A Summer Phlox Survives Storms and Spies

A solution for letting cats enjoy the outdoors—safely

Making Peter Great Again – One Fountain at a Time

Most gardeners after about 40 years in the asparagus patch begin to at least consider downsizing. You know, cutting back to only three-quarters of an acre of weeds, fewer disease-plagued rose bushes and compost-pile-death to those ever-needy iris and day lilies.

The same with back-yard fountains. Sure, they offer bubbling sounds and elegant gushes of water at the flip of a switch, but the pumps go bad, the dirt clogs the outlets and it can be difficult to keep the hungry goldfish trapped within them happy.

Chances are the house, yard and garden fountains will eventually be sold to some minimalist gardener who only cares to raise a few onions in some ecologically-pure raised bed anyway.

Then there was Peterhof, the cozy 1,250-acre Russian complex of paths and gardens, 150 incredible fountains and a looming yellow palace first brought to light by aptly-named Peter the Great in St. Petersburg in the early 1700s.

Three centuries later it still tells a larger story: To hell with downsizing

Our summer visit there was part of a cruise ship trip to the Baltics, a journey that took in Russia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands.

We saw plants aplenty – including a much too brief stop at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, with its 15 separate gardens dating back to 1843 spread amidst a circus of splendid carnival rides and the ghosts of its 80,000 tulips that appear each spring.

But it was Peterhof that inspired the most memories – and we barely had time to wander one-tenth of the place. Downsizing for Peter the Great – and all those who came after him – was not on their agenda.

Peterhof was absolute proof there’s still a place in this world for a minimal amount of oversized attitude with a large nod in the direction of art history and engineering – and at least the Russians are paying for it. The Mideastern oil sheiks seem to try the same, but much of their works seems over the top and offensive.

Along with the clinging joy of honest sweat and dirt under the fingernails, that’s another thing I like about gardening; it asks that you wander the world a bit to examine what came before, and what a tiny place we all now occupy in that food chain.

Peter the Gardener, a big, handsome, alcohol-loving mix of foresight, genius and brutality, first mentioned the Peterhof site in his journal in 1705, but only as a good place to build a landing for his war efforts.

It all evolved from there, but only after he and his ancestors brought it some architectural help from France and Italy and the like. They also had ready access to about 10,000 laborers with absolutely no choice in the matter.

Few of them, I suspect, got any medical and retirement benefits or paid vacations. In fact, my first thought upon seeing all those massive, gold-edged European castles, palaces and churches is always of the people who built them. The rest of it is aristocratic arrogance and God’s misspent money.

So, evolve Peterhof did. It grew several palaces, the grandest being The Great Palace built during the reign of Empress Elizabeth. And over time such palace walls across Russia and Europe were coated with paintings by Rembrandt, van Gogh, Goya and such.

For all that, Peterhof reached its true glitzy height when Catherine the Great, the Russian Hostess With the Mostess from 1762 until 1796, held all-night parties there illuminated by 10,000 candles.

Peterhof has a lot of shrubs, flowers and trees; many of which I see back home again in Indiana. Although I know better – and have traveled the European world a fair amount looking at gardens – that is always something that still surprises me a little. I mean shouldn’t Mother Russia offer us only Russian plants, and if they had to send one to us, why the very invasive Russian olive? Was Putin behind that?

In a totally horrible way, Peterhof was downsized by the Germans in World War II. The pictures show a bomb-shredded landscape, smashed walls and fountains torn to pieces. It was war-mentality so ugly Stalin bombed it just to forgo Hitler the pleasure of using it.

But the outsized gardens mattered in Russian history, and to its people. The fountains were rebuilt to full size and working condition. All of them. There was no downsizing. The place meant too much. Peterhof now gets 4.4 million visitors a year.

Those fountains are amazing. Their inherent genius is the leaping streams of water are not pushed by pumps, but through huge lakes and reservoirs built above them. The gravity-fed water flows downhill through pipes, the water pressure building to the point the fountain spray erupts 60 feet into the air.

The most glorious of them – the Sampson Fountain with its golden figure of that legendary warrior wrestling with the jaws of a lion – is the centerpiece of the Grand Cascade. Its 64 fountains and 200 bright-gold statues gush water in all directions, an elegant frenzy of art, engineering, history and spectacle. All that water then flows gently down the Sea Canal past other surging fountains to open waters.

Some credit, please, to those ancient artists, architects and forgotten laborers. Their fountains first cranked up in the early 1700s – more than 300 years ago. The Germans stole the original Sampson during World War II. The Russians replaced him by 1947. Fully operational and still going. Wow.

No downsizing there.

Making Peter Great Again – One Fountain at a Time originally appeared on Garden Rant on July 28, 2018.

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The Sights of Cornell, Ithaca and More

Almost on a whim I drove to Ithaca to attend the Children and Youth Garden Symposium being hosted by Cornell (with the American Horticultural Society), and I’m glad I did.

First, the stunning beauty of the campus, the town and the whole region reminded me not at all of the flatlands of Northern Ohio where I went to school. Above is the Plant Sciences Department, where the symposium was held.

One treat was meeting Craig Cramer, who started a blog way back when the Rant launched and became an early commenter. Here he is in his office showing off one of the many scanned-art works he’s famous for. See lots more on his blog Ellis Hollow.

The Cornell Botanic Garden, until recently unfortunately named the Cornell Plantation, was so much more than I’d expected.

The Herb Garden was my favorite part, so much so that I couldn’t choose between these shots.

The Cornell BG includes a whole arboretum with this lake, a shrub collection and much more.

And possibly unique among botanic gardens? A big honking gorge! The Cascadilla Gorge and its trail connects connects the Cornell campus with downtown Ithaca.

You got that? Stunning natural areas right in the middle of the city! I walked part of the trail early one morning and a dog-walker recommended I climb the narrow Cascadilla Park Road that runs along the gorge, calling it a “really cute street.”

Sounded good to me and sure enough, there were gardens and funky homes everywhere.

The architecture in this neighborhood and throughout Ithaca is a fabulous mix of my favorite home types.  

Cute house, impossible upkeep? Boy, I’d love to know how often this hedge has to be trimmed and how long it takes. (I’m nudging my housing coop to stop recommending hedges, despite their prominence in the original plan for the town.)

Like any good boomer tourist, I had to find the original Moosewood Restaurant, in downtown Ithaca. Larger than I imagined, but just as lively.

A fun symposium event was visiting the Ithaca Children’s Garden, shown here with AHS president Beth Tuttle and AHS horticulturist Dan Scott.

The Anarchy Zone presumably doesn’t have to look like a garden. On the right, who doesn’t love a labyrinth?

Honey-harvesting and -tasting.

For still more nature-in-the-city, I visited Stewart Park along Cayuga Lake (one of the famous Finger Lakes) and found it positively strewn with folk music performers. Felt like home.

And going all-out-nature, I visited Treman Gorge, just 4 miles outside of Ithaca and a top recommendation by my old friend Craig Cramer.

Coming soon to GardenRant: what I learned at the Youth and Children’s Garden Symposium, which I promise I really attended.

The Sights of Cornell, Ithaca and More originally appeared on Garden Rant on July 27, 2018.

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Natives here, natives there, natives, natives everywhere…

Painted plants? It’s only Ok when I do it.

Slow Flowers Summit and the Farmgirl Story

Great Dixter Through the Lens of an 11-Year Old

Gardening For Health – Part II

Coop Office Make-Over at Mid-Summer

When I last reported on this make-over I declared that I’d kept the old junipers, despite your advice, and showed pics of the limbed-up old junipers looking pretty sculptural with all the dead matter removed.

But now with dozens of new perennials and 18 new shrubs all at their mid-summer best, bare juniper parts are barely visible.

This is my favorite before/after combo – what people see as they leave the visitors’ entrance. I cringed every time I saw those overgrown junipers made ugly and half-dead by shearing.

Like most landscapes around public and commercial buildings, this one HAS to be low-maintenance while looking good. So like the “Mostly Shrubs” city center I recently showed you, the shrubs here will eventually fill up these foundation borders, and I’ll gradually reduce the number of perennials to pockets of color here and there.

Naturally, there are no annuals, and therefore no need for irrigation after new plants (all pretty drought-tolerant) are established.

Thanks to all the full-grown perennials donated for the project, the garden looks pretty darn full in its first year, and the coop only had to spend $1,500 on plants and materials.

Anyone hazard a guess as to what this make-over would cost if done professionally – with no volunteer gardeners or donated plants?

Plants ID’d

Shrubs above: 3 ‘Gumdrop Burgundy Candy’ Ninebarks (native, fast-growing, ultimate size 4-5′ x 30-36″) and 3 ‘Golden Mops’ Threadleaf False Cypress we chose for the yellow leaf color to contrast with the deep green of the Junipers and purple leaves of the Ninebark.

Perennials above: 2 ‘Walker’s Low” Catmint, a few donated Garden Phlox and many donated Black-eyed Susans (native and the Maryland State Flower. This cheerful long-bloomer is so popular in Old Greenbelt, it’s almost our signature plant.)

Shrubs above: ‘Ginger Wine’ Ninebarks, and  ‘Ogon’ Spireas (chartreuse, willow-like leaves and white flowers in the spring).

Perennials above: Many donated Purple Coneflower, another native, with long-lasting blooms that we’ll leave up in the fall for the goldfinches that love their seedheads. The white flowers on these (instead of the usual purple) were a big surprise. Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) is an orange-blooming native plant that’s great for pollinators. And more Catmint ‘Walker’s Low.’

Shrubs above: 3 ‘Silver Mist’ Junipers’ (ultimate size 1′ x 5′), and ‘Ginger Wine’ Ninebark. 

Perennials above: Tons of donated Black-Eyed Susans, and 3 Kahori Scarlet Pinks (Dianthus hybrid), which bloom almost continuously throughout the season.

Coop Office Make-Over at Mid-Summer originally appeared on Garden Rant on July 13, 2018.

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Managing plant withdrawal

U.S. Botanic Garden’s Sustainable Gardening Showcase is SITES-Certified

Perennially yours; the front yards and easeways of my street

Front lawns are the outliers where I live. With a dense, mature tree canopy that provides cool shade in these dog days of early July, there’s not much hope of maintaining a lush green sward of turfgrass. Oh, there are maybe two houses on the street where the sun has managed to break through and, clearly, a diligent weed ‘n’ feed program is being maintained, but by far the majority of properties don’t even try. Expect shrubs, gigantic hostas, aggressive ground covers, and the few flowering perennials that will accept the shade and all-pervasive surface roots. I used to curse these limiting conditions, but I’ve long since made my peace with them.

It seems best to stick to the earlier tried-and-true varieties of many plants. My shrubs consist of Annabelle hydrangeas, h. quercifolia, some leucothoe, and a couple golden junipers. Perennials include athyrium ‘ghost’ which form a curving shrubbish line across the space, variegated polygonatum, brunnera, and lotsa, lotsa hosta. I am loving the miniature varieties; they can fill in but still maintain continuity.

Elsewhere on the block, I see interesting shrubs, massive stands of columbine and other shade perennials (always with the ginormous hosta), and maybe some annuals or a Japanese maple or two.

The thing that impresses me the most is that here’s an area where the usual front yard treatments—lawn, foundation shrubs, bright annuals for color—simply will not apply. And people are making the most of it.

Perennially yours; the front yards and easeways of my street originally appeared on Garden Rant on July 3, 2018.

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Alternative Lawn for the Northeast

My wife – who is the mower of lawns in our partnership – has taken to mowing around any wildflowers she encounters. As a result, our rather sparse fescue lawn has sprouted tufts of black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta), yarrow (Achillea…

Alternative Lawn for the Northeast originally appeared on Garden Rant on July 2, 2018.

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green thumb

Gardeners look at things maybe morning AND  evening because that’s what gardeners do. I’ve grown impatient with those people that tell me they just don’t have a green thumb. I lay a steely eye on them and tell them to…

green thumb originally appeared on Garden Rant on June 29, 2018.

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Wish Me Luck

My good luck began this spring with a three-year-old thoroughbred named Justify. I was smitten the first moment I saw the beautiful chestnut-colored horse walk onto the Churchill Downs track for a short gallop. I knew right away, early in…

Wish Me Luck originally appeared on Garden Rant on June 27, 2018.

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Tin Chickens are the Right Garden Art for Us

In the end it came down to a pair of ornamental tin chickens, both of them, no doubt, created in a distant and dangerous land soon to be confronting more tariffs – or less.

So it goes in the modern yard-art department where, at some point, everything seems fair game or fowl.

My taste in such in our Hidden Hill Nursery & Sculpture Garden has been running more toward tin chickens of late. That’s partly because every botanical garden and arboretum in the world has now been overrun with Chihuly and such. I do often enjoy those gardens’ massive fountains and carved limestone behemoths, but I do not rob banks or cajole the rich for a living.

Some days you just have to settle for tin chickens.

I started collecting garden art with even more modest goals. The nearby Ohio River provided limestone fossils from the Devonian era; anything that had been around more than 400 million years seemed like a worthwhile investment in time and dirty tennis shoes.

Once there, driftwood also became fair game. It floated in from Pittsburg and beyond, its bark washed smooth, its stunted limbs offering a polished ballet with previous performances upriver in Cincinnati, Ohio and Madison, Indiana.

Yeah, sure, blocky, limestone fossils and well-worn dead trees lining a raised-bed garden. That old stuff. It could make a guy interested in tin chickens.

I went through the usual rustic, garden art phases. Church bells. Shovels shaped like angry birds. Cut class bottles. Wheelbarrows filled with rainbows of caladiums. An ox yoke. Plow shares. Old horse-drawn plows. Painted wooden signs that said, “Beets me.” And, yes, God help me, rubber tires painted pink and planted in purple petunias and hung from trees, but only to mock Chihuly and his ilk.

Promise.

Gradually my tastes changed, some might say even improved. My secret was to befriend local artists who had taste, talent, and, as with many artists, preferred to see their work in our meadow rather than stuffed behind the lawnmower in their garages.

I paid a lot more attention to genuine upper-case Folk Art and artists; people who can create stuff just because they can. You can’t teach it. You can’t imitate it. They just see something where others see nothing and do it.

The results include our Wizard of Oz-like “Watering Can Man” and our “Federal Offense” mailbox.

Certainly, our tin chickens do not roost in that territory. With them I envision about 500 workers sitting in unheated tin buildings cutting up pieces of salvaged metal and making chickens for about $12 a day. The man or woman painting them in their bright colors might get $14 – subject to tariffs.

My reason for the tin chickens was that we already had the empty chicken coop. Our earlier attempt at raising genuine, yellow-yoked farm-grown eggs had gone south. Our coop needed some low-maintenance presence.

We did have some chicken-raising experience. But this time around the original seven fully-formed chickens were quickly reduced to 14 unattached legs by some hungry varmint.

Our next attempt was 12 chickens reduced to zero chickens over about six months due to varmints, illness, bad karma and their refusal to lay eggs after a certain point – with the final three slackers ending up in an employee’s oven. We had warned them.

But our empty chicken coop remained. It had been a $1,000 investment, not counting another roughly $1.6 million spent on treated lumber, chicken wire, lights, heaters, feeders and bales of straw. A good MIT accountant would have estimated our costs per dozen useable eggs at about $15,000 a carton.

But here’s the deal. If part of your reason for living is to mock certain art, pretentiousness and Chihuly, what better way to do it then placing a couple of tin chickens next to your chicken coop.

The opportunity presented itself at a mammoth, corporate-looking glassed-in Northern Illinois nursery that offered at least one of every tree, shrub, flower, fertilizer type, porcelain pot, shovel, hose, watering can and green-lawn push mower in horticultural history.

Its knowledgeable employees sort of wandered the place in a rosy glow, surrounded by all that was good and holy, seemingly willing to die there in the back room potting up perennials if it came to that.

And there, near that back room and another quarter acre of garden stuff, were two tin chickens. What seemed to be a rooster about four-feet tall and a smaller guy with tinny pretensions. On sale. And us only about 400 miles from home and a pickup truck already full of trees, shrubs and flowers I couldn’t live without.

No problem. The chickens got safe harbor in a relative’s garage until we got back up to Northern Illinois. They got a ride home in the back of our beloved Honda Odyssey – our 146,000-mile baby – along with more much needed plants.

We cleaned out the chicken coop and its run of extraneous chicken bit, placed the two tin chickens near the end facing our nursery, and stood back in awe and full customer appreciation.

There is the distinct possibility that da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” or Rodin’s “The Thinker” might garner a little more praise, but I’m thinking we’ve got Chihuly worried.

Tin Chickens are the Right Garden Art for Us originally appeared on Garden Rant on June 25, 2018.

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I Saved the Old Junipers Despite your Advice

In a post last fall I asked, “Can these Junipers be Saved?” about the old, overgrown ones used as foundation plants in front of my coop’s office building. Above, the very sad “before” look, showing a lot of dead parts due to shearing that was done to keep branches away from the sidewalks. It was the sadly common problem of using plants that become too large for their space.

So the staff yanked out the junipers nearest the sidewalk, which revealed large dead areas on the remaining ones, where they’d been crowded and shaded.

That’s when I asked GardenRant readers here and on Facebook to weigh in, which they sure did. The majority were in favor of removing ALL the old junipers:

• I would say just remove them and start fresh.
• Low growing evergreens like junipers tend to break or spread under a load of snow. So, when you remove the lower limbs, you’ve removed the support for the upper limbs making the juniper more prone to snow breakage. Besides, I personally am not a fan of the ornamental look. I’d remove your junipers. I’d place more open evergreens
• Sometimes, the better question is not “can they be saved,” but “should they be saved?” And I’m a vote for “not saved.” No more spraying for bagworms, no more (in my case) worrying about whether the pack rats are moving in for shelter, no more browning underneath, no more overgrown monstrosities harboring trash and potential muggers. Out! Out, I say!
• I am with many of the others. Remove the entire lot of juniper, start over and select plants that will be appropriately sized for what you want.
• No, they cannot and should not. My neighborhood was developed in the 60s and some of the lovely homes still maintain borders and slopes of juniper, which also harbor rats and skunks. A couple of the worst hold-outs paint the exposed brown a too-bright green annually, to compensate!
• They could be, but there are so many more attractive alternatives.
• Pull them out and plant more attractive shrubs. (To which I asked, “What shrubs would you suggest?” but there was no response.)

Just two voted for saving the remaining junipers:

• I had this problem at my property here in Provence. I have some landscape training, and decided to do a modified Japanese style, exposing the good parts of the structure and thinning and shaping the upper branches. Looks beautiful and I get many compliments. I even added a stone lantern.
• I really like the sculptural look and haven’t had or seen snow load problems (mind you we don’t get the lake affect snow upstate New York gets). The issue may be what to do in the area under the branches.

I guess I like a “sculptural look” because that’s what I’d call the result you see here, after I spent several hours over the winter removing all the dead juniper parts. I also like using that area already in place when possible (a principle of sustainable gardening that doesn’t get enough attention) and saving money for my coop. Replacing all these foundation evergreens would have been pricey and it would have taken years for them to look established.

But what about the problems the commenters warned me about?

• To my knowledge, these junipers have no bagworm problem and are never sprayed.
• Limbed-up like this, they don’t harbor rats, skunks, trash or potential muggers.
• The only concern that applies here (again to my knowledge) is that some of the remaining branches aren’t holding themselves up well now, without the support of the dead branches underneath. The drooping adds a bit of drama to the sculptural effect.

In April the effect of daffodils blooming with the limbed-up junipers was nice but awfully sparse-looking. I can’t wait to show you what the make-over looks like now, with 18 new shrubs and dozens of perennials, mostly donated and full-size.

Okay, that’s an understatement. I’m so excited about this garden I can hardly keep from checking on it every day.

I Saved the Old Junipers Despite your Advice originally appeared on Garden Rant on June 22, 2018.

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Too Cool For Color

Amazon comes for the garden centers?

It’s been happening for a while. I am guilty of using Amazon for garden hardware that’s kind of boring to shop for in person, like hoses, nozzles, timing systems, and the like. I have never shopped for plants there. But a recent article in the industry mag, Garden Center, reports on Amazon’s recent launch of the Amazon Plants Store, which invites consumers to shop for plants by brand, with the list including such well-known icons as Proven Winners.

Ordinarily, if you go to Amazon’s home and garden section, you’ll find a list on the left that includes plants, with items like trees, perennials, and shrubs. But click on trees and, most likely, the first item might be a book, with other choices including a bottle tree, solar lights, and fairy houses to hang on trees. It’s not much help and you’ll soon be headed to your local tree nursery.

The new Plants Store, however, focuses on live plants only. Except. After scrolling down past the grower logos, some plant images appeared, none of them plants I would ever think of for outdoor gardening purposes. They included a sago palm, a lucky bamboo, a bunch of orchids, and some other tropicals, all mixed in with Knockouts and azaleas. This is not the way I like to shop for plants. My favorite IGC has separate areas for these things and they are arranged in a way that makes sense, something that Amazon’s algorithms are incapable of, by definition. Amazon just doesn’t work that way, which can be fun when you’re looking for books or face cream.

I am a big online shopper for bulbs, and, occasionally, annuals or perennials I can’t find anywhere else. But, by far, the bulk of my shopping is done in person, at local IGCs and I do not see that changing.

Here’s my favorite quote from the Garden Center article, from a retailer who sells both ways: “We kind of like Amazon, and we kind of feel like we don’t like Amazon. It’s a really weird relationship.” That sounds about right.

Otherwise, I’m envisioning hordes of newbie gardeners filling their yards with orchids, sago palms, and lucky bamboo.

Amazon comes for the garden centers? originally appeared on Garden Rant on June 19, 2018.

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