Summer Garden Visits

I love to visit gardens, especially herb gardens, during the summer. This year I stayed close to home and visited Elm Bank, home of the Horticultural Society of Massachusetts and the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.

I love the design of the herb garden at Elm Bank but thought the garden itself looked a bit neglected. It is a beautiful design in a wheel with spokes pattern. Each "spoke" has a different theme such as the dye garden, fragrance garden, etc with herbs fitting the category. There was a good selection of herbs, just needed some tending.





One of the other things I love about Elm Bank is the trial garden. There is always a great variety of new plants to see. One I really liked as Achillea "Apricot Delight", a pretty little yarrow in delightful colors. There were also different varieties of Echinacea and a large selection of scented geraniums including a very fragrant Vanilla scented geranium I will have to go look for. Here is a picture of the achillea.


But I thought the most beautiful garden of the day at Elm Bank was the Childrens Garden. In full bloom with wonderful scents, textures and colors it was a joy to walk through with all kinds of little paths going through the garden and places to just sit and enjoy.


The New York Botanical Garden had a summer exhibit called the Edible Garden, including a culinary herb garden with plantings designed by Martha Stewart, which was the reason I went down there. It was well worth the trip. Sipping on some Martha Stewart herbal iced tea available at the cafe, I spent time in the small but beautifully designed and impeccably maintained herb garden. With beautiful formal boxwood knot gardens filled with sage and cardoon and amazing planters with scented geraniums, rosemary and hops it was a delight.

But along with the herb garden was a wonderful display of edible gardens in a community garden and all through the botanic garden. I particularly liked this display of lettuces as a border.





Of all the beauty in this garden, I think my favorite thing was the flowering lotus in the

courtyard of the conservatory. Having seen lotus flowering in China many years ago, I had forgotten its delicate beauty and the way it rises above the water with those large dramatic leaves.What a treat to see this.

August Garden Progress

Even though we have had a rather cold, rainy summer the new garden has been doing well overall. Okay...so the tomatoes are still green but I have been overrun with cucumbers and zuchini and the garlic harvest this year was fantastic.
Some highlights...

The nasturiums that were planted around the center circle Hawthorn have been spectacular this month. This was a last minute idea, and I used unsold plants at the store so they are a mix of different kinds and colors. Some looked small and a bit forlorn, but as soon as they were in the ground they were amazing. As seen in the picture left, they have totally filled out the circle. Here are a few closeups of these beautiful, and tasty, flowers.















I used a climbing trellis for the cucumbers for the first time this year (from Gardeners Supply). It worked great, and it is so cool to see the cucumbers hanging off the back of it. It isn't quite tall enough as the cucumbers are vining back down it, off it, around it, anywhere and I think next year I'll get a second one and put them back to back in a teepee like structure. Here's the front and the back view:












I've made pickles, salads, given cucumbers away and they are still coming. Think another batch of pickles is on the agenda soon.

Surprisingly, the peppers did well in August. I had planted a yellow sweet pepper called Banana I think (I lost the tag) and they are so pretty.

And all the herbs have taken well and growing vigorously. The catnip is quite large, the mint was planted in containers and already overflowing them and the tarragon is ready for some tarragon vinegar. Parsley, lovage, oregano, thyme and basil are all quite full and I've been using them in cooking all month. It's time to start drying and freezing them and make some vinegars but I love to see them out in the garden and get rather sad about cutting them all back in anticipation of winter.

One of the special plants I put in this summer was a boneset plant I bought at the International Herb Symposium in June from Zach Woods Herb Farm, an organic herb farm in northern Vermont. Their plants are always wonderful and the boneset is in full bloom and done quite well for its first year. Boneset is a wonderful plant in the back of a garden where its height can really highlight other plantings. And I love to get a plant as a reminder of a special place I've been, it always gives it a special meaning. Medicinally, boneset is used for colds and flus and especially to break fevers by causing perspiration.

I also noticed in the garden this month a large number of butterflies. I'm not great at identification, but this one really loved the dahlias.

Well I guess that's it for now. As the season winds down, I'm starting some plantings of lettuce and spinach for the Fall and starting to think about plans for next year. I just hope those tomatoes ripen - anyone have any good ideas on what to do with lots of green tomatoes?

Harvesting the Hops

Three years ago I planted a small hops plant given to me by a friend at the corner of the store, hoping to train it across the porch railing. The first year it was rather slow growing and I wondered if it would make it. Last year it started growing vigorously and made it about halfway across the porch. Then this year it just took off. It almost made it to the end of the porch and I had a bine filled with beautiful hops.

No that's not a typo, it is a hops bine, not vine. Bines have stout stems with stiff hairs that aid them in climbing while vines use tendrils, suckers or other appendages to attach themselves. Hops are the female flower cones, also known as strobiles.

Hops are most generally known as a flavoring and stability agent used in making beer. Its antibacterial properties also help in beer making by helping the brewers yeast react over other bacterial organisms. Tom's of Maine uses hops in their dedodorant for its antibacterial properties. Hops are also used in a way similar to valerian, as a treatment for anxiety, restlessness, and insomnia. A pillow filled with hops is a popular folk remedy for sleeplessness. Hops may be used alone, but more frequently they are combined with other herbs, such as valerian. The relaxing effect of hops is largely due to a specific chemical component, dimethylvinyl carbinol.

I use a dehydrator to dry my hops. Hops are very light and dry even lighter. I started with about 5 ounces of hops, which dried to about 2 ounces. Here's the process I followed:

I pick the hops when they are full, but not opened, and a vibrant green color. Here they are on the vine and just picked.

I don't wash the picked hops, I just brush them off and make sure there is no dirt (or any bugs!) and no brown spots. They are then placed on the dehydrator screens with enough space in between them for air circulation.
As they dry, they fill out a bit and become very light and airy. I try to dry them just until they are totally dry, but not overdried to keep the color and flavor. In my dehydrator, that is about 6 hours on the lowest temperature setting.







Here are the dried hops, you can see the difference...








Hops are a beautiful, hardy plant that go great across a trellis, along a fence, or anywhere that they can climb and have plenty of room. Add one to your garden!

July Garden Musings

When I wrote at the end of May about needing patience in gardening, I didn't know that we were going to have the rainiest June on record and that planting was going to be more delayed than I had even imagined!

But I persevered, catching windows of time here and there in between rain storms to continue planting. I had taken a workshop a few years ago about soil and it was drilled into me not to work soil that is wet. I tried very hard to follow that, but wet soil was the norm in June.

The perennials were all planted and the gardens mulched. Slugs have appeared in abundance and seem to love cilantro, but I've been trying to control them with an organic product that seems to be working. The garlic was the only thing that was able to be planted last year, and it seems very happy. The currants transplanted well this Spring and are fully of berries, providing a pretty backdrop to the garlic. And bordering it is lemon balm, which after all the construction came back up on it's own!

The plant search continues with some spots needing "just the right" plant. I searched all over for an apothecary rose (rosa gallica), an old heirloom traditionally used by herbalists and ended up buying one online. It is small but seems very healthy. I know it will grow large, so there are a lot of annuals around it round now, as is the case with many of the perennials that were planted. I just don't like the look of lots of mulch and the annuals are adding a lot of color and interest, Here's a picture of my small little rose bush before the annuals were planted...

And now mid-July, the garden is looking good. The Hot Kaps that I used were wonderful and I've already picked a 10" zuchinni from the plants I started from seed. I was so proud of it (see picture) and my husband even remarked with amazement "that's from our garden?" The bed I had with the zuchinni and pumpkins is overflowing and there should be a good crop of both this year.

And the espaliered apple tree that I put in 5 years ago has apples for the first time! When the garden was redone we discussed taking the tree out, but I'm so glad now that it stayed. The apples are a bit hard to see in the picture, but they're there!



How is your garden growing this year? Feel free to post comments and pictures!

May Garden & Lessons in Patience

One of the things I love about gardening is the many life lessons that can be received. And for me, patience is one of those. Plants and gardens have their own timetables and they may not necessarily correspond with mine. May has been a month of waiting and watching, planning and yearning, fine tuning the garden plan and wondering how it is all going to work.

We had some periods of warm, sunny weather where I wanted to run out and plant, but I knew it was too early. The full planting moon came several weeks ago but it was still too cold and early. But slowly some chervil, parsley and onions went in the garden.

Martha Stewart had a show recently where she showed a product called Hot Kaps (hotkaps.com) to protect seedlings. Her garden was planted and covered with caps - ah ha I thought! I went online and bought some and planted my pumpkins and zuchini started from seed and covered them protectively with their hot kaps. How cute and how satisfying to get some planting done.

And so I waited, as weeds started filling my beautiful new garden soil. The hollyhocks I started from seed went into the garden, also wearing their hot kaps and a good size echinacea and perennial carnation went in. Ladies mantle was transplanted, and russian sage, catmint and comfrey went in. And the weeds still came and the garden looks so empty.

I know that the first year is the year of the "bones" of the garden. Get the perennials in and started, allowing plenty of room for their eventual growth. I yearn to plant everything closer, but know that if I do, I will be pulling out, dividing, and trying to control the plants in a year or two so am holding myself back.

I have a garden plan on paper, with each bed measured and on graph paper to scale, filled in with plants at their mature size. But the gardens look so much bigger in real life and right now they look rather empty.

But in getting plants to fill in all the space, I've also had to deal with my perfectionism in my garden. I go between 2 extremes....one wanting just the right, perfect plant for a certain location and the other saving every lost little plant I find. Sometimes this works....a plant that is struggling at the store I will put in my home garden knowing that it will come to life and be a wonderful addition. I just can't throw a plant away and although it might not be perfect enough to sell, it can be salvaged. A few of the scented geraniums I overwintered fell into that category. Missing most of their leaves and looking very scraggly, I planted several of them in the garden where they are flowering and new leaves are starting to appear. Voila! But I know I will get a lot further, faster if I buy full size perennials such as the echinacea that went in. So I go between the two extremes, feeling satisfaction in watching the struggling plant come back to life but also appreciating the beauty of the large full plants.

And I realize that it is the need for instant gratification, the desire to have the perfect garden NOW and wanting the plants and nature to be on my schedule rather than my having to adapt to theirs that can be so frustrating. So I take a deep breath, talk to the plants and allow myself to sink into the process of building a garden which will take years, not days.

But that is part of the joy of it and the sense of being part of something living outside myself. I am their caretaker, and they are mine. There is so much in life that is fast, easy and instantaneous that it can feel uncomfortable to be slow, mindful and on nature's schedule. But maybe that's the sign that I need it all the more.

New Garden in April

The planting has started in the new garden, hurrah! It has been a cold wet month and not a lot has been able to go in yet. I mentioned to someone that I was planting and she replied that I had said in the store newsletter that it was too early to plant in April. Well, generally speaking that's true. But there are always exceptions. So what has been planted in April....

• The Hawthorn tree (in picture). This is planted in the center circle. There was much discussion about what to put in the circle...a fountain, maybe a statue, some plantings, a tree or shrub? I decided on the hawthorn because hawthorn is a gentle herb of the heart, and is a sacred plant from the tradition that it supplied the cross of thorns. It is also considered a magical plant for protection. I had a beautiful small tree from our garden club plant sale and no where to put it. It does get large and may not stay in its current home, but we'll see how it goes!
• Overwintered perennials. Many of my plants had to be moved for the new garden and it was too late in the year to replant them, so I overwintered them in a holding spot until Spring. As they started to show new growth, I've replanted them and have a small border of lavender along with lovage, valerian, ladie's mantle,thyme, chives and angelica replanted.
• Cold hardy plants. Newly planted are lettuces, arugula, sorrel, tatsoi, peas and a few other assorted greens that grow in the cold soil and air.

So now I'm just waiting for the soil to warm up a bit to continue planting. The space is much larger than I'm used to having which is a good thing, but also a bit overwhelming. So I'm just taking it a bit at a time and trying to curb my impatience as I space plants far apart knowing that they will grow in and a the bones of a beautiful garden are being established.

My New Herb Garden

Is there nothing more promising than a new garden, ready to be planted? Dreams of lush flowers, the air filled with the scent of herbs and robust vegetables ready for the dinner table... We all know that by July those dreams may be dashed, but in late March everything seems possible.

This garden is the result of 6 years of dreaming and planning. Having moved into this house with a small garden running along the side of the house, I struggled to make it work. It was filled with lemon balm and the first few years I affectionately called it my lemon balm garden. And although I love lemon balm, I would like some other things there also. So lemon balm plants went to the Garden Club sale, the store, friends and anyone who would take it....and still there was lemon balm. But after a year or two of diligent removal and new plantings, the form of an herb garden began to take shape. But there wasn't enough room in the narrow strips on either side of an old, lopsided brick path to include all I wanted. And the vegetables always overflowed, with pumpkin and squash vines taking up the path and winding around other plants, tomatoes running into the currant bushes that were there, and the sage growing large and overshadowing everything around it.

But the final blow was the vole, or what seemed like a large family of voles. My first indication several years ago was the echinacea. Big, beautiful echinacea in bloom suddenly was tilting to one side. When I went out to see what was happening, I pulled at it and up the whole stalk came, with no roots at all on the plant or in the ground. After much internet research I found this was probably the work of a vole and the next year, almost the entire garden was eaten from below ground. The vole war started, and after trying all the organic remedies I resorted to poison, which still only worked minimally. So last year I planted in cages I made out of chicken wire and decided that was it....I was giving up on reforming this garden and a new one was warranted.

So after close to a year of plans, discussions, hiring and work my beautiful garden is finished (many thanks to Lisa Bailey of BayLeaf Studios in Maynard, MA, Steve Jackson of Stonewalls by Jackson in Lancaster, MA and Miller Fence in Worcester, MA).

But we finished just as the first snow and freezing weather started, leaving me a blank landscape to start with in the Spring. I heeled in existing plants I wanted to replant and hopefully they have made it through the winter.

So the winter months were spent on dreaming and planning....what to plant, where, how many, how to work around the shade areas and slope by the stairs....all the fun stuff.

I plan to post my progress this season in the blog. Any ideas, suggestions and comments are welcome!