Brookgreen Garden Tour

This weekend I went to another of the garden estates around the area.  Like its English forebearers great estates were established here in the 17th-19th centuries, and also similarly, they are now the sites of some of the wonderful gardens in this area. From the website:

This was a rice plantation, one of the largest crops grown in antebellum times.

"During the Seventeenth Century, English settlers first came to the Carolina territory from Barbados and other Caribbean islands.  A plantation economy was well established on the islands, and the planters were looking to expand their holdings.  From the beginning, they brought enslaved Africans to work the new lands. The planters at The Oaks, Brookgreen, Springfield and Laurel Hill plantations (the four former plantations that make up the present-day Brookgreen Gardens) established family dynasties and were leaders of the rice planting elite during the antebellum years.  However, the success of these great rice plantations rested on the backs of the enslaved Africans.  As early as the mid-eighteenth century, a majority of the population in the Lowcountry of South Carolina were enslaved Africans and during the late antebellum period they accounted for almost 90 percent of the population in the region. They provided physical labor, skill and technology required for rice cultivation and production and infused the environment with their customs, traditions, crafts, and language known today as Gullah-Geechee culture."

Obviously this was a time of great wealth and fortune for a few, at the cost of freedom and hardship of the many.  

Today, its a sculpture garden

I was very taken with this statue and pool

Ballerina Roses and Daisies

Not all of the sculptures were classical!

What are considered weeds here have their own place!

Quite a bit of woodlands too

In the Child's Garden

Slightly cooler than Charleston, the tall snapdragons are still alive!

A scenic view on the walk

Love this pool

....a lot

The White Border (with Griffon)

One of the few copper statues

Foxgloves are at their height of glory

more Foxgloves

More snapdragons, with a larkspur or two

I think this is a Monsieur Tiller

The Muses in Fountain form

Another shot, it was beautiful

I was particularly taken by this sculpture holding a sculpture

Knockouts!

Snapdragons, foxglove

Its a formal garden but many portions have that slightly wild abandoned look that I love

I visited on a stormy day, in the 'in-between' season... after the spring magnificence but before the summer abundance... but still it was beautiful and informative.  You need about 2 hours to explore the formal gardens, and an additional 2 to walk the nature walks, plantation/rice fields area, see the butterflies and the zoo.

The Bumper Crop in Pictures

I missed GBBD, per usual, but its a bumper year for the Showy Evening Primrose (is there ever a year when it isn't a bumper year for those?) and the Star Jasmine.

So lets start with the Jasmine.  Last summer I decided to let the jasmine climb the tree on the corner of the fence.  This is what happens when you do this:

This is one star jasmine plant.  It is probably 30+ feet wide by 15 feet high.  And remember how happy we all were last year that this same plant survived a fungus that made it drop all of its leaves?  And remember me saying that it was looking rather pitiful, even though you all thought it looked fine?  Well, it has recovered.  Actually it still has the fungal disease but is slowly beating it.  Only about 25% of the leaves fell off this year.  And just to jog your memory, here's a picture of the same vine in May of last year, before massive climbing of tree.

And that same corner today:

Back to good health.  And behind the statue has filled in nicely too!

I know, its absurd the size of this thing in one year, and you can probably imagine the intensity of the scent around my house currently.  Okay, moving on to a true invasive, Oenothera speciosa, Showy Evening Primrose or Mexican Primrose.  I pull out about 90% of this each year.  I'm seriously considering putting in edging around it like you do bamboo.  Its sort of like that really pretty girl with the black heart in high school.  Its horrible and attractive all at the same time.  It will wrap its roots around other plants roots.  So they don't get any water at all.  Like it is evil.  Don't be fooled by these pictures.  You really really don't want this plant. 

In this next picture it is joined by a few of the plants I don't have cultivar names for.  That purple salvia is super cool...the stems are actually the exact same purple as the flower.  And those slightly peachy flowers are those of the "lowes nameless" miniature rose I bought last year.   The roses in the background for the most part are late bloomers and are about 2 weeks from full flush, and the foxgloves are out, and still standing this year, thanks to lack of wind and hail storms this spring.   The gaura is also a week or so from full flush, and of course, the hydrangeas who I loved dearly, kill me this time of year because they are so late to leaf compared to everything else.  Oh except for the echinacea, hands down the slowest thing out of the ground each year.  I swear its dead every year, but it never is.

But back to the point here: what I do love about it (the Oenothera), is that it sprawls so prettily... so few plants do this with any grace.

A few other shots from around the garden to round out the lot.  First the 'classic' (haw haw) red knockout rose with my cat, deet can and sluggo looking on:

And the remains of the first flush of the MAC rose.  This rose definitely suffered from both thrips and iron deficiency earlier in the year so isn't the prettiest its been, but still I'm not complaining.

  

Garden Missteps: "When Good Yards Go Bad" in my own backyard!

You'd think I'd have run the gamut of mistakes after these past few years, but I have outdone myself with a first time mistake that I'm surprised I lasted as long as I did without committing.

It has to do with color combinations.  Generally, I stick to the pink, light pink, light purple, blue, and white areas.  I have one potted Bush Daisy that throws in a shot of yellow but otherwise there has been no variance from this scheme. Ever.

Angelonia in the background doing what its supposed to be doing, last year.

Most of my garden is perennials and shrubs so you would think it would be hard to mess up and already 'set in dirt' color scheme that was working just fine, but I did.  You see, every year I plant one major flat of annuals: angelonia.  It grows and blooms all year no matter how sunny and hot it gets, and I have to say, it is the ONLY one so far I have found that fits that bill.  I buy an entire flat of it, and infill around the perennials that are slow to poke up.  I love it because it looks lovely all push over as those same perennials fill in, or upright it has a nice shape of its own.

Anyhow, this year I went out to get my flat and WOAH!  I saw this midnight reddish dark purple flat, and fell in love.  It was in the purple family, though redder than most of the bluish purples that I have, and I thought, this is WAY better than the white and very pale pink angelonia I have been planting every year.  So I snapped up the flat and headed home, quickly plopping the small squares all over my garden.

Nicely matched angelonia and pink veronica, yeah...last year

And now, my garden is a painted trollop.  I also purchased some pineapple sage earlier this year (which is already blooming thanks to summertime weather), and the extra bush daisy (europs) I buy for my Mom each spring, between the two it looks like my mac n cheese when to mardi gras.

And imagine...this stuff will get 4x larger. 

So the purple has to go.  Not sure what I'm going to do with it.  Right now I've lined up a few in some dirt meant to be used for something not reddish purple.  It doesn't match ANYTHING!!!  What was I thinking?  The pineapple sage is going too and those pots on the patio pavers...all to my Mom in one week.  She's got 5 acres of gardens, she can hide this stuff somewhere. Whew.  This garden is not me. Heaven forbid when those roses bloom.  I'm not sure I even like the pink anymore!

And onto another mistake I just did a few minutes ago.... pruning a rose that mixes in nicely with the star jasmine, snip snip snip, and I realize, I just cut the jasmine.  In the middle somewhere.  I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see which part of the vine is no longer attached to...um...anything.  sigh. Nothing like a dead bunch of jasmine climbing in with the rest.

Okay, here's a few pictures in the garden of things that look good.

Iceberg blooming by the front drive

Madame Alfred Carriere Rose by the back door

MAC a little closer

Million bells in a pot, that one purpley bloom is taunting me

By the ugly brown wall with new ugly 5" pipe

Star Jasmine perfuming every breath, everywhere

Oenethera, I hate this plant, but its pretty, and not garish. Just mega invasive evil.

I have some work to do.  Have you ever done this?  "Improved" your way into something that was better left as is?

Is Old the New New?

The proverbial baby keeps getting tossed with the bath water.  Its true. And nowhere has this been more debated than in the rose world.  As the story goes, the commercialization of the cultivar "Peace" by Meilland after WWII, ushered in the age of the hybrid tea, which saw a great many roses perish in their midst.  Now, all kidding aside, I think many of us now sigh a big whew, and thank those 1960s, 70s and 80s folks who stuck to their guns and kept around an old rose or two instead of hoisting them all in favor of the latest and greatest.

But come on everyone, lets get real.  Rose growers have long been in the business of commerce, and there has always been "this years winner" be it wines, or flowers, or fashion trends.  Some of those items honestly SHOULD be deigned fit only for the history books (kindles). White skintight jumpsuits for instance. Hoopskirts, knee breeches, knob and tube electric, telegrams. And yes, many many old roses.  There are also those things that come into and go out of fashion throughout the years.  And yes, gardening itself goes in an out of style, and flower type, height, smell, and form all seem to win or lose favor with each successive generation.  Even before the advent of hybrid teas in the later 19th century, the annals of time have claimed many a flower variety.

Rosa "Peace" ~ The Conquerer

So with this as the setup, we have an interesting trend going on now in the rose world, as well as the gardening world as a whole: organic, original, heirloom, old.  Old is this generations next greatest thing.  So much so that I read somewhere recently that hybrid tea roses, once the overwhelming ONLY selection of roses in commerce are having trouble selling and languishing on the shelves!!!  This means that hybrid tea varieties, the good, the bad, and the ugly will perish in the whiplash. Hold on to your favorite varieties now, because soon they'll be hard to come by (life's full of blackspot and then you die).

And so it goes... in my lifetime I'm all but certain that new will move back into being the next new thing, and old garden roses, heirloom vegetables and whatnot will again have to step aside for some amazing new horticultural marvel as the whim of popular opinion moves along.   As most of us probably have found out in our lives, not all progress is actually progress, but no progress isn't progress either.  And sometimes you can't tell the difference for a good long while.  Something to chew on, that.

So to each his own I say.  The fact that there are remontant lilacs and hydrangeas and short versions of every old garden stalwart isn't a bad thing.  It reflects what we the people really want.  Not all of us (I sure as heck would rather the taller dianthus, coneflowers, and salvia's of yore), but the masses have spoken for this day, this moment, and have done for many many many generations.  And hey, my hydrangeas stay in bloom 10 months of the year.  I can live with that. And just to throw it out there, if I could grow lilacs at all down here, I wouldn't care if they came from Mars, and were only available at the "evil box store": I'd be growing them.

So how about this: Lets stop beating each other up about our choices... what do you say?  Organic or not, heirloom or not, OGR or knockout, purebred or hybrid, remontant or species, the choice is yours, and surely any current generational zeal you conform to for anyone's reasons but your own will shortly be the next worst thing.

For the record: in my garden in zone 9a super humid all year long Southern Coastal USA, I fertilize primarily organically with a midseason dollop of osmocote, spray for pests and disease only when absolutely necessary (but I absolutely do), think lawns are sort of pretty, and I grow 18 cultivars of roses:

3 types of knockouts
2 david austin shrubs
1 species rose
5 OGRs (or almost) a noisette, a polyantha, a bourbon, a china and a hybrid musk
4 modern bushes/climbers
2 bermuda/mysteries
1 miniature

They ALL grow quite well, and have no distain for each other.  Imagine that!  I make my own choices, and to those of you who think I do so in an uninformed fashion, I'll also state for the record, I think its nice that you have an opinion.  We all do.  And since nostalgia is such the rage these days I'll add this oldie but goodie: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.  Now I sure do wish that WOULD come back to stay.

The defense rests.

Box Limerick

There once was a house with a drive
which was planted with boxwood each side
It grew so very slow, how was that family to know
Now no one can get through to inside!

The front walk to my childhood home

Happy St. Pats!  I've started my front garden gutting and knot garden construction.  Mean, lean and green.  Boxwoods are involved. Stay tuned!

Top Ten Benefits of Gardening

1)Magic - Gardening is more than hard work, maintenance and flowers lolling in the breeze.  There are moments every so often when the sunlight is on your face, the soft sound of bees buzzing reaches your ears, and the smell of earth fills your nostrils. Suddenly you open up to another smaller, more wonderful world.  Little moments of magic, I like to call them.  There is something to be said for sitting out on a patio chair early on a May morning drinking your coffee and minding your own business when a hummingbird zips up and stares you right in the face for 30 seconds.

2)Being Present In the Moment - Gardening insists that you be present in the moment, due to the sheer ephemeralness of the pastime. What you notice this very moment well might not be there tomorrow or the next day.  In a broader context though, I find the act of gardening similar to reading in that it focus's the attention down so much that it is hard to be actively gardening while also thinking about x, y, or z.  I tend to be thinking about exactly what I'm doing... and in this day and age that's rare.

3)Hope - No matter what happens out there, I am always hopeful for each and every plant.  That it will survive, get bigger, bloom nicer, quit taking over neighbor plants. I always look at each plant and see in my minds eye its most perfect self.  And, as gardens tend get better with age, I always have hope no matter what the disaster was last season.  I think the reason people like visiting others grand gardens is because it gives us hope of what ours might be someday.  And what's really nice about all this hope: sometimes we do achieve!

4)Passion - Catch someone who gardens in the late February spring fever and you'll see passion along almost fanatical lines.  I almost went to Chamblees.com and ordered two more roses at midnight a few days back, even though my 'rose picks' of the year had already been purchased with great thought and care several months before so they'd have the winter to get well established.  Its a mania.

5)Exercise - Gardening uses muscles that most people do not use.  It is a full body isometric sport.

6)Stress Relief - Part of being in the moment (#2) I think, but a very specific benefit on its own: Stress Relief. When in the garden, because of the physicality of the entire process and the utilization of most of your senses... it tends to disrupt the brain from the circular worry/dwelling/task oriented thinking which goes on contantly in the background without our consious noticing.  It is almost hard NOT to stop and smell the roses in the metaphorical sense because your brain is busy listening to the birds and bees, watching the colors and forms, feeling the gritty dirt, and smelling all the smells that are around.

7)Sense of Accomplishment - Many of us use our jobs to get our daily fix of doing something to move forward in the world. Anyone who has ever lost a job knows exactly how much of this sense of accomplishment and achievement we derive from our jobs; they have obvious rewards.  Granted there are tons of things we do every day that provide us with accomplishments, but family chores and house maintenenance don't provide that immediate sense of satisfaction.   Take weeding though.  An hour out weeding and you can see your efforts.  An hour planting a row of azaleas...instant gratification... as well as future rewards as those plants mature and become better than even your first vision of them had been.  Like a botanical pension plan, really.

8)Alone Time. Gardening is something that is generally best done alone.  Though its nice to share the garden, and I love doing so, I spend most of my time in it just being myself, all by myself, in my yuckiest clothes with no makeup on.

9)Creativity/Individuality... yes nearly everyone has a knockout rose or two, but I can tell you my garden doesn't look a thing like anyone elses around here.  And thats not on purpose really, I just do what I think looks good.  I make mistakes in my mind, and I dig them up and move them or donate them to others.  The sum total collective is a huge expression of what I find pretty.  Its why I like visiting other peoples gardens too.  It expands my vision, but also shows me their unique creative side.

10)Acceptance.  Sometimes you cannot win.  Mother Nature is a really tough mama, and she doesn't really make exceptions.  I have learned to accept that some things take time, for instance.  I have learned to accept that I can't have any more sun, less sun, less 90+ degree days than she's going to give me.

{All Photos from my trip last week to Magnolia Plantation}

When Good Yards Go Bad II

For Part II of my series on Charleston yards gone awry, I thought I would share with you a newly planted front yard installation that cropped up this week, on my walking route to work, while I was away on a business trip.  As we gardeners so often note during this time of year: a lot can happen to a "garden" in just one short week.

So without further ado: here you have it.

"Kitchen" Garden

As with many truly unfortunate ideas, they tend to look good on paper. Communism springs to mind.  But in all fairness, and to set myself apart from the mainstream news media, let me present both sides.  What this genus does have going for it:

- It comes in many colors, an almost endless array
- Variable pricing on different cultivars, priced to fit nearly anyone's budget
- Strong silvery foliage that will absolutely never need staking
- Low water needs
- Doesn't mind if you plant it upside down
- Supreme disease resistance (although the very cheapest varieties may be prone to Rust)

But in my humble opinion, the negatives of this species far outweigh the positives:
- It remains short, sparse and invariable
- Painful if stepped on
- Companion 'plantings' tend to be empty aluminum cans and cigarette butts, two of my least favorite weedy varieties
- Attracts party-ators (aged 22 and under all night partyers) instead of pollinators
- Tends to spread: not necessarily in the same form but its companion plantings and party-ators move quickly throughout the block, overtaking well established gardens in a very short time period.

Anyhow made for a good laugh on my way to work, and I couldn't resist putting it up here!