Each Little World

Art in the garden

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.

Buying trip

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.

Corn and tomatoes reign

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. 

Wordless Wednesday

Kirengeshoma palmata, Koreana group with Perilla

Cleveland Botanical Garden: Herb garden

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.

 

A parsley planter

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.

September at ACG

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.

Lemon herbs

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.

DOUBLE LEMON TEA BREAD

 

BREAD INGREDIENTS:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 Tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tablespoon grated lemon peel 

1 tablespoon finely chopped lemon balm

1 tablespoon fine chopped lemon thyme

3/4 cup of milk

LEMON GLAZE:

Juice of two lemons

Confectioners' (powdered) sugar

Mix flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl and set aside. Cream butter and gradually add in sugar. Then beat eggs in one at a time. Continue beating until light and fluffy. Beat in lemon peel and chopped herbs. Add flour mixture alternately with milk. Mix until batter is just blended.

Pour batter into greased 9 x 5 x 3 inch bread pan. Bake at 325 degrees about 50 minutes until a broom straw inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from pan and set on a cooling rack.

Add lemon juice, a few drops at time, to sifted confectioners' sugar until you have a thick but still pourable glaze. Pour the glaze over the still hot bread. Decorate with sprigs of Lemon Thyme. It's prettiest if the thyme is flowering. Mine had flowered once and been cutback (along with the Lemon Balm) and virtually had no flowers.

The flavor is very subtle and the bread has a fine texture and slices easily. Great with a glass of iced tea or lemonade on a hot afternoon — like today. You could easily increase the amount of lemon zest for a sharper flavor, but you don't want to increase the herbs so much that you wind up with green bread!

Lemon Balm can be pretty rampant but it smells wonderful as you pull it out to keep it under control! Mine also gets ratty looking by August so I cut it back to about 6 inches tall and it puts out a flush of new growth. Lemon Thyme likes perfect drainage and mine dies out every few years and I have to start again. The biggest, hardiest clump of it is growing in my traffic island bed where it gets lots of sun bounced off the concrete and also picks up lots of dirt and car exhaust fumes.  

Asparagus season

“By far the most exciting harvest of May is asparagus,” says Monty Don, one of the best contemporary British garden writers as well as a superb home gardener and one of my personal faves. He goes on to say, “Asparagus is one of those foods that are corrupted by being eaten out of season. The whole point of asparagus is that it has a time and a season.” 

You can find these thoughts and more in his book, “From the Garden to the Table: Growing, Cooking, and Eating Your Own Food,” co-written with his wife Sarah. 

And the time for asparagus is now in my part of the world. One of the great virtues of asparagus — besides its great taste — is that it’s so easy to prepare. In fact, it’s one of those foods that is best when not buried under rich sauces or lost in complex dishes. If you're looking for some new asparagus ideas, here's a few from me and my shelf of faithful cookbooks.    

How to chose and prep: Harold McGee did his asparagus homework and published the definitive word on thick vs thin and how to figure out where to break the ends off the stalks in this article in The New York Times. It finally ended the argument Mark and I have every spring about how and where to snap.

You can cook asparagus any number of different ways, all of them good. It’s more a question of taste than anything else. One pound of asparagus serves two to three people; though I’ve been known to eat the whole pound myself.  

Boiled: In her book, “A Year in My Kitchen,” Skye Gyngell says “all vegetables should be cooked in really well salted water — salty as seawater” to keep their color vibrant. (Gyngell is the chef at the cafe at Petersham Nurseries near London, above). My own tip is to not add anything with lemon juice until serving time as it turns any bright green veggies a drab olive green. 

Bring the pot of salted water to a full, rolling boil and drop in the asparagus. Bring the water back to boil and cook until tender, says Skye. This is usually only about a minute. Drain and serve immediately with any of the following: 

Pretty plain: Drizzle the spears with a bit of olive oil and a sprinkling of chive flowers. The chance to use the pretty lavender flowers is reason enough to make room for chives in your garden. 

Herb mayonnaise: Serve the asparagus with a lemon wedge and a good dollop of herb mayonnaise on the side. To about 2/3 cup of homemade mayonnaise (or your favorite store brand), add 2 to 3 Tablespoons of creme fraiche or yogurt, and one Tablespoon each of curly parsley, chives, tarragon and basil.

Citrus butter: Melt a stick of butter (4 ounces) and add the zest and juice of one lemon, lime or orange and pour over cooked asparagus.

Herb butter: Mix 2 to 3 Tablespoons of finely chopped herbs of your choice (my own favorite combination is Lemon Thyme, Lemon Balm and chives) with a squeeze of lemon juice and one stick of butter at room temperature. Shape the mixture into a log about one-inch in diameter. Wrap in tin foil and chill. Slice into discs about 1/4 thick and serve on top of hot asparagus. One woman I know uses a pastry tube and makes pretty little decorative shapes out of the soft butter and then chills them.  

Pan steamed: I most often cook asparagus this way, something I learned in the early 1980s from  “City Food,” one of Lee Bailey’s many fabulous cookbooks. Melt 1 Tablespoon butter in a deep skillet. Add washed and prepared asparagus and no other water than what is clinging to the stalks. Cover and steam over medium heat for five minutes. Shake pan occasionally. Check to be sure it’s not browning and cook another few minutes to taste.

Roasted: Last summer I discovered Ina Garton’s method of roasting asparagus in her book, “Barefoot Contessa Family Style” and it became an instant favorite. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. For two people, prepare a generous pound of asparagus and spread it in one layer on a sheet pan. Drizzle with 1 Tablespoon olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast until tender about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and return to the oven another minute until the cheese melts. Divine! 

As Monty Don says, “Eating asparagus is good not only for the taste buds but also for the spirit: It makes you feel pampered and indulged.” So go ahead, indulge yourself. Alas, asparagus season won’t last nearly long enough for you to get really spoiled.

Parts of this column appeared in The Capital Times under my byline.

Madison memo: Plant sales ahead!

I don't know about your town, but one of the annual rites of Spring here in Madison are plant sales. I mean the ones sponsored by garden groups not commercial nurseries. They are a chance to buy local and sustainable in the best sense of those words. This is the week they kick off with two of the most prestigious: 

Olbrich Botanical Gardens' Plant Sale with the Pros: This sale is known for three things: fabulous selection of tried and true plants mixed with cutting edge introductions; on-site advice from Olbrich staff and local experts, including help creating containers; and crummy weather. I always volunteer for this sale (come say hi on Sat. between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.). I usually work the shade perennials which are under a tent to protect them from the sun. More often than not, there is no sun; it's cold, windy and threatening rain! Those who've worked this sale know to dress in layers and make sure the top one is waterproof. Still, I'm hoping for the best!  Friday, May 8, members only from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; open to the public from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Public sale continues on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. See Olbrich's Web site for more details.

Friends of the Arboretum Native Plant Sale: This is THE place to find native plants with over 100 species of grasses, woodland, prairie, and savanna plants, trees and shrubs on offer this Saturday under the big tents next to the UW-Madison Arboretum Visitor Center, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Click here for details. The UW-Madison Arboretum — one of our local treasures — is celebrating 75 years in 2009 with a number of special events. Since 1934, the Arb has been "restoring the land, advancing ecological restoration and fostering Aldo Leopold's land ethic," as the Web site puts it. It's also a great place for a walk in the Spring.

Jeff Epping, the Director of Horticulture at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, wears his "Pro" apron and conducts a sale at a past Olbrich plant sale.

Also noteworthy:

Westside Garden Club: I love this sale and never miss it. They sell "choice perennials, specialty annuals and herbs," as a recent email from one of the members put it. Many of these plants are from member gardens so you know they will grow here. They tend to be nice size offerings at reasonable prices. This sale is also in the gardens and driveway of a lovely house (3918 Nakoma Rd., just west of Thoreau School) in one of Madison's older neighborhoods, so a visit is always a treat because of the setting. The sale is Friday, May 8 from 8 a.m to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. LIke most local clubs, the proceeds of the sale are donated to garden related civic organizations and projects.

I checked my garden journal to see what I bought last year at the Westside sale and discovered I spent $48 (including $6 on a pair of gloves that looked interesting). I had forgotten what I bought so the list refreshed my memory and I can tell you everything is up and looking good. I bought a number of different kinds of primroses and they have come up in big, healthy clumps — very exciting. I'm guessing they may be in flower by the time the sale rolls around this weekend.

Shorewood Hills Garden Club Annual Cocoa Mulch and Plant Sale: Saturday, May 9 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Shorewood Village Hall, 810 Shorewood Blvd. Call 238-4860 or 236-9374 for more information. A good group and their event should prove the same.

Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society Plant Sale: Saturday, May 16 from 9 a.m. to noon at the West Madison Agricultural Research Station, 8502 Mineral Point Rd. This is a stellar sale! The plants come from members' gardens, as is the case with many club sales. But this group includes some incredible gardeners and thus the sale always includes some unusual plants but you have to get there early. 

The last couple of years I've bought small Korean maples (Acer pseudosieboldiana) for about $10-12. Even small, they make an immediate statement in the garden. Already this spring, the trees I purchased at last year's sale have started to put on growth. How can you beat that price for a tree that has dramatic fall color, disease resistance, hardiness and small stature perfect for urban gardens?