Birdbath

While the ground is covered with snow and temperatures hover at zero, I’ve been trolling through photos of my visit to Seattle last July (with 70 other garden bloggers) and especially noticing ornaments in the garden, some plain and some fancy.  Many of us have birdbaths in our garden – even me – who has not ornamented my garden in any thoughtful way.

Fountain

It is not a big step to go from a simple birdbath to a fancy fountain. Bird lovers tell me that the sound of running water will attract more birds than a bird feeder.

Shiny beads

Strings of beads on a trellis is pretty simple. And simply pretty.

Mosaic bench

If you sit on this fancy mosaic bench you’ll get a fancy view of Seattle.

Steps and stones

I don’t know whether to call these steps plain or fancy. Stones aren’t fancy, but they can be used in fancy ways. I was surprised to realize that ornaments in the garden can be built right into the landscape.

Pebbles can be fancy, too. This pebble mosaic stair landing is beautiful.

Large urn

A large urn in the garden is a simple idea, and beautiful even if it is empty.

Urn with plants

Put plants in a fancy urn and you have double fancy.

Garden sculpture

Is this a sculpture – or is it a planter. Pretty fancy.

Bowling ball

Lorene Edwards Forkner invited all us garden bloggers into her Seattle garden. She knows how to make really simple work in the garden. And she has written a whole book about ways we can ornament our gardens simply for a fancy effect. Have you read Handmade Garden Projects: Step-by-step instructions for creative garden features, containers, lighting and more?

Entry to Japanese Garden at Bloedel Reserve

This small stone fox sculpture is set at the entry to the Japanese Garden at the Bloedel Reserve. Is it simple? Is it fancy? Is it perfectly elegant?

What kinds of ornaments do you have in your garden? Plain? Fancy?

The Solar Dancer

The Solar Dancer greeted all those who gathered at Greenfield Community College last Saturday to hear about and discuss our current local food production and food security and the ways that it might be stepped up.

It was an exciting day because we live in a fortunate area that has lots of good farmland, with old (in the sense of established) and new farmers. These farmers operate farmstands and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) and participate in area Farmers Markets. We have the Community Development Corporation‘s certified kitchen which farmers can rent by the hour to process their crops.

We have restaurants and families who appreciate good fresh food that not only sustains them, but sustains our environment – and our economy!

The day was filled with excellent  presentations and workshops, from Jim Barry from the Mass Department of Energy Resources, Ben Hewitt, author of The Town That Food Saved and many local experts. You will be hearing more about this exciting day.

Shelly Beck of Enterprise Farm in Whately, MA

There were so many thought provoking ideas presented, including one by Shelly Beck of Enterprise Farm which has a bold vision of their place in the community. One of the Farm’s concerns is the Food Deserts that exist in the state, areas where (usually) low income communities have no access to affordable healthy food. Enterprise Farm decided to bring their produce to one such community near Boston where they already delivered CSA farm shares weekly. Their answer to the food desert was a bus and a celebration. They bought and retrofitted a bus which brought food to this community for a long season – bringing along a growing festive spirit and activity. This was one of the most inspiring moments of the day for me.

Cardoons at the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanic Garden

When I joined 70 other garden bloggers in Seattle this past summer, one of the first places we visited was the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanic Garden which is a part of the University of Washington. There were familiar plants, and not so familiar plants like these cardoons, which are related to the artichoke and make for some sophisticated eating.

Green roof

Like many botanic gardens there are trial beds and educational projects like this green roof. It looks like it is on the ground, but it is actually the roof of a wing of the building that is entered at ground level while I was standing on  a deck to take this photo.

The most special part of this botanic garden for me was the Elisabeth C. Miller Library. Once a librarian myself I had a special appreciation.

Elisabeth C. Miller Library librarians

This library is unique I think, in that it is available to the general public. Not only can people come in and use the collection of 15,000+ books in the library, many are available for circulation. There are books on every botanical subject from roses to ethnobotany, from container gardening to plant hunters, from annuals to urban forestry, from composting to flower arranging and just about any other subject you can think of.

You can even check their catalog online, recommend books you’d like to see in the collection, and browse through hundreds of current nursery and plant catalogs that are included in  the collection.

But this wonderful library with its helpful staff also offers very practical assistance through the Plant Answer Line,  and lists local plant sales and garden tours.

Of course, the collection is slanted toward plants of the Northwest Pacific, but I tell you I could spend weeks in this library happily exploring many subjects that would be of interest to me – even coming from the Northeast Atlantic.

October 31, 2011

We don’t usually have snow at the end of the season, but it has been a remarkable and difficult year with extraordinary weather. I think the Bridge is ready for a rest.

See you on April 1, 2012.

Buckland side entry to Bridge of Flowers

Chrysanthemums were planted in September. We want the Bridge to be full of bloom all season.

I am so happy to see roses still in bloom.

I am also happy to see a quiet river behind these dahlias.

The dahlias are important at this season.

But the weather has been so relatively mild that even the begonias are still blooming.

The gardens will be put to bed and the official garden season ends on Sunday, October 30.  Have a good winter. See you on April 1.

Lyman Plant House at Smith College

Last week I visited the Lyman Plant House at Smith College in preparation for a column and post about the Annual Chrysanthemum Show which begins Friday, November 5 with a talk by Smith alum and author Paula Dietz about the gardens she has visited and written about in her book, On Gardens.

The Smith Botanical Garden and the Lyman Plant House are treasures for the whole community to use. The Lyman Plant House is open every day (except Thanksgiving and the period between December 23 – January 3) from 8:30 am – 4 pm, and the gardens surrounding it are available every day of the year. I was amazed at the amount of bloom.

Actually, I know dahlias are still blooming madly up in the higher elevations. Not only at Smith.

There are lots of labels on the plants in the Botanic Garden, but I could not find one for this beautiful plant, of which there were several wonderful floriferous clumps.  Any ideas?

This plant was another mystery. It looks like a regular daisy flower, but look at that foliage – not daisy foliage. Any more ideas?

As a part of the Rock Garden are a number of trough gardens which I think is a wonderful way for any of us to enjoy a few alpine plants.

There is an iron fence that separates the garden from the roadway, but on the road side of the fence there are plantings. Even those passing can enjoy the garden without entering.

This dramatic red planting is at the doorway to the Lyman Plant House.   Wow!

I was familiar with many of these plants (not all obviously) but I was amazed to see cactus included in the garden. Hardy in Northampton?  I guess so.

Melanie and Ray Poudrier

Gardens are planned, grow and develop over time as dependably as any single plant. Ray and Melanie Poudrier’s garden could be said to have begun when Ray’s father bought land in Hawley in 1942.

Ray’s father joined his mother and their brood of thirteen children on Hawley summer weekends to see the latest developments. The family grew a vegetable garden, had an orchard and a blueberry patch. They even rented a cow for the summer to have milk for all those children. What they did not have was electricity or running water.

They didn’t have a car during the week either, which meant when a few extra supplies were needed, Ray’s mother would leave a note for the mail carrier to give  Avery’s General Store, and the next day necessities would be delivered along with the mail and a bill. “We weren’t the only ones depending on the mail and Avery’s either,” Ray said when I visited for a tour of the gardens. “I often saw other bags of groceries in the back of the mail car.”

Happily, when Ray met Melanie and they prepared to marry, she was as up for Hawley adventures as Ray. As newly weds they began building their vacation house. “It was always exciting,” Melanie said as she recounted stories of bathing in a frigid spring fed pond after a day’s work.

Ray explained that because Melanie is so slim and petite, she is the one who could fit into tight spaces, like a well, or next to the house foundation to apply tar before the land was graded. That vacation house became their permanent home in 1981.

Heaths, heathers, stone and shed

The house was snuggled into the woods which they both loved, but when they decided to put up solar panels in the mid-1980s trees had to come down. “That opened up a whole new world,” Melanie said. Vegetable and flower gardens were shifted around and now the sunny land in front of the house is filled with extensive ornamental beds that can be admired from the house in every season.

The gardens include a whole array of perennials, but once they discovered the heaths and heathers they fell in love. Heaths and heathers both belong to the Ericaceae family, but they each have there own genus, Erica and Calluna. They are similar in that they are both evergreen shrubs, some very low, some growing to a height of three feet, some are upright, and some are very spready. The Poudrier’s sunny garden has the kind of poor acid soil that all that heaths and heathers enjoy.

“There is so much variation in the texture and color of the foliage,” Ray said. As we walked through the garden this was clear as we saw gray-green foliage, golden foliage that was bright even on that showery day, dark green and light green foliage and even foliage that was an autumnal shade of red all year long.

Calluna 'Allegro'

Heaths and heathers also produce flowers at different times of the year depending on the cultivar, but bloom begins very early in the spring and continues through the summer. Many bloom in various shades of pink and lavender, but there are also white varieties. “During its bloom season a plant can be a beautiful cloud of color,” Melanie said. Melanie added that some nurseries will tell you to shear back the plants in the fall to remove spent flowers and keep the plants neat, but she never did that. “The flowers just disappear,” she said.

Melanie does not mulch the plants either, because she said the voles were a worse problem than weeds. Mulch provides good nesting spaces for the voles who love to eat the heaths, although they don’t bother the heathers.

All their plants have been bought locally and they have found a good range of varieties. Many people don’t pay much attention to the color of or season of the flowers, but concentrate on the form and color of the foliage that provides interest in the winter garden. “You get a lot of bang for your buck,” Melanie said talking about the pleasure they enjoy all year long.

The Poudriers have included other plants whose foliage contrasts with the heaths and heathers. There are alliums with tall thin oniony foliage, European ginger with its low shiny leathery round leaves, and creeping savory, a perennial, which resembles the evergreens and produces white flowers.

Hawley Crowsfoot Schist

As varied as they are, the heaths and heathers are only half the beauty of the garden beds. The other half is provided by the magnificent stones that Ray has moved into place to provide a framework and structure for the plants. He is especially proud of a large slab of Hawley’s unique crow’s foot schist he has placed among the heathers.

Ray has worked with stones from the site for many years, building stone walls that mark the cultivated domestic landscape, an artistically arranged stoneworks around an ornamental pool, and a rock garden that includes not a single plant. Ray smiled when he said he wanted to build a garden for Melanie that would never need weeding.

Perhaps the best of all worlds they have found is stones with heaths and heathers.

Between the Rows  October 8, 2011

'Starlet'

Nurseries and roadside stands are filled with tidy pots of tidy chrysanthemums, but I planted a collection of these fall bloomers in my Circle Garden this spring. The chrysanthemum family is so various in form, as well as color, that I wanted to branch out a little. My collection of six from Bluestone Perennials got whittled down to three because of rabbits! Fortunately, a reader suggested black netting which discouraged the bunnies, but ineptly placed as it was, it tangled the plants making the usual pinching  and pruning impossible. Still, look at these blooms. Undeterred by the frost we on Wednesday night.

'Joanette'

‘Joanette is a quilled mum, which means the petals are like little tubes, which do not show up very well in my photo. “Starlet’ is a spoon mum, which means the tip of the petal is a little spoon shape that narrows down to a rolled tube in the center. This provides a little more interest and fun to the fall garden than a neat pot of fall mums. Don’t you think? These varieties make it clear why the Chinese consider chrysanthemums the symbol of autumn.

To see even more spectacular mums than you will ever find in my garden, click here for my post about the fabulous KIKU exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden two years ago. To see some unusual and beautiful mums yourself be sure and visit the Lyman Plant House at Smith College for their Annual Chrysanthemum Show beginning on November 6.

Erica - Heath

Yesterday, in the rain, I visted the gardens of Melanie and Ray Poudrier and paid special attention to their collection of heaths and heathers. These two evergreen shrubby plants are often mentioned together in the same breath, but I never really knew how to tell them apart until Melanie made me look at the foliage closely. Heaths and heathers are both members of the Ericaceae family, but heath of the genus Erica has needle-like foliage.

Calluna - heather

The foliage of genus Calluna or heather is quite different with scale leaves that remind me of cedar foliage.  Heath and heather foliage comes in a range of colors from deep to bright green, grayed green, golden or even red. You will be hearing more about this garden soon.

University Village fountain

Our area suffered flooding from Tropical Storm Irene and the storm that followed a week after causing enormous damage as rivers and streams overflowed their banks. We have recovered on our road so today I prefer to think about the gentler water in our gardens that calms and soothes.  Here are some of the the quiet waters I saw in Seattle this summer at the Garden Bloggers Fling.

Michelle and Christopher Epping's Garden

Kate Farley's fountain and pool

Kathryn Galbraith's fountain

Bloedel Reserve Reflecting Pool

Only a big public garden can have a big water feature like this, but most of us can find a way to bring water, reflections – and quiet reflection into our own gardens.