Summer Sale

Ruthie checking out the sale items

Welcome to our sale, it's time again to load up on our great perennials and herbs. You too can have gardens galore with everything you have wanted that we have and save money.  Thinking of trying something new, this is the time.   Visit now while the selection is at it's best.  Once they are gone, they are gone.

Sale dates: July 31st to August 8th, 10 am to 6 pm all week

What's Ahead as the Weather Warms

Days are getting longer...sigh. I can say it for sure now: our gardens are receiving more light to warm up their sleeping hearts. Sure, I'm writing this during a cold snap, but I feel spring is really on the way and the days of intense cold are on the way out. Our first greenhouse is full of herb cuttings and all of George's perennials are raising their tiny heads above the soil of their birth. We are going to have all kinds of "new-for-us" plants this year, along with some of our old favorites in smaller amounts so we can offer more variety. I will pass on a few every time I write, either new or undiscovered by most gardeners.

One of my favorites from last year that we will have again is Digitalis purpurea heywoodii "Pink Champagne." If you were one of the lucky few who bought one last year I would love to see it this year, because we forgot to keep any for ourselves! Heywoodii has beautiful silver foliage with blush pink bells.

Lonicera sempervirens 'Major Wheeler'

A new one is Lonicera sempervirens 'Major Wheeler' (right) which flowers heavily from spring through fall. It's 3 - 8 feet tall with a 1 - 10 foot spread and has crimson-red trumpet-shaped flowers. The long flowering time makes this special, who wouldn't want something that flowers from spring to fall?

Another new plant for us is Aspen Sunflower (Helianthella quinquenervis). It is a clear yellow without a hint of orange or gold. As a member of the sunflower tribe, it is a great food source for birds in fall (I love natural bird food plants).

Moving on to our display gardens: last year we were establishing a grass and sedge garden and Geo's rain garden. The whole property will soon be one giant garden for everyone to enjoy. We want customers and friends to wander our home and take whatever ideas fit for themselves. One of the best parts of this place is how it keeps us in touch with our gardening community. We hope our reach goes beyond our 4 1/2 acres and our love of gardening reaches into your heart, too.

Happy Gardening!

The Quiet Garden

Coxcomb

The garden is quiet now. No bees or butterflies at work. The finches have eaten all the echinacea seeds from the seed heads. The frosts have made the gardens droop and the monochromatic colors are shadows of what they were last week...but it makes me smile because it's time to clean up and plan next years garden.

Now, because we use perennials and annuals every year the garden can be different. This year for summer and fall the front of one of the gardens was purple, blue, yellow and orange. I liked it a lot and it gave me pleasure everyday to look at it. It's funny: I actually had meant to put a coxcomb in that area that was a sunset orange color called Temple Bells, but I misunderstood George when he told me where they were in the greenhouse and put in HUGE red-velvet looking coxcombs instead. That was not in my orange/purple plan at all. When I could tell which way the wind was blowing concerning their color it was too late to pull them out so they stayed and, surprise, everyone loved them. I would try to explain the error but no one seemed to care much and took lots of pictures anyway. The other side of the garden got the temple bells a few weeks later when I figured out the color thing, and somehow that just didn't work as well. Actually, I think it was the time difference. But what I thought of as a big mistake (big RED coxcombs), everyone else thought was genius.  Sometimes good things in a garden just happen despite my best efforts.

Getting back to next year... I went into a friend's art gallery and she had a beautiful arrangement of flowers on the checkout table. I immediately thought, "That is what I want to do in the garden next year." It was all different shades of reds and oranges with touches of chartreuse thrown in. Very rich colors, very beautiful for a garden.

I will happily do my clean-up chores thinking of next year and my new attempt at a planned color garden:   pinks, oranges, double apricot, white, and deep red. Can't wait. Until next year.

Progress in the Dog Days of Summer

Ruthie

I see the moon and the moon sees me. God bless the moon and God bless me (and you as well).

Tonight as I was watering the garden up by our sign at the entrance of the property I had the most incredible view of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the fading pink twilight (and they don't call them "Blue" for nothing). The mountains were in front of me and the full moon, as big as a pumpkin and just about as orange, rose in the slate-blue sky behind me. I couldn't believe that all that could really exist on one night in mid-August in 2008. I just stood there with the hose in my hand and laughed at how majestic and beautiful Virginia is. It has been a great season for us (and as the full parking lot today attests, it still is).

So much is happening:

First, George is putting in a rain garden behind the greenhouses.  I call it the big dig. It's going to be fabulous when the planting is done...but for now it looks like several big holes in the ground connected to each other by smaller holes. We are going to be on the Culpeper Harvest Days Farm Tour the first weekend in October, so I'm betting the rain garden will be done by then. along with a wine tasting that Saturday, and are slowly pulling the gardens together to look their fall best.

Also, we finally got back to my original garden and have cleaned out the weeds and cut back some of the over-grown perennials. Time to do some serious picking and choosing in that garden, it is in it's 8th year and definitely needs some work. The tree peonies that a friend raised from seed, and were a gift to me so long ago, produced seedlings this spring. We will be digging them this fall and transplanting them into 2 1/2" pots. I have no idea how fast or slow they will be so that is a new frontier, who knew?

George and I were talking as we do at the end of a growing season about perennials that really worked and I thought I would tell you about two of them.

Catmint 'Joanna Reed'
This is the second year we have had this plant and it is a standout in my garden. It has silvery-green foliage with blue/violet blooms. It stands 12 - 16" tall and has a very long bloom time. I cut this back mid summer after it's first bloom and it's re-blooming now in the garden.

Herniaria Glabra

Herniaria Glabra
Also called Irish Moss or  "Green Carpet," it is a lovely ground cover for full sun to part shade that I also put in my garden this year. It is a beautiful soft green mat that stands up to some foot traffic and spreads to about 2 feet and has one single tap root that help with water conservation.

And there were many more. We had success with so many that George did from seed this year that it would take pages to write about them all. Now that I have more time I will include a few every time I write so as not to overwhelm anyone.

More later, and happy planting.

Garden Pigs: Worth the Oinking

The sun is moving higher in it's arc across the sky and that's good news for us gardeners. My own gardening time is limited now, but as I walk by the garden my mind is at work. What can I do with the half hour I have to share with my garden today? Some of the plants in my garden are plants that I call garden pigs. Plants that, years ago when we first made the garden, were just right for the place we put them are now, 6 years on, all over the place. Their piggy behavior, while tolerated when I had more time to garden, is just too much for me these days.

These piggy garden thugs are creeping all over the garden and I think the oinkers have to go. My beautiful summer garden phlox that I love are coming up everywhere, seeding and spreading out like they own the place. Euphorbia, lamium, and those great old garden mums are also popping up in any open space they can colonize. My daylily bed, already thinned just 2 years ago, is just too much daylily again. Now that I think of it the whole garden is just out of control!

The solution is obvious: start a new garden. Learn the lesson from my old over-grown garden and plant picky perennials. You know, plants I have to nurture and fuss over. These plants will not spread everywhere, they will have to be coaxed to grow. Never mind that they will look sickly and pale; at least they won't be taking over. Hm.

You know, on second thought,  I really do like those piggy plants. They are some of my favorites, and I like working in my garden even if it means ripping out buckets of spreading plants. So I guess in the end I will stick to the good news about the sun getting higher and tomorrow morning go out and enjoy the spring sunshine in the garden with a few extra buckets.

Forever Revising

Our gardens have filled up and are reaching for the sky. Now is the time to see where there are bare spots and a lack of color in a certain area. Change is always good in a garden. So many of my perennials in the old retail garden are so big that it has taken the diversity of the garden away. It's time to rethink that garden...something we do every few years with our gardens.

Actually we are rethinking all of the gardens here. Spending time with serious weeding and re-evaluating the space as to changing taste and acquired plants: some great new annuals that George has done from seed and cuttings that are ready to be put in. Both we and the mosquitoes were out working almost until dark on our rethunk garden last night.

Golden Tansy

The summer evening is our time to just be gardeners. We put in masses of coleus that will look like a patchwork quilt in a few weeks. Then we moved on to profusion zinnias (double cherry and apricot), salvias of all kinds, and anything else we like and have here at the farm. Come visit us this Sunday for the plant swap (more info in the "news" section of our homepage) and take a look at some of our updated gardens. As always it is a work in progress, come visit often.

As to garden advice…do as we are doing: keep ahead of the weeding and mulch...it's dry, dry, dry. Happy gardening!

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!

Planting the New Garden

One of the new greenhouses

We have a new planting project here at Morningside Farm: our new huge display bed. It stretches on forever around the new retail area. The back side of the garden is going to be a rain garden, which will help with erosion and runoff problems into our new pond and on down the pond chain to the river system and the Chesapeake Bay. I am savoring the idea of planting this garden. Our friends Jeff and Bill came and tilled the whole garden bed. It's beautiful just as it is, but of course an empty garden to a gardener is a battle cry. We will all work on it. I like to imagine it will be the wonder of the neighborhood, and it will certainly be the wonder of our nursery. As children at Christmas with sugarplums dancing in their heads, our heads are full of dancing perennials and annuals, maybe a few small trees and shrubs, a few pieces of iron work maybe, beautiful blooming containers over-spilling with summer lushness. I am going to do the containers now so they will be ready to add to the garden after mother's day.

Crab Apple

I was thinking of a seasonal Spring, Summer, and Fall garden starting with Spring at the big blue house and continuing around. The whole garden would be of interest all the time, with an emphasis on a particular season in a particular area. I haven't broached this with the men yet; I'm trying to get it straight in my own mind first. I plan on making a list of all sun blooming Spring perennials, a list of Summer perennials, and a list of late Summer/Fall perennials. I'll start with a list and veer off entirely by the end.

I would also like to have bays of annuals in the garden that stay the same every year, kind of like annual islands in the perennial bed, with their own area they can be planned as a garden within the garden every year. That's the end of my garden musings for now.

A small, funny string of tips about old-fashioned clothespins (the ones with a coil of wire between the pieces of wood):

• Use an indelible ball point pen to write on them, snap it onto the rim of a flower pot to identify the plant
• Put on opened packages of seeds to keep tightly closed or to separate different packages
• Flank a partly broken stem with pieces of wood and hold in place with the clothespin
• Hold the pages of a book open to free both hands
• Hold covers in place to shade a plant.
• The last part of the tip..."Keep in your basket of tools at all times"

That's it for me this week. I will let you know about our garden progress, or better yet, come visit.

In the Cold, Spring Heats Up

Sedum 'Autumn Fire'

Can you believe it? We have one of the new greenhouses up in the new retail area thanks to George, Travis, and our good friend and excellent helper Billy. I never believed it could happen so fast, but I look out our living room window, and there it is. A good thing too because we have run out of room in every greenhouse and need the new space for more plants that we are potting up everyday. Today Trav was working on herbs (thymes, loveage, garden sage, and many more) and I was potting up perennials (hypericum, chrysanthemum, sedum 'Autumn Fire'--at right). Everything is breaking dormancy and growing so fast. Now is the time when everyday is different in the greenhouse. Seedlings jump, cutting root so fast, it seems like the plants think spring is here, and I guess for us it is.

George and I are doing something we have not done in years, we are going to the Philadelphia Flower Show, and I can't wait. The theme this year is 'Legends of Ireland' and as someone who subconsciously always seems to make a garden that looks like it belongs somewhere on one of the British Isles, I will be in heaven. I expect to come back with a whole new outlook on Irish gardens. I will keep you posted; we now have lots of new gardens to work on, and I don't see why a part of one can't be a bit Irish.

I also wanted to say last week we got in a ton (for us) of terra cotta pots. Some we are going to paint, some we will lime wash, and some we will leave terra cotta. It's really beautiful stuff, big pots, medium pots, and small posts in lots of different shapes and sizes. Something for everyone.