My fennel plants were spending more time on the ground than upright so I clipped a number of stems with seed heads for a vase. They're joined with a Cimicifuga seed head and those of Kirengeshoma palmata Koreana group.
I love how the Kirengeshoma seed heads look like fat flower buds about to explode open.
To see what other gardeners have put in a vase today, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this long-running Monday meme.
Though there are a number of things blooming in the garden, this is one of my favorites. Thus it's planted in multiple locations including in the Traffic Island Garden out in the middle of the street. Calamintha nepeta subsp. nepeta is a plant that you will see in gardens all over this area. We all discovered it in the sustainable gardens at Olbrich Botanical Gardens.
It doesn't seed and is a bee magnet. For me, the only problem is that my garden soil is more moist than this plant wants and I don't have quite as much sun as it will take. But it is such a fragrant, easy care perennial that I grow it anyway.
When I visited Olbrich Botanical Gardens last month, I was completely charmed by this piece of art in the center of their Herb Garden. I checked with the garden to find the name of the artist who created it.
Turns out it was the work of Erin Presley, one of Olbrich's horticulturalists who works in the Herb, Wildflower and Pond gardens and is also a mapping specialist. She told me via email that the tree is a 'King Arthur' crabapple that is showing its age.
She noted that some of the tree's large branches had been dying off intermittently over the past few years. After they lost a large section this past winter, the choice was made to remove the smaller twigs and branches, leaving most of the main branch structure intact.
Erin noted the clay balls had been around the garden for a while and the copper balls were remnants of an art installation at the gardens several years ago.
She said — and I completely agree — that "they provide a playful foil to the strong architecture of the remaining trunk and branches." At the moment, Olbrich is having their annual exhibit featuring local, national and international artists creating light-based installations throughout the outdoor gardens.
Called "GLEAM, Art in a New Light," this art extravaganza runs until Oct. 27th. Complete details are here, including times and admission information. While those night-time art installations are quite dramatic and eye-catching, don't miss Erin Presley's daytime delight in the Herb Garden.
Next year this area will look completely different because Olbrich will be moving the vegetable plot for the Herb Garden into this space. About this change, Erin says she's "looking forward to growing vining plants on the tree; can’t you just see gourds and pole beans dangling off of there?!" Make a note on your calendar right now to visit Olbrich's Herb Garden next summer to see Erin's whimsical re-do of this old crabapple tree.
I was given a gift certificate to Fitchburg Farms last year but I never rushed right out to redeem it. I am not a gardener who does a lot of containers or uses annuals in the garden itself. Given that Fitchburg Farms was known for those things, I had kind of ignored them until now. But free money to spend at a garden center should be used, one way or another. So I invited a gardening friend to go with me. I figured if I couldn't find anything I wanted she might.
As we were driving out on a gorgeous sunny day, she mentioned she'd heard the nursery was now selling perennials and even some shrubs. Turns out she was right and I was much more satisfied at the end of our shopping spree than I first envisioned. It was way too sunny outdoors to get any photos of the areas where I shopped — perennials and woodies. But it's really the inside of this nursery that is the amazing area.
The space was massive and filled to the brim with color and texture. Name an annual and they had it. Plus I saw all kinds of plants that were new to me, though I limited myself to herbs in here.
Some plants — like these Coleus — were displayed in ways that suggested brilliant planting combinations to try.
Intense color surrounded you everywhere you looked.
But if I am going to get a foliage plant with multicolored leaves, I'll opt for Pelargoniums. These were not only beautiful but a dramatic size. What an instant effect they would provide.
If you looked, you could find subtle plants and garden art as well.
I bought a few unusual basil plants, a pair of yellow foxgloves and the pretty little Larch tree that I posted about earlier. I spent the entire amount of the gift certificate with the exception of $1.50 which I gave my friend to splurge with on her purchases!
We continued on to Flower Factory, my personal favorite nursery, but again I didn't really get many photos as the sun was just too intense. I sat in the shade with my wagon full of plants and enjoyed this view while my friend continued to shop.
Flower Factory has innumerable hoop houses with everything clearly marked. I found everything on my list and restrained myself from most impulse buys. Having bought a tree at the previous stop helped to keep my spending in line. I intended to buy this stunning honeysuckle 'Major Wheeler' until I saw how big it was and realized it would eat my garden. But what a beauty. This area now is covered with shade cloth after a huge old oak tree came down in a storm a few years ago.
This is a photo from last summer's July visit to Flower Factory. This is the first parking area when you pull into the nursery. I usually manage to find a spot here and park with the nose of my car almost hitting the flowers. But this is a busy place with lots of parking including space for busloads of garden shoppers.
The plants I came home with from our two stops do not make for a very exciting photograph as they are mostly about foliage. As I mentioned I bought some unusual basil plants including one with pale green and white variegated foliage, two yellow-flowered foxgloves, a big plant of Epimedium 'Ellen Willmott', a tatting fern, some Ajuga 'Chocolate Chip', Euphorbia palustris to plant by the pond and more Lilium landini. One of the Euphorbia and the larch are still waiting to be put in place but everything else was planted before the big rains and seem to have settled in.
Here's that variegated Basil out in the garden.It's just a great little foliage plant.
I saw this Astilbe — 'Mighty Chocolate Cherry' — at the Westside Farmers' Market on Saturday and could not resist it. Love those dark leaves and the intense flower color. It is supposed to get 4 ft. tall, though the online photos and descriptions all say it has red flowers. We'll see.
Our local farmers' markets are bursting with fresh produce that is providing lots of great eating at our house. For as long as possible we will be feasting on sweet corn and tomatoes. I've been roasting and freezing tomatoes, making gazpacho and fresh uncooked tomato sauce for pasta. But my favorite for both flavor and ease is Caprese salad.
According to Epicurious.com Insalata caprese (literally, the salad from Capri) was created in the 1950s at the Trattoria da Vincenzo for folks looking for a light lunch. Its ingredients were tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil and olive oil. I add a splash of balsamic vinegar so mine's not authentic but it's the way we like it.
I don't have enough sun or space to grow my own tomatoes but my garden does offer three kinds of basil. So we vary the salad with the type of basil and tomatoes we use. It may have been created to satisfy lunch-goers, but I am happy eating it as an appetizer, side dish or the whole meal. Not many dishes are so pretty or so flavorful.
We had Caprese salad the other night after an entree of Beaufort Soused Corn and Shrimp. The link takes you to a recipe that is identical to the one I follow from Christopher Idone's coffee table cookbook, "Glorious American Food." We mostly enjoy corn on the cob but I love this recipe that uses it off the cob.
The waters around Beaufort were once plentiful with shrimp who made their way into many dishes, including pies, which is the origin of this dish. Idone ditched the crust and added a lemony vinaigrette instead. I usually only make this once a summer but it's yummy as well as easy. The recipe serves 8. I use a scant pound of shrimp for the two of us which leaves us with enough for dinner the next night. But I make the entire recipe of vinaigrette because I love the flavor and don't want to run short.
We have a few small grindstones in our garden but nothing like the ones used as hardscaping in the Herb Garden at the Cleveland Botanical Garden which we visited on our recent trip out east. A magnificent contrast to all the aromatic plants surrounding them.
I always pot up a container of annual herbs that I can put in a sunny spot. Often that spot has been on this old stump from a huge crabapple tree. Time — and digging critters — are making inroads into the stump, so this year I decided to put a couple of parsley plants directly into the crevices along with a little dirt. They've lasted a week and seem to be settling in. The usual pot of herbs (4 kinds of basil) is on the stump of the pine tree that came down in the winter of 2012/13.
Last week I visited Allen Centennial Gardens on the UW-Madison campus with Julie Siegel, a Chicago-area garden designer, blogger and friend. The garden is a teaching garden for the university but it is also free and open to the public. It was a perfect day for a visit with blue skies and few clouds, evidenced by this shot of the decorative details on the house once used by the Deans of the Ag School.
On the ground, however, it was a bit sunny for capturing the best photos. I took this shot of Geranium dalmaticum to remind me that mine is planted in the wrong spot in my garden judging by how happy it seems to be here.
Every time I visit ACG I discover something that is completely new to me — like this seedpod of Datura. I've seen this plant growing in many gardens but never at this season when it has these huge pods along with its last few flowers.
Ed Lyon, the director of ACG, always creates exciting mixes of edibles and ornamentals.
And he's an expert when it comes to color in the garden: whether it's flower and foliage combinations or art objects that he adds for emphasis. Every one of the following images offers ideas for home gardeners looking to do something a little different. (These tubes are painted PVC).
I particularly like blues that have a touch of gray or green as accent colors in the garden, and Ed must also judging by all the ways he employs it at ACG.
When I was at ACG at the end of June, I was taken with the clumps of peachy-pink hollyhocks that picked up the trim color of the Dean's house. This visit, it was the seedheads that matched the Cream City bricks.
I began growing herbs long before I had a garden. They were in pots on porches, tucked next to steps and back doors; anywhere there was a bit of room and a lot of sun. The minute I had a plot of my own, I planted chives; a pass-along from my garden mentor who also sat next to me at work, a lovely arrangement and one conducive to impromptu garden (and life) lessons.
I planted all the things that I never saw to buy at the grocery store but were critical recipe ingredients in the cookbooks I was reading at the time. Things like Lovage and Summer Savory and Perilla. Over the years, my taste in various herbs has waxed and waned, along with the amount of sun in my garden. But two herbs that I'd never be without are Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis, below) and Lemon Thyme (Thymus citriodorus variegata; the variegated variety is the prettiest, above)
These days, most of my herbs are planted next to paths for easy clipping and close to the house (when possible) so I can run out whatever the weather. But if I only had room for a few, Lemon Balm and Lemon Thyme would always top the list, because they're the flavoring in my favorite summer dessert: Double Lemon Tea Bread. This recipe is probably from the 1970s and is likely from House Beautiful magazine. It's pasted on an index card and stuck inside a plastic sleeve in my recipe box where I can easily find it, even if I can no longer recollect the source.