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At A Glance: Ensata Gardens

The first time I ever visited Ensata gardens in Galesburg Michigan was 27 years ago.  I was 34.  My dear friend Denise was pregnant with her child Jacob-who by the way has been married 3 years now, and is about to buy his first house.  I was fiercely obsessed with gardens, and had all the energy to go with; so was she.  I was in my “have to have every iris” phase-the species iris, Louisiana iris, tall beardeds, siberians-and of course, Japanese iris. Being the painter that she is, Denise shared that love of iris kaempferi with me. 

We lost track of each other over the years until the day she decided to drive up to the shop on a Saturday.  We have been thick as thieves ever since, as if that twenty year gap never existed.  Buck and I drove up yesterday to spend 2 days with Denise and her husband Ken.  On the itinerary-a visit to Ensata Gardens. 

What a thrill it was to see that this small highly specialized nursery not only still existed, but was thriving.  They are the largest nursery devoted to the hybridizing and sale of Japanese iris anywhere-outside of Japan.  www.ensata.com   John Coble and Bob Bauer have persisted in a way I truly admire.  Their iris, and all of their other perennial offerings are beautifully grown.  Though it was 96 degrees when we got there at 10am this morning, I hardly noticed.  I hope you enjoy my pictures. 

If you are interested in growing them, I can attest that they do not just propagate these iris-they eat, sleep and live them.  This is a long way of saying that they are happy to coach.  The iris I bought from them I had for the better part of 10 years, before I sold my land.  Today’s visit made me want to grow them again; every plant was beautiful, and the flowers extraordinary. 


dreaded beetles!  After I took this pictures, I squashed him.


I so very much enjoyed this visit. I liked the memories-I loved what is going on there right now.

Posted on: July 2, 2011 4 Comments
Filed Under: Picture This, Garden Design Tagged With: , ,

Sunday Opinion 24 Hours Late: Fall Back

When I opened my eyes this morning, my first thought was that today was the day I needed to fall back.   Fall back, as in daylight savings time.  I think the big idea is to save, preserve, or otherwise ensure more daylight by changing the time.  So when I woke up at 5am old time, it was really 4am new time.  4am is really too early to get up-even for me.  So I laid in bed, eyes wide open, until 5 am, the new time-which would have been 6 am yesterday. In bed at 6 am-the thought horrifies me.  How will I ever be ready to face the day with so little time?  I fed the dogs at 6am-they were fussing, as they usually have breakfast by 7am.  I left for work shortly after the new 7am, which was now shortly after the old 6am.  It was indeed very dark.

Angie was scheduled to come in today-we have a lot of work to do before our holiday open house this coming Thursday.  The old 9am is now 10am-it felt like she got to work in the middle of the day.  By 4pm the new time, the dogs were overdue for their 3pm afternoon dinner.  They both came to my desk, staring and glaring as if I had violated their routine.  It is very hard to explain daylight savings time to a pair of corgis.  By the 4pm Sunday close of the shop, which would have been 5pm yesterday, I was tired.

If you are having trouble following this train of thought, you have company. The one hour change in the time will dog me for several weeks, before I adjust.  Don’t hold me to anything I have said in the past few paragraphs.  I have a hard time adjusting to even a small change of pace when I am busy.

Why would I make such a fuss about this?  The beginning of our gardening season is not solely about temperature.  Day length is a trigger for many plants.  Growers schedule their work around that biologically driven clock.  A biological clock?  A biological clock is set to record metabolic changes, sleep cycles, or photosynthesis.  The aforementioned-from the dictionary.  I have an internal clock set in tandem with the time.  When the time changes arbitrarily, I am thrown off course.  The loss of that hour in the fall-an adjustment that is a rude imposition.

Rob travels all over the globe to shop for Detroit Garden Works.  He does not buy on line.  He shops in person.  Whether it is Los Angeles, or London, or Impruneta, Italy, or Brazil or Belgium,  he routinely flies back and forth across multiple time zones.  He spares me the gory details of the personal cost of giving a few hours up here, and the consequences of adding a few hours there. He manages to make the travel look manageable.  I know better.  Traveling across multiple time zones takes courage and time to resolve.  He is unwilling to give in to the disruption of his internal clock.

Today I have abandoned the fall, and anticipate the the beginning of winter. By this I mean the coming of the dark time.  The winter season in Michigan is notable for its gray days, its early nights and its late mornings.  I have a few weeks ahead of waking up at 4am instead of 5am.  I will be tired at 5pm, as my biological clock will insist it is 6pm.  What a shocking difference an hour makes.  The little details-they matter much.

This coming Thursday night is the opening of our winter/holiday open house weekend. This is the only evening event we host all year.  The following Friday, Saturday and Sunday we will have lots of guests start to finish.  We serve treats and coffee.  I love that lots of clients bring their kids-they are the gardeners of the future.  Gardeners for the future-I support this.  What began 10 years ago as a modest campaign to get Michigan gardeners to fill their containers for the winter season , rather than leaving them empty and forlorn for our winter six months in length, has grown.  Our winter season is every bit as big as our spring season.  What I love the best-the camaraderie generated by the coming of the cold, the waning of the garden, and the prospect of the holidays.  This is the most good natured season of the gardening year.  Everyone knows the stakes are high, and the winter time will be tough and long.  All of us gardeners share that.

We have scheduled our open house a week early this year, as Thanksgiving falls as late as it can possibly be.  There are boxes everywhere-waiting for someone to unpack them.  We have gardens to clean up, the terra cotta at the shop to put into storage, and company coming in 3 days.  The 20 of us will do the best we can to bring a good end to the garden, and be ready to embrace the coming season.  Exciting times, yes.  As for daylight savings time-we are chasing the clock.  Gardening-the best venue for drama that I can imagine.

Posted on: November 4, 2013 7 Comments
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion

The Garden Cruise, 2017

This coming July 16th will be the 10th year that Detroit Garden Works and Deborah Silver and Co have sponsored a tour of our landscapes and gardens to benefit The Greening of Detroit. The tour is a fund raiser for an organization behind which we put all of our weight. The Greening of Detroit? From their website: “Between 1950 and 1980, around 500,000 trees were lost in Detroit to Dutch elm disease, urban expansion and attrition. Troubled by this deforestation of a great city, Elizabeth Gordon Sachs devoted herself to reforesting the city. She played a key role in the 1989 founding of The Greening of Detroit. During that same time, economic constraints prohibited the city from replacing those trees. The Greening of Detroit was founded in 1989 with a single focus in mind – restore the city’s tree infrastructure.”  Their goal was big and bold. In the past 28 years, they have made a mission of nurturing a stewardship of the land that the City of Detroit occupies. We are very interested in what they do.  If you are too, read on.  The Greening Of Detroit   Pictured above is Rob, manning his summer drink bar at the cruise afterglow dinner and drinks in 2008. We try to make it interesting and fun for gardeners to contribute to The Greening.

They describe their mission loud and clear. “Our focus at The Greening of Detroit is to enhance the quality of life for Detroiters by planting trees, repurposing the land to create beautiful and productive green spaces and helping communities rebuild their neighborhoods one lot at a time.  We involve Detroiters in the process through community engagement, education and jobs.” This is a simple and succinct description of what they do, although the reality is much more complicated and labor intensive.  I know first hand how hard each and every one of them works to create green spaces, and how they teach that a respect and an association with nature makes for a better life. I have participated in their events at the Eastern market in Detroit, specifically geared towards growing vegetables at home. I was knocked out by the numbers of people who attended my talk. Every vegetable pot I planted had a Detroiter willing to take it home, and grow it on. That experience will always be with me. Putting on a garden tour is the least I could do to help make my city more leafy. I am pictured on the far right of the picture above, sitting close to my good friend, extraordinary gardener and supporter of everything green, Judy C. She has attended 9 years of cruises, just like me. Gardening can be a fairly solitary occupation. But over the garden, we are close. A love of nature makes it possible for The Greening of Detroit to carry on their work.

I sit on the board of the Greening, although I do not attend their board meetings. I am much more effective as a doer, than a discusser. So I made a commitment to raise money for them. To date, we have raised over 107,500.00 in support of their programs. A tour ticket is 35.00 per person. A 50.00 ticket gets any tour attendee a swell supper, and summer cocktails mixed up by Rob at Detroit Garden Works after the tour. Be advised that his signature gin and tonic this year will feature The Botanist Gin.  Every cent of the money raised from ticket sales goes to the Greening of Detroit. Whatever it costs us to put on the tour is at our expense. This is our donation to a cause we believe in. What you spend for a ticket to tour goes to fund their employment, educational and planting projects. This year’s tour will be terrific, I promise. 6 landscapes and gardens that are well worth seeing.  For more information about the tour, visit our website:  the 2017 Garden Cruise  Our treasured client Jane C has brought as many members of her family to the cruise every year as she can. This picture taken in my yard in 2014 still makes me smile. Thanks so much, Jane!

I have another good reason to smile. I am very pleased to announce that Garden Design Magazine has agreed to co-sponsor our garden tour in support of the Greening of Detroit. Thank you, Garden Design!  Their quarterly publication features the best that American gardening and landscape design has to offer. They deliver an ad free publication that you will savor and save.  Chock full of anything and everything that would interest a gardener, article after article are accompanied by astonishingly beautiful photographs.  Should you not be familiar with their quarterly ad free magazine, I would urge you to become acquainted, here:  Garden Design Magazine  Any reader who subscribes to Garden Design via this Greening Of Detroit tour special offer will get their first issue the summer issue which has just come out, absolutely free. In addition, Garden Design Magazine will donate 12.00 from your paid subscription to the Greening of Detroit. This is an opportunity for any gardener and reader of this journal to enrich their gardening life, and donate to a cause very close to my heart.For subscription information regarding this special offer, click on the cover picture above, or

click on this link:      special subscription offer         Subscribe and support, yes please.

Sunday, July 16. 9am to 4:30 pm, rain or shine. The afterglow light supper and Rob’s garden bar begins at 4:30 pm.

From the cruise last year, a bowl full of zinnias and snapdragons.

From the current summer issue from Garden Design, one of many gorgeous gardens.

From the Greening of Detroit website, a group of volunteer citizen foresters, planting trees. This is a very good look. Tickets to the cruise are available now at Detroit Garden Works, or we can take payment for tickets or donations to the Greening by phone:  248  335 8089. We can mail or email your ticket to you. Many thanks.

 

 

 

 

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Posted on: June 26, 2017 16 Comments
Filed Under: Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Detroit Garden Works, Garden Design Tagged With: , , , ,

Sunday Opinion: Cheap Tricks

Mow the grass to perfection.  This will make your landscape look well cared for, even if the garden has gotten away from you, and fungus is running rampant in everything from the maples to the sweet woodriff.  

The sweet woodriff might need a little more room-cut the bed 6 inches bigger.  If it has spread into a spot where it is not so happy, move the edge back.  Mind your edges in general.  Compositions, beds, properties, views, walkways-they all have edges.  The effort you put to good edges, as in deep verges, edger strip, brick edges, stone walls-all of this will result in less maintenance, and a better look that costs nothing more than your attention and your timely intervention.

Maintenance is key to a beautiful garden, so do not buy plants on impulse.  Read the literature, visit any trial garden within driving distance, decide if a plant meets your aesthetic or practical criteria for inclusion in your garden-before you plant.  If it does not, there will lots of extra maintenance trying to get it to deliver, or work visually.  I do not mind hard work.  What I mind is hard work to no good end.  Nine times out of ten, I own my own troubles. I try to think before I buy. 

Buy plants on impulse. Your impulse comes from you and you alone; your unique point of view is what fuels the success of your garden efforts.  Having something the way you want it is fun. Make everything you love work together, as in move things around until they are in just the right spot.  You are after all the President and CEO of your garden.  Exercise your executive power, and then your executive shovel.

Shovel out those ideas you believe to be true without having looked at them with a cool eye. Take photographs of everything you do, and look at the pictures. Your relationship to your garden is emotionally charged.  Step back-get that dispassionate lens looking at what you have trouble seeing clearly.  Cell phone cameras-fine.  You need to see the big picture-not the details.

The details could not be more important. Stake those things you know will go over. Water when you need to, even when you don’t feel like it. Deadhead, divide, weed, grow from seed. Be good natured about the fact that the work will never be finished. The difference between a successful garden project and a so so garden project has everything to do with an energy that starts out big, stays big, and finishes bigger.

 Big, broadly conceived moves will draw, engage, and delight the eye.  Express your design clearly. Should you need to write an explanatory outline of your intent and post it at the entrance to the garden-go back to square one. Figure out how to make that garden look like what you intend.  Arrange plants and spaces coherently.  What do you have going on in the air space?  What is going on underground?  Are your social surfaces level? 

Level headed-there are those times when it is a good idea.  I pay my bills, pass by the potato chips in the grocery, and get a yearly checkup.  There are times when this mind set applies to overseeing the garden.  If you plant a tree, will you hand water it until it has rooted in?  If you add a perennial bed, will you mulch weed and water until it fills in?  Plant only what you will look after faithfully.  Make a plan to get where you want to be, one step at a time.  Plan.

Plan and re-revise your plans every season.  A great landscape and garden takes many years. The years that represent hat time is equal to the time it takes you to mature as a gardener.  Take the time.

Time is not on your side.  Make a move-now.  Plant a tree or 3. Redo.  Hire a professional.  It is ok to ask how hiring someone could possibly be a cheap trick. If you buy and plant and don’t get a garden you love, a good professional could save you lots of time and money.  Expose yourself to places that can inspire you.  Beautiful gardens both public and private, books, a garden club or association, a local garden center may have something that enchants you.

What enchants you?  This is the cheapest trick of all, sorting out what seriously interests you from what mildly amuses you.  Take the time to understand what matters to you about the garden.  This might be a complicated topic, but the more you think about what you love and need from your landscape is like is two aspirin and a beer for your design headache.  Any knowledge is a good thing, and it can be had for nothing more than your effort to obtain it.  An inspired landscape and garden of your own will energize and enchant you. 

I like to talk to people who visit my shop. I am in an out of the way location, so I know people come for a reason. They will tell me why the came, or what they are looking for, should I ask.  So many tell me they come here to be inspired, to get ideas, to feel better, to add or change something in their garden. They happily complain that there are too many beautiful choices. They may tell me that something they see makes them change their mind about what they thought they wanted. I like hearing this.  I intend that anyone who comes here gets visual access to my ideas about gardening, beautiful ornament, and design. The store display gardens, how we choose and arrange what we buy, our willingness to talk things over, coach and care-how we put it all together, makes for an experience.  Take advantage of anything or anyone out there that strikes a chord.  

  People do hire me to design and install landscapes and gardens for them-thanks heavens they do.  People who shop at Detroit Garden Works have kept me in business for going on 15 years; I so appreciate this. It is my idea to keep working, keep evolving.  Lots of people have a hand in this-thank you all very much.   We are in the thick of redoing the shop for the fall, and the upcoming winter season. We have a few tricks up our sleeves. Given what lies ahead for gardens and gardeners alike, we are running a special on enchantment this fall-you’ll see.

Posted on: September 19, 2010 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion Tagged With: , ,