Marjorie Harris' Blog » Summer

the garden in july

Marjorie — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:59:50 +0000

The perennials are bursting out all over the garden. This is a garden which depends on foliage for most of its colour so it’s startling to see Phlox ‘David’ shining in the background, the few roses I have being outrageous and all the hydrangeas I was given last year to trial are now coming into delicious pinks, pure whites in amazing variety. This is a sight that absolutely delights: it’s Clematis ‘Betty Corning’ ramping her way through the lilac tree which, out of bloom, is dead boring. This goes on and on for weeks thus the delight. It’s a great way of giving a dullish plant extended interest and the clem certainly likes it. Another one whaps around an Acer palmatum ‘Sangu-Kaku’ which may not be the best thing for it, but I’m enjoying it anyway.

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.

Insecticides

Marjorie — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:15:10 +0000

Jean Cumming wrote me this wonderful e-mail:
What is Paris green? Bordeaux mixture? I presume arsenate of lead is an evil poison that cannot and should not be sold or purchased? I found Canadian gardening textbooks at a garage sale, one really, two editions, 1938 and 1951, by A.B. Cutting (I swear). Such fun. Very rigorous “year round” gardening regimen, including chemicals that I suppose people had kicking about. Puts me in mind of my southern Ont Gothic aunt, an asthmatic who burned and inhaled a saucer-full of herbs when it got bad. A post-modern Toronto friend of mind went to the herbalist on the Danforth with the recipe my then octogenarian uncle remembered by heart. The herbalist was shocked at my friend’s requesr: no, I can’t give you the ingredients for LSD.
I wrote back:
I feel about laughing at this Jean. Great story. I don’t know Paris Green so I looked it up in an old garden book and they have a long entry without actually telling you there’s arsenic in there somewhere. Dear God no wonder all our older relatives had weird things going on in their bodies. “Paris green is not being as widely used for spraying as formerly because of its tendency to burn tender foliage and flowers.”
Wikepedia says: copper(II) acetoarsenite

There is actually someone out there who doesn’t know what the lily beetle is. Lucky person. It’s a bright red beetle which spends all its time making love to other lily beetles or chewing up plants. If I can get a picture I will.

But here a great suggestions from Diane Smith. Everyone else who called or wrote said squishing was the only thing that worked. Well if nothing else this is one to record:

Hi Marjorie – the lily beetle has been in NS for some time now…in desperation I ripped out all my Asiatics years ago. Folks around here have tried everything (including Neem oil) with little or no success. At a gardening lecture I did a month ago a woman shared with me her secret to eradicating the red pest: Windex. Yup – sprays it liberally with no apparent harm to the plant. Maybe it’s the kind with ammonia. I’m not one for chemical warfare but thought I’d share this anyway. Love your blog!

Designing a new garden

aptps — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:58:18 +0000

This week is going to be really exciting because today we start on a new garden. I always find this exhilarating. New trees, new shrubs but first of all taking out all the junk that was there before us and then going massive soil rejuvenation.Derek Welsh and his lads have already been in to do a masterly job of pruning two giant Magnolia grandiflora which had been brutalized by a gang of machine wielding thugs. The client e-mailed at the crack of dawn saying ?My family is in mourning.? We had also removed a dying apple tree as well as loads of other crap. It did look a little bald.By the time Derek and I got there to inspect, she said ?We are so happy. We have light.? So once again it?s proven if you get a good pruner to clean out the mess, you are then, and only then, going to be able to tell what you have to deal with.That?s when I can really start planning what to do with the rest of the garden. I can do a little drawing, but I?m not a landscaper, or a landscape designer, though I am an honorary Landscape Architect (strictly an honour, I?ve not been to school for 7 years but I have actually gardened for almost 40). I am a plant consultant with a lot of opinions on how you can fix your garden and turn it into paradise. I also work with people who are absolutely the best (everybody falls in love with them).Most of the time what we do changes people?s lives. So far the whole experience of re-working people?s gardens has been thrilling. Only one person has stiffed me on a cheque. A university professor with lots of money (medical, dental, pension plan as well), who said I took too long to give him a design and install it. Everyone else has been wonderful and some clients have become friends for life.Today the guys move in to take out masses of cement and junk that have been a blot on what will be a gorgeous garden. I will probably shift what we?re going to do just a little bit more because space changes so radically once it?s tabula rasa. I can?t just work from a little piece of paper. I see gardens in three dimensions and like to spend a lot of time walking through them, imagining what it will be like in three years.

****

If you got the new e-letter addressed to Tara Baxendale that?s because we needed a way of sending them all out and knowing they would get there, but several came back. I dunno maybe there?s a better way of doing this and we?ll figure it out for the next one in another month.If you want to get the e-letter (it really isn?t a newsletter because it?s full of instructions on what bulbs to buy and what to do with them), just sign up. If haven?t received by now it let me know, and I?ll send it out again.

Tom Vogel?s Pix and the new E-letter

aptps — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:15:10 +0000

I love looking at my garden. I?ve gotten to the stage where I actually sit in the garden and appreciate it. Feels like I?ve spent decades like a whirling dervish out there, not stopping long enough to memorize what it was like.I don?t remember what it was like ten years ago any more. I had the checkerboard, yes. Things weren?t as tall of course and there were may more perennials. Now I stand in the middle of my garden and can feel layer upon complex layer of plants all around me. ?Most of it created by using foliage instead of blooms.At the end of the week, we pulled out a huge old boxwood and a viburnum seedling which had gotten out of hand. Huge task which Kathy and her nephew Henry managed to accomplish in between whacking great tropical downpours. Now for some creative staring to figure out what?s next.?If you go to My Garden (up there at the top), you?ll see Tom Vogel?s brilliant and latest installment in photographing the garden with a new kind of perspective. You can click on the flower in the middle and it goes from winter to spring to summer and you can see all around the garden.?I do it on a regular basis because it completely fascinates me. I sort of like technology.Speaking of which: the new e-letter will go out on Wednesday. If you haven?t signed up and want it, do let me know. Tara will come in and actually do this because my eyes just glaze over at sending out hundreds of these things. When I try it doesn?t work. Just like getting photographs on to the web site. So far I?ve been a complete dunce at this. But I live hopefully.So look at My Garden, sign up for the e-letter and hope that it doesn?t rain again today.

Watching birds

aptps — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:00:15 +0000

After yet another mountain of deadlines completed, I realize I?m a serial worker. I can?t blog and do all this other stuff at the same time. But now it?s getting back into the garden to be more than just an observer. The other day I was musing about this at the dining room table and watching a couple of teenage robins having a merry old time sunbathing, showering and fooling around on the sculpture fountain.I don?t think Reinhard Rietzenstein who created this marvelous work of art had any idea of what a multipurpose piece it is: The sounds masks much of the noise of the city; it?s a magnet for insects; and the bird population has been enormous.Earlier this year I saw a Scarlet tanager. At least that?s what it looks like in my bird book (I know nothing about birds). And the usual suspects who live here all the time (cardinals, robins, blue jays) zoom in and out. But it?s the robins that seem to enjoy it most of all.They sit on top of the bubbler and go crazy. Are they having some sort of sublime sensual experience? These two guys the other days were facing off each other, beak to beak, looking like they were taunting each other and having fun doing it.I?m not sure if you?re supposed to be anthropomorphic with birds or not. But there is something gangly and very male about the two birds who make this their spa/playground.Jostling for position, flapping back and forth, making a lot of wonderful racket.I have new and even greater respect for wild life photographers. I?ve worked with some of the best including Tony Beck (look at his web site www.tonybeck.ca??and you?ll see what I mean). The patience, the endurance waiting for that defining moment. I spent a good many hours and got a couple of rather crummy shots. I?ve always been afraid of birds (sea gull attack as a child) but I?m getting more and more fascinated as I spend time sitting very still in the dining room with the huge screen down and windows wide open. Being still has never been easy for me, but I can do it when I?m watching plants and birds do what they are supposed to be doing. Getting this close to nature makes everything else worthwhile.I was on Fresh Air this a.m. with the wonderful Karen Gordon who managed to smoosh dozens of questions sent in by listeners into really good questions. The two annuals I mentioned are: Plectranthus ?Mona Lavender? and Euphorbia ?White Diamonds?. Both are superb if you can find them this time of the year. If not put them on your list for next year.

Pruning Trees

aptps — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:10:40 +0000

I?m back. I am a serial worker it seems. I?ve spent weeks trying to finish the new edition of a 1991 book ECOLOGICAL GARDENING. To the astonishment of my publisher Anne Collins of Random House, I got it in at exactly the hour I said I would (also a couple of days early as well). I was pretty astonished myself but everything else dropped to one side in the push to complete it.There so much that?s happened and not all of it good over the years. Disappointing and terrifying is more like it. But the book was amazingly prescient about climate change and the need to shift our gardening techniques. Anyway, it will be out early in the new year.I did manage to get out to client?s gardens with arbourist Derek Welsh. He also had to spend time in my garden. I stupidly placed a Cornus controversa ?Variegata? in absolutely the wrong place. So Derek is going to spend the rest of my life in this garden keeping it in a lollypop shape because it?s too big to move.This is called do what I write, not what I actually do. What a dope. I didn?t read the plant tag properly, I ignored the research. I put something little in where I thought it would look perfect. It did too, until it started to grow into the monster it would end up being. So it?s being shaped into something it?s not.I like the look of it now, however, as it peaks through a dense part of the garden like a delicious secret. In situ it is absolutely stunning. That Derek. He can make anything crappy look good again. This has been a summer of such growth that weeds spring up over night. Toronto has had the most rain it its 70+ year history of keeping track.This place was looking shaggy and a little unkempt. A morning of Derek hovering his way through here changed all that: a large limb is now gone out of the witch hazel, massive chunks out of an ailing Viburnum ?Shasta?, taking half of a Cornus mas ?Variegata? off, moving a Cotoneaster dielsianus var. ?Major? to a better aspect. It was flopping into my neighbour?s garden so he just turned it so it tumbles forward here—brilliant—I thought I was going to have to move it.But what we found in a client?s garden was truly upsetting. A magnificent old magnolia was attacked (le mot juste ) by a famous Toronto company and I?ve never seen such a mess. Crossing branches were left and now a year and a half later dig into each other so badly a large limb has to be removed. The ends were tipped. The shape destroyed. As I say, Derek is a wizard. He will clean out these trees, find a lovely form and make them look good.Be very careful when you hire someone. Get a certified arbourist. If you are having a big job done, make sure you look what they?ve done in someone else?s garden. And don?t waste their time. These guys cannot do anything with your city trees so don?t ask.If they touch a city tree, both owner and arbourist will be fined heavily. You have to get your city councilLor to help if your town?s tree department won?t respond. An arbourist can do anything you need done (as well as move vines going into window areas and eaves) safely. But get someone with the eye of an artist. This stuff is expensive.When I?m doing a garden, the first thing I recommend is a good cleaning out. It?s one of the best investments you can make?bar none. Then it?s possible to see what you?ve actually got to deal with. It clears the mind as well as the garden. And it does piss me off when people balk at the prices. This is dangerous work, and it lasts for years. The aesthetics should be incomparable.I am now going off to spend rainy days playing UPWORDS and SCRABBLE with my grandchildren and will be back here on Sunday or Monday.

Happy Canada Day

aptps — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:15:25 +0000

Wow what a magnificent Canada Day it is: warm,? sunny, not humid and the garden is looking magnificent.? I have a tour coming this afternoon:? it?s for a charity. They use my garden as a silent auction item and today I am expecting what sounds like a lovely couple who care about gardening. I always say:? ?If you want wine and nibblies, bring them.? And it usually turns into a treat.

Even though there are still plants to be put in the garden, here goes with what?s blooming today. Haven’t seen much of the garden this week because ?I?ve had a cold that has felled me completely. ?I spent more time in bed than out hacking away.? Sort of feel better now. Sort of.

?Clematis ?Betty Corning? is covered with the pale blue turned-up bells in several spots.? I planted way too much but who cares. The sight and scent ?are enchanting in any position. C. fargesioides isn?t far behind in the madly blooming slot but it?s not a well-behaved plant. Again, that?s fine in some places but it really needs whacking back in others and that has to be done this week.

The plant that?s astounding is an annual here:? Tibouchina urvilleana which has soft velvety silver-green leaves with brilliant blue flowers.? It is a showstopper in a container. The encyclopaedia says it will get to 10 feet tall in its native Brazil but methinks not so here. ?It’s planted with almost black calla lilies, deep purple-black Asiatics and a couple of the black grasses, Ophiopogon planescens.?

?Euphorbia ?White Diamond? has had the best press I?ve seen for any plant since Sambucus ?Black Lace? hit the market a few years ago.? The euphorbia lives up to its billing as one of the best of all the new annuals:??starry pure?white flowers that bloom all summer long. They seem to do just fine in the shade and look wonderful with my all-time favourite Plectranthus ?Mona Lavender? and one of the new ipomeas. ?And S. ‘Black Lace’ continues to be a really good plant in almost any light.??

We have a street potluck tonight and it?s terrific competitive cooking, lovely wine from the local ecological group GrassRoots Albany and a chance to yak it up with the wonderful people who live on our street.? We are really really lucky.??