Surprising Blossoms

Our first dandelions

There are surprising blossoms in the garden right now. Yesterday I found my first dandelions growing against the house foundation. None in the lawn but it won’t be long.

Orchid Cactus blossom

I never know when the neglected orchid cactus in the guest room will bloom. Surprise!

Orchid cactus buds

The orchid cactus is loaded with buds waiting to come into bloom.  More surprises to  come

My Succulent Container Garden on Wordless Wednesday

Succulents planted December 19, 2011

I just realized that I planted my succulent container on December 19 last year. This was a new project for me.

Succulents on February 2, 2012

I posted an update in February when the succulents looked like this.

Succulents on December 19. 2012

Today the succulents look like this. I love being able to put together this series. With so few words.

For more Wordlessness this Wednesday click here.

I Become a Judge at the Boston Flower Show

Boston Flower Show and Blooms!

Spring was in full bloom inside the Seaport World Trade Center where the Boston Flower Show and BLOOMS! featured display gardens with reflecting pools, landscapes fit for a hobbit, Japanese maples, fountains, school gardens with veggies and flowers, as well as rooms filled with specimen plants and flower arrangements awaiting the intense gazes of the judges.

This year I was not attending the flower show merely as an admirer, but as a volunteer judge. Earlier this spring I was invited to join the judging panels by Libby Moor of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. While I was happy to accept I warned her I had no training. She seemed to be satisfied that on-the-job training would be sufficient so I looked forward to enjoying the whole event from a whole new perspective.

I met the two other members of my group, the elegant Jocelyn Sherman who was a trained and official judge, and Rick Peckham who was good humored and incredibly knowledgeable, understandably enough because he is the fifth generation to operate Peckham’s Nursery in Rhode Island.

It was quickly apparent that judging is all about details. We were to judge entries all grown by amateur gardeners. Our first category was hanging plants, separated into groups, those grown under lights, in the window or in a greenhouse. The conditions are considered to be sufficiently different to impact the growth  patterns. There were also categories of hanging plants: flowering; foliage; or ferns.

We began by looking over all the plants in a general way and then hunkered down to attend to detail. I was instructed to look at the shape of the plant – was it balanced? Was it leggy? Was it healthy? Was there insect, disease or sun damage? Was it well groomed with all dead leaves, stems and flowers removed? Was it mature, or a young plant? Was it rare or common? Was it hard to grow?

In one category we gave a blue ribbon to a beautiful Swedish ivy. This is obviously not a rare plant, but the condition of the plant, its balanced form, health and good grooming, trumped slightly more uncommon plants.

Halfway through the judging my colleagues gave me a plant to judge all by myself as a test to see if I was catching on. I passed! Thank heaven! I did notice the lopsidedness of the plant with most of the foliage on one side, damage to leaves, and bits of leaves on the soil.

In one category we gave a blue ribbon to a mature rattail cactus. Again this was not extraordinarily rare, but its maturity and health were the winning traits.

Rattail Cactus

Later, while on another panel with two other judges, Jane Cary and Sandi Joyce,  I went around the room full of entries by individuals: hanging plants, begonias, succulents, and terrariums and more. There were foliage plants and flowering plants, all beautiful. I joined these two in choosing candidates for the Cruso Award which is designed to honor the outstanding effort of an individual. Then I remained silent as we narrowed down our deliberations while my two new colleagues conferred and agreed that the same rattail cactus we had chosen for a blue ribbon, was also worthy of the Cruso Award.

After attending to the hanging plants, my colleagues and I went to the four Small Bay Window Displays. Again, we looked the four large displays over in a general way, and then concentrated on each individually. Three of these windows contained between 20 and 40 plants and it was our job to evaluate each individual plant as well the whole. In this category we had to use a point system. Sherman and Peckham said to look at each judging criteria and remove points for problems.

I already knew from watching judges at the Heath Fair that consistency is a vital component in judging. We had to take off a couple of points in one display because not all the pots were plain terra cotta, and some of the pedestals were wood, some were upended pots.

We gave one display created (we later found out) by the Cactus and Succulent Society the full 100 points. Our immediate reaction (all three of us) was Wow! This was a fabulous collection of healthy plants beautifully arranged. We could not find a single thing to quibble about in any of the 30 or so plants or their arrangement. When we had recovered ourselves sufficiently we read the Statement of Intent. The intent of the creators of this display was to have viewers say Wow! Never was an intent so fully achieved. We gave this display a Blue Ribbon and the Advisor’s Award for excellence in this class.

When I checked back at this display of succulents before I left I saw that it had also won the National Garden Clubs Medal and the Garden Club of America Certificate of Excellence in Horticulture.

However, no matter how picky we got, the other three bay window exhibits also got more than 90 points. In this category if a display gets more than 90 points, it gets a blue ribbon. Four blue ribbons! Wow!

Visitors to our own gardens don’t come armed with blue ribbons or medals, but we all feel great satisfaction if they give us an occasional wow. Or maybe an admiring sigh. Still the greatest satisfaction and pleasure I get is working in the garden, kneeling to examine the details of each unique plant, reveling in its own particular beauty.

Reflecting Pool and Boston Flower Show

Between the Rows   March 17, 2012

Christmas Cactus Right On Time

For more Wordlessness click here.

My Succulent Container

Last week I spent the better part of a day Christmas shopping. Needless to say I ended up buying a gift for myself. I have been so inspired by Debra Lee Baldwin’s book, Succulent Container Gardens, that when I found myself near the Hadley Garden Center I had to stop in and buy some succulents.  I had already bought this handsome classic container and potting soil at my ‘neighborhood’ Shelburne Farm and Garden Center. I did review Debra’s youtube instructions before beginning, and got very jealous about the nursery where she was putting together her container.

The Hadley Garden Center didn’t have a huge selection of succulents and none of them were labelled, but I dove in. Does anyone know what this is?  The roots were potbound and very dry, but I guess that is the way of these little plants.

Debra encourages the use of a top dressing to finish off the container. I used smooth pebbles from the shore of Lake Champlain, and the farm where I spent some of my childhood years. I collect a few every time I visit, full of memory.

I don’t know that Debra would give me high marks for design, but at least I began, and in my defense I didn’t have many choices at this time of the year when I could not make use of a specialty mail order catalog.  8 degrees here this morning. I can identify the burro’s tale or Sedum morganianum, and the haworthia, but the other two plants are a mystery. Who can help?

In this gift giving season I also want to mention that my friend Paula over at Birds on a Wire has suggestions for good reading, including my book, The Roses at the End of the Road. Be sure to visit. Our region is rich in artists and writers of every stripe.

Succulent Container Gardens

Succulent Container Gardens by Debra Lee Baldwin

Houseplants have never been my strong suit. I rarely get cyclamens or amaryllis to rebloom, and I even gave up my everblooming abutilon this summer. I simply could not get rid of scale. I had to put it out of its misery.

And yet I have kept succulents alive and in good shape for decades. My jade tree is over 20 years old. It survived being moved to my daughters’ houses while we were in China, and it survived a winter in our unheated Great Room which caused severe frostbite. However, with a little spring warmth, radical pruning and gentle watering it revived and remains beautiful and indomitable.

I also have an orchid cactus and Christmas cactus that are probably about 15 years old. Still alive and healthy, and blooming on schedule with very little help from me. So you can imagine my pleasure when I opened “Succulent Container Gardens: Design Eye-Catching Displays with Easy-Care Plants” by Debra Lee Baldwin ($29.95) published by Timber Press.

Who among us is not familiar with the sempervivium hen and chicks? This common succulent is only one of the 100 genera, 275 species, and 90 varieties of succulents that Baldwin presents, alone and in combination, in containers plain and fancy, large and small, indoors and out, in a book that will inspire everyone who has ever put aside the idea of keeping houseplants alive for more than a year or two.

Baldwin gives advice about how to choose attractive pots for various succulents, looking at form and color. It is the varied forms of all these succulent species that fascinates me. I may not have been familiar with the terms graptovenerias or pachyforms or aeoniums, but now I love the graptoveria rosettes, the amazing exposed root of the pachyforms, and the graceful string of pearls, a senecio. And we haven’t even begun talking about spiky cactuses or agaves or trailing sedums.

There are over three hundred photographs of succulents potted in every style from traditional, classical, whimsical and moderne. They can make a sculptural statement planted alone, or arranged in a miniature landscape.

I have always looked at group plantings of succulents and wondered about how to arrange them. Baldwin gives advice about planting mixtures, and most importantly for me, advised that any planting should be full. These plants grow slowly so to keep a container from looking kind of pathetic, enough plants, or a big enough plant should be put in at the very beginning.

My Garden, The City and Me

Baldwin’s book makes me want to run right out and buy a big potful of succulents, but Helen Babbs’ charming little book of essays, “My Garden, The City, and Me: Rooftop Adventures in the Wilds of London” ($18.95 Timber Press) sends me to the armchair in front of the fire with a cup of tea to imagine her life in London where she lives in a gritty neighborhood and builds a garden in the three square meters outside her bedroom door.

Babbs is a young woman who is very aware of the ways that nature inhabits even the busy metropolis. Her London is set firmly within the greater natural world of plants and wildlife. She plants a garden in the hope that it will provide encouragement and sustenance for the birds and butterflies, for bees and other pollinators that are so important to her life, the life of the city, and the life of the planet.

Her book begins with a seed swap while winter is still ruling, then takes us through the seasons, through the days when, all unaware, she steps on her new seedlings and to full summer when she writes, “The roof has looked at its prettiest florally over the last few weeks. The flowering tobacco has been joined by yellow evening primroses, prongs of purple lavender and deep orange nasturtiums. I recently inherited a courgette plant that has five fluorescent flowers now.”

Her descriptions of the Thames and London’s historic parks and the wildlife she finds there are equally poetic. She writes about a damp autumnal ramble on the famed Hampstead Heath. “A sudden downpour left the leaf fall slick and gleaming, and the lichen on the tree trunks fluorescing lime green. Glossy droplets balled on fat, pink berries. When the rain returned, tree canopies made protective umbrellas over our heads.”

You don’t have to be a lover of English novels as well as gardens to enjoy this book, but it won’t hurt.

As her first year as a gardener closes she cannot help thinking of the coming spring  and growing carrots growing in a pair of leaky red wellies and potatoes in a hessian sack. I can absolutely identify with that kind of dreamy planning.

Babb ends with a short list of Things to Read and a list of Places to Go. I, for one, would not mind following in her London footsteps.

Between the Rows  -  December 3, 2011

All’s Quiet

Life looks quiet here at the End of the Road, but looks are deceptive.  Yesterday I read and signed my book, The Roses at the End of the Road, at Boswell’s Books in Shelburne Falls. On my way home I stopped at a friend’s open house – and sold more books there! Tomorrow I will be signing books at Tower Square in Springfield, right outside the fabulous Festival of Trees exhibit. Expect some photos.

And inside the house work continues on my kitchen renovation. Fortunately, I can use the sink and the stove again! This is baking season.

It is also Giveaway Season. Tomorrow I celebrate four years of blogging, of learning, of meeting other skilled and helpful bloggers by giving away a copy of Debra Lee Baldwin’s inspiring and useful book, Succulent Container Gardens, and a copy of my own book.  Click here and leave a comment. You still have today and all day tomorrow to have a chance to win these two books. I will announce the winner, chosen at random on Wednesday, December 7.  Good luck.

Bloom Day – November 2011

Thomas Affleck

Between the fact that the weather has been so oddly warm, today at 7 am it is 55 degrees, and our efforts to prepare for a kitchen update, I forgot about Bloom Day – not that much is in bloom.  Still, I dashed out into the gray dawn. Certainly it is the end of rose season. Does this Thomas Affleck bloom still hanging on count?

Hardy peach chrysanthemum

An unexpected stop at Wilder Hill Garden in September sent me home with this beautiful mum, identified only as Hardy Peach.  It endured snow and rain, but I think it is still ‘blooming.’

When I timidly began participating in Bloom Day I was assured that ‘buds count.”  Budded now, you can see that this Thanksgiving cactus will be in full bloom on its name day. Unfortunately not much is blooming in Heath in mid-November. I even gave up on my abutilon, defeated by scale.

I look forward with pleasure to seeing other blooms, indoors and out, all over this great land and give thanks to Carol at Maydreamsgardens for giving us this gift every month.

Spring Surprises!

Orchid Cactus

My orchid cactus lives in our main living space so it does not get the proper conditions to put on a real bloomin’ show, but every once it a while it gives us a glamorous surprise.

I was out in the garden enjoying the sun, and the breezes which meant no pesky bugs. While I was weeding the Herb Garden I saw that the chervil which self seeds several times over the summer is already up. And then I saw . . .

that the dill had self seeded as well.  Dill often self seeds, but the plants are so small and fine that I often clear out the bed, with the seedlings without seeing them.

Hooray for spring surprises.

Spring Showers

It is so warm and showery out today that I couldn’t resist putting some of the houseplants on the piazza for a little trimming and showering. See how green the grass is?