The Magic of Gardening

Ruthie and George

I have come to believe our place here is magic and that people come here to feel it. A friend who has suffered a great tragedy in her life has used gardening to ease her sadness. Working with the earth and making a special garden is her way of remembering a daughter. Gardens can be like the soul of someone we love, we are not left alone if we garden in someone's name and keep thoughts of them close. They will be with us always in the garden. I have my mother with me as I garden often.

I believe working the earth is a blessing to everyone who is open to it. We shut ourselves up and out of so much that is of the natural world, we limp along waiting for the next thing to make us happy whatever it is, and there is always a next thing. Well, you know what? I stopped looking for my happiness outside of what I already have: family, friends old and new, my happy dogs, the cats that eat their fill of mice and voles and leave the parts everywhere, what could be better then this?

This evening I picked some of my favorite zinnias tonight, like apricot. I also planted salvia ‘Phyllis Fancy’ which has pale lavender flowers because the hummingbirds know it’s better then anything else around (all you have to do is pick one of the flowers and suck on the end to see for yourself).  I DO love it when the garden is alive with bees and butterflies and hummers. Tonight I was cutting back the spent blooms of my salvia ‘Caradonna’ to encourage a second flush of flowers, but I had to be careful not to rub elbows with the bees filling up on pollen for the evening trip home.  They were honey bees and I have enjoyed watching them hover around those deep purple/blue spikes for weeks. Thinking about it now, I believe 'Caradonna' is the same color of our new shady rest pergola. Friends and family helped put it up and it’s almost time to rest in it’s shade. When life gets to hectic at the farm me and the dogs plan on resting up quite a bit.  Come and join us sometime. We will drink mint sweet tea and chat and laugh and that should be enough to make anyone happy. A bouquet of happy thoughts to you all and good night.

Spring Update

It’s been the darndest weather this spring: Cool-misty, cool-rainy, cool-cloudy, and then really hot all in the same week. The plants in the greenhouses and in the gardens certainly recover faster than I do. There is also no denying how the weather has made everything lovely this year. The gardens have had enough rain, and the world looks green and lush.

We are doing well at the nursery this year; we had no idea what it would be like. I appreciate the love and support from friends and strangers alike. I guess we are becoming known for peddling beauty to everyone who stops by. Yesterday a young family came down the driveway in the late afternoon, I smiled and said hello and they said they were just looking. They gave the the display gardens the once over before getting back in their car and heading out the driveway. Thats what I want our place to be: a respite from all of the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I believe the people who make their way here feel that as well.

Finally, next week we are putting up a shade area attached to the retail greenhouse just for sitting and relaxing (something we all need to do more of). When the breeze blows through, it will be like heaven. The new sitting space will also afford a great view of the gardens, which are now showing off false indigo, golden spiderwort, and catmint, among others things. Come and join us and talk gardening anytime.

Happy Digging!

Preparing for Spring Opening

The stage is set, the lights are coming up, and it’s almost show time.

We are rushing headlong toward our opening. It is coming so fast, as fast as the green shoots emerging from the ground all through the gardens. Our Morningside calendar has filled up with wonderful classes, check them out in events.

This year we are going to be adding a small herb cutting garden for fresh herbs. George is going to be taking some to the market and if people who come here would like fresh herbs we will go out into the garden and cut some. Of course we have to put the garden in first. We do have the spot picked out, we just have to amend the soil, figure out how many of what to put where, and plant them. Hmm Karen, and when is this going to happen? I am a firm believer in miracles, and as miracles go, this one doesn’t seem so out there. Herb cutting garden? Just make it so. Check back later to see if anyone was listening.

I also want to start including a few recipes on these pages and in our class. I love to cook (nothing fancy just what I would call good country fresh food, and the way to get fresh food is from your own yard). So we are putting in our first extensive veggie garden. That should also be fodder for a few laughs here as my small efforts with tomatoes and peppers has been spotty at best. Ornamental gardens I can handle, but the kind of garden I can eat out of, well it is my experience other things want to eat out of it as well. Fences don’t keep blister beetles out of the garden. I learned about crop rotation the hard way last year. This year I hope to fool the little suckers with a new garden location.

George is still working on his rain garden, which is coming into it’s own. He is working on a living willow fedge, which is a cross between a hedge and fence. It is an experiment, but exciting if it works. Our fascination with willows continues...they are cropping up everywhere here. I was thinking next year of having a pussy willow day so everyone who wants to can enjoy them also. Honey bees are enjoying them at the moment. Willows are good bee food as not much else has pollen at the moment. I also love to bring big bunches of all the different kinds of willows (we have about 6) into the house. Happiness is spring, fresh food and willows.

Happy Gardening!

The Call of Nature

Kumson

I think yellow is the color of early spring. It seems to be everywhere: the daffodils, the forsythia (‘Kumson’, right) blooming in pots, and the big yellow twig weeping willow. Even the finches get into the act by changing from their dull winter browns to neon yellow. It catches the eye and lifts the heart with the thought and hope of spring.

As rocky as the economy gets, gardens and gardening will always be just what it always has been, we can count on that. Garden ups and downs can only come from, say, the weather or garden-eating animals or my unwillingness to do the work I know needs to be done. We can adapt our gardens to almost all of these conditions to ride out the rocky times. Plant drought resistant plants, deer proof plants, be more diligent with weeding. In gardening we can be pro-active and take control of our gardens; we have so much control. We can make them as big or as small a garden as we feel like working in. It doesn’t have to be an overwhelming task. A beautiful container at the door is a garden.

This spring, thanks to a very good friend Clara’s suggestion we are going to have two classes that speak to the ability to put a garden anywhere. The first will be an English trough class and, in the next, we will be making a fairy garden in the troughs. Fairy gardens are those petite magical gardens that a fairy would love to inhabit. Gardens don’t have to be the size of Versailles to stop the heart and make you sigh. Sometimes being here at the nursery I am struck by people who like the idea of gardening but think it’s too much work The problem is just semantics. Maybe we could call it "earthly meditation" or "communing with plants" instead of "work." Remove the old idea of toiling away in the hot sun with a hoe, and replace it with the idea of a quiet time to hear the call of the natural world again. You can be anywhere, in a city on a balcony, or in the country, the natural world is always calling we just have to be quiet enough to hear it. And if we listen close enough, we might even hear one of those fairies.

Happy Spring!

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.