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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10/31/2007 4:42:45 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

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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8/17/2007 9:22:29 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

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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8/6/2007 1:49:40 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

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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6/14/2007 9:22:36 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

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

5/18/2007 4:03:15 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]