Hurry Up and Wait

New Retail Space

Though our new retail space amazes me, I get a twinge every time I pass our old space with its sad remnants of all the years of flowering glory. My old established garden that went with it is also not getting as much eye traffic this year. It's just waiting up the hill...still looking beautiful.


Our new garden space is huge. We are planting a small area at a time. It reminds me of my hill garden 5 years ago. For new gardens to mature it just takes time. You can rush it some with bigger plants, but they can only be so big. Gardeners have to be patient to see the results of a mature garden. Luckily, patience is in a gardener's nature. We went to a good friend's garden this week to drop off a few things and tour her garden. I have seen it over the years, but this year it has all come together. In the dusk, it was glorious. It's a big garden; a joy to walk through and around, many vistas and levels. New plants go in all of the time, but because the garden is mature you don't notice that they're smaller. All it took was time.

Hibiscus

Lord knows the three years you have to wait for Baptisa to bloom from seed is forever, and the year for a hollyhock or foxglove is only slightly less hard to bear. We have so many different kinds of perennials and biennials in 3 ½" pots. At that size they are easy to put and establish well. You can have a great garden with interesting plants and it won't cost you an arm or even a leg: It just takes time. The funny thing is...the years fly by and the garden grows. Plants that have gotten too big (how did that happen?) are moved or divided or shared. One-year blends into the next and ta-da!, you have a mature garden.

Some great plants that will test your patience but are worth it:

• Alyssum 'Ball of Gold'
• Aquilegia Canadensis 'Nora Barlow', and from seed we collect ourselves a 'Morningside Deep Blue'
• Baptisia Australis
• Digitalis Mertonensis, p. 'Pam's choice', p. 'Snow Thimble', p. 'Apricot' (blooming in my garden for the first time after putting it in last year)
• Campanula Glomerata 'Surperba', poscharskyana, pers. 'Telham Beauty'
• Our native Hibiscus coccineus (above)
• All the poppies we sell in the small pots: 'Allegro', 'Brilliant', 'Royal Wedding,' 'Victoria Louise"

Time to get back to the greenhouse. Thanks for reading!