Creating good plant combinations and beautiful color pairings is not my forte. Obviously I don't even note such things in my garden because today, I suddenly realized that I had this great combo, a clump of crimson bee balm next to a clump of Black Dragon lilies. They are perfect together and I wasn't even trying.
Lorraine Brennan is not a woman daunted by a challenge. When she and her husband bought a house by the side of the road in Northfield 20 years ago, it was surrounded by what seemed to be acres of blacktop parking lot. Now it is surrounded by what seems to be acres of garden – trees, shrubs, and perennials. Especially daylilies. The house by the side of the road, Route 10, was perfect for Brennan’s antiques business.…
These tours are over, but even these brief garden descriptions may be useful to others. When I visited Mary Manilla’s garden in Hawley this week it was a ribbon of green along the stream that borders the garden. By the time the Hawley Garden and Artisans Tour takes place on Saturday, July 11, there will be a river of color along the stream as the hundreds and hundreds of daylilies in every hue come into bloom. It…
The Western New England Iris Society is having its annual Iris show at the Community House in Shelburne on Sunday, July 5 from 1-4 pm. This is an opportunity to see a variety of beautiful Japanese irises and learn about their needs and culture. Japanese irises have a flatter more horizontal flower and bloom slightly later than Siberian and bearded irises. I always thought they required a wet site to thrive, but Kathy Puckett told me this…
Kathy Puckett is a collector. She has hundreds of orchids and hundreds of daylilies. She has lilies and roses and peonies. But right now she is celebrating her Siberian irises. Blue, purple, yellow and white. Great clumps of healthy gorgeous plants. When I asked if she had a favorite flower family (it was obvious she could never choose a favorite individual flower) she hesitated. “I love them all for different reasons. Sometimes I love the flower, or…
Pam Oakes assures me that neither her house, nor the lush surrounding gardens existed in 1976. When she and her husband Gordon first walked this piece of land by a pond once used for harvesting ice, they could not even imagine where to place a house until a friend bulldozed a stand of sumac and said “Build here!” They did and she said it is a perfect site. The gardens grew and continue to grow. Oakes said…
“June! Finally I’m going to have flowers,” a friend said after bemoaning how long it took for spring flowers to arrive in her garden. While it is true that a June garden can hardly avoid blooming, it is also true that a garden can have some bloom from April into October, even here in Heath. When my friend Elsa Bakalar was gardening in Heath she had enormous beds of perennials…
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…