Chanticleer in Winter: Texture

Posted in garden to visit, landscape design, winter, winter interest with tags , , , on January 28, 2012 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Chanticleer’s Teacup Garden in May

Chanticleer is a unique public garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania, U.S., which I have profiled in three previous articles.  The first, Chanticleer Part 1: A Pleasure Garden, gave an overview of this one-of-a-kind horticultural destination.  The second, Chanticleer Part 2: Garden Seating, focused on the huge variety of thoughtful seating areas in the Chanticleer gardens.  The third, Chanticleer Part 3:  Through the Seasons, showed the gardens as they evolve through spring, summer, and fall.

 

The Teacup Garden in January

To complete my series on Chanticleer through the year, I received special permission to visit the garden during the winter months when it is closed to the public.  As you can see from the photo above, all the “toys” are put away and most of the flowers and foliage are gone.  But the minute I stepped into the garden, the word TEXTURE appeared before me as if it was outlined in neon lights.  I have never had such an exciting visit to this garden because I saw it in a whole new way, and I hope I can communicate that to you.

I always admire the elegant mature trees when I visit, but without their leaves or any flower gardens to distract me, they really stood out.

Texture was also provided by smaller plants, but not the way I expected:

 


 



Hardscape, always a huge part of Chanticleer’s elegance and beauty, really dominated my visit:


 

 

 

The attention to detail in the paths, always a hightlight for me, was easier to see and appreciate:

I decided not to add captions to the photos in this post, but if you want more information just run your cursor over the photo.  The location of the Lady in the Lake is secret so you will have to find her for yourself.

I want to thank Bill Thomas, Chanticleer’s Director, for making this visit possible, Fran DiMarco, Administrative Assistant, for arranging it, and Joseph Henderson, Horticulturalist, for providing some needed conversation in the sun so I didn’t freeze to death.  I have been promised a visit in the snow, and I might take them up on it if we ever get any of the white stuff.

Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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New Snowdrops for 2012

Posted in New Plants, Shade Perennials, snowdrops, winter, winter interest with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 19, 2012 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Who said all snowdrops look alike?  Some of my favorites: top row, L to R, ‘Wendy’s Gold’, ‘Blewbury Tart’, ‘Hippolyta’, ‘Flore Pleno’; middle, ‘Jaquenetta’, ‘Merlin’, ‘Lady Elphinstone’, ‘Augustus’; bottom, unknown, ‘Ophelia’, G. plicatus subsp. byzantinus, ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’.

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Our current snowdrop catalogue is on line here.

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This article includes photographs and colorful descriptions of the 5 new snowdrops I am offering for sale in my 2012 Snowdrop Catalogue.  For entertaining descriptions of most of the remaining 13 varieties offered in the 2012 catalogue, click here.

The hundreds of snowdrop cultivars out there range from a classic like ‘Atkinsii’ pictured above to…(see next photo)

In Snowdrops or The Confessions of a Galanthophile, I described my transition from someone who grows snowdrops to someone who is obsessed with them.  In Snowdrops: Further Confessions of a Galanthophile, I explained that most snowdrop cultivars can be appreciated as much for their colorful history as for their ornamental characteristics.  That history is contained in Snowdrops: A Monograph of Cultivated Galanthus by Matt Bishop, Aaron Davis, and John Grimshaw (Griffin Press 2006), commonly called the “snowdrop bible”.

Galanthus nivalis 'Blewbury Tart' at Carolyn's Shade Gardens…this crazy, modern double cultivar, ‘Blewbury Tart’, which looks like it’s having a bad hair day (I love it!).

The information in Snowdrops is not only interesting but also crucial to keeping straight all the available snowdrops.  Snowdrops describes over 500 cultivars, and the authors admit that it is now out-of-date, and a second volume is required (for details on Snowdrops 2, click here).  Snowdrops description of the cultivar along with the actual origin of the snowdrop plant in question both contribute to its provenance: the history of its ownership documenting its authenticity.  If a collector is purchasing an expensive plant, provenance is very important.

Snowdrop prices range from the very affordable (but no less desirable) common snowdrop, G. nivalis, pictured above with Italian arum and snow crocus, to…(see next photo)

…the highly collectible (with a price to match) ‘Wendy’s Gold’.

‘Brenda Troyle’, a new snowdrop from Charles Cresson in my 2012 catalogue, is a perfect example of how this works.  True ‘Brenda Troyle’ is a vigorous snowdrop admired for its well-proportioned, rounded flowers with flared and cupped outer petals (segments) and a strong fragrance of honey.  It received an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society in 1960 for “outstanding excellence for ordinary garden decoration or use.”  Customers who attended Charles Cresson’s snowdrop seminars last year loved it.

Charles Cresson’s authenticated ‘Brenda Troyle’

But Snowdrops explains that ‘Brenda Troyle’ is very mixed up in the trade.  In fact, it is even unclear whether it was named after a character in Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Pirate or a staff member at an Irish nursery.  In cases like this, it is very important that the snowdrop display the desirable characteristics of the cultivar as Cresson’s stock does.  It is equally as important that the original stock was purchased from a reputable source and kept labeled since its purchase.  Charles got his plants from a bulb company started by the venerable Hoog family of Van Tubergen fame and conserves his whole snowdrop collection with the utmost care.

Galanthus ‘Tiny’

‘Tiny’ is a snowdrop that does not suffer from an identity crisis as Snowdrops states that almost every galanthophile in the U.K. grows it.  It is a diminutive form of the common snowdrop, G. nivalis, easily distinguished by its narrow leaves and elfin stature.  It is quite charming in a clump, which develops rapidly with this vigorous cultivar.  It also flowers later, extending the snowdrop season into late spring.

The subspecies byzantinus of G. plicatus is easily distinguished from subspecies plicatus by the two marks on its inner segments.


Unique provenance adds significantly to the desirability of a snowdrop as is the case with the Turkish snowdrop, Galanthus plicatus subsp. byzantinus.  This subspecies has beautiful wide pleated leaves and lovely plump flowers joined in an elegant overall habit.  It comes from a small area in northwestern Turkey, but is uncommon even there.  Subspecies byzantinus is an exceptionally good form of G. plicatus, hard to come by even in the U.K.

The elegant habit of G. plicatus subsp. byzantinus.

But the part of its provenance that is really exciting is that these plants originated from one of the most celebrated and important American snowdrop collections, the gardens at Winterthur.  As Henry Francis du Pont added plants to Winterthur, snowdrops became a focus.  In the 1930s, he purchased the parents of these very bulbs from Barr & Sons, a renowned bulb house that operated in Covent Gardens, London, from 1882 to 1956.  When Charles Cresson worked at Winterthur in the early 1990s, he was given plants of this unique snowdrop, and we are offering the offspring of those plants in the 2012 catalogue.  Now that’s provenance!

The Greatorex double ‘Hippolyta’ (photo by and used with the permission of Paddy Tobin).

The final two new snowdrops were both hybridized in the mid-twentieth century by the legendary but enigmatic snowdrop breeder Heyrick Greatorex and are known as Greatorex doubles.  Snowdrops makes an unflattering reference to a story that he spent World War II in a local pub.  However, further research reveals that, in addition to serving in WWII, he fought in World War I, was wounded at Lagincourt, and received the Victory and British Medals—a very distinguished record indeed.  If you would like to read more about him, click here.

Galanthus 'Hippolyta' photo Paddy Tobin‘Hippolyta’ (photo by and used with the permission of Paddy Tobin)

‘Hippolyta’ is the shortest of the many Greatorex double snowdrops, which Heyrick Greatorex developed by crossing the double common snowdrop, G. nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’, with the species G. plicatus to create large and vigorous plants.  He named them after characters in Shakespeare’s plays, Hippolyta appearing in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Although some of the Greatorex doubles are confused, ‘Hippolyta’ consistently produces neatly doubled, rounded flowers, combining a tightly compact inner rosette with cupped and flaring outer petals (segments)—a charming arrangement.  It received an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society in 1970.

 

The Greatorex double ‘Dionysus’

The final member of the five new snowdrops in my 2012 Snowdrop Catalogue is ‘Dionysus’, also a member of the acclaimed series of double snowdrops developed by Heyrick Greatorex (although not a Shakespeare character).  ‘Dionysus’ is one of the taller and earlier flowering doubles in this series.  It has fewer inner segments  than other Greatorex doubles, and  they feature a large, deep green, inverted heart-shaped mark.  Evidently Heyrick Greatorex described ‘Dionysus’ as one of the best of his doubles for cultivation in the open garden.  Charles got his bulbs from the well known Oregon bulb authority Jane McGary.

Obviously, I find everything about snowdrops fascinating and hope I have communicated some of my infatuation to you.  If you are in the U.S. and want to order from the catalogue, just follow the directions for mail order.

Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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January GBBD: Hellebores on Parade

Posted in Camellias, evergreen, Garden Blogger's Bloom Day, garden to visit, hellebores, Shade Perennials, Shade Shrubs, snowdrops, winter, winter interest with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 11, 2012 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

I have had this gorgeous double purple hellebore in my garden for several years but it has never bloomed this early.  Photo 1/7/12

It is the middle of the month and time to participate in Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day hosted by May Dreams Gardens (link available on December 15) where gardeners from all over the world publish photos of what’s blooming in their gardens.  I participate because it is fun and educational for me to identify what plants make my gardens shine at different times of the year.  This month I hope that my nursery customers and blog readers will get some ideas for plants to add to their own gardens to extend their season through winter.

My garden is located in Bryn Mawr (outside Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, U.S., in zone 6B.


‘Mrs. Betty Ranicar’ is usually one of my first hybrid hellebores to bloom but this is early even for her.

Last January, the whole garden was under snow, and I didn’t even participate in GBBD.  This year couldn’t be more different with 7 days in the 50s (10C) and 6 days at 60 degrees (16C) or above since December 15.  Frankly, I find it extremely worrisome, but it means that I didn’t have to go searching for plants peaking between December 15 and January 15.  There are a few other plants worth featuring, but my hellebores are all blooming early so I call this post Hellebores on Parade.  For the benefit of my customers, I will note which hellebores will be for sale at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens (CSG) this spring.

 

‘Pink Tea Cup’ has the best pink color of any hybrid hellebore and was the first to come into bloom this season ( for sale at CSG this spring).  Photo 1/9/12

 

‘Jacob’ Christmas rose just keeps going and going with new white flowers appearing and mixing with the older pink flowers for a gorgeous effect, see below (for sale at CSG).  Photo 12/31/11

 

‘Jacob’ Christmas rose with Camellia x ‘Winter’s Joy’.  Photo 1/2/12

Flowers are emerging on the hellebore species cross ‘HGC Pink Frost’ (for sale at CSG).  Notice the dark red to burgundy highlights on the leaves and stems and the amazing color of the buds.  As noted in Cutting Back Hellebores, I leave the foliage on to make a nice backdrop for the flowers.  Photo 12/31/11

 

‘Praecox’ Christmas rose is also blooming at least a month earlier than usual.  Photo 12/31/11

 

The hellebore species cross ‘HGC Winter’s Song’ is now fully in bloom.  Photo 1/10/12

The rare species Helleborus dumetorum (no common name) continues to bloom (for sale at CSG).  It is deciduous so all the “leaves” in the photo are actually flower bracts.  The leaves will come up later.  Photo 12/31/11

This beautiful, pure white, outward-facing hellebore called ‘Snow White’ (aka ‘Snow Bunting’) is an extremely rare cross between hybrid hellebore and Christmas rose—something that was thought to be impossible (for sale at CSG).  Photo 1/9/12

 

The lighter chartreuse buds of bearsfoot hellebore, H. foetidus, are becoming more prominent and will remain ornamental through May (for sale at CSG).  Photo 1/10/12

 

Helleborus x "Double Purple"Another look at the hybrid hellebore “Double Purple” (for sale at CSG).  Photo 1/7/12

My new favorite this year, hellebore species cross ‘HGC Cinnamon Snow’ (for sale at CSG).  I like it so much that I decided to put it in a basket by my front door.  Photo 1/9/12

There are some other plants looking great in my garden besides hellebores.  Most of the fall-blooming camellias still have viable buds but no flowers open to show you.  They will continue to bloom if the weather cooperates.  Here are the non-hellebore stars:

My un-named Korean Camellia japonica, which blooms in the spring and fall, continues to produce flowers.  Photo 1/9/12

Camellia x ‘Elaine Lee’ also has buds, and look at those shiny leaves.  Photo 1/10/12

Camellia x ‘Winter’s Joy’ has been flowering since October and is still covered with buds but none are open right now.

The buds on my variegated winter daphne, D. odora ‘Aureomarginata’, are coloring up early.  It is the sole survivor of five shrubs I put in this spring.  Although I gave them excellent drainage, they just couldn’t tolerate all the rain we had in August and September.  One by one they wilted from too much water and died, while this one remained healthy.  Photo 1/9/12

If we have cold weather, winter jasmine, Jasminum nudiflorum, blooms in February, but right now it is opening flowers continuously.  Photo 1/10/12

Galanthus elwesiiThe only snowdrop in bloom right now is the giant snowdrop, Galanthus elwesii (for sale at CSG).  Photo 1/9/12

My fall-flowering snowdrop ‘Potter’s Prelude’ has finished blooming, but I wanted to show you its beautiful leaves (for sale at CSG).  Photo 1/1/12

On New Year’s Day, my husband and I went walking in the Pinetum at the Haverford College Arboretum, a wonderful local treasure.  We saw two unusual conifers with great texture that I wanted to share:

 

Longleaf pine, Pinus palustris, is native from Virginia to Texas but is not usually found around here.

 

I love firs, and the texture of this Algerian fir, Abies numidica, really stood out.

I dedicate this post to Bob Stewart, my friend and horticulturalist extraordinaire, who died on December 16, 2011.  Bob and his wife Brigitta started the amazing nursery Arrowhead Alpines in Fowlersville, MI.  If you haven’t visited their site, you should by clicking here.  Bob will be greatly missed.

Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Cutting Back Hellebores

Posted in evergreen, hellebores, Shade Perennials, winter interest with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 4, 2012 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

‘Jacob’ Christmas rose, Helleborus niger ‘Jacob’, right now in my garden.  It always starts blooming in the fall, see Hellebores for Fall.  Photo 1/1/12

I usually don’t think about cutting back my hellebores until mid-February when the flower stalks begin to extend up through the old leaves.  However, here in southeastern Pennsylvania, we have had unusually mild weather during December—10 days over 50 degrees (10 C) and 8 days at 60 degrees (16C).  Hellebores that don’t usually bloom until February are coming into bloom now.  It seems like a good time to explain the ins and outs of cutting back the old leaves on hellebores.  This is done for aesthetic reasons and is not necessary for the health of the plant.


This beautiful hybrid hellebore, H. x hybridus ‘Pink Tea Cup’, is fully out right now.  It usually blooms in February.  Photo 12/31/11

The genus Helleborus contains about 15 species, and decisions about how to care for them require some knowledge of exactly which hellebores you have and how they grow.  The most commonly available hellebores are hybrid hellebores, Helleborus x hybridus (the Royal Horticultural Society approved name, previously called Lenten rose),  with the large, showy, nodding flowers in an amazing range of colors.  For some beautiful photos, check out my articles An Ode to Seed Strain Hellebores and Double Hellebores.  Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, is also regularly found in gardens: for photos see Christmas Rose: The Perfect Hellebore.  Both hybrid hellebores and Christmas roses produce leaves and flowers on separate stems (botanists call them acaulescent) so cutting back the leaves has no affect on the flowers.  The questions is when to cut.

If there is a “common” hellebore, then the un-named hybrid hellebore above would be it.  I couldn’t even begin to count the number of flowers on this one plant.  No leaves are visible yet, what you are seeing are bracts on the flower stems.  Photo 3/21/11

 

I do not cut back the leaves of hybrid hellebores in the fall because they are very pretty through the winter.

Hybrid hellebores have attractive leaves that stay green all winter (wintergreen), adding interest to the winter garden, so I leave them on as long as they look nice.  They are not evergreen though so the old leaves should be cut off when they become unsightly in late winter.  It is easiest to do this when the flower buds are still at the soil level and the old leaf stems and new flower stems are not yet intermingled.

This photograph illustrates the new flower stems emerging among the old leaf stems, which will be cut off February 15.  Usually the leaves are standing up causing old and new to mingle, but also providing some protection from cold weather.  Photo 12/31/11

 

In addition to winter interest, I also leave the old leaves on to protect the flower buds should we experience very cold weather in January and early February.  For southeastern Pennsylvania, this could be as low as -5 degrees (-21C).  I cut back my hybrid hellebores around February 15.  The same rules apply for the nine species hellebores that are the parents of hybrid hellebores (see The Sex Lives of Hellebores) should you have them in your garden.

 

This straight species Christmas rose is blooming right now in my garden—it has never bloomed before March in the almost 15 years I have had it.  Notice the lack of leafy bracts on the stem.  Photo 12/31/11

 

Christmas roses have very clean and elegant, blue-green leaves.

Christmas roses have even more beautiful wintergreen leaves.  Although you can cut them back without affecting the flowers (they are acaulescent), my considerations for this hellebore are somewhat different.  The flower stems of hybrid hellebores contain the buds and also leaf-like bracts, which provide a pleasing green backdrop for the blooming flowers (see photo of pink hybrid above).  Christmas rose flower stems have no bracts so if you cut off all the leaves, to me, the plant looks naked when it blooms.  As long as the leaves remain halfway decent, I leave them on until later in the season to serve as a frame for the flowers.  The leaf and flower stems do not intermingle so cutting them later is not a problem.

The buds of bearsfoot hellebore, H. foetidus, emerge from the top of the leaf stem in the fall.  For more photos of this spectacular hellebore, see Hellebores for Fall.  Photo 12/2/10

There are two more wintergreen hellebore species that make their way into hellebore lovers’ gardens: Corsican hellebore, Helleborus argutifolius, and bearsfoot hellebore, Helleborus foetidus.  Botanists call these species caulescent because the flowers are not separate but are on the end of the leaf stem.  You cannot cut off the leaf stem until after the plant has flowered because you will be removing the flower buds.  And if you cut off the individual leaves, you are left with a long, ugly stalk, typically 2-3′, with the flowers at the tip.

I grow Corsican hellebore, H. argutifolius, as much for its gorgeous wintergreen leaves as for its flowers.

In mild winters when the leaves remain attractive, this is not a problem.  It is also usually not a problem for bearsfoot hellebore whose leaves remain pristine during very cold winters.  However, Corsican hellebore leaves are easily damaged, and I often make the decision to sacrifice the flowers and cut the plants back to the ground rather than look at their unsightly leaves while they bloom.  I grow this species equally for its foliage, and new growth springs up very quickly when the old stems are removed.

H. x ericsmithii ‘Winter’s Song’ in my garden right now—much earlier than normal for this species cross.  Notice the leafy bracts surrounding the flowers.  Photo 12/31/11

 

H. x ballardiae ‘Pink Frost’ displaying the pink color inherited from its parent H. lividus.  Photo 3/21/11

That pretty much covers care and maintenance of the hybrid hellebores and the available species hellebores.  However, a large group of gorgeous species crosses are beginning to appear in local gardens (especially if the gardener has been shopping at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens), and I want to let you know how to care for them.  These plants are generally the progeny of Christmas rose crossed with Corsican hellebore and/or Helleborus lividus (not hardy here) to produce elegant outward-facing flowers and silver-marbled leaves often with red highlights and stems.  The most familiar crosses are H. x ericsmithii (‘Silvermoon’, ‘Winter’s Song’), H. x nigercors (‘Honeyhill Joy’, ‘Green Corsican’), and H. x ballardiae (‘Pink Frost’).

 

H. x nigercors ‘Green Corsican’: all the Christmas rose crosses have copious amounts of large, very desirable outward-facing flowers.  Photo 3/21/11

The Christmas rose crosses grow differently than either of the two groups discussed above.  Their leaves are one of their best features, and I cut them back only if they are unsightly.   They do have leaves and flowers on the same stems so you cannot cut the stems back to the base if cutting is necessary.  However, the plants are generally short, 12 to 15″, and produce such an abundance of flowers that cutting off individual leaves from the main stem does not leave an ugly stalk.  In addition, the flowers usually have leafy bracts to frame their beauty.

Our 2010-2011 winter was very hard on hellebore leaves.  However, even though I cut almost all the damaged leaves off these H. x ericsmithii ‘Silvermoon’ plants, they still look beautiful.  Photo 3/24/11

I hope I have answered all your questions about cutting back hellebores.  If not, feel free to seek clarification in a comment.  You are probably wondering what I will do this year when the hellebores are blooming early.  I have decided that discretion is the better part of valor so no leaves will be removed until mid-February.

Carolyn

If you would like to look at my photos all year round, please consider buying my 2012 calendar, available worldwide.  For details, click here.  It is 25% off through January 6, 2012, with the code ONEMORETHING at checkout.

This is part of a series of articles on hellebores, one of the specialties of my nursery.  Here are links to the other articles:

Part One        Hellebores for Fall

Part Two       An Ode to Seed Strain Hellebores

Part Three   Christmas Rose: The Perfect Hellebore

Part Four      Dividing Hybrid Hellebores

Part Five       The Sex Lives of Hellebores

Part Six          Double Hellebores

Part Seven   Cutting Back Hellebores

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

101 Comments »

Friends, Food, Flowers, and Fun

Posted in garden to visit with tags , , , , on December 28, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

‘Heavenly Blue’ morning glory (in the garden at Pineland Farms), a plant Jean has often featured on her blog.

In considering several subjects for a holiday week post, I decided that there couldn’t be anything more appropriate than describing a summer day spent with a new friend visiting gardens, eating, and shopping for plants—sounds like heaven, doesn’t it?  You may recall that in April, Jean Potuchek from the blog Jean’s Garden (and Jan from Thanks for Today) visited my nursery and gardens and toured Chanticleer with me.  When I was in Maine in early July, Jean invited me to visit her, and this post describes our day.


Jean standing in the future site of her Serenity Garden, often discussed on her blog and now a reality.

Before I get to photos of our day, I want to recount a little side story that illustrates how our minds can go down weird paths (at least mine can).  In a total role reversal, my children always give me  a concerned look when I refer to any garden blogger as a friend, saying: “You can’t be friends with someone you haven’t met in person.”  And I ask you, what would you say to your driving age daughter if she said to you: “Mom, I’ve met this really nice person on the internet,  and she has invited me to visit her at her home in remote rural Maine.” 

As I was driving to Jean’s house, I thought of this as the road twisted and turned deeper and deeper into the countryside, went from asphalt to gravel to dirt, and finally ended in about the most remote dead end I could think of with no neighbors in sight.  No one knew I had gone there, and no one would know whether I returned home because all my family had left Maine for Pennsylvania that week.

Jean in her beautiful and remote garden in East Poland, Maine.

Of course, I had met Jean before, but that was in a public place, and she could have been softening me up, right?  My worst fears were confirmed when, shortly after I arrived, she offered me poisoned strawberries from her lawn (well, they could have been) and invited me inside her home.  You will be relieved to know that all my fears proved groundless.  The garden blogging world is such a unique community, and I consider many garden bloggers friends, I just don’t say it aloud in front of my children.

The Pineland Farms business campus, which includes the market and cafe, is well designed and maintained.  I wish I had been able to get better photos, but the day was very bright and sunny.

The only good shot I got of Jean’s lovely garden appears above, but it was so fun to see all the plants I had been reading about on her blog.  After the tour, we drove to Pineland Farms in New Gloucester, Maine.  The 5,000 acre Pineland Farms property encompasses a working farm, artisan dairy, hydroponic greenhouses, business campus, equestrian facility, farm market, cafe, recreational facilities, including hiking, biking, and skiing, and even guest houses.  For more on Pineland Farms, read Jean’s post.  After eating a delicious lunch made from the farm’s own products at the cafe and purchasing vegetables and farm made cheese at the market, we headed to the ornamental garden for a look around.

Views of the exterior enclosure of the Garden at Pineland Farms.  It feels like you are walking into a secret garden.

I was very charmed by what we found.  The garden encompasses one acre with 1/4 mile of paved paths.  It is mostly filled with perennials interspersed with trees and shrubs, but there is also an extensive vegetable garden.  Although the layout is formal and the maintenance is meticulous, it has a very accessible feel—like anything you saw there could be attempted successfully at home.  And I saw many plant combinations and design ideas there that I would love to try in my own gardens.

The formal brick paths, which are very easy to navigate, wind themselves around the exterior of the garden (top two photos) and across the center (bottom photo).  Although the site is flat, the curved paths and carefully places trees and shrubs create garden rooms and a sense of discovery.

The side paths are gravel and include some shade gardens.

A key element that holds this garden together is the repetition of large groupings of a limited palette of perennials appropriate to the season.  In early July, it was meadowsweet, Japanese iris, astilbe, and daylilies, among others.  These groupings unite all the small gardens and the large selection of perennials displayed.  If you scroll back through the photos above, I hope you can see what I mean.  Here are photos of some of these key plants:

Double meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria ‘Flore Pleno’

Japanese iris, Iris ensata ‘Shakkyo’

Japanese iris and ferns

The large plantings of dwarf Chinese astilbe, Astilbe chinensis ‘Pumila’, looked gorgeous with the brick paths.

Daylilies, I think Hemerocallis ‘Stella de Oro’.

In addition to the ornamental gardens, there is a very pretty herb garden and an extensive vegetable garden:

Various lavenders in the herb garden.

Produce from the vegetable garden is sold in the market.

As we left the formal garden, we had a panoramic view of the Pineland Farms dairy operation.  The bucolic beauty is typical of this part of rural Maine.

Plainview Farm plant nursery in North Yarmouth, Maine

After looking at all those gorgeous plants, it was time to buy some.  Jean took me to one of her favorite nurseries, Plainview Farm in North Yarmouth, Maine.  Not only do they have a great selection of enticing perennials, but they also have extensive display gardens.  Well worth the visit if you are in the area.  I’ll end the post with photos of two plants that intrigued me:

Yes, I am a sucker for Japanese iris: Iris ensata ‘Temple Bells’

I have never seen a sea holly this blue: Eryngium ‘Big Blue’.

 

Happy New Year to my nursery customers, my blog readers,  Jean, and garden bloggers everywhere,  Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Havahart® This Holiday Season

Posted in How to, organic gardening, product review, sustainable living with tags , , , , , on December 21, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

The woodchuck we caught was a lot cuter than I expected.  He looked and acted like he was trying out for a part in Wind in the Willows.

Last spring Havahart®, the manufacturer of live animal traps, contacted me regarding a potential product review.  Their representative expressed an interest in having a review appear on my blog because I advocate gardening  organically.  He thought my customers would be interested in their humane traps and other products.  Havahart® would send me any of their products for free, and I could try it out and say anything I wanted about it.


Never one to go half way, my husband baited the trap with a whole cabbage.

We had previously used small Havahart® traps to catch and release chipmunks, which were tearing down our 10 foot stone walls with their tunnels.  We were very pleased with the results, but our current cat has the chipmunk problem well under control.  Now we were being plagued by a woodchuck (AKA groundhog)—the most persistent animal pest I know.  For the review, we chose the Havahart® One-Door Groundhog & Raccoon Trap.

The trap is set with the door open and the cabbage behind the trigger pad.

Our current woodchuck was living under our deck so we placed the trap near his entrance and exit hole.  The trap door is held open by a trigger rod attached to a trigger pad and snaps shut when the woodchuck presses the tilted trigger pad on his way to the bait.  We didn’t have to wait long—two days later a sad little face greeted me when I checked the trap.  I expected a vicious varmint, and what I got was Beatrix Potter’s Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.  You will notice that he ate the whole cabbage.

Success occurred immediately.

I felt so sorry for the little guy that we decided an immediate transport and release was necessary.  It was easy to carry the cage to our van and place it on a tarp in the back.  The woodchuck remained passive during this ordeal.

As recommended by Havahart®, we drove to “an isolated location five to ten miles away,” insuring that the woodchuck would not return to our property.  We stopped the car, unloaded the trap, and prepared to release our little friend—that was when the fun began.  The fat little woodchuck sat firmly on the trigger pad preventing the door from being released into the open position.  Even when my husband manually opened the door and held it open, the woodchuck would not leave the trap.

While my husband holds the trap open, the woodchuck resolutely faces the back of the cage refusing to vacate his new found home.  Thanks to my customer, Ben Hayward, for pointing out that my husband should not have had his fingers near the cage opening without wearing protective gloves.  See my reply to Ben’s comment about why the gloves didn’t make the trip.

I wish I had a video of what happened next because it would be hysterical.  Without warning me, my husband picked up the whole trap, tipped it perpendicular to the ground, and shook the woodchuck out right at my feet.  If only I could say that I stood my ground like a brave photographer, risking an angry woodchuck to get THE photo.  But instead I turned and ran for the car as fast as I could, convinced that the woodchuck would climb the nearest upright object, which was me.  I regained my senses just in time to get this photo of the little woodchuck fleeing for the hinterlands.

Overall I think Havahart® traps are very useful for humanely removing unwanted animals from your property.  And upon reading the manual to write this article, it does recommend inserting a stick through the cage to prop the door open.  That would have solved the problem with our unusually passive and docile woodchuck who seemed happy to live in the trap indefinitely as long as we fed him cabbage.  However, I do not think I would want to get my hands that close to the cage (see photos above) with a more aggressive animal inside it.

Happy Holidays,  Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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December GBBD: Past Prime

Posted in Camellias, Fall Color, Garden Blogger's Bloom Day, hellebores, Shade Perennials, Shade Shrubs, snowdrops, winter interest with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on December 13, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Every year I make a Christmas wreath using all natural materials from my property.

It is the middle of the month and time to participate in Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day hosted by May Dreams Gardens where gardeners from all over the world publish photos of what’s blooming in their gardens.  I participate because it is fun and educational for me to identify what plants make my gardens shine at different times of the year.  I also hope that my customers will get some ideas for plants to add to their own gardens to extend their season well into late fall.

My garden is located in Bryn Mawr (outside Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, U.S., in zone 6B.


I used berries from this native winterberry holly, Ilex verticillata ‘Red Sprite’, to make the wreath.  On December 7, the robins came and cleaned off all the berries.

Last month was still prime time in my gardens, but now with hard frosts and generally colder weather, my gardens are past their prime.  The show goes on though with the focus shifted from the garden as a whole to individual plants peaking between November 15 and December 15 (I do not take all my photos on December 15).  This means that they bloom now (or are still blooming), have ornamental fruit, or feature exceptional foliage or fall color during this period.

Let’s start with flowers:

The large and vigorous fall-blooming snowdrop ‘Potter’s Prelude’ is in full bloom through this entire period.  Mine is surrounded by the marbled purple foliage of ‘Frosted Violet’ coralbells, Heuchera villosa ‘Frosted Violet’.  For more on fall-blooming snowdrops, click here.

Over the years, I have planted hundreds of giant snowdrops, Galanthus elwesii, and in the process have acquired plants that bloom in the fall instead of January when this species normally blooms.

I am always raving about the long bloom time of  ‘Shell Pink’ lamium so I thought you might like to see a photo of it in full bloom in December.  For more on lamium as a wintergreen groundcover, click here.

The buds on my paperbush, Edgeworthia chrysantha, have gotten large enough to show their beautiful silvery color and will remain ornamental until they start to open in March.

‘Zebrina’ hollyhock mallow, Malva sylvestris ‘Zebrina’, does not seem to be bothered by hard frosts.

Hellebores are one of the primary contributors to flowers during the winter months:

The spent flower heads of ‘Josef Lemper’ Christmas rose, Helleborus niger ‘Josef Lemper’, which has been blooming since early October, seem more ornamental when everything else has gone by.  Buds are forming at the base for the next wave of bloom.

Since November 15, another Helleborus dumetorum (no common name) has put out fresh foliage and covered itself in flowers.

The lighter chartreuse buds are forming on bearsfoot hellebore, H. foetidus, which will remain ornamental through May.

‘Jacob’ Christmas rose, Helleborus niger ‘Jacob’, is covered with buds just starting to open.

This photo might not look very exciting, but I am thrilled to see buds on my rare double Christmas rose, Helleborus niger ‘Double Fantasy’.  In all my years of collecting hellebores, I have only seen a double Christmas rose once in a garden.  Now I will be offering blooming plants to my customers in my 2012 snowdrop catalogue.

This is what ‘Double Fantasy’ will look like when it’s open.

My fall-blooming camellias are a mainstay of my garden right now.  The first three pictured below are Ackerman hybrids, which I profiled in Fall-Blooming Camellias Part 1:

This is the last flower on Camellia x ‘Winter’s Darling’.

Camellia x ‘Elaine Lee’ still has a few buds left .

Camellia x ‘Winter’s Joy’ has been flowering since October and is still covered with buds.

Fall-blooming Camellia oleifera is no longer covered with flowers but still continues to produce blooms when the weather warms up.

I was very lucky to receive as a gift this fully hardy, red-flowered Camellia japonica from Korea.  It has not yet been introduced for sale.  For more information on and photos of camellias, including this one, click here and here.

If you are just in it for flowers, then you can stop here because the last few plants rely on leaves to make their contribution.  However, foliage is very important for filling out the late fall garden, and I wanted to give you a few ideas:

Although they have dropped now, dwarf fothergilla, F. gardenii, holds its gorgeous fall leaves way beyond November 15.  For more information on this outstanding native shrub, click here.

Another woody with late fall color is ‘Shishigashira’ Japanese maple, Acer palmatum ‘Shishigashira’.

‘Magic Carpet’ spiraea, S. japonica ‘Magic Carpet’, is still displaying some of its gorgeous fall color right now.

‘Albury Purple’ St. John’s wort, Hypericum androsaemum ‘Albury Purple’, remains fully clothed in plum-colored foliage.

This is the first year that I have grown ‘Cool Splash’ southern bush honeysuckle, Lonicera sessifolia ‘Cool Splash’, but I am amazed to find that it looks like this right now.  For more information on this great native shrub, click here.

I have over 20 kinds of pulmonaria or lungwort in my garden providing me with beautiful flowers from February to April, but I appreciate them almost as much for their pristine foliage through early winter.

‘Diana Clare’ lungwort, Pulmonaria ‘Diana Clare’

Both native ‘Bronze Wave’ coralbells, Heuchera villosa ‘Bronze Wave’, and fall-blooming hardy cyclamen, C. herifolium, will look like this all winter.

My post, More Flowering Wintergreen Ground Covers of Shade, included several photos of Italian arum cultivars, which are great winter interest plants.  I won’t repeat those plants here but show you a seedling that appeared among my arum.  The leaves are more pointy and narrow than the species and the markings go beyond veining to cover the leaf.

Enjoy the last few days of fall,  Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Carolyn’s Shade Gardens 2012 Calendar

Posted in calendar with tags , , on December 4, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Calendar Cover

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens 2012 Calendar $21.95

11” x 17”, ships in 3 to 5 business days, available worldwide

To read reviews and to order, click here.

20% off through 2/5/12 with code SHADOWHOG

Just in time for the holidays, I have created the first ever Carolyn’s Shade Gardens Calendar.  Using all my own photographs, each month is illustrated with a single photo or a collage that is seasonally appropriate.  All your favorites are there: snowdrops, hellebores, primroses, hostas, native plants, and much more.  Many of the photos have appeared on my blog and received numerous compliments.  Now they are gathered together in a beautifully printed calendar. 

February

Having seen self-published calendars before, I was stunned by the excellent quality of the printing.  The printer uses high quality, heavy stock, semi-gloss paper.  The photos are so clear that they look better in print than on my computer.  I scanned the cover and the February and October collages for this post to give you an idea of what to expect, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise of turning each page.  I am forever indebted to Clare at Curbstone Valley Farm for recommending the publisher and helping me through the process.

October

I hope you will want to order the calendar for yourself, but it would also make a great holiday gift for friends and family, hostess present, or gift for that someone who has everything.  Please send a link to this post to anyone who might be interested in an easy holiday present.  Let me know what you think of the calendar when you receive it or better yet write a review on the calendar site.  Your feedback is always important to me.

This is a print-to-order calendar so you must place your order directly with the publisher by clicking here.

For aesthetic reasons, I didn’t put captions in, but here is a list for everyone who has asked for them:

Cover: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens main terrace
January: snowdrops ‘Potter’s Prelude’ (Galanthus elwesii var. monstictus ‘Potter’s Prelude’)
February: un-named hybrid hellebores (Helleborus x hybridus)
March: checkered-lily (Fritillaria meleagris); white checkered lily (F. m. ‘Alba’); fumewort (Corydalis solida)
April: glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa forbesii) with ‘Caramel’ coralbells (Heuchera x villosa ‘Carmel’) left; ‘Little Princess’ tulip with white stonecrop (Sedum album) right
May: cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea) left; Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) and Celandine poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) right
June: primrose ‘Cherry Pinwheels’ (Primula x polyantha ‘Cherry Pinwheels’)
July: ‘Teeny-weeny Bikini’ hosta left, ‘Holy Mouse Ears’ hosta top, Hosta tokudama species bottom
August: stone chair at Chanticleer with climbing hydrangea (H. anomala subsp. petiolaris)
September: ‘Early Amethyst’ beautyberry (Callicarpa dichotoma ‘Early Amethyst)
October: Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quenquefolia) left, northern sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) top, oakleaf hydrangea (H. quercifolia) bottom
November: ‘Blue Angel’ hosta with fall-blooming hardy cyclamen (C. hederifolium)
December: tea viburnum (V. setigerum) bottom, my gargoyle mascot left, Carolyn’s Shade Gardens carriage house top

Thanks, Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Chanticleer Part 3: Through the Seasons

Posted in Fall, garden to visit with tags , , , on November 29, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Close up of the teacup fountain in fall.

Chanticleer is a unique public garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania, U.S., which I have profiled in two previous articles.  The first, Chanticleer Part 1: A Pleasure Garden, gave an overview of this one-of-a-kind horticultural destination.  The second, Chanticleer Part 2: Garden Seating, focused on the huge variety of thoughtful seating areas in the Chanticleer gardens.  This post will show some of Chanticleer’s gardens as they evolve through the seasons, highlight some additional “hardscape” features, and focus on the attention to detail in one tiny garden that peaks in the fall.

The Teacup Garden through the seasons: clockwise from top, spring, summer, fall.  I highly encourage you to click on any photo to enlarge it for more detail especially the collages.

I hope that my first two posts have inspired you to visit Chanticleer.  However, if you live in the area, it is well worth visiting several times a year.  As you can see from the photos of the Teacup Garden above, the changes in some of Chanticleer’s gardens are very dramatic.  And even the less dramatic evolution of other areas makes each visit feel unique.  Here are a few more gardens from spring through fall:

Entrance courtyard: clockwise from left, summer, spring, fall.  The lavish and very colorful plantings in this area, where visitors check in, often have a tropical theme.

The gardens above the pond and below the ruin: clockwise from left, summer, spring, fall.

View of the Serpentine Garden from the gravel gardens below the ruin: clockwise from top, fall, summer, spring.  Although the changes are more subtle, they are no less beautiful.

Another more subtle change in the area below the ruin and above the Stream Garden: top summer, bottom fall.  A change in the seasons gives a whole different feel.

One of the many unique features of Chanticleer is the ingenious use of “hardscape” or architectural elements throughout the garden.  These elements are as important to my visits to the garden as the plants themselves.  They provide a dimension of experience not available in any other garden I have visited.  I have highlighted some of the hardscape in each of my posts, but here are additional examples:

The elegant gate at the entrance to the Teacup Garden.

Stone acorns in the Ruin Garden: Chanticleer has many beautiful stone sculptures, including the stone chair in my garden seating post, which has taken Pinterest, the online pinboard site, by storm.

Pattern in the floor of the Ruin Garden: at Chanticleer, it pays to look where you are walking because art is incorporated into the paths.  I have been inspired by my visits to add design elements to  my own woodland paths.

Lovely bridge with carved wooden railing below the Pond Garden.

Elegant bridge marking the entrance to the Asian Woods.

This creepy fountain of sunken marble faces is in a secluded alcove of the Ruin Garden—I love it!

I thought you might like to see close up photos of all the sunken marble faces in the Ruin Garden fountain.

My latest visit to Chanticleer was on October 21, shortly before the garden closed for the season at the beginning of November.  I was captivated by a small garden between the Teacup Garden and the back gate.  So much work had been put into the plantings and the seating arrangement to ornament the very short period when Chanticleer is open in the fall.  The eggplant-colored chairs perfectly echo the October-blooming and -fruiting beautyberries, toad-lilies, and other flowers behind them—now that’s attention to detail and that’s what Chanticleer is all about.

To finish out this series, I will need to visit Chanticleer in winter.  Because they don’t reopen until April 1, I hope to get special permission to visit off season.  Wish me luck!

Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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In Which I Decide To Be Thankful

Posted in garden essay, green gardening, native plants, Uncategorized with tags , , on November 22, 2011 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

All photos in this post were taken in and around Cliff Island, Maine, U.S., in summer or fall.  Click on any photo to enlarge.

This is my 2011 Thanksgiving essay.  Last year in My Thanksgiving Oak Forest, I described why my husband and I decided to transplant native red oak seedlings to a waste area filled with invasive plants.  If you haven’t had a chance to read it, I hope you will click here because I think it is my most important post. This year’s essay is a glass-half-empty, glass-half-full kind of story, which ends with me deciding to be thankful, always a good result at any time of year.

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I spend a lot of time on a small island seven miles off the coast of Maine called Cliff Island.  The island is a very special place for many reasons.  Physically, it is achingly beautiful, surrounded by rocky shores and ocean and with acres of woods, marshes, and beaches created by nature and for the most part preserved that way, although it is all private land. 

Our family has no vehicle so I walk three to four miles every day often to get places but predominantly for pleasure.  And while I walk I think.  In the midst of all this beauty I am often sad.  Aside from public land, few places remain in the eastern U.S. like Cliff Island where the ecology is not rapidly changing for the worse.

Surrounded by a close to pristine landscape, I mourn for what southeastern Pennsylvania, where I live, must have been like and how it has been changed beyond recognition and probably beyond redemption.  As Heather from Restoring the Landscape with Native Plants says: “Although many of our woodland landscapes have been invaded with invasive species and altered by humans, diminished representations of the former plant community still exist and provide us with a window of what the woodland used to be [emphasis added].”

I think about how most people don’t know, and many of them don’t care, what a real native landscape looks and feels like.  How will we preserve the precious areas that remain if people have no context within which to appreciate them?  Jill on Landscape Lover’s Blog describes a noted French landscape architect as pointing out that “most people prefer highly-managed places – pleasurable gardens and efficient landscapes – over raw nature, which is increasingly perceived as distant, unpleasant, almost repellent, with its insects, bacteria, and disorder [emphasis added].”  Is that true?  I am afraid so.

Even Cliff Island is under attack with invasive non-native plants making their way out from the mainland and displacing the island’s delicate native ecology.  We currently have a full scale battle going on with Japanese knotweed, purple loosestrife, oriental bittersweet, multiflora rose, Japanese barberry, burning bush euonymus, and Norway maple.  These plants have only started multiplying invasively on Cliff Island in the last 20 years or so and yet the rate of increase is exponential.

On better days, when my half-full attitude takes over, I am deliriously thankful that I get to spend time on Cliff Island.  I stare at the landscape trying to burn it into my memory for viewing during the rest of the year.  I find it so beautiful that it seems unreal, like a movie set.  I never get tired of it.  No designed garden can compare with what nature has created.

I am also eternally thankful that I am able to appreciate this natural beauty.  That I don’t prefer highly managed landscapes and that I love being outside.  I am grateful that my training enables me to understand how the plant communities on the island work and to appreciate the ornamental characteristics of the native plants.

I am thankful that Cliff Island’s balance has not been destroyed.  In Pennsylvania, any unplanted area is soon filled with invasives.  On the island, the regenerative power of the native plants remains in tact.  An area of abandoned lawn will quickly be re-colonized by blueberries, goldenrod, bayberry, asters, and other natives.

I am also thankful that, four years ago, I was able to launch a non-native invasive plant removal program on Cliff Island.  Volunteers from the community are working hard to remove invasives before they become established like they are on the mainland.  I am happy to report that the program is a huge success.  If you would like to know more about the program, please feel free to email me at carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net.  Nothing would make me happier than to help others preserve their native landscape.

Readers of my 2010 Thanksgiving post will be pleased to know that we are continuing what will now be our Thanksgiving tradition and have planted three more native red oaks at the bottom of our property.

Happy Thanksgiving, Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information.  If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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