The Shape of Good Things to Come

One group of plants brings in more hummingbirds, bees and other pollinators than practically anything else in our garden. It’s the genus Salvia—a group of perennials and annuals that produce flowers in red, blue, purple, violet, white and bi-colors. Their tubular flowers are well-suited to a hummingbird’s long straw-like tongue. Bees, even smaller ones, that can’t fit inside the flowers, take the easy way out by chewing a hole at the base to access nectar.

Besides the common culinary sage (also a Salvia), there are many different species. One that is particularly lovely is the new Salvia coccinea ‘‘Summer Jewel Red.’ This species is also called hummingbird sage, scarlet sage and Texas sage.

The folks at All-America Selections chose Summer Jewel Red as one of their 2011 winners. It was rated superior and above average because it flowers early (50 days from sowing seeds) and it’s covered in blooms through autumn. It works in containers and in the ground in a sunny spot with well-drained soil. Flowers are about ½ inch long on plants that reach 20” tall and 16” wide. I think this one is going to place the older standby, Lady in Red, which, for me, had a somewhat lax habit. Thanks to those hard working breeders at Takii & Co., Ltd. I’m looking forward to buying seeds at my local garden center.

I plan to pair it with blue-flowered ageratum and white sweet alyssum. Or perhaps turn it into a hot-colored container with some Gaillardia and Cosmos ‘Bright Lights.’ Or maybe I’ll put some in the 80-foot-long perennial border with prairie dropseed (Sporobolus), liatris, Coreopsis 'Zagreb', white daisies and celosia. A plant that provides this much bloom power through our northeastern Illinois summer is worth starting from seed.

A Backward Glance in Winter

Over the past 30-odd years, I slowly amassed a large collection of gardening books, seed and plant catalogues, some dating from the 1880s, photographs of American gardens from the Civil War onward, old seed packets and other ephemera. While there are blogs, tweets, Web sites, and still an amazing assortment of horticultural magazines—yes, print is alive, and for some publications, like Organic Gardening and Fine Gardening, doing quite well--I find myself turning to the gardening magazines and journals published more than a century ago for inspiration.

While stuck in the Information Age, where bytes rule, there is something about peering into the past and examining what plants, structures and other elements made up the American landscape during the Industrial Age, perhaps a parallel to our current cultural condition. It’s a challenge to put yourself in that place—considering the events and technology that were available—and trying to give your mind’s eye a 19th Century viewpoint.

This photograph, ca. 1862-1863, is from the U.S. Library of Congress, from the series, “Photographs of the War of the Rebellion.”1 It’s a view “from above of an overgrown large garden, crossed with paths, small buildings, arches and flower beds. Officers and African Americans stand in the pathways.”

Of course, not everyone during this period had magnificent gardens—either home gardens or public gardens. However, many home gardens—whether urban or rural--of the time were quite unique. One of my favorite photographs was taken in Bureau County, Illinois in 1868 and shows a gingerbread Gothic-style farmhouse with an ornamental fence and a few ornamental trees, a barn with an extended decorative pergola and vines growing on it. It was an incredible early garden on what was still untamed and almost endless prairie that stretched for miles behind the farmstead.

That doesn’t mean that everyone could afford an ornamental garden such as that, or that they even had the inclination to create one given all the other worries of survival on the Midwestern prairie.

Just like today. Not everyone down your street has a spectacular garden, I would wager. Gardeners are a unique bunch. And the stories, photos and other details of gardens and gardeners long gone make a fascinating read during these cold winter months.

¹From "U. S. Navy. Edisto Island. Morris and Folly Islands. Fort Warren, Mass. Andersonville Prison, Miscellaneous." photographic album, p 61 (Edisto Island).  Accession source: Library of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Commandar of the State of New York

Walk this Way: Two Good Design Pointers

If you own a house, there’s a good chance you have a side yard.  And you pay taxes on that side yard because it’s part of your property. Even so, many homeowners figure the side yards are an afterthought.  In a crowded city, the side yard is likely to be quite narrow and shady.  In the bungalow where I grew up, the sides of the house were cloaked with hostas and a slim ribbon of cement walk that lead from the street pass the side entryway and to the alley.  

Stand across from any house with side yards and notice how they frame the building.  They are part of the curb appeal.  What’s planted there?  How do the owners access their back yard?  What are the focal points--what draws your eye first?  And second?  

In our ex-urban one-acre setting -- we’re not quite in suburbia and not quite in farm country -- our side yards are quite large and filled with shrub borders and flanked by lawn and steps, planting beds around the foundation and arbors on each side of the house. 

I like arbors because they provide a sensation of leading one through a doorway and into the next garden room.  All the better if the style and  material of the arbor honors the architecture of the house.  This incredible arbor-and-fence combination enhances the turn-of-the-century frame house. What a bore this side yard would be with no flowers, no arbor, no path, just lawn.  There’s be nothing to stop your gaze.

But here your eyes are drawn to the arbor and then the sweep of plantings, curving around and hugging the lawn to the front walk.  It’s a stunning scene even in winter when the plants are dormant. 

There’s something else here that works particularly well but you may not notice immediately.  It’s the color palette.  And a very English one at that with pinks, chartreuse (lady’s mantle flowers), blue salvia, catmint, silver-leaved lamb’s ears, variegated dogwood and white daisies.  It’s a limited pastel palette--no hot-lips' reds, oranges, or other warm tones.  Oftentimes when a perennial border or even a container combination is not quite right, it’s the color palette.  Stick with a triad of colors or a monotone combination of one color and you can’t go wrong.  

For more on effective color combinations, see Painting Your Garden with Plants classes, coming this spring to the Chicago Botanic Garden.   

What are your favorite colors in the garden? 

Eating Locally....Just a Cluck Away?

Winter eggs...pale pink, green and ivory

Chickens. Should we or shouldn’t we?  One neighbor keeps pet ducks in what we call the Falling Down Highly Aromatic Duck Condo.  Other neighbors down the road kept a rooster, but they had a flimsy 2-foot-tall chicken wire fence around its pen and a coyote soon made quick work of it. No more 5 a.m. wakeup calls from that yard. 

A cat that clucks? 

We toured the poultry barn at the Sandwich, Illinois, county fair two years ago, marveling at the fluffy-furry look of the ribboned champs--they were positively catlike.  We have flipped through the chicken-covered pages of McMurray’s, a specialty catalog that offers everything you could possibly need for raising fowl.


To harvest those warm eggs on a summer morning, or prepare all those egg-enriched baked goods, or ponder over our ability to become truly self-sufficient, green, sustainable, and maybe even artistic--knitting a sweater or making some jewelry circa 1975 and incorporating those plentiful chicken feathers...these are the things that entice.

But back to reality...do we need really need eggs every day and how many can we possibly use?  Do we have time for two-legged outdoor “pets?”  Will we look “trendy?”  I hope not.  

There was a time in Chicago when butchers had live poultry that they slaughtered on the spot for customers.  Now, according to every fashionably "green" magazine, Web site, book and newspaper, it's time for every city and suburban gardener to acquire a chicken. Or three. 

So, if we get a few chickens,  will I have to give them names?  And what about salmonella? I’ll never make a raw-egg dish without worrying that someone will fall ill. But then there’s all that potential chicken manure we could use. Maybe we’d be better off with another wacky Golden Retriever.  

My friend Lou tends chickens, a pot-belly pig and other critters on her farmette northwest of Chicago, along with a very large organic vegetable garden and extensive flower gardens. That’s when she’s not working at her 40-plus hour job in information technology, in addition to her grueling commute. Her potatoes--fingerlings, heirlooms and others--grow like weeds in a mix of composted pig manure and hay.  She occasionally bring to work cartons of eggs from her free-range chickens. During winter when egg-laying slows down, her hens produce a few eggs in the most delicate pastels--pale pink, taupe and mint green.  

Hawks or coyotes have occasionally picked off a chicken here or there on Lou’s property, but for the most part, the chickens amble around her garden in summer, pecking at bugs and plants, seemingly happy.  For now, I think we will stick with this chicken, one which stood guarding the flowers in my mum’s former Chicago garden for many years.   

Thinking about chickens?  Check out the rare breeds and supplies at  McMurray’s Hatchery catalog. 

Already have chickens?  Do tell--post a comment or email me at info@thisgardencooks.com