View of a Garden: Garden Walk 2013

Pagoda dogwood 'Golden Shadows', the other pictures can be seen by clicking on the "Read More"

On Saturday, 240 new sets of eyes saw my garden, most for the very first time.  This after Wednesday's Master Gardeners walk through of around 50 people.  These (pictured) are the plants and things I was asked most about.

In general, I was surprised at the level of discernment among this group of garden walkers.  Many of them were gardeners themselves, although vegetable or fruit gardeners, so these items, although not the most interesting and not the coolest things in my yard garnered a lot of attention.  But overall, lot of them asked if mine was a "real" garden?

I thought this was the very best question I was asked, although the first time I was asked it, I was a bit perplexed.  I stopped a moment and digressed a bit.  I told them the whole garden walk process starts almost a year in advance (just in case they didn't know).  As it was, there are always things that a gardener plans to do and stuff that we should be doing that doesn't get done.  The idea that my garden would be on the walk pushed me to finally deal with some of those issues.

I went on to explain how the long border had originally been created ten years ago, with newspaper, and wood chips, and leaves raked and collected from the library lawn a block away, as I had NO trees at the time.  I told them when I came to this lot I wanted to garden as organically as possible.  I told them how I lugged those leaves home and mowed them into the beds for a couple years.  How I composted everything organic I could find.  And how I still battle the terrible quack grass that is my lawn and how it runs from lawn to beds. And, how I had made the decision not to use Round-up because I have my own well and the garden sits on top of my drinking water, how I could probably dig my next well with a spoon, I'm so close to that water table.

I talked about how I don't use lawn chemicals, and the Village Maintenance Person dumps wood chips for me and how they are incorporated into the shrub and alley border, how I compost in place, everything but quack grass, weeds with seed heads, and really big sticks.   I talked about how when I dig a wider bed or a new area or remove sod I find the equivalent of beach sand, great drainage, but...

I talked about how I felt clean crisp bed lines is what draws a border into one cohesive "all."  and yet how the early long border has a couple ton of rock dragged in from my father's local dairy farm and how dragging it back would be too onerous, but how do you deal with it?

I talked about how I had redone the rock border 3 times in ten years.  First to weed it and raise the rock up as it sinks over time.  Second, to again raise it up and make an attempt to prohibit the quack grass entry into my long border.   I had put down REALLY heavy landscape fabric only to have the quack use it as a rooting mat and weaving itself into an un-weed-able, impenetrable barrier.

And how last fall I had dug everything up in a 20 foot section at a time and threw it on two tarps and laid down the rock yet again and replanted the long border.  And finally I had come across what I now think is "The Solution": a six inch deadzone between the rock and the lawn.   Finally, a clean bedline!

I was asked if I fertilize?  This year I did.  The last two years, I did not.  I did not fertilize my lawn.  I mostly fertilized roses and clematis.  I didn't fertilize my veggies.  Some years I mulch with compost; some years with wood chips.  The year I exclusively used wood chips I added chemical nitrogen.  I used to fertilize with cow manure, until there seemed to be too much of a thistle problem at my dads.

My worst weed?  Quack grass, clover, and turkey foot.  I seldom see creeping Charlie-- when I do it is all hands on deck. I don't tolerate violets and I am still eradicating the last of the lady bells, code name "campanula horribilis".


Do I spray?  No fungicides, I use 1:1 2 % milk to water and spray it every 3-5 days.  Yes, fungal stuff has been terrible this year, but my ninebark had that fungal disease that tends to kill ninebarks here and it appears nearly clean of it at this point.  Vigilance and good tool sanitation is key.

I explained the village's composting/chipping program, and the "too mulch of a good thing problem".  I told how I trim my shrubs and throw the trimmings and raked pine needles under shrubs in the long border.  I told how the duff under the iconic white pine is so fluffy, I can dig planting holes with my fingers because I never remove much there, just add mini pine bark nuggets each May.


And I talked about starting my own seedlings, cuttings and overwintering most of the annuals they see.

These were more the types of questions I had hoped to have.

I have been sweating the ornamentation aspects.  I overheard several comments on how I nailed it with my signature green apple paint and ultra-modern "green" squiggle.

Just A Bit Mulch

Usually where I park my pick-up, now has 20 yards of wood chips!  Eek!

So I am working on plant tags for my annuals on Monday when I hear the Village Maintenance Person chipping brush left on the streetside.  I slip on my shoes and walk down the the corner (the Dr. across and I tend to haul our own, the other neighbors never put anything much streetside).  I ask the VMP if he could dump the chips where I park my truck. I'm thinking to cover the places where the vehicles have killed the grass with a nice rectangle of woodchips.    I've had the VMP do this before, as have a couple other residents from time to time. It's usually about 5 yards.

Imagine my surprise...

My beds are already mulched with commercial cypress mulch this year, not the wood chips, leaves, and twig stuff I typically use courtesy of our recycling/composting program.

It's a bit much.

I'm having a hard time with this mentally.  Was he being helpful, did he think?  Or... malicious?

Then tonight at our village meeting I requested for the garden walk, a bit of traffic control in the form of posted no parking right in front or our houses; Dr. Darrel Apps and I are squarely across from each other on a narrow street with a deep ditch on my side and landscaping to the road on his; and no through-way on the alley that day.  First it is placed on the wrong part of the agenda, under correspondence versus where it probably should have rightly been: new business.  So then one of the Trustees decides perhaps we can't bring it to a vote.

Really?  A clerical error?

Then a discussion, which blindsides me, privatization/abandonment of the alleyway, which is used by 15 different families...but with a right of way to all "interested parties".


Huh?  I'm supposed to pay to have plowed and maintain a road surface of nearly 200 feet so my neighbor can access his garage (which sits half on my property)?

Where did this bright idea come from?

And today, the Master Gardener group did a walk through of my garden (about 50 of them) and someone asked if a hosta was perennial, what a sport was, and suggested they would break off a piece of one of my sedums for themselves...

What!

I was pretty agitated by the end of the walk-through.

Should I have been? 

"10, 9,..." and Counting: Days to Garden Walk

Not hardy here for the rebloom, but I have been wanting to see if I can grow it as
a hot house type plant and winter it over.  It is in a pot in this box planter. 
I adore the deep red hydrangeas.

Forgive me the urge to want to walk through my garden yelling, "Places, places, everyone!"  

My garden is very much a working garden with lots of fruit, salad vegetables, some few hills of potatoes to satisfy that new potato urge and a strawberry patch.  For vegetable canning, I rely on the family garden which I work on at my brother's with his children, the four-year-old Gardening Twins and Baby Gardener.

Nevertheless, I want to remind the lilies, daylilies, liatris, and the rest their big moment in the sun (hopefully partial sun-- the light is nicer, although we have had a LOT of rain this year) is coming.

Hazelnut, for the squirrels versus gardener face-off this fall

Will garden walkers realize how special these blemish-free apples truly are?

Or how ornamental Seckl pears can be?

Do you think people will see the joke in these chairs?  I NEVER sit in them.  They are actually just art.

"Clean, crisp bed lines..." even with a rock border "pull a garden together," says my neighbor Dr. Darrel Apps.  This was one of the best ideas I had to cut the grass out that tiny six inches.  I'm not sure why I never thought of that before.  The quack grass growing into my garden beds from the A.K.A. "lawn"  which is just a pseudonym for quack grass in central Wisconsin has been a pain!

My small attempt at under-ornamentation

That lavender doesn't grow well in zone 4?

Yup, they're yellow.... or will be!

That this mystery rose (maybe it's 'Eden'/Pierre du Ronsard') is a rarity here?

Clematis texensis 'Princess Diana'

Clematis buddy for my front porch climbing pink rose, overshadowed now, but the star on July 13, I'm thinking...

"Go liatris!'

Highly ornamental allium 'Summer Beauty' forming heads which will burst into loveliness...in nine days?

A zone 6 Japanese cypress and its buddy, "The Rock Cairn" hanging out.  The rocks just balance there, defying the odds and are not fastened... there is almost something magical in that I have never had to restack them.

It really has been a nice year for my clematis, some of which were early fall additions, buried very deep-- two nodules below what they were in their pots.

'The Fairy' rose in the border along the alley, forming an underplanted hedge to hydrangea 'Annabelle'.

And then it will be on to the the neighbor's across the way for garden walkers.  Dr. Apps' yard was born ready.

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.