Bloom Day--June 09

This is my first bloom day. With a cool June and two weeks of mostly gray and rain...here's what was blooming this morning.

In order top to bottom: Thermopsis caroliniana, Clematis sp. (a rescue, not sure of cultivar), Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle', and one of many Lychnis coronaria.

The Garden of Lost Plants

My professional need to know plants is how I ended up with The Garden of Lost Plants. My personal gardens looked more designed when I was an amateur.

The sunny 'Deer Eat This...Sucker!' garden with a Buxus topiary awaiting installation elsewhere

I am not a plantaholic, although to look at my home garden, you would think I was. My planting design knowledge of plant needs, form, structure and maintenance comes from personal experience. As a landscape designer, I learned early on that specifying plants for a specific site without having firsthand knowledge of them can lead to garden disaster in a season or two. I just can't design a great garden from pictures and descriptions in a book or a catalog...I have to know the plant. Obviously I can't grow everything so that's where garden visits come in.

A woodland native I'm trying this year--Silene virginica
photo via Northcreek Nursery

I have one of many plants--with few multiples--I watch each grow, observe how big it really gets, what texture the foliage creates, if the bloom color and time is what I expect, and if the way I neglect them allows them to survive. I am always experimenting and have found winners and losers through this hodgepodge, totally unscientific process. My garden is not fenced or sprayed--I barely have time to pull the weeds. It is in a sub-urban environment with deer, rabbits, chipmunks, moles and a dog who has no respect for my efforts. Add kids and this is a similar environment to many of the landscape design projects I work on.

Another new one for '09 although I can't believe I haven't grown it before--Asarum canadensis
photo via Rush Creek Growers

I try to make The Garden of Lost Plants look as if they've seen a designer's hand, but it's a challenge with one of each. I group plants together using basic design principles--contrast of foliage texture and color, diagonal repetition of color, shape and structure that helps to create a visual pull through the space. I make sure plants are peaking out from around corners to beg further inspection. Those that I suspect will be showstoppers get the 'look at me I'm a star' placement.

I rotate plants in and out of empty spaces that are still in containers until they go to a new home and I've been known to dig something up and take it to a client--leaving a hole until a new orphan or test case takes its place. Some plants are so successful that I have too many--bearded Iris for one, Leucanthemum superbum 'Becky' is another. A couple of years ago I added some woodies for trial and structure. That has helped with design cohesion a bit.

Plants move in and out of my garden constantly. It is pretty and somewhat over the top and yes, there are things that stay for years. Sometimes they even survive the lawn guy's string trimmer.

My Garden State--Basking Ridge

Yesterday I stopped for a bit in the village of Basking Ridge. I went specifically to take pictures of the White Oak that has lived there for more than 600 years. Known as 'The Old Oak', this ancient tree has been growing and shading the sacred ground that is the Presbyterian Church graveyard for almost 300 years before the first person was buried there in 1733.


I have a fondness for old graveyards, and the Old Oak made my visit incredibly special. At lunchtime, I was the only living person there and the noise of traffic and the bustle of noontime activity in the village seemed distant, event though the church and cemetery are at a busy crossroad.


Standing next to it, this American native tree's trunk is more than 6' in diameter--its branches are supported by crutches and cables.


The raw power of the oak's presence combined with the remnants of 18th and 19th century lives lovingly carved into the headstones is hard to describe. For me, it was an emotionally charged experience full of reverence for nature and respect for those who had been.

White

I started thinking about this when all of my white shrubs bloomed at once this spring. They are supposed to bloom in a kind of sequence. The absence of color was just as, if not more powerful, than a garden full of color.

Just the spireas--lilacs & fothergilla were blooming too

I know the idea is not new, but white has a symbolic power beyond the absence of color and I think it's appropriate for our times.

The staircase at Chanel for the 2009 Haute Couture collection
photo via Chanel

A puff of dandelion seeds (plenty of those around here)

A lace table cloth

Santorini

Nautical ropes

Weathered Picket Fence

Dodecatheon meadia--native and beautiful
Photo via Vanderbilt.edu

White wicker

The White Garden at Sissinghurst
photo via Meade/flickr.com

Often way over my head

My neighborhood has some unusual street trees. A few blocks away there's a solid block of Sweet Gums (Liquidambar stryaciflua) that make an incredible tricolored foliage show in the fall and an unbelievable knee high mess when they shed their macelike fruit. Bags and bags of them are heaved to the sidewalk by the homeowners who have to rake them from front yards, sidewalks and hell strips.

Anyway, when I was out for my early morning walk today I noticed a young, low branched Tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera) in bloom. An eastern native, it's not often I get to see these exotic flowers at eye level as the trees in my parts are tall, tall, tall and their blooms are usually 50-60-70 feet above my head.

A sun kissed 'tulip'

Fringe Benefits

I love our native fringe tree, Chionanthus virginicus. Hardy to zone 3, it is delicate, fragrant and underused in the landscape. Sometimes I see it used here as a multi-stemed shrub, but seldom as a mature understory tree.

I've used it in gardens as a shrub, but never as a tree--I will after this week. On a road I have driven down hundreds of times, there it was in full glorious bloom, at a bus stop on Mountain Avenue in Springfield.

The Fringe tree on Mountain Avenue

Blooms