Scanner art by Craig Cramer, gardening & more
Just the usual pix from a quick Sunday walkaround …
I don’t normally go in for the ‘vignette’ shot. Mostly because I have a hard time filling the viewfinder with a medium-range subject without having something truly ugly or frightening intruding on the scene. But I looked up and saw this and it was almost garden-worthy.
Bee on globe thistle.
Pink Malva.
Yellow water lilly
And the same up close
Had the pleasure of attending the annual picnic and members-only plant sale of the Adirondack Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society. (I serve on the chapter’s board, edit the newsletter and handle other communications chores.)
Judy and Jim Fogel hosted the event at their home in Lansing, N.Y., a few miles north of Ithaca overlooking Cayuga Lake. (In the background below, as members engage in the feeding frenzy that is the plant sale.)
The Fogels have some beautiful borders, in addition to a great vegetable garden, water garden, containers, shrub border and just generally great landscaping that they’ve put in since the house was built circa 1997.
That’s Jim on the right, Judy with the cup. Small world department: Elly (my wife) delivered babies with Jim 25 years ago when she was a labor and delivery nurse.
The Fogel’s recently installed rock garden is still mostly rock. But it’s got a great view.
This flower in a container off their patio caught my eye. No clue what it is.
In honor of the Olympics and county fair season, Mary Ann Newcomer at Idaho Gardener has organized a kind of online Gardening Olympiad with real prizes. (See Olympic Medal Event: Gardeners face off for Gold-Silver-Bronze!. Hurry. Deadline of entries is midnight tonight.)
I’m not much into competitive gardening — earliest tomato, biggest pumpkin and the like. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the skill and drive of some gardeners to excel. It’s just that the only prize I’d win is weediest garden or worst color combo.
So I wasn’t sure what to enter. I’ve got a lot of pretty stuff that I share here on a regular basis. But I really don’t like to put aesthetics into competition. I cringe at the gymnastic judging at the Olympics. Sure. A stumble here or awkward landing there might make someone think that one performance should be judged better than another. But I think they’re all beautiful in their own way.
So, maybe it’s a guy thing. But if we’re going to actually have a contest, it should be something that can be objectively measured — like in the pool or on the track. With that in mind, below are my three entries for Tallest Herbaceous Perennial, Zone 5.
Keep in mind, we aren’t in the tropics here. Last frost is late May or early June. Falls have been long and warm into October the last few years. But some years I’ve had frost before Labor Day.
Note the 4-foot-tall bronze marker (used to measure snow depth usually) at the base of each. Click images for larger view.
Bronze: Ironweed (Vernonia, V. noveboracensis, I think). It’s topped out between 7 and 8 feet. I’ve had it grow slightly taller in years past. Can’t wait for the purple flowers to open. Most years, Eupatorium purpureum ‘Joe White’ would have easily gotten the bronze here. But I divided it this spring and it’s topping out around 7 feet while it recovers this year. I’d expect it to top 8 feet most years.
Silver: Inula (not sure of species, I. helenium maybe?) This plant easily broke 8 feet this year in part shade. Another patch in full sun is almost as tall. Yeah, those leaves at the base are more than 4 feet long.
Gold: This year and every year, it goes to Miscanthus floridulus (Giant Chinese Silver Grass aka Miscanthus ‘Giganteus’ and Miscanthus japonicus). It doesn’t really start growing until the soil starts warming up in June. But it’s up to 10 feet now and will probably go another couple of feed and start putting out seedheads if the weather stays warm. Makes a nice screen from the road.
Oh, there’s some tired ‘reach for the sky’ or ‘the sky’s the limit’ Olympic-spirit closing line that would sinch me a medal like sticking the landing. But I won’t go there.
Thanks for a fun idea, Mary Ann.
I was in a hurry doing my scans this week. I think they look like crap. (They’re at the end.)
But there are details within each that look OK. So they’re first.
Click on images for larger view.
Cool detail:
Warm detail:
White detail:
And another white detail:
A few real pix before the full (awful) scans. Joe-pye weed (wild patch):
Lily:
Rosa ‘Princess Di’:
Canna:
And the original scans, warm:
Cool:
White:
This is my post for the August edition of the Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop – Trellises and Screens.
We seldom use our front door. But it — and our living room — sit about 35 feet from a busy rural ‘connector’ road. It’s the shortcut for commuters traveling from the east to Cornell University, which employs about 10,000 people, not counting the construction workers.
When we moved in here in 1999, there were three spruces (none taller than I am) between us and the traffic. We lost one in the midnight bowling ball accident of 2003. At that post, you can see the bare ‘before’ pictures from the year we moved in.
Since then, I’ve tried to put up a buffer of mixed shrubs and perennials in a bed along the road and next to the house to separate us visually from the road. Here’s what it looks like now:
Click on images for larger view.
Here’s what makes up the barrier (see numbered image below):
Here’s the view from the front door looking slightly left …
… and slightly right:
How does it work? Could be better. The deer have kept the Cornus alba (above) too short to fully block the road and the driveway beyond. Everything in these images is at full height and in full leaf now. But that’s not the case early in the season.
I don’t notice the traffic as much during winter when the house is shut up tight. But that’s probably a rationalization. I was afraid to plant evergreens due to the wet soil out front and the salt spray from the road during winter. But the remaining spruce have done fine. If I’d planted two or three more in ’99, we’d probably have a solid wall of evergreens out front. Oh well.
Along the stretch of the road to the east of our driveway, I planted a screen of Miscanthus floridulus, or at least that’s what I think it is. It does a nice job blocking the view of the road from our patio behind the house. The bamboo-like stems also make good pea brush and wattle-building material.
