Each Little World

Garden Girls

Like most gardeners, I love my own garden the best. Part of that is the fact that I am the designer as well as the one who decides which plant and where and who actually puts it in the ground. It is that familiarly that breeds contentment.

Not long ago I realized I have three gardening friends who all live on my side of town and whose gardens I have visited enough to be quite familiar with as well. I decided we should form an informal group to visit each other's gardens, talk gardens, get in-person advice and share books, information and ideas. But no set meeting schedule, no projects, no fees or obligations.

We've met four times and have seen all the gardens but one. At our last meet-up we all brought books, computers, 3-ring binders and talked about how we keep track of our plantings and how effective each particular system is working for each of us. One person even brought a beautiful piece of stained glass she'd just made that she later installed in her garden. When we're not meeting, we're emailing each other with reminders of events, questions and links to articles, plant lists and Youtube videos.  

I'm sure that this desire to hang out with fellow gardeners in person is a lingering result of our year of living COVIDLY and mostly gardening via Zoom. Though I am a long time member of Olbrich Botanical Gardens and the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society (and am on their excellent FB page many times a day), nothing has proved as much fun as getting together in living color with this like-minded group. 

Light at the end of the tunnel

After four endless years, the light at the end of the tunnel is visible at last .. .

So get up, get out and VOTE (if you haven't done so already)! 

Photos from a WHPS trip to Villa Terrace, Milwaukee.

Foliage and more foliage

By high summer, flowers and color have been banished to the very back of my garden. I want green and serene when I look out from now on.    

Clockwise from left front: Hosta 'Spritzer,' Cornus 'Golden Shadows,' Adiantum pedatum,  Tiarella 'Running Tapestry,' Carex Divulsa, Brunnera macrophylla 'Alexander's Great,' Deinanthe caerula and Heuchera 'Autumn Haze'  

Acer tegmentosum 'White Tigress,' Athyrium hybrida 'Ghost' and Hosta 'El Nino' 

Astilbe 'Garnet,' Hosta 'Shade Fanfare,' Brunnera macrophylla 'Sea Heart,' Melica unipolar f. albida  (grassy foliage) and Paeonia veitchii (The black hole in the center is probably more  Heuchera 'Autumn Haze')

Athyrium niponicum var. 'Pictum', Hostas 'Spritzer' and 'Abiqua Drinking Gourd'

Kirengeshoma palmata, Geranium phaeum 'Samobor' and Heuchera 'Palace Purple'

Paeonia japonica, Hakonechloa macra 'All Gold,' Athyrium niponicum var. 'Pictum' and Epimedium 'Lilac Fairy'

Polystichum acrostichoides aka Christmas fern, Carex morrowi 'Ice Dance,' Hosta 'Inniswood,' Heuchera 'Green Spice,' Tiarella 'Elizabeth Oliver,' Carex caryophylla 'Beatlelmania/Mophead' and Epimediumx youngianum 'Baby Doll Pink'

The next two photographs offer close-ups of the grassy foliage in the above picture. Polystichum acrostichoides, Carex morrowi 'Ice Dance' and Heuchera 'Green Spice

Tiarella 'Elizabeth Oliver' and Carex caryophylla 'Beatlelmania/Mophead,' which is much more yellow in person

When FaceBook is fabulous

Some time ago, the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society decided to have a FB page. Initially things were posted by a group of "administrators;" I was one of them. But once we opened posting to the full membership, it started to take off.

Now that WHPS has had to cancel all their meetings and garden tours for the foreseeable future, the FB page has become the replacement. It is the place to share images of our gardens, to ask for plant identification and design advice. Now there are weekly "challenges," inviting members to show their native plants, their garden paths and currently, the art in their gardens. 

LINDA LEE WOOLBRIGHT: GARDEN ART/MARQUETTE COUNTY

I find I am visiting the site constantly to see what's new, who's commenting, and on and on. I've been blogging for a dozen years but nothing has been as much fun or as social as this site. Maybe it's because many of the gardeners posting know each other from WHPS meetings and have visited each other's gardens on various tours. Or maybe it's just because, as members, we are mostly all Wisconsinites, and are curious about gardens in other parts of the state and want to share our experience and expertise.

JOSEPH SMOOT: PASSION VINE

All the gardeners I know will admit that our gardens — as sources of both respite and activity — are helping us to cope with our stay-at-home lives. I can only add that the WHPS Facebook Page is equally helpful. It's a place where we can be social, at a distance but without masks, and revel in the beauty of nature and everyone's gardens.

PAMELA SMITH: CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THIS PLANT IS?

If your garden club or hort society does not have a FB page like this, convince them to start one. You won't regret it. 

Dog Tooth violets and friends

I am thrilled Erythronium 'White Splendor' flowered despite a week of overnight temperatures below freezing.

I am equally happy that all five tubers I planted appeared; the start of a nice little swath of this beauty. 

i would grow this variety for the foliage alone, even though it is ephemeral. 

But I really wanted to see the flowers in person so I could add some other ephemerals to keep them company. 

I love to see early bloomers in UK gardens, but it is much harder to create a similar scene in the Upper Midwest in April. Ed Lyons' recent post about Corydalis — on the WHPS FB page — spurred me to make a few purchases to befriend the Erythroniums.

Corydalis glaucescens 'Pink Beauty'

C. integra.

Corydalis solida 'Vermion Dawn'

Subtle variations on a theme. Hopefully not to subtle to create a eye-catching spring display next year. 

Not quite wordless Wednesday

I could not resist capturing an image of the twisted limb on this fruit tree that I saw on one of last summer's WHPS garden tours.  Can't wait until some green starts showing on the trees in my garden.

Lake Forest: An estate garden

I was one of a busload of gardeners from the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society who visited this estate garden last summer on a very hot, very sunny day. I am including a few images you've already seen of the entrance courtyard and the Japanese Tea House to put the entire property in context.

Our bus dropped us off at the street end of this expansive driveway. We turned left at the garage  . . .

and walked along a covered portico to enter the garden. That sliding shoji-style door on the right was a restroom that the hosts opened for us. You can imagine how thankful and surprised we were at this unexpected gesture. 

We continued along the wooden walkway, getting enticing glimpses of what awaited us.

We turned left at the end of the walkway where it skirted the house before opening into the garden. 

This large piece of sculptural wood marked the corner. 

This was the view as we left the covered walkway.

This stream was on the other side of the shrubs that edged the walkway. 

It curved out into this water feature. 

You could walk up this slope using the rocks as stepping stones between these beautiful swaths of weeping Blue Spruce. 

The folks walking through this shady spot give you a sense of the size of this specimen rock. 

A cloudy and misty day must make these lichens glow. 

This garden was big enough to include large sculptures and to let you enjoy them in long views as well as close-up. 

The Tea House was in this woodsy area on the far side of the garden from the house as well. 

This is the view along the side of the house and garage where we entered the garden — but looking in the opposite direction. 

This little path took you to the back side of the water feature. 

Both ends of this long walkway had unusual natural sculptures.

A beautiful garden, beautifully maintained. 

Lake Forest: The Tea House

Since we have a Japanese-style Tea House in our garden, I was quite excited when I looked across this Illinois garden last summer on our WHPS tour and saw a familiar structure nestled in the trees. 

Like our Tea House, it was stucco. 

I was quite taken with this narrow "veranda" and the beautiful textiles blowing in the breeze.

Flowers and a scroll in the Tokonoma, a display area in a Tea House. 

Every detail in this little building was beautifully done. 

It is not often that one visits a private garden with its own Tea House. I was excited to have the chance to see it up close; definitely impressive. I went home very happy with our Tea House which is a more rustic style but equally impressive, if I do say so myself. 

Lake Forest: A courtyard garden

Last summer I visited what can only be called an estate garden in Lake Forest, Illinois with a members of the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society. Our bus dropped us off on a quiet, densely wooded street with impressive houses at every turn. Though we did not see the inside of this house, the garden suggests it was equally beautiful. But what was most memorable about this garden was the charm and friendliness of the owners.

The front courtyard garden is the entry area to the house. The garage is to the left and the front door is through the opening on the right.

The rocks and weeping trees offer a hint to the Japanese influences that are to be found throughout this garden. 

The subtle house materials and the dark entrance let the greenery shine. 

The ground cover evergreen shrubs offer a textural contrast to the rock work, whether stone pathways or sculpture. 

You can't tell from these views but the house is situated on the edge of a ravine. 

Garden visits: Pots empty and overflowing

A few more scenes from the garden of Bruce and Linda Christensen. As someone whose garden features large, unplanted pots you can imagine how taken I was with these dramatic containers.  

When you treat pots like sculpture, the surrounding plants can be subtle like evergreen shrubs and solid green Hostas. The Hosta in the photo below looks like the so-called "August lily," a variety whose fragrant white flowers will completely change this scene late in the summer. 

The rippling grasses and Hosta foliage emphasizes the movement on this pot to me. 

Not all the containers in the garden were empty. 

Most of them were filled with annuals which made for bright spots of color amidst the greenery. 

I am a big fan of this Begonia and keep intending to grow it.

Though it is a drama queen from some views, in other directions it merely provides an additional bit of color.