Turning Toward the Light

GitW: Getting Ready for Opening Day

I was out at Garden in the Woods this morning for our last guides' training session before opening day, which is this coming Saturday, April 15. The expanded plant sales area was filled with beautiful new plants that had been brought in from our new nursery in western Massachusetts, Nasami Farm.

The patio lunch tables were empty and waiting for the first visitors, while the horticulture crew were putting finishing touches on the garden, raking the gravel paths, tidying the beds, and spreading mulch.

We had a great guide training walk, led by our new Executive Director, Gwen Stauffer. Gwen joined the New England Wlld Flower Society last year, coming to us from Callaway Gardens in Georgia. Gwen shared with us her first impressions of the garden, both the things she loved and the issues she was concerned about. And she was very open to hearing our suggestions for possible improvements. It was a really productive discussion, and I think Gwen will be bringing dynamic new leadership to the garden and the society.

We had an amusing and distracting moment down by the pond, when two ducks came in for a very noisy landing, and then proceded to indulge in a "tender moment" in the middle of the pond. I managed to catch a picture of the two of them going at it - the female is almost entirely under water, but you can just see her head if you look closely.

And there were a number of things in bloom. Here are pictures of bloodroot, hepatica, and trailing arbutus.

I've signed up to do the first tour, at 10am on opening day, April 15. So if you're in the vicinity, come on by!

Garden in the Woods - May 27

In the woods: Yellow Lady's-slipper (with Blue Wood Phlox), Showy Trillium, Caroline Silverbell, Torch Azalea

By the pond: Turtle, Bullfrog, Interrupted Fern, Swamp Pink and Cammas, Royal Fern

(The bullfrog seems to be sitting in a mass of salamander eggs.)

The Interrupted Fern gets its name from the way the brown spore-bearing fronds "interrupt" the normal green fronds along the stem. Swamp Pink is a rare plant that is considered to be a wetlands indicator plant. It is very stricking, with bright pink flowers and blue pollen.

More rain and more writings

A chart on the front page of The Boston Globe made it really clear just what a rainy May we've been having in the Boston area. So far (and it doesn't appear to be getting much better before the end of the month), it has rained every single Saturday and Sunday with only one exception. Only 5 days have had more than 75% sun, and only 8 days have had more than 50% sun, and all but one of these days were in the first two weeks of the month. Yech.

Since I am trapped indoors most of this week, I've uploaded a few more landscape design papers. Today's offering is from a course on the British Arts and Crafts Garden. The Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was an attempt to reject the mass production of the industrial era and to return to individually hand-crafted products. Some of the big names of the movement were William Morris and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and it was a direct influence on Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School of architecture in the United States.

In gardening, the Arts and Crafts principles resulted in gardens with a strong underlying structure, usually more formal near the house and less formal further away, the use of traditional building materials, and the artistic use of plants, with careful attention to form and color. Some prominent examples of the Arts and Crafts garden were Gertrude Jekyll's Munstead Wood, Victoria Sackville-West's Sissinghurst, Lawrence Johnston's Hidcote Manor, and Christopher Lloyd's Great Dixter.

I think the Arts and Crafts garden is one of my favorite garden styles. In my visits to England I've managed to visit o the latter three of the gardens listed above, and I've loved each of them. (In fact, one of the papers I'll be adding to the collection later is a major research paper on Great Dixter.)

Today's papers are The Wild Garden, by William Robinson, about a 1899 book which was a strong influence on the Arts and Crafts style, and Garden Rooms in the Arts and Crafts Garden, describing how enclosures, usually of hedges, are used to create garden rooms with different themes.

Rain and Mesclun Geens

It's been wet for three days now, and will continue that way for most of the week. We're all wondering if Boston has been mysteriously transmuted to Seattle. So it's been hard to do much gardening. Just before the rains hit, I was able to cut down most of a juniper near my driveway that mysteriously died this winter. I never much liked it anyway, so was happy to see it go, but getting rid of the skeleton has been an effort. I've removed most of the brushy parts and just need to take a saw to the remaining stumps. Luckily, the base is sort of hidden by some other shrubs so it doesn't look too bad.

Meanwhile, I've been running out in the rain each day to harvest a handful of mesclun for dinner. Meslun is a misture of lettuce and other greens that you grow in a wide row, then cut as you need it. It's particularly nice for a one-person household because you don't have to wait to harvest a big head of lettuce, but can just pick a little at a time. And after you cut it, it will grow back, at least until the hot summer weather hits and everything goes to seed. (The picture shows my row of mesclun just before the first cutting.)

You can make your own seed mix, or buy prepared mesclun mixes, which range in flavor from mild to spicy, depending on the ratios of lettuce to more pungent greens. The one pictured is from Johnny's Selected Seeds, "Mild Meclun Mix", and contains Rosalita, Red Sails, and Saladbowl lettuce, Kyona, Hon Tsai Tai, and Chinese pac choi Oriental greens, and Red Russian kale. Mesclun is very fast growing and easy to grow; you could probably grow it in a windowbox or a patio planter if you didn't have access to a garden.

I like to eat mesclun with just a sprinkle of homemade raspberry vinegar. (Very easy to make; recipe to follow when raspberries are in season. It keeps forever, too - I'm still using some of the 2000 batch.) It tastes as fresh as spring, and is packed with vitamins.

I managed to plant some tomatoes just before the rain started, but they're just sitting there in shock at the cloudy, chilly weather. I was lazy and didn't start my own seeds this year, but Russell's sells variety packs, so I was able to get an assortment of types without having to discard a lot of extras. I put in two plum tomatoes, two early, and two beefstake plants. I also have some broccoli and sugar snap peas coming up, but didn't get to planting the green beans and squash before the bad weather hit. So my vegetables are going to be a little late this year. So it goes.