Design – Page 4 – Ellis Hollow

2008 Year in review (Part 1)

The obligatory (and hopefully entertaining) look back …

January

Not much happening in the garden, so it was a good time to think about ordering seeds and plants (unfortunately, they’re more than 5 cents a pack these days, unlike these old packs) and sharing stories about the great bowling ball accident of 2003.

castor bean seed packet

While there were no blooms (or scans), there was surprisingly much to photograph on a very warm January garden bloogers bloom day.

February

February is for forcing.

And time to fiddle around with PhotoShopping that month’s bloom day scans and chase away the merry blues with Manu Chao.

bloom day scan feb

Had a sunset picture grace a CD cover.

Read and reviewed Tulipomania. Added my two cents (and a ton of pictures) to the Garden Bloggersâ€™ Design Workshop â€“ Color in the Garden edition.

March

I love March, if only for its excitement. There are the forced bulbs in flower …

The first of the spring ephemerals …

Then back to winter, hell and high water.

By Easter, plenty of signs that spring is on it’s way …

Iris

Then more snow. There’s a reason they’re called snowdrops, you know.

April

Speaking of snowdrops, April brought the open house at snowdrop collector Hitch Lyman’s garden.

And the spring ephemeral peak at my place. Crocus …

Puschkinia.

Hyper-spring also brings scilla …

… and erythronium.

And by the end of the month, a bazillion daffodils, these at Nina Bassuk and Peter Trowbridge’s annual open house.

May

Spring continues full bore. Purple primrose …

Thalia daffs …

Sakuraso primrose …

…an iris from Marcia’s garden …

… and many more in this bloom day scan.

In the world of art, Quilter Lisa Ellis used one of my canna images for this work of art …

… Cornell students built this Turfwork! project …

… and Durand Van Doran built this fabulous floral gate — roots and all — in Minns Garden outside the building where I work.

And we are reminded that there’s nothing new under the sun.

June

Some theme posts in June, because there’s so much to cover you’ve got to do some lumping. One on openings …

,,, another on chartreusey stuff …

… too many blooms on bloom day to fit onto one scan …

… actual bloom day pictures to go with the scans …

… East Digitalistan …

… and decent images of aruncus (finally!) …

… summer songs …

Mussolini was a-shavin’ whistlin’ tarantella,
Stalin was keeping eye on barbeque.
When their fish line bell started to jingle,
Mussolini caught a-nothinâ€™, Stalin caught two.

On the art front, Cornell graduation turf art …

I tried to push back on the bland reporting on leaf casts in the garden media, and reported on the infamous Memorial Day jello contest.

As we head into the second half of the year, these alliums in Minns Garden outside the building where I work are all ready for 4th of July fireworks.

Part 2 starts here …

Note to self (gardening resolutions) …

Hat tip to Nan at Gardening Gone Wild for passing along the link to Le Jardin Plume, in particular this gallery.

I have no delusions that I’ll ever have the design sense or level of control they have. But it’s one of the first great gardens I’ve looked at and said to myself, I can grow most of those (or reasonably close facsimiles) on a large scale.

So my 2009 gardening resolutions (a little early) …

Focus plant purchases on new and interesting ornamental grasses.
Start dividing and spreading around the grasses that I already have that I like.
Plant the Sanguisorba tenufolia seed I collected this year instead of leaving it in an envelope for three years like I do with most seed I save.
See if I can start getting the Verbena hastata (it’s a freakin’ weed around here) to grow kind of where I want it to.
Start figuring out how I can slam all these into one big planting along with some eupatoriums, various vebascums and some other biennials in one big mass.

Have to PhotoShop some images together to see what it might look like. Can’t wait to get started.

Verbena hastata

Cornell Plantations Winter Garden

Living where I do, you’d think I’d pay more attention to planting more things that look really good the other six months of the year. I’m always reminded of my shortcomings when I visit the Mullestein Winter Garden at Cornell Plantations.

While its ‘bones’ are way beyond my means, I would do well to focus on planting more evergreens of various shapes, sizes and hues, as well as more colorful-twigged trees and shrubs.

The basic structure of the garden is a large circular area divided into four massive raised beds with a millstone in the center.

There are nice views down the axes, but the plantings still have a very informal feel despite the hardscape’s symmetry.

Nearby plantings look pretty good too, especially captured when the sun pokes through the clouds just before setting.

Borrowed scenery

One of my favorite views — from the driveway, across our skinny front yard, out to the wetland and the ridge beyond.

Shot this morning. The fog is clearing, the view is good.

Compost with a view

I never have enough room to pile up the leaves. So I took a couple old pallets and some stems from last year’s Miscanthus floridulus to make a nice big area on the slope out of sight behind the shed where I can dump them. And it’s got some borrowed scenery, too.

I use the plastic compost bin mostly to keep the dogs out of the kitchen scraps.