Let’s Host A Garden Tour Every Year, Honey!
Okay, just kidding. We’d probably keel over if we had to get the garden in shape for a tour every year. But it was a really fun day and if someone asked, we’d probably offer up our yard again for a tour in the future. Even though it was in the 90s with extremely high humidity, the 9-hour day went by fast and we honestly could have gone on yacking with visitors for at least another hour or two after the 4 p.m. closing time.
The numbers have been crunched and it looks like we had 367 people touring the 11 gardens on display—that’s the biggest year yet for the annual Hennepin County Master Gardener Learning Garden Tour. Our garden is small and the paths are narrow, so we were worried that visitors might feel cramped and rushed in a way that would keep them from experiencing the garden as it’s meant to be experienced.
Luckily, people trickled in throughout the day and meandered down the paths looking at everything. Everyone was smiling and happy and had a lot of questions. It’s mostly true that mean people don’t garden, and this day was a testament to that. Love fest would be a good way to describe the day, really, and who doesn’t want more love?
Read More»Our Yard Is On A Garden Tour
- On July 12, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Container Gardening, Organic Gardening, Perennials, Soil
7
Two days from now, on Saturday, somewhere around 300 people will be coming to check out our gardens as part of the Hennepin County Master Gardener Learning Garden Tour. Our house is one of 11 stops on the one-day tour, and we have been working like maniacs for three solid months to get the place in shape.
Front Yard “After”
Front Yard “Before”
Truthfully, as you’ll see from the photos I’m posting, we’ve been working on our yard for six summers in a way that would probably seem nutty to most people. But when I volunteered us for the tour, we really had to kick things into high gear and we have now completed EVERY project that we had on our to-do list for the yard. Had it not been for the tour, we probably would have stretched those projects out over three years or more. So while we’re exhausted, we’re also really glad to have little more than weeding and watering to do next summer.
Read More»Container Plantings of the Rich
- On June 28, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Container Gardening
- 0
Rich people may have money, but that usually doesn’t keep their gardens from being stuffy snooze fests of unearthly green grass bordered by close-clipped hedges and dotted with a weird topiary or two.
This being the case, I just had to stop the car and take pictures the other day when I spotted some amazing, over-the-top container gardens flanking the gates of an otherwise bland-looking mansion on Minneapolis’ swanky Lake of the Isles.
And I wasn’t alone. Several other people had stopped to stare or take pictures, too. As you might imagine, we don’t see too many tropical displays of this magnitude in these parts. So what did we do? We all behaved as if we were in a library and didn’t make a sound as we blinked in the morning sun.
There were clearly other containers to be gawked at in the front yard too. But nobody ventured up the steps to peek inside the gates. It seemed kind of rude.I was really hoping someone would see us and just come on out and invite us inside in that grand way that Willy Wonka invites Charlie, his grandpa and all of those dreadful other people into the chocolate factory.
Perhaps it’s all for the best that it didn’t go that way, really.
Zombie Garden Gnomes
- On June 10, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Perennials, Uncategorized, What In Tarnation?
- 0
I admit it. I have never understood the allure of garden gnomes. Ugly, dumpy and slightly creepy in a pervy kind of way, gnomes always make me wonder about the sort of person who chooses to use them as garden accents.
Why do they like these creatures? Are the gnomes perceived as funny, cute, hip, what? Did somebody this poor homeowner loves foist gnomes upon them as a gift so now they feel like they have to set them out in the garden—at least for a few weeks until they can claim that some neighborhood kids took ’em?
What is the story?
The situation is completely different with zombie gnomes, however. Created by Los Angeles-based couple Chris Stever and Jane DeRosa, these gruesome gnomes make no attempt to hide their creepiness behind props like whimsical pointy hats. Happily noshing on pink flamingos and other hapless garden dwellers, they broadcast what many of us have suspected all along. “Yes, gnomes are creepy,” they would say if their mouths weren’t full of tasty flamingo meat. ” In fact we are the blood-thirsty undead come unbidden into your yard.”
Please tell me those don't taste like chicken, too.
Buoyed by their forthrightness, and my longtime love of all things zombie, I ordered some up right away. If you’d like some zombie gnomes for your garden, go to Chris and Jane’s Place, the couple’s shop on Etsy. Be aware that it says on their website that due to increased demand it may take up to five weeks for your zombie gnomes to arrive.
I figure that’s fine. I need a little time to let the cute turtle and rabbit statues out in the backyard know that they’d best get their affairs in order.
Got Ugly Bulb Foliage To Hide?
- On May 24, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Perennials
- 3
Tulip 'Queen of Night' and Sedum 'Matrona' (Cornell University)
If you love flowering bulbs, but recoil at the thought of having to look at their withering foliage long after the blooms are gone, Cornell University has good news for you.
Knowing that the right plant combinations could successfully hide fading leaves, researchers at Cornell spent four seasons putting bulb/perennial pairings to the test at the university’s trial gardens in Ithaca, New York.
Their results, including some helpful photos of the two plants progressing together over several weeks, are available on the university’s website: http://www.hort.cornell.edu/combos.
As someone who has mostly tried in vain to effectively pair up plants in ways that really do hide ugly, yellowing foliage, I’m grateful to Cornell for putting real energy into actually testing plant combos to see what works and what doesn’t. When deciding which pairings looked good and worked well together, the researchers considered the same types of things gardeners think about: color, foliage type and texture, bloom times and the rate at which the perennials they planted mature.
Read More»Reading Your Weeds: What Do Weeds Really Tell Us About Soil Conditions
- On April 27, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Books, Organic Gardening, Soil, Sustainable Agriculture
- 3
Broadleaf Plantain Credit: USDA
Years ago, when I was a news reporter at a weekly paper, an editor yelled in my face that I wasn’t fit to be a journalist because I was too easily “spun.” It wasn’t the first time this guy had wigged out at my inability to see the world in the same black and white way that he did. But it was the last. Maybe I am easily spun. I didn’t deny it. I prefer to think, that I can usually tell the difference between someone who is selling something and someone who is offering their informed opinion—whether I agree with them or not.
Sure, it does mess with a well-defined story idea when research and sources don’t take you in the direction you thought you were going to go. But that happens sometimes. In fact it happened with this story I’m posting here, which is a longer version of a recent article I wrote for Norther Gardener magazine about using weeds as soil indicators.
I have read and heard for years that weeds can be good soil indicators, and gardeners who understand what their weeds are saying can remedy soil problems accordingly. “Read your weeds,” people often say. I never paid the idea much mind. But last summer, after hearing that advice for what felt like the zillionth time, I decided to look into it.
Read More»
