We Takoma Hort Clubbers offer a nifty little service to all our members – a free in-garden consultation by up to four knowledgeable yet highly opinionated gardeners. I’m one of the lucky four consultants and I say lucky because we have such fun doing it, especially when we’re all together, and we learn a lot from each other. We disagree plenty, but one thing we usually agree on is that everybody’s plants need to be grouped into masses. That’s because we see so many "onesies" or several of the same item spread too far apart. We keep saying "masses" and "drifts" and "groupings" ’til we’re sick of hearing it.
So when it comes to twe
aking my own 20-year-old garden, guess what I’m doing this fall? Massing and grouping in drifts, of course. I posted earlier about my crummy-looking daylilies and I’m happy to report they’re now massed up the wazoo and, I hope, hidden after they bloom by the lovely foliage of hardy begonia. The lamb’s ears, some of which you can see in this photo, are all massed at the front of this border (though sure as hell not in a straight line). Let’s see what else. My newly expanded border has six new pieris and seven new nandina – how’s that for massing? And now when I plant bulbs, they’re grouped in 3s and 5s, rather than carefully spaced a foot apart across an entire border – my first pitiful attempt at bulb design. Even some items I’ve bought recently are telling me they need some pals to have enough impact, so the ‘Ogon’ spirea toward the back of this photo will soon be three and ditto a ‘Purple Smoke’ baptisia. Don’t want to get yelled at by those three Hort Club nags, ya know.
Do you know this woman? Her name is Susie Coelho and apparently she’s an authority on "styling," whatever that is, and she’s probably really good at it. Just don’t expect her to know anything about gardening, which you just might if you knew that she hosts HGTV’s backyard make-over show, "Outer Spaces." On it, Susie and her design team set tables and arrange lots of throw pillows and really just furnish and decorate a backyard, specifically a Southern California backyard. That must be an important distinction because these outer spaces are treated exactly like they’re indoors.
And did I mention it’s a reality show? Yep, complete with the grand unveiling of the results to the lucky homeowners, who have to keep their eyes shut until Susie, barely able to contain her excitement, gives the signal. Having fast-forwarded through more episodes than I care to remember, I can definitively give this show a pass.
Next up is "Curb Appeal." This photo comes from the show’s website and I’m not sure if it illustrates a
before or an after, which pretty much sums up my objection to the show. Because while the changes to the houses are definitely for the better, the "after" landscapes are sometimes actually worse. I’m serious. For instance, in a recent episode involving a cute older house with established plantings, the eager design team ripped out all the full-grown shrubs along the foundation and replaced them with – I’m not making this up – snapdragons. I’m at a loss to understand, much less explain, why the landscapes on this show are so terrible. Seems to me a lost opportunity.
And while I’m cataloguing my complaints about HGTV, let me add how much I miss Erica Glasener’s erstwhile show "Gardener’s Diary". An actual horticulturist, Erica conducted half-hour tours of the most interesting gardens and interviewed their equally interesting gardeners and the show was a delight – both eye candy and inspiration. With no garden tour show in their current lin-up, maybe HGTV is looking for a new tour guide. Boy, what a dream gig that would be.
This time of year many of us are admiring our ornamental grasses, now at their best, but some of us are also hearing warnings about their invasiveness. Just that – "Don’t you know they’re invasive?" Well, I hate it when that happens. In fact, my number one gardening rant is about too little information, or even misinformation, about plants, usually with the words "native" or "invasive" being used rather loosely.
Still, being the nature-lover and dutiful student that I am, I hit the old keyboard and read all the websites I could find about badly behaved plants in Maryland. Sure enough my favorite, Miscanthus sinensis, is listed as a "plant of concern." Which might steer me toward buying a different one but what about the ones already in my garden?
I’m happy to report finally finding the answers I was looking for – on HGTV’s website, of all places. An article there on this very subject quotes from the Timber Press Pocket Guide to Ornamental Grasses to explain that invasiveness is a matter of genes, region, and culture, and then goes on to list exactly which grasses are problems and which aren’t. Bless you, Timber Press. Turns out Miscanthus sinensis, the bad boy of ornamental grasses, isn’t a problem in cold or dry areas, and there are some cultivars that aren’t problems anywhere because they’re sterile, don’t self-seed, or simply bloom too late in the season. And even if I had an early bloomer, I could prevent its spread by simply removing the seedheads.
The specific cultivars recommended for the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic are ‘Morning Light’ (YES!), ‘Zebrinus,’ ‘Gracillimus,’ ‘Purpurascens,’ ‘Hinjo,’ and ‘Little Zebra.’ And it’s recommended that we limit the number of cultivars in our gardens to one or two, because cross-pollination can result in reversion to species – the worst offender of all. See, we gardeners want to do the right thing and with enough information, we can (and without ripping out our gardens.)
Yes, it’s THAT GOOD. Believe the rave reviews and go. I wish it were required viewing for everyone in the Mainstream Media.
And for once it’s nice that a pretty face is also so smart and talented and politically on target. George, if I were only young enough I’d offer to have your child.
Memorials here in D.C. and elsewhere used to be about stonework, not plants. No green interrupts the displays of granite that are our monuments to Lincoln or Jefferson. The Washington Monument is, of course, in the middle of a sea of grass but its form – SO phallic – focusses the eye on a stack of stone, to be seen from afar or ascended by elevator. Then there was the Vietnam, that shocking black gash in the lawn, and the world of memorialization changed.
The wonderful memorial to FDR took the notion of the walking memorial even farther, using the popular garden concepts of multiple rooms and water features, and quickly became the favorite of many Washingtonians. Former Attorney General Janet Reno, a sufferer of Parkinson’s disease, famously visited the FDR for inspiration, and as readers of this site might remember, I visited the FDR immediately after Katrina and was moved by words of that great leader.
And here you see the latest representation of the "landscape memorial" trend, the proposed $100 million memorial to Martin Luther King along the Tidal Basin and facing the Jefferson. The winner of a worldwide design competition is this sculpture garden and grove of trees, including even more cherry trees and lots of new crape myrtles, a welcome addition of color long after the too-brief flowering of the cherries.
This beautiful and moving design stands in stark contrast to the recently completed World War II Memorial, which in my humble opinion is all stone and bombast, an empty display of trite symbolism. Eagles, wreaths, columns, arches, stars – they’re all there. This design of another era pleased almost no one except the WWII vets themselves, very few of whom are still living but who had enough political clout to have their taste enshrined for eternity. Then there’s the fact that it glorifies war, but don’t get me started. Let’s hope that the beauty and power of the King Memorial will convince decision-makers that this gardenesque, contemplative, walking experience of memorials is far more successful and more likely to be loved for generations.
After months of drought we finally had a week of rain and cloudy skies. Now we could all start planting our fall purchases and moving things here and there, right? Because now the conditions were best for the plants to survive their big move.
Well, so I thought until someone asked me, "Isn’t it too wet to plant?" Which reminded me of all the dire warnings I’ve heard about stepping into the garden when the ground is wet – again, at exactly the time you most want to get in there and do stuff, whether it’s now or in the spring.
So what’s all this about? SOIL COMPACTION. It’s the terrible thing we apparently must avoid, and although I have no experience with it myself – that I know of – I’m taking the warnings seriously because my man Paul James, "HTGV’s Gardening Guy," is part of the chorus. Just this past weekend Paul opined at length on the subject of soil compaction, offering various ways to correct and even one way to avoid it without halting all work in the garden. He suggests laying a board down in the garden to step on, which disperses your weight and lessens the dreaded compaction. Pretty awkward, I’d say.
So to Paul and anyone else who wants to prevent compaction yet still get something done in the garden, how about creating places to step – permanently? The photo here shows a couple of 4-inch rocks serving that function in one of my borders, and I highly recommend them. Having access to the plants is essential, whether it’s for putting them in the ground, taking them out, pruning them, or weeding around them – and I’m talking about the whole season, at least. It doesn’t have to look like a path to function as one; it just has to be a place to put your feet.
aking my own 20-year-old garden, guess what I’m doing this fall? Massing and grouping in drifts, of course. I posted earlier about my crummy-looking daylilies and I’m happy to report they’re now massed up the wazoo and, I hope, hidden after they bloom by the lovely foliage of hardy begonia. The lamb’s ears, some of which you can see in this photo, are all massed at the front of this border (though sure as hell not in a straight line). Let’s see what else. My newly expanded border has six new pieris and seven new nandina – how’s that for massing? And now when I plant bulbs, they’re grouped in 3s and 5s, rather than carefully spaced a foot apart across an entire border – my first pitiful attempt at bulb design. Even some items I’ve bought recently are telling me they need some pals to have enough impact, so the ‘Ogon’ spirea toward the back of this photo will soon be three and ditto a ‘Purple Smoke’ baptisia. Don’t want to get yelled at by those three Hort Club nags, ya know.
