Longwood Gardens

Two things happened special this week.  One, I took my son Travis back to South Carolina to see where he lives and meet his new friends.  We also went to the botanical garden and visited the zoo.  Always fun with our children no matter what age.  And Two, George and I went to a green roof conference in Philadelphia.  We spent the night downtown and learned a lot about the green roof industry and how it works as we have started growing green roof plants.  On the way in we stopped at Longwood Gardens in Kennet Square, very near out old home.  Oh my gosh what a show, it would make anyone want to garden.  Well actually you don't have to be a gardener to appreciate the beauty of the place, it's overwhelming walking into the conservatory and gardens.  If you haven't been it's hard to describe, I would say Disneyland for gardeners except more natural. The smell of growing things is what first hits you, warm and inviting.  After that it's just one long mouth hanging open experience.  Thousands of poinsettias and white hydrangeas along with branches from red twig dogwoods. Amaryllis in red and white.  Tall white euphorbias next to giant red amaryllis. Small salmon poinsettias that look like roses next to silvery big leafed begonias.  My oh my, how to describe it all.  Maybe I will just use the rest of the page for the pictures, after all one picture is worth a thousand words and who has time to read all that.

OK, this is my zoo visit which was way cool too.

Here come the blue ridge

Fall means, among other things the return of the mountains from my office window.  The trees that have grown up through the years, in summer obscure those beautiful blue ridges, but now have lost their leaf power and with it the ability to hide my view.  OK so good and bad things happen with the demise of another year of gardening.  I love this window outlook, it includes a view of 'Old Rag' a local landmark.  I have painted this same scene on our stairway leading up to this very same view.  No one would notice this but me which makes me smile.  George has started cleaning up our garden, it's a nice time of year with mellow days and cool nights. I am listening to Danny Wright on Pandora as I write this and life seems perfect. We are looking forward to lots of garden projects with anticipation.  Not everything will get done but enough to make the place look good when spring rolls around again  Our plant and seed catalogs have appeared from hiding places where we squirreled them away, it's time to plan spring 2012. Of course it's also time to plan what we will have for Thanksgiving, the paradox of gardening.  Plans must be laid in the season of dormancy in order to bring forth new life in the spring.  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.  Better than Christmas (although the parties are nice) is figuring out what to try. Notice I said try, not everything works even some tried and true seed may fail to germinate this year, it happens.  I would like to have more varieties of Anise Hyssop. Bees and butterflies love them, they have a long bloom time and deer leave them alone, sweet. This year we will have,  Golden Jubilee with it's stunning yellow foliage and blue flowers, rupestris with root beer scented leaves and rose orange flowers, Bolero  has rose purple blooms with bronze aromatic leaves and a few more. Foxgloves, one of my favorites just because they are beautiful, how many can I talk George into this year.  Maybe Apricot, and Snow Thimble (white), lutea (yellow straw foxglove), Rusty Foxglove which is yellow with brown-red spots, Strawberry Foxglove (guess what color) and I bet I can talk him into more. I can really get him going on the odd stuff that will work in our area. I have a while until spring after all.

And the rain came, we all breathed a sigh of relief, spring again.

This spring has been outstanding. As I am looking out my window this cloudy morning the grass and trees are so green and grateful for all this rain.  This year, it seems like it's better then other years or is it just that old spring fever again. I wake up with a smile on my face and ready to face the day.  My customers and friends that come are of the same mind, no lamenting here. 

Seeing the plants emerge from the ground is like seeing all of my gardening friends that also emerge this time of year. Some have grown, some are the same, and some have died away and somehow new plants find their way into the garden and new customers find there way here as well. Of course we at Morningside change too; a new greenhouse went up where our herbs abide, shade perennials moved around to a new home and there are ever so many subtle changes only old customers would notice.

We are working like mad to make everything beautiful and welcoming. I have finally figured out that the nursery, like my home, is my attempt at making a place I would like to find on a back road. Full of blues and greens, people who love plants and love to talk about plants, and of course the plants themselves. Sharing a life's passion is the best part of being here. I can make people happy just by being here; we make a difference in the quality of the lives of the people who come here. Pass this on if you feel like it, it's good to pass around happy thoughts. I have also started a facebook page to jot down day to day happenings or not happenings as the case may be. Check us out. Onward and upward in the spring garden.

The spring rush is on.

We had a great opening weekend. Old friends came by and new people showed up as well. We had a few extra vendors from local farmers markets selling organic beef, lamb, goat cheese and so much more (I will be eating well for the next few weeks myself). We closed up shop for the day at four and all the vendors vowed to meet again for dinner in September, a fine time was had by all.

During the weekend, as my friend Anne and I were walking up to our house, we passed my old retail garden and she said 'I used to covet this garden'. She said it in a sad way as the garden is over run with all kinds of weeds and plants that have gone wild.  Another friend, Linda, had commented the day before how beautiful the garden had once been. I have neglected it the last few years, it will get a quick run through from George once a year but that isn't enough to keep weeds at bay. Some of the worst offenders are plants I put there, like the confederate violets, with their beautiful splotched blue and white flowers. I got a clump from good friends years ago and put them in the garden where I could take care of them. I was able to do that for, say, 5 years; I even thought I had gotten them all. But when we moved to the new retail area, the garden got lonely and neglected. Over the years I kept at the violets and I thought I was winning the war. Nope. The reason I thought I had gotten them all was because, unknown to me, they had sneaked over to the other side of the garden and were flourishing. Having come upon them a few days ago, I am enjoying digging them up as they are easy to spot (being one of the only green things in the garden--beautiful flowers even now). 

One of the things they were crowding out were my tree peony seedlings. Years ago I was given tree peonies that had been done from seed. Now eight years later I have a really nice crop of seedlings of various age groups below their mothers. Three years ago I dug about 30 of them up and tried to pot them up. It was too much care for me, being as they were not going to bloom for another four or five years and I couldn't keep them alive for one. So I decided to leave them in the ground. It's funny that I consider the violets invasive, while I encourage the peonies (of which there are many). I am thinking of turning the garden into a tree peony garden: now that would be impressive. I bet a confederate violet garden wouldn't take nearly as long to mature; they're very sneaky. Come and visit now that we are open; we'd love to see you...and we can help you with just these sorts of problems. 

Happy Digging,

Karen