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.

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.

Go to   <http://mgabc.org>

Or call  Hope Hilliard  at 250-589-4952.

An entertaining, educational event, hosted by Victoria Master Gardener Association, featuring one of Canada’s leading Garden authors, speakers and garden designers.   Open to the Public.

• TOPIC:  LET’S STOP MAKING UGLY GARDENS
• DATE: Wednesday, September 7,  2011
• TIME:  7:00-8:30 pm
• LOCATION:  Alix Goolden Performance Hall, Conservatory of Music.  907 Pandora Ave, Victoria
• COST:  $15.00

Please come and say hello.  I LOVE going to Victoria. I intend to drown myself in looking at gardens and talking to gardeners.

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.

I suggested using them as houseplants for the nonce and then plant them out in the garden in May when the soil warms up.

This one is just opening up in my garden.

More later today.