a garden maker's notes

Spring Anemone Steals the Show

Plant Anemone canadensis when you want to carpet a large area. Too vigorous for a small spot in a border. Here it works to echo the shape of the long narrow walk  as it directs your attention to the garden below with its beckoning color and texture.
Meanwhile, I’m challenged to dead-head [...]

Birdsong, streaming sunlight, happy plants greet me most mornings. For most of May, the white climbing clematis vine (is it alba or grandiflora?) treats me to its lovely floral display. With or without flowers, the vines connect my deck to my garden and the woodland view beyond. Below deck, it’s wonderful as well.  I enjoy it from my office and the lower patio. [...]

 Always something to delight along the path. Texture, shapes, flowers, colors all reward the garden journey.

Drawn by color or form, I find myself noticing the way the sunlight plays across the landscape. It shifts and highlights or casts shadows. It flirts with our attention. Mesmerizing, sometimes the light dance holds me present for minutes that seem a much longer time. Pretty good considering how many thoughts distract us from our ‘now’ constantly. As a [...]

The garden changes daily now. Heat, rain,wind, and longer days continue the parade of plants emerging, opening, and flowering. The blue pansy paired with the muscari have been delighting me for weeks. But now, the rose foliage behind and sedum adjacent create a lush abundance to greet me.
 
 
 

 
 
Here’s the larger composition. This season’s white and blue pansies [...]

Did the Thalia narcissus blooming with the pink hellebore enchant me more than the European ginger with the emerging fern? Or the amazing smell of  the lilac scenting the garden fully 2 -3 weeks earlier than usual?Or the textures of  allium, cerastium, granite, and geranium foliage? Or the wonder of the sun lighting the varied array of [...]

Hummingbird visits to my garden are always a treat for me. I don’t have a feeder, but one passes thru the flower garden now and then. My hairdresser, Suzy, told me a lovely story. She places a feeder in her garden every year about this time (late April-May) and eagerly awaits the visits.
Over the years, one [...]

Millions of children hunt brightly colored eggs this morning.  Not to be left out, my child within hunts the new spring flowers that daily appear in my garden. The lovely witch hazel that provided so much delight and hope mere weeks ago in cheerless March now wears her petals as bright yellow carpet. The pounding rain of Monday and [...]

Muscari, dwarf iris, and dianthus budded foliage

Found myself in waking consciousness muttering the words” enable beauty” one morning this week. The dream fragments that I woke with escape me now but do remember the words–a mantra of sorts. The mantra of one who gardens and designs landscapes professionally, I’m continually challenged to create gardens that delight, restore,and simultaneously [...]