Winter has come properly decked out finally and I’m continuing to be fascinated by thinking about where our gardens are going in the next year or so.

5. An emphasis on trees. More conferences, more concern about their condition especially for native trees. Finally we are getting seriously worried about our canopies. Not just the urban canopy but canopies everywhere. Our trees have been assaulted by pollution, lumbering, invasions by exotic aliens.  The latter is being taken extremely seriously by those who want our native forests to survive and thrive.  Trees can’t go very far with global climate change and those that can’t adjust quickly are going to croak.  They give us so much we all have to become stewards of the forest. Forget that epithet tree-hugger, become one.

6. Sustainability has become a confusing term, but we’re going to have it slammed at us in almost everything that has to do with nature (which takes in everything not just gardening). We all need to get up to speed on what it really means and how it affects our gardening, lives, homes and what we can do about it.

7. Hellebores are my personal Plant of the Year:  a never-fail (though it may be slow to get a grip in some gardens), evergreen, glorious, magnificent plant. You can use it as a houseplant;  fill up a container if it’s out of its zone; or have a collection that will bloom pretty much year round. Here’s a wonder Helleborus ‘Pink Frost’ which landed in nurseries last year and should be in everyone’s garden.

8. Self-seeding plants. The whole trend toward having looser, more casual gardens means we’ll be using more and more self-seeding plants without being terrified of them (rampant, and invasive). Learn about a few of them that work well in your area. Start with a palette and then move into the plants that will work with what  you’ve got.  I’m going to write more on this so please sign up for the newsletter.

And here’s  what I’d really like to be doing now: glugging down a lovely glass of Italian wine and watching the sun set over an Italian villa. Join me, have a look at our Italian trip for this year.

The Saturday before Christmas a group of lads showed up late in the afternoon. They got the gigantic earth movers going and then drove them off rather quickly I thought as I turned back to work. When the cop arrived on Monday he asked:  ”Did you notice anything odd over the weekend?”  Of course I had, at 4:35 on Saturday  two giant machines left the site.  ”What did the guys look like?” he asked.   Well, like construction workers: puffy vests, toques, steel-toed boots. “Where are the machines now?” I enquired.  Oh,  on a ship to a foreign land; or off to another construction site.  The contractors were convinced it was organized crime.

It certainly looked organized but it’s hard  to feel sorry for them. Apparently all Caterpillar machines have the same key. All you need is one bent person and you’ve got yourself a $120,000 chunk of metal.

TRENDS

Trends come slowly to the mind when this sort of annoying stuff is going on.  But I’m as willing as the next person to take a shot at it. We used to joke at Gardening Life magazine that whatever we declared as a trend one year, we’d say was out of style the next. Not completely true but now there are so few garden mags, I still like this pretentious little ritual–it  makes us all feel like the season is about to swing over into something new.

1. Vegetable gardening in the front yard or among the perennials is going to be as big this year as it was last. People have fallen in love with growing vegetables, not just for eating but also for the aesthetics. A gigantic fennel or edging of Swiss chard looks great among autumn bloomers such as Salvia bonariensis and other plants of its ilk.

2. Orange has been declared the colour of the year by the fashionistas,  and gardeners have been ahead of the curve on this one. We chose orange tulips, dahlias and echinaceas to marry up with purple and magenta plants a few years ago. This year, we’re trendy.

3. Fewer lazy landscaper gardens:  you know the kind–thirty hydrangeas, 18 grasses et voila a Piet Oudolph garden.  Well, not bloody likely. Oudolph is a genius at colour block planting and I haven’t seen one garden in this style that passes muster. This sort of  dreary garden is so foolproof and so boring that even the most visually illiterate of clients wants it to be replaced by something requiring both thought and individuality.  Most of our work last year at Marjorie Harris Gardens was taking out this sort of egregious mess, moving plants around and adding new and exciting ones.

4. Flowering shrubs. Instead of putting in tall perennials, smaller flowering shrubs are catching the eye of gardeners. There are some staggering beauties coming into the market place and it’s a matter of demanding them at your own favourite nursery. There are such dishy ones as my favourite plant du jour:  Calycanthus floridus an eastern native with maroon blossoms and long tapered leaves.  I’ll have a list and  pix of the new ones I adore coming up shortly.

More trends to come, I hate these blogs when they get too long. I also apologize for having been absent such a long time but between our tour to Italy last autumn and recovering from  knee replacement surgery immediately after, I seem to have been totally preoccupied. I’ll keep this up on a regular basis from now on. And I’ll be sending out the free midwinter newsletter next week. If you’d like to receive it and are not on the mailing list,  just get in touch. And we’ve got the new itinerary for this year’s trip to Italy just hit the button up on the banner and you’ll find it in all its glory.

Some day I’ll go into the garden and not be critical of each and every plant.  What’s missing from the photograph below is a giant Rosa glauca and that left  the path a little easier to manage, a seedling of the mother plant will flourish and it will continue to live here.

I’ve never ever seen a year like this one for weeds and diseases.  Unbelievable. That warm winter didn’t kill off a lot of offenders, the humungous amount of rain that never seemed to end lead to fungal diseases. I had one tree so infected, so covered in aphids and ants farming them that I had to whack it right back (it was a Heptacodium miconoides). Derek Welsh the arbourist says it will probably come back all right. My soil is good. So take courage with your own plants. It might not be the end of them.

In the background you can see a tricoloured beech. This year it’s glorious beyond belief. Makes me want to change one of the Japanese maples in the foreground.  Gulp.

Over the next few weeks I’ll get out a summer newsletter.

And I thank  those who’ve asked about my husband Jack Batten. In the past week he’s starting improving. The man I love has returned and feels so much better. It’s been a hellish couple of months but I feel as if life is going to return to something close to normal.  Yeaaaaaa

Sign up for the free newsletter:  marjorieharris@rogers.com I’ll welcome you joining us. I apologize for not answering you really terrific comments. I am expecting any day that all this media stuff will actually become very clear to me and I’ll know what to do instinctively.

Agapanthus ‘Black Buddha’
Alternanthera ‘Purple Knight’
Angelonia ‘Angelface White’
Canna ‘Durban’ (African Sunset)
Coleus ‘Purple Duckfoot’
Dahlia ‘Bishop of Llandaff’
Dichondra ‘Silver Falls’
Ipomoea ‘Midnight Lace’
Ipomeoea ‘Sweet Caroline Bewitched’
Plectranthus ‘Mona Lavender’
Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blue’

I’ve done a bunch of videos for the Globe and Mail and the column starts on May 28th. Monique Dobson took this picture of  us working away.  I must say we had fun and they should be on the Globe’s web site this week.

Here’s a really piece that was in the Edmonton Journal:  

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/life/Lessons+from+Marjorie+Harris+garden/4801463/story.html

The garden is popping incredibly and every day seems to bring new ephemerals into view.  But here’s a scene I like very much:

It’s hard to believe this was mud city a few weeks ago. The scilla blanket the whole garden now and what a pleasure they are:  they look great for a while in spring just when we need them,  spread around and then disappear in summer making way for all the other plants around them.

The Cornus mas behind the viburnum is just coming into glory. I like this composition  because there’s an old Chinese vase, broken long ago, which humps up like a small whale in a sea of green. And the compost is sitting back there needing a good turn. I’ll keep shooting from this exact spot for the rest of the year.

If you want a copy of the piece that was in the Life section of the Globe and Mail this week, let me know and I’ll send it onwards.

That’s a Viburnum bodnentensis which I swear did not look like that a few days ago.  It’s  going crazy.  And a  Cornus mas behind it is starting to look golden. And i n the outside world the sun shines. The bubble of being in the hospital is broken once I see the garden. It never disappointed. Mud has turned into a carpet of green and blue and white:  scilla, chionodoxa, snouts of everything pushing up.

But last night temps dipped down to -2C so we’re are not in a safe zone yet.

I will be talking to the Edmonton Hort on Easter Monday:  LET’S STOP MAKING UGLY GARDENS.  Really looking forward to this.  Monday 25th at 7 p.m.

Then the adorable friends from BC start the annual announcements about what they’ve got in bloom NOW. I love my friends and it makes me long for something to show up in this garden. Until this great dump of snow, I could see snouts coming up from the ground. The wonderful Hamamelis ‘Diane’ is looking gorgeous bedecked in bright orange-red flowers.  I love the the denseness of the coral bark of the Acer palmatum ‘Sangu-kaku’ (on the left side of this picture).

I wasn’t unhappy with this sight until I got a very nice e-mail from Jeff de Jong. He has a radio show in Victoria (will be on it April 2) and my burning desire for  Spring came leaping to the forefront.

Here’s Crocus with Cyclamen coum taken in his garden this week. I could weep. This is a dazzling combination.  The undertones of  violet in both plants works absolutely perfectly.  It’s hard to grow crocus in our neighbourhood alas.  Squirrels paw them up almost inevitably. I have two small patches I watch like a hawk (where is that hawk when you need him?) and putting the Cyclamen with them is great.

Cyclamen are tuberous plants and should grow in this area but I’ve never planted them and this will encourage me to do so.  And now for spring….

We gardeners live in hope—always.

Barry says:  ”My favourite plant combo is Cotinus ‘Royal Purple’ and Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’. First thing in the morning when there is still dew on the leaves they are spectacular!”

Couldn’t agree with him more. The foliage on these two plants are both so well-defined they make a gorgeous contrast. It works really well.

Cotinus, smoke bush, now has many sizes in varying cultivars but ‘Royal Purple’ is still one of the strongest and best available.  In cold areas it will die back in winter. But here in Z6 we can expect it to winter through most years. It doesn’t cause much trouble and the leaves are such a rich texture.

Baptisias in any form is not the easiest plant to grow. They take forever to have their lovely blooms, followed by dramatic beans.  It’s easy to get discouraged about it but it’s drought tolerant with smokey blue foliage and then amazing purple-blue spikes of bloom are staggering.  This is a combo I’m doing to be keen to try if I can shoehorn a cotinus into the space near the baptisia.

Thanks so much Barry.   If anyone else has a great combo I’d love to see it.

The catalogues are coming in and speaking of worth the wait. Dugald Cameron’s Gardenimport is so delicious, it’s definite bathtub reading. Really great new stuff. A friend calls it garden porn, but I think of it as a reflection of Dugald’s ebullient personality. It’s such a good catalogue I keep it on hand for reference all the time.

Harvey Wrightman is another absolutely first class plantsman and though you have to get his catalogue   www.wrightmanalpines.com as an excellent reference to rare and unusual plants, you have to go to his site and look at the videos. Most garden videos are unbelievably boring, not Harvey’s. The one with the little kid making a rock garden is funny, charming and one I go back to regularly just to be cheered up.

Hallelujah Lost Horizons catalogue is with us as well.  It is one of the most complete and interesting catalogues in the country. Larry Davidson is very careful with his plants and he’s also a grower in a tough area  (windy not a lot of snow cover) so it’s plants are tough and very well grown. I can tell I’m in trouble already, stickies abound. He doesn’t ship any more but you wouldn’t want to miss the nursery anyway.   www.losthorizons.ca It takes about 4 minutes to print out the catalogue. Worth the money and the paper.

Fraser’s Thimble Farm has nary a picture and it is definitely a must-have. Tons of unusual plants and they will ship the little stuff. www.thimblefarms.com.

More to come. It’s the only way to ward off February blues.

Barry

I asked one of my favourite gardeners, Monique Dobson, if she would come up with her favourite combo and this is what she sent me:

This is Gentian scabra ‘True Blue’ with Hakonochloa macra ‘All Gold’  and a dazzling combination it is

The hak is Japanese hedge grass and it has practically no down time at all. In spring all it needs is to be whacked back to the ground the minute there’s new growth and it will be popping out looking absolutely great.  You have to wait until late summer  for the gentian to look this good and for this moment.  They are glorious plants and that blue is so intense it carries for a huge distance. But what’s so smart about this combination is that the gold background makes it pop even more than usual.

This is an Asian gentian and hardy to Z5 but it needs sun though not hot full sun and must have really well drained soil. What a great genus because there’s a gentian from almost every part of the globe and it’s a fantastic plant to collect.

I’ve tried G. septemfida but  ignored the well-drained part and it drowned in the spring flood.  Next time I’d put it in a raised bed with lots of organic matter in the soil.

I got an e-mail from Darrell Probst the developer of this cultivar (cultivated variety). He says:

“It is a hybrid of several species including Gentiana makinoi and so it is tolerant of a variety of situations. It will take full sun in all of Canada as well as most of the US. It is actually hardy to at least zone 3 and should be fine in most garden soils although it might turn chlorotic in especially alkaline soil.”

If you have a combination that’s as stunning as this one, send it to me and let me comment on it.  I’ll throw in some of my own as well. It’s going to be a long winter.

To add to garden enjoyment mark July 14th to go to the Toronto Botanical Gardens to hear Cameron McMaster give a talk. He is a leading expert on geophytes, he’s from South Africa and he regarded as a great speaker.  That’s at 7 p.m.  July 14th, TBG (go to their web site  www.torontobotanicalgarden.com for more information).

I’m coming back to blogging because the worst of the crazy planting season is over.  My little crew and I have handled 30 gardens in very short order (or so it feels there are days when falling over seems the only alternative) and we’ve put in some gorgeous gardens.   I’ll talk about what I’ve learned from them over the next few weeks. And will get on with a newsletter.