George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

New Native Garden and Sculpture Park Opens in Perry County

July 6th, 2021

   Bill and Jane Allis just built a home garden in Perry County that they’ve decided to share with everybody.

Bill and Jane Allis talk to a tour group at their new Bower Garden in Perry County.

   It’s called The Bower, and it’s a new combination native-plant sanctuary and sculpture park that covers 36 acres in the Carroll Twp. countryside not far from Shermans Dale.

   Six of those acres is a wildflower meadow alongside a residential garden that’s planted with assorted shrubs, perennials, and small trees (mostly natives) around the Allis’s house and pool.

   The remaining 30 acres are woodlands with wetlands, pools, copses of trees, a stumpery, and a mile and a half of trails running through it all.

   Ten sculptures complement the plantings throughout, ranging from a three-foot, polished-brass heron to a 67-foot long, 17-ton steel “Ridge and Valley” work representing Pennsylvania’s different eco-regions.

This Ridge and Valley sculpture by Rebecca Rutstein is the first thing visitors see when they enter The Bower’s driveway.

   The Allises are welcoming a limited number of visitors at no charge via timed appointments and have plans to make the property more of a widely open public garden. (Note: All available time slots for this year already have been reserved.)

   Bill is an environmental engineer (retired from Gannett Fleming) who grew a love of plants at the tropical-plant business his dad ran in Wisconsin in the 1960s and 1970s.

   Jane grew up in Washington, D.C., but spent a lot of time in the woods and nature at a get-away place her family owned. She went on to become an early-childhood teacher.

   The two met at Dickinson College, got married at 21, and bought their 36 acres of Perry County land the following year.

   They raised two sons there, spent the latter 13 years of their careers living in Harrisburg, then moved back to Perry County to retire.

   Rather than sit in rocking chairs, the couple hired the renowned D.C. landscape architecture firm of Oehme, van Sweden to come up with a master plan to do something special with their large and diverse property.

   “We were so fortunate to be able to have this that we thought we should share our fortune,” says Jane.

Can a Robot Weed Your Garden?

June 29th, 2021

   You might be familiar with the Roomba, that little robotic vacuum cleaner that automatically patrols indoor floors for dirt and dust bunnies.

   You’re probably not as familiar with the Tertill, a similar idea for the outdoors that Roomba’s co-inventor Joe Jones developed along with robotics engineer Rory Mackean.

   Tertill, pronounced like the hard-shelled animal, looks like a fat, squat, smoke detector on wheels that patrols the garden for weeds.

Tertill’s underside is equipped with a short string-trimmer line to chop weeds.

   It has a small weed whacker attached to its underbelly that cuts off weeds as it meanders through beds.

   It’s a clever idea… and one that Jones envisions not only as welcome relief for weed-plagued home gardeners but a step toward using robots to help grow the world’s food.

   Tertill has been available for a couple of years now. It offers some intriguing possibilities but also some shortcomings, as I found when I tried a Tertill in my home gardens this spring.

   First, the pluses from my trial.

   Tertill runs on a built-in rechargeable battery fueled by a solar panel on its back, which means no plugging in and no buying a steady supply of replacement batteries.

   It’s also sturdy and weather-proof, capable of bouncing around on uneven ground, getting doused by rain, and dealing with erratic temperature changes without breaking down.

   Tertill’s wheels also do some surface tilling as the unit moves around, giving a second measure of weed discouragement.

   You have to give Tertill a few points, too, for coolness. Gadget-lovers, tech fans, and curious visitors will be impressed to watch this little gizmo rolling around whacking weeds automatically. My grandkids especially liked watching “the robot” in action and pushing its start button to play the cute “charge” tune.

   Most important, though, Tertill really can keep weeds under control – in the right setting.

   The problem is that there are a lot of settings that aren’t right. And if you’re trying to use Tertill in one of those, figure on a marginal job at best.

Is It Once and Done for an Outdoors Philadelphia Flower Show?

June 22nd, 2021

   The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society didn’t want to move its world’s-biggest indoor flower show outside or change the timing from end of winter to late spring.

This Habitat sign spelled out in dried flowers welcomed visitors to the 2021 outdoors Philadelphia Flower Show.

   If COVID wouldn’t have come along, I’m sure the 2021 Philadelphia Flower Show would have taken place inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center in early March, just as it has done to crowds to the tune of 250,000 since moving from the Philadelphia Civic Center in 1996.

   Faced with the prospect of canceling or going outside, PHS picked the latter and made the most of what it could at the city’s FDR Park near Philly’s sports stadiums.

   Normally, PHS knows the show dates and themes three years out. But because of the lingering uncertainty of COVID, a decision hasn’t yet been announced what will happen next year.

   “We are still taking feedback and will make an announcement in the coming months about the future,” said Sin Gogolak, PHS’s associate director of communications.

   My hunch is that if at all possible, the 2022 Philadelphia Flower Show will go back inside the convention center at the usual time early next March.

   For one thing, the show is under contract with the Convention Center for next year.

The outdoors venue at least spread out the crowds.

   I saw the 2021 show four times and thought PHS staff did an overall good job of making lemonade out of lemons – at least with the major decisions.

   The FDR Park site was good for location, the layout between the park’s boathouse and American Swedish Historical Museum was well planned, and the diversity and quality of the display gardens was on par with most years.

   Some visitors actually preferred how the layout was more “integrated” with vendors and food booths more mixed among the gardens.

   The food options also got higher marks than the rather abysmal choices usually available inside the convention center.

   Most of all, though, the leading improvement was how the crowds were much more spread out over the outdoors 15 acres than the more cramped 10 acres inside.

   Despite the prospect of a return to the cattle-herd conditions, I’ll be happy if the 2022 show goes back inside… and stays there.

   A couple of key drawbacks this year outweighed everything else in my mind.

Solution Gardening 3: Even More Plants to Solve Yard Problems

June 15th, 2021

   My past two posts looked at Dr. Allan Armitage’s “solution gardening” theory on how people buy plants – by the situation they address, not their type.

People tend to shop for plants by the situation they solve as opposed to looking for specific plants.

   The posts included 14 situations with my Pennsylvania-geared recommendations on plants that make good sense in those situations.

   Today finishes the three-part series with good plants for seven more yard situations.

   If you’ve never noticed it, my website also has a “George’s Handy Lists” section in which I post a few dozen other gardening lists – all free for the viewing. I’ve added all three Solution Gardening lists to that section as well.

   And I’ve put together an 18-page “Survivor Plants of Pennsylvania” booklet that zeroes in on hundreds of the best plant varieties with sizes, bloom times, and other important attributes that help gardeners get the right plant in the right place. It’s available as a $5.95 download on my Buy Helpful Info page.

   Here are the final seven situations with plants to consider in each:

Shrub roses such as these Knock Outs are a good choice for sunny house foundations.

Plants for Along Sunny House Walls

These are good choices for along sunny house foundations, generally west- and south-facing ones:

Evergreens: birds nest spruce, blue holly, boxwood, cherry laurel, dwarf Hinoki cypress, dwarf globe blue spruce, dwarf cryptomeria, globe arborvitae, juniper, yew.

Flowering shrubs: abelia, beautyberry, bush honeysuckle (Diervilla), caryopteris, dwarf butterfly bush (sterile varieties only), dwarf black chokeberry, dwarf crape myrtle, dwarf lilac, dwarf winterberry holly, deutzia, ninebark, oakleaf hydrangea, panicle hydrangea, red-twig/gold-twig dogwood, rose of sharon (sterile varieties only), shrub roses, spirea, St. Johnswort, sumac ‘Gro-Low,’ viburnum, Virginia sweetspire, weigela.

Perennials: allium, agastache, amsonia, aster, baptisia, betony, black-eyed susan, butterfly weed, candytuft, catmint, coreopsis, daylily, dianthus, dwarf goldenrod, dwarf Joe Pye weed, euphorbia, gaillardia, gaura, hardy geranium, hardy hibiscus, heliopsis, iris, lamb’s ears, lavender, liatris, lilies, liriope, mums, most ornamental grasses, penstemon, peony, perennial sunflower, phlox, purple coneflowers, Russian sage, salvia, sedum, Shasta daisy, sneezeweed, stokesia, veronica, yarrow, yucca.

Annual flowers: ageratum, alyssum, angelonia, blue salvia, celosia, coleus (sun-tolerant types), dusty miller, dwarf sunflowers, dwarf zinnia, euphorbia, geranium, globe amaranth, gloriosa daisy, lantana, marigold, pentas, petunia, scaevola, verbena, vinca.

Solution Gardening 2: More Plants to Solve Yard Problems

June 8th, 2021

   Dr. Allan Armitage’s plant-buying theory is that most people don’t show up at the garden center looking for certain plants.

Arborvitae are the classic choice for solving privacy issues, but it’s far from the only option.

   They’re there looking to carry out a gardening project or to solve a yard problem.

   My post last week looked at this idea and Armitage’s intriguing suggestion that maybe plant-sellers should start displaying plants that way instead of the traditional way of lining up plants alphabetically by their type.

   He dubs the idea “solution gardening.”

   Last week’s post included seven of my Pennsylvania-geared solution-gardening lists of perennials, shrubs, and evergreens. Below is a list of seven more with seven others coming in next week’s post.

   If you’ve never noticed it, my website also has a “George’s Handy Lists” section in which I post a few dozen other gardening lists – all free for the viewing.

   And I’ve put together an 18-page “Survivor Plants of Pennsylvania” booklet that zeroes in on hundreds of the best plant varieties with sizes, bloom times, and other important attributes that help gardeners get the right plant in the right place. It’s available as a $5.95 download on my Buy Helpful Info page.

Plants for Blocking Unwanted Views

Small Trees: American fringe tree, Carolina silverbell, cherry ‘Okame,’ columnar hornbeam, crabapple, dogwood, dwarf magnolia, flowering cherry, hawthorn, hop hornbeam, Japanese tree lilac, paperbark maple, Persian parrotia, redbud, serviceberry, smoketree, stewartia, sweetbay magnolia, three-flower maple, trident maple, witch hazel

Tall Shrubs: beautybush, chokeberry, crape myrtle, elderberry, lilac, oakleaf and panicle hydrangeas, ninebark, red-twig dogwood, sterile varieties of butterfly bush and rose of Sharon, sumac, sweetshrub, viburnum, winterberry holly

Evergreens: arborvitae, Bosnian or Swiss stone pines, boxwood ‘Dee Runk,’ cryptomeria, greenthread/goldthread falsecypress, fir (except disease-prone Douglas fir), Hinoki cypress, holly, juniper, Manhattan euonymus, rhododendron, spruce, upright yew