The North Country Gardener

Big leaves for cold climate gardeners

Once seen...never forgotten...a plant with enormous leaves hovering over the pond at Chartwell, Sir Winston Churchill’s home in Kent, England. And though more than twenty years has passed since we were at Chartwell, I can recall that plant as if I saw it yesterday.

It was a Gunnera (most likely Gunnera tinctoria which is sometimes called the Giant Rhubarb) and I really coveted it. The winters in Kent are comparatively balmy and it was flourishing there. But gunnera is rated as hardy only to Zone 7 (where the winter cold may drop to 0 ℉) so I know there is no point trying to grow it in my Zone 4 Vermont garden.

But I can and do grow lots of plants with great leaves. While none of them are any where near the size of that Gunnera, they certainly attract attention all season long and they often show beautifully against finer textured companions.

Most large-leaved plants do well in the shade, their leaf size being an adaptation that allows them to gather more light for photosynthesis.   Here are four large leaved beauties to consider for the shady parts of your cold climate garden... and you can find them all at Cady’s Falls Nursery in Morrisville, Vermont.

Right now the prize for the largest leaves goes to Astilboides tabularis, a plant that hails from Korea and Northern China. In my garden its flat floating discs are full 2 feet in diameter, just slightly angled on short stubby stems. Thus the overall height of the leaves is only about 30 inches, making them excellent companions for low growing plants. Here they are with the fringed bleeding heart (Dicentra eximia) for a striking texture contrast.

The leaves are definitely the reason I grow Astilboides; its small plumed flowers on 5 foot stems seem to pop up as an afterthought, and I will cut them down fairly soon.

Every visitor to our garden invariably comments on the umbrella plant, Darmera peltatum, from northern California and Oregon. It has 20 inch leaves that catch water in a little hollow at the base and it grows in the dappled shade behind our gazebo. This plant loves moisture so I planted it where it could enjoy an extra dose of rain from the roof runoff. Over five years, it has rewarded me by expanding, as a single clump, to 7 feet across and 4 feet high... and it’s still growing strong. However, for all its size, it is really well behaved and does not put out running roots.

  I also really enjoy the creamy plumes and crinkled palmate leaves (with an overall leaf diameter of 12 inches or more) of Rodgersia aesculifolia, which also originates in Northern China. In this picture, which I took a few minutes ago, you can see the daylilies in the background have finally started to bloom; but ever since May the Rodgersia has been making this corner of the garden a bit more interesting.

Interestingly, in the AHS Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, all three of these plants are all ‘officially’ rated as only hardy to Zone 5, though other sources list them as Zone 4. Certainly in recent years we have had several winters where the temperature has dropped to -25 ℉ up here. I sited the plants carefully in my garden, and they are all growing beautifully. So it all goes to show that you can take ‘official’ zone information with a small grain of salt.

And finally, I have become quite fond of the striking foliage of Ligularia dentata  ‘Desdemona’, another plant coming to us from China, which I can see from my computer as I write this. The original plant has self-seeded, and made a large colony in a difficult spot under the cherry tree on the north side of our house. In my garden ligularias seem to grow much better in the shade, where they produce larger leaves, and are far less prone to the ravages of voracious grasshoppers.

Of course we all grow hostas for their foliage...and some of them sport really large leaves with interesting textures or patterns. One could write dozens of blog entries about hostas, but I am not planning on that. For the record here is one of my favorites, ‘Gold Standard’... lighting up a deeply shaded spot under the serviceberries behind our woodshed.

I am always on the look-out for plants with interesting foliage... whether large or small, fine leaved or big leaved, and also in colors other than green. Against the changing parade of flowers that come and go each month, great leaves really spice up the garden all season-long, and in future blog postings I look forward to sharing ideas on other cold-climate foliage plants.

Solstice Reflections

The long days of high summer (fifteen and a half hours at the moment) and this year’s cool damp June has made EVERYTHING, special plants and weeds alike, grow ‘like Topsy’ in my Vermont garden. And, in trying to keep up with it all, my journal has been sadly neglected.
So now, with an extra long post, I am making up for lost time! For several mornings this week I have been out and about in the garden with my camera, and here are some of the things that caught my eye. And, as I strolled around, I also reflected on three wonderful local nurseries and growers where many of these plants originated. If you have a chance I hope you can pay them a visit this summer... speaking as a gardener I feel that a ‘buy local’ philosophy applies as much to buying plants as to food.
Roses, early-flowering clematis and peonies are the undisputed queens in my garden now, along with a great supporting cast of Siberian iris, nepeta, geraniums, veronica ‘Crater Lake Blue’, several different dianthus, and more.

Pink, white and blue are the signature colors at this stage of the summer.... not ‘meek and mild’ baby colors, but assertive tones that demand attention. And, as with clothes, it is lots of fun to play ‘ mix and match’ with flowers.
  The climbing rose ‘William Baffin’ is one of the famous Canadian ‘Explorer'  series’ of roses... (and yes...they are truly hardy in our Zone 4 gardens). It is definitely a strong pink which seems best paired with a contrasting color like blue. Here it is with a clump of the Iris siberica ‘Perry’s Blue’ growing around the base. With each passing year, a bit like a married couple, this duo look better and better together.

And just outside our kitchen window, there is a second blue/pink combo I really like. Another William Baffin rose intimately shares its trellis with a Clematis Multi-Blue (it has blue/purple petals and unusual thistle-like centers) and the white Clematis ‘Miss Bateman’.

 

A few years back I bought these two clematis, along with several other varieties (all of which are still happily thriving  in my garden) at Rocky Dale Gardens in Bristol, Vermont. This is a great nursery with beautiful gardens, and without a doubt they have the best selection of clematis available anywhere. It is definitely a ‘must-visit’ destination for everyone who loves gardens and gardening. I hope to get over there this summer with my camera and I will share pictures when I return.

Like all gardeners I love peonies. Many of the peonies in my garden came from Bill Countryman, of Northfield, Vermont, a very very special person indeed. After a long career of as a biology professor at Norwich University, Bill began his new life’s endeavor, collecting and growing peonies. Over time he collected almost 1500 varieties, including every variety awarded a Gold Medal by the American Peony Society. Dick and I visited Bill and his wife Ann on two different occasions. Each time Bill graciously took us around his extensive peony fields in his golf cart, pointing out his favorites and telling us about their special points. Tragically, four years ago right at the height of the peony season, Bill died just days before members of the American Peony Society were to convene at Countryman’s for their annual meeting. In response to this devastating event, local Vermont Master Gardeners, along with others who knew Bill and Ann, turned out in force to help prepare the fields for the meeting, which went ahead as planned. And today his sons, Chris and Bill, are still keeping the business going.

 Countryman Peony Farm is an incredibly beautiful spot, and quintessentially Vermont. Their little shop, up on Winch Hill Road in Norwich, overlooks the amazing peony fields. If you are able to make a visit to Norwich in the next few days, many peonies will still be in bloom. Wander through the fields, decide which you want to buy, and they will arrive at your house in the fall, at just the proper planting time. And each summer, as I enjoy my peonies, I always remember Bill with great affection.

Raspberry Sherbet is a variety of peony with intricate shaped flowers and color gradations. For this reason I planted it near our driveway where I enjoy it up close as I come and go. Raspberry Sherbet also stands up to harsh weather better than many peony varieties...a very good thing when you live in the mountains.

Peonies also look good when a couple of contrasting varieties are grown together. Here are a red and pink pairing is nestled in with some Alchemilla mollis and Allium.

I have lost the name of this georgous single peony, one that also came from Bill Countryman. It flowers very early, and if anyone can identify it I would love to hear from you.

And last, but not least, here are some of the smaller flowers in bloom now that caught my eye as I trolled the garden with my camera at first light the other day.

I don’t know anything to match the midnight blue intensity of Veronica austriaca ‘Crater Lake Blue’ and I love the striking contrast it creates against the pale pink striated Geranium sanguinium ‘Lancastriense. This picture does not do it justice. I have had these two in my life for a very long time now, and fifteen years ago moved them, along with a host of other favorites, when we migrated from New Jersey to Vermont.

Jeffersonia diphylla and Primula kisoana are both spring flowering, but all season long their exquisitely shaped leaves make a great addition to the shady corner beneath by my serviceberries. And right now they create a very pretty picture next to the brightly colored dianthus. Both the jeffersonia and the primula came from Cady’s Falls Nursery in Morrisville, Vermont, another gem of a garden and nursery. Cady’s Falls is run by Don and Lela Avery, great plantspeople who over the years have also collected an incredible range of rare and unusual plants that are hardy in our climate. Their gardens are an absolute delight for all serious gardeners. I will soon be making my annual pilgrimage up to Morrisville to scout out some additions for a new section of garden I am currently developing. I will post some pictures of their gardens when I return!

Spring Blues

My garden is in a decidedly ‘blue’ mood at the moment. Islands of blue forget-me-nots are everywhere.... some in planned places and some by serendipity... echoing the color of the brilliant blue sky overhead. And a duo of Indigo Buntings, small iridescent blue birds that winter in Florida and summer in New England, are a delight to watch, as they peck at the millet seed we have sprinkled on our small shed roof.
Yesterday morning I spent time with two very special people, Sharon and her mother, in their peaceful Vermont country garden. Sharon delights in blue flowers, and she was reeling off the names of some of her favorites...Forget-me-nots, Prairie Blue Baptisia, and Bluebells. Sharon is also dealing with early onset Alzheimer's disease, and her garden has become a very special part of her life. This blog post is for Sharon, and for everyone else who who loves blue flowers and has a cool climate garden.

It seems that true blue flowers for the garden are fairly difficult to come by...which in turn gives them  a certain cachet among gardeners. Unfortunately this scarcity value causes the people that write garden catalogues to describe some MAUVE or LAVENDER flowers as ‘BLUE’ ... this distortion irritates me, but it is a personal peeve.

But most of the ‘spring blues’ are the real thing. The first ‘blue’ in my spring garden is Scilla siberica, blooming here for much of April. Since it self-seeds easily, it pops up in all sorts of odd places. It also obligingly co-exists in a big patch of myrtle at the edge of our woods; its blue flowers shine against the myrtle’s dark leaves. And towards the end of its flowering period the lavender myrtle flowers open up as well...a very pretty sight.
My Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica, are the next blue flower to bloom in my garden. They are slightly paler than the Scilla siberica, but still a true BLUE. Over the years quite a respectable colony has developed outside my study window, growing alongside my beloved English Cowslips. Virginia bluebells also self-seed, and new plants tend to show up several feet away from the parents. By mid-June their leaves will disappear, so now is the best time to move any stray plants back into the fold and form bigger groups.
Also flowering at the moment is Camassia quamash. It is more of a lavender-blue, but still very pretty. Since it loves a wet spot, some years back I planted half-a-dozen bulbs in the tall grass near our pond, together with some ‘Summer Snowflake’ Leucojum. We avoid mowing the entire area until after the leaves of both have gone dormant in mid-summer. They have both gradually multiplied and they look great together.

Forget-me-nots are, of course, true to their name. They reappear every year, mostly from the plentiful seed supply produced by each plant. It was ten years ago when I first really appreciated the sight of forget-me-nots growing en-masse. We were visiting the lovely Hamesbest Lilac display gardens in Randolph Center, Vermont, where the forget-me-nots made a veritable carpet in all the beds of lilacs, and I was hooked.
I know some people scoff at forget-me-nots as weedy. Certainly soon after flowering they quickly become tatty and mildewy. So I enjoy the flowers while they last, then assertively cull the plants. This is a quick job and it clears out the beds for the perennials to follow, and still seems to leave a few plants and plenty of seeds to create next year’s display.

A few years back I succumbed to the lure of the renowned Himalayan blue poppy Meconopsis.   Cady’s Falls Nursery in Morrisville, Vermont was offering some beautiful plants for sale and I bought two.  Meconopsis seem to be famous for two reasons...they are a startlingly different shade of blue and they can be really fussy to grow. I sited my new plants according to the detailed directions in the Cady’s Falls catalog, so that they would get a few hours of shade at midday, and carefully prepared the soil. So far they have obliged me very well. Their color is quite unique, and I leave it up to you to decide from the photograph of them growing in my garden how to describe this particular blue.
Perhaps this summer I will try once more to grow Delphiniums with their unforgettable blue spires. I grew delphiniums quite successfully here in Vermont for a number of years, although the individual plants were short-lived for me. Delphiniums are tall growers and they do need to be staked carefully. My biggest problem with growing delphiniums successfully was the wind. We live on the western slopes of the Green Mountains, and by some quirk of geography, when the wind blows out of the south, it becomes incredibly strong and gusty. And of course, by Murphy’s law, this always happened just when my delphiniums were at their peak of perfection, so that they would snap off just above the top tie.
I am still looking forward to a few more blues coming into bloom in the next month or so. Notably there will be Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’ which, as you can see in the picture above, for a while, gives a decidedly blue cast to my big perennial bed, as well as Baptisia and Monkshood...Aconitum carmichaelii.

And, as I contemplate all the blue flowers I have already aquired for my garden, I realize that, like lots of other gardeners, I do have a special spot in my affections for the ‘true blues’.

A Mother's Day Gift

It is the second week on May and here in the mountains of Vermont the serviceberries are blooming...like snow in springtime...a perfect Mother’s Day gift from Mother Nature!

Serviceberries...several different species in the genus Amelanchier...are my absolute favorite small trees. They are the perfect size for gardens; in spring they are covered with delicate white blossoms; and in fall their leaves turn a gorgeous shade of burnt orange. 
 
Serviceberries naturally grow as understory trees...meaning they are happy with less light. Around here they absolutely thrive in the partial sun at the edge of the woods alongside our road. For most of the year they go unnoticed. But for two weeks in early May they become the stars of the neighborhood.

Serviceberries flower early, before their taller forest companions have leafed out. It is an unforgettable sight, looking down our winding dirt road on a misty spring morning, to see a lacy white veil peeking out from under the still leafless canopies of the maples and ash.

I also have a group of four Amelanchier canadensis...the smallest of the tree-sized serviceberries...growing in the shade behind our woodshed. And today...Mother’s day’... they are just perfect.

 And every year, as I anticipate the flowering of our native serviceberries, A.E.Houseman’s famous poem, The Loveliest of Trees, about the wild cherry of his English woods, runs through my head.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide. 

Now of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more. 

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

I do not have fifty more springs to enjoy...so I will live in the present and make the most of each and every spring as it is given to me. And each spring I cherish the beauty of our New England serviceberry, also ‘hung with snow’.

Daffodils: the quintessential sustainable plant

Just down our road there is a small field where, every spring, hundreds of daffodils push up through the meadow grass to greet the sun. They were planted by the people who, back in the seventies and eighties, lived in the house across the road. But that house has been empty for a good while now, and certainly there is nobody to coddle the daffodils.

My garden is full of daffodils as well, and I like to think they too will give pleasure to people who will be enjoying this place after me. Daffodils are tough survivors in neglected spaces.

This week, wherever I look in the garden, I see these great islands of yellow and white. There are daffodils in the flower beds....too many perhaps. But there are also daffodils in the rough grass around our pond and in the scrub at the edge of the woods. There are even daffodils under the birch trees alongside our dirt road....these are for my neighbors to enjoy as they walk or drive by.
 
Back in the fall of 1994, which was the beginning of time in my garden, I bought about six varieties of daffodils, and a dozen of each kind. I sunk them in the ground, somewhat randomly, in groups of threes or fours, along the axis of my new big flower bed. During the first few years the results were skimpy to say the least... a few flowers dotted around here and there...certainly no lavish display. But with the passage of time these six dozen or so bulbs have transformed themselves into the thousands of flowers that Dick and I enjoy today.

How did this happen? Every year towards the end of May, after the flowers are finished but the leaves are still green, I set aside a little time to lift and divide any daffodil clumps that seem to be in the wrong place in my garden, as well as clumps that are becoming less prolific. I then replant these bulbs, anywhere I would like to see flowers to brighten my springs. I plant them with their leaves intact, or ‘in the green’, as we sometimes say, so they can continue photosynthesizing food to fuel next year’s show.

Over the years I have found out the hard way that it is best not to grow daffodils in the middle of the bed where, come June, their spent blooms and yellowing leaves are right next to the peonies and roses. Of course, as everybody knows, if you want a bulb to bloom next year, you must leave the foliage to mature...i.e.turn an ugly yellow, until in early July it wilts in a messy heap on top of the mulch. I follow this advice to the letter. However, contrary to advice from more fastidious gardeners, I do not find my inevitable lack of deadheading in any way ruins the chance for flowers next year.

So I have stopped planting any more daffodils in my flower beds (though inevitably plenty remain from my early plantings). I have also stopped planting them in the lawn to ‘naturalize’ as some garden books advise. In the past Dick has complained vociferously about having to mow around their maturing leaves. 

Now I plant my daffodils in any rough grass around the property (sunny or partly sunny suits them fine) where unnoticed they can quietly mature and die back, and then next spring reappear even more numerously.

This all works because over time a daffodil bulb (or any other true bulb for that matter) gradually expands itself by spawning side bulbs. And, after a decade underground, a single bulb, together with its progeny, will reward us with a huge clump of flowers. Eventually, as things get a bit too close for comfort down below, the number of flowers in the clump may start to diminish. But this has not happened yet with the daffodils in the field up the road, and by my reckoning they have been already there untouched for at least twenty years.

 So, with a small investment of time, you can reposition any badly placed or crowded clumps of daffodils and replant them wherever where you would enjoy a splash of yellow or white next spring. I think of it that my time investment to divide and replant the bulbs is rewarding me with compound interest.

Harbingers of Spring

It is early April...and Vermonters are on the look-out for ‘signs of spring’ to report to our ‘Eye on the Sky’ meteorologists. The most salient signs will be announced on Vermont Public Radio.

Even up here in the mountains, although we lag the valley by ten days or more, there are already several ‘signs of spring’ in evidence:

• A nice patch of snowdrops is blooming near my front door (reminder to self...I WILL plant more snowdrop bulbs next fall)
• The wood frogs have begun their noisy mating in our pond and the red-tailed hawk stopped by for breakfast
• Two tree swallows, along with a lone phoebe, put in a brief appearance
• And last week the road-grader came by (a most welcome event).

The most exciting ‘sign’ was undoubtedly the arrival of the wood frogs yesterday afternoon. Every year their sudden cacophony creates a truly visceral thrill. It means that real spring, with its sunny yellows and greens, will be here in a few short weeks.

It was many years ago now when, one afternoon in early April, I heard a loud quacking noise coming from the pond at the bottom of our garden. Assuming it might be a pair of mallard ducks checking out potential nesting sites, I crept down to take a look. To my surprise, I saw the entire surface of the pond was pock-marked with little moving dots. Then suddenly everything went silent.... I had been discovered! After a few minutes the sounds began again, and I figured out what was making the noise...hundreds of little frogs swimming every which way.

Wood frogs (Rana sylvatica), as their name implies, spend almost most of their lives in the damp woods. (Last summer I spotted one in the leaf litter to show my grandchildren.) But at this time of year a little miracle of nature occurs. Within a couple of days, and right on cue, all the wood frogs know that NOW is the right time to migrate out of the woods and go to nearby small ponds for their annual mating ritual. After a few weeks of frenzied activity they vanish back into the woods, leaving behind large rafts of spawn that, by early summer, and in just our pond alone, will have morphed into thousands of wiggling tadpoles.

This morning (the snow has gone now) the wood frogs (or ‘quackers’ as I still call them) have been in the pond for less than 24 hours when, also on cue, we spotted a keen-eyed red-tailed hawk perched on an overhanging branch. Then he swooped down to snag a frog -- right out of the water -- for breakfast. This is the first hawk I have seen this season up at our altitude (1700 feet); somehow they too know about the ‘signs of spring’.

Each summer Dick and I enjoy watching tree swallows raise their families in one or more of the nest boxes in our big perennial bed. We are also very fond of the phoebes, small birds with a characteristic tail bob, that return each year and fix up their grassy nest above our barn door. Both are fly catching birds and presumably they are attracted by the abundant insect life in and around our pond. But I was really surprised when last Saturday Dick saw a pair of swallows, along with a lone phoebe, in the garden, looking hopefully for food. In early April there are few insects available, so both the swallows and the phoebe left again. And I am reminded of the saying, attributed to Aristotle, ‘One swallow does not a summer make.’

And the final harbinger of spring this week was indeed the road-grader. This ponderous piece of machinery gets rid of the ruts and potholes that plague all dirt roads after the ravages of winter. It does this by scraping off the top few inches of the gravel and redepositing it as a smooth fluffy layer all across the road, which will then be tamped firm by the next dozen or so cars that happen to pass by. Another rite of spring in the country!

Just dreaming

This morning, Sunday, April 5, the garden is weighed down under six inches of new snow and we formally entered the season we sometimes call ‘more winter’.  This can be really hard on spring birds who have already arrived up here in anticipation of nesting. Today a song sparrow was poking at the mesh sunflower feeder by our dining room window, and later Dick heard him singing in the snow...which all seemed a little incongruous. And out on our low shed roof a group of juncos were furiously digging into the snow to reach some millet seed I put there a couple of days ago.
 
Although is all very beautiful I am going to indulge in some day-dreaming about the spring days to come.

Here are two spring favorites that will be soon return. The first to come will be the Tete-a-Tete daffodils, among the very earliest daffodils to flower in my garden:
 
And by early May the primroses will here too. My yellow primroses always remind me of the English cowslips that my mother and I used to find in the woods near our house in Kent. Many years ago now I found a small plant of these 'Hose-in-Hose’ primroses at Rocky Dale, a great local nursery with its own lovely gardens in Bristol, Vermont, that specializes in unusual plants. The primroses adapted well to life in my Goshen garden, and over the years I have divided them again and again, so now each spring they light up every shady nook

Garden Walk-About: April 2009

Today is April Fools Day, and I went on my first ‘garden walk-about’ of the season. Juncos, goldfinch and sparrows were busy scouring the flower-beds for seeds, and a few snow-drops were bravely showing their faces. The snow has almost completely gone now, and the emerging garden looks a tad dreary...it will be several weeks before my beloved daffodils light up the scene.

Today’s big question...after five months of winter which perennials are still standing upright??

 As part of the autumn ritual of ‘PUTTING THE GARDEN TO BED’, most fastidious gardeners will consign every last perennial to the compost pile. But I feel they are missing out on the second perennial season...that of seed heads and stalks outlined against winter’s snow.

So my normal routine is to leave a number of perennials, such as the Miscanthus and Rudbeckia you see in this picture, standing throughout the winter. However I will cut back perennials, like asters and phlox, that I think may look messy as winter progresses.

But this past fall, Dick was hospitalized for several months, and I was totally pre-occupied. So no garden clean-up what-so-ever happened around here. Now that my life is returning to normal, I am turning our ‘big brush with adversity’ into a 'little opportunity'. Today I looked at EVERYTHING, and I made a LIST of all the perennials that still look good in April, so that next fall I will know WHAT TO CUT AND WHAT TO KEEP!

I was not surprised to find all the rudbeckias and astilbes  still looking quite presentable, but the shasta daisies were truly a mess.

A number of shorties, which I had really enjoyed in November outlined by the frost or in December against a shallow snow, became completely smothered by snow in mid-winter. However now, as the snow recedes they have all emerged completely unscathed. These sturdy low growers include:

• The woody herbs: sage, savory and lavender
• The two-foot high aster Purple Dome
• Diminutive sedums like Sedum cauticola, Sedum floriferum and Sedum ‘Ruby Glow’
• Nepeta ‘Walkers Low’ and Astilbe chinensis 
• The spiky blue grasses (Festuca and Helictotrichon)

I will cut all these back sometime before the new season’s growth starts in early May, and I also made a note to cut the old leaves off the epimedium BEFORE it comes into flower in late April.

The perennials that remained above the snow all winter were an even greater addition to the winter garden. These are the best of the best:

• Sedum Autumn Joy coupled with Chrysanthemum ‘Mary Stoker’
•  Astilbe ‘Straussenfeder’ or Ostrich Plume Astilbe... its arching plumes were stunning all winter long
• Rudbeckia ‘Herbtsonne’ grown with Miscanthus grasses.
• The shorter Rudbeckia ‘Goldstrum’  with any Nepeta
• Switch grass Panicum ‘Dallas Blues’ Echinacea and Aster lateriflorus ‘Lady in Black’
• The small iris sibirica ‘Flight of Butterflies’
• Thermopsis caroliniana

Also the cimicifuga and some of the tall phlox are still interesting spikes today (they did not all make it standing upright, but I will keep them next winter)

And what should I cut back before the snow comes? Here is today’s list:

• All Shasta daisies and all daylilies
• The two grasses, Panicum ‘Shenandoah’ and Molinia ‘Sky Racer’
• Baptisia australis

These all ended up squishy disasters...and they played no useful part at all in a snowy winter garden.

Community Gardens--Taipei style

Community gardens are popping up in the small towns and villages across my home county of Addison, Vermont. This year there are six so far.  Last year there were just two!

Community gardens make use of spare land, such as outside a school or behind a business. The land is divided into plots (typically 20’ x 20’) which are leased, for a nominal price, to local families who use them to raise their own vegetables.

These days, all across America, the community garden concept is catching on like wildfire. People are discovering that growing vegetables can actually be a lot of fun. They are also discovering that food grown close to home really tastes better. As the bumper sticker I saw yesterday proclaimed ‘Locally grown food is thousands of miles fresher’!!

 In some parts of the world the idea of using spare land to grow vegetables has been around for centuries. Growing up England I remember very clearly what we called ‘allotments’. These English-style community gardens were squeezed into every available spot, such as in the triangle where two railway lines come together. And in Britain today, where people often have to ‘queue up’ to get an allotment, a lively social protocol has developed among young ‘allotmenters’. Check the blog  Horticultural for insights into modern-day ‘allotmentering’ in the UK.

 On our visit to Taiwan, a couple of years back now, we also saw allotments, this time Taipei-style. On the first morning as we recovered from our arduous 24-hour journey from Vermont to Taipei, Eleanor  dropped off Miles at his Chinese pre-school, and then took us up the THOUSAND STEPS... a steep trail of rocky steps running straight up into the hills above Taipei.

 First we passed a small park where elderly people were performing their early morning tai-chi ritual. As we climbed higher, we looked down to see the whole city laid out below us.

On either side of the trail, houses were built right into the hillside and, for some of these houses, their only connection with the outside world was via the steep path we now traveled.

And all along, wherever a flatish piece of land could be found, we encountered ALLOTMENTS, set cheek-by-jowl together. It was still early in the gardening year, so the first spring crops--including all kinds of Asian greens -- were just emerging.

And in some cases we saw not-so-flat land being terraced for new gardens too.

Like Japan, Taiwan is an island where much of the geography is taken up by a central swath of mountains. And even a casual observer to either country has to notice how every small piece of available land is pressed into service to grow FOOD. Perhaps it goes without saying, but in Island Nations, like Britain, Taiwan and Japan, since land is scarce, it becomes more highly valued and so better utilized.

Maybe, in America, as oil becomes less available, it will become economically non-viable to continue transporting all our vegetables from another coast, or even another country. Then perhaps we too will be motivated to extend today’s ‘community garden’ trend and convert some of the seemingly ‘waste land’ along our highways and railroads into productive ‘allotments’.

A Day for New Beginnings

Today is the Vernal Equinox, (or spring equinox) when all over the world there are approximately 12 hours of night and 12 hours of day, and the sun stands directly overhead at the Equator. In the northern hemisphere it is also called First Day of Spring, and for north country gardeners it is like a second New Year’s Day.

No, real spring, with daffodils and crocuses out everywhere, has not actually  arrived in Vermont yet. (Although yesterday I was thrilled to catch my first glimpse of some bright yellow crocuses open wide, huddled against the southern wall of the Congregational church in Middlebury.) But right now there is a buzz of expectation running through the gardening community as we make our plans, promises and resolutions for the season ahead. Today is our DAY OF NEW BEGINNINGS!
 
And Horsford Nursery, off Route 7 in Shelburne, with their their huge count-down message out on the highway for all to see, has been really ramping up our spring fever for quite a while now. ‘5 WEEEKS’ it proclaimed last week! Actually they will opening for real on April 13.

And, to whet your appetite for spring, here is a picture, taken on May 15, 2005 of one of their gardens.

Horsford— locally owned of course—is one of my favorite nurseries in this part of Vermont. And if you live around here, and have not been before, I highly recommend you put it on your list of ‘PLACES TO GO’ this spring.

I have always been a big ‘Buy-Local' fan, not only with my food-buying decisions but also with my garden purchases. Locally-owned businesses, run by our neighbors and colleagues, are truly the life-blood of our communities, and they really deserve all the support we can give them. So, over time in this blog, I hope to introduce you to a number of GREAT locally owned nurseries or growers that offer something special for us gardeners.

Actually Horsford is both a nursery and a grower. Not only do they offer a huge selection of all types of plants for your garden, but they also raise many of their own trees and shrubs right there in their fields. Indeed you can walk out down the rows and choose the particular plant you want. They will either dig it for you on the spot, or tag it to be dug at the appropriate time for planting. NOW THAT’S FRESH!!.

It goes without saying that all the plants they grow will thrive in Zone 5 (the Champlain Valley) and most will be quite happy in the coldest areas of our state as well. And all the sales staff ‘know their plants’ and they can help you make the right choice for your particular location. This is just another benefit of patronizing a local nursery, instead of chasing a so-called ‘bargain’ at the ‘big box store’ up the road.