by Lisa Newman, Art Director

For the last year (at least) I’ve cornered every gardener I know, looking for advice, guidance, and direction for a yet-to-be-“gardened” area of my yard.

I’ve been trying to imagine creating a garden where there is none. It used to be that I just started digging and created something, but all these years later I think I know better. Or at least I imagine I should know better than to just start without some sort of vision.

My problem seems to be that I can’t commit to a design, a list of plants, or a direction. I like everything. Everyone's suggestions seem perfect.

Should I go with tropicals as one friend suggested? Or a series of "rooms" as suggested by a stellar landscape designer? Containers mixed with plantings is another option, and then there’s the possibility of making this the designated space for a long-dreamed-of cutting garden. 

Whatever direction I end up with, then there will be the list of plants. Another quandry for me.

It’s all making my head spin. Luckily I still have time. As of lunch today there’s still a solid two-foot base of snow and ice.

I guess what really scares me is that I have never followed a plan, a design, a list. Much as I want to believe I can do it I just can’t seem to get there.    

This seems to be a window into my general “process,” or lack of. I seem to have the same approach to gardening as I have to cooking: I read and look at all sorts of inspirational material and then go and invent. For me it’s all very random, whether I’m planning the garden or creating a meal.

This exercise of writing this may have helped me to commit. When I got to this place on the page I began to imagine the following (actually it’s a marriage of all that has been suggested):

• A long row of 'Annabelle' hydrangea shrubs against the fence 

• Three containers with 'Brown Turkey' fig trees

• Replant the cannas from last year in a tight cluster

• Salvia 'Spanish Dancer' 

• Lots of annuals for picking

• A witch hazel because I’ve been wanting to add that to the landscape

And then the rest will come from inspiration when I visit the nursery—just like usual.

by Lisa Newman, Art Director

A few weeks ago someone arrived with quince and black pussy willow branches for me. I put both into a large vase. I loved watching them bloom. The quince stayed in bloom for a really long time, brightening my kitchen during New England’s cold February. The pussy willow provided nice texture to the arrangement.

My mom taught me early how to force branches. I believed that she was the only one who knew this magic trick. I would go out and collect pussy willow, apple branches, and forsythia and she would arrange them in large vases and I would watch as the branches came to life. I’m now the keeper of those vases.

My mom also taught me that we could start new plants from some of the branches that we forced. That’s how I started a few plants in my garden with branches from my mom’s garden. They make a nice connection to the past. And a double pleasure—first the blooms and then a plant.

Well, I know my mom wasn’t the only one who knows this trick to brightening the long New England winter. And now I have a question and I am without my mom to answer it.

I just noticed that both the quince and the willow have developed incredible roots. However, it’s February, and where I live there’s more than foot of snow on top of a base of ice. We won’t be ready to put anything into the earth for another two months. So the question: will the shoots keep? Is there anything I should be doing to keep them from molding? Am I crazy—should I just toss them? Seems awful to do that.

If you have any clues, please leave me a note. Just click “Comments.”

Thanks.

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By Lisa Newman, Art Director

Horticulture’s third-annual “Plants We Love” issue hit the newsstands just about the same time that my friend Jeffrey called to schedule our second-annual “tea and seed catalog” get-together.

Jeffrey was already there when I arrived at the local eatery, Elmer's. He was sitting at a table buried beneath a mountain of catalogs. A steady stream of gawkers couldn’t resist a look. Everyone had something to say. Mostly they all expressed the same end-of-January longing for plants, color—the promise that all of the pictures held. (At home, my dog Amos was pining for some garden action, too.)

I ended up with a long, long list and plan on placing my orders today—after some editing, so I don’t overspend or overestimate my ability to actually get all of these planted. Then the next move is space planning, inside and out.

I’ve always wanted a cutting garden, and this year I am determined to get one started. I hope that I can pull this off from start to finish. I’d never really considered starting an entire garden from seeds but here goes.

A sampling of the list:

• ‘Moonshadow’ and dwarf sunflowers
• ‘Apricot Blush’ zinnia
• ‘Glacier Star’ morning glory
• ‘Black Watchman’ and ‘Antwerp Mixed’ hollyhocks
• Dahlias of all varieties
• Mixes of blue-shaded sweet peas

By Lisa Newman, Art Director

On a visit to North Hill (Wayne Winterrowd and Joe Eck's Vermont garden) a few years ago, I noticed all of the great container plantings throughout the gardens. I finally saw beyond the potted geranium. Suddenly the idea that I could have tropical plants in containers, that I could move plants around during the summer months to fill in holes in the garden, that I could use containers in groups along the side of the house in lieu of the dreaded foundation plants—well it was a whole new world opening up before me. I went home and started a garden of containers.

But then came the problem of storage and over wintering. This year it sort of came to a head. I’ve run out of places to stash the plants. I asked everyone how they handled this problem. One piece of advice stuck: Edit the plants down to those that will over-winter well and are deserving of the space.

So this year, I have brought in all of the containers but have not kept all of the plants. A few of the larger leggy plants have been brought down in size—I rooted cuttings that I can nurse throughout the winter. I began to realize that what I need to learn to do is to create an indoor garden that I enjoy rather than indoor storage that just torments me every time I look at it.

Until I get a bigger house or a better set of skills I think I’ll use the winter as an excuse to rethink what I have, to start over with new plants come spring, and to try my luck at propagation. Here’s
hoping for success and spring—when I can move it all outside where the plants and the “gardener” will be happier.

We all learn differently. Some of us read up on techniques before venturing into new territory, and others of us (me) stumble into knowledge.

Last fall I read about tuber storage in Horticulture. I stored lots of dahlia tubers in the basement as instructed. The story stopped there, and so did I, when maybe I should have read up on what to do next, in spring. Here’s what happened with the stored dahlia tubers, some cannas tubers a friend gave me, and colchicum bulbs I bought in late August.

I learned that timing of planting is worth noting. I didn’t think about putting the dahlias in the ground until sometime in late June. The canna tubers a friend gave me, along with some gladiola bulbs, languished unplanted for 2 or 3 extra weeks. The colchicum bulbs got stashed in a closet.

The results: If not for the very unusual summery fall weather here in the Northeast, a frost would have killed the plants long before they had time to bloom. The dahlias were about to bloom at the end of October. The cannas were just beginning to flower.

The gladiola bulbs yielded fantastic blooms that kept on going for weeks. The lesson learned with those: They would have been really nice in the garden, instead of slumped over in too-small containers with barely enough dirt. (That’s where I shoved them in a desperate summer effort to just put them somewhere.)

As for the colchicums, I found them blooming in the closet one day. I had forgotten to plant them and in the dark closet they began to bloom. I quickly got them into the ground but in that haste I didn’t bury them at the correct depth and although they bloomed they looked ridiculous sticking up many inches higher than they should have.

So why confess to all of these blunders? It’s my nature I guess. And I guess it’s my nature to learn by trial and error. Or at least that’s been the case before. This year I plan to store everything in one place. I’ll label the tubers and bulbs and prepare a journal with informed information on when, where, and how to plant. Here’s hoping for abundant blooms on the dahlias, showy cannas to punctuate the end of the season, colchicums nestled in at the right depth, and gladiolas standing straight in the garden where they belong.

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While Nan Sinton is leading a tour in South Africa, our art director Lisa Newman will be offering her thoughts on her autumn garden.

by Lisa Newman, Art Director

Asters appeared a few weeks ago and I realized that I didn’t like them. I thought it was because they were leggy and misplaced in the garden. They seemed to loom up dead center in the garden announcing themselves as a very unwlecomed focal point. I considered moving them but knew they’d have deep purple blooms soon and I could use them as fresh picked flowers. I put off moving them. Not long after that, my neighbor began a new garden. He said he liked asters so I thought I’d dig them up and pass them along. When I started digging, however, I began to resconsider, running down the list of virtues and that’s when I hit upon the reason I didn’t like this plant. It's not so much the plant but rather what it announces—the end of the gardening season. I started thinking about what I could do to embrace the season and even extend it. So I began searching out plants that would bloom in late September and early October. If the aster had some companions, then it would just be part of a new scene in the garden, not a reminder that the season was coming to a close.

A Hydrangea 'Limelight' and an oakleaf hydrangea along with some big,bold dahlias (I plan to save the tubers for next season), Rudbeckia nitida, ruby-leaved heucheras, a few sedums are now providing companionship to the aster. This morning while gathering a bouquet of fresh-picked flowers from this new assortment I noticed, tucked way back under the  robust hydrangea, the most beautiful crimson bloom of a salvia (an annual in my part of the world) that I had forgotten I’d even planted. So bring on fall now that I see this new world of new possibilites.

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I went to pick parsley last night and discovered that someone had been there before me – in fact a contented gathering of the beautiful green and black “caterpillars” of the black swallowtail butterfly, Papilio polyxenes, was happily feasting on my kitchen door pot of parsley. These lovely larvae require a meal on members of the carrot family in order to complete their development and have adopted Dill and Parsley, neither of them native to North America, as tasty additions to their diet.  So now I’ll have to remember to plant a lot of extra parsley for the larvae, as well as lettuce for the rabbits and everything else for the wood-chuck.

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I was at Tony Avent’s amazing nursery Plant Delights with Horticulture’s “Great Plants event a couple of years ago. Tony has planted an avenue of golden dawn redwoods, Metasequoia glyptostroboides ‘Ogon’ with a ground cover of the purple pineapple lily, Eucomis comosa ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ near the entrance to the nursery. It looks sensational so of course I bought a couple of pineapple lilies and brought them back to Massachusetts.

I planted these bulbs in a container which I over-winter in my garage. This year they are really hitting their stride. The other day I had an “eek” experience when I looked at those beautiful dark burgundy leaves and found, nestled deep down in one of my lilies, a greedy snail! Too far down to pick out by hand, too small a space to get at –and then I remembered them – the ice tongs. One of those rarely used kitchen gadgets tucked away at the back of a drawer the all but forgotten ice tongs did the trick. The snail was extracted, the lily continues to bloom beautifully and the tongs have moved from the recesses of the kitchen drawer to a handy spot in my greenhouse. Who knows what other rescue missions they will perform?

P.S. I’ll be back at Plant Delights with the speakers in our fall symposium, Smaller Garden/Big Ideas. We’ll be there on Friday, October 19. Tony has invited all the registrants for the Raleigh symposium to come for breakfast and a little shopping at Plant Delights. I wonder what treasures I’ll find this time?

For more details click here or go to our web site and click on symposiums.

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It was a cold February day when I chatted with my friends Marcia and David at the Horticulture winter symposium in Troy, Michigan. I first met this gardening duo when we traveled together on Horticulture garden tours and I have come to know them as international travelers, avid gardeners, and lovers of music. I’ll never forget persuading David to sing on the stage of the Greek theater in Taormina, Sicily during one of our tours. His magnificent voice gave us some idea of what a performance there could have been. Back home in Michigan he and Marcia tend a garden ‘up north’ and over the past thirty five years they have cultivated Primula japonica in a damp spot.  These candelabra primulas thrive, and now, thanks to the wonders of over-night shipping, they have shared their bounty and sent me some to add to my own garden. When I got to the office I discovered a package of seedling primulas waiting for me, carefully packed and fresh as can be.  I am thrilled to have these small treasures to grow in my garden. There is nothing quite as delightful as a shared plant and I look forward to many springs admiring the primulas in bloom.

Michigan gardeners enjoy some of the finest wildflower and woodland garden displays found anywhere. Think of blankets of trilliums, yellow and pink lady-slipper orchids, the pristine white of bloodroot. Now is definitely the time to take note of gaps in our spring garden planting so that we can add more plants for an event prettier display next year.

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By Nan Sinton, Director of Programs

I’ve always lived near the sea, which for a gardener can be both good and bad news. Good for the ocean’s moderating effect on winter cold and summer heat, bad for the wind, the salt and the storms. One thing I‘ve learnt is that in New England fall will linger and spring will be late.

In London in early March I saw the daffodils in full bloom, and later, on the Horticulture tour to Sicily, there were hillsides of golden coreopsis and blue alkanet, (Anchusa arvensis). Back home in Massachusetts snow and ice covered the ground.  Now, nearly two months later, the daffodils are still blooming in my garden, joined by Leucojeum aestivum, the spring snowflake, and something that came as a sweet surprise, a collection of grape hyacinths, Muscari sp., a gift last year from a friend. Dark blue, pale blue, white, two shades of blue-- this is the prettiest mix I’ve ever seen. (It came from the excellent John Scheeper’s Beauty from Bulbs catalog). But much though I enjoy the extended bloom of the bulbs, our weather has remained chilly and the trees are just barely beginning to open, so I was taking a chance in early May when I decided to call it ‘officially’ spring and bring out the bananas. My “plantation” winters in the garage – more on garage gardening another time – and were already leafing out and heading for the ceiling. I’m growing Musa bajoo, the Japanese fiber bananas, which are technically hardy in Zone 6 so I don’t actually have to dig them up and take them indoors, but I do. When I decide that spring has come I prepare a big hole for each plant, mix in a hearty feed of cow manure and my best compost, move the bananas out on a two-wheeler, remove the individual black garbage bags in which they’ve spent the winter, settle them into the ground with a deep drink of water and hopefully, they are off to a happy summer of growth.

I’ve always enjoyed growing tender and tropical plants and find it encouraging that one of the finest sub-tropical gardens in the world is actually in the far geographical north, in Scotland, at Logan Botanical Garden. There the garden is on a tiny peninsula surrounded by salt water and the resulting mild climate enables the gardeners to grow an amazing range of plants. Bulbs from around the world, Chilean flame trees and New Zealand tree ferns, the enormous pre-historic looking Gunnera manicata from Brazil and the tiny Gunnera magellanica from Chile mingle with perennials and vines,  trees and shrubs from Asia and the United States. I’m looking forward to making a return visit to Logan with our Horticulture group when we visit Private Gardens in Scotland at the end of August.  I think Logan is at its best in late summer, as are many of the gardens that we plan to visit.  And by that time in the summer I’ll be ready not only for new ideas but to see new plants to try in my not-always sub-tropical greenhouse and garden. I wonder if a tree fern would like to join the bananas for a winter snooze in a New England garage?

Nan Sinton
Director of Programs,
Horticulture Magazine
98 N.Washington Street
Boston, MA 02114