How to Space Plants in a Garden

I wonder a bit how it is that until last Friday, the 20th, I had never heard of Alfred Austin or his book, The Garden that I Love.  How did my garden designer decide on that book to leave for me?  I've enjoyed it immensely. It's the kind of book you can pick up and read cover to cover and along the way, fall in love with gardening all over again.

Plus, there is some useful information on how to garden, buried in the story.  Useful information like how to space out the plants in a garden.

In his own words...

"A garden is not a collection of curios. It is for the most vigorous, the most lovely, and the most fragrant flowers that room should be found; and many these demand for the full display of their charms that the atmosphere should be seen all round them, and that they should not be too much elbowed by their neighbours. It is, perhaps, a little incautious to say this for it may be pressed into the defense of those terrible villa borders where every plant is a specimen, is duly staked, and tied and trained and they all stand at stated and goodly intervals from each other. I pray you avoid it. But if you run into the opposite extreme and crowd certain herbaceous plants overmuch, you curtail their growth and their grace and incur the risk of losing them altogether." (The Garden that I Love, Alfred Austin, 1894)

In my words, space plants not too close, but not too far apart. 

If you crowd all the plants together, you are likely to lose a plant or two that just can't compete with a closely planted, vigorously growing neighbor.  But if you space them out too far then it isn't really a garden, where plants play off one another and sometimes support one another, it's just a row of plants.  

I can think of no better advice on how to space plants in a garden.

Back Tracking in the Rabbit Hole

I am still down in this rabbit hole chasing after ideas and quotes in "The Garden that I Love" by Alfred Austin (1894).

You can imagine this rabbit hole in any way that suits you.

Maybe you think of it as various underground runs with occasional side rooms where, if you peak in, you'll see meadow voles wearing aprons and having little tea parties?  But watch where you are going, because comparatively giant moles wearing heavy blue overalls and glasses with thick lenses are busily digging out more tunnels and rooms.  They keep expanding the rabbit hole by pushing something interesting just a little further out of reach, enticing you to keep going, to stay up later, to find that thing. Then about the time you come to that thing, you see something else and before you know it, you are so far down in the rabbit hole that you decide it is best to keep going.

Maybe the exit is closer than the entrance?

Truth be told, my rabbit hole looks a lot like a chair by the window, where there is good light in the day time and a view of the garden and bird feeders. Next to the chair is a side table holding a tall stack of books, mostly old gardening books but there are a few news one, too. There is just enough room left for a good lamp for night time rabbit hole explorations. On the floor beside the chair is a basket filled with seed and plant catalogs.

I spent quite a bit of time this morning in that rabbit hole, searching for a passage that I read a few days ago in The Garden that I Love. It seemed to me the perfect description of how to determine the amount of space a plant needs in a garden.

I see my new friends as I look back through the pages I've already read. There's the author plus his sister Veronica and their frequent visitors, the Poet and Lamia.  I have just a slight idea of who they are and how they relate to the author in real life. They are there throughout the book, so are always present in this rabbit hole.

I knew generally where in the book I'd read the passage about how to space plants out in a garden but I didn't mark it, so I had to go back and hunt for it.

Going backwards through a rabbit hole can be treacherous travel, but it is sometimes necessary.  Why didn't I mark that passage or even the page where the passage was? Why didn't I scribble a little note or draw a tiny star in the margin?  Well, if a 116 year old book (mine is the 1896 edition) has made it so far without someone dog-earing pages, or underlining passages, or highlighting keywords, I don't feel like I should start doing so now.    Though, I do enjoy opening an old gardening book and finding notes in the margins or something underlined. I also like finding old newspaper clippings or other handwritten notes slipped in between the pages of the book.

But I am always reminded that one should must respect the rabbit hole, the book, and leave it in the same condition that she found it in, so others can enjoy it, too.  The only thing that shouldn't be in the same condition after a run through a rabbit hole or a read through a book is the person who fell in. They should be changed, filled with new ideas and old ideas that are new to them.

Finally, I found the passage about plant spacing that I was seeking.  It's too good to tack to the end of a post, as almost an afterthought.  I'll start a new post for it, as soon as I can find my way to the exit, or is it the entrance, of this rabbit hole, The Garden that I Love.

A Season to Make Experiments

Obligatory Garden Picture

A quote that I love from the book that I love titled The Garden that I Love...

"What would be the good or the pleasure of a garden if one did not make experiments?" (Alfred Austin, The Garden that I Love, 1894)

Have you "made experiments" in your garden lately or have you played it safe, afraid to risk a season with a mistake or misstep?

Maybe this should be the season to "make experiments" in your garden?

Yes, this should be that season. The season of experimentation.   

(Garden fairies here. We are garden fairies and we are now very afraid of what is going to happen this spring and summer here at May Dreams Gardens. What is the book that Carol is reading? It is giving her ideas. It is old. Should it give her ideas? Experimentation? What does she mean by that? There has been such upheaval here the last two growing seasons, we had hoped to just relax a bit. But Carol seems so determined to do something. Experimentation. We are garden fairies, we can only watch and see and maybe occasionally hide her gardening gloves. These experiments could be fun. Or they could be a disaster. We just hope they are safe for garden fairies.)

My Garden Has Moved

Plopper's Field, now in a zone 6a garden

My garden has moved... sort of.

When the new USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map came out earlier today, I dutifully entered my zip code and discovered, as I suspected might be the case, that my garden has moved.

It has moved from zone 5b to zone 6a.

What does this move mean?

No longer will I start my Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day posts with "here in my zone 5b garden".

Instead, I'll say "here in my zone 6a garden".

No longer will I say "oh, shoot" when I see that a plant is only hardy to zone 6.

Instead, I'll say, "Hmmm, maybe I'll try that in my garden".

Well, truth be told, if I really wanted a plant before this new map came out, and the plant was listed as only hardy to zone 6, I might have tried it in the past and hoped for the best. Now I'll just be trying it with perhaps a bit more confidence that it won't die off in the winter and plan for the best. 

But otherwise, not much has changed.  Admittedly, zone 5b is just a few miles, maybe 20 miles, north of me, so I don't feel like I am solidly in zone 6a.  I feel like I am just provisionally in zone 6a until I try a few more zone 6 plants and see how they fair.

After a few years, if those zone 6a plants do well, I'll consider this move to be more official.

Now, where are those catalogs? I need to start looking at those  "hardy only to zone 6a" plants.  I want to try a whole bunch of them and maybe make this zone 6a move feel a bit more official, as soon as possible, in a few years.