by Christie Purifoy | Jul 30, 2020
There are two kinds of garden books.
Okay, I’m sure there are more than two kinds, but here are two very important kinds:
- the “How to Garden” books
and
- the “What to do with what you grow” books
A Tree in the House: Flowers For Your Home, Special Occasions and Every Day by Annabelle Hickson is definitely the latter.
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I have never been much of a “flower arranger.” I’m more of a gather-them-up-into-a-mason-jar kind of girl.
But I love this book because it makes even me want to take a little more time and care with the garden flowers I bring into my home or share with friends. I also love this book because it celebrates intricate bouquets and the ease and fun of simply plonking a few things into a jar and calling it a day.
Hickson is no flower snob.
Here are three things I love about this book:
- It’s inspiring! The writing and photography make me want to get outside and start making art with the raw materials of nature, whether I’ve grown them myself or found them on the side of the road.
- It’s practical and accessible. Unlike some books about floral design, Hickson’s instructions are easy to follow. She doesn’t make things harder than they need to be, but she’s clear about the tools and techniques that really make a difference.
- Hickson thinks waaaaay outside the box, which means you’ll soon be inspired to tromp around outdoors cutting branches and weeds to bring inside.
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Who is this book for?
This book is great for gardeners and non-gardeners. It gives gardeners ideas for doing more with what we grow, but Hickson’s adventurous approach to bringing nature indoors can be adopted by anyone, whether they have their own garden or not.
Is this a book to buy or borrow?
I first borrowed this book from my library. By the time it was due, I had decided to buy my own copy.
Now I refer back to this book:
- For Hickson’s recipe for homemade “flower friendly water,” using a bit of bleach, sugar, and vinegar.
- To be reminded that I already have the materials on hand to create something beautiful and special.
- To reconnect with the outdoors even when the weather isn’t conducive for gardening
Explore all our Black Barn Garden Library posts here.
by Christie Purifoy | Jul 27, 2020
Spring bulbs are rarely on our minds in July.
And yet, they should be. If we garden in the northern hemisphere, now is the time to order bulbs for fall planting (if we didn’t place our orders in spring). If we garden in the southern hemisphere, we can anticipate the bulbs that will begin blooming soon.
I love planting bulbs in the garden because they are so easy, require so little care, and make such an impact.
While some are enticing to pests like deer and squirrels, there are many bulbs these animals will ignore, like Narcissus (daffodil), Allium, Camassia, and Fritillaria.
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Here are some especially beautiful and unusual bulbs to consider ordering right now:
- White flowers really stand out from a distance. In the evening they are often the only flowers we can still see in our gardens. I love planting large numbers of a beautiful white lily-shaped tulip called ‘White Triumphator’
- One of my garden goals is to highlight my flowering bulbs with companion plants rather than mulch. Even the prettiest daffodil looks better set against the colors of other plants rather than the brown of mulch or soil. A tip I learned in this recent article comes from one of my favorite Pennsylvania gardens, Chanticleer. Chanticleer gardeners recommend picking up a packet of purple-leaved lettuce. Bulbs will look amazing contrasted with purple lettuce seedlings.
- Scilla siberica is a small bulb that can carpet the area under a tree with shades of blue.
- After blooming, bulb foliage should always be left to die back naturally. Never cut it back before it loses all of its green color. This ensures that the bulb is fed for next year’s flowers. Small, early blooming bulbs can be planted right in the lawn. By the time the grass needs mowing, the bulb foliage has already done its job. I like to plant crocus tommasinianus, or “tommies” as they are often called, because they are supposed to be a little less appealing to squirrels than other crocus.
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by Christie Purifoy | Jul 23, 2020
Some gardening books grab our attention with big promises.
Like parenting books or self-help books, their titles seem to say, “Here is the solution you’ve been searching for. This book will change your (garden) life.”
Lucy Bellamy’s Brilliant & Wild: A Garden From Scratch in a Year sounds a little like that.
A brilliant and wild garden in one year?
It’s a big promise, but I think she keeps it.
If you begin from scratch (by which I mean, you begin with an empty and prepared patch of soil), follow Bellamy’s detailed and inspiring guides, and keep your new garden well weeded during its first year, I feel sure you can have exactly the kind of brilliant and wild garden she shows in this beautifully photographed book.
But what about those of us with established gardens? Do we have any reason to read this book?
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Who is this book for?
Written for beginners, this book offers simple and thorough step-by-step instructions, but even more experienced gardeners will find the plant lists helpful and the photographs and illustrations beautiful and inspiring.
This book is written from the perspective of a British gardener, so those gardening in other countries and climates will need to do a bit more research to determine which of the plants she recommends will do well in our spaces.
What does it offer?
Bellamy writes about a very particular garden style. She calls it “brilliant and wild,” but we might also use words like natural, prairie, and meadow. It’s a style made famous by the Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf in the High Line in New York City and the Lurie Gardens in Chicago.
I love Oudolf’s naturalistic garden style, and I appreciated how Bellamy makes this style accessible for home gardeners.
One of the main tenets of Oudolf’s designs, and those of other designers in what has come to be called the “New Perennial Movement,” is that plants should be chosen less for their flower color and more for the look of the plant through all four seasons. Oudolf is more likely to choose a plant because it has beautiful seedheads in winter than because it has pretty flowers in spring.
What is the main lesson?
Simplicity.
The particular risk of a “wild” garden is that it will look like chaos rather than nature. Nature rarely looks chaotic. It is never planted with one of everything from the garden store.
Bellamy emphasizes the need to limit our palette of plants while incorporating a variety of shapes. She organizes her plant suggestions by shape, which is unusual for a garden book but very helpful for amateur garden designers.
Bellamy also asks her readers to imagine what their garden will look like through all four seasons. This is an often neglected aspect of our home garden design. It is easy to picture a flower in bloom, but what will that plant look like when it goes to seed?
In Bellamy’s “brilliant & wild” garden, it will look more beautiful than ever.
“In a world of quick-fix, instant-gratification gardening, the brilliant and wild garden is something different. With just a few tools and a back-of-an-envelope plan, it is easy to grow a blooming bee-filled garden from scratch in a single year–a space wild in character that happily knits together in a matter of months, brimming with bugs, birds, and butterflies; somewhere that evokes other natural, beautiful places in an incredible sparkling whoosh, wilder, greener, and right outside the back door.” – Lucy Bellamy
by Christie Purifoy | Jul 20, 2020
… in the garden, at least.
Though I’m still not convinced the old adage holds true when it comes to books.
But in the garden?
Even a collector gardener like myself, someone who longs for one of everything, learns in time that gardens looks and feel their best when we plant them with greater numbers of fewer varieties.
In other words: plant densely but with more of the same thing.
Follow this guideline, and your garden will look intentional and less like a hodge podge.
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Here are a few ways I follow this guideline in my own garden here at Maplehurst:
- In the most public and visible borders around my home, I use the least variety. These beds are planted exclusively with ornamental grasses, boxwood shrubs, with a bit of color from self-seeding verbena bonariensis (pictured above). The look of these beds doesn’t change much over the course of the season, but they don’t need much care from me in order to look neat.
- In the more private and personal border at the back of my house, I plant a wider assortment. Here, the ornamental grasses and verbena bonariensis are joined with perennials like spring bulbs, bearded iris, calamint, dwarf dahlias, and agastache. This area requires more care in order to look its best, but the reward for that care is seasonal change and variety.
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The “less is more” guideline isn’t a rule.
There is no formula for the exact right number of plants.
If your space is small, you will probably use fewer varieties. If your space is large, you will use more because the larger space will still allow you to plant in large drifts and repeat certain plants.
The key no matter how you follow this guideline in your own garden is to use repetition.
If certain plants repeat themselves around your space, then the whole–whether your style is more simple or more riotous–will feel comfortable and peaceful.
Like the chorus of a wonderful song.
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by Christie Purifoy | Jul 17, 2020
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” – Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Whether or not we would love roses quite so much if they were called dock or dandelion, the truth is that gardeners need to know the names of plants, and they need names they can rely on.
Our common plant names are often sweet and familiar, reminiscent of childhood memories, poetry, and myth. They have a music the proper, scientific names often lack.
Yet, common names are slippery.
One community’s tulip tree is another’s saucer magnolia. Only the name magnolia soulangeana guarantees we are talking about the same beautiful, spring-flowering, deciduous tree.
If we only know a common name like “Burning Bush” or “Snowball Bush,” there really is no telling what we’ll be given if we ask for that at a nursery.
The flower I grew up calling Bachelor’s Buttons is properly called globe amaranth and even more properly identified as Gomphrena globosa. The flowers most people call Bachelor’s Buttons are cornflowers with the scientific name Centaurea cyanus.
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Are you overwhelmed yet?
For years, I felt overwhelmed even by the thought of trying to learn scientific plant names. I resisted learning them and my eyes would simply skim over those names on a plant label or in a book.
These names sounded difficult and unfamiliar, and I assumed I would never be able to remember them.
But as I began to learn more about different varieties of plants I realized that only by paying careful attention to the scientific name would I be able to guarantee that I was bringing home the right plant.
If I wanted a tall, airy purple verbena I had better find verbena bonariensis. No other purple verbena would do.
If I wanted a native and non-invasive honeysuckle, I had better look for Lonicera sempervirens and avoid Lonicera maackii at all costs.
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Don’t be afraid!
There is no need to learn every scientific name in the book.
Begin small.
Take baby steps.
Soon, Latin names will be rolling off your tongue.
Just as I recommended getting to know twenty plants really well, I suggest beginning by learning the true names for the plants you already grow and love.
Before you know it:
- your garden thoughts will have a new specificity and precision
- you will be better equipped to tell a native from an invasive and a species from a hybrid
- you will understand plant families and will go looking for more things to grow from within a plant family that seems to like your conditions.
Language, it turns out, can open a whole new world for gardeners.
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Here are some resources to help you get started:
A helpful podcast episode and blog post from Joe Gardener.
A pronunciation guide from Fine Gardening magazine.
WHY we use Latin plant names
Explore all our Black Barn Garden Library posts here.
