I pledge to help new gardeners...

Every spring, new gardeners emerge from the dark tunnel of their world without gardening into the light of a world with gardening.  These new gardeners can be a bit blinded by the brightness of the gardening world and need our help, if we are experienced gardeners.

Raise your right hand and repeat after me...

I, (state your name), will remember that there was a time when I didn't know much about plants or gardening.

I will not roll my eyes or  sigh or otherwise indicate in any way that a new gardener's question is one that has been asked a thousand times before.  I will answer it.

I will not laugh at new gardeners when they attempt to pronounce botanical names, nor will I correct them and tell them my way of pronouncing it, as though my way is the only way, the right way, even if I know that it is.  Well, I won't correct them in public but I won't let them continue to make it obvious that they are a new gardener by continually mis-pronouncing Clematis.

I will remember that the collective wisdom of gardening and knowledge of plants is much bigger than my knowledge of gardening, vast though I think it might be, and therefore, it is possible for a new gardener to encounter some new wisdom or knowledge that I know nothing about.  I will learn from them at times.

I will never give a new gardener a thuggish plant, no matter how much they beg or promise to keep it under control.

Finally, I will remind new gardeners that gardening is a way of life, a journey, and once in the light, their lives will never be the same.

Thank you. You may lower your hand now, grab a hoe and head out to your garden.  Be careful in the heat!

Spending like a Hortefeller

Do you dread getting your credit card statements after the Christmas holidays? Ha! You should see my credit card statements after the month of May.  By early June, those statements often look like a directory of nursery and garden centers around my side of town and beyond.  Some garden centers are even listed more than once.

I have to give some credit or blame to my stylist, Gloriosa Vanderhort.  She has expensive taste and often whispers in my ear, "You work hard all year. What else are you going to spend money on? When will you ever see that plant again? When will you be here again where they are selling these sculptures? Now is the time."

Then Ms. Hortefeller, my other garden center visiting companion, takes over. She marches me up to the cash register, pulls out one of my credit cards and buys the plants and everything else like she has the money of a Rockefeller.

Once Ms. Vanderhort and Ms. Hortefeller get done shopping, I feel like I need to turn to that tightwad gardener in all of us, Ms. Hortwad, to restore the balance and save up for the next big garden shopping spree in the fall. But I try to leave Ms. Hortwad at home when I am actually at the garden centers. She can be a real downer.

Collectively, though, they do provide balance. Gloriosa Vanderhort makes sure I buy good stuff, Ms. Hortefeller makes sure I just buy stuff, and Ms. Hortwad figures out how to make it all balance out.

And when they don't all work together, there is always Dr. Hortfreud...

No one gardens alone, or shops for their garden alone, truly.

We've come a long way in garden blogging

We've come a long way in garden blogging.

I remember the early days, when we were careful to not reveal too much information about ourselves. After all, who were our readers?  Who was really looking at our blogs?

Few of us posted pictures of ourselves, mentioned other family members by name, or even provided an email address.  If you wanted to get in touch with any of us, you had to leave a comment.

Times have changed.  

This past weekend 90 or so of us garden bloggers met up in Asheville, North Carolina for our fifth garden bloggers' fling.  Some of us have been to all five flings and greet each other now as good friends who only get to see each other once or twice year. Others came for the first time or returned after missing a fling or two. It was a grand, good, gardeners gathering.  I give it four G's out of four G's possible in my rating scale of gardening events.

Yesterday, I attended a regional Garden Writers Association meeting at the Taltree Arboretum in Valparaiso, Indiana, and gave a talk on garden blogging.  One of the challenges I made to the group was to either start a garden blog in the next few days, and I would help promote it through my blog,  or if they already had a garden blog, do something to improve it in the next few days.

For my blog, I improved it by adding an "about me" page. 


The keen observer will note that on my "about me" page, I have a last name that is like a botanical name.  It is not obvious how it is pronounced. Just like with  botanical names, some people will avoid saying it so they aren't called out for mis-pronounciation. Or they will ask how it is pronounced before saying it. Or they will hear me say it and realize that they have been silently mis-pronouncing it and are sure glad they found out how it is pronounced before they attempted to say it out loud.

I like that.  It is just one more clue that I might be a gardening geek because even my last name is like a botanical name that is often mis-pronounced.

Asters Interrupted

We interrupt the happiness of spring in the garden to note that one of the Aster oblongifolius 'October Skies' has offered up a flower.

A flower.

This flower is several months early, no doubt because this plant knows it is dying and has decided that it must set seed now before it is in such poor condition that it can't set seed at all.

I suspect it has a botrytis blight of some kind. This same condition occurred on one of six of these asters last year, but I stuck my head in the compost bin and ignored it.

There is no ignoring it now with five of six clumps of this aster clearly infected.

I'm not the kind of gardener who goes rushing for the chemicals when something like this occurs.

Instead, I cut off what looks like the diseased stems or remove the plant.

"Seeing as how" removing a few stems infected last year did nothing and now it is a bigger problem, I no longer think that will work. I'm moving on to the other option. This weekend, I'm digging these asters up and throwing them in the trash.

I'm starting to think about replacements and *gasp*, I'm actually thinking about smaller bluish grasses. We'll see.

I had a revelation about my garden

Bulbarella's garden high in the mountains

I had a revelation about my garden while touring gardens with other blogger/gardeners in and around Asheville, North Carolina for our fifth Garden Bloggers' Fling

It came to me on the last day of our long weekend of seeing all kinds of gardens and hanging out with fellow kindred spirits who are  passionate gardeners who also like to write and blog about their passions.

I was at nearly the last garden when the revelation hit me, though I suspect that the revelation was there the whole time and I just couldn't see it. Or maybe I wasn't ready for it in the other gardens? A seed needs the right conditions to germinate. A revelation needs the right mindset to develop.

I should have seen the revelation way up in the mountains Outside Clyde where Christopher, our main Planner Man for fling, and his mother, affectionately referred to as Bulbarella because of all the bulbs she's planted, carve out their gardens in the lush.

The revelation was a nice takeaway from the trip. But even without my little revelation, the trip was worthwhile and wonderful because of the many bloggers, now friends, who made the same journey to Asheville.

I had my little revelation when I was in the garden of the historic 1889 WhiteGate Inn & Cottage admiring the plants, water features, and focal points.

I'm not sure I have a good photograph of the revelation but this picture, with the Oenothera sp., evening primrose, in the lower left hand corner provides a good example as does the picture above high up in the mountains in Bulbarella's lush garden.

I have some evening primrose in my garden and was thinking last week that I should contain it a bit because it's a spreader. Then I saw this evening primrose and I realized that I like gardens that are full and lush and cottage-y and that to achieve this style faster in my own garden, I should... oh dare I say it?

I should plant some more self-sowing, spreading perennials in my garden.

And I should not be so quick to weed them out if when they become a little loose and free amongst the other plants.  They can be temporary fill-in plants until other plants are added or grow bigger. Then I can pull out these temporary fill-in plants.

Now, mind you, I don't want to go all  berserk and plant some wildly spreading bamboo or variegated Bishop's  goutweed, but what would be so wrong with adding a few more ox-eye daisies or letting a little clump of evening primrose spread a little further?   As I get more plants, I can gradually weed out these fillers.

I am aware of the pitfalls, of the disastrous situation I could have in the garden if I don't choose the fillers wisely and edit some of them out eventually.

But I think I'm willing to risk it because there are still a lot of blank spots in my garden and I want a fuller, lusher, look.