Sustainable Gardening Blog

Green with envy, maybe not.  But I do envy the blond gardening writer/TV personality you see pictured on her latest book - which is terrific. Oh, yeah, she had to be a good writer.  A sample quote:  "Perfection is not possible, nor is perfection what a garden is about.  It is about change that is driven by the cycles of the seasons and the aging of the plants.  No living thing is perfect."  Oh, you’ll be seeing more quotes of Suzy Bales on this site.

So it’s bad enough that she’s pretty and a wise and successful garden writer. My lower self really kicked into gear when I read about "Our Plan."  To wit:  she and her husband hired a "prominent landscape architect" to do everything imaginable to their 6-acre property on Long Island - including two ponds, a waterfall, a pool and a tennis court.  Next she "worked for" the landscape architect, helping out and soaking up a lifetime of knowledge.  Then there’s Suzy’s husband, who "never questions my garden expenses," to put it mildly, and who designs new structures for their property.  And for me the last straw is - you guessed it — her full-time gardener.

Now I love my garden and for the most part I love doing the work myself.  But Suzy here gets to design new projects that are then implemented by stronger people.  She gets to immerse herself in the gardening world and soak up what everyone else knows.  She sure doesn’t have a day job she has to grind away at in order to support herself or her gardening habit.

Okay, I’ve gotten that off my chest.  Now I can go back to reading her book and savoring the wisdom of Suzy’s terribly privileged life.  Hey, I’m just glad she found her passion in gardening.  It could have been golf.
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An important postscript after sleeping on it:  As a middle class American, I’m plenty privileged myself.  Just not terribly.

Maria Sgambati wasn’t your typical 10-year-old. She really, really wanted a garden, so her parents assigned her a small patch on their property. At 12, she had to have a compost pile, so she started one. Her first scientific experiment was "borrowing" her parents’ thermometer, sticking it in the center of the pile, and finding out that it really was super-hot. Maybe it was this exciting discovery that led her to med school and her career in research. In between those two things she chose a college for its garden, something that doesn’t get much press in the books on choosing a college. Her small school had a huge organic one where she worked to pay her way through school and learned about growing edibles on a large scale.

Maria now lives in D.C. and has gardened for the last five years at the gorgeous community garden near Washington Cathedral. Its 200 plots are filled with equal parts edibles, ornamentals, seating and even shade structures, all with a view of the spires of the Cathedral. She remembers going there on September 11, 2001 and finding it a real sanctuary from the mayhem and fighter jets that everyone in this area experienced that day. Someone was playing the flute there that afternoon.

Maria recalled all this in her recent talk at the Washington Ethical Society, where she’s one of the volunteer keepers of its lovely garden. Among other thoughts about gardening that she shared:
- Gardening transformed her life; connected her to life.
- Gardening elicits the best in her and awakens her senses.
- Eating food from the ground is a holy experience.
- In her garden she "knows fully what I am."
- She "can’t bear to leave" her garden.  She’d miss seeing her beans grow.
- Gardening teaches us we’re mortal.  It makes us feel part of the cycle of life, a part of the living universe.

Thanks, Maria, for a wonderful talk.

Sorry about the boring photo but it’s to illustrate a common gardening project - sod removal. Here I’ve recently removed about 20 square yards of sod in order to enlarge a border. And why enlarge the border? Because there’s nothing evergreen along the whole length of it so I hate it all winter when I need cheering up the most. The expansion will give me room for the new Hollywood Juniper I’ll be buying soon, the 5 pieris I bought in April for $3 each, a nice leucothoe that’s looking for a better home, and maybe some nandina.

So back to sod removal. Our email group recently had a spirited discussion of this topic and I want to add my two cents. What worked for this project was to 1) create the new line using a warm garden hose, 2) mark the line after I’ve tweaked it with marking paint, 3) slice along the new edge using a flat-bottomed shovel, 4) cut through and slice under the sod at random places, and 5) lift sod chunks with a trowel and shake off the loose soil. Steps 3-5 took about 2 hours in total and it was easy work. I added the discarded sod to the leaves in my compost pile.

So you might give this technique a try when you don’t want to wait months for newspaper or plastic sheeting to slowly kill the grass. I know impatience is a terrible flaw we all wrestle with as gardeners, but sometimes it’s really okay.

Here I go again using someone else’s photo, but this time it’s to plug my favorite political blogger, who regularly posts photos of his very own orchids in bloom. He’s John Aravosis, the writer of Americablog. He’s been called a "particularly angry activist" by the Family Research Council, so you know he’s ruffling the right feathers.

So what’s he done besides grow great orchids? Among other scoops, he’s uncovered the true identity of Jeff Gannon, a member of the White House press corps, as a prostitute and right-wing operative. And on a daily basis he writes the kind of colorful, lively missives that make it almost fun to be part of the powerless left wing in this country.

Oh, and he’s local, so maybe we can entice him to come to a Hort Club event someday.  John, are you listening?

I wish I could say I took this picture, but the credit goes to Fred. I discovered Fred through a blog I check in on –"Time Goes By, which he designed. If you go to his website, www.fredshead.org,  click "NY Botanical Garden" and experience a slide show to delight any plant lover. Fred’s bio pleads with us not to " steal my stuff". So looking is kosher, but how about using as wallpaper for our computers? Or, for that matter, showing you this shot. I’d better email Fred right now and see if I’m in violation of something. Meanwhile, enjoy.

Welcome to Washington, D.C., seat of government, home of the Nationals, and sometimes the location of our well-rested president. But more germane to this blog, home of some mighty fine gardens, and here’s two of my favorites, both on the National Mall.

On the top is the Ripley Garden tucked between the Smithsonian Castle and the Hirshhorn Museum - whata gem! Rarely discovered by tourists, well loved by people who work in the area. And don’t plants look great with beautiful old buildings in the background?

The next photo, with a view of the Capitol dome, is Bartholdi Garden, just across the street from our newly renovated Botanic Gardens. At lunchtime House staffers congregate here seeking a bit of peace and beauty away from the sometimes soul-crushing world of politics. Personally, if I worked there it would take some excellent pharmacology to mellow me out at the end of the day.

I was chatting with a landscape architect friend - you know, the ones who do lots of hardscape and make beaucoup bucks? He was complaining about his (rich) clients. Apparently they want perfection at all times. Echinaceas past their peak just won’t do. And roses can’t be the terrific new shrub roses; they have to be hybrid teas so they’ll produce good cut flowers. And they don’t notice much in the garden — except the imperfections. He said the garden is like a stage setting to them. Almost makes me feel sorry for rich people.
Which makes me wildly appreciative of my coachees — that’s the word I prefer to "client." They’re aspiring do-it-yourselfers either because A, they can’t afford to have everything done for them, or B, they think they just might enjoy it– working with nature, having a creative outlet, getting exercise, etc. So they’re motivated and willing to work and they’ll get there - there being a garden that’s a big improvement over what they started with and that they’ll have created themselves, with the dirty fingernails to prove it. I’m grateful for the opportunity to guide them down that wonderful path.

This photo has nothing to do with the text but hey, the elephant ears are looking gorgeous and they won’t last much longer, so let’s enjoy ‘em.

I’m telling you right up front that I killed this plant, and it could have been avoided. If only I’d listened to the advice I give people all the time.
THE FACTS: I bought three rhododendrons in June and two of them diedly, suddenly like rhodos do, with no helpful warning signs like wilting. That’s a 33 and a third percent survival rate. And here’s the point: I was home every day. I thought I was taking good care of them. I was in my garden probably 13 days out of every fortnight (I have English readers now and I want them to feel included.) I’m not saying my care was perfect, but it demonstrates it has to be perfect if the damn things have a chance of surviving their first summer.

I probably never would have gone public with this but yesterday I wrote about Paul James, about how he gives the exact same advice that I’d so recently ignored, and I just had to come clean with it. And now that I’ve gotten it off my chest I feel I can learn from my mistakes and look to the future, a future of planting in the fall if possible, early spring when necessary.  I feel better already.

Stoneyards are noplace for sissies. It’s all frontloaders and dump trucks and huge piles of rocks and stone dust. They’re dirty and dangerous. Nothing has a price on it. There are no recognizable salespeople. So how does a do-it-yourselfer ever get stone for their garden? They put on their heavy-toed shoes and long pants, grab their heavy gloves, and kiss their family goodbye as they leave the house.

Kidding! No, it’s really do-able, and I’m here to ease the pain. These photos are from Jack Irwin’s stone yard on East Gude Drive in Rockville. As intimidating as it is, it’s actually the best of the bunch, at least the bunch of three stoneyards that I’ve sampled, so listen up.

First, I suggest going when they’re not too busy, like weekday afternoons. Their only weekend hours are Saturday morning and that’s a busy time, so this might be a good time to call in sick at work. When you arrive park, go inside and ask if there’s anyone to show you what piles you should be looking at and what the prices are. Then get back in your car and drive onto the scale that’s next to the building - yeah, you’re a trucker now, dude. They weigh your car going in, then again going out, and calculate what you owe.

I’ve actually had very friendly and patient sales help at Irwin’s, even when I was buying a little of this and that. He took me all over the lot and gave me lots of direction about what stones would work on what projects, helped me load it all into my car and sorted it out for me at the scales.

So yes, stoneyards can be ugly and noisy, but the displays out front remind us of how gorgeous the results can be. Stone really does make the garden. (If you’re rudely keeping track of my proclamations you’ll remember that last week I said conifers make the garden. And next week I may say it’s hanging baskets — but don’t bet on it.) Bottom line - plants look better when combined with stone. 

So get up your courage, grab a friend who owes you big-time,  and take the plunge.

I hope you all get basic cable because the Home and Garden Television Channel (HGTV) is not only where I get most of my gardening ideas but it’s how I survive the loooong winter (even in relatively balmy Zone 7 it’s too damn long for me).  So let me introduce the folksiest, goofiest, most knowledgeable gardening guy you’ll ever see on TV - the host of "Gardening by the Yard," Paul James. Ain’t he cute? Plays the guitar, too. Probably had a ponytail and played in a rock band. Overall, my kind of guy, but I digress.

Now be forewarned that Paul may take some getting used to. He and his crew are pretty goofy - no, make that silly in the extreme - but that’s just him not taking himself too seriously. What you get with the silliness is knowledge of gardening techniques that are almost always organic and that work with the land and elements, not against them. He encourages people to just accept a little insect damage, to not plant or transplant in the middle of the summer, and loads of other seriously practical lessons for gardening. He turned me on to conifers. He turned me on to one of my favorite gardening writers, Ann Lovejoy of Bainbridge Island, Washington. And he just keeps turning me on to gardening.

Where I live his show is on Saturday and Sunday mornings, as part of a line-up of solid gardening shows from 10 to 1. Of course I’m not going to spend my weekend mornings in front of the TV watching gardening, so I tape shows for my viewing enjoyment throughout the week, usually while I’m exercising. And because I don’t like programming the timer any more than you do, I just pop in a tape sometime before 10 and press "record," which even my most electronically challenged friends (you know who you are) can do, I think.