On CBC’s Fresh Air this morning, I mentioned the newsletter.  If you get in touch with me I’ll put you on the list and send a link to the old one and I guarantee I’ll have a new one this week.

I also mentioned a shrub called Lespedeza which I think if a wonderful autumn blooming shrub. I’ll try and take a decent picture of it and put it up here.

There will also be a new batch of videos on the Globe and Mail web site  called Gardening 101.  I’ll also be better at putting things up her from now on. I cannot be working harder than I am right now. It’s crazy.

But here is one:  my garden this week.  

The summer has winged by. Last week in The Globe Plant of the Week was Clematis ‘Meine Belle’  a gorgeous vine which I longed for myself. Well forget about it. Gardenimport was so swamped with orders that they are out of it already and will be even when the next catalogue comes out. It touched a nerve that plant.

We all want lovely little clematis, different species. But what are we getting:  the great big cultivars that the growers have decided are all we can get. It’s been appalling. So only a few outlets have interesting clems. Gardenimport has others so give them a try as well, as does Lost Horizons.  And put some pressure on your local favourite nursery to search out more clematis for you next year. If they know they can make money on these plants, they will stock them. So they will put pressure on the growers to try the better ones.

Clematis ‘Betty Corning’ is going bananas in my garden in two spots. Nothing holds back this beauteous lady. But you can’t buy it anywhere anymore.  

The Globe and Mail has more videos up of me furbling on. It was a lot of fun doing them so I hope you enjoy watching them .

Gardening Basics

A new free newsletter is being worked on so if you’d like to sign up, I’d like to send it to you.

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.

He was either looking at the little squirrel bashing about next door, or had his eye on anything fallen from the feeder which had been filled that day. When he took off it was breathtaking. How can they do that?

It was cheery this week to make my way to Canada Blooms and actually see and smell plants in bloom. They have an amazing track record of forcing plants and it made slogging around on the those cement floors worthwhile. I like the show very much and there’s lots to see without it feeling smooshed together.

My highlight was talking to Ben Heppner the great Heldentenor. He was standing in his garden named Parisifal (designed by Judith Wright). He was ever so patient being interviewed and I couldn’t resist speaking to him.

Parsifal is the opera that changed my life. Turned me into an opera nut. I also has actually met Mr. Heppner years ago. It was up at the Red Barn on Jackson’s Point when Peter Gzowski used to have fabulous fundraisers for his literacy campaign.  I was doing a small gig on gardening;  and Ben Heppner was the surprise star of the evening. So I like to think I once sang with Ben Heppner (he at the mic me at the back of the stage belting out Oh Canada!).

So we chatted on amiably.  I am his slave forever he is so kind and patient. I didn’t ask if he was a gardener which was fairly stupid.

All  of this  took my mind off the flood that’s begun and will continue until the ground can absorb the snow melt and the water coming in from all around (and rising from Taddle Creek our underground stream). There are snow drops up everywhere. And it really is beginning to feel like spring might make an appearance soon.

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

But this is a dangerous situation for trees and shrubs laden with snow as the sun hits them and  makes them incredibly heavy. Brittle or frozen branches run the risk of snapping. This can cause an enormous amount of damage. I hate to much this up  because the garden just makes my heart fill up when it this serene. Very hard not to spend a lot of time gazing at it and ignoring the situation as it actually is. So out I went and trammelled up the untrammelled.

Things here are a bit nasty. My adored husband, Jack, has to have heart surgery and I haven’t felt like blogging or doing anything but spend time thinking about him (and being with him).

We don’t know when the tests will begin and we don’t know when the surgery will take place, so it’s a waiting game at the moment.  It’s hard to feel like going out and being social.

So once again the garden is a solace. This fact has kept me going through a lot of crises.  Something smashes you in the face, you spend time in or looking at the garden and you can feel the beat of your heart change. You can feel the calm entering your body.  The garden does heal but of course you have to let it do its work. I can’t imagine being without a garden whether it’s what I see behind my house or having plants in pots to gaze at.

Speaking of plants to look at. The Amaryllis from Gardenimport are all coming into bloom and they are gorgeous. This is truly  looking into the face of nature. All those complex little details and the subtle striations of colour. I’d love to post a picture, but my brand new camera doesn’t work properly. So another schlep to the camera store.  I was banging away with it over Christmas and anything took was not properly in focus. Not good.