Farla's Flower Garden of Alphabet Verse

In winter, I look for indoor activities, away from home, that allow me to breathe in fresh air, as I transition from house to car to parking lot to building. One of my destinations is a community center where I joined a writers’ circle. Some members of this group are storytellers, others write poetry in free verse or iambic pentameter. One member, Margie Golick, is a talented, humorous, poet. She wrote the following as a birthday present for a friend. Astute gardeners, who might find exception to some of her botanical facts, should note that this writer’s expertise lies in rhyming couplets.

Flower Facts for Farla by Margie Golick 

Seeding, weeding, digging, hoeing; Like the Energizer Bunny, Farla keeps on growing.

In every single garden bed; Nature’s secrets A to Z.

AnemoneAloe, anemone, astilbe; We’re your friends and always will be.

BegoniaBluebells, buttercups, begonia; But you’re in your garden when we try to phone ya.

Campanula portenschlagianaCampanula, core-opsis; No time for a movie – Just read a synopsis.

Dahlia Mary's Jomanda Dandelion, daffodil, dahlia, daisy; No one would dare to call you lazy.

Echinacea Mama MiaEchinacea, edelweiss; A garden is a healthy vice.

FuchsiaFuchsia, foxglove, forget-me-not; (Unless they find you growing pot)

GerberaGerbera, gentian, and geranium; Guarantee a youthful cranium.

Fall HyancinthusHyacinth, heather, hollyhock; Hold you steady as a rock.

Iris versicolorImpatiens, ipomoea, iris; Impenetrable by any virus.

JasmineJack–in-the-pulpit, jonquil, jasmine; For sure you’ll never be a has-been.

KelpKeep your garden mulched with kelp; You’ll find this is a lot of help.

Mountain laurelNeed to patch a lover’s quarrel? Try lilac, lemon mint or laurel.

MimosaEverything will be hunky-dory; With mimosa, marigold, morning glory.

NasturtiumNarcissus, nasturtium, nightshade, nettle; Put a little in your kettle.

OleanderJust a whiff of oleander; Women flirt and men philander.

Shirley poppyRemember to think outside the box; With peony, poppy, petunia, phlox.

QuinceAnd always reserve a little space; For growing quince and Queen Anne’s lace.

Oso easy strawberry crush roseRosemary, rhododendron, rose; These will banish all your woes.                                                                                                            

Snapdragon frosty lavenderSalvia, snapdragon, sunflower, sedum; Got 'em, got ‘em, got ‘em, need ‘em.

TrilliumTiger lily, tulips, trilliums; Will bring you fortunes by the milliums.

Ulex europaeusYour beds will never be unruly; With ulex, ugni, and uhule.

VioletVenus fly trap, vio-let; Will also keep you out of debt.

Wisteria blutentraubenWeigela, wisteria, water lily; Keep you warm when the day is chilly.

XeranthemumXeranthemum if you want variety; Will bring you welcome notoriety.

YarrowWith yarrow, yucca, yam, and yew; You will never catch the flu.

Zinnia cherry double zaharaFrom Vancouver east to West Virginia; These facts hold true and I’ll be Zinnia.  

Gardening Eyes and the Grandmother Clock: Yes, There is a Relationship.

Eupatorium rugosum "Chocolate".The flowering perennial, Eupatorium “Chocolate”, is inappropriately located in my garden.  Unlike the other plants in the flowerbed, I derive no pleasure from staring at it, because it appears lonely and lost.  No one else notices that it is out of place, but I do.

The height of the plant is too short for its location, the brown shading of the leaves causes it to disappear into the brown slatted fence behind, and its white flowers are too insipid for the garden’s colorful composition. Yet, all who admire my garden comment on the rich, unusual color of its foliage, and on its regal and stately deportment.

Foliage of Eupatorium r. Chocolate. Copyright photo by http://www.robsplants.com/, used with permission. Click on image to link. Because of the opinions of others, I recognize that this plant has some redeeming value. In spite of what my eyes and brain tell me about its imperfections, the perennial is prominent in the eyes of my visitors and that is enough to stop me from digging it up and heaving it onto the compost heap.

One day, I must plant additional perennials nearby. A composition of several other taller and shorter plants will mitigate my perception of the Eupatorium, by contrasting its dark foliage and pale flowers with richer looking companions. Perhaps, when it is surrounded and enhanced by other plants, my eyes and my brain will be happy.

I experience a similar visual tension when I enter the home of my Boston-based children. There, I am confronted with an antique clock in the center hall. It appears to be just as lost, hanging alone on an empty wall, as the Eupatorium does growing in my garden.

Whenever I notice it, my eyes tell me that the clock needs a companion – a piece of furniture - to integrate it better into the room. With each visit, I desperately want to place a wood bench beneath it. Yet, I dare not share this critical vision with my children because, like the Eupatorium in my garden, the clock has a redeeming value to others that far surpasses the aesthetic disconnect that I feel.

With Roman numerals on its aged, ivory face – a reminiscence of Queen Victoria’s England - the wood-framed antique timepiece speaks of its long history. This austere-looking clock was a wedding present to my daughter and son-in-law from his grandmother. Instead of a monetary or utilitarian gift, she chose to buy the newlyweds an item that would perpetuate her memory in their lives.

Selecting and purchasing the gift was difficult for Grandma. Her frail physical condition made it challenging for her to leave home; when she did go out, her body’s low energy caused immense fatigue. Nevertheless, she considered a wedding gift for her grandson sufficiently important to ignore all of her ailments in order to shop.

The clock she selected is over one hundred years old. It and thousands like it once graced the walls of every railway station in the UK. When they were replaced with more accurate timepieces, hundreds of the old clocks were shipped to North America. There they were sold in quaint shops to unsuspecting neophyte antique collectors. According to experts, once these clocks break down, they will never again keep time, no matter how often they are repaired and regardless how qualified the watchmaker.

Yet, in spite of the fact that I perceive the clock to be out of place, and that it regularly stops working, my children do not intend to remove it. Like the stately, regal Eupatorium growing in my garden, this historical object has an undeniable prominence.

In the Midwest of America, where my son-in-law’s parents were raised, a present is considered holy. The energy and thought invested in selecting a gift is more important than its monetary worth or intrinsic utility. The gesture of generosity and thoughtfulness is its primary value. When my children made me aware of this Midwestern trait, I finally appreciated the importance of the clock in their lives.

Now, in my imagination, I can see passengers inside a Victorian railway station, staring at the clock. It hangs on the wall with authority, surrounded by oak benches that anchor it into the overall interior design. It is the most important item in the waiting room. Then, I envisage Grandma buying the clock in an antique shop and, suddenly, I notice her face break out with a smile of extreme satisfaction for having found a suitable present. Eventually, I see her exhausted and hobbling with pain - but never complaining - as she heads back to her car.

Like the visitors to my garden, who found regality in a plant that I disliked, I gained an appreciation for Grandma’s clock when I saw it through the eyes of my children.

Note:  The above image of foliage is the most accurate depiction of brown shading on the leaves of Eupatorium rugosum Chocolate. I found it via Google Images at www.robsplants.com.  Since all of Rob’s photos are copyrighted, it is used here with his permission, for which I am grateful. Readers who visit his garden website and click on the "photo" icon in the website banner will be rewarded with a large array of stunning close-ups of perennial flowers from USDA Zone 6.

How to Enjoy Flowering Gardens During the Depths of Winter

A meadow planting of Snakehead Fritallaria, http://www.holbrookgarden.comWe have just passed a psychological milestone; autumn is over, winter has officially begun, and this passionate gardener can hardly wait for next spring to arrive. Since snow will blanket my garden until next April, I satisfy my need for flowers and plants by visiting the websites of my suppliers. There I study the new perennials they intend to introduce next spring and refresh my mind about those I neglected last season.

Tulipa humilis, http://www.holbrookgarden.comIn addition, I visit the websites of public gardens to admire photos of flower displays. For example, all the images posted here are from Holbrook Garden in Devon, England, U.K.  Of the many pictures displayed on that site, I have selected those that tug at my heart.

Kniphofia uvaria nobilis and Crocosmia Lucifer, http://www.holbrookgarden.comThese cyberspace activities are the next best thing to real gardening. How long will it take to begin that activity anew? I imagine it to be an eternity. Consider that my suppliers closed their premises at Christmas after selling trees and decorative branches for the holidays. Many of them recently left Canada for warmer weather in Florida, Arizona, Hawaii, South America, and the Caribbean.

Iris ensata and Primula florindae, http://www.holbrookgarden.comThey are not expected to return until the end of March and my plant deliveries do not begin before early May. Until then, online images from nurseries, growers, and public gardens will become my kind of virtual gardening. I hope these pictures will help warm your hearts, kindle the imagination, and offer you just as much pleasure as I receive from admiring them.

Beware of Tiny Flowerbeds That Are “Up Close and Personal”

A prospective client, who never gardened before and doesn’t intend to garden ever, informed me that she purchased an illustrated book about perennials so that she could choose the plants for a proposed garden. It was the moment I would dread for the rest of the season; a situation that every designer hopes will never occur.

Instead of inquiring what I had in mind for her project, and before listening to my suggestions, she began flipping through the book’s pages, selecting whatever caught her eye. Without any regard for a plant’s personality or performance, she insisted that I work only with her choices for a tiny garden to be planted along her front walkway.

The client lives in an imposing home, on a prominent street, in an upscale neighborhood. In her part of town, the garden is an accessory that enhances the home. One cannot plant only with one’s heart. A keen editing eye is also necessary, especially for a flowerbed on the front lawn. None of that seemed important to this client.

She balked when I tried to explain the design impropriety of using some of the plants that attracted her attention, and the need for miniature ornamental shrubs as structure to showcase perennials. When I continued to suggest plants more appropriate for the scale of the project, I could sense frustration in her voice and annoyance in her eyes. Eventually, I decided to keep my mouth shut. In retrospect, that was the wrong decision. Even at the risk of losing her business, I should have been vocal - very vocal.

As I envisioned, the client’s choice of plants did not look good in her garden. The flowerbed had no bones to enhance its contents, and, as expected, I was not permitted to address that problem. Although a great deal of thought had gone into the plant compositions, the resulting garden was hopelessly ugly. No matter how hard I tried to place and reposition plants, the fluffy, puffy, sprawling perennials, selected by the client, appeared helter-skelter with nothing to ground them.

Exacerbating the situation was an instruction to restrict the color story to hot, tropical tones. This aesthetic preference, perfectly suitable for a large sprawling landscape, gave the small flowerbed a congested and frenetic feeling.

Then, a day before planting, a prevailing heat wave scorched some of the perennials. As I was unable to replace them before the start time - there was a clause in our agreement about the beginning and end date of the contract - I could only hope for temperate weather so that withered plants might recuperate quickly; but that did not happen. Consequently, when the job was complete, neither the customer nor I was pleased.

For the next two weeks, I began the process of replacing prematurely dormant plants, moving remaining ones to enhance their appearance, and discretely substituting some of the client’s plant choices with others more appropriate. In the end, nothing that I did alleviated the client’s disappointment. Sadly, none of that remedial work pleased me, either.

I have learned two lessons from this experience: - First, if I cannot convince a client to reconsider an idea that is unrealistic, I should walk away from the project. Second, I must never accept a commission to design a tiny garden, at the formal entryway to a home, composed exclusively with perennials.

Gardens admired from afar may appear more attractive because distance enhances the beauty of plant combinations. Also, when seen from that perspective, nature’s blemishes are diminished. However, up close and personal flowerbeds - that is, gardens that are literally in one’s face - reveal every flower’s flaw. Fastidious homeowners, who confront the garden intimately each time they enter or exit the house, will notice and scrutinize every fine detail.  As a result, the designer’s intentions are lost because - as the tweaked saying goes – the client cannot see the garden for the flowers.

Chance Encounter with Anonymous Day Lilies

During the third week of July of every summer, my wife and I reunite with our children at a lake in Upstate New York.

The cottages we use are the summer residences of people who live elsewhere, and who are happy to rent out their homes, in order to offset the high cost of taxes on lakefront property.

Most buildings in the Adirondack Mountains tend to have modest exteriors, to avoid competing with the majesty of the surrounding vistas.

Occasionally, some homeowners will add a touch of color to their properties by planting day lilies that bloom at the height of the rental season. In the growing zone of the Adirondack Mountains, Hemerocallis are among the most reliable perennials one can plant.

The images posted here are of flowers discovered around our cottages, this past summer. With the owners off site, there was no opportunity to learn the names of these plant varieties. How fascinating that my eye was drawn to them, even though I avoided choosing such colors for my garden at home.

Warm and hot shades are difficult to integrate into my flowerbeds. Yet, they seem so attractive in this rustic setting. Next season I will risk breaking my color rules. Perhaps it’s time to experiment with a few similar varieties in my own garden, simply because they are beautiful.