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Once A Year. This Is It!

We have been slammed at the shop since this past Monday.  Detroit Garden Works conducts one sale a year.  From the day after Christmas until January the 8th, we put every holiday item on sale for 50% off-and everything and anything else in the shop at 20% off.  Should you be a gardener interested in a bit of a bargain-once a year, we oblige.  This is it.  Jenny has plenty of pictures posted; www.detroitgardenworks.com.  After the 8th, we are open by chance or by appointment until March 1.  This gives us some time to travel, shop, repaint, clean, and plan.  So should you have a mind to drop by after January 8, email us, call ahead, or knock on my front door.        

Gardening might be best defined as a “this is it” pursuit. Should I neglect to plant crocus in the fall, I will have plenty of time regret it, come spring.  Should I not take the time to see and enjoy my March crocus, I might miss them. A two day span of exceptionally cold weather-those flowers will vanish-until next year.  There are times when I might turn back the clock, or ask for an extension-but time waits for no garden. Tune in to the crocus, or wait until next year.   

The hellebore flowers are not nearly so fragile.  They stay with me for a while in late March and April.  I make it my spring business to look at them every day.  Planting them on the driveway was no accident; I have two chances every day to enjoy them.   How the flowers emerge from the ground, mature, and dry right on the stalk is a process that takes weeks.  But once those weeks pass, hellebore heaven will have to wait until next year.  I leave the flowers be, hoping some seed will mature, drop and grow.        

I may photograph the tulips outside my office every day.  Like the hellebores, observing their manner of emerging from the ground and growing is a yearly treat.  The flowers are glorious.  They come in an extraordinary range of sizes, colors and forms.  For my pots in the garage, I bought smaller numbers and as great a variety as I could.  Why not try as many as possible?  I was caight flat footed by the early cold this fall; the pots were outdoors a little too long. Every time I look at these pots filled with dirt, I search for signs of a bulb-fest to come.  Nothing doing.  I’ll have my this is it moment, for better or for worse, months from now.     

With the exception of double bloodroot, no flower is more fleeting than the magnolia.  Really cold spring weather can shut down the show before it even opens.  No matter than you have a valid ticket. Should I be so fortunate to have a good show from my Galaxy magnolia, I can be assured it will not be a long one.  I have 2 chairs and a table on my upper deck.  They are placed to take advantage of the aerial view pictured above.   I may need a coat and hat, but I am out there. The ephemeral beauty of everything that blooms in my garden has much to do with why 2011 will be my 33rd gardening season.   

I cannot remember another year when the roses were this prolific. 2010 provided spectacularly great growing weather from early spring through June.  This John Davis rose of Janet’s was smothered in flowers for weeks. Wherever I saw roses, they were glorious.  Janet, who devotes her summer gardening life to her roses insisted that I come and spend some time with hers.  I am so glad I did.  On both of our minds-is this it?  Is this the best the roses will ever be?    

Even the Queen Anne’s Lace in the field was lush.  Regular rain early, and a very hot and dry July made the meadow next door look dreamy.  This was nature at its weediest best.      

The sunflower season is one of my favorites.  I buy them at market as often as I can.  There is not a form shape or color I do not like-although the orangy brown varieties seem a little silly.  I like my sunflowers to remind me of the sun, and sunny summer days.  I like to have bouquets of them throughout the season.  These stems I stuck into a large brick of oasis taped into a clear floral dish.  Sunflowers are big, heavy and unwieldy.  Worst of all, the water fouls quickly, and needs frequent changing.  I set this dish on top of a glas vase full of water which I tinted yellow with food coloring.  Amazingly, sunflowers last for days out of water altogether. 

By the time my Honorine Jobert anemones start blooming, I know the end of the season is not long off. The cooler nights make this once a year display go on for quite some time.  But once the nights turn very cold, the flowers vanish-until next year.   


The fall color on the Boston Ivy was short lived this year.  Some leaves dropped from cold before they turned. The color-not so great as it was in 2009.  But I had no complaints.  Once a year, I have my chance to enjoy it.

Posted on: December 30, 2010 2 Comments
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Garden Design Tagged With: , ,

Pattern and Texture

There is nothing like a snowfall to make patterns and textures in the landscape stand out.  Boxwood provides a small and fine texture and a uniform pattern; this picture makes that very clear.  The branching on trees stands out dramatically when those branches are coated with snow.  These brown concrete pots have very smooth surfaces; only the rims catch the snow.  The pots read as a homogeneous shape.  Given the somber colors of a winter landscape, the interest here is all about line, pattern, texture, and mass.  Winter greatly restricts the color palette in the landscape-that change is not all bad.  It makes the other elements of design easier to see.  

A dusting of snow has collected on the exposed surfaces of these bundles of copper willow.  The bunches provide quite a hairdo for this bench.  Individually, the sticks are quite linear.  The mass of sticks have a curved pattern.  The snow makes clear that anything in a mass reads quite diferently than it does as an individual.  A single plant might be distinguished in its flower or leaf, or stature; a mass of that plant is more about an overall shape, sweep, or drift. 

This cast iron grate has a distinctive pattern and a densely complex texture.  Snow makes all the more of that. How snow softens the outlines of hard structures and surfaces is one of the pleasures of the winter landscape.  A snowfall can make the most ordinary landscape look spectacularly beautiful.  It would be more accurate to say that most natural phenomena are spectacularly beautiful-even if I neglect to see it.  The snow turns on the lights.  

We are not buried in snow like other parts of the country, but we did get 6-8 inches.  The snow fell fast, and stuck to everything.  Why does it sometime snow when the temperature is above freezing?  It was 35 degrees here at one point yesterday and snowing like mad; it was 7 degrees when I got to work this morning.  All the wet snow is now frozen in place, so I have had plenty of time to look around.  The pruning pattern on the katsura espaliers can be readily seen; branches that were cut back hard responded by sprouting a number of stick straight branches from a single cut.  The pattern I see on these trees is a very clear explanation of how a branch responds to pruning. A pruning cut issues an invitation to grow.   

These vintage trench drains have a repetitive and very geometric pattern. They are most clearly a human-generated form.  The wildly curving branches of the pollarded willow are anything human. This idea shocks me some, and interests me a lot. The snow outlines the massive main trunks of the tree. I will loose this pollarded tree sooner rather than later. A high wind several years ago uprooted it.  My efforts to replant it were in vain; the bark is shedding in giant strips, and bracket fungus fruiting bodies have appeared.   

The copper curly willow is very curly. This branching is obscured in the summer by leaves.  I have to admit that this tree looks better in the winter than the summer, and that the pattern is outstanding in the snow.  The most difficult thing about choosing plants for their winter interest is that when that idea strikes home, as in today, nothing can be done about it.  I keep files of photographs of my own garden organized by the month.  I photograph certain key spots from the same angle 12 times a year.  I wish I had started doing this 14 years ago, instead of four.    Nonetheless, these pictures tell me a lot about whether the design and planting is working as well as it could.   

I did not clean out the boxes on the roof this year-the first time ever for that.  The fall and very late fall was a beautiful season for the boxes.  I am not surprised that the elegant feather persisted in its skeletal state, but I am surprised to see so much of the dichondra and plectranthus still holding on.  The pattern and texture provides something moody and textural to see.  The empty box alternative seems much less interesting. 

This pile of cut burning bush branches is dramatic covered with snow.  They are all the more dramatic for their accidental placement in front of a concrete wall, covered in the dark stems of boston ivy.  This wall faces the west; I have no idea why there is not one bit of snow on it anywhere-unless the snow was born on wind out of the west. So much pattern and texture-all ruled by a study in light and dark. 


A pair of espaliered crabapples need to come into the garage for the winter.  As soon as the bulk of our winter containers are done, space will open up for them. This is the only plant with color on the entire shop property.  The pattern of the snow on the berries-I am glad I got a chance to see this.

Posted on: December 13, 2010 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Garden Design, Holiday, The Natural World, Landscape Design Tagged With: , ,

Breathing

Every living thing breathes. Seals, beavers, dolphins, people, birds-and leaves. The act of taking a breath is an elemental description of life.  I know when I have a bad cold, my breathing is obstructed; challenged.  I am ready and able to take on any issue-but key to my energy is my ability to breathe in and out. Plants do the same thing-but in the winter, that rate of transpiration slows down.  A loss of moisture through the leaf cannot be replaced when the ground is frozen.  Plants go dormant in response to this-but the evergreens are still open for business.  Seeing that evergreens get adequate moisture is an important fall job, as I the time will come when moisture loss cannot be replaced. This Michigan winter seems to be settling in early. This thicket of boxwood pictured is enduring considerable cold.  This morning-14 degrees.    

My holiday and winter containers revolve around live materials.  In this instance, Cardinal redtwig dogwood, magnolia stems and leaves, cut noble fir, and Michigan holly-ilex verticillata.  This giant Bulbeck egg cup-lots of materials are asked for. I think we did a great job of answering.  My winter design for this beautful lead egg cup-generous.  But pretty and generous aside, there is a job to be done. Hopefully this composition will stay fresh looking for the winter months to come. 

Michigan holly berries usually fade and rot when the temperatures go below freezing.  Unlesss you have a mind to intervene.  Newly planted evergreens and boxwood-I spray them with an anti-dessiccant late in the season.  Wiltpruf has for years been the anti-dessicant of choice.  This waxy substance slows the loss of moisture from evergreen leaves and needles.  This can help prevent winter burn.     

For the first year, this year, I researched a new anti-dessicant called Vaporguard.  I was impressed that newly transplanted cabbages treated with vaporgard showed no sign of wilt.  I wondered if it might help cut greens and berries to better retain moisture.  This cut Michigan holly, treated with vaporguard, seems to be holding just fine. The magnolia leaves will eventually loose all of their moisture, but they dry beautifully, and hold tight to the stem. 

These boxwood are located in a fairly protected location.  The house does a good job of shielding them from winter winds. Though their growth began slowing down in August, how well they winter can be helped by an application of antidessicant.  Even when it is very cold, sun and wind can accelerate the evaporation of moisture from leaves. 

These boxwoods have been sprayed with antidessicant for the winter.  My idea is to protect them however I can. Though these plants have been in the ground four years now, I am never sure what the winter might have in store.  Since they are a major feature in this landscape, I am hoping to avoid widespread trouble in the spring.  


This is the first year I have ever included bunches of Michigan holly in my winter and holiday containers.  The berries seem fine and fresh, and show no signs of dropping from the cold.

Posted on: December 9, 2010 2 Comments
Filed Under: Holiday, Garden Design, Landscape Design

Potted

By no means have I left the dirt in my dust-my gardening season is not yet over.  I still have projects in process.  But one of my fall gardening projects did come to a close today.  We’re all potted up.  I was determined to pot spring bulbs in containers this year-I ordered scads of them.  Even Steve started to complain about the sheer numbers.  OK, he and his crews are tired-it has been a busy season, and the holidays are yet to come.  But he did oblige-and he obliged in a significant way with his home-composted and sand-leavened bulb soil-does it not look scrumptious? 

Bags full of that precious and special compost found its way to the shop.  There was much discussion about what bulbs would seem good together, what bulbs asked for a simple mass, what mixes of the same type bulb might make for interesting spring color.

The tulipa are the Sarah Bernhardts of the spring garden. Lush leaves, dramatically thin stalks and large showy flowers-what gardener is not longing for them come spring?  It is indeed a natural miracle that a flowering plant that can top out at better than 30 inches is programmed and ready to go inside these 2″ diameter brown orbs.   

These World Expression tulips in my window boxes were drop dead gorgeous for weeks.  Potting bulbs in window boxes that put the roots above ground is a dicey move-in a bitterly cold winter they could have frozen solid, and rotted by spring.  But why not try?  That effort paid off; my spring at the shop was beautiful. 

It is not so easy to keep that picture of those tulips in mind, when the fall is cold, and the planting circumstances less than charming.  Putting little brown bits into the soil is just about the most unsatisfying garden chore of all-there will be nothing to show for all of that effort for the next six months. 

But when April comes around, I will be happy for today’s effort.  The daffodils blooming set every gardening heart to beating a little faster; spring is on the way.     

I chose a variety of  standard containers.  Fiber pots, made from recycled cardboard, are a good choice. Though they will degrade, they degrade slowly. Kept from any contact with a hard surface, you might get three years out of them. The trick to getting long life from a fiber pot is to elevate it off the hard surface.  This allows the bottom to dry out, and stay intact.  Unlike a cardboard box, a fiber pot that dries out is just as strong as it was originally.  In the spring, they can be dropped into a more dressy container with ease.  When the bulbs bloom, the news will be all about what is inside-not the container.

Bulbs are beautiful in containers.  Diminuitive bulbs show and grow best in shallow containers.  The low large classic terra cotta shape is known as a bulb pan.  Too large a pot for any plant can encourage rot; the larger the soil mass, the slower it will drain and dry out.  These concrete faux bois planters are no more than 8 inches deep. 

These grape hyacinths were planted in very small pots-3″ containers.  That made transplanting them into a larger planter of lettuce and violas easy.  Muscari bloom a long time in the spring, especially should the night temperatures stay chilly.


I am sure this is the third time I have talked about bulbs in containers this fall-why am I still talking about it?  The chances are good that there are still bulbs available; at this time of year, they are priced to go.  If you are like me, you have a stack or a stash of pots available to you.  So why not fill them with bulbs?


I have not counted how many pots there are here, but my instinct says I will have a very good show come April. Even if you did not plant one bulb in ground this fall, no need to do without them.  What are you doing Sunday?  Rumor has it that nature has decided to do 60 degrees that day-perfect for a little spring gardening.

Posted on: November 17, 2010 3 Comments
Filed Under: Garden Design, Holiday, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: ,