George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

The Layered Garden Guys

November 8th, 2016

One definition of “layering” in the garden is placing plants so that the tallest ones are in the back, followed by mid-sized ones in the middle, and then the shortest ones in front.

This is the back of David Culp’s and Michael Alderfer’s Brandywine Cottage.

Another definition is how nature “layers” itself by growing a tall canopy of trees with shorter, under-story trees beneath those, then a shorter shrub layer beneath that, and finally a groundcover layer closest to the ground.

Then there’s the idea of layering gardens by planting different plants that peak at different times, handing off to one another as the season progresses.

That’s the version that David Culp and Michael Alderfer use in their 2-acre Brandywine Cottage gardens in the countryside outside of Downingtown in Chester County.

These gardens became renowned as the basis for Culp’s 2012 book, “The Layered Garden,” which was a best-seller that year and won 2012 best book honors from the Garden Writers Association.

I got to see the gardens on a trip that Lowee’s Group Tours and I put together at the end of October.

The gardens had had a pair of brushes with frost by then, and the perennials were at the beginning of cutback time, but enough was still going on to show the diversity of this place.

Houseplants in Waiting

October 25th, 2016

I was reading an article the other day that mentioned how houseplants are “out” – not very trendy and apparently not something many people want to mess around with these days.

Houseplants aren’t all plain-Jane green. Check out this Rex begonia.

I can understand that, especially if your view of a houseplant is a boring bushy-green Chinese evergreen or one of those cheapo bargain-store peace lilies like Aunt Sally was growing 40 years ago.

Growing houseplants also takes some effort and know-how. A lot of people kill them from over-watering or from shoving them in a dark corner and ignoring them for months.

Others don’t like the idea of potential molds and allergens from pots of damp organic matter in the living room. And no one likes the fungus gnats that houseplant-growing often breeds.

But (you knew a but was coming) houseplant gardening can be something more than a feeble side show designed to keep gardeners from going stir crazy for 5 months in winter.

Dead Plants? It’s OK with Me

October 18th, 2016

Some gardeners get upset when their plants croak, counting it as a miserable failure at best and botanical murder at worst.

If you garden, you WILL kill plants. Look at it as a learning experience…

Me? Eh, it happens.

Garden long enough, and you realize that dead plants come with the territory.

No matter how much you know or how much babying you do, plants die. It may take 300 years for a sycamore to do it, 50 years for a peony, or in my yard, just one or two for a “perennial” lady’s mantle, Jupiter’s beard or scabiosa. But sooner or later, all plants die.

One positive to spin to put on it is that killing plants is a learning experience.

As horticulturist Jimmy Turner once said, “The success of my garden is built on the compost of my failures.”

Or as the late North Carolina nurseryman J.C. Raulston put it, “If you are not killing plants, you are not really stretching yourself as a gardener.”

Nicely said.

If you can figure out why a plant died, that’s only going to jack up your success odds the next try and make you a better gardener in the long run.

But I’ve also learned not to blame myself every time a plant dies.

Snowy Winter Ahead?

October 11th, 2016

Are we headed for this?

I read AccuWeather’s long-term forecast for this winter with a touch of dread.

The projection is for temperatures 3 to 4 degrees below average with a lot of “snow events.”

I don’t care for even normal winters (whatever they are anymore), so this supposedly cold and snowy one isn’t one I’m looking forward to.

The promising part is that forecasts are often wrong even a day or two out, so this could be a sign that we’re in for a clear and balmy winter.

On the other hand, AccuWeather could be wrong in that things will be even worse than the projection.

The bottom line is that we’ll get what we get when we get it – and have to roll with the punches as they happen.

We can do a few things now, though, to nurse our plants through any coming vortexes and/or snowmageddons. Here are eight “do’s” and four “no-do’s.”

Plants Like Ours

October 4th, 2016

Although it’s six time zones and an 8-hour flight across the Atlantic away, France has remarkably similar plants to our own.

French plants are a lot like ours… except we don’t do grand parterre gardens like this one at Chateau de Villandry.

I’m just back from leading an 8-day trip to great gardens in and around Paris, and of all the foreign countries I’ve been to (not counting Canada and Texas), this one was the most familiar plantwise.

The countryside looked identical to roadside I-283 – right down to fields of drought-stunted corn and a nuclear power plant with one tower spewing steam and one not.

No doubt the similar climate has a lot to do with the plant similarity. We both have four distinct seasons, erratic rainfall, and snow in winter, although Paris is slightly milder in winter.

If you just want to see some of the impressive gardens and sights we saw, check out the Paris 2016 Photo Gallery I just posted.

If you’re curious about what caught my eye, read on…