Day Trips for Gardeners

Summer is congested with tours – most of them sponsored by worthy local organizations who work hard and make some money for their causes by convincing local gardeners to open their gardens to hoards of people for (usually) one day.  What fun! – at lest for those of us doing the visiting.

Highlights for this coming weekend include the Woodinville Garden Club’s tour (Saturday, July 18^th), where for the price of a ticket ($15) you get not just gardens, but a wine tasting at the end of the day at Molbak’s.  How convenientthat you can also buy plants there.

The Federal Way Symphony tour, also on Saturday and also $15, shows off some lovely suburban gardens. The West Seattle tour on Sunday (July 19^th), also $15, almost always includes some fine water-view gardens.

A bit pricier at $75 each – but going to a worthy cause – is the Mediterranean Garden Tour in Edmonds on Saturday (18^th).  The proceeds go to the Hunger Intervention Program; you’ll get food and wine, plus a close-up look at the winner of the Pacific Northwest garden contest.

You’ll find loads more tours listed at the Miller Library’s Web site.

Kubota Gardens

Not up for a one-day tour?  Then head to one of Seattle’s fine gardens that are also city parks:  the Japanese Garden and Kubota Gardens.  You’ll be able to enjoy a quiet stroll and fabulous landscapes.  No food allowed in the Japanese Garden, but you can take your picnic to Kubota

The Myth of the Outward-facing Bud

I pruned the roses on Friday – a lovely, sunny dry day that appeared like a miracle between snowstorms.  Enough of this snow in Seattle!

            As I pruned, I looked for the outward-facing bud that we are told to find and prune above.  I don’t think they exist.  Is this some joke the roses are playing on us?  Buds face inward, off to awkward angles on the side, but I never see any that face outward.  As I tend to be fairly fierce in my rose pruning, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.  After a while I don’t care what kind of bud is or isn’t there, my Felcos go to work.

            In England, land of “rose replant disease”, they’re just as likely to rip the whole rose garden out as to prune carefully (or not) each year.  I don’t really understand what rose replant disease is, but I believe it has something to do with monoculture – those rose-bush ghettos, where a confetti mix of colors are planted for display, must be ripe for an attack of some fungus or another.  I love rose gardens for their historical interest, but it isn’t something I’m going to copy in my garden.  I’m not a rosarian, just a gardener.

            Last time we were at Hever Castle, they had just replanted the rose garden, and as it was May, there was little to see.  Against the wall, however, was a ‘Maigold’ climber in bloom – it’s practically the only rose we see blooming in England in May.  In fact one May, we visited Hodges Barn near Tetbury – a lovely place where Amanda Hornby showed us around her garden.  The house (originally a dovecote) was surrounded by brick walls that had rambling roses carefully pegged down, and the ramblers were full of buds, but not a flower was open.

            When pruning ramblers and climbers, you never have to worry about outward-facing buds.  Instead, if you secure the long, wild stems horizontally (pegged on a brick wall at Hodges Barn), the roses send up loads of flowers all along.  It’s a spectacular show.

Trains and planes

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran an AP story on the improvement of airlines’ on-time performance.  Things are looking up!  Of course, how much of this is because of fewer flights and fewer people traveling — although the times I’ve been in airports this year, it’s looked just as crowded as ever. 

Still, it’s nice to know that you might just be off and arrive at the time you hope — especially because airlines pad the departure and arrival times.  I believe they say that’s gate-to-gate as opposed to actual flying time, but I think they do it for psychological reasons.  You get on the plane, everyone finally settles in, you wonder why you haven’t pulled away yet, then you get in the airplane line for takeoff.  By then, you’re way past “departure” time, but the captain comes on board and says you’ll land on time.  Now doesn’t that make you feel better!

            Another bit of good news reported in the P-I — Amtrak ridership is up in Washington and Oregon.  People are getting on the train!  If only somehow the on-time effect would leak over into the train world in the U.S.  The Cascades trains that run from Oregon up to Vancouver, B.C. are generally fine, but just try to take the Coast Starlight between Seattle and Los Angeles and see what happens:  an eight-hour delay is, sad to say, not unusual.  When there is even a short delay in England, a voice comes over the loudspeaker (recorded, but still) apologizing for whatever’s happened to make the train late.

            So, in honor of the great train system in England and the rest of Europe, and because we’ve just announced our England garden tour for 2009 (check out my Web site), here’s a photo taken by Jane of Leighton and me at King’s Cross station in London, waiting for the Hogwarts Express.

Pieces of the puzzle

Putting together a garden tour is like fitting the pieces of a jigsaw together.  I found this out when I arranged a tour of Seattle-area gardens for a group from out of town, and I’m going through it again now as we finalize the draft itinerary of next May’s England trip.  It isn’t just how long we’ll be sitting on our small coach to get to the garden, it’s our experience when we get there, and making sure there’s a good mix of landscapes.

I could just slap together a list of names — all the most popular tourist stops — but our tours have never been the kind of trips that Chevy Chase’s character in the Vacation movies would enjoy (“Don’t you want to see the Grand Canyon?”).  All of the big, famous gardens are big and famous for a reason — Kew, Wisley, Sissinghurst are all fabulous — but you never get to sit down and have a cup of tea with the gardener.  I like personal gardens mixed in with the big and famous.  It’s seeing the Lutyens/Jekyll design and plantings at Hestercombe, but it’s also hearing Judy Pearce talk about how she turned Lady Farm from a muddy dairy farm into the incredible garden it is today — and then having tea in her summer house.

Of course, getting the good stories about the big gardens makes those visits more personal, too.  Mrs. Cartwright Hignett talks about keeping up appearances at Iford Manor so that Harold Peto’s creation doesn’t go sliding down the hill into the Frome.  Mike Beeston, property manager at Hidcote Manor Garden, tells quite a tale of just why it’s taken 60 years to find out what Lawrence Johnston had intended.  It’s a story that I love to pass along, and will do so when I herd our small flock of gardeners through next May.

 

What’s it worth to you?

Can anybody tell me what an airplane ticket really costs?  I don’t mean the cheapest ticket from some online source, what day of the week to fly, using accumulated miles, how to get all your worldly travel belongings into one carryon so that you don’t have to pay the baggage fee, or packing snacks of homemade trail mix (ack).  I mean, how much does a ticket actually cost?

            The people that run the counter and run the airplane need good salaries — I’d rather be sure that a well-qualified pilot, co-pilot, attendant or check-in person gets a topnotch salary for his/her position than bargain for the lowest bid.  I understand that the cost of oil is high, which then drives up the price of everything else.  I’m not complaining that ticket prices are too high, I’m complaining that I don’t know what the cost is for the percentage of time and equipment I use when I get on a plane and fly to San Francisco, Newark or London.  And, of course, how much of the ticket price goes to the CEO.

            Surely some mathematician can figure this out.  If I knew how much a trip really costs, I wouldn’t mind paying it, instead of adding all these silly fees.  There are lots of hits for “airfare calculator”, but it’s all about my budget, not the airlines.  Somebody help me out here.

Northwest garden … style?

Do we have a garden style in the Northwest? Do we need one?  Last week, taking the folks from Ladew Topiary Gardens around the Seattle area, we heard constrasting comments on style.  At Kubota Gardens, we heard that until Fujitaro Kubota’s time (mid -20^th century), we had looked to the West for our style, and created English gardens.  After that, the East became our influence in choosing plants, forms and designs.  At Daniel Sparler’s, we saw eclectic combinations, but Tina Dixon eschewed the “jelly-bean-jar look” of one of these and one of those.  Shelagh Tucker’s back garden was inspired by the English border look; Judy Massong’s garden relied on traditionally formal lines — but with a new twist, because none of the lines matched up.

            When we visited Charleston in March, we saw formal gardens historically accurate for the late 18^th century.  It was the closest we got to England this year.  At the Alamo, horticulturist Mark Nauschultz, who took me on a tour (while my husband Leighton trailed along with his cousin, Bruce Winders, curator of the Alamo — that’s them standing under a wild olive, Cordia boisseri) drew from a plant palette that includes parts of Central America.  The landscape looks fitting for the site, and in early April the walls of the Alamo are awash in bloom.

            So, our garden style comes from our history, as well as what we can grow, what we want to grow, what we will take a chance on growing.

Through the eyes of a visitor

We showed off our best weather to visitors from Baltimore last week, as I guided folks from the Ladew Topiary Gardens around to see our own gardens here.  They were amazed at what they saw — and I don’t mean the Experimental Music Project.  Lots of plants they can’t grow, although I know Richard and Joel have tried most of them.  In Daniel Sparler’s garden in Seward Park, they got their first taste of our growing love for hebes of all shapes and sizes.  ‘Great Orme’ was a dazzler, with its 5-inch-long pointy, pendulous, pink inflorescences.  Daniel’s garden evokes a tropical feel using temperate plants — or, mostly temperate plants.  The leaves on the banana (Musa basjoo) must’ve been 5 feet long!

            Cactus at Linda Cochran’s, along with quite an array of New Zealand plants that were succulent or pokey.  Such great shapes and textures.  An intense class in the importance of foliage at Tina Dixon’s — who needs flowers when you can get that effect?  Rock and stone are showcased at Shelagh Tucker’s garden, with hardscape designed by Phil Wood.  In front, Shelagh took inspiration from Beth Chatto’s book The Gravel Garden and we learned just how beautiful no supplemental water can be.

            I loved answering questions from the Ladew folks, and listening to their reactions.  I enjoyed seeing our Pacific Northwest landscapes through new eyes:  I knew we had fabulous gardens, but it’s always nice to hear other people say so.

Weary gardeners soldier on

I’m leading a homegrown tour this week, taking a group from the Ladew Topiary Gardens around to Seattle-area public and private gardens.  This is a first, and I’ve enjoyed putting together the itinerary and finding great landscapes (always remembering that there needs to be a bathroom stop along the way).

Yesterday afternoon, we had a tour of Kubota Gardens, now a city park but once the landscape and nursery business of Fujitaro Kubota.  The group flew nonstop yesterday morning, leaving about an hour late.  Considering most of them had been up since 3 a.m. Baltimore time, they were a lively bunch.  But I remember that zombie feeling.  When we fly to London, we’ve arrived midday, and then try to stay awake the rest of the day to get on local time.  Usually, we sit in Russell Square staring at the lovely fountain and eating sandwiches until we can check into our room and — yes, I admit it — take a nap.  Then we are ready to hit the pubs.

More on our local Seattle tour as the days go on.

The Constant Garden Traveler

Gardeners know that any trip turns into a garden tour of sorts — driving in a different town or countryside is a way of getting new plant and design ideas.  So, our weeklong vacation in Oregon was full of visiting friends and family, with the bonus of garden and plants.

            We spent a couple of nights with friends Dave and Ellen Morrison, who live in the country just south of Tillamook (south of the Air Museum) and north of Beaver.  In addition to their large, fabulous vegetable garden and orchard, Ellen has collected some great plants.  Positioned at the end of their drive is a small (for now) purple beech, which replaces a Forest Pansy redbud (Cercis canadensis) that didn’t quite live up to expectations.  European beech (Fagus sylvatica) and all its many cultivars make it into my top five favorite plants ever — stately trees, crisp foliage, fallen fruit (the nuts are called beech mast) crunchy underfoot.

            On our way from the coast to my sister’s house in Bend, we drove through Santiam Pass.  Still in bloom at that elevation:  bear grass (Xerophyllum tenax), with its fluffy white inflorescences atop tall stalks, and snowbush (Ceanothus velutinus).

            Back in more cultivated gardens, my sister’s small patio was awash in blooms.  One of our favorites, of course, is the ground-cover rose ‘Green Snake.’  This is no landscape rose, it runs wide (up to 10 feet) and flat on the ground, unless it hits an obstacle, and then it hops over.  ‘The Fairy,’ also in bloom, was eyeing the small vine maple behind it.  I’ve seen ‘The Fairy,’ a sweet, unassuming polyantha rose, scramble up into an old apple tree.

            Carolyn planted a lamb’s ears as a border along two sides of the patio.  It’s Stachys byzantina ‘Big Ears’ (also sold as ‘Helen von Stein’).  It’s a different growth habit from regular lamb’s ears, which I have in the parking strip.  Instead of creeping flat on the ground, this plant mounds up into a thick, rounded form — fabulous!  It’s now on my list to recommend as a low hedge; wouldn’t it look great as the border in a parterre?

The Armchair Garden Traveler

A quiet Charleston courtyard from our March 2008 visit.

A quiet cup of tea and a good book goes a long way to reviving your spirits and energy in the afternoon.  On Friday, I picked up Brian Coleman’s new book Intimate Gardens (Gibbs Smith, 2008), and was delighted to be transported back to Charleston and Savannah, where I led a tour at the end of March.  Brian sets the stage well for each chapter/garden in his book, and so I read about Savannah’s history and how the city was laid out in a regular grid system, before he described a lovely space in the historic district.  The two Charleston gardens reminded me of walking around the historic district with our landscape architect/guide — the houses are set on the lots with the short end to the street, and long porches face out into the shallow gardens.  We enjoyed the neatly clipped boxwood and wall fountains amidst houses that date back to the middle of the 18^th century.  Being there, we said, was the closest we’d get to England this year that’s the feel of the place.  (Only local brew houses were lacking, according to our ale expert, a.k.a. my husband Leighton.)

            Brian’s book was photographed by Bill Wright, who also photographed Debra Prinzing’s newest book Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways (Clarkson Potter, 2008; read more at shedstyle.com).  Debra’s book takes you around the country, too, letting the reader peer into someone else’s back garden to see what the tool shed of yesterday has become.  I’m amazed at the creativity of these gardeners — not just in the construction of the sheds, but also in the shed’s placement in the garden and the variety of uses to which they are put!