Once the fall sets in, I focus on all of those plants that favor a fall planting.  Of course the spring flowering bulbs are routinely planted in the fall, but right now I am thinking about peonies. I have had a big love for peonies my entire gardening life. At one point early in my gardener history, I had many hundreds of them planted on my property in rows, like crops. This infatuation with peonies predates my infatuation with design.  I wanted those plants, and had no idea of what to do with them beyond digging a hole and planting. I was young, working, and struggling.  Every extra cent went to plants, and in the fall, to peony roots.  The picture above, one of the few that I still have.  Peonies are just about the easiest perennial on the planet to grow.

Peonies are ordinarily sold as bare root divisions, in the fall.  A cluster of juicy roots with dried tops arrive bathed in barely moist sphagnum moss.  Of particular interest-the number of eyes.  Those red eyed shoots with send forth stems, come spring.  A standard division-3 to 5 eyes.  Double divisions are occasionally available.  A peony asks for just a few things.  Full sun, somewhat alkaline soil, and a planting at the proper depth.  Per the drawing above from the Canadian Peony Society, the eyes should be 2 inches below ground-after they are watered in and the ground settles.  They may refuse to bloom, if the are set to shallow or too deep.  As long lived as peonies are, they resent transplanting.  Smaller divisions transplant more readily.  Larger divisions are a temptation; it will take a number of years to grow a peony division into a robustly shrubby and heavily blooming plant.   Peonies are incredibly long lived perennials-perhaps the longest lived of all perennials, save asparagus.  Herbaceous peonies die back to the ground, come the winter.  In May their thick stems and glossy leaves are topped with an amazing variety of flowers.  Post the bloom season, their strong stems and glossy leaves grace the garden with  a broadleaved presence.

I cannot remember which birthday it was, but my Mom gave me a trip to the National Peony Convention in Mansfield Ohio.  I was in my mid twenties. I had to have been the youngest attendee at the convention by 30 years or better.  I have a distinct memory of a great worry.  What if not enough people my age got interested in growing peonies?  My Mom put that to rest.  Could I have afforded the trip and the lodging and the meals?  No.  Older people who were more established or perhaps retired attended the convention.  There certainly were other gardening Moms taking their kid to specialty plant meetings and exhibitions.

My love of gardening has everything to do with Julia.  Along with exposure to good books, manners, and study habits, she saw to my exposure to nature, dirt, and plants.  I can still remember what a happy trip this was.  Rooms full of peony flowers in milk bottles, each specimen more lovely than the last.

On the table tops-the blooms submitted for exhibition.  Under the tables-the rejected flowers.  Perhaps there was a blemished petal, or the form wasn’t perfect.  I could not imagine how it came to be that thousands of peonies from all over the country happened to be at peak bloom on the same day.  I learned that once a peony bud shows color, it can be refrigerated, a plastic bag over it’s head, in the vegetable crisper.  2 days before you want the flower in bloom, bring it out of the crisper, recut the stem, and place it in deep water.  Voila. The year after this show, I put 50 stems in the fridge.  I had no lettuce, celery or radishes, but I had peonies for almost 6 weeks.

This was an incredible opportunity to see they flowers from many different cultivars.  There were lectures about herbaceous peonies, and tree peonies.  I saw my first herbaceous/tree peony cross-then an unnamed”Itoh Hybrid”.  The flower was a pale yellow with dark red flares-so exotic.

My scrapbook detailing that visit is old, but still a part of my library.  My peony growing days are long over. That moment in my gardening life when I had hundreds of them lined out is but a memory.  I do not have anyplace to plant them now.  But every fall, I long for them, just the same.

Were I to limit myself to just a few peonies, I would choose these.  Moonstone.  Mrs. FDR.  Miss America.  Kansas.  Sea Shell, Red Charm, Dinner Plate. Princess Margaret, Coral Charm, Kansas.  Do Tell, Krinkled White, Festiva Maxima.  Doreen, Do Tell, Gay Paree, Nick Shaylor.  Charlies White, Pillow Talk, and Bu-Te.  Cytheria, Dinner Plate, Ludovica, and Paula Fay.  The Fawn, Miss America, White Innocence, and Princess Margaret.  I would want to grow White Cap, too. This is not a few peonies-this is a list from a person who has a big love for peonies.  Lucky for me, I am but a short drive from the largest collection of herbaceous peonies in the US.

In the 1920’s, WE Upjohn, founder of the Upjohn Company in Kalamazoo, donated a collection of 280 varieties to the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum at the University of Michigan.  More than 90 years later, many of his original plants are still healthy and blooming.  An avid collector and grower of peonies himself, he had the kindness to share that with other gardeners.

His grand daughter, Martha G Parfet, recently donated a half a million dollars to honor her grandfather, and establish the WE Upjohn Peony Garden Fund to help with the restoration and the protection of this historic peony garden.

What a treasure-a peony museum.

Last fall I contacted Jonathon Hofley, owner of Motor City Publishing, about doing a project for Branch.  He has handled all of the print advertising for Detroit Garden Works, from the first day we went into business.  He is responsible for everything we do to speak and spread our story-from inserts in the New York Times, to the lettering on our trucks.  He maintains the garden cruise website, he arranges to have our landscaping company and garden cruise tee shirts printed. He answers me, even if I write him on a Saturday night.   If you have a business that needs an advocate, he and his brother Eric do an outstanding job.  For the record, they write and publish the Michigan Gardener magazine.  We pass out their free publication like crazy every month.  Both of them are serious gardeners.  The both of them have a mission to spread the good gardening word, which makes them an ideal partner.

But back to last fall-I had a special project in mind.   The Branch Studio has been producing great ornament for the garden for going on ten years.  Manufacturing anything takes an incredible amount of time to get right.  The Branch boxes, pergolas, and fountains underwent countless revisions.  Revisions in size and proportion.  Revisions in construction details.  We were at the point where I felt we had  beautifully made and weatherproof ornament for the garden.  I felt it was time to formally introduce ourselves to people who had both professional and personal interest in ornament for the garden.  To gardeners and designers in other places who were not in a position to visit Detroit Garden Works.

I told Jonathon that I wanted to imagine, produce and print a catalog for Branch.  I wanted a catalog with great pictures that would tell the story.   He immediately suggested we engage a photographer whose skills we admired.  I already had a photographer in mind, a local photographer named Roy Ritchie.  His photographs of Detroit are graphic, edgy, and beautifully composed.  I especially like how the raw image itself is a starting point for his work- and not necessarily the end result.  How he handles light and color makes him, in my opinion, an artist.

November last we began shooting the photographs.  Roy wanted to take a picture of a box, in a garden, in a way I would have never have imagined.  Though Roy’s ideas about this first picture made my head swim, we went with his recommendations.  We hired a photographer, an artist, and an expert. Once we spent enough time with him, explaining the history and the process, we got out of his way, and gave him the freedom to work without restriction or commentary.

We have been making steel garden ornament long enough that I had lots of pictures of Branch objects in gardens, and in a variety of seasons.  Once Roy shot the major full page photographs, Jonathon took on the job of laying out each page, and arranging each of the photographs.  With the exception of a few paragraphs about the company and the products, the catalog is an illustration of who we are, and what we make.

The back page is the back of of our house.  We show the sizes and styles of the stock pieces we build.  12 boxes, 3 vase shaped pots, 3 pergolas, and three fountains. Each piece is dimensioned.  Of course we have the capability to manufacture by special order.  We mailed out 650 catalogs the end of March.  We’ve been very pleased by the response.  Buck and his group have been busy non stop, producing both stock and custom pieces.  I especially like that all of the hard work and effort Buck has put into bringing this enterprise to life is getting some attention.
If you are interested further, there are plenty of pictures, and a digital version of the catalog at   www.thebranchstudio.com

I would not begin to presume to write a scholarly essay regarding the history of the process of extracting olive oil from the fruit of olive trees. That history is long and involved.  Both the fruit, and the oil, have been agricultural staples dating back 6000 years.  Suffice it to say that I have read that the cultivation of olive trees is one of the earliest signs of civilization.  Thousands of years ago, the precious, delicious and healthy oil was stored in jars.  These jars were high shouldered, and short necked.  Every country that makes pots produces its own version of the olive jar.  In my own collection of hand made Italian terra cotta is an olive jar which dates back to the 17th century.

There was that long length of time when olive oil was not processed for export, bottled, and shipped.  It was stored in jars, the design of which helped to keep the oil fresh.  Countless varieties of olive trees means that many people all over the globe enjoy olive oil of different flavors.  Today, 99% of all of the olive oil produced comes from those countries that ring the Mediterranean sea.  If you have not had the pleasure of soaking a piece of handmade bread with a great olive oil, I would encourage you to do so.  The oil from the olive trees, in my opinion, is a food group well worth including in any diet.

Olive oil is not stored and shipped in jars anymore.  But that jar shape is a shape that persists.  Jars make great garden containers.  I have an abiding interest in how agriculture came to include ornamental gardening.  Those moments when a landscape refers in a strong way to the history of agriculture is of great interest to me.  This means I like jars.

I have no olive trees.  I do not grow vegetables.  I do not have an orchard, or fields to plow. I am not a farmer.  But I am a gardener whose roots has plenty to do with agriculture.  I have an olive jar which I plant with flowers every year.  A great planting that thrives is a joy.  But equally important is a beautiful container whose shape dates back centuries.

An olive jar is a shape any gardener recognizes.  Every culture, every country has pots of this distinctive shape.  High shoulders, and low necks.  Though I may buy all of vegetables from a farmer’s market, or grocery store, that shape that I recognize as an olive jar never fails to please my eye.

French glazed huile

concrete jars

French glazed olive jars

Italian olive jar

Olive jar from Crete

This Italian made strawberry jar from Mital, a pottery in Impruneta, Italy -this is a beautiful jar.  There are many beautiful ways to plant it.  I do think that the containers that are home to annual and seasonal plants are an important visual element in a garden.  Olive jars make great containers for the garden.  Every one of them is soaked in the broth we know as history.

The past few days have been all about the rain.  Torrential downpours.  Wind, thunder-unsettled weather.  I don’t know how many inches of rain in all-but I think it was a lot.  In the past week we have had 24 degrees overnight, and 88 degrees during the day.  In my neighborhood-three phone poles blown over. Frost, hail and drought, wild temperature fluctuations-and now the big rains.  All of April was too cold and wet to work out.  I cannot remember a year when my landscape crews could not get out until late April.  This is no news- any gardening effort is subject to and influenced by the weather.

I  do not think I have ever seen rain fall so hard and so fast-as I did 2 days ago. The shop property is sandy, which we top dressed with gravel.  Standing water at my place- unprecedented.  I have my own perfect storm going on.  Several landscape installations which could not be finished in April are due-now.  The planting of the annuals and containers-due now.  Some earlier plantings have frost damage.  This is more excitement than I would ask for, but every year has its challenges and troubles.

I was not really unhappy about the rain.  Our spring has been very dry. Every plant that wakes up come spring is programmed to grow.  That growing requires moisture.  The trees especially needed a big drink.  My hydrangeas came out of dormancy reluctantly.  Our spring came slow-the dry weather played a big part in that.  I am so happy for the rain-even though it is late.

The torrent of rain meant that all of the plants at the shop were fine-no one needed to drag a hose.  What a relief.  Water from the sky is life sustaining water.  Our plants loved the rain.  Water from the hose is a temporary fix in dry times.  I cannot really explain what I mean by this, but water from the sky is better water than the water from the hose.   Rainy days-I love them.  Rain from the sky makes plants grow and thrive.  The days that I have to drag the hose-a chore day.  Automatic irrigation needs a gardening person in charge.  Automatic irrigation on auto can kill trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals.  Supervise your irrigation system!

I cannot speak to the science of the effects of spring rain.  I only have my instincts.  In my opinion, every plant bathed in late spring rain seems energized.

My own property-vividly green.  The grass looks like fur. Thick and vigorous. The yews are covered with a layer of lime green new growth.  Every plant looks energized, and juicy.

Lush life-this describes my idea of late spring in just two words.  Given the heavy rains, all of my plants are putting on weight and substance in a beautiful way.  The lime green color of new growth is why I love that lime color in any plant.  Fresh and new. The dwarf spruce and hellebores in the above picture will turn towards emerald green, later in the spring.  The Sum and Substance hostas that retain their lime green color all season long- how I value that memory of spring.

Another month, another day, another time of year, this picture would look so much different. This level of lush speaks to late spring.  Though I am so busy with work, I try to take the time to enjoy this moment.  The bad weather aside, there is so much to appreciate this time of year. In my garden the voices are fresh.  A new season has begun.  The intense flush of growth from the trees to the roses and perennials-so exciting. This photograph of my garden does not really express how beautiful it was to see it in person.  Last year at this time, my roses were struggling to emerge from an extended and killing late April frost.  Needless to say, I did not have much in the way of roses last year.  Today, every rose is loaded with buds.  Loaded with promise.  I have not written about this, but the lilacs in my neighborhood have been spectacular this spring.  I would venture to say-the best ever.  What I see makes me long to grow them.  But in fact every spring season favors some plants over others.  My advice?  Grow lots of plants.  One or several of them will surely handle whatever the weather has to dish out.  If you do not grow any roses-I would encourage you to try them.  n early June, they will hold your heart.  They smell good.  They will encourage you to garden on.

I had a surprise visit today from Michelle Gervais- an editor of Fine Gardening Magazine.  With only 12 hours notice, she wanted to see the shop, and tour my garden.  She was so kind-giving me next to no notice of her visit.  I really had no time to prepare for her, even if I had had notice.  This is a very busy time of year.  I would have fretted about every square inch-if I had known in advance that she was planning to visit.  She limited my stress.  Do you read her blog?  It is great!   My garden-she saw it, without any editing or cleanup.  I think it looked fine.  The drenching rains did more to endow and enrich the appearance of my garden than any gesture I could have made.  The heavy rains are making my working life tough-but how the plants love it.