Friday, May 29, 2009

Learning to know each other

Stewartia pseudocamellia buds, like little peas waiting for June and July to come to show off their pure white contents.
K

No, this time I won't be rushing to move and replant and dig up. I promise. I will take it slowly (which, according to my husband, does not come naturally to me...), get to know my garden better and see, what I really needs to be done. And then, in a well-planned way, go to action during the autumn and early next spring. This is the plan, at least. And so far, being busy with other things, I've been really good at adhering to it. I dug in the Anemone nemorosa 'Vestal' plants that I had in pots. And I have been dead-heading numerous Rhododendrons, just out of pure stress. I like the popping sound of the spent flowerheads when I nip them off just above the juicy, new shoots. And it makes a big difference to the look of the garden, when the old flowers are not hanging around like used handkerchiefs.
K

A flowering white Dogwood, Cornus florida, above some old Rhodos. They grow actually over a meter below the stone terrace with Spanish lavender in the front...

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Buzzing activity in the lavender hedges; there are at least twenty meters (60 feet) of them...
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I took some shots of some plants in the garden that I like. There is (luckily) no structural work to be done and I really like the overall plan of my new garden. But there is a circular lawn surrounded by a flowerbed, now filled with Spanish lavender, that I would rather see filled with lovely, flowering perennials in cool tones. And I could move the lavender to the front, where the cold winter took many of the large, established plants... Also, there is a large area in the back that has been left totally unlandscaped. It does not show from the actual garden as it slopes downwards (towards South), but why waste such a large area of land? Maybe this could be a perfect place for a kitchen garden? Or a jungle for the girls, who still love disappearing in the bushes and playing fairies? All these possibilities...
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Azalea 'Everest' is now covered with almost luminescent white flowers; it looks almost bridal while flowering. It has been used throughout the garden, and I love it.
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The "island bed towards the street, with three big Magnolia grandiflora 'DD Blanchard', Euonymus alata 'Compacta', Sedum spectabile 'Autumn Joy', Iris sibirica 'Ceasar's Brother' and Lavandula stoechas 'Otto Quast'. A nice, draught tolerant combination together with several large stone boulders.
K

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Hello, old friend

Things are definitely moving in the right direction... Just look what I found in one of the boxes; my favourite garden trowel, from my house in Saltsjöbaden. When we moved there, I found this wonderful tool in the garage, with other old gardening tools that nobody had cared about for years. There they laid, in the middle of mouse drippings and spider webs in the unrenovated and dirty crawling space behind the garage.
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Later, I learned and noticed, that an earlier owner of my house had been a passionate gardener, and that the garden had even been voted as the most beautiful garden in Saltsjöbaden in the early 70's. Unfortunately, the next family in the house had no interest for plants or gardening and when we came, only some of the toughest survivors gave me clues about the former glory of my garden; a peony in the edge of a meadow towards the sea, spreading its frilly, shockingly pink petals like an old primadonna amongst its plainer sisters; a double Anemone of an exotic sort, surviving between the cracks of the cliffs towards the sea. And all the Hellebores, only managing to send up a few, thin leaves though the wirelike mat of roots of the ground-elder. After cleaning the beds from this nasty intruder, I re-planted the roots in the middle of June (!) and got my reward already the next spring, when the Hellebores flowered with large bundles of dark Burgundy flowers. And this lovely old trowel was with me through the whole journey, always there, often hidden in the soil so that I had to spend long times looking for it (I understand that the new, bright coloured ones are better in this sense, but I still prefer mine...).
K
So you can surely imagine my unease about not knowing if my trowel had made it into the moving boxes; it really felt like an old friend had gone missing. And at the same time, I felt a bit embarrassed (why, I don't know) about asking the people renting our house to look for it and if finding it, sending it to me. And now, here it is, together with me taking on a new adventure on the other side of the Atlantic; surely a sign of more good things to come? And this time I might tie a colourful ribbon on it, just in case...
K
(My trowel is taking a well-deserved rest on a bed of Blue star creepers, Pratia pedunculata, in my new garden. More about it soon - it seems that I'm getting over the busiest part of this moving project!).

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Stealing time for things you love


In front, Disporum sessile 'Variegata', with Primula Sieboldii ’Alba’ and Fritillaria meleagris 'Alba' behind.
K
Somehow I feel that I'm getting less and less effective with things I don't especially love to do. Like moving between houses. Of course, I'm excited about getting into a new home, and my brain is already working on a plan for making the garden more "mine", but I still would already like to be at the stage when all those boxes were not staring at me demanding attention. I've always been a pretty effective person while moving, sorting out things and getting 90% done within the first two weeks, eager of creating an illusion of normality around me. But now that energy seems to be eluding me; I start my days with good intentions, but loose myself to daydreams about plants and writing that I would love to be doing instead of unpacking things.
K

Last Thursday, while I should have been packing the last things for the movers to take with them on Friday, I visited Marian's garden. And some time later, came back home, happy and refreshed and with over 140 pictures in my camera, many of plants that I've so far only seen in foreign gardening books and magazines... I still can't quite get over the huge possibilities for growing things here in the Pacific Northwest. Marian's garden is such a wonderful place, an acre of winding paths and a stream of water running besides it. The plants just seem to enjoy themselves so much, they mingle with each other and behind every nook there is somethings special and rare to see. I was laughing on myself when I saw thousands of Anemone nemorosa 'Vestal' flowering here; this rarity has actually become a bit of a thug in Marian's garden. We were wondering about the claimed sterility of these white ladies; here they seem to be much more promiscuous than their namesake virgins... And there are so many other Anemones; the yellow A. ranunculoides that I remember from my childhood gardens in Southern Finland, A. n. 'Monstrosa' (above) with frilly green sepals, A. n. 'Robinsoniana' with lovely pinkish-purple flowers.


Polygonatums, Solomon's seals, have for a long time been one of my favourite woodland plants, but Marian had some close relatives with name Disporum sessile 'Sunray', now called 'Kinga', that very really lovely too, with their greenish-white flowers hanging from the "joints" of the stems. Other beautiful Disporums in her garden were D. sessile 'Variegata' (first picture of this post) and D. cantonense, my photos of which unfortunately did not turn out well.

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Trilliums, the handsome woodland plants many of which are native to this region, didn’t seem to like getting their photos done, especially the dark velvety red T. chloropetalums just seem to sulk in them, but all of them looked lovely in the garden. The yellow ones with beautifully freckled leaves are called T. luteum. There was even a double variety, T. grandiflorum 'Flore pleno', shining in the shade with its clean, white flowers.
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The Arisaema's were flowering too; greenish white ones, and ones with dark maroon, striped blooms. I have to learn more about them, as they are not hardy in Stockholm, I haven't been paying them too much attention so far, but they really make an exotic looking addition to a woodland garden. Above Arisaema sikokianum.
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Two very interesting new acquaintances were Cardiocrinum giganteum, the Giant Himalayan lily (first picture above), several of which were showing off their lush, shining heart-shaped leaves shooting up from the bulbs, and Podophyllum pleianthum, the Asian Mayapple (second picture above), which was hiding it's rounded flowers under the umbrella-shaped leaves, both of which I had never seen before. I can't wait to see the large trumpet-shaped flowers of the Giant Himalayan lily to show up later in the season, and it will be so interesting to get to smell them for the first time!
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Fritillaria pontica, the Balkan fritillary (first picture above), had spred itself freely around, with it's nodding yellow and greenish flowers. Fritillaria acmopetala had alread flowered, so I took no pictures, but as all Fritillaries, they are a wonderful springtime addition in a garden. I had tens, if not hundreds of the common Fritillaria meleagris, both purples and whites in my garden in Sweden, and the combination of them coming up from a sea of Forget-me-nots was one of my true spring time favourites there. A yellow flowering Magnolia, 'Elizabeth', was still in flower in the shade of the bigger trees, spreading its branches above a sea of Anemones.
K

Some of the paeonies were already flowering or even past flowering, but more of them later... I just decided to show one more interesting small plant friend, namely a small, delicate Bergenia omeiensis, that I also hadn't seen before. Marian told that the flowers start as little bells, and open up to resemble pinkish white geraniums. As Bergenias are one of the few hardy and evergreen perennials in Scandinavia, this might be an interesting choice to grow there.

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It is just amazing to see all these plants in their woodland surroundings in the middle of the suburban Eastside of Seattle... And I can't help thinking of and admiring the amount of work that has gone to get everything in place and keep them thriving; years and years of interest and dedication; composting, mulching, weeding, and then planting, re-planting and dividing them to keep them growing. Marian's garden is a real pearl, a document of a true gardening life.
K
Read about my first visit to Marian's garden, the magic carpets of spring here.