by Christie Purifoy | Jul 13, 2020
Recently, I was talking with a friend about her new garden.
At first, we traded a litany of complaints and disappointments.
Deer ate her tomatoes. A groundhog ate my sunflowers. She kept digging up bricks (the remains of an old patio). I kept plucking the nymphs of Spotted Lantern Flies (the newest pest to invade Pennsylvania).
But after ten minutes or so, we both sighed. And almost as one we said,
Isn’t it wonderful to work in a garden?
Here is one of those great mysteries of gardening:
From the outside it looks like drudgery.
From the inside, it does sometimes feel like drudgery.
But when my mind drifts toward my garden, it is rarely with a sense of dread. Rather, whether it is deep winter and I must wait for spring or it is summer vacation and I must wait for homecoming, when I think of my garden it is almost always with a mixture of longing and love, grief and gratitude.
And even the grief (whether I grieve over diseased plants or troublesome pests) is a kind of love.
After our shared sigh, we laughed, and she said, “I’ve heard there’s something in the soil–some mineral, maybe?–that’s good for us. Even if my garden fails, I am glad for this chance to take off my gloves and get some dirt under my nails.”
*
My friend is right.
No matter our superficial successes or failures, it is good for us and for our happiness to tend a bit of dirt.
Scientists have found evidence of soil’s anti-depressive properties, and exposure to dirt and sunshine strengthens our immune systems.
So while it is good to make plans, set goals, and work toward garden progress of one kind or another, the work itself is worthwhile.
The work itself can help keep us happy and healthy.
Here are a few more links for further reading:
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by Christie Purifoy | Jul 9, 2020
When I was in middle school, I wanted to grow up to be an interior designer.
Though I didn’t stick with that particular dream, I have continued to appreciate books and television shows about home interiors. One of the things I’ve heard designers say over and over is this:
“Don’t be afraid to move the sofa away from the wall.”
In other words, most of us use the walls as our guide when arranging our furniture, but we don’t have to do that. Our rooms might feel more comfortable and function better if we pull the sofa out toward the middle, perhaps creating a cozy conversation nook or maybe freeing up space behind the sofa for some other use.
But it usually takes a designer’s trained eye and experienced advice before most of us even consider ignoring the dictates of our walls.
The same is true in the garden.
We may not have walls to work with, but we do have boundaries.
A typical small backyard often has a fence lined with flower borders and a patch of green grass in the center. But just as it is with our sofas, we don’t have to push our gardens up against the walls.
And in a larger yard, the decision to plant and plan according to the outer boundaries can be a substantial opportunity wasted.
I’ve learned the hard way here at Maplehurst that I should have begun my gardening close to the house and moved outward from there. At the very least, I should have planned views, paths, and planting areas with the axes of my home’s doors and windows in mind.
Instead, back in the beginning, I was more likely to plant trees, shrubs, and even flowers out along the edges. It was as if I felt some need to pretty up the farthest view, but I never stopped to consider whether I wouldn’t rather have entirely different views.
For instance, I’ve always disliked the far view of my children’s playset and trampoline. Recently, I realized that if I planted a long, slightly serpentine shrub border connecting two young trees (an ornamental cherry and a Japanese Stewartia), I could define a more intimate space, have something much nicer to see from my kitchen window, and obscure the far edge of our yard.
Instead of an unobstructed view all the way to the trampoline at the edge of the yard, I am hoping that a shrub border will give the sense of something enticing just beyond the line of sight.
Like pulling the sofa away from the wall.
No one need know it’s only dust bunnies back there or a trampoline. And maybe one day I’ll have a woodland garden growing where the trampoline stands now.
Always, there are more garden dreams to dream.
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by Christie Purifoy | Jul 6, 2020
In outward appearance, these two months aren’t alike at all.
But in the heart, mind, and soul of a gardener, they have something significant in common.
These are the months that invite us to pause. To be still. To pay attention. This is how we tend the soil of our own selves in order to better grow the gardens we really want to grow.
Not our grandmother’s garden. Not the garden we visited on vacation. Not the gardens we see in books or on tv, but the garden that is unique to us and to our place.
The garden only we can grow.
Like my cat Tom, pictured above, mid-summer should be lived (and gardened) less frenetically and energetically than spring.
July is for watering, and deadheading, and gathering the first harvests of vegetables or flowers, but the heat of July is there for a reason. It pushes us down–into a chair or onto a hammock–and asks that we simply look. Looking is one of the most important things we can do as gardeners, but attentive observation is too easily lost as we bustle back and forth at work in the space we are making.
When we stop and look–really, look–we can see the gaps we want to fill, we can see the plants we really love (and the ones we don’t), and new garden dreams can begin to take shape. Lately, I’ve been sitting quite a lot at a glass-topped table outside my kitchen door. Because of all that sitting and all that looking, I have begun to imagine a lily pond in the space between the gravel terrace and the flower garden. Perhaps it’s a terrible idea, perhaps it will never happen, but it is certainly an idea I never would have had if I had kept on quickly marching between the kitchen and the garden with only my next garden task on my mind.
July and January: if the garden is a journey, these mid-points are significant. They are signposts we should not rush past without taking time to reflect.
Here are a few “seeds” to inspire your own mid-season contemplation:
- January is a good time to think through what we will plant in spring. July is the perfect time to consider what we might plant in fall, and some argue that fall is an even better time of year for planting. This may be especially true for trees and shrubs. The soil has warmed, rainfall often picks up again, and the plant can grow its roots a bit before resting through the winter and taking off again with vigor in the first warm days of spring.
- Are you naturally more of a plant collector or a landscaper? This is a tension I am always feeling in my own garden. At heart, I’m a collector. I want one of everything and often order special plants before I know where I will put them. But gardens rarely look as good they could without restraint. A hodge-podge is not as peaceful as a landscape thoughtfully designed to look and feel good. Currently, I’m thinking through my approach to a long stone-edged border in my backyard. The plant collector in me has filled it with roses and dahlias and a lot of self-seeders like poppies and cosmos and verbena bonariensis. But it is a border that is usually seen from a distance, and I know it would have more impact if I planted it with big blocks of color. Neither is right, but I do need to take the time to consider which style I really want.
- Sometimes, what we need most mid-season is escape. If we escape into garden books and television shows, we often emerge re-invigorated to tackle our own garden challenges. I love to read memoirs about the making of personal gardens like Charlie Hart’s Skymeadow: Notes From An English Gardener or We Made a Garden by Margery Fish. I also like to browse old episodes of gardening-themed television shows on YouTube. I recommend both seasons of the Great British Garden Revival and the always inspiring and informative Gardener’s World hosted by Monty Don.
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by Christie Purifoy | Jul 2, 2020
We celebrate certain garden plants in our songs and stories, our poems and our myths.
Roses. Tulips. He-loves-me, he-loves-me-not daisies.
And yet, we cannot make gardens out of these stars only.
After all, even the brightest stars need a backdrop of inky black in which to shine.
What our gardens need are the unsung heroes. These are not the main characters in our myths and legends. These are the plants that weave and knit our gardens together. These are the backdrops, the matrix that sets other plants to best advantage.
These are the best garden plants you have possibly never heard of before:
Echinops (Globe thistle): striking blue spherical flowers
Calamintha nepeta (Calamint): with blue or white flowers, this is a wonderful groundcover for smothering and crowding out weeds
Echinacea pallida (Coneflower): a longer-lived echinacea with beautiful, pale, and gracefully drooping petals
Actaea (Bugbane): tall spiked bottlebrush flowers
Agastache (giant hyssop): pollinator-friendly purple flower spikes
Perovskia (Russian sage): striking, silvery purple late-summer color
Stipa tenuissima (Mexican feathergrass): not quite hardy in colder zones and invasive in the southwest, this is still a wonderful ground-covering grass for some gardens
Anemone hupehensis (Japanese anemone): a shade-loving favorite for beautiful flowers in later summer and fall
Sedum (stonecrop): late summer and fall blooms on a distinctive, flat-topped plant; ‘Autumn Joy’ is a much-loved variety
Thalictrum rochebruneanum (meadow rue): a delicate, statuesque stunner
Miscanthus sinensis (silver grass): offers a bold, clumping backdrop for flowers
Panicum virgatum (switchgrass): delicate, grassy foliage
Allium (ornamental onion): starburst and pompom exclamation points for the garden
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by Christie Purifoy | Jun 29, 2020
One of my favorite ways to celebrate and appreciate my garden is by cutting flowers to bring indoors.
This is an especially helpful practice when we are hitting that mid-summer Wall of Discouragement, as I think of it.
You probably know the moment I’m talking about: suddenly it’s too hot, too humid, too buggy, and the garden has lost its spring freshness. At that moment, it is all too easy to see the things that aren’t going right, for instance, the rose buds devoured by Japanese beetles, the blackspot or powdery mildew, the worrisome signs of blight on the boxwood.
Sigh.
This is when cut flowers can turn our perspective right around.
Gardeners have a critical eye in their own spaces. We are drawn to the “not right” and easily pass over the “absolutely wonderful.”
When I cut flowers and bring them indoors it’s as if I put a frame around the garden’s gifts.
Flowers in a vase are the very best of what’s growing in the garden at that moment. Flowers in a vase help bring the garden’s best right up close where we can appreciate it and be nourished by it.
Did a raging storm knock down half the scented lilies?
Are insects devouring a favorite plant?
Is mildew or fungus creeping up the stems?
Each of these scenarios is an invitation to choose to see the best in our gardens and to make that our focus–indoors as well as out.
Here are some links to help you celebrate cut flowers:
Floret Flowers is a family-run flower farm in Washington’s Skagit Valley. Their website, blog, and books offer lots of beautiful inspiration for growing, harvesting, and designing with flowers.
A flower frog is a funny name for an amazing tool. Pop one in the bottom of your vase and use it to secure tall stems. Life-changing, I tell you.
Even if nothing seems to be doing well in your garden, the book A Tree For the House will give you new eyes to see the design possibilities of everything alive outdoors. You’ll be inspired by weeds and shrubs even when your garden flowers aren’t doing so well.
One of my favorite inspiring accounts to follow on Instagram is Swallows And Damsons.
Some tips on keeping cut flowers fresh longer from The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
Finally, even those of us who don’t grow many flowers can see the beauty we do have and celebrate it indoors. I love to add herbs to my bouquets, and flowering herbs especially are worthy of their own arrangement. A bonus is that you can keep your bouquet on the kitchen counter and use it in your cooking. Even vegetables can look amazing brought indoors.
What about a vase of glorious Swiss Chard?
What about a few branches from a leafy shrub?
The possibilities are almost endless.
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