Each Little World

Garden visits: Ken and Jean Nordlund

Every time I've visited the Nordlund's garden, it is more lovely than the last. Ken says that he couldn't do much more than "distinguish a petunia from a pine tree" when he and Jean moved to this house in 1989. Even a brief glance at this front garden indicates this is the home of a consummate plants person. Front to back and side to side, this is a swoon-worthy garden. 

Heading around the garage (to the left in the above photo) is this walkway with a tall hedge creating a narrow garden room.

The garage wall on the right holds attractive trellises for clematis to scramble over. 

This is the view as you walk out into the gardens behind the house: big trees, hedges and deep dramatic beds of plants and grasses.  

As someone who loves a tightly clipped hedge, I am in awe of this sweep of yew setting off a space for entertaining right in the midst of the garden. 

This garden has a number of Carexs as well as grasses. 

The fenced area in the center back of the view below is the vegetable garden. 

A dairy state icon guards the veggies.

Continuing towards the back left side of the garden leads you to an entirely unexpected view. 

From the street, it is not obvious that the Nordlund's home and those of their neighbors circle a hidden park.

Ken and his neighbors are working on a prairie landscape where his and other properties adjoin this community space. 

Back in the main garden, we are now looking at the beds that border the right side of the property. If you need to reorient yourself, go back to the 3rd or 7th images which show wide views. 

Another garden visitor provides a sense of the scale of some of the hedges and plants. These borders are deep enough that that have paths running through the middle of them. 

Whether you look up . . .

or down, there is something wonderful to see.

All good things must come to an end. 

i'm already looking forward to this year's tours of gardens of members of the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society.

Not just Hellebores

I love Hellebores and have them spread throughout my garden. If you grow them, then you know they only have one downside — and down it is. Their lovely flowers face downwards meaning it is almost impossible to see them without bending over yourself or turning the flowers upward with your hand. Somehow I've managed to plant two summer flowers that do the same thing. 

This is Deinanthe caerula which I've been growing about ten years. It is a small clump former that is almost shrubby. And yes, it's caged because it is rabbit candy.

It is sometimes called "False Hydrangea". You can see where it got that name: from its large rugose leaves that look very like those of a Hydrangea.

The pale, waxy lilac blue flowers are exquisite.

Alas, without lifting them upward they don't look like much and are easy to ignore. This was blooming around July 20th.

My other downward summer bloomer is Anemonopsis macrophylla, a Japanese aristocrat of the woodland. Its foliage was describe in the catalog as "cimicifuga-like," but I think it looks more like Astrantia.

This also has rather waxy blooms but even more pale colored than the Deinanthe. 

When you see the inside of the bloom is really looks waxy; almost to the point of looking artificial. We've had a little over two inches of rain since early Sunday and this flower is showing the effect of getting pounded by the weather. 

'Splendide' indeed

I am growing seven different Thalictrums. They range in size from Thalictrum kiusianum aka Kyushu meadow rue which is about 4" tall. This spreads slowly, can take some sun and nothing seems to bother it. 

Thalictrum rochebrunianum 'Lavender Mist' usually tops out around 6'. The stems are sturdy and stay vertical unless they get hit with a severe wind storm. This has always been the drama queen of my meadow rues — until now. 

I bought Thalictrum 'Splendide' from Digging Dog Nursery in 2016 and this summer it has done its third year leap if you know that gardening mantra. This plant was discovered as a seedling between T. elegans and T. delavayi by famed French Heuchera breeder, Thierry Delabroye, according to Digging Dog. You can see its foliage behind me in the image below. 

This plant is listed as getting about 2' wide which is the width of mine and 5-9' tall. The tape measure I'm holding below marks the top of the flower stalks at 10.5' tall! Except for a few stems which have bent downward, most of the flowers are lost in the tree's leaves. The tree is helping to stabilize this tall plant so I shouldn't complain that it's hiding the flowers. 

At this height there really isn't another location in the garden where the same thing won't  happen. Despite buying 'Splendid' because I loved the idea of a really tall Thalictrum, I never believed it would reach the sky. 

Lilies and daylilies

It's high summer and the garden is bursting with bright colors and towering plants. The view out the living room windows is all green, but take a short walk up to the Sacred Grove and the scene is entirely different. Up there, I've got deep dark red Lilium asiaticum landini and bright yellow Lilium leichtlini in one bed. Across the path are three types of orange lilies and assorted daylilies.

I planted Lilium henryii in memory of my late father-in-law, Henry. It is always at least 6' tall if not a bit higher.  

Lilium lancifollium flore pleno is the double form of the tiger lily. Lilium superb, the Turk's Cap lily, is just about to bloom. Though all three lilies in this bed are orange, the tones are  markedly different tones of that color. 

Hemorcallis 'Lady Inora' shares the bed with the orange lilies. 

Tall spikes of Thalictrums lighten the look of the lilies' heavy flower heads.

Across the path is Lilium leichtlini. I love the delicate blush of red on the backs of the flowers. I'd like to get more of this bulb but haven't seen it offered recently.

I seem to have lost the name of this daylily, but based on its markings I think it is one of Pauline Henry's Siloam varieties. Lovely pale yellow with a purple throat.

The dark red Lilium landini (center) are so dark you can barely see them in this photo. That's Hemerocallis 'Little Grapette' in the foreground with Ligularia 'The Rocket' adding more yellow. 

Around the corner by the Tea House side of the above bed are red daylilies: H. 'Little Red Warbler' on the left and H. 'Petite Sioux' on the right. 

At the top of the stairs out front is Hemerocallis 'Early Bird Cardinal' backed by Berberis 'Orange Rocket'.

If you asked me if I had any bright summer flowers in the garden, I'd say that I have very few. But walking around with a camera suggests I haven't a clue about what I've been planting the last few years!

Summer recipes

I've been taking advantage of the summer weather to to try out new recipes, including a few from "Smitten Kitchen Every Day," the latest cookbook by Deb Perelman, of Smitten Kitchen blog fame. These days I am usually thinning cookbooks from my bookshelves but leafing through the pages of this one in A Room of One's Own bookstore, I found recipe after recipe that I wanted to try. 

Then the New York times published an interesting sounding recipe for marinated and grilled flank steak, one of my favorite meals. I bought fresh dill at the Farmers' Market for another recipe but used it first with Alliums for a tabletop bouquet. 

This is Smitten Kitchen's "potato and asparagus gribiche" which became my new favorite potato salad at first bite. The gribiche dressing (with the spoon, below) of mustard, hard boiled eggs, capers and cornichons may not be typical but I found it perfect. This dish is a great way to eat asparagus in season and a good way to enjoy it when it's not local. (Note that all her recipe titles are lower case type, so I followed suit).

I make quick cucumber pickles often in the summer, but Perelman turns hers into a bright new idea: "smashed cucumber salad with salted peanuts and wasabi peas." Another recipe where I fell in love immediately upon tasting. 

If you don't cook flank steak, the NYTimes' recipe for "Grilled Flank Steak with Worcertershire Butter" is a good starting point. Plus I froze the leftover Worcestershire butter so now I have a lovely little treat to make any meat special. 

Alas I did not take any photos of Perelman's "whitefish and pickled cucumber salad' which we ate on thick rye crackers along with "Charred Tomato Soup with Coriander and Cilantro" from the NYTimes. Both were great and they were also excellent paired. The Times suggested this was a good soup for gazpacho lovers, which we are. This soup was tasty and complex and much quicker to make than gazpacho. With fabulous tomatoes at my  local farmers' market, this is going to appear on our table a number of times before winter. 

IOVM: The lightest lavender

I am not a big fan of Hosta flowers. I like them the moment they first appear but end up deadheading the plants long before they're finished flowering.  

August flowering Hosta ' Royal Standard' has huge white flowers that are fragrant so those always get to mature on the plant. 

The Hostas pictured above are growing at the end of the driveway out by the street. Across from them in the traffic island bed are 'Summer Beauty' Alliums. 

This is a popular Allium variety locally and almost every gardener I know is growing it. That's Geranium 'Roxanne' growing in its midst. 

The concrete of the street makes a surprisingly nice backdrop for the Allium flowerheads.

I have enough Alliums that i am free to cut as many as I want for indoors. Last week my vase was mostly Alliums with a few smaller flowered Hosta stems. 

This week is the opposite. Once the Alliums started to fade, I replaced them with large Hosta flowers that are mostly in the bud stage. They lose a lot of that drama as they open to my eye. 

To see what flowers other gardeners have put in a vase this week, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this Monday meme. 

A break in the weather

The forecast for today's high temperature has dropped to only 92°F instead of 94°F, but it's not enough to draw me outdoors. We're supposed to go back down into the 80s and even a few days in the 70s next week. We'll see if that really happens, but I'm hopeful.

I spent Tuesday evening sweating my way through beautiful local gardens of members of the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society that were open to visit. The next morning I was up early to make a 7 a.m. bus departure for a day-long WHPS trip to Chicago-area private gardens and the wonderful Chicago Botanic Garden. Too hot and sunny to get many good photos but I managed to snap a few to share at some future date. For now, here's Hemerocallis 'Little Grapette' and Lilium landini in my garden after the rain. We've had a little over two inches in the last two days with more forecast for the weekend. 

Wednesday vignette

Clematis alpina 'Stolwijk Gold' is just as beautiful in the summer without any flowers. The stems are distinctly red, contrasting with the eponymous foliage. 

The Glidden House

We discovered The Glidden House a few years ago when we checked the Cleveland Museum of Art's website to see if we could find lodging nearby. This boutique hotel, located in a historic building, is right in the midst of University Circle, the city's art and cultural area. We could see the botanic garden from our window as we ate breakfast and the art and natural history museums were within easy walking distance. 

The building was once the home of the Glidden family whose name was synonymous with paint. There are well-throught-out new additions to the original structure giving them room for conferences and weddings without detracting from the beautiful old house. 

Though the building feels spacious inside, it also manages to maintain a comfortable, almost homey feel. Well, a rather fancy home! There were a lot of cars around the entrance when I took this photo as there was some kind of business meeting in progress. But we have been able to park adjacent to the hotel on our visits and we've just left our car and walked everywhere. They even let us keep our car there after we'd checked out but wanted to go back to the museum for a while. 

We  snapped this photo for the beautiful construction materials and for the rocky solution to a problem area. We have a similar narrow, sloped space and are thinking about using the same solution. 

Opposite this painting is the check-in desk. On the coffee and side tables are the latest books about the exhibits at the art museum. This is the only hotel I've ever been in where I was so taken with the art and art books that I could hardly pay attention to registering!

We ate breakfast in the garden room adjacent to the original dining room on the other side of the brick wall. The Glidden House offers an absolutely fabulous breakfast buffet. 

You can also sit in the dining room with a fireplace and lighted built-in china cabinets around the room. The cabinets are full of china!

Isn't this a great spot to begin your morning!

I had to take a closer look at the beautiful woodcarving around the screen doors out to the patio. 

The dark wood just at the edge of the photo on the left below is the screen door whose carving I photographed above. 

This outdoor seating area is between the old garden room and one of the new event spaces.  

The glassed-in area (above) with the long white curtains is a small cocktail lounge (below). There is a small curved bar area with seating by the big windows. 

While Mark played on his laptop, I had to check out the artwork. There's nothing I like better than abstract mark-making. 

The view out the windows in the lounge. 

And the view towards the street. 

When I think of Wisconsin I picture huge old Oak trees and acres of evergreens. But there is something mesmerizing about the trees that I see every time we drive out East. 

On our walk over to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, we unexpectedly came across this Frank Gehry building.  

It's the Peter B. Lewis Building of Case Western Reserve University whose buildings are spread throughout the area. As Mark was standing on the sidewalk across the street taking these pictures, someone called his name. We looked up and it was one of his Madison photo friends who was in Cleveland for a music conference on the lute! Small world. 

You are allowed to go inside and tour part of the main floor. It was well worth taking a look to see how all those swoops and curves played out in the interior. And we also got to see a ceramic sculpture by one of our favorite artists, Jun Kaneko. You can tell I'm going to the natural history museum and not the art museum by my casual clothes. 

I haven't a clue what this building was originally or how it is used today. But it was too lovely not to capture it with the camera. 

I've written many posts about restaurants and museums and art galleries, but I am not sure if I've ever shared my opinion on a hotel. But should you be in Cleveland, The Glidden House Hotel is a lovely place to stay. And to our surprise, we discovered it cost about the same as one of the big chain hotels we'd stopped at in Toledo on previous trips.

The drive from Madison to Cleveland is a bit longer than we'd prefer to do in one day, but knowing The Glidden House Hotel was at the end of our drive kept us focused. That, and the fact that I'd made reservations a while before we left Madison for dinner at L'Albatros Brasserie (photo from their website above), a wonderful restaurant just down the alley from the hotel. We ate outdoors on the patio our first night and went back the next night and enjoyed a cosy dinner inside by those big windows where we watched a rainstorm. 

Author's note: I am not receiving any remuneration for this post. We've had great service and experiences at all the places mentioned and wanted to share them. 

CBG: The view from the street

When we were in Cleveland three years ago we spent a day at the Cleveland Museum of art and squeezed in a visit to their botanical garden. When we were in Cleveland last summer, we again spent a day at the art gallery but this time added a short visit to the natural history museum.

Since I could see the garden from our breakfast table at the Glidden House hotel across the street, I dashed over to take a peek even thought the gardens had not yet opened for the day. These are all shots taken quickly with my iPad during a break in the rain. These areas are outside the main gardens and are adjacent to the entrance driveway and parking ramps. 

Cleveland's Botanical Garden is in the area known as University Circle which is a museum-rich arts area.

i thought this was a great way to hide this utility vehicle ramp from the main entrance drive on the other side of the greenery. 

You can enter from the sidewalk and I am sure many people walk through this area as a shortcut to work or the other museums. 

I took this photo last June for my Madison garden friends to show them that the botanic garden had lost a big Hibiscus just like many of them. Another result of the harsh winter along the Great Lakes. 

I am a big fan of "true" Geraniums and was impressed that the plant was being used as a little hedge here. 

I believe that is a Lemony Lace elderflower in the background. Or was it a Japanese maple with bright foliage? Too fascinated with the Geraniums to take note of the other plants!

Since this bench is right out in the open, it's bolted to the cement. But at least it is subtle and doesn't take away from this peaceful little scene. 

Note how you can see the street and some of the buildings of Case Western Reserve University right behind this tree. The view from that building must be lovely all year. When I visit botanic gardens I try to take a photo of a plant's label so I can identify it later. But it seems like I missed doing it with this gorgeous tree. If you recognize it, please let me know in the comments. 

A busy street on the other side of this planting. It's such a gift to residents that a large area of this garden is not behind fences and gates. I loved walking through and chatting with the folks already hard at work in these outer gardens. 

Since there is nothing green and growing around me at the moment, I will be showing some of my photos from last summer as a break from winter images.