Marcia’s garden revisited

marcia with alliums

One of my first posts (Aug. 2005) was about the garden of my friend and coworker Marcia. She needed some environmental portraits shot for a feature about her on another website, so I stopped by for a quick visit a week ago. I couldn’t help but wander around and shoot some more pix after the portraits were done.

marcia's garden

While some trees have been removed to let in some light and many small details have changed, the bones are mostly the same. From this angle (above, from a second-story window), it’s a well-designed flower garden with a vegetable garden in back separated by a fence. The new bed on the right was inspired by an article in a recent issue of Garden Design about a Charleston, S.C., garden (see “Southern Classic,” May 2008, image on page 39) that features a lawn area ‘pinched’ by beds at the far end to create some separation between different areas.

marcia's garden

From the opposite angle (above), you can see the second face of Marcia’s layout: A functional veggie garden with some funky ornamentation.

marcia's garden

This small water garden also provides some separation between the flowers and the food. You need to walk around it to get to the entrance arch.

marcia's garden

This column provides a focus in the round bed in the center of the veggie garden, as well as being the anchoring lighthouse at the far end the garden’s axis.

marcia's garden

One thing Marcia and I share it the love of the blue bottles …

marcia's garden

…and funky ornamentation. (I’m thinking Les Quatres Vents only smaller.)

marcia's garden

A closer view of the left border from above.

marcia's garden

This nearly black iris came from a small iris farm nearby that went out of business last year. The rhizomes were free for the digging, but not labeled. (I got several buckets too.) Adds to the surprises in the garden this spring, waiting to see what the new irises are going to look like when they bloom.

marcia's garden

I don’t know the name of this iris. But it seems like it’s everywhere. I’ve got some that are identical or very similar that came with the last house that I lived in.

marcia's garden

Rhodie flowers starting to pop.

Sakuraso primrose

Sakuraso primrose

A few years ago, I signed up for a fledgling Sakuraso society — mostly because a ridiculously low membership fee got you some seeds and packets of thread-like roots that when planted in pots quickly grew into robust little plants.

I can find nothing about this little society online, so I suspect that it is no longer in existence.

That’s too bad. I wish I could find them and re-up. I love these little primroses, even though I only have one left. I made the mistake of transplanting them into a bed where I greatly underestimated the ability of buttercups to reinvade from what I call ‘lawn’. When I got behind a few summers ago, the buttercups more or less took over. But this sakuraso and a few other tough primroses have hung in — thrived, almost — despite the competition.

I like to see that in a plant.

Sakuraso primrose

Updates and reruns

Some updates to recent posts …

Minns gate

Cornell Chronicle article on Durand Van Doran’s botanically inspired gate/sculpture outside the building where I work. More pix at my original post.

turfworks flyover by Pete Cadieux

Another Cornell Chronicle article about Turfwork! student project. My original post on this project.

may scan with hard light effect

One more version of my May bloom day scan. Lori over at Gardener of Good and Evil taught me a new PhotoShop trick that drives this scan from antique to something much closer to the actual colors of the flowers. (Long story short: Duplicate layer, multiply. Though with this one I chose hard light which is even closer to the real McCoy.)

Sunday music: It’s like that

I stumbled on this over at Dark Roasted Blend. It has a special appeal as we get emails from our son who’s in Belarus on business, filling us in on what life is like in that former Soviet country. (I’m hoping he can check out the botanical garden for me.) Anyone have suggestions for what to see and do while in Minsk?

If you don’t remember the ‘original’ video (if I got it right, a 1998 remixed version of Run DMC’s 1983 groundbreaking hiphop hit), it’s eerily similar, only the breakdancers aren’t near as good. And there’s quite a good message in the lyrics, if you listen.