A Garden Gem in Oshkosh

As you may know, I went on a number of garden walks this summer.  Many of the gardens were filled with kitschy art, lots of annuals bedded with no sense of design, and not a lot of thought. 

The following picture are not that.  These all come from one garden I would consider a standout.  I'm going to post them in the order I viewed the garden, to give you a better idea of its small space, good gardening, and design.

I hope  you enjoy this particular garden as much as I did!

Before the Wrens

It is four days until my garden will be featured on the Waushara County Master Gardeners' Garden Walk, aptly(?) titled "Ring Around Wild Rose" (gaaa-wk!).  (Linked here.)

The garden at this point will pretty much be what it will be.  I am still hoping most of my LA and Asiatic lilies will pop,  but it looks doubtful, they will be in prime bloom.  I think all the clematis will give up a pretty nice show and some of the tail end of the first flush of roses will be evident. 

For the first time I can remember the area daylilies are not in bloom.  This means my hosta are in bloom without the three ring circus the hellstrip daylilies make this event.  The black 'Landini' Asiatic lilium I planted specifically to be timed with the walk look as if it will not be in bloom.  The black lilium blooming against the cottage-y pink I thought might give pause to the dangerous aspect of a gardener with thoughts of evil topiary/pruning plans for world domination and plant submission.... at least in my own yard.  A yard so tiny, topiary is a necessary evil and pruning, "the way."

The long border looks like a sea of green to me, but Darrel says it is "impressive".   The potager, not quite so much.  My timing is just off with the vegetable part this year.  There is a longish stretch by my berry bramble and next to the neighbor's much improved garage since residing that I waited to plant until they completed their work.

There is still a bit of mulching to do, a bit of the deck to paint, some pea gravel to move, plant labels to deal with (or not), and a couple spots to weed.    Even if I do none of these things, I don't think anyone walking my garden will be totally disappointed. 

Except, maybe the wrens.

While walking Faithful Companion I scared up a fledging robin, navigating in a manner that spoke too loudly of a bad Pixar movie with animated soundtrack of a juvenile robin screaming, "How do I fly this thing!"  It reminded me a lot of Handsome Son and his first driving attempts, especially the part where he went in reverse much too fast and gathered a spot of red paint from a different neighbor's garage on my bumper-- no damage to the garage. 


Also while walking Cinnamon, the wrens sent up a nasty racket from the nearby apple tree.  I paused.  "Like what's up with you guys?  Don't you have your nest much too low over in the long border's forsythia (appropriate height for neighbor's "feral" cat, however)?"

Ah!  The light dawns on my vast unconscious consciousness...the Lapin cherries are nearly ripe.  As a matter of fact, the ripest ones already show signs of tiny wrens eating a la fresco.  Picking them, the scant bowlful happened immediately.


This is the second year I have had just this bowlful of of sweet cherries.  This cherry is topiaried.  I have no room for a full size cherry tree.  It was covered with blooms, though and I expected much more from it.  More research is called for, perhaps the supposedly self-fruitful Lapin needs a bit of help with pollination in the form of my paintbrush in Spring, or perhaps again some of the fruit froze, although the nearby apple had no issues.



July 13, 2013
Ring Around Wild Rose Garden Tour
Wild Rose, WI
By the Waushara Co. MGA from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. rain or shine. Six gardens in the Wild Rose area feature a wide variety of gardening styles, including a covered bridge, an English garden, farm garden, working G scale train in one garden, and more. For details download the garden descriptions document. $7. For more information call Celine Pitzen at (920) 787-0795.

Mother Nature's Revenge on the Kitsche-y Garden Art Tour

 I also took these pictures on that "Kitsche-y Garden Walk".

Sometime, the best gardener is the gardener who leaves well enough alone.  Especially, if you have no sense of what makes a well-designed garden space.  Mother Nature does, leave it to her.

Sea of Green

Penstemon digitalis, the native giant beardstongue

Buddelia alternafolia, supposedly not hard here

Miss Kim Korean lilac

I'm having a hard time apturing any sorts of views that realy show my garden or the cool plants in it.  It just seems like a sea of green.  I guess that's better than snow, which it seems like just melted yesterday. 

I'm not sure if I'm not staging my garden well, or if it is a massive failure in design, or what.  Thoughts?  Maybe a massive failure to edit, or a freak of our weather.

A Curated Garden Tour

I've been obsessing a bit as I go through seed catalogs looking for annuals to grow to fill hanging baskets, pots, and anticipated blank spaces in my garden borders for the July 2013 garden walk. In an attempt to get my mind off my own garden buried under snow and a cold front, I turned to today to YouTube.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of poor photography out there. What I did come up with though is what I am calling my Mid-winter Curated Garden Walk.

Enjoy!



A single garden narrated by the garden owner.



A group of five gardens, with a short interview with each gardener, set to, at times obnoxious, music.

And last a tour through Shropshire's David Austin Rose Gardens.

Garden Ballet: Opening and Closing Show on July 13, 2013

Hemerocallis hybridized by my Handsome Son.

I never do this-- plan out my garden additions to a prompt a crescendo for any given weekend-- as I am doing this year.

Garden Walk - July 13, 2013.

I tend to think of garden design as writing ballet in three acts in which all the principals must be on stage in all acts, even if they die before the end or have no lines until after the big chase scene.

My neighbor, Dr. Darrel Apps, is also on this garden walk. I asked him what plants he would add to my garden. Tongue in cheek, he answered, "Daylilies."

Cue guffaws and ruckus laughter. This comment from a world renown daylily hybridizer, who as I type this is probably putting more and more daylily seed into his fridge to prompt its germination.

I have been looking for cheap inspiration everywhere. In the course of my searching, I have noticed a lot of my pictures "pinned" on Pinterest. I'm not a "pinner". Maybe I will be someday, but not now.

Something I noticed when I typed particular garden related words was how many pictures I have taken have found their way to be pinned on Pinterest. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Obviously, it is a compliment. And, as I have hundreds of hits a day, even in winter for my blog, it is something to be expected. Also, it is not like I haven't found inspiration in the pictures of others. The internet and its pictorial nature have certainly gone a long way to make me feel less trapped in the boonies, for certainly central Wisconsin IS the boonies.

Typically, the pictures do have my blog's tagline on them, too. "Someday," I keep playing with the idea of a book on garden art and staging a garden which gardeners could do themselves. So, the sticky question, "If a picture is dissimilated far and wide beyond my blog, do I still have rights to it?"

These murky thoughts while pondering creating a better water feature for my side yard. My sole water feature is a cement bird bath I keep filled with water. More than used by birds, although they use it too, my neighbor's bees found it to be a sanctuary during the drought and heat of 2012.

This Christmas I have been gifted with money with the particular purpose of installing an outside outlet. A strange gift, for sure. Not one I was wishing for, either. It is a want. It opens up so many garden decorating possibilities.

So, Pinterest.

Cooling my yard would be nice so maybe this cooling mister? This doesn't need electricity. On a timer, it might be a cooling addition to my front yard hosta bed.

My side yard, with its bird bath which has been an nearly perfect water feature, is narrow, just 12 feet wide and 24 feet long. A large part of this is a pea gravel path.

I can actually tent my side yard.

Late last summer, I actually dug out a section of my long border and replanted with the crescendo in mind. I spent fall incorporating my key signature color into as many of the garden accessories as I could. I added as large of potted clematis as I could find to any climbing structure, particularly if it was inhabited by climbing roses. I staked and tied my climbers.

Then late last fall I brought in many of my annuals, thinking to have many cuttings so I could bed out plants to plump up my borders, shade and sun, and the baskets I hung under my deck windows.

(Photo courtesy of Walters Gardens, Inc.) Hollyhock 'Appleblossom'

An unnamed lilium blooming in my garden, early last July.

I also had a flat of hollyhock seedlings I planted at the back of two of my borders just in case it was a "hollyhock year" and planted lilium to be the darlings of the show adding to the cast of pale, unspotted yellow ones already holding court in my garden mid-July.

(Photo courtesy of Van Engelen Bulbs) Lilium 'Landini'

(Photo courtesy of Van Engelen Bulbs) Lilium 'Algarve'

(Photo courtesy of Van Engelen Bulbs) Lilium 'Elodie'

I have also been struggling developing some labeling for my plants. That I am a collector is part of the reason my garden is on this walk. There were at least a couple dozen plants the Master Gardeners could not identify when they toured late last summer.

Thoughts and suggestions? I could use some brainstorming here from fellow gardeners and those of you who open your garden to the public on occasion.

Garden Art Panels for Your Garden

Some of you know that my garden was selected for my county's Master Gardeners' Garden Walk in July 2013. It is in a small yard.so I thought choosing a signature color might help pull it together. I had for Handsome Son's graduation painted every paintable surface with federal park dark green and found it too severe and unimaginative.

To lighten up my garden, I selected this green apple color. The stray blue plastic pot was given a couple coats of this shade and now waits for its 2013 planting out. As you can see, I have mounted three swirling metal window boxes on my deck windows. I don't plant a lot of annuals, but I thought these boxes might be just the thing filled with either alyssum or bacopa, dragon wing pink begonias, variegated spider plants, and limey green sweet potato vine.

The top band on my clay pots have been given a swipe of this signature color.

The trellis was quickly resprayed and is now rehung on the dark brown fence from which it seems to leap.

Some of my metal garden chairs were also repainted in the signature green apple, while these two retained the dark federal park green, but were given an individual touch all their own. On the way to a cohesive look in the garden, I realized as a plantsperson might, that the green squiggle was not actually a green squiggle at all or even a fern frond unfurling as Dr. Darrel Apps suggested, but a young seedling emerging from the seed root radical and unfurling proto-leaves.

This proto-plant is the subject of the graphic triptych (top picture) I think might be just the thing for the bald space next to my apricot tree. By simply adding the proto-leaves at a jaunty angle to the squiggle, I have my stylized design. Painted in broad strokes in my signature green apple on MDF panels sprayed with a dark brown similar to the fence color, and outlined with a white paint pen; I have my art pieces.

I kept this simple by just drilling through the face and putting painted screws in the fence to mount my art. I realized after hanging, one of the screws needs to be painted the green apple to stay with my individual panel's peculiarity of its design. I other words, I wasn't stressing to keep each panel exactly the same. Young seedlings have their differences, too.

In addition to being an easy art piece, it has the advantage of using a tester paint sample I had mixed to match the spray paint I choose. The spray paint was the simplest method to paint my trellising. The repainting of the chairs and the puling together of the stray elements in my yard with his signature color has run me the cost of three cans of spray paint and the one tester (still half full). That's a lot of bang for the buck.

Arborvitae: Worrying About That Which You Can't Change

About a week ago, I was out watering and walking in my garden. Yes, we have had patchy frost here, and for all intents and purposes the gardening season has come to a halt for us, but until the ground freezes and I turn off my outside water faucet, I continue to water. This is especially important when we have received less and a couple of inches of rain each month since May.

The entire quality of the soil has changed, even in my yard where I have watered regularly. I don't think a day has passed all summer when I haven't watered some part of the yard. I don't know how long it will take for the soil to regain its tilthe and friability. It is almost like the living things in it have been burned out from our heat and lack of moisture.

So I am out watering by hand with my 100-foot hose, and I actually see my arborvitae. It has noticeable brown patches. Now, although your typical non-gardener gets excited the first time they notice an evergreen looking like it is shedding its "evergreen"; looking at my arborvitae, I am thinking back on past years. I couldn't help but think the percentage of brown a tad excessive. For the most part, I tend to ignore these two arborvitae that came with my lot when I bought it more than a decade ago. They're 50-75 years old if they are a day.

My big white pine gets a lot of attention because it is so iconic. I water the hosta beneath it, getting twice the bang for my watering buck. The arborvitae, I tend to ignore, not that they haven't received water, not just the copious amounts my white pine probably sucks up.

That my arborvitae might be contemplating throwing in the horticultural towel and calling it a day leaves me flummoxed when juxtaposing it with the upcoming July 2013 garden walk. And if, I have trees dying in my yard, how many other trees might be dying of which the less-empathetic homeowner is oblivious?

So all of you out there, keep right on watering until the ground freezes, if you haven't gotten rain. And, also a warning to anyone contemplating burning leaves this fall-- DON'T! I hate to think of an errant spark. And you hunter's leaning against a tree and thinking about lighting up, reconsider. (Those big bucks can smell that, and we don't need any forest fires; and beside, it's not good for you either!)

Unfortunate Borrowed Views

This honeysuckle blooms almost all summer. This summer, as hot and dry as it was, did it no favors. I have trimmed it back and tied it up hoping that by next July it will send out as much growth as I trimmed off, hiding this peeling spot on my neighbor's house.

Also, one of the reasons I mounted my two newly green apple painted trellis high on the fence!

One of the things I noticed this summer on some of the garden walks I went on was a sort of property line myopia. The gardener would spend a lot of time thinking through plant combos only to have them backed by a neighbor'a trash cans, dog kennel, or clothesline.

Garden Angst: The Front Yard in Mid-July, 2012

I'm fairly happy with the front yard. There also a wide swath of pumpkin-colored daylilies in the hellstrip making it feel sort of like a three ring circus in mid-July.

In my front yard and typically the first impression visitors have of my garden is hostas. When the Master gardeners visited, their first comment was, "Oh, you're into hosta." To which I had to reply, that I really wasn't, but grass just doesn't grow there under the big white pine and in the shade of the houses on the north side of my house, in the sand.

Where I have a bit more sun I try and grow daylilies, because they will bloom in the sun, or shade; but really all of you reading this, you are short-changing the beauty of the daylilies by growing them in the shade. The corner with the 'Red Jade' crab is the farthest point from my hose connection. It is the hardest to water.

As my lot has street and alley on three sides, my gardening has always been about problem solving, defining the perimeter, and adding privacy.

This little spot looks a lot better in spring and fall. The color combos with sedum 'Matrona', the blue balllon flowers, coneflowers, filapendula, valerian, black Austrina pine just seems very dark. There's an apricot tree here, too, you can't see. I think the plants there probably aren't going anywhere, but there must be a way to "lighten it up". Anyone?

This is the long border, which I have been re-digging the last few days. As you can see the middle of July is definitely a down time for the long border. At one point, it had waves upon waves of bloom. Now the show is early spring and then late summer and early fall. I'm not sure what happened.

I painted the two trellis in this area green apple and have planted a lot more liatris as they bloom then. This just seems a sea of green and I am loath to plant out bedding annuals for a shot of color. It seems like I need some sort of broad, large leaved plant for some sort of focal point. I've thought of doing a swath of native beebalm and Jacob Kline mixed and have already divided and spread out a pale yellow daylily. (This is the area in my last post with the shovel stuck in it!)

Thoughts?

Help! 314 Days and Counting...

(What the garden needed more than anything else this summer was moisture.)

Next July 13 (2013), I am going to be a basket case. I know it. A couple Mondays ago, the county Master Gardeners (well,not all of them, a committee of them) "toured" my yard. Someone had dropped a bug in their ear about my tiny home garden. I don't suppose they said anything about how TINY it is, or that I have A DOG, or, WEEDS! Someone who typically sees my front yard, where I make a much bigger effort to keep up "appearances".

Irregardless of its (MY) shortcomings, their committee at large met and discussed among themselves and had their secretary or sunshine lady or whatever, maybe the "garden chairperson" send me a cute little note and thank you. Because I have so many unusual plants, fruits, tree, etc., "...our guests will enjoy learning of them," she wrote. "More info to come..."

Eek!

Time to put up, or shut up. I critiqued a lot of area gardens this summer, and didn't spend a lot of time in mine. Now the veggie garden, that's a thing of beauty.

My home garden?

I figure I need the whole 10 1/2 months to get this garden walk thing done.

Really?

Yes, REALLY!!!

You see I just don't accessorize. There are a dozen projects unfinished. My fence, I have been working on staining it for THREE years.

(No that's not where I have decided to plant the 'Golden Shadows' dogwood. It is just sitting there in its pot!)

It is only 120 feet long. AND the weeds!

This last spring for Handsome Son's graduation party, I simply mulched HEAVY. And then it rained for three days and pretty much everyone was inside anyway. That was nearly the last time it rained. So this year, because of the endless stretch of days over 95 and no rain, I stood with a hose and going around the yard with an automatic sprinkler.

I certainly didn't weed. I didn't even trim a lot of the shrubs back because I didn't want to stress them (ME) out.

And as I walk around the yard, I notice it is 102 on my outdoor thermometer. Still. Okay, granted it is on the south side of my house, and it is no where near as humid as it has been this summer; it is still hot.

Frankly, I have spent a lot of time at the family vegetable garden and with Baby Gardener and the Twins, teaching summer school, and getting Handsome Son ready for college this summer.

About two weeks ago,I actually walked around the yard thinking if all the summers to come are more like this, how do I dryscape this? Yes, I had green grass, but I also acquired a small patch of creeping Charlie, and even the gravel scree garden was having a hard time in the heat. The Annabelle hydrangeas on the east side of the house actually roasted out and burnt, regardless that I kept them watered.

Several patches of plantain and turkey foot and pigeon grass would like to crowd out the fescue.

Okay. I didn't like the federal park dark green I painted all my metal chairs right before graduation and have opted to do two over in this nice green apple.

And I do have a couple nice pots like this and an unusual planter (which I have never actually planted).

So all of you garden walking people, what do you like to see (or don't like to see) when you visit a garden featured on a garden walk?

You artsy folk out there, what are some of nicer and cleverer (cheap) ways to accessorize a garden?

I'd also like to incorporate a solar-powered water feature, too; nothing grand, just the calming sound and splash of gurgling water.

I'm taking suggestions on everything garden walk-related for the next 300 days or so, and unfortunately you are all going to be exposed to my garden angst as I throw out small sections of my garden for your critique.

Have at it!