The Good Old Days

For the past 15 years, I've researched what makes the midwest American garden so unique. I've collected old catalogs, books and photographs, many of which are more than 120 years old.  But some things, like this beautiful 1893 Vaughan's Seed Store catalog from Chicago, can only be found in the archives of The Morton Arboretum Library in Lisle, Illinois.  Check out www.mortonarb.org

I love the marketing that went on in Victorian-era seed catalogs.  Some things never change. The so-called simple flowers of old gardens were not that simple. Gardeners back then were bombarded with newer, bigger, better, more colorful annuals. There was an incredible influx of plants and seeds brought into the U.S. The canna lily flower on the cover is spectacular (and a trendy plant again for today's tropical-inspired gardens). But, it's the slogan, "Gardening is an employment for which no man is too high or too low" that hits home. In other words, send us 35 cents and we'll send you seeds for some of the newest annuals so that your tiny garden can look just like the big estate gardens. 

This particular catalog was issued the year of the 1893 Columbian Exposition--the World's Fair--in Chicago.  “Opening the Vaults: Wonders of the 1893 World’s Fair” is a special exhibit at Chicago's Field Museum, which will run through Sept. 7, 2014. Now, you can get a rare view inside The Field Museum’s vaults to see incredible artifacts that bring to life one of the most spectacular events in the Windy City’s history.

 The Field Museum is at1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago; 312-922-9410, fieldmuseum.org.

Monday Musing

Scarecrow.  Door County, Wisconsin.  I drove past this house and then decided to come back and have a better look.  A whimsical little vignette.

I'm in search of the perfect scarecrow, but have yet to find the right one.  This one was cute from the Evanston Garden Walk a few years ago.  I have weeping spruces.  This could work.

One year, my scarecrow wore this shirt with the slogan, "Enough is just a Little Bit More," a slogan I spotted on a bench in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.  But what the heck does that mean?  Just when you think you have enough it's actually more than you need?  I still need a few more scarecrows.

Here's a potential scarecrow.  This is Mad Mom from the Frederik Meijer Sculpture Gardens in Michigan.  You have to see that place--great gardens, sculptures and live music of all sorts.  Wonderful.

This scarecrow watched over the basil patch, here going to seed one fall.  It's too bad this scarecrow can't scare off basil blight.

This is Debbie Rea's wonderful scarecrow in her lovely, organized vegetable garden.  Not a crow around but plenty of herbs and veggies.

My brother Greg makes an AWESOME scarecrow but he doesn't really want to be out there for more than 10 minutes.  Besides, he has his own pepper patch -- several hundred hot peppers from around the world -- that he nurtures.  And he even overwinters a few pepper plants indoors each year.

Another year in our garden.  Standing guard over the Brassicas for late fall harvest.  Cabbage butterflies  ignored it.  

Evanston Garden Walk school garden.  The kids at this elementary school did a great job designing the scarecrows.

How clever---a face made from a colander filled with ornamental fruit.

 

This would be the ultimate scarecrow.  A gigantic horse.  My Spouse is checking out its knee.  How did the Frederick Meijer Gardens ever get this on the property.   No horsing around.

Here's to Hue

The snow is about to start flying again this weekend with another 1 to 3 inches in the forecast.  This is a good time to hunker down and start thinking about how to refine the mixed perennial-annual-shrub border.  Cool colors--mauve, purples, pinks and blues--have always been a favorite, but it's tempting to do a hot-colored garden outside the vegetable garden. 

 

 

 

 

Hot (or warm) colors like reds, oranges, orange-yellow, can provide eye-popping color at a distance whereas blues and violets fade away.  That was the case this summer when I planted Salvia guarantica, Salvia farinacea and dusty miller outside the picket fence, which is about 80 feet from the house.  They flowers disappeared against the vanilla-white fence.  Time to rethink that planting.



 

 

 

A nice clump of bold cannas--the combination above (red salvia, canna, zinnias and dahlias)--courtesy of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois (www.mortonarb.org) would provide a focal point against the veg garden arbor.  And all of the flowers on these annuals attract hummingbirds and other pollinators. 

 

 

 

And, where there's not a lot of space--on a deck or patio, for instance--I could still do a few sizzling-hot combinations, like this one above--plectranthus and caladium.  Great colorful foliage for a shaded spot. 



 

One other thing I'll be looking at is how to combine more contrasting shapes in the mixed border. The stachys and coreopsis above works well but I'll be doing this in larger blocks throughout this long, deep border. 

Now, where is that snow shovel?  Enjoy your weekend. 

Looking Ahead: One gardener resolves to reflect, read and bloom

For those who missed my essay in the Sunday, January 13 Chicago Tribune...

“Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination. You are always living three, or indeed six, months hence.”  -- Alice Morse Earle, “A Taste for Gardens” (1897)

In the coming weeks, snowdrops will push their leaves through the frozen soil and unfurl their delicate little bell-shaped flowers. But gardening season remains a long way off so I stare out the window. And reflect. The occasional snowfall in the past month has concealed or at least relieved many of the little errors I’ve planted over the years. There are the shrubs--viburnum, ninebark and weigela--that outgrew their intended space. There are hordes of non-native grasses that decided to sow themselves around the perennial border and elsewhere. There’s the small grove of river birches that, in retrospect, should have been the more attractive alders, or swamp white oaks that hold their burnt umber leaves throughout the winter. Who knew?

And so I resolve to “fix” this year’s garden with a few resolutions. But before I put pen to paper in my garden journal, I checked with a few other gardeners to learn their New Year’s intentions. 

Susie and Rich Eyre of Rich’s Foxwillow Pines in Woodstock have practical plans for the conifer and perennial gardens surrounding their 19th Century farmhouse. “Our garden resolutions for 2014 are to use more compost, more water, and more mulch,” Susie said. (I make a secret note in my garden journal that she said nothing about adding plants. I’ve seen their garden. I predict they will add many plants but she doesn’t realize it right now.)  

Jean Starr, editor of the Midwest Peony Society newsletter, is a realist. She admits that just because you have a resolution doesn’t mean that it can’t cover multiple growing seasons. “My resolutions are usually a carry-over from previous years. They include adding organic fertilizer in the form of compost or composted manure.”  Check. “I’m not adding anything new until I remove the plants I don't intend on keeping.” Check. “I plan to continue indulging my penchant for unusual plants because that's one of my main reasons for gardening.” Check. (Jean loves perennials, especially peonies and day lilies. I make another secret note that she is going to buy many new plants that will patiently wait in their pots for a spot in her garden in Chesterton, Indiana, while she decides which existing plants to evict.) 

Garden designer Patti Kirkpatrick of Joliet is still pondering what she might do this spring. “I guess my gardening resolutions for 2014 would be to plant more suitable-for-drying species to make an all naturally decorated Christmas tree this year, reclaim my neglected edges, and replace more fences in need of repair.” (I make a secret note in my garden journal, resolving to be more like Patti Kirkpatrick in 2014: thin and ballerina-like. With a knockout garden.) 

A few snowflakes are falling as I look out toward our big vegetable garden. When the wooden picket fence surrounding it finally began to rot last fall, we dismantled it. (When I say “we” I mean My Spouse. My ever-patient spouse who admitted that his resolution this year is to not move any more small trees that I’ve planted no matter what.)  Fence shopping is boring in the middle of winter, so before I begin making concrete resolutions (besides the usual ones--lose weight, eat healthy, exercise, etc.), I turn to my bookshelves in search of a distraction.  

I come across the American poet Ogden Nash, who in 1943, penned “My Victory Garden.”  The poem’s last stanza is my favorite: 

"My farming will never make me famous,

I'm an agricultural ignoramus,

So don't ask me to tell a string bean from a soy bean.

I can't even tell a girl bean from a boy bean."

My resolutions last year focused on growing edibles, including beans of all types, along with “add more tomato plants, get the soil tested, put in raised beds, take out more lawn, put in some apple trees.” A few of these things were much easier to accomplish than my annual, yawn-provoking “exercise regularly” resolution. 

I page through a slender volume, “In Your Garden,” a 1951 collection of newspaper articles by Vita Sackville-West, whose English garden, Sissinghurst, continues to draw visitors long after her death in 1962. In one winter column, she wrote about planning a grey, green and white garden--an ethereal moon garden to be enjoyed on a summer evening. 

“I cannot help hoping that the great ghostly barn owl will sweep silently across a pale garden, next summer, in the twilight--the pale garden that I am now planting, under the first flakes of snow.”  

And then it dawned on  me. My gardening resolution is not about gardening. What I really want to do is sit in my garden and observe rather than work feverishly kneeling and planting, dividing, edging, watering, fertilizing, pruning and tweaking.  And so I revisit one of my favorite quotes by James Douglas from his 1930 book, “Down Shoe Lane.” 

“It is a good idea to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.”  

A reverie of suspended thought. Into my garden journal goes this year’s only resolution: “Read More, Weed Less.” (I make a secret note to revisit that entry frequently.) 

What are your garden resolutions for the year?