Inheriting a garden

Moving into an existing house means inheriting more than a floorplan, paint and carpet colors.

What happens when the last resident was a gardener and you inherit their plants and planting schemes?

If you're not a gardener, you probably don't give the green stuff much thought - it either gets ignored until it turns into brown stuff, or it gets mulched or mowed down.

If you are a gardener, it is a mystery to be solved.  It can be as frustrating as teasing apart a knot, taxing your patience and persistence.  As each new plant sprouts up, you peer closely; is it a weed to be yanked or a plant to be nurtured?  What color will it bloom?  Is it situated properly for its sun/shade and moisture requirements?  Does it need to be fertilized or pruned or just left alone? Common wisdom says to let the garden have four seasons to unfold before you make radical changes.  That gives everything time to make an appearance, and gives you time to decide if you like the landscaping, or if you want to overhaul or tweak it.

When we first toured this house, it was December (our anniversary, to be precise).  Not a good time of year to know what might by lying in dormancy in the garden.

The roses had been severely pruned in the fall, but I knew from the real estate photos they were red Knockout roses, and the pruned canes and grafts appeared to be healthy and vigorous.   True rosarians will snub these as too commonplace, lacking scent and their stubby stems too short for bouquets.  But as a landscape shrub in the south, they are tough to beat - they bloom repeatedly, are not prone to blackspot and they appear relatively immune to attacks from the Japanese beetles.  (I picked off a few the other day, but nothing like the beetle orgies I have encountered on my Old Garden Roses in the past.)

Throughout the spring, peonies, bearded irises and Shasta daisies have popped up and bloomed, and even snapdragons and morning glories have put in an appearance. Some hibiscus are ready to pop open, and I'm on pins and needles to see what color they'll bloom.

In the back yard, a few hostas and daylilies struggle in some tough-to-grow spots.  I've moved the hostas to a shadier bed (out of the path of the lawnmower and weed whacker); the daylilies will get moved to a sunnier location along with some clumps of my faves I moved from our old house yesterday.

I know I should wait until at least fall to plant anything.

I know full well this is the worst time of year to plant, let alone transplant perennials - even with copious quantities of water, they will struggle with the incessant heatwave we call July and August around here.

And yet....

It's hard (okay, impossible) for me to not scratch this gardening itch.

A few days ago, a ginormous Helianthus 'Lemon Queen' and variegated meadowsweet came home with me and they now flank the 'Chocolate' eupatorium on one corner of the pond.   Here's hoping the soil will remain moist even if the pond dries up.  Some additional marsh and swamp plants are on their way - my one and only mail order plant purchase so far in 2011.  (There's always spring bulb orders...and fall perennial sales.)

The blank spot left by the dearly-departed clematis was so forlorn, right there as you rounded the corner of the walkway.

I just had to fill it with something.

Something like a tuteur...with a patina-ed spigot on top to keep it from seeming too high-falutin'.  And a pretty new clematis (non-thuggish) to clamber up the structure.

I'm pretty sure my fig and some other shrubs, the variegated vinca, native pachysandra and a few heucheras are going to find their way from old house to new house over the next week or so.  And then I'll just have to keep them tended until temperatures cool and the fall rains come.  At least the toad house won't require any nurturing.  I may have to sort out squabbles among would-be tenants though.

Inheriting a garden is a bit like the parable of the talents.   There's a balance to be struck somewhere between honoring the gift given to you and your desire to put your own imprint on everything.  And of course, in this application, it IS prudent to bury everything - it's the only way to get an increase.

Happy gardening,

He sends sun and the rain

The sermon on the mount is found in Matthew 5. Toward the end, Jesus said, "For he (God) makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust..."

A few years ago, we suffered a very late freeze (three nights of freezing temperatures after trees and shrubs had fully leafed out), and then a severe drought that summer. Before that happened, I often grumbled if the weather didn't suit my plans. After losing so many established trees and shrubs to the double-punch that nature dealt that year, I decided I would accept whatever weather we receive, and most especially, never complain about getting rain at an inconvenient time.

Last May, we endured what "experts" called a 500-year flood, when it rained for three days and nights. This year, we received nearly as much rain, at about the same time of year. The Cumberland River didn't flood this time, but so much for the experts being able to offer reliable opinions.

This week, we finally got a much-needed break from weeks of mid-90 days and no rain. The rain comes at an inconvenient time - I need to be mulching and weeding the old house in order to get it ready to sell. But I won't complain. I am planning a garage sale for Saturday. If it gets rained out, so be it. The sun feels good, and so does the rain. I think I'll just focus on doing what I can to being counted among the "good" and "just" in that teaching, and let the one who made this world worry about the weather.

Happy weathering the storm!

Room for rent

Darling toad abode, perfect for a single renter or couple. Cool, shady, damp and adjacent to a pond, via protected crosswalk. Available for immediate occupancy. Must be willing to eat your weight in mosquitoes and other flying and hopping critters every day. Serious inquiries only, please.

We spent the weekend in the backyard, finishing out last year's pond project, when we tore out the large, free-form pond and replaced it with a smaller pre-formed pond. The extraneous area was filled in with dirt and we got some basic landscaping done before fall and winter set in. This allowed us to widen the path around the pond and add a paved area behind the pond, where we'll move a concrete bench for sitting (that's next weekend's to-do.) My sweet husband finished the gravel and rock paths this time - he did a great job!

Flashback - here's the pond back in 2001, after we installed paths and plants (before that it was a pond in a sea of mulch.)

The pond evolved over time - we added a bog filter/garden to the backside and then streamlined the filter to operate more efficiently. But the silver maple, which does give a lot of shade to the area, has a nasty habit of aggressively rooting and the roots buckled the pond liner twice. The final straw was when a large branch fell into the pond a couple winters ago, and punctured the liner - again. There are only so many times you want to empty a pond, tear out the liner and replace it, or even patch it.

Here's the landscape you see as you come through the arbor. It's going to take it a while to fill in, but I think it will be pretty when it does.

Now to get some big, bold-leaved cannas or bananas going in those containers, a few ferns to fill in, and an experiment with some turquoise-y spray paint to see if I can achieve a verdigris finish on a couple black plastic chairs. Oh, and a new wrought-iron hose holder. It's back to a serviceable, hose holder for me...no more hose carts (self-winding or otherwise). Too many broken handles, wimpy cranking mechanisms, and abuse from mother nature each winter.

Then it's on to power-washing and staining/sealing the deck, getting the deck containers planted, getting the veggie garden in...I think the to-do list grows longer and longer every day!

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get!

Who decided landscape was a verb?

land - a noun, referring to an area of ground.
scape - also a noun. Meaning a view or scene.

Someone put those two words together and suddenly it's a verb, with or without adding "-ing" to the end. And it's not just a verb, it's an action verb, generally requiring a lot of grunting, sweating and sore muscles. Who got to make that call? I want to know if they do their own landscape work.

This time of year, the task of maintaining our landscape (aha, there it is - as a noun again), is daunting. The weeds grow before my very eyes, despite the horrible soil (which we like to call "insta-brick"), tree roots that snake their way into every crevice, and bermudagrass, which I firmly believe is one of Satan's tools to cause us to sin, whether by cursing it, harboring hatred and malice in our heart toward it, or even attempting to kill it. Repeatedly.

Today I helped oldest son with his landscaping (see, it's morphed back into a verb) today. Fortunately, he's young and has a strong back, so my role consisted mainly of advising when his stone blocks were drifting one direction or another. It's a tough job being a garden coach, but somebody had to do it. And yes, that's my website, and yes, I do actually garden coach.

Good news: his stacked stone wall looks awesome, his new and replanted shrubs look orderly and should soon fill in the space without getting overgrown like the old stuff), and the only thing he lacks is a couple more shrubs. Better news - he used up the stacked stone blocks we had languishing after we dismantled the big pond last year.

I told him I'd visit some local nurseries and be his personal shopper tomorrow while he and his daddy are out on the lake fishing. It's a sacrifice, but I'll make myself go.

It's their first time to take the new (to us) boat out. Here's hoping the weather is kind to them - I think it's supposed to be a little cooler over the next week, which is fine by me.