My Favorite Plant Reaches Its Full Potential

Do you see that shrub sticking up deck-high? Just behind the railings? The beautiful, soft green of that most wondrous of plants?

If I stick my arm out of my Adirondack chair, I can nearly reach the top of my all-time favorite plant: my blueberry bush!

That’s right, this year I’m living the dream! In just a few short weeks, I’ll be able to pick blueberries from the comfort of my deck, just as I had planned all those years ago when I dug the hole for it. I’m already salivating about the thought of taking my morning Cheerios to the deck and sprinkling it with a few over-sweet berries, yummm!

Veggie Gardening Colonial Style

As I mentioned in my last post, the Lower Garden at Mount Vernon was among my favorite inspiration points at George Washington’s impressive estate, in part because there was no separation between the practical and the pretty, the vegetables themselves were beautiful. The rows of purple-topped chives added interest among the cabbage. Rosemary created a fragrant, beautiful, and simple-to-maintain hedge around the peas.

Around the fenced-in dipping cistern was a beautifully patterned arrangement of vegetables to benefit from the handy irrigation.

However, the most unique addition was the apple, pear and peach trees trained to grow espalier along many of the fences throughout the garden. It was mind-blowing how these trees had been trained and trimmed to create a low-lying living fence throughout the garden.

The entire arrangement made me eager to rush home and start digging the perimeter of my veggie-garden to be. Fortunately for Chris, I don’t rush much of anywhere these days and instead am making plenty of to-do lists for the summers ahead. More on that later as well!

Is there anything more beautiful than an edible feast awaiting harvest in the garden?

Mount Vernon’s Landscape Inspiration

Chris and I have started a tradition of doing something special for our anniversary, rather than settling for gifts – something we might not ordinarily do, where we can both learn something new and enjoy some time together. My waddling and growing girth limited us a bit this year, so we took a short drive north up to visit Mount Vernon, George Washington’s final estate. (It’s starting to seem as though we’re following President Washington around…)

The estate that George Washington spent 45 years remodeling and improving.

It’s a beautiful mansion on the banks of the Potomac, and the organization that runs it has done an amazing job of preserving even the view from the grand veranda. Outside, as we waited in line for our tour, I admired the arcades on either side of the main house, leading to servants’ quarters and kitchen, respectively, and how what seemed to be honeysuckle had been trained to grow neatly along the columns. From a distance, the flowers seemed painted. Inside I was most impressed to see Washington’s study, because I do love a good library, and it was rather impressive to see the chair he sat in to pen many of the documents that helped dictate the course of our nation.

The covered walkways bordering the main house at Mount Vernon are themselves covered with well-trained blooms.

As our tour guides reminded us, ol’ George considered himself quite the farmer, and his gardens show his passion. The first we toured was the tiny test garden where new or exotic varieties of plants were grown before being moved to one of several other gardens. There was a large orchard that sloped beautifully toward the river. Then on either side of the front lawn were the walled Upper and Lower Gardens. Restorers have created in these gardens their image of what was standard for the time, with some basis in records that Washington kept.

The Upper Garden, which abutted the former greenhouse, was a fabulous mix of wild and tame. Here we found rows of cabbages and lettuce and peas and radishes and other veggies bordered by a hodgepodge of peonies and Siberian irises and tulips roses and goodness knows what else.

The Upper Garden at Mount Vernon

Yet on the side of the walkways closest to the greenhouse, restorers had created a fabulous expanse of topiary in all manner of unique designs.

The topiaries in the Upper Garden at Mount Vernon

It was a fascinating blend of discipline and untamed beauty.

Still, I think it was the Lower Garden that I most enjoyed, because practicality and beauty were combined hand in hand. More on that later…

Sweet Start to Summer

This morning I was greeted with the first rose of summer. The sight left me smiling and I thought I’d share.

Given the rate at which my roses have grown so far this spring, it’s going to be a sweetly fragrant summer.

Garden Week Inspiration

Virginia Garden Week has been taking place across the state this week, and yesterday my mom, sister and I took part in the Norfolk area “open garden” tours. The homes were absolutely lovely and the flower arrangements created by Garden Club members were phenomenal. A number of the volunteers on hand to discuss the various rooms were helpful in offering arrangement tips, and further inspiring my interest in the Garden Club. I’m more motivated than ever to add green new textures to my garden, with the goal of recreating some of the uniquely twisted knots and loops that graced many of the vases.

For my purposes, there was one garden in particular that proved particularly inspiring. Being that tours were in the historic Ghent section of Norfolk, gardening space was at a minimum. Yet one couple had turned their tiny backyard into an endless retreat through the use of meandering paths and natural screens around an incredible koi pond.

I liked the way nandina was used near the head of the curvy stream to create a screen that offered privacy while still allowing light to pass all the way through, and enticed the visitor to wander through the “secret” garden.

Nandinas create just enough shelter for privacy – and visually expand this small garden greatly.

Seating was placed throughout the path, which was lovely since every curve of the narrow path offered a fresh view. I also liked in the photo below how the low growing evergreens near the stream that texture and visual interest, without presumably too many leaves to clean out of the water.

Evergreens and mondo grass add interesting texture to the smooth stream surface and river rock.

You can see in the back of this photo how this couple covered their skimmer simply by placing a tree with low branches nearby, just enough of a distraction to hide the plastic without making clean-up a pain.

Low-growing trees add shade and security for the fish, and conveniently obscure the necessary skimmer.

And of course the entire pond was surrounded by shady protection from birds, making this a safe and delightful place for the numerous koi to swim.

Countless koi are calling this beautifully landscaped pond home.

Now that my own lily pads are turning green again – and the tadpoles are out in force – I’m excited to add some new landscaping to the edges of my water garden.

A New Entrance

I have undertaken one small project since the start of spring. It was something I’ve been talking myself out of since last May when I went on the Hallowed Ground Tour in downtown Fredericksburg.

I dug out my one remaining boxwood from the leaf-covered mess that is the bed by  my front door and in its place added five dwarf boxwoods in a semicircle. The boxwoods end on either side in a rosebush, each of which at one point served as table centerpieces. These roses (name long since forgotten) have delicate yellow blooms and, while hearty, won’t be taking over a bed anytime soon. I then went ahead and transplanted two of my pink Sweet Drift roses,  at once widening the pathway in the bed from which they have been removed, and adding the promise of color and height over what will, in many, many, many years, be a low hedge bordering them in. In the far back you can see the daylilies coming up; they’ll be adding more height this summer behind the roses.

In the upcoming weeks I hope to add a nice row of white impatiens to the front of the boxwoods and a few bags of mulch to tie the whole thing together. The thought makes me giggle; not the mulch, but the impatiens. I’ve always thought of them as boring little standbys, but now I’m coming to realize how all of those standbys are essential tools of the gardener who wants to create a smooth, orderly look with a few knockout touches. Too many “touches” are what gave me such an unordered mess in the first place, and the reason I’ve been rearranging rather than adding to my living palette.

The Best Laid Plans

April at my house has been a jumbled lump of “laugh or else you’ll cry” moments. I guess it really started back in November when the new heat pumps came in. Remember that corner garden I put in last summer? When the HVAC contractors came in to install two massive new heat pumps (bye-bye gardening budget) they unceremoniously yanked out one of my three blueberry trees and squished at least one sage to make room. All that I learned about orderly gardening wasn’t enough to teach me about ordering proper boundaries for the routine maintenance (and then some) of HVAC units. Sigh. That disheartening event made me throw in my gloves, and ultimately abandon my unbundled blueberry root ball to several months of cold and snow. And you know what? I’ll be darned if it isn’t one of the few trees I had budding up at the beginning of February. Talk about tenacious. I have since given that little guy a new place of honor on the opposite side of my deck (although I suspect that still won’t be bribe enough to get any fruit out of him).

My bulbs did come in, sure. I watched as all the neighbors’ daffodils bloomed and then, right when mine started showing signs of life, some pure-evil punk squirrel started ripping off the buds and leaving them in the middle of my front walk. I assume it was a squirrel who, having watched The Godfather one too many times, was leaving me a warning about what squirrels do to gardeners who think they’re being smart about planting rodent-resistant bulbs around their precious tulips.

Split-personality pear tree.

Then there was the pear tree. You gotta love the beautiful white show of pear trees in bloom, and thank goodness my neighborhood and city at large is filled to bursting with them. Mine has a split trunk and, apparently, split personality. The southwest side bloomed while the northeast side stewed; this week they’ve progressed to half green and half white, at least. And don’t even get me started on my cherry tree’s four blooms. Yeesh.

 

If you look close enough, you can see my personal cherry tree festival.

That’s the thing about gardening. Nothing goes the way you planned it. It’s an especially good lesson for me now, though, because there’s another little seed I’ve been growing all fall and winter, one that has filled every cold and dreary day with the brightest sunshine. Nothing goes the way you plan it in gardening nor, I remind myself, in parenting. In the case of both, I’m excited to take the good with the bad and the hoped for with the gloriously unexpected surprises. It’s going to be a long, wonderful and exciting spring and summer.