems, plus evergreen holly leaves. A holiday gift from our friend, Jamie Dockery.

Rose and I traded gray skies in Kentucky for lashing rain and 40 mph, winter solstice trade winds that swept the windward side of Oahu the day after we arrived.

I’m not complaining.

Two days later we made the short drive from Kailua to beautiful Hanauma Bay, beating the crowds to watch a spectacular sunrise. We staked out a spot on the beach, threw down towels and put on snorkel gear. We saw colorful tropical fish with Hawaiian names that you’ll need practice to pronounce.  I’m working on “Humuhumunukunukuapua” or Humumumu for short. Reef triggerfish might be a little easier.

Reef triggerfish. Wiki Commons photo, Bernard Spragg.

I felt so lucky to be back on Oahu.

Few places are so culturally diverse and mean so much to me as Hawaii. Kentucky and Hawaii are a world apart. I grew up in segregated Louisville. Then, in 1971, in my early 20s, I worked as a hotel janitor in Waikiki with Hawaiians, Filipinos, Chinese and Portuguese.

I spent two summers on Oahu with a dozen or more college buddies. We held jobs, shared rent in cramped quarters, snorkeled at Hanauma Bay and body surfed at Makapu’u and Pounders on days off. We remain close friends almost 50 winter solstices later, in spite of the 4,000 miles that separate a few of us. (We all came back to Kentucky, eventually, but Roby, Andrea and Toni grew homesick. They returned to Hawaii, settled down, worked hard, raised families and went to the beach.)

Christmas Eve with (L-R): Toni Hartman, Andrea and Roby Bell. Davis Bell photo.

Hawaiian tourism has exploded since 1971. You can’t hide beautiful natural places for long. The roads and beaches are now crowded. My favorite beaches are still lovely, even though thin meandering lines, made of small fragments of multi-colored plastic and styrofoam, occasionally wash up on shore with mangrove seeds, marking each high tide.

Plastic and styrofoam fragments with mangrove seeds.

“Plastic Free Pipeline,” a 2019 sculpture by marine scientist and artist, Ethan Estess, is a tangle of plastic sea trash, bits of wood and miscellaneous hardware collected by volunteers off beaches on Oahu. The art piece, now at Honolulu’s Bishop Museum, will travel around the Hawaiian Islands to heighten awareness and inspire people to “Refuse, Reduce, Refuse and Recycle plastics.” Story May Lowe photo.

The tropical Hawaiian flowers and foliage made an impact on me, more than I realized in 1971. I couldn’t tell the difference, back then, between a magnolia and a mango. Nor a paw paw from a plumeria. I can now identify a few tropical plants. I know hardier Kentucky natives better than I do Hawaiian natives, but I am deeply curious about botany, and ethnic cultures, wherever I go. Hawaii, so lush and green, awakened me in many ways. I’m not sure I would have had a career in horticulture if I hadn’t absorbed a little bit of the Hawaiian tropics and culture way back when.

My granddaughter Story floats with a plumeria blossom. Molly Bush photo.

Rose and I returned home to Kentucky before the New Year and transitioned from palms to pines.

Greasy grass, Tridens flavus, in the winter meadow. Salvisa, Kentucky.

I needed to remind myself that I am the beneficiary of one extra minute of life-affirming January daylight in Kentucky with every rotation of the earth. Though I barely noticed the bonus smidge of sunlight, I did notice a few runway lights to spring, in the midst of the muted grays and browns of tree bark and meadow grasses. I can’t imagine a sedge will light your winter fire, not like the snow-white blooms of Christmas rose (Helleborus niger) or the fragrant yellow flowers of a Chinese witch hazel (Hamamelis mollis ‘Wisley Supreme’). These surprised me when I can home, blooming weeks ahead of time.

Seersucker sedge, Carex plantaginea.

A string of 60 F days, while we were away, were responsible for the early flowering. However, neither eased my temperate reentry as much as the durable and semi-evergreen, shade-loving seersucker sedge. Carex plantaginea, native to the eastern Kentucky Appalachian Mountains and much of eastern North America, immediately caught my eye on a walk around the garden. I had seen one of her kin in tropical Hawaii only a few days before.

Oahu sedge, Carex wahuensis.

I was not expecting to meet Carex wahuensis, or any carex, in the native plant garden at the fabulous Bishop Museum in Honolulu. I knew nothing about the Oahu sedge. I was suddenly smitten. I know you’re thinking jet lag had rattled my brain on the long plane ride home. All the beautiful tropical plants like candlenut (Aleurites molluccanus) or Indian mulberry (Morinda citrifolia) to write home about, and I fall in love with a native Hawaiian as dull as dirt?

Well, yes.

Kailua, Oahu at sunset. Molly Bush photo.

Now, when I make a lap around the garden, or wander around Kentucky’s woodlands, and run into the native seersucker sedge, I will remember fondly our celebration of Mele Kalikimaka with family, friends and the Oahu sedge.

Nostalgia is everlasting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snorkeling Past Solstice to Spring originally appeared on GardenRant on January 8, 2020.

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