No, you’ll find no dreadful scenes like the above lurking about my property. There is no need for manufactured horror here. If I want to be filled with fright and despair, all I have to do is take a short walk around the yard. Do you dare to accompany me? All right, but just remember … you were warned!
The Black Lagoon of Misery
This was once a cheerful water feature, with bright orange fish darting through the clear water. Now, the once-pristine pond is more like a swamp, choked with leaves and inexplicably-dead water plants. The fish lurk in the bottom, their only hope possible adoption by a kindly neighbor.
Dark Shadows of Doom Overhead
By the thousands, they rustle in the breeze, still bright green for the most part, taunting us as they flutter down, one or two at a time. They’ll save the big drop until 3 hours before the first major snowstorm. And there they’ll lay for months, ready to be scooped up in heavy, sodden piles after the thaw.
Will the Bulbs Never End?
Who ordered all these? What could he or she have been thinking? Who’s going to plant all these? How much did all this cost? This is madness, I tell you, madness!
The Killing Fields
This is where young, vibrant, healthy, expensive plants are taken to die … slowly. The torture is simple but exquisite. If planted, these perennial salvias, daylilies, and geraniums might make a bright show next summer. If planted—and that’s looking less and less likely.
OK, that’s all for today. Thank you for visiting my little garden. I’m sorry if it has been unpleasant. Once I had beautiful flower beds, lush ferns, colorful container annuals, and much more. Not any more.
Readers, we imagine you’ve noticed a recent increase in ads here on GardenRant – in the sidebar AND in our posts. So unlike the first 14 years of this blog’s regular postings, readers have to scroll through ads to continue reading. We’ve heard from some of you about this and understand that it’s been a painful change.
Others have noticed that our new ads are mostly general interest, rather than gardening-related. In the example above, our site has ads for Xfinity, LinkedIn, Discover card and Lowes. We’ve noticed Toyota and Best Buy, too – and some seriously cool coats from Zulily, which had at least one of us forgetting her deadline and going down a sumptuous retail rabbit hole.
What’s changed is that finally, about two years after our long-time advertising service (Blogads) went out of business, we have a new ad agency – Mediavine. To become part of their program, GardenRant needed to have good traffic, which we do thanks to you!, and we needed to go through a long approval process similar to someone examining your underwear drawer.
So why did we go through all that, despite the resulting inconvenience to readers (and us) of now having to scroll through ads as we’re all reading?
Improved GardenRant with Comments that Function!
Bottom line: Sites cost money. And good sites cost good money. We signed on for more ads NOT because any of us hope to quit our day jobs, retire early, or even finance a two-week beach-house rental from our new income – after it’s divided among a five-person writing team.
So it’s not greed, y’all.
The BIG difference these ads will make is in the site itself, which after 14 years is sorely in need of an update. Our priorities:
COMMENTS: Number one is fixing the damn comment feature! We comment ourselves – or try to – and get emails about the problems, so we know and we’re so sorry! Composing a comment and getting an error message for your troubles is beyond irritating! We totally hear you. To fix the problem in the past, we moved to a new host, which sadly didn’t fix the problem, so we’ll be moving it again to highly recommended site, and upgrading the hosting account for more capacity. While we all wait for this so-needed change, please be patient and feel free to interact with us on the Garden Rant Facebook page too.
EXPERIENCE: Better functionality for all visitors – finding the information they want, navigating, browsing, subscribing, faster loading time, telling us we’re full of shit or it’s the best thing you’ve ever read in your entire lifetime, quickly in the comments — all of it.
AESTHETICS: We may be gardeners covered in soil most of the time, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care about appearances. We’re investing in an updated look by a real web designer – our first – and working with a graphic designer to make the web designer’s job even easier. We’ve hired developers and one graphic artist back in 2006, but never a real designer. ‘Bout time!
Believe us, if we could support the site by pulling an endowment out of our collective hats and live happily ever after in the aforementioned beach rental writing edgy garden prose, we’d do it. We didn’t like it when PBS started airing sponsored ads in the middle of Masterpiece Theater, either. But sadly, we find ourselves where PBS was, and hey, we held out a lot longer.
Meanwhile, please know that we greatly value your input (in the opposite of the way that politicians say they value your input) and will be considering your experience every step of the process.
Sticking with our Original Mission
We loved our original Manifesto and we’re bringing it back to the home page – prominent and proud. We’ve never written articles based on what’s trending, and we’re not going to start now. We’re not incorporating paywalls or forcing the team to do paid webinars in their spare three minutes a day. Nor will you find key words mentioned nineteen times in 600 words so we get 3.5 million page views from Russian bots. You’ll get the same beautiful, edgy mess you’ve always gotten for free – you’ll just need to scroll past an ad for a pet brush to get it.
But hey, garden dogs get dirty right? Maybe you’ll find some retail rabbit holes of your own in the process. Thank you to all our loyal readers past, present and future – we look forward to a new site with anticipation.
Timeline?
We expect improvements to speed and comment functionality in early to mid-November, as soon as we move to our new host. Then we expect to kick off our glorious new design in January of 2021.
One of fall’s last hurrahs. Symphiotrichum (Aster) oblongifloium on October 27th.
The old joke among horticulturists is that shuffling and splitting plant names keeps botanists off the dole. The botanic name-changing business has been productive, but the consequences of taxonomic tinkering are sometimes painful.
For instance…
The aromatic aster “…by any other name would smell as sweet…” became Symphyotrichumoblongifoium. The jaunty, old botanic name, Aster oblongifolius, was tossed on the ash heap of lost loves.
According to Julian Shaw’s 2014 article in The Plantsman: “Older, Latin-based cultivar names, of which there are very few, as well as species epithets previously used in Aster (masculine), have to be modified to agree with Symphyotrichum (neuter), hence A. oblongifolius becomes S. oblongifolium, and so on. “
Yes. And so on, but Aster is such a cozy name.
Christian Gottfried Daniel Ness von Essenbeck first suspected that there might be a difference between the New England aster (Aster novae-angliae) and other similar daisy-like blooming perennials. With a name such as his own, perhaps he couldn’t resist. In 1833 he named New England asters Symphyotrichumnovae angliae.
The name didn’t stick. Aster prevailed until 1994.
DNA evidence eventually proved who daddy really was.
A botanic split ensued, and Symphyotrichum was re-commissioned.
Most asters were in shambles and reassigned to new genera that included Ionactis, Eurybia, Seriocarpus, Doellingera Oclemena and Ampleaster. The rollout of new names challenged the recall of those of us whose memory banks had been robbed of once formidable assets.
I muttered displeasure with the inconvenience but accepted science even if it has taken five years, since the “split,” before I attempted to utter the Latin name. I discovered Symphyotrichum is clunky sounding but isn’t any harder to pronounce than Echinacea.
The aromatic aster has foliage with a sweet fragrance when the small, oblong leaves are rubbed. The species grows from the east coast across the Great Plains in inhospitable, dry soils in full sun. I’ve seen October flowers blooming out of the cracks of rock outcrops near Salvisa.
There are still a few street-legal asters left unruffled, but they are not the ones we see in fields, swamps and woodland edges in North America. Gail Eichenberger calls these ex-asters. What’s left of asters are found predominantly in the old world. The wonderful fall-blooming Asian Aster tataricus is a good example.
Feasting on Aster tataricus ‘Jin Dai’ on October 27th before the long flight home.
I love common names, but when botanists call a spade a spade they would, by their nature, want to figuratively distinguish a tile spade from a nursery spade.
Carolus Linnaeus came up with the clever binomial nomenclature (“two term naming system”) in 1753. The protocol was necessary to provide clarity. It doesn’t suffice to say, ‘Well, it’s just a bluebell,” for example. A Virginia bluebell (Mertenisia virginica) is different from an English bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta ), and in Scotland, the plant they call a bluebell is Campanula rotundifolia.
Don’t despair. The good news is that you don’t have to kick any commonly called bluebell or aster to the curb.
Common names are often descriptive, folksy, melodic and point to cultural origins. Best of all, common names are free for all. It needn’t be a stubborn case of Give me liberty or give me Symphyotrichum!
You can call a plant what you want, but science requires tighter reins.
There is no question the garden is one the most exciting and vibrant parts of any property. This is the place where you can express yourself and try to make some of the best possible changes to enhance and improve the home as a whole. You should be looking to come up with ideas that are going to help you make your garden better, and there are a lot of things you can do to achieve this.
Make sure you look at doing as much as you can to come up with ideas that will help you improve the process moving forward. You need to try to maximise your garden and use it for as many different things as you can, and there are a lot of ideas you have to work on right now. Try to focus on this as much as you can right now in order to make the right gardening tips that can make a big difference.
The lawn is probably the most important part of the process when it comes to looking after your garden. So you need to have some tips and techniques to help with the right lawn care, and this is something that plays a massive part in the process right now. Lawn maintenance is one of the essential parts of managing and improving your garden as much as possible, and this is something to keep in mind right now.
Grow Edibles
Another thing you can do to make the most of your garden right now is to grow edibles. If you can set up a mini allotment where you can start to grow things like fruit and vegetables then this adds an exciting new dimension to the garden. You might also think about growing mushrooms, and heading to Out-Grow is a great way of stocking up on the essentials for this. Growing edibles makes your garden a place you can grow food and helps you to live a greener life as a result.
Prepare for the Winter
There are a lot of things you need to think about when it comes to effective garden maintenance, and it is clear that you need to make the right choices to look after the garden in adverse weather conditions. This means making sure you have ideas in place to help you get your garden ready for winter and make sure it doesn’t suffer too much in the cold and frosty elements.
You have plenty you need to consider when it comes to making the most of this right now, and there are a lot of factors you have to try to make the most of moving forward. Come up with some of the best ideas you should be using to improve things and make your garden better right now.
Right now, here in fall, this is when all the many flaws in my garden are on glorious, full on, full frontal display. Proudly, they flaunt themselves, mocking me to every carload of judgmental suburbanites that drives by, the pilots and passengers who fly over my house, and the hordes of bike path walkers across the street who glance my way, make remarks to one another, and snicker. So the other day, it hit me like a brick. Yes, it’s been a long season. Sure, I’m tired. Indeed, I’m pretty darned burned out. But the constructive response to all this humiliation is not to run across the street and chase around four middle-aged sisters who had, in fact, snickered, but who also counted among their number a county judge, but rather to put on my boots, pick up my spade, and make needed changes.
Having written that above paragraph, and then having reread it, and then having re-written it, re-read, and then repeated that cycle 2-3 more times, a couple thoughts occur to me. One, writing and gardening are very similar. There is never a final product with gardening. And there wouldn’t be for writing if it weren’t for deadlines. The other thought, and one that worries me, is that not everyone will find the above revelation as earth-shatteringly insightful as I did.
Agastache ‘Blue Fortune,’ I tried. I really tried. But the soil here is not spare enough to keep you from keeling over. You’re getting moved to the kind of inhospitable site that keeps you trying.
It’s very possible some people are smarter than I. You might fall in that category. And, possibly, even as a small child you knew that poor plant choices and bad design ideas majestically rear their ugly heads in the fall garden, thereby making it easier to lop them off. I, myself, am finding it somewhat appalling that it has taken me almost 40 years of gardening and 60 years of living to discover this pithy truth. So if you are annoyed by how obvious the whole premise of this blog has been so far, I will ask that you read on anyway. I think you’ll be amused by the schadenfreude that comes from observing how much harder life is for some of us.
Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen,’ like many of us, had a bad 2020. And it wasn’t so hot in 2019 either. It’s on the short list.
I’ll say this one additional thing too before I stop all this paralyzing self consciousness. I might have thought this idea up before, and then simply forgot it. I forget everything. On several occasions when a number of weeks had passed since my wife and I had had marital relations, it was like I was a virgin all over again. I was like, “Wow! That was so incredible! Tell me again what you called it?”
A memory this bad is why it’s not good enough to just walk around and be accosted by my garden’s many flaws with the intention of fixing them in the spring. Maybe your memory is bad too. If so, fix all you can now. For the remainder, take photos and make notes that you print and bind into a book which you’ll keep in an inconvenient place where it might drop on your foot several times over winter. That way, it won’t be out of mind come spring.
Have I inspired you to act yet? Because I suspect a lot of you are smiling and nodding your heads sagely, and yet will not get outside and defeat all those unsightly elements in your garden. And, I reckon I know the ironic reason why. It’s because it’s depressing to wander the garden this time of year. And why is that? Hell’s bells, it’s because of all those flaws! The time to strike is now.
Loved my Crocosmia back in June when it looked like the picture on top, but it has looked like the picture on the bottom ever since. Not quite ready to live without it, I dug it up and relocated the bulbs yesterday. It now lines my neighbor’s side of a rock wall. Maybe the wall will keep it from flopping like a Premier League soccer player. If not, it’ll flop where I can’t so easily see it. My neighbor will, but he’s a lawn guy. Most importantly, I know the blooms will be held above the wall enough that I’ll still get to enjoy them. Moreover, I think my Crocosmia needed dividing anyway, and will look better as a long, narrow clump than it did as an amorphous one. Whether it stands upright or not.
So don’t talk yourself out of doing this important work. Don’t tell yourself that you’re tired and you want to watch football on TV. Don’t fall for your own lie that your garden is already good enough. Don’t remember that the garden center will be a depressing and disappointing ghost town with a shell shocked staff all wandering around like zombies. Don’t be so stupid as to expect you’ll remember all the changes you need to make next spring. Just go outside and start working.
When I cut down the tree that was shading my Brunnera, I wondered how much sun it could take. Turns out, not this much. It will get moved to a shadier neighborhood, but, lower on the list, that might not happen until spring because I already have a lot of it and know it is quick and easy to transplant them in spring.
Oh, and one other thing. When you go out to judge the good, the bad, and the ugly, make damned sure you’re in a terrible mood. The worst mood you can make happen. Critically important. Your tolerance for tolerance should be way below the norm. If you’re a mean drunk, do it drunk. If you’re a happy drunk, do it sober. If you’re not a drunk at all, watch four hours of the other side’s 24-hour cable news channel before you go outside. With that kind of fire in your eyes, sentiment will not override ugly, and with a sharp spade and some napalm, you can get real. Get really real! You might be surprised how much less you hate your garden next year!
So the Aster tataricus, despite being cut back by half in July, is devouring the ‘Stewartstonian’ Azalea. The azalea is also being devoured by lace bugs, which is exactly what typically happens here in calcareous SW Ohio. Something here has got to change, but I haven’t quite decided what. But it’s not looking good for the azalea. Best case scenario for it is that I find a shadier place for it and drench it with sulfur and iron from time to time.
River Farm, headquarters of the American Horticultural Society
First we all read the big news – that the American Horticultural Society, in order to survive financially, has decided to sell the 25-acre historic property in Alexandria, Va. that serves as its national headquarters, and is considering an acquisition by the American Public Garden Association.
Cue the Uproar
Naturally that sparked a Facebook group called Stop the Sale.
And the state senator and delegate for the area posted this article to a local paper:
American Horticultural Society (AHS) has announced that it is putting its headquarters, historic River Farm, the 27-acre property which represents the northernmost of George Washington’s five farms, up for sale on the open real estate market.
We have heard from constituents with concerns about losing this beautiful and historic property, on the bank of the Potomac River, to development.
Oh, I bet they have! To people who live near there especially, like the childhood friend I toured the grounds with last week, the loss of access to the property would be huge.
Meadow at River Farm.
Interesting bits of news-to-me in that article include:
The American Horticultural Society first acquired the River Farm property in the early 1970s when Enid Annenburg Haupt, an AHS board member, donated the necessary funds. This acquisition followed an attempt by the Soviet Embassy to buy the property as a retreat during the Cold War.
White House Gates
Also on the property are the White House gates, first installed at the White House in 1819, during the reconstruction of the structure after it burned during the War of 1812, and used for more than 120 years at the Executive Mansion’s northeast entrance.
The property was valued at nearly $17 million in 2019.
We have joined a smaller fundraising group that will focus our energy on raising the necessary funds to purchase River Farm.
Rather than moving forward with a merger with APGA, our board has committed to maintaining AHS as an independent national nonprofit with its own board, staff and headquarters…As part of this new model, we are focused on building collaborative relationships with APGA and other like-minded organizations who have a shared interest in building and expanding horticultural programming and other initiatives across the country.
In order to move forward with this renewed vision, we are dependent on the proceeds from the sale of River Farm. These funds would create a significant endowment that has been the missing link in our financial viability. Our hope is to find a buyer – a new steward – for River Farm who will work to preserve this beautiful and historic property.
Is raising probably well over $17 million to buy River Farm and keep it open to the public even imaginable? Especially in what must be the most challenging fund-raising time ever?
I’m just reporting the news here, but I’ll add that enjoying River Farm last week on a stunning fall day made me appreciate it more than ever. It’s so sad to imagine its potential loss to the public.
A nursing home therapy dog, sidelined during the pandemic, gets a training refresher at River Farm.
Someone recently asked me if there was a free online version of one of my books Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida. My response was polite, but after thinking about it, it occurred to me that readers probably don’t understand the enormous amount of work it takes to write and publish a gardening book.
The book I’m writing now is “Adventures of a Transplanted Garden: Advice for Gardeners New to Florida”.
Even in these days of free access to tons of unedited information on gardening (and everything else under the sun) via posts on social media, articles on blogs, and other online content, books produced by publishers are both useful and important, because they have been designed for their targeted audience, and curated by editors and others. The end result is a reliable, readable, and organized volume to help you be more successful in your gardening activities.
Each book takes two or three years to research and write, but this is not the end of the work. Here are some of the steps involved in this two to three-year process:
Writing a Gardening Book: The Proposal & Contract:
– If there are coauthors, work with them on the concept of the book and to find a way to split and share the work. I use Google Docs to simplify the sharing, so the latest version of each chapter is always online. In the case of Climate-Wise Landscaping, I was the primary writer for the odd chapters. There were some jokes about that.
– Write a proposal to the publisher. If the acquisitions editor thinks it’s a viable idea, and the Board supports their decision, they’ll send you a contract with a deadline.
– Have the contract looked over by legal representation, or possibly regret it later.
Writing a Gardening Book: The Text, Photography and Illustrations
– Do the research and write the text for the book.
– Find or take photos to provide examples of the plants, ecosystems, or gardening technique. If someone else is supplying the photos, they will probably need to be paid.
– Find and pay an illustrator to help clarify points or lessons in the book with clear drawings.
Writing a Gardening Book: Copyediting, Peer Review and Rewrites
The publisher assigns a project manager for the book who plays a large role in shaping the book and typically a number of meetings or conference calls happen between the project manager and author(s).
In the case of my four University Press of Florida books, the publisher paid two or three peer reviewers to go over the text to look for errors, suggest topics that are not included in the manuscript, and to analyze the market for the book.
Reading a gardening book is a wonderful escape from screen time and no power is required. Ahhh! “Garden Revolution” by Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher provides a different way to think about gardening.
If significant rewrites are suggested by the peer reviewers, they may be asked to review an updated manuscript. This process may add another year or more to the process.
In the case of my first book, the three reviewers had lots of corrections and ideas for what would make it better including reordering the chapters. I ended up rewriting and reorganizing the book which took several months.
Someone asked me if I was mad about having to do all this extra work. My answer was that while it was a lot of work, the book was a much better product in the end and especially without those errors. I had no idea that we don’t have groundhogs in Florida–armadillos and pocket gophers, yes, but no groundhogs.
Then the manuscript is sent to a copy editor who goes through the text with a fine-toothed comb to look for grammatical errors and syntax irregularities. The copy editor also puts in the codes for headers, lists, breaks, etc., so the publishing software can talk to the printing press.
I work with the copy editor to make sure he or she hasn’t misunderstood the text. So there are several exchanges back and forth on this process.
All this input is extremely important, because once a book is published, you can’t go back and fix errors or update it the way we can on a social media or blog post. Authors and their publishers want things to be correct before it goes to the printing press.
Writing a Gardening Book: Design, Indexing, and Industry Review
A book designer then chooses a theme or overall look, arranges the manuscript, and places the drawings and photos within the text. After the layout is complete, the designer generates a pdf file of the book in its final layout with the page numbering in place.
The pdf file is sent out to prominent people in the field for review and for cover comments. This file is also used if someone writes a foreword. Sue Reed and I were thrilled that Doug Tallamy wrote the foreword for Climate-Wise Landscaping.
The pdf file also comes back to the author to fill in page numbers for references within the text, for any minor corrections (no re-writing and nothing that would cause renumbering the pages) and for indexing–one of the more tedious tasks. I could hire an indexer, but I never do, because an outsider won’t have the deep understanding of what people might want to find.
After the cover comments are available and the foreword has been written, then the book designer designs the cover. Thankfully, the authors usually have some say in the final product, though they usually don’t have the final word on the title
Writing a Gardening Book: Release and Marketing
A few months later, I’ll receive the first batch of books. Then the marketing begins. After each of my Florida books was published, I organized a book tour around Florida. That’s when I found out how large our state really is.
In 2018 when two books were published, I created a 52-event book tour from Sept. 6th through Dec. 1. For most events, I’m a speaker at a meeting or larger event and then I sell books after the program. I enjoy the speaking, but I often wish for Scotty to beam-me directly to the events so I wouldn’t have to do all that driving. On the other hand, the backroads of Florida have often provided wonderful adventures.
Marketing is part of the process. In my case I arrange the #FloweredShirtTours where I speak to groups of gardeners. Not many book stores, but chapters of the native plant society like this group, chapters of Audubon or Sierra Club, or garden clubs and master gardeners. In my 52-event 2018 tour, I had three different programs ready: a three-hour native landscaping workshop, a presentation on climate-wise gardening, and a presentation on Florida native gardening.
The Bottom Line
And all for all this work the authors receive 8 to 12% of what the publisher sells the books for – mostly the wholesale price. Here’s the math: A $25 book sold at normal wholesale is $15, and 10% of this is $1.50.
This amount is shared between the authors, and will be held against any advances paid to them. If those small royalties do not add up to the advance (which can be small, or non-existent) the author will not make any further money on the book.
More math: If that same author(s) is fortunate enough to sell 20,000 copies of their book – that’s $30,000 – for two to three years of work – split between authors and any illustrators or photographers that the author has contracted to pay.
Buying books from authors when you hear them speak is the single best way of supporting their efforts. As they can buy their books at a discount (not as much as you might think), selling them in person allows them to keep more of the profit.
Untold hours went into producing these books, but in my opinion, it’s been worth the effort.
I’ll just keep writing
I’ve shared these details of the book production not to look for sympathy, but so you’d know how much sweat goes into your gardening books. I will continue to write, and while I will probably not get rich doing so, I love sharing gardening advice and plant science information so people can become more successful. It’s part of my advocacy for Mother Nature.
__________________________________________
Ginny Stibolt is the author or co-author of five-going-on-six garden books. Find her at www.GreenGardeningMatters.com
As we move into winter and the temperature drops, it’s essential to prepare your garden – no matter how small – for the change in seasons. It’s especially crucial if you want to have your garden looking well during the spring and summer months when it is a joy to be wandering around.
Here are some top tips to help you:
Remove fallen leaves
Rake up any fallen leaves, especially from pathways as they can be slippery. However, don’t just throw the leaves away, use them to make leaf matter. It will take about eight months to decay, but it is so worth it for your plants or vegetables.
Prepare plants for colder weather
Cover any plants that don’t like frost with bubble wrap or hessian sacks. This will protect the roots of the plant from any frost damage. This is particularly useful if you have plants in pots as often the frost can cause plant pots to crack. If you are growing vegetables, cover these with fleece.
Prune
If you have overgrown trees, now is the time to use a professional. Making use of tree trimming services in your area will ensure your trees are pruned correctly and shaped. This will ensure they don’t overhang or cause a shadow over any of your plants that like sunshine.
Look after your lawn
During a time when lawns are no longer growing, it is a good idea to remove any thatch or moss. This will aerate the lawn and have it looking its best during the hotter months.
Don’t forget the wildlife
It is so important to look after the wildlife in your garden, especially over the colder months. You can do this by feeding the birds. You could also consider adding in a water bath too.
Protect your garden furniture
The colder months mean that any garden furniture that is left out often gets damaged. If your furniture is wood, then give it a coat of preservative to ensure it doesn’t crack or damage over winter. Another option is to bring your furniture inside if you have room. Alternatively, you can purchase a table cover to keep your furniture dry during the winter season.
Protect outside taps
If the weather does get really cold and you have outside taps, you don’t want them to freeze. This can cause untold damage and be costly. You can stop a burst pipe happening by using insulation on any exposed pipes and taps. This is an excellent prevention tip.
Plan for the growing season
Winter is often a time when you can take stock of how your garden has performed over the warmer months. Do you want to grow more plants? Do you want to grow vegetables? Did the plants perform well in their current location? You can answer all these questions during winter, which will allow you to plan for the growing season ahead.
These are just a few tips to help you in the garden this winter. It is a great time to reflect on your growing season and plan ahead. Preparing your garden for winter will save you so much time when it comes round to the growing season again.
This hellebore is sad here, but that’s nothing to what happened as the season progressed.
Guest post by Linda McGivern
Left elbow screaming in pain (gardener’s “tennis elbow” is a real thing), I raked up the last pile of yard waste from the shade bed under the London plane tree, scrambling to finish this final garden clean-up before a predicted windstorm scattered the tree’s sycamore-like leaves upon the whole expanse of the garden I had just toiled to put to bed.
I let out an extended sigh and shrugged my sore shoulders. The relief of this season just being over was big. Bigly big.
For this was the season of weather.com as fake news. It was the season of a dearth of water so grave that our seven-acre pond receded into a large mud puddle and the lawn turned crispy in July. It was the season of tough decisions over who got water and who would wait for the promised-by-weather.com-but-never-delivered rain. I am serious when I write that some days I would watch, agog, as a thunderous mass of black rain clouds would pass overhead and seem to part exactly over my town, delivering the longed-for water to the east and west, but none for me.
Winners? That blue Lacecap hydrangea that I paid big bucks for two summers ago got watered. Likewise for the roses, the truly despondent peegee hydrangeas, a few favorite rhododendrons, and all the baby plants I was deranged enough to move to new locations over our dystopian summer of pandemic, wildfire, drought, locust plagues, and a few murder hornets thrown in for good measure. Occasionally I would grimly drag a hose to a few plants (I am talking to you ninebark and Autumn Joy sedum) that had been steady performers, despite the devastation of less than an inch of natural rain in a New England season that usually brings seven or eight inches.
But the withering hostas, conifers, acteas, catmints, baptisias, and alarmingly disappearing hellebores that I hope to god will come back? I lugged the hoses right by them, convincing myself that the mass plant devastation the likes of which I have not seen in my thirty years of gardening is “early-onset” dormancy and not death.
My husband has taken to calling our grounds “Decrotia,” aptly borrowed and modified from the term “decroded” (decaying + corroded), coined in the movie Napoleon Dynamite.
Climate scientists say “decroded” is our gardening future and that this is the sort of summer weather we are going to be facing as the planet warms. A number of reports I read this past summer suggest there will be rain, but it will come in violent bursts, rather than extended periods of moderate showers, and drought will be normal. Another suggested we should stop planting hydrangeas and azaleas in preparation for future droughts. Then I read this article: the headline of which I have adapted for this post. It’s enough to twist the knickers right off of the most patient and committed gardeners among us.
This (blessedly) past season is more evidence that, yes, climate change is coming and we need to be ready. I am plotting my next moves; how about you?
I don’t remember September. It had something to do with a copyediting deadline on the new book, but when I try to think on it, I just black out and find myself here in the glory and gorgeousness of October. It is a month just as beautiful as I always tell myself it will be, and the woods have begun offering up mushrooms for pies.
This was Wednesday’s find. A Chicken of the Woods about one day away from being too old. Harvested it. Cut it up. Ate it last night.
I do hope that our correspondence hasn’t, by association, poisoned your chances of getting your bottom into a comfortable and tasteful chair around one of Martha’s gracious tables in the future. I apologize if my tone was characteristically harsh; but not to put too fine a point on it, I was pissed.
I utilize the term in its American, not its British, sense. I can assure you that I was not drinking wine with lunch when I wrote it (contrary to your impertinent, if indirect, accusation). Sadly, there’s been far too little of that sort of beautiful nonsense going on around here lately.
You term my review of Martha Knows Best a “hatchet job,” but I like to think of it as constructive criticism laced with a good dollop of shame. I would have had no issue with the series simply run as a ‘Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous’ piece.
In reaction to my review, a friend dug out this parody mag that was given to her twenty-five years ago. That’s a long time to be pissing people off. The best part of this photo is the face of the lady in yellow.
You and I have been around long enough to understand the difference between reality and fantasy when it comes to garden media in all its lovely incarnations; but one cannot discount the deleterious effect of flaunting The Unachievable on younger, less cynical minds with little resources at their disposal.
Particularly young, ambitious, female minds with adrenal systems on the brink of collapse and no staff in sight. It requires only one more bespoke garden project, a dinner party for ten, and a toddler with pink-eye to send them spiraling into madness. I speak from experience.
The review did however have a fantastic outcome in that I was inundated with emails suggesting other gardeners (many on Youtube) that I might like to watch to cleanse the palate. One of them, sent to me by my good friend John Willis of MacGardens, has now become something of an addiction that I feel I must share, for this girl may be the answer to a world gone mad. Her name is Li Ziqi.
There are no words to be heard in these hypnotizing videos, or at least, no narrative words describing the practical, primitive stories that unfold within them. Indeed, I hardly have words to describe them myself.
There is only this young, exquisitely beautiful, woodland sprite of a Chinese woman from the mountains of Sichuan going about her daily routine of gardening, cooking and tending the property on which she lives with her grandmother. Building fences and pathways…walking the garden in the early hours of the morning…cooking something wonderful over a primitive cooktop with fresh ingredients.
Scott, it is absolutely mesmerizing. Her movements are fluid and purposeful, and to see her bend and lift and cut and stack and pull and dig creates in me a visceral ache for my twenty-something body – a body that didn’t negotiate with my brain each time something needed doing at soil level.
My God that is therapy, just to watch her. One wakes up from a sweet, opiate haze at the end of each video with a new skill to try, and a re-commitment to finding and claiming pleasure in the simplest of tasks. And yoga. Yes. More yoga.
It is of course fantasy. But it is thoroughly rooted in the quiet simple rhythms that make us human. It nourishes the soul. I hardly need add that she doesn’t discuss getting her seeds from Parisian seed markets, and refrains from Facetiming Snoop Dogg in between projects.
September is now coming back to me in snatches. I visited my mother for a long overdue trip since my father’s memorial service last August. California was on fire, state parks were closed, and we were informed somewhere in the middle of it all that electricity had never been codified in the Bill of Rights as a God-Given and would therefore be revoked at will. Good times.
I returned three weeks later with smoker’s lung and a now, quite pronounced feeling that I desperately needed to get away again as soon as possible. Michael was not amused.
Revisiting the garden after significant time away (which let’s face it, is about one week for gardeners), is a curious feeling. In many ways I felt quite happy at the state of things. There is now so much mature growth in cultivated areas, that weeds have a hard time finding their way.
Coming back to this was a huge bonus. Tropical orgy in a trough, and it’s only gotten better as the months go by.The pumpkins were a huge come-home-to bonus, because I threw some seed in in July just because the soil was there and the hugelkultur needed covering. I harvested 18 beautiful squash.The winterberries are wonderful this year – I grow Winter Red and Winter Gold and one other yellow that I should have the journalistic integrity to go look up.
Mulberry weed and Japanese stilt grass are my worst weeds, and I immediately set to getting them out of beds (and Ye Gods! from between the thick tufts of carex and mondo grass along the pergola) before they could release fourteen further generations of fury. The Japanese stilt grass yields easily to the slightest touch, but the mulberry weed snaps just as you feel it coming, and will send up new heads like a hydra.
Mulberry weed growing over the Lycoris radiata. First thing I tackled in the pergola garden.
Some areas I have simply given up on until I can turn my full attention to them for a significant period of time; but I think that overall this is the right approach. Otherwise one finds oneself dabbling here, dabbling there and never really getting a handle on the weed problem in any one bed. There is only so much time.
Michael hadn’t collected chicken eggs for the entire three weeks – preferring to collect and eat the duck eggs when he let out what he terms ‘the quackers’ in the morning. The chickens have an automatic door, an automatic feeder and an automatic waterer.
You’re a man. You know where this is going. A hen went broody over four dozen eggs and a few days after I arrived home I had six fall chicks running after their mother on cold mornings.
This is, I think, a testament to the failure of modern philosophies of parenting. Back in May I carefully isolated a broody hen with ten fertile eggs so the other hens would not lay eggs on top of her (as they do); and so the rooster would not ravish her (as he will); and after she meticulously ate nine of those eggs over the next three weeks, I had one single chick to show for all my helicopter parenting. Michael goes full redneck and we’ve practically got a soccer team.
So there you go, neglect is the answer. I know you’ll appreciate that.
In other garden news, I am thrilled with the progress of so many of my trees planted over the last few years. Most, not all, are small trees – I have enough towering tulip poplars and sycamores as it is. The witch hazels are the most exciting – so far ‘Wisely Supreme’, ‘Jelena’, ‘Rochester’ and ‘Pallida’ are putting on strong growth and flowering vigorously from late December on.
I just bought a Japanese umbrella pine and was given a Styrax obassia earlier in the summer, so I have spent most mornings over the last two weeks walking around with both in hand fruitlessly looking for the right spot. After ten minutes, I put them down and the dance begins again the next morning.
A guilty pleasure – Susanna Farms in Boyds, MD – for all those hard to find trees.
The real difficulty at this time of year, beyond siting plants, are the rutting deer, who, unfathomably, survey a massive woods filled with all sizes and shapes of sapling and stately, and instead choose my coralbark Japanese maple as a scratching post. How many precious trees have I lost to such injustice?!?!?
Wire cages are the answer of course, but ugly. Your photo illustrates that point beautifully, though I think the point is to cage living trees, in case you weren’t sure. I have taken to limbing up most saplings so I can either slip a tree shield over the trunk, or construct a less obtrusive sheath of chicken wire around them.
Still, hunting season begins soon.
Those that do not garden with deer, or indeed, do not garden, cannot understand the spitting, blinding rage experienced by less masochistic folks when they find the weeping spruce they had forgotten to sheathe for the season broken in half. I assure you, hunting season is too good for these criminals.
But enough about things that vex us. On to things that guilt us. After I finish writing these words to you, I must go out, find a dolly and get my big houseplants indoors, before a possible frost tonight – nearly three weeks after they should have enjoyed a smoother temperature transition. Having just written extensively on this very topic in the new book using words of recrimination, and perhaps even a matriarchal, imperious tone, it is only just and right that I should find myself on the opposite end of my own tongue.
This schefflera is easily twice this size since this photo was taken two years ago. That’ll be fun.
Well, some years I pull it all off perfectly, and some years everything goes to hell. I think I mentioned that in the book too.
Last night’s vegetable haul – including some fresh young ginger! I didn’t clean the wheelbarrow in the spirit of Journalistic Integrity…etc..
But before I sign off, two things: First: Beth Chatto. Must you really be schooled again? The entire point of her Gravel Garden was to discover what could and couldn’t grow in a dry East Anglian climate in a prepared bed without supplemental irrigation. They didn’t just throw down a bit of stone dust on top of a compacted parking lot and start charging £8.95 for the privilege of seeing withered gaura. It’s a teaching garden first, a pretty one second. I trust we will not have to revisit this topic in the future.
Second: I’m quite fond of you too, so please avoid the countless ways of stressing yourself out that you seem to revel in. Michael happened to read your last letter and paid particular attention to its warm sentiments. “Is he a threat?” he asked with one eyebrow cocked, hand on holster. (This is Virginia.)
“Well, he’s in Ohio.” I said. “And there’s COVID.”
He seemed satisfied.
Yours,
Marianne
P.S. I do hope that my admission of the houseplants being outside well past their bedtime continues to uphold our lofty ideals of journalistic integrity. If I’m really being honest, I’d rather just let them go at this point, buy exciting replacements in the spring, and spend that saved time watching another episode of Li Ziqi, lithesome and supple amongst the cabbages. Sadly, my frugal nature will win out. It always does.
This is a year when speculation about the future underlies almost everything we do. When will we be able to see children/grandchildren/siblings who live in another state or country? When can we take that vacation? Will the kids be able to go trick-or-treating? When will it be okay to eat inside a restaurant without worry?
The statistics have not yet been compiled, but from my observations and reading, easily thousands of new gardeners turned to something that would bring results, no matter what happened in the world. Or so they thought. Not all the early spring seed orders yielded substantial harvests, but I am also noting that the failures aren’t necessarily stopping first-timers from trying again. Throughout Western New York, garden centers and nurseries, not knowing what to expect, were happily surprised when they were bombarded with online orders for pickup and shopping appointments last spring. They’re still seeing good business as the season slows down. Anecdotal reports estimate that garden supply sales have increased by maybe 300% or better. And, of course, the houseplant craze was already in place.
I put in my bulb order in August and am so glad I did. At this time, most bulb supplies are completely depleted and the sales I usually expect at this time have slim pickings. Once again, Brent and Beckys has temporarily stopped taking orders (just as Burpee had to do in the spring).
I have questions.
Will this surge of interest help our remaining gardening magazines survive?
Will it lead to more and better gardening shows on American TV, along the lines of Gardener’s World?
Will newbie gardeners learn to accept failure and rejoice in partial success, rather than worrying about every little brown leaf or weird bug (there are so many of them). I think we’re so used to living in an increasingly dangerous world that we overestimate the dangers of mildly toxic plants, unfamiliar insects, and common plant diseases.
There are so many sectors of our economy in danger now, but I am selfishly glad if all this means survival, even growth, for garden-related businesses.
The Black Lagoon of Misery
Dark Shadows of Doom Overhead
Will the Bulbs Never End?
The Killing Fields
Others have noticed that our new ads are mostly general interest, rather than gardening-related. In the example above, our site has ads for Xfinity, LinkedIn, Discover card and Lowes. We’ve noticed Toyota and Best Buy, too – and some seriously cool coats from Zulily, which had at least one of us forgetting her deadline and going down a sumptuous retail rabbit hole. 
Masterpiece Theater, either. But sadly, we find ourselves where PBS was, and hey, we held out a lot longer.
This is a year when speculation about the future underlies almost everything we do. When will we be able to see children/grandchildren/siblings who live in another state or country? When can we take that vacation? Will the kids be able to go trick-or-treating? When will it be okay to eat inside a restaurant without worry?
