A Timeless Giveaway

This sundial could be yours!

I was flattered to get an e-note from CSN Stores saying that the commonweeder had the kind of readership that they were trying to reach. They proposed  a Giveaway and I am very happy to pass that on to you.

Their website Teak, Wicker & More offers a whole range of outdoor furniture which includes just about everything you need to make your gardens hospitable and comfortable. They have firepits and grills, planters, and of course, patio furniture. They have birdbaths,  feeders and houses, everything to  welcome birds to your garden, adding their color, movement and song to the other pleasures of a garden.

The Giveaway is a 12″ Frog Sundial made of rust free and weather resistent recycled aluminum. I like it’s being made of recycled material. Recycling will be successful to the degree there is a market for items made of recycled materials.

 It also has a wise inscription: “A quick summer’s glimpse, reveal egg, tadpole and frog, life in constant change.”  The light and strength of the sun is always changing, even over the course of a single day. Certainly we all know that a garden can change over the course of a single day.

I have a sundial in my circle garden, and I’ve had friends who enjoyed a little pun. One placed his sundial in the midst of a bed of creeping thyme.  Another, a very busy nurse and mother, placed hers in the center of a whole collection of thymes, common, silver, lemon, gold and more.  She said it made her feel (in her hectic life) that she had all the time in the world.

By leaving a comment and website or email address here before midnight on Friday June 5 I will enter you in a drawing for the sundial and announce the winner on Saturday morning. The winner can then give me a mailing address and Teak, Wicker & More will mail the sundial directly.

All Kinds of Wallflowers

             The stone wall is a New England icon. Our soil is rocky and early farmers spent a lot of time clearing planting and grazing fields of stones and piling them at the edges to make walls of varying durability. Actually, we New England gardeners are still pulling stones out of the soil and piling them where they won’t be in the way, or using them as another resource.

            Here at End of the Road Farm we have lots of stone walls, at the edge of old fields, some of which have grown back into woodland. The old barn which was struck by lightning and burned down in 1990 left us with three five foot high stone walls. We have two dug wells lined with beautiful and amazing stone walls. I cannot imagine how they were built.

We have even built two small stone walls of our own to edge and hold the piazza pavers, and the new entry walkway pavers. Since the pavers are very regular and the stone walls are not, I have planted common thyme along the edge where they meet to disguise that irregular border. The thyme is handy for kitchen needs, and very pretty, when it is in purple summer bloom or not.

Thyme is a big family of good low spreaders including wooly thyme, lemon thyme, French thyme, silver thyme, gold thyme and more.

There are other plants that could act as this kind of filler. Rock cress, Arabis alpina, is a low growing perennial with small white flowers that bloom in the spring. It likes sun, or light shade and a well drained soil which means that planting at the edge of a stone wall will suit it very well.

In case you want color there is a false rockcress, Aubretia, which is also low growing but comes in a variety of blue, purple and plummy colors. Butterflies love it.

Snow in Summer, Cerastium tomentosa, is similar with spring blooming white flowers. It likes hot dry places so planting by a stone wall is again ideal. Give it a shearing after it blooms for an attractive appearance in the summer.

Basket of Gold, Alyssum compactum, is very easy to grow. It was one of the plants in my very first garden back in 1965. I didn’t have a clue about what to do, but  this graceful 14 inch plant with its extravagant spring flowering didn’t need any help from me. Cut it back by about one third after blooming.

Larger graceful plants that would be happy on top of a stone wall where the drainage is good are the catmints.  Nepeta Walker’s Low is not low, it is about 30 inches tall with an equal spread. It was a Perennial Plant Association Plant of the Year in 2007 because it is beautiful and dependable in a wide variety of situations. I have only one caveat about catmints.  Cats love them. My cats have lolled and rolled and slept on top of my catmint and killed it dead.

There are a number of sedums that are suitable for growing around a stone wall. Sedum kamtschaticum has scalloped yellow-green leaves and yellow flowers that mature to  bronze. I have this plant (I think – it came from a plant swap) and it makes a good groundcover – or plant for a wall.

Sedum Sieboldi has gray blue foliage with pinky gray flowers that appear later in the summer. It should not be deadheaded right after blooming, but cleaned up in the early spring.

For even more color there is Sedum spurium ‘Dragons Blood’ with red edged foliage and red flowers in summer.

While the plants I have mentioned are all perennials and will come back year after year, there are familiar annuals that will also work well on a wall. Think about annuals that work in hanging baskets like petunias that come in a full range of color and form.

Licorice plant, Helichrysum petiolare, has trailing, slightly fuzzy silvery or gold foliage that is often used with bloomers like petunias, verbena and nasturtiums.

I love trailing verbena with its cascading stems and flowers in many shades including, pink, rose, red, purple, lavender and white. The variety with a plumy purple is a standard at garden centers in the spring.

There is even an annual named wallflower, easily grown from seed. The old fashioned Erysimum grows about one to two feet tall and has brilliant orange flowers in the spring. Pinch it back as it grows for a bushier plant.

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If you are reading this with your breakfast coffee you still have time to pot up a bit of some boisterous grower in your garden and bring it over to the Plant Swap at the Energy Park this morning. You can even bring flower pots, baked goods, anything, to swap for plants. The swap will begin at 10:30 AM.  Some people usually bring more items than they want to bring back which means new gardeners can take away extra plants. Bring some dish to share and stay for the pot-luck lunch and lots of plant talk.

The Shelburne Falls Women’s Club is also holding their famous Annual Plant Sale at the Baptist Lot (near the post office) beginning at 9 AM. Plants are from the Bridge of Flowers and members’ gardens and a few other places as well. Get there early.

May 16, 2009

Monday Record May 26

What a celebratory weekend.  All due honor has been paid to our veterans, and even the tree peony has joined in those solemnities. Appropropriately, she is named (in translation) The Face of the Goddess of Compassion.  This year she has nine blossoms, each about 7 inches across.

Next  to Guan Yin is another tree peony, planted at the same time, about 5 or 6 years ago (the relevant journal has gone missing) but she is smaller and  will have only three blossoms this year. Fortunatley the ice  storm damaged a sheltering viburnam, but the tree peonies were spared.   I don’t know whether my other two tree peonies, one red and one white, which are more exposed will bloom this year.

The weekend has been beautiful and we’ve gotten a lot of work done, paving in front of the Welcome Platform (not quite finished) cleaning up the damaged apple tree next to the Cottage Ornee, planting new perennials from the Greenfield Garden Club sale, phlox and columbine, in addition ot moving a yarrow and astilbe from one bed to another, and weeding the Lawn Beds, but it was all done in  the midst of the fragrance of the hedge of common lilacs, some the tradition purple, and some this wonderful single white.

Beauty of Moscow

Even though we had that one ancient white lilac three years ago I bought the Beauty of Moscow, a double white that begins with fat pink buds.  I also have a Miss Willmott white that I planted last year, but it is too small to bloom. That was a gift from Jerry Sternstein, who dug up a shoot from his MW. He has 70 lilacs!

Of course, there was lots of work in the vegetable garden. I have 6 tomatoes, two each of Cherokee Purple, Paul Robeson and Volkov. I  also planted 2 Sweet 100s in the Herb Bed, along with a yellow pear tomato. Herb seedlings were planted too, parsley and basil. I stuck a few cosmos in the Herb Bed because I had extra seedlings. Pole beans and Raven zucchini went in.

Squash seedlings went in the ground. Sunshine and Waltham Butternut.  You can see the peas are doing fine.

The Cottage is Open! All swept out and set up for tea time. This is my reading corner, but no sitting and reading time this weekend. Soon.

When you enter the Cottage you can see this deep purple Ludwig Spaeth blooming in back of the Cottage. It gets a lot of shade and is a little more spindly than I  would like but I’m hoping time will take care of that. The fragrance wafts into the Cottage.

From the north windows you can see Boule de Neige and Rangoon, white and red rhodies, along with some ajuga that runs every where and a little primrose. My friend who gave it to me later said there wasn’t really room under the rhodies for primroses. She was right.

This was a weekend!  Out in the garden, and even a fabulous Gourmet Club dinner on Saturday. 28 years of serving ourselves – and we are still hungry.

Is There a Giant Pumpkin in Your Future?

A Cry for Help

My  friend Peter who reads this blog, and others, responded to the review of Covering Ground by Barbara Ellis with the following post and request.

 “I need some gardeners’ advice. The two photos show the side area of our house. It was cleared and a lawn (of sorts) planted before we bought the place. We do not use the area, and our dogs don’t go down there either. Its value is in providing a respite with open space (neighbors here are just crazy about trees – someday we’ll have a hurricane and they’ll change their tune) and abundant sunlight. My questions: 1. What can be planted to secure the slope (on the left, below the low stone wall)? We’d thought a sea of azaleas would work.

2.) For the larger sloping lawn area to the right, we’d like to replace the grass with a sweep or mass of something colorful and fragrant. We thought lavender would be lovely. Ideas? 3.) There is a rock outcropping that steps down from the corner of the house. So far the soil has been supporting weeds which require hand cutting or the use of a weed whacker. Surely there’s something that likes to grow in among rocks and has more charm and grace than the current weed population. Again, ideas?

This is the dullest elevation of the house, and we do have plans to visually break up its massiveness. But the photographs are taken from the right-of-way we’ve granted for neighbors to walk to the beach. We see no harm in planting something they might enjoy as they walk by, and color, texture and fragrance might divert them from spending too much time looking at the house’s bulkiness.

I am a reluctant slave to the lawn mower. We use a battery mulching mower and it takes three chargings to mow everything. You have written that ground covers that lessen the lawn area also reduce one’s carbon footprint. At the moment we have rather big feet, clown feet apparently, and look to your readers for ideas that will lower our shoe shoe size.”

I will add from my own knowledge of this house, that the distance between the right of way and the house is 96 feet, and the house is not as monumental as it appears in the photo. It is a modest and charming one story house built in the 1950s in the modern style. On this side of the house is an entry into the finished basement – a very comfortable guest room and bath.

Monday Record May 18

Things are blooming here at End of the Road Farm. The Sargent crab in the Sunken Garden is magnificent. So are the dandelions. It is so wet we haven’t been able to mow here yet. The lilacs are also in full fragrant bloom.

On Saturday I worked at the Shelburne Falls Area Women’s Club  plant sale, which includes many many divisions from our famous Bridge of Flowers. Now it is time to plants my new beds.

I also got tomatoes from my neighbors. We shared out our seeds this spring, and they started the tomatoes because they have a little greenhouse off their study.   Here are my lists of things to plant as much as I know of them: 2 Paul Robeson, 2 Cherokee Purple and 2 Volkov tomatoes. 2 reds and 2 regular cabbage starts from my neighor. These are in the process of being hardened off.

At the plant sale  I bought 1 boltonia, 2 forget me nots, 1 Beverly Sills bearded iris, 2 ‘excellent’ red daylilies and 2 Cherokee geraniums.  When I got home Fed Ex came along with my Bluestone Perennials order: 1 Brunnera Jack Frost, 1 tiarella cordifolia, 3 stokesia Purple Parasols and 3 anemone Robustissima. It’s time to plant!

Earth Day 2009

            When I woke up on the first Earth Day, nearly 40 years ago, gas for my old car cost about 29 cents a gallon, I had never heard of recycling, and I didn’t worry much about lights left on, or watering my lawn.

            Things have changed since then. Gas prices got up to over $4 a gallon and struck terror into all our hearts. Recycling is an everyday habit for many of us. I not only turn out lights in a room when I leave, we have switched to Compact Florescent Lights CFL) and even  Light Emitting Diode (LED) lights to save on energy. I never water the lawn.

            Over the years I have added any number of new habits to do my part in protecting the earth and the environment.

            Although we have worked, over time, to save energy in our house, adding insulation, insulating draperies, Energy Star appliances, and most recently, a new energy efficient heating system, we have also been concerned about protecting the environment around our house.

            I compost kitchen and yard waste, along with hen house cleanings. I consider myself lucky to have hen house cleanings. I even collect leaves from neighbors and others in the fall to add to the compost pile.

            I don’t fertilize the lawn, or use herbicides or pesticides anywhere in the garden. This protects groundwater, local birds and wildlife – and my grandchildren.            Recently I was talking to Walter Cudnohufsky  about  ways to garden and manage our plots of land. Cudnohuksky founded the Conway School of Landscape Design on ‘green’ design principles, believing that protecting habitat, water quality, plant diversity, soil health and energy conservation were all necessary elements of good landscape design.

I am sure that Cudnohufsky, like any designer, would like to work on a site even before a house is built, but most of us have a house and yard with all its faults, and with unexplored possibilities.  When we make changes we have an opportunity to meet new needs, and to protect and work with the natural systems of water, sun and shade on our site.

            I am not alone in becoming more and more aware of the threats to clean water supplies in our world. Towns and cities struggle with providing clean drinking water and the difficulties in handling storm water run-off now that so much of the landscape is paved.  In the suburbs and small towns especially it is clear that homeowners can play a positive part in managing these challenges.

On the home landscape we often complain we either have too much water or too little. Cudnohufsky works to keep as much water as possible on site. This means using porous paving, planting slopes to slow surface runoff, and designing swales or dry stream beds that can add a beautiful element to the garden as well as handling storm water. Our own energy is saved by this kind of design because if we keep most of the water on our site we won’t have to water our gardens as much, or replace and redo areas that are always washing out.

Keeping water on site is a benefit to our town, especially if we don’t use a lot of chemicals, by decreasing the amount of water that goes into storm drains and then into local waterways.

Gardeners spend time choosing plants. Cudnohufsky points out that a lot of human energy can be saved by selecting plants for existing conditions whether they be sunny or shady, or dry, damp or wet areas, rather than endlessly working to adjust the conditions.  I also like his idea of working with the natural model of multi-level gardening: canopy, understory and ground cover.

It is easy to find attractive native trees and shrubs that will thrive in our climate, and will suffer little trouble from pests or disease. Native plants will also provide the food and shelter that birds need.

With the resources of the New England Wildflower Society (NEWFS), the oldest conservation organization in the country, so near at hand in Whately at Nasami Farm, finding native plants that are as beautiful and they are healthy and useful in the garden is not difficult.

Trees can also ameliorate the effects of the weather. Windbreaks protect our house from winter winds, and help us save on heating costs. Trees planted to shade the house from afternoon sun will keep the house more comfortable in summer.

            My husband is in total agreement that our lawns are too large and require too much labor. “It’s unsustainable,” he says.  My one recent effort to cut down on lawn is removing sod and planting a native groundcover, barren strawberry or Waldsteinia. I got mine at Nasami which is now open on weekends, Thursday through Sunday into June.

            We are fortunate to live in a beautiful area. It is our duty and our joyous privilege to protect the beauty and health of our earth in every way that we can.

            For those Ashfield residents who are interested in how Walter Cudnohufsky’s principles can take beautiful form, he is holding an interactive Residential Landscape Design Clinic for home owners on Saturday May 8th and/or Sunday May 9th 8:30 – 5:30 PM.  Five or six sites will be visited. “The goal is to have participants perceive design and problems differently and to have a sense of what quality design thinking is and produces,” Cudnohufsky said.  For more details including the modest cost, email walt@wcla.com or call 628-4600, ext. 11. You can also logon to www.wcala.com.

April 18, 2009

Preserving Herbs

Herbs fresh or preserved. Delicious!

If any edible garden is going to be a cost saving endeavor, thought has to be given to preserving the harvest. The labor in harvesting and preserving herbs is not onerous, but it must be done in a timely fashion.

            For  hundreds of years farmers and gardeners have been drying herbs. Before they knew about UV rays, they did understand that sunlight will diminish the flavor of herbs, and often discolor them as well. Hence the general direction to dry any herb in a dry area, out of the sun.

 I have harvested herbs like mint, parsley, rosemary, lovage, oregano, marjoram, tarragon and sage, washed them and let them dry off before bundling a few stems together. I putt the whole bundle in a paper bag with the stems coming  out the open end, then tie the bag shut and hang it where it will be out of the sun and out of the way for two or three weeks.

            I also use this technique for herbs whose seeds I want, like dill, caraway, and chervil. After drying for a time the paper bag just needs a bit of whacking to knock the seeds loose. The collected, dry seeds can then be stored in a small glass jar. Don’t forget a label.

            Herbs, like thyme with its small leaves, can also be dried on a drying tray placed in a dark warm place.  A window screen works well. If you have a lot of herbs to dry this way, you can put spacers, perhaps 2x4s, between the trays and stack them.  When thoroughly dry, store the herbs in small glass jars.

            Many people have herb and spice racks near their stoves. Very handy for cooking, but actually not very good for the herbs which degrade from the light and heat.

            Some people like to dry herbs in the oven. I have never done this and I think you have to be careful not to dry them too quickly, or at too high a temperature, or you’ll lose the volatile oils, and the reason for drying the herbs in the first place.  Don’t have the oven any hotter than 180 degrees, and keep an eye on the herbs which should be adequately dry in 3 or 4 hours.

            Those who really want to be done with the task fast can use a microwave oven. Place the herbs on a paper plate and turn the microwave on for 30 seconds, stir them up, and repeat. Do this for 1 to 3 minutes until the herbs are dry.

            Herbs must be dry before storing or they could turn moldy.

            Chives and parsley can also be frozen. Wash and dry them, snip the chives and chop the parsley, then spread on a cookie sheet and freeze, just as you would a harvest of berries.  When they are frozen they can be put into freezer bags. Since they are frozen separately, the few can be removed as needed.  They will not be useful as a garnish, but will add their flavor as well as fresh.

            Actually, any herb can be washed, then chopped and mixed with water. Take that mixture and freeze in ice cube trays.  When the ice is frozen, remove the herbal ice cubes and put them in a labeled freezer bag. A single frozen herbal cube can be added to a dish as needed.

            I don’t think basil dries terribly well and it discolors when it freezes. I harvest a good amount of basil, put it in the food processor with an appropriate amount of olive oil. The flavor stays fresh. I take the resulting puree and put a spoonful or two in plastic sandwich bags, twist shut, and then put several of them in a labeled freezer bag.  When I need basil for a sauce, I just pull out one little bag and add it to whatever dish I am making.

            While most of us think of culinary herbs as those we use in flavoring stews, marinades, and rubs, a glance at any herbal tea mix will tell us that we could very well be putting up our own tea mixes as well.

            We use fresh black stem peppermint for tea during the growing season, and dry the leaves for winter use. Some people like to add a leaf or two of lemon balm or lemon verbena to a pot of black tea.

            I’ve known mothers who swear by a tea made with fennel seeds for soothing a colicky baby.

            Peter Rabbit’s mother made a chamomile tea, and chamomile is an ingredient of many soothing teas.  On the other hand, borage tea is said to give one a lift, and comfrey tea will cure what ails you.

            However you use them, herbs are beautiful in the garden, and useful in the kitchen. All year long.

I’d also like to remind everyone that The New England Wild Flower Society’s Nasami Farm Nursery in Whately opens its 2009 Spring Season Thursday, April 16 and will remain open Thursdays through Sundays until June 14. The Society’s nursery propagates and features over 450 native plant species for sale. For more information logon to www.newfs.org.  

          Between the Rows  April 11, 2009

Bloom Day May 15, 2009

Dandelions and violets in the flowery mead are still blooming.

Johnny jump ups are scattered everywhere. Where do they all come from? I wonder what a johnny jump up seed looks like flying on the wind. I’m not sounding like much of a gardener so far.

Many of the daffodils are starting to wind down, but others like this pheasant eye daff (Poeticus) bloom late. When I visited the daffodils at Tower Hill Botanic Garden last year I learned that all the shades of pink in pink daffodils come from the red genes in the pheasant eye.

How is it that I never noticed this low growing cotoneaster bloomed? Is this really the first year? Name lost.

Lilac season is just beginning. This is the ancient white lilac that was here when we bought our house in 1979. There is a hedge of white lilacs melding into a row of the old lavender lilacs. I’ve added a Beauty of Moscow whose beautiful pink buds open to white, Miss Willmott who won’t bloom until at least next year, deep purple Ludwig Spaeth, and the pretty pink Miss Canada who will not bloom until a bit later.

We’ve got a couple of semi-dwarf plum trees, and sometimes we get plums. When there are extras I can them and I think they are just beautiful in their juice.

We planted a sour cherry years ago. Any cherries that develop go to the birds. I was racing the rain when I took this photo.

We have apple trees  in bloom – at the edge of the lawn, along the drive (actually the town road), in the fields, next to the vegetable garden and

most spectacularly, the Sargent Crabapple in the center of the Sunken Garden.

For more beatiful blooms go to May Dreams Gardens. And thank you Carol for giving us this great way of seeing what is going on all across the country.

Cover Your Ground

                                                “Green your garden” sounds like an unnecessary admonition, but as the discussion about global warming heats up (pun intended) gardeners are looking at ways to lower their gardens’ carbon footprint.

            Because digging the soil releases carbon into the atmosphere no-till cultivation methods have gained new advocates.  In addition to saving human energy, sheet composting/lasagna gardening has become more popular.

            Another way of reducing the carbon footprint of the garden is to reduce the size of the lawn.  Gas powered mowers are the most common mowers and produce those polluting greenhouse gases that we are all worrying about. They also use gas and oil that we are trying to cut down on.

            However, it is possible to eliminate, or reduce mowing by planting ground covers.

The term ground cover is a large one that includes shrubs, vines, and perennials like pachysandra that we are all familiar with.

            It’s easy to call up the names of a few ground covers: pachysandra, vinca and ajuga, but then I start to run dry.  Barbara W. Ellis has no such problem. Her book, Covering Ground: Unexpected Ideas for Landscaping with Colorful, Low Maintenance Ground Covers (Storey $19.95) is full of ways to cut down on lawn and labor while making your garden even more beautiful.

            Ellis is an engaging writer with enormous experience and knowledge. She begins with an inspiring examination of the kinds of sites that might benefit from groundcovers from steep slopes, to wet areas to stream edges and border areas.

            The second section of the book is a particularly useful reference, with clear photos, of groundcovers for various areas, sunny and dry, shady, boggy, and for different types of soil from sand to clay.

            Since we all know that putting the right plant in the right place is the best guarantee of success this section is a valuable and useful reference

            She organizes other lists for types of ground covers from shrubs like flowering quince which will be 2 to 3 feet high, forsythia, and a host of cotoneasters which can be as low as 4 inches or as high as 3 feet.

            We usually think of vines growing up, but they can also be used to spread over the ground. Ellis suggests which vines like ‘Dropmore Scarlet’ honeysuckle and clematis can be used this way, and how to manage and care for them.

            She also has a section on using ornamental grasses that will not need mowing, as a groundcover. She reminds us that ferns and moss are other sorts of groundcovers.

            Ellis even has a section about hardscaping and other ways of covering the ground. I am making my own new garden paths with wood chips, but gravel and various pavers are mentioned.

            I appreciated all the information she gives about the size and spread of the plants she describes, the soil and amount of sun they prefer and the hardiness zones. She also notes which plants are natives, and has a section on invasives which are to be avoided, even if you see them for sale at a nursery.

            A final section Planting, Growing and Propagating gives basic advice about preparation of planting different sites, renovation, and how to grow plants from seed and take all manner of cuttings to increase your stock.

            The headings in the table of contents are so well worded that it will help you when you want to look up a particular type of plant, but there is also an excellent index that lists plants by common and proper name.

            Ellis notes which ground covers are natives, but I called Ron Wik, the Nursery Business Director at Nasami Farm in Whately, for some suggestions.  Nasami propagates native plants in their large greenhouses and is open Thursday through Sunday 10 AM til 5 PM until mid June. The complete list of natives they sell is on their website www.newfs.org, but Wik gave me five suggestions.

            “Carex pensylvanica is a clumping grass,” Wik said. “You can plant it 8 to 10 inches on center in mulch to get them started and to outsmart weeds. Once it is established it will outcompete weeds and within five years the clumps will touch. In a breeze it looks like moving water.”

            Gaylussacia brachycera is known as box huckleberry. “This is a versatile shrub. We can barely grow enough, but this year we have a good supply. It is useful for dry shade areas, has little flowers and huckleberries.  You can eat them, but this is not the variety that a farmer would plant,” Wik said.

            Even though Sibbaldiopsis tridentate translates as three tooth cinquefoil, Wik said, “We call this shrubby five fingers.  It has shiny dark green leaves, about 10 inches high and is good for dry slopes. It grows high on Mt. Monadonock.”

            Woodland or creeping phlox is familiar to all of us with its dense mats that produce pink, blue, white and red flowers in the spring. It’s good for shady areas.

            “Cliff green is another low evergreen shrub that won’t grow more than 10 inches high. It’s a good substitute for junipers, but it’s less abrasive. It’s not a conifer, but it is similar in texture,” Wik said.

            If you are considering reducing your lawn area Ellis will give you some great suggestions, and a large array of natives will be there for the choosing at Nasami Farm. 

          This is naative Waldsteinia or barren strawberry (note the brilliant strawberry like flowers) that I am planting to cover a strip of ground I no longer want to mow. Ron Wik said they have more for sale at Nasami. I think daffodils will look very pretty coming up through it in the spring.