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Gray Day

The fire that was our fall has burnt itself out, but for a few embers here and there.  Those embers are largely the heat that is generated by passionate gardeners.  The plans to plant bulbs.  How to store the cannas.  What they feel they must try-next season.  A new house requiring some semblance of a landscape before the snow flies.  But the fact remains that the leaves from our shop wall of boston ivy fell in unison overnight, making a crispy heap all along the base of the wall. The skies have been rainy and gray all day-the wind brisk and cold.  The color in the garden this late-muted, and dry.     

My small rose garden is but a shadow of its summer self.  The last few flowers on the Sally Holmes roses are droopy, the petals punctuated by rose pink markings from the cold rain.  The asparagus, weighted down by the cold rain, is grudgingly turning yellow.  Along with my Parrotias, it is the last plant in garden to succumb to the fall, and turn color. Once the asparagus turns, I know the gray days are soon to come.

Buck shut the fountain down a week ago.  Dry maple leaves floated on the still surface.  Many more maple leaves have sunk to the bottom,  turning the water brown.  The decomposing leaves stain the stone.  He drained the pool yesterday.  I am in no hurry to go see it-empty.  Closing the fountain is every bit as emotional day as that day when we open it in the spring.  The opening and closing-part and parcel of gardening in a zone that has four seasons.

What plant could possibly be more dramatic about about the close of the gardening season than the hostas?  Once the cold infiltrates their stems and leaves, they collapse in a mushy heap on the ground.  Flattened-that is exactly how the late fall makes me feel.  It’s too late to garden, beyond the planting of the fall bulbs.  It’s too early for winter. It’s too early for a down coat, but its too late for a sweater.  It is way too early to wring my hands, and wish the season had been better.  It is too late to plant a few more anemones.       

We did redo a landscape on a small property last week; this renovation included a sizeable perennial garden.  If I plant perennials this late in the fall, I am sure to tromp down the rootballs firmly.  No rooting will take place now, and the frost coming out of the ground in the spring will want to heave those rootballs out of the ground.  We stamp every plant down firmly.  At the end of winter, when the frost starts coming out of the ground, we will check to be sure no plants have heaved up. 

Though we are still actively involved in the installation of landscapes, several of which are for newly constructed homes, the close of the gardening season is tough to take. Amazingly, we have not had a hard frost yet.  Down the street from me, a marigold border is flat out gorgeous.  Maybe it’s just my gray-colored glasses, but most of the landscape looks like it is grieving.

Astonishing how the leaves of the Boston ivy fall all at once, leaving their stalwart pink stems still attached.  These rosy stems defying gravity made me smile- in spite of that  cloud of gloom following me around.

The coming of the dark-I do not welcome it.  But there will be moments, experiences to come that I will enjoy.  The winter season in Michigan-who knows what nature has in store for this year.  Putting the shovel and the pruners away means there will be time for the holidays, the winter containers, the books – and the planning for the new season to come.  This was a very hard season-I am not so sorry to see it gone.  The April frosts that killed every flower on my magnolias, and the extreme heat and drought that challenged all of my summer gardening efforts-I am relieved to see that come to a close.  In spite of this griping about my summer season, I am sorry to see it gone.

 

 

Posted on: November 2, 2012 2 Comments
Filed Under: Garden Stories, Upon Reflection, Fall Tagged With:

Halloween Light

The new landscape lighting got done just in the nick of time-for Halloween.  What a difference it made!  Little kids in costumes with skirts ands pants that were extravagantly long could negotiate my steps with ease.  Those with big wigs, masks, elaborate costumes, and knit caps to ward off the cold, had some light to help them get to the door. 

The lights positioned outside the front door made it easy for me to see every costume, and every face.  Though one places a premium on scary at Halloween, a well lighted walk and destination makes for an experience of the landscape that is more fun for everyone.  The puzzled looks you see here-my French friend Matthias asking each trick or treater “who are you??”.  Each reaction was immediate, and unfiltered by a dark meeting place.

Though many of my pictures are blurred, they tell a story.  This is my once a year contact with the kids who live in my neighborhood.  This is their once a year interaction with me. The new landscape lighting helped all of us to see each other better. 

My arms are still aching from carving 6 giant pumpkins.  I will never again be fooled by the label-“carving pumpkins”.  I somehow thought these carving pumpkins would be thin walled-easy for a florist’s knife to handle.  This pumpkin had walls every bit of 2 inches thick.  Hours it took to carve them.  I did put 7 votive candles in each of my pumpkins-Buck thought I was nuts.  But I am used to the light from the pumpkins supplying all of my Halloween light.  Last year, the nest of gourds that I usually set my pumpkins on would not have been visible. This year, the light from the eaves makes them part of the show.  The work was worth it-it showed.  


The porch was a well lit place.  This was a good thing, considering that it was cold, and spitting rain.  It interests me that landscape lighting can provide so much atmosphere for an event-or a garden.  Last week, the lighting was friendly-all about illumination.  Halloween night it was all about a little drama.  The shadows cast by the lights-just as scary as the holiday.

Though the work of the carving was a lot, my pumpkin pots were looking good.  Lots of fire on the inside.  Enough light outside to reveal their shapes and stems. 

The look of this pumpkin without light from above would have told but half the story.  More kids asked about my pumpkins this Halloween than ever before.  Many kids asked me if they were real.  The lighting made all the difference to the presentation.   This exterior lighting is making the many dark months ahead seem less dreary.  Even intriguing. Some thoughtful landscape lighting-I recommend it.

 

Posted on: November 2, 2012 6 Comments
Filed Under: Fall, Lighting Tagged With:

At A Glance: The Boston Ivy

 

September 2

October 14


October 18

October 14

October 20

October 21

October 21

October 22

October 28

Posted on: October 28, 2012 5 Comments
Filed Under: Plants, Fall, Color Tagged With: , ,

The Garden Designer’s Roundtable: Danger Garden

There is danger lurking in every garden.  It doesn’t take much of a brush with poison ivy to sideline the most passionate gardener.  A horde of angry bees can do the same.  The leaves of tomatoes and datura are poisonous-never mind the mushrooms that spring up here and there.  But given my zone that features a long and often bitter winter, my focus is much more about the dangers that pose a threat to my gardens.  The landscape around me, both public and private is on fire now-it is the fall season.  A good client tells me that the intensely fiery fall color is nature’s way of apologizing for what is to come.          

Leaves are green when the leaf is actively producing chlorophyll.  Leaves convert the energy from sunlight into energy that is food fore the plant.  This is a vastly oversimplified and maybe not so perfectly accurate account, but it helps to tell the story. 

Yellow, orange, red and hot pink pigments exist in leaves, but that color is masked while the plant is in active growth, and producing chlorophyll.  Once the days begin to shorten, the plant responds to this slowing down of the growing season by reducing, and finally ending its production of chlorophyll.

Would that gardeners had a mechanism that sophisticated for dealing with the season coming to an end.  I am outside cruising the garden now in a coat and hat, shivering, in an effort to stave off the inevitable.  I value those cold temperature stalwarts the pansies as much in the fall as the spring.  My Rozanne geraniums and my Japanese anemones are in full flower right now.  None of their leaves are on fire-they are green as green can be. 

Perennials need much less time to prepare for winter than the trees.  Giant plants take months to slow down, so onc the ground is frozen, they are but a breath away from a dormant state.  Hopefully they have stored plenty of energy which will sustain them throught the winter. 

Our fall is associated with the fruits of the harvest.  Brilliantly orange pumpkins are available everywhere right now.  At market, the red, yellow and orange peppers add lots of visual heat on chilly days. The color Chinese lantern seed pods is a comfort.

Our fall color in a good year is sensationally beautiful.  It is hard to believe that all of this warm color comes at a time of year when the overnight temperatures are steadily dropping.  This magnolia in full fall color is an expression of yellow that rivals forsythia in the spring.   

Nyssa sylvatica is a very architectural tree.  Simple and unobtrusive in shape and leaf, the fall color is its glory.  The tangerine and yellow orange of these leaves is a standout in a fall landscape.

This leaf from a Princeton Gold maple is singed by cold, and fungus.  The process of the slowdown of chloropyll production is obvious.  Danger-winter dead ahead. 

Sugar maples are noted for their fiery fall color.  Someday I would like to take a fall color tour in northern Michigan, or New England.  But trees all over my neighborhood do a great job of making the beginning of the end of the garden bearable.

All five of these leaves came from one of my yellow butterflies magnolias. They illustrate the process by which a green leaf matures, and drops.  The danger ahead?  A winter that threatens the life of even the best prepared of plants.  It can happen. 

Gardening in a zone with harsh winters has its dangers, for plants and gardeners alike.  All of the fiery signs are out there.

For more on Danger Gardens,  check out the posts of other members of the Garden Designers Roundtable, and our guest writer this month, the very talented gardener Loree Bohl :

Loree Bohl : Danger Garden : Portland, OR

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Mary Gallagher Gray : Black Walnut Dispatch : Washington, D.C.

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

David Cristiani : The Desert Edge : Albuquerque, NM

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Posted on: October 22, 2012 16 Comments
Filed Under: Fall, Color Tagged With: