Green Beans

My husband specializes in growing fruits (peaches, plums, raspberries), and vegetables (green beans, cucumbers and eggplant this year).  We probably will not get any eggplant, but we had a bumper crop of beans and cukes.  I was disappointed a few weeks ago with the beans; we seemed to be at the end of their too short season.

The beans that I was picking were thick and barely edible.  I also noticed white beans in the pod.  Dummy, this is where beans that  vegetarians like me live on come from! 

 I threw a bunch of them into the crock pot with some dried white beans, soaked them and cooked them.  My daughter made a delicious soup with the white beans, vegetable stock, sweet potatoes, sauteed onions, and plum tomatoes.  Some day, perhaps next summer, I would like to make a soup with just the white beans from my garden and compare how they taste with the dried beans.  In this picture, I show a mature bean, opened up to reveal the white beans, and a young green bean, with no white beans yet.  They must grow quickly - for the green beans become inedible in just a few days.

Gardening is like child-rearing

Last night I gave some friends a garden tour.  As I walked, I  become uncomfortable with the state of things.  My garden is a mess!  Granted, it has been hot and humid (sweat was pouring off of my sunglasses as I worked outside yesterday), and I have been working full time, cutting out a lot of time for weeding.  Even the spots that I have been able to keep up look so so at best.

This picture shows a garden full of flaws - the asters in the center front need to be moved forward; the phlox is too dominant; the dianthus in front of the phlox are not blooming; the lavender just looks sad. 

If you can see beyond the flaws, there is tons of potential.  The lavender will grow and its silver-purple foliage will balance nicely with the blue-silver foliage of the festuca on the left.  The veronica on the right will most likely have a longer bloom time in its second year of residency, balancing the phlox.  Taller annuals can be placed in the middle back of the border, giving the border more color.

Raising kids can be like tending to a garden.  You can have a super-neat garden with lots of impatiens and hosta.  There is nothing wrong with that scheme; it can be quite soothing.

You can also think about kids the same way.  Like they were formed from a cookie press.  Once they are out, can walk and talk, you know who they are.  This one is gregarious; this one is serious; this one is an athlete.  The problem for me with this approach is that it ignores the big element of children growing, changing, evolving.  Somebody can be a klutz when they are young, and go on to become a decent tennis player when they are older.  They can work hard and conquer math.  The list goes on and on.

I do not despair when  I see the picture above.  I say to myself  "this doesn't look to good - it will look better next year."  That, for me, is the fun of gardening and the challenge and joy of  raising children to become happy, healthy, responsible adults.      

Perfection in the Garden

There is a garden that I drive by frequently that is almost perfect.  It has just the right amount of balance - tall grasses balance beautifully with shrubs; white clumps of impatiens are placed throughout the border, keeping your eye moving, not stuck.

There are two problems with this perfection, though.  One, it is static.  There has been no change for months, not even a stray weed appearing.  Second, I have never seen anyone in the garden, admiring it, or enjoying it, or working in it.  Its beauty and perfection are sad rather than joyful.

I much prefer a small garden that I often walk past. It is sometimes messy, but always boisterous.  Black eyed susan, purple coneflower, ornamental grasses co-exist with weeds.  I get the feeling that this owner sees something she loves and plants it -  whether it "goes" or not.  This is a happy, messy place - a place with  love.

I have included a picture of one of my own garden borders.  I have to move the Russian sage (that droopy, gray-purple flower in the center) to the back so that I can really see the deep green-blue herb with pink flowers in front of it (I wish I know the name - it might be a thyme).

You also see the white house behind the border, and often a car or two.

Clearly, this image is not magazine-ready.  It is a source of joy for me though - colorful, dynamic, full of life - the way a garden should be.  (We have planted three tiny arborvitae in the back - some day the white house won't be so obvious.)

Going on Vacation

My husband and I leave tomorrow for a much needed vacation to sizzling Washington, DC (to see our daughter), and the Jersey shore (Cape May, not Wildwood).  My computer is on my 3rd floor, which at 10 AM is a comfortable 90 degrees.  At 3 this afternoon, I plan to bake bread on the windowsill.

Before I leave, I want to show a gift from my husband.  We bought a cut-leaf maple several years ago and planted it in a shady part of the garden between two patios.  The tree was surrounded by a motley grouping of hosta and sweet woodruff.  A few years ago, my husband decided to re-arrange the hostas into groupings.  The yellow-green hostas are in the front of the tree - they were all over the place before he got to work.  The same with the sap green hostas to the left.  You could barely see the sweet woodruff.  What he achieved is an almost perfect design.  There is change of texture and color (from the maple down to the hostas, then finally down to the sweet woodruff).  There are big enough blocks of each plant or planting to satisfy the eye.  The beauty of the maple stands out because of this arrangement.  By the way, the sweet woodruff and hosta will spread.  However, the way this area is arranged it will not be a problem.  Each species is robust enough to stand up to its aggressive neighbor.

Here is another picture.  Unfortunately, my photographs do not do justice to the scene.

Finally, I need to add a few pictures of filipendula.  In my post on same, I blathered on and on about how gorgeous the pink of the flower is.  You may have been scratching your head at that one.  That photo was taken before the flower had really hit its stride.  Here are two more photos that do more justice to its glorious pink color.   

No Pictures Today, Folks

Here I go with my Losers.  I have no pictures, because these plants are no longer in my garden.  I had a beautiful watercolor of one of them, but I cannot find it.

My first loser is Hollyhock.  A truly old-fashioned flower - tall spikes with flowers that resemble roses - these flowers made me think of drinking lemonaid  while sitting on a wicker settee on my porch back in 1890.  They were a wonderfully evocative flower for me until they were beset by the inevitable RUST.  Even my internist at the time said "Hollyhock - oh yes, RUST."  Once the rust set in, they were awful (if my memory serves me right).

My second loser is perennial salvia.  Again, a very pretty flower, not unlike my favorite veronica  (only salvia is purple).  Once the flowers are gone, the plant degenerates into a lot of dead-looking stuff.  I suppose if you had a huge border you could tuck it in somewhere and let other plants grow over it - although nobody seems happy when crowded out.  If you really want a purple flower, go for the annual heliotrope.

Coreopsis is a good looking plant, and there are several different varieties with very different foliage - some needle-like (they aren't sharp, just look like needles), such as "moonbeam".  Others look more like daisies.  The problem with these plants is that grasses grow up easily around and through them.  This problem leads to my worst sin in gardening (besides symmetrical balance, not watering hydrangeas when it is really hot out,  an indiscriminate use of herbicides and pesticides, and of course, a willful ignorance of what works and doesn't work in the garden) - where was I?  Oh yes, the specific problem of grasses growing up through plants and the general problem of "confusing the eye".  Coreopsis is a really lovely plant, and it even looks OK after flowering - it has a good shape, it is well behaved (doesn't spread).  But, I have spent hours trying to yank all the grasses out from around these plants - never to succeed - even with people helping me.  Thus, the tragic problem of having a wonderful plant rejected because of its unruly neighbors.  I just cannot tolerate those grasses ruining my pleasure.  I actually get anxious when I see a messy garden - my eye cannot enjoy the flowers because it gets stuck on that part of the garden that it cannot figure out - "what the heck is going on over there?"

Monarda has a very pretty red or pink flower that butterflies love; once the flowers are gone, so are the butterflies, and the plant starts to mildew and look awful.  Plus, it spreads.  Just what everybody wants, spreading mildew.  (This is the plant that I have a watercolor of.  If I ever find it (probably when we move), I will post it.)

Asclepias tuberosa - in my last post I wrote that there was a picture of asclepias tubreosa (butterfly weed) in an earlier post.  I was mistaken.  So, here it is.

Part 1 of a 4 part series:  Winners, Losers, Worth the bother, and "Buddy, your're on probation"

My winners are:  veronica, asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed), gaillardia (blanket flower), Lobelia cardinalis, sedum, aster, and astilbe.

Veronica has good colors - blue, white and pink.  It does not spread and has a shape that makes it easy to weed around - you won't spend all of your time yanking out grass from around this plant.   After it blooms, it looks good.  It has a positive presence in the border even past bloom.   This violet-pink veronica is shown in front of  the chartreuse flowers of lady's mantle - a good color combination.  I am really fond of the blue variety but don't have any blooming right now.

Asclepias tuberosa (there is a picture in my first post) and gaillardia are superb for their color - brilliant clear orange (butterfly weed "asclepias tuberosa"), and red-orange and a deeply saturated yellow (blanket flower "gaillardia").  I use them in my "hot" garden - they can stand up to a brilliantly sunny day.  They are good with just about all other hot colors, and do well with clear, strong blues (complementary colors always balance a color scheme) such as with many delphinium.

Lobelia cardinalis is a tall, moisture loving plant with  clear, gorgeous red flowers (picture with hummingbird in a previous post).  Hummingbirds love them, and I love hummingbirds, so I make sure that I have them in the back of my border.

Sedum and asters are great because they flower at the end of summer and well into the fall.  They look good before they flower - thy have a nice shape that can make a solid statement in the border.

Astilbe are excellent in the shade garden.  Their flowers are light colors - soft pinks and soft whites, nothing strident - that you can see in a shady spot.  Even if they did well in the sun, they would not be appropriate - their soft coloration would get washed out.  Astilbe has feathery, almost fern-like foliage.  The flower looks a bit like that of filipendula.  I have a pink and a white variety separated by asters.  I have liriope in front of the astilbe, and hosta, tree peony, and holly behind it in this photo.

Filipendula

I am not sure whether Filipendula is classified as a shrub or a perennial; maybe a shrubby perennial.  I have had it tucked into the front corner of my smaller border for years, and the only problem I have with it is that it does not like the shade from the plum tree.  There was no plum tree when I planted the filipendula; now there is a good sized happy tree that gives us wonderful plums every year.  The filipendula will just have to soldier on.

I like this plant because it has delightful, clear pink flowers.  When it is done flowering the leaves are really nice.  The plant never looks scraggly or unkempt, regardless of the time of year.  Because lilies placed behind it bloom afterwards, and a Rose of Sharon blooms after the lilies, I have a constant stream of blooms from early June to mid August in that part of the border.

.  

 Who wouldn't love that leaf?  I recommend this plant, especially for the end of a border.  It serves very well as an anchor plant.

Design

It is finally time to get back to blogging about the garden.  I have decided to write about garden design, and why it is important.

When my husband and I bought our house in January 1984, I had no idea what the garden would  look like.  When it revealed itself to me in the Spring, I was both enchanted and horrified.  There were beds and borders with lovely peonies and daisies.  There were also pernicious vines studded with thorns that seemed to have wrapped themselves around the property.  I did not know what to do; I just wanted to bring order to my property.

I did not have a grand plan or an ambitious idea about transforming my yard into a prize winning space.  I really just wanted order.  Many years later, I realize that that goal was an excellent one, and I will explain why from a design point of view.

Design goals are many - create and enhance function, economy, and beauty.  I am most interested in creating and enhancing beauty in my garden.  I have discovered over the years that having an orderly garden, even if it is boring, is more beautiful than a disordered one because the eye, and thus the brain, cannot tolerate confusion for long.  The eye wants help, needs help, to decipher what is going on.  If there is not a clear sense of order, the eye is confused, and the viewer becomes anxious.

An obvious question, then, might be "why didn't you just plant beds of pink impatiens?'  Actually, that might not have looked too bad.  But I wanted more.  I wanted delphiniums, I wanted prairie-type flowers, I wanted hydrangeas.  Whenever you add variety to a design, especially an organic design, you make the design process much more complicated.  You start dealing with height, color, texture, shape, and timing issues.  The goal becomes coordinating all of these considerations into an ordered garden.  It seems like an overwhelming task. 

Design elements  in the garden include balance, repetition, pattern, scale, light and dark, color intensity, color hue, and interest.  I am first going to tackle scale and interest.

I have two large borders on my property.  The smaller of the two can be viewed from many vantage points - close, several feet away, and many feet away (20-30 feet).  This garden works best when the whole garden works as a whole.  The larger of the borders can be seen up-close, no more than 10 feet away if you are looking at it dead on, and 20-30 feet away if you are looking at it at an angle.  I will illustrate and discuss these scale considerations more fully in a subsequent blog.  I bring it up now because I want to discuss the up-close view of a section of garden.   My long border works as a whole, but it also works in sections or "rooms".  This picture shows one of these rooms in late May of this year. 

A garden season can be 12 months long.  Many novice gardeners get excited about plants in the Spring, and plant their garden with lovely early-flowering plants such as iris, cranesbill geranium, dianthus, poppies, peonies and creeping phlox.  The problem with this scheme is that the flowers stop blooming, and you are left with a green garden for most of the rest of the season.  There is a relatively simple solution to this problem; place late-flowering plants in front of early-flowering ones.  There are exceptions, which I will explore further in an up-coming post.  I will leave you with some plants that I like to plant at the front of a border, and a picture.  The plants are sedum august joy, asters, and many herbs.

Sedum august joy has been planted in front of a bearded iris clump in this photo.  After the iris have finished flowering, I can cut them back.  By that time, the asclepias tuberosa (there is a picture of this flower blooming gloriously in an earlier post) to the front left will be blooming, and the sedum will be much larger.  It took me years to figure this scheme out, despite that just about all of the garden design books mention it.  This design suggestion also makes it easier to keep an orderly garden.  Once many plants have flowered, they can look awful - think of poppies especially, but also obedient plant and monarda.  If they are placed behind yet or soon-to flower plants, you can hide or cut them back.  Order is maintained, and visual anxiety is kept at bay.