I Finished My Handmade Garden Projects

Handmade Garden Projects by Lorene Edwards Forkner

The trouble with the Handmade Garden Projects book by Lorene Edwards Forkner is difficulty in choosing where to begin. Steel trellises or other things made with metal scraps? Clever hose guides? Or creative containers?  Then the Bridge of Flowers committee thought it might be a good idea to make hypertufa containers to plant and sell at our Annual Plant Sale on May 19. The decision was made. If you decide you want to have your own copy of this energizing book, Timber Press is offering a Giveaway. Leave a comment on this blog by a week from today at midnight, on May 24 and I will chose a winner at random on May 25.

Five of us ladies got together for our hypertufa party. We gathered assorted materials to use as molds to each make a hypertufa container (otherwise known as a Rustic Lightweight Trough) for ourselves and one for the Bridge Plant Sale.

I was surprised to find out that you don’t whip one of these troughs up one afternoon and plant them the next. You have to think ahead. After you have made your trough (of whatever shape) in your mold, it has to be put in a black plastic trash bag to cure for 24-48 hours. Because we had our ‘party’ when the weather was still quite cold (but not below freezing) we all chose to let our troughs cure in their bags for nearly a week. We were all very careful using our goggles, dust masks and rubber gloves, and I was so busy that I never got any photos that day. Lorene gives full directions beginning with an ingredients list – and I want to say that I have some leftover materials to make more troughs. There is also an equipment list. All those dusk masks, etc., and then step by step directions.

As suggested, I rinsed mine off several times with a hose to wash out some of the alkalinity provided by the cement and let some of our rains practice their scrubbing on them. Lorene recommends not planting the troughs for at least three weeks from construction day, and I just barely held myself in check long enough.

Our group intended the troughs for succulents, but Lorene has other suggestions. I also noticed directions for making a succulent container out of galvanized gutter which may be my next project, unless I decide I need the neat hose guides more urgently.

Lorene Edwards Forkner is clearly the type of person who goes shopping in her basement, attic and garage before she runs out to buy some expensive garden art or equipment. But, I’ve been thinking that all the upcoming tag and yard sales might also be good places to gather material for some of these projects.

Some of the troughs we made

A number of other bloggers are posting about their take on this great book. Check them out.

http://www.amateurbot-ann-ist.com/

http://torontogardens.blogspot.com/

http://wwwrockrose.blogspot.com/

http://heavypetal.ca/

http://www.growingagardenindavis.com/

http://bonneylassie.blogspot.com/

http://bwisegardening.blogspot.com/

http://www.houstongardengirl.com/

http://www.bumblebeeblog.com/

http://www.thebikegarden.com/

http://www.ourlittleacre.com/

http://www.debraprinzing.com/

http://www.vintagegardengal.com/

Don’t forget to leave a comment here and you might win your very own copy of Handmade Garden Projects.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day – May 2012

My flowery mead

Spring has come in starts and stops here in Heath, Massachusetts and so has the blooming season. The lawn, otherwise known as the flowery mead, is in full bloom. Here I show dandelions (of course,) white violets, and ajuga that has migrated into the lawn in a number of places. There are blue violets, too, and creeping ivy with its violet flowers.

Robin plantain

Colonies of this plant have come up in various sections of the lawn. I think I have an ID.  I believe this is robin plaintain, Erigeron pulchellus. At least that is as close as I get using my wildflower guide. The flowers are actually a little more of a gentle plummy lavender with a yellow center. My camera has not captured the color well at all.

Lamium

I don’t know what variety of lamium this is, or how it came into the garden, but there is a large spreading patch in the shady area at the wild edge of the peony bed, and going down towards the road. A very nice gift from Mother Nature. Or someone.

Barren strawberry

The barren strawberry, Waldsteinia fragarionides, was planted behind the peony bed, where there is (was) lawn. It has spread nicely, but there is still lots of lawn.  The yellow blossoms are just coming into bloom.This year I am planting three more big pots. This is a native groundcover that I bought at Nasami Farm where the New England Wildflower Society does its propagating. I am so lucky to live nearby.

Miss Willmott lilac

I thought the lilacs were a little slow this year, but since the Arnold Arboretum in Boston just celebrated Lilac Sunday yesterday, and their bloom season begins earlier than hours, I guess we are about on time. The other lilacs are also just starting, and will be gone by June’s Bloom Day.

Daffs, forget-me-nots and grape hyacinths

This little group blooms under a weeping birch. The daffodils are nearly done, and the forget-me-nots, blue and white varieties, have come up hither and thither in the Lawn Beds.

I have a long bloom season of daffodils, encompassing many varieties, but this is one of my favorites, poeticus, or the pheasant eye daff which is among the last to come into bloom.

When I first began posting for Bloom Day I was assured that buds count. This is the first fat bud on Guan Yin Mian, a beautiful pink tree peony, but all the tree peonies will have come and gone by June 15.

Cotoneaster

A couple of years ago I was stunned to find out that one of my two cotoneasters had come into bloom. Unfortunately, I do not know the variety.

Trollius

I love this sunny flower, Trollius, which blooms on the Bridge of Flowers as well as in my garden. A couple of these will be for sale on Saturday, at the Bridge of Flowers Plant sale in Shelburne Falls.

Sargent crabapple

The Sargent crab is the piece de resistence of this Bloom Day. The old apple trees in the field are almost done blooming, but the Sargent crab in the Sunken Garden is a glory.

Carol at May Dreams Gardens hosts Bloom Day, and I am so grateful for this nudge to keep a useful bloom record, and the opportunity to see what else is in bloom on the 15th of every month, all over the country.

And since I am almost Wordless today, do checkout real Wordless Wednesday photos.

Weekend of Plants and Memorials

The Ladue Family on the Bridge of Flowers

This Mother’s Day weekend was filled with flowers, and memorials. The Ladue family, Kimberly, Troy and Lisa, visited the Bridge of Flowers and presented the Bridge committee with a donation that will help keep the Bridge in bloom. Their mother, Margaret Oliver Ladue was a flower lover and (among other things) worked in the gardens of an assisted living home. Through their family foundation, her children are able to support their mother’s interests in education with an annual scholarship and by supporting other organizations that reflect their mother’s interests. For more about the work of the foundation you can click here.

Edie Gerry, Buckland Library Trustee

I was also happy to attend the planting of an American Elm tree at the Buckland Public Library in memory of John Powell, a Buckland native whose final work for the town was the help he gave the Library with its new addition to make it energy efficient. I treasure my memories of John when he visited the library and we tried to figure out which books of his favorite authors he had not read, and his memories of the town in earlier days. Just this past week the Library received notice that it was awarded Silver Leed Certification.

Caitlin, Diane and Tricia

My Mother’s Day was filled with so much lively family that there was hardly time to take photographs. My gift was hours of labor in the gardens. Mowing, digging, planting, fence building – and the opening of the Cottage Ornee. I did one picture of daughter Diane with her two daughters as they prepared to leave, with potted plants for their gardens. For all of them including, daughter Betsy,  and grandsons Rory, Tynan, and Ryan (teenagers getting ready to drive!),not to mention the ones who could not be here, Philip, Chris, Kate, Greg, Anthony and Drew, I am truly grateful.

Mother’s Day – The Family is Coming

Sargent crabapple

Mother’s Day has arrived and children and grandchildren are on their way.

The Bridge of Flowers on National Public Gardens Day

Elaine Parmett

In 2004, when the Bridge of Flowers was nearing its 75^th anniversary, Elaine Parmett, a member of the Bridge Committee, decided to find out just who and how the Bridge of Flowers began.

“I was a historian so I did research and learned it was Antoinette Burnham in 1928 who complained about the way weeds had taken over the abandoned trolley bridge. She wondered why they couldn’t have a flower garden instead. Her husband, who worked for the Recorder, helped move this idea forward by writing about the bridge; together they built community support,” Parmett said.

There was discussion about tearing down the bridge but it carried an important water main from Shelburne Falls to Buckland. The expense of moving that water main would have been prohibitive, so the idea of a Bridge of Flowers took root. The Women’s Club, the business association and others gave money for the initial planting, but it was the Women’s Club, devoted to serving the community, that undertook the care of the Bridge.

Parmett joined the Women’s Club not long after moving to the area with her husband Dick and two young daughters in 1979. “I attended a meeting and I was so impressed by the caliber of these women, by their warmth of welcome and their commitment to community service. I wanted to be a part of that group,” she said.

She also began volunteering on the Bridge which was then under the supervision of Carol Markle. “Carol was a retired biologist and horticulture professor at Reed College. She opened up a whole new world to me. I had grown up in the suburbs and we had a little vegetable garden and a few annuals, but I was new to perennials. I didn’t worry about Latin names, but learned to pay attention to where a plant liked to live. Carol was very good at educating all of us volunteers. I learned to love perennials, and the Bridge.”

Parmett explained the Bridge of Flowers Committee was upset when Carol Markle finally had to retire. She was known as The General and made many of the decisions. “I didn’t understand their upset. I asked the group what needed to be done – one said she did the publicity, one said she handled the money and so on. So I looked at them and said – so, you need someone to boss you around? They said yes. I laughed and said I could do that. That’s how I became president, but everyone did what they said they would do – and that is true today.”

Parmett said she was honored to serve the Bridge that way, and was grateful to the committee for being so trusting of someone who was younger and still fairly new to the town.

One big event in the Bridge’s history was the renovation carried out in 1983. Carol Markle was a key player in that effort to remove every plant from the Bridge before repairs were made. Volunteer gardeners dug the plants and took them away to tend in their own gardens until they could be replanted on the Bridge in 1984. “Women guarded and took care of those plants because they wanted to preserve the old plants, and special plants – like the wisteria,” Parmett said.

The Bridge has been fortunate to have a number of good gardeners oversee the design and care of the plants, most recently the skilled Carol DeLorenzo and her assistant Tish Murphy.

Parmett has remained involved with what is now called the Shelburne Area Women’s Club and the Bridge of Flowers Committee in many ways over the decades. She has also raised her daughters, worked at a variety of jobs, and returned to school, first Greenfield Community College, then Mount Holyoke, and finally the University of Massachusetts, earning a Master’s Degree in History. Her final job as Academic Advisor was also at UMass, which she left after ten years in 2004.

It was about that time that she became co-chair of the Bridge Committee with Susie Robbins. They did some reorganizing and cleaning up and got the Conway School of Landscape Design to come up with a plan that helped reshape the Shelburne side entrance. “They did a beautiful design that pretty much exists today,” Parmett said.

Recently Julie Petty has served as co-chair with Judy Lawler and they have over seen the installation of the sign-in kiosk, beautiful donation boxes and the Friends Tree sculpture, all designed and created by artist-blacksmith Bob Compton.

“These additions to the Bridge artistically refer to the trolley; the kiosk design reflects the curve of the trolley car, with wood insets that refer to the railroad ties. Sculptor John Sendelbach also created a gate for the Buckland side with an depiction of the trolley car,” Parmett said.

Lynda Leitner tending 1000 plants for May 19 sale

Right now Parmett is preparing to work at the Annual Bridge of Flowers Plant Sale to be held on Saturday, May 19. Lynda Leitner and a group of volunteers have been digging divisions from the Bridge and moving them to Leitner’s house where she has been lovingly tending and watering them until they are moved to the Trinity Church Baptist Lot on Main Street. “This year we have nearly 1000 plants from the Bridge and from local gardeners,” Leitner said. “And that is not counting the scores of annuals from LaSalles or rarities from Hillside Nurseries.”

Vendors selling a whole range of garden related items will also be present. Joanne Sherburne will be there with her new garden whimsies; OESCO’s fine tools; John Sendlebach’s sculptures; Nina Coler’s water color prints; note cards by Polly French, Kathy O’Rourke, Samantha Crawford and Jane Wegscheider; Dancing Bare Soap; Mojo Glass beads; and Shelburne Booksellers. Stillwater Porcelain is offering special Bridge of Flowers items. Proceeds from the plant go to support the Bridge of Flowers .

It was love of community and of flower gardens that created the Bridge of Flowers. Eighty-two years later that same love inspires the volunteers who keep the garden blooming, and, as Parmett says “. . . still connects the two towns, and unites them in a unique and beautiful way.”

Between the Rows May 5, 2012

Bridge of Flowers – National Public Gardens Day Coming Up

Azalea and view of the Iron Bridge from Bridge of Flowers

The Bridge of Flowers is our local public garden, open and blooming every day from April 1 – October 30. Free! Universally accessible.

Carolina lupine

Primroses

Wisteria, just beginning to bloom

Pink Primroses

Flowering cherry tree

Tiarella

Bleeding heart and snowflakes

Trollius

Osteospurnum

Pink dogwood

I’ll be celebrating National Public Gardens Day, May 11 this year, with a stroll over the Bridge of Flowers. What will you do?

I’ve been almost Wordless, but for real Wordlessness this Wednesday click here

Weekend Chores – Removals, Renovations and Additions

The first mowing of the year

While my husband was busy with the first lawn mowing – and fence building – I was busy with removals, renovations and additions.

I have had a pink potentilla at this corner of the North Lawn bed for several years but never been happy. I was reluctant to remove it, but this spring it look nearly dead, so out it came. Removals can be difficult, but they are sometimes necessary. Neither the dead shrub nor its hole are very photogenic, but you can at least see that one of the problems was the way weeds crept under this ground hugging potentilla. I am not sure what to replace it with yet.

Alma Potchke renovation

My Alma Potchke aster, such a wonderful deep pink fall color in the garden, had become invaded by numerous weeds including Silver King artemesia. Beware of this artemesia! There was nothing to do but launch on a renovation of the whole area. You can see part of the clump of Alma, and some of the pieces I have started to replant. The whole area is nicely weeded.  More of the aster will be replanted, and a few weed free pieces will be potted up for the Bridge of Flowers plant sale on May 19.

Actually renovations, as in Serious Weeding, are needed all over the gardens this spring. I’m about two thirds of the way through weeding the Herb Bed which requires replanting the Ashfield black stem mint which has wandered all over the place, and a clump of scarlet bee balm which became infested with mint and various weeds. I have herb seedlings ready to go in, as well as dill seeds. The renovation was really necessary here.

Bleeding heart

My friend Judith in Greenfield invited me down to take away one of her extra bleeding hearts. I hesitated thinking I don’t have any shade. I am so used to saying I don’t have shade that I had come to believe it. And yet, I realized I do have some shade on either side of the Cottage Ornee and even extended a small bed last year. I planted the bleeding heart between the cimicifuga and native foxgloves. I was afraid I would have to cut off the blossoms, but it perked up substantially, so I am enjoying this blooming addition to the garden.

As I begin the week I am looking forward to planting roses, and more barren strawberry that I bought  at Nasami over the weekend. We are moving into high gear!

Rain Barrels, Rain Gardens and Raised Beds

We finally got rain. Hallelujah! And more was promised, but it does not seem to be arriving, at least not in the amounts I was hoping for. The lesson seems to be that we need to be always prepared for flood or drought. The question is how do we do that.

Rain barrels, rain gardens and raised beds can help us to moderate, though not eliminate, both of those problems.

Rain barrels that collect the rain from our roof for use during a dry period have become more popular as we face these weather extremes. What quickly becomes apparent to people after they get their first rain barrel operational is that enormous amounts of rain come off our roofs, and a 50 gallon barrel fills up really fast. Many people have taken to adding a second or even a third rain barrel to capture more of that valuable water. A friend of mine in Houston, Texas has even set up a 200 gallon plastic cistern to catch her rain water. Capturing rain for use during dry periods is getting easier and easier.

A rain barrel can give us water for our garden wherever it is. A rain garden can be planted ten feet away from a roofline specifically to make use of the hundreds of gallons of water that come sheeting off a roof during a generous rainfall. They can also be sited where a slope leads water to a street or other undesirable location. The Greenfield Public Library has built a rain garden near their back door to capture runoff from sloping paths.

The concept of a rain garden is fairly simple. It requires a depression in the soil, four feet or more deep, and as wide and long as you think you need. If you have a long roof, and room on that side of your house, you might want to make the garden as long as the roof and perhaps six feet or more wide. The downloadable and well illustrated Vermont Rain Garden Manual (http://vacd.org/winooski/RGManual7.1.09FINAL.pdf gives specific instructions for calculating the appropriate size, as well as practical advice about locating and maintaining a rain garden.

The depression will first be filled with a layer of gravel and then with layers of soil and compost. These layers do not bring the level to where it was before. A depression must remain to allow rain to collect and pool.

Now you have a site for a beautiful garden of water tolerant plants whether your site is shady or sunny. There are perennials like asters, astilbe, echinacea, goatsbeard, Joe Pye weed, bee balm, coral bells, and daylilies, but there are also shrubs like various small willows, yellow or red twig dogwood, viburnams, and elderberry that will thrive in a rain garden and attract birds and butterflies as well.

Ornamental grasses can have a place in the rain garden, switch grass, feather reed grass and others. It is not hard to find over a hundred plants that are suitable for a rain garden.

I worried about mosquitoes when I first learned about rain gardens, but mosquitoes need 7-14 days of standing water to find the water and lay their eggs. The water in a rain garden will usually be absorbed within 24 hours, or 48 hours at the most.

A rain garden will give you a beautiful garden bed, and will keep all that water on your site. This is not only good for you, it is good for your town because it will keep excessive runoff out of town sewers, and thus out of our waterways. Storm water runoff pollutants typically include sediment; bacteria from animal waste; and oil, grease, and heavy metals from cars. We do not want that dirty water fouling our streams and rivers.

Rain gardens are such an efficient way of managing storm water run off that more and more towns are inaugurating programs to install rain gardens on town properties and in parking lots.

Finally, I want to mention raised beds for the garden. Raised beds seem to be quite fashionable right now and almost every garden supplier can offer kits or instructions on building raised beds out of lumber. The benefits of these constructions is that they can be laid out on your site and filled with good soil and compost and be ready for planting quickly. I would add a caveat. If these beds are set up on a grassy area, I would mow as low as possible and then lay down a couple of layers of cardboard to kill weeds before adding good soil and planting.

However, raised beds can also be created simply by removing some of the soil from paths between beds and mounding it on the bed. Adding compost every season will also help raise the level of the soil and keep it high over time. Raised beds drain better so plant roots don’t get waterlogged, but they also allow that moisture to be absorbed and kept on the site.

Keeping as much rain on our site as possible makes it easier for plants to come through dry periods. Of course, with the possibility of real drought, we might also want to consider an ornamental bed filled with beautiful drought resistant plants. That is a thought for another day.

Our dug well and new pump

This is my plan for using on site water – our old dug well ( a marvel of engineering) and a new pump. I will be able to use this water for irrigation when necessary and not deplete water in the new drilled well.

Between the Rows  April 28, 2012

Benefit Plant Sales Galore

Solomon's Seal and azalea

Benefit plant sales are a traditional spring event. Gardeners can spruce up their gardens and benefit various community organizations. Which will you choose? Or will you choose them all? Have you thought about giving your mother a gift certificate (one way or another) so she can pick out  some flowers herself?

This Saturday, May5 the Greenfield Library will open its plant sale at 9:30 am on the front lawn. It will close by 12:30, unless everything is gone earlier, of course. The book sale will also be going on so you might find some helpful garden books as well.

St. James Church will hold its ‘Come Grow With Us’ plant sale from 9am – 2pm on  the church. There will be many perennials for sale as well as heirloom tomato plants. Two trellises, one bamboo and one hickory, will be raffled off the day of the sale. There will also be children’s activities.

The Bridge of Flowers will hold its Annual Plant Sale on Saturday, May 19 at the Trinity Church’s Baptist Lot on Main Street in Shelburne Falls from 9 to noon. There will be nearly 1000 perennials for sale, from the Bridge and area gardeners, specialty plants from Hillside Nursery (a rare opportunity to buy these) and scores of annuals from LaSalles. Many vendors will be selling garden related items from note cards, tools, glass beads, books, sculptures, and more!

Bleeding heart

Nasami Farm in Whately, the New England Wildflower Society‘s nursery, is open on weekends now. Buying their beautiful plants will benefit the New England Wildflower Society, one of the oldest conservation organizations in the country, your own landscape and the environment.  Three for one!

Hardy Roses on Deck – Ready for Planting

Rose delivery from Antique Rose Emporium

My daughter’s Christmas present arrived today, Folksinger and Winter Sunset are Griffith Buck hardy rose hybrids, and Mrs. Anthony Waterer is a rugosa. Daughter Kate lives in Texas, where the Antique Rose Emporium also lives. It never ceases to amaze me that roses can be propogated in one climate, but still be hardy in climates like mine. The hardiness is in the genes.

I have bought roses from the Antique Rose Emporium before. These container grown roses are carefully packed and shipped and arrive in good shape. From now on it is up to me.

Folksinger and Winter Sunset, the Buck hybrids, are both in the yellow/orange range. Both are fragrant repeat bloomers. Most of my roses are in the pink range, but I have been trying to add yellow roses. I do have the very hardy Harrison’s Yellow with its prickly spiny canes, and Ghislaine de Feligonde that are both doing very well. I added others last year, but it is still not clear whether they came through our mild, but dry winter. Wait for further reports.

Mrs. Anthony Waterer is a hybrid rugosa with fragrant deep crimson blossoms. Rugosas do very well here in Heath. I can always count on the rugosas. Where on the Rose Walk will she go?

We are still enjoying showers so planting will have to wait, but that gives me extra time to figure out the best place for them. Somehow I am never definite about The Where until I have plants in hand.