Sing it Carly! “Anticipation, anticipation/Is making me late/Is keeping me waiting.” Maybe Carly Simon was a horticulturist, because it strikes me lately that no one knows more about anticipation than a gardener. If you told me there’s any pursuit that is more about delayed gratification, about waiting for green dreams to be realized, about being just plain old patient, than gardening, well, I just wouldn’t believe it.
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Last month I started my seasonal orange bender. It being the color of all kinds of wonderful things, from mangoes to sunsets to campfire embers. I can’t get enough of it–in the garden or elsewhere. So I shared some of my favorite flowers and promised a return to the topic with a post on good leaves for orange themes. Here goes: Continue Reading →
Alliums ride in to rescue my garden every year about this time. The spring rush is over, the tulips, daffs and their ilk are gone by, as are many of the flowering trees and shrubs . The summer show has yet to get underway. There’s a kind of lull…except for the alliums, which from late May into early June raise their flowery orbs high, as if to celebrate their moment in the sun, that singular season when the lowly garlic clan rises to rule the garden. A carefully chosen selection of alliums might brighten the garden for most of the season–I’ve got one–Allium thunbergii ’Ozawa’–in bloom nearly as late as Thanksgiving, but late spring is when three of my favorites are most welcome. Continue Reading →
I think we can all agree that planning and installing permanent paths before plunking any plants in the ground is generally the ideal way to get a new garden off to a great start, design-wise. The reality, though, is that most of us are lured into gardening by plants rather than by paving. Have you ever heard anyone say: “Gee, I’d really love to add some color to my yard. I think I’ll go buy some bricks”? I think not. We decide where we want a garden, dig up the turf or pile stuff on top of it, and plant. If we’d stop with that one area, paths would be a non-issue. But when we add another bed or border close by, we also create an “in between” space: a path created by default, rather than by careful planning. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because default paths can be quite practical. They end up being where they are because you (hopefully) placed your plants in spots where you thought they’d look good without interfering with access to your yard. Continue Reading →
