Gardening Book

Bloom’s Best Perennials and Grasses: Expert Plant Choices and Dramatic Combinations for Year-Round Gardens, by Adrian Bloom. Timber Press, 2010

Adrian Bloom is the son of Alan Bloom, the plantsman who started Blooms of Bressingham, the noted plant breeders and nursery. Plants are in his blood.

The book is many things: it’s a basic manual on perennial care; it tells you how to choose plants that will do well in your area (hint: choose one’s that originated in a similar climate & soil); it gives you design ideas; it lists his 12 best plants; it’s a grass/perennial encyclopedia, and it lists plants for special conditions-wet, dry, shady, etc. If you’re just beginning with perennial gardening, this might be a good book to start with, right up there with Cox’s “Perennial Garden”. If you’ve been gardening with perennials for a number of years, you might not find any surprises- I only found one new plant that I must have. But that’s not surprising: he lists only plants that have been around long enough to prove their worth. The latest salvia might be beautiful, but it might be floppsy, spew seedlings everywhere, or be a weak grower. The plants that Bloom lists are proven winners, provided you give them the soil and exposure he recommends. And that’s another thing- all the plants he lists are low maintenance.

While I like most of his plant selections (I already have most of the ones that will grow in zone 4), I’m not overly fond of his designs. They are good designs, but he uses grasses with a heavier hand than I care for, and he uses much more yellow and orange than I would. On the other hand, his gardens are designed to give multi-season interest, rather than be gorgeous for one week in June and then be spent.

Recommended.

At Last! I Have Crafted!

The in-laws are here, so yesterday I had a day of enforced inactivity indoors. That did give me the opportunity to trim a hat that I’ve had sitting around for awhile now.

The straw form came from a yard sale and had truly horrid flowers on it. I pulled them off, sewed this ribbon on, and then sewed a couple of old fabric roses on it. The roses came from some other project I’d taken apart, so the only thing new was the ribbon.



A remark was made that I’d gone overboard for a hat meant for working in the garden, but what the heck. At a total cost of under $3, I can have some thing that is nice to wear for work!

Great Gardening Book!

American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Perennials, ed. Graham Rice. Dorling Kindersley, 2006


This is a marvelous compendium of plants. Almost 500 pages of plant descriptions and beautiful color photographs make it a book that the curious gardener will dip into again and again. Plants are listed by genus and species, and a good number of cultivars are listed. Each genus is given a general description, followed by how it is best grown, how it’s propagated, and what pests it has. Then follows the various species within the genus, descriptions including origin, size, bloom time, color and size, scent and occasional tidbits about medicinal use or the like. One thing I love about this book as opposed to many other plant encyclopedias: it gives the American zone hardiness of the species.

But this is not just a straight encyclopedia; interspersed with the plants are sidebars and boxes with information on combining the plants to make beautiful vignettes that put plants with the same needs together, the structures of various types of flowers, plant history, diseases and pests of plants, and detailed propagation instructions for certain plants.

This book is great for looking up information, but it’s also wonderful for just leafing through it, stopping at reading at random spots- did you know that the Barlow type aquilegias make seed that’s true to type, while all other aquilegia’s promiscuously cross breed? And here I thought those Barlow girls were just as bad as their cousins! Drooling over this book has given me a lot of new ideas for the garden, and left me with serious zone envy.
 

First Clematis of the Year

Madame Julia Correvon, if I recall correctly:

Edit: Whoops, it's Pink Champagne!

Big Bird is Big

We're working on a gardening job that's on the top of the Sunnyside peninsula right now. The view is amazing (and I keep forgetting to take pictures while we're there). On the way home yesterday, we caught this bald eagle in an old snag, viewing his domain.

The Jewel Box Garden, by Thomas Hobbs. Timber Press, 2004


‘The Jewel Box Garden’ is not your average gardening book. You’ll find no advice on composting or dealing with insects; this book is strictly about the aesthetics of gardening. Far more picture than text, it’s a book of inspiration, not instruction. The book is filled with vignettes of plants that are jewels on their own, and are supported by being used in combo with other plants and with planters, statues and other hardscaping. His theme is that you want to create beauty in the garden, and not copy what everyone else is doing. I can’t argue with that.

Hobbs lives, designs and gardens in Vancouver, B.C., so his palette of plants is much more extensive than what most of us have, and he’s pushed the it even further by using hot weather plants that he takes inside every winter. That’s more work than most of us want to do, but we can achieve the same effect with hardier plants. Hardy sedums and sempervivums can stand in for tender echevarias; there *are* hardy bamboos (and they are less apt to spread aggressively than the tropical varieties), hardy ferns, hardy variegated plants and hardy plants with dark, almost black foliage.

The photos are beautiful, but the text may be off-putting to some readers. Hobbs is snarky about the people whose gardens he doesn’t like, and if you have that sort of garden you’re apt to be insulted. Ignore those bits, though, and allow yourself to get caught up in his enthusiasm for what he’s doing.

The Great Outdoors

The second round of chicks and the ducklings have been in the chicken house, rather than in our house, for several days now, and are acclimating nicely. Of course, the day after we put them out the temperatures plunged and we’ve had freezes for several nights in a row, but with the help of four light bulbs, they are doing well. The chicks do go out in the run much, but the ducklings love it outside, ran or shine.