As the year draws to a close, it's a time to reflect. I'm thankful for family and friends and fellow gardeners.  I'm thankful, too, for past shows like The Victory Garden (the version that ran from the late 1980s through the 1990s) and for folks like Jim Wilson and Peter Seabrook who inspired me through the gardens and the gardeners they explored. Here's what other gardener-friends have been thankful for in years past...

“Plant-wise, I am thankful for Black Scallop Ajuga and golden Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’ [groundcovers] as they are a ‘living mulch’ and the Black Scallop is truly black,” says garden designer Patti Kirkpatrick of Joliet who helps design and plant the hummingbird garden and indoor displays at the Joliet Birdhaven Greenhouse and Conservatory. “I am thankful for the great volunteers who help with plant sales there, too. But most of all I am thankful to be working with Mother Nature as an artist’s medium.  It is ever changing, always challenging, most rewarding.  Just to enhance her work, be it for a short time, is such an opportunity.  And the appreciation of others who enjoy it is beyond words.” Birdhaven Greenhouse is located at 225 N. Gougar Road in Joliet, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day, closed on holidays. Check out www.jolietpark.org or (815) 741-7278.

Father knows best

Bigger.  Better.  More bloom power.  That’s what plant hunter Tim Wood of Spring Meadow Nursery in Grand Haven, Michigan was looking for when he developed the new must-have Hydrangea ‘Incrediball,’ which produces gigantic flowers on strong upright stems.  And when he’s not developing his own plants, he’s traveling across the world searching out new, promising selections for the Proven Winners brand. “I got into this because my dad was a horticulturist. He was in charge of landscaping at Ford Motor Company, overseeing their world headquarters in Dearborn. He also had a nursery that specialized in unusual plants and I would take care of it after school, weekends and during the summer. In many ways I hated it. Hard work, dirty and long hours. But what I loved was learning and growing new and unusual plants. He gave me an appreciation and love for all types of plants.”  Follow Tim Wood on his plant hunting blog at  http://plant-quest.blogspot.com/  Enter stage right

Landscape architect Scott Mehaffey credits his grandparents with instilling an interest in gardens.  Now director of project development with the City of Chicago’s Natural Resources and Water Quality Division, Mehaffey says, “My maternal grandparents were part of the ‘back to the land’ movement after WW II.  They built their own house, planted an orchard and a huge garden, grew berry bushes in the woods and made their own cider.  My grandfather died when I was two and I spent the better part of my childhood helping my grandmother take care of the property.”  But his defining moment came as a theater major in college.  “I had been designing and building sets, setting lights and running sound boards when I realized that I wanted to make real places that would last longer than a few weeks. I picked up the debut issue of Garden Design magazine and I was hooked.  I do think my tech theatre background still influences me--I pay a lot of attention to scale and perspective, architectural style and site furnishings--and to lighting of course.”  Good Read: “Elements of Garden Design” by Joe Eck (North Point Press, 192 pages, $15.00)

Lilies of the field

Jim Ault’s gardening roots likely started in his parent’s large vegetable garden.  ‘I was the only one of three brothers who volunteered to work in there. I even learned to tolerate beets,” says Ault, plant breeder and director of ornamental plant research at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. “My grandmother, too, was an extraordinary fern grower--starting plants from spores--and I remember visiting her in Miami when I was a college student and getting up early to walk around her garden.”  Ault spends a lot of his leisure time breeding lilies. “My wife and I stumbled on the lily show at the Botanic Garden and we were blown away.”  Their backyard in Libertyville, Ill., has become a lily breeding ground. He joined the North American Lily Society and the Wisconsin-Illinois Lily Society and has read everything about lilies from garden magazines to scientific journals. “The whole plant breeding thing gets under your skin and I can’t walk away from it at the end of the day.”  Learn more at www.lilies.org .

From soup to [coco]nuts

Sue Miller’s gardening roots run deep, starting with family visits to her German grandparents home in Iowa where castor beans, morning glories, peonies, phlox, petunias and an assortment of vegetables filled the garden.  “The green beans and peas tasted so wonderful straight off the vines, which, at the time, were taller than I was,” says Miller, a horticulturist who lives and gardens in Geneva.  When she was age 6, her grandfather gave her a grapefruit tree that he had grown from a seed in a soup can. “I still have this tree. It reaches the ceiling and takes up half of my front room. I've kept it alive at least 40 years.”  Family vacations in the 1970s took her to exotic places with unusual plants. “My dad was a pilot so we flew a lot when I was young. He flew in WWII in the Pacific near Papua New Guinea so we traveled to Mexico, Hawaii, Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. In New Guinea we stayed about a month with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. It was a great experience that I will always remember. This is where I found my love for tropical plants and crazy, wild gardens.”  Check out rare and exotic tropical plants for indoors at www.glasshouseworks.com 

The apple never falls far from the tree

When garden book author Stephanie Cohen was 5 years old her parents started a Victory Garden in New York city.  “It was the Second World War and they wanted to be patriotic,” says Cohen of Collegeville, Penn. After planting too many vegetables they gave produce away in a little red wagon.  “We fed the neighborhood. Veggies were boring because I didn't like to eat them,  so I had a tiny piece of land where I planted exotic plants--petunias, marigolds and geraniums. This was the start of my long-term romance with ornamentals. Three books, hundreds of articles and lectures, and 21 years of teaching horticulture. I never found the cure for this obsession and probably never will.”  Check out her book, “The Nonstop Garden: A Step-by-Step Guide to Smart Plant Choices for Four-Season Designs,” by Cohen and Jennifer Benner. (Timber Press, 248 pages, $19.95.)  


...Happy New Year...