Each Little World

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. 

Garden visits: Linda and Bruce Christensen

We first met Linda and Bruce Christensen a dozen years ago when we visited each other's gardens to share experiences with water features, specifically ponds and waterfalls. I remember being impressed with their garden on that first visit; this time I was overwhelmed by its mature beauty. 

This is a garden that keeps you moving deeper and deeper into it, around curving shrubs, along grassy paths and over bubbling streams. 

The mossy rocks and Koi suggest this garden is in the Pacific Northwest, not southern Wisconsin.

We grow Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy' which has foliage that is a similar color but the shape and scale of this weeping variety turn it into a focal point. 

The quiet planting around the Redbud also emphasize its star quality. 

One of the things that struck me about the Christensen's garden when I looked at the photos is how they use workhorse perennials and shrubs. They're planted in drifts and sweeps that give them a dramatic presence.  

Since this generous planting is only one kind and one color of flower, it draws your attention but not in quite the same way as the mixed planting at the edges of the beds. 

They also feature uncommon varieties of a common Midwestern workhorse like Hostas, mixing them in a thoughtful combination of color, size and leaf shape. The quiet Yew background gives them room to shine.

I am a big fan of gooseneck loosestrife and used to grow it in a small plot surrounded by concrete. 

It was a thrill to see it in a large display out in the garden, though it appeared to be held in check by stone paths. 

A section of lawn swept around to the exit leading out to the driveway . . .

where we came upon the last colorful and wildly dramatic planting along the edge of the driveway.

Garden visits: Houses for birds and gardeners

With a garden building this attractive, you can be sure the birds at Bruce and Linda Christensen's will have equally noteworthy houses and feeders. 

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.

Blue Monday

Freezing rain on Friday evening with a bit of snow on Saturday has done little to provide protection for the garden from the single digit temperatures forecast this week. Nor did it glam the garden up the way a heavier snowfall would do. That means my focus for the foreseeable future will be the gardens I visited last summer.

It is rare to see a bottle tree up north, but this one looks completely natural as it repeats the intense color on the trellis in the image directly above.

Betsy True and Danny Aerts garden on one acre with mushrooms, fruit and flowers, a pond and a prairie, bees and chickens, a pizza oven and more. This is a shot of their fenced veggie garden which also contains pears, quince and espaliered apples. 

It's inspirational — and educational — no matter where you look. That's Betsy between me and another WHPS member. 

An entertaining garden

Winter in Wisconsin is glaringly bright and snowy or drearily brown. Thus I saved all my images from visits to local gardens last summer to share this winter. Members of the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society open their gardens in the late afternoon and evening for members to stop by. Many of these are scheduled in advance with a number of gardens in near neighborhoods. Lately members are also sending out broadcast emails for impromptu tours.

These images are from a 2019 early season visit to an urban garden surrounding a beautiful older home on Madison's east side. You know you are in for a treat when the garage sports such a beautiful door — with a large piece of art above it!

Every inch of available space along the driveway was planted and there were containers of foliage and flowers all through the space.

A a woman who collects china and garden tools, I was smitten with all the displays on the back of the house and around the deck. Old brass hose nozzles had pride of place on this windowsill while a shelf was built especially to display these little china flower baskets. 

A vine-covered lattice wall decorated with plates screens the dining area from the neighboring house which is quite close by. You can see it is so early in the season that the vine is just starting to leaf out. 

 

The size of this tree trunk shouts that this is mostly a shade garden!

This view shows more pots and troughs on the deck as well as long curtains that screen out the neighbors. A lovely garden and a perfect spot for entertaining. 

Perfect end of September weekend

The weather has been less than perfect, but I had a busy and satisfying weekend. It began Friday afternoon when a friend and I went to the Back to School Alumni and Friends Event sponsored by the UW's School of Human Ecology (where I received my grad degree in textile design).

We saw two widely differing fiber exhibits in the galleries of Nancy Nicholas Hall, followed by a fascinating look at the history of reusing textiles by Prof. Marina Mosokwitz — just for starters. I managed to get to two mini lectures before Mark picked me up at 5 pm for an opening at our favorite local art gallery. 

My first stop Saturday morning was the Westside Farmers Market where this trio was performing. After watching all 8 episodes of Country Music on Wisconsin Public Television, they reminded me of all the country music stars who began at this age.

Then I spent two hours at a WHPS free workshop "An Accidental Arboretum," where one of the members talked about all the trees and shrubs in her garden. As we walked through her garden she point out various specimens as well as sharing information about pruning practices, tools, and sources for plants. She topped it all off with cookies, lemonade and a handout with every one of her trees and shrubs listed by their botanical name.

I came home all excited about possibilities in our garden but went to work in the kitchen instead. First I roasted a couple of pounds of Roma tomatoes and froze them for winter soups and bruchetta. Then I made a batch of ginger broth, one of our personal pantry mainstays. Next up is Daikon and red raddish pickles. 

I took the photo above during the morning garden workshop. This is a Korean fir that died unexpectedly and the gardener left it for a snag. I love the pattern the critters who are using it are making.

We spent a rainy Sunday reading, listening to music and dealing with paperwork. Then Mark went off to a new photography book club while I settled in with the last season of Poldark. 

Mark blew our roof and gutters clear of leaves on Thursday just in case the rain was one of those gushers that doesn't move. Luckily it was gentle for the most part. But what a wet month. According to our rain gauge we got 1.48" (3.75 cm.) from Friday through early this morning, bringing our total for the month of September to 8.95" (22.73 cm.). Don't know if this is the new normal or just an unusually wet September.

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.