Late winter garden shows are an interesting experience, particularly when you’re the one building the garden. We begin with an empty concrete floor Monday afternoon, and by Wednesday a garden appears that looks as if it’s been there for years. The photos below show the progression building Meadows Farms’ garden at the Capital Home and Garden Show in Chantilly,…
Month: February 2010
Only a few weeks away
Finally, I took a walk through the garden today, but it might be awhile until I try again. I’ve seen some grass through the melting snow on sunny properties, but mine is shaded from the afternoon winter sun, and the snow remains knee deep. I was exhausted from the effort of walking twenty steps. I…
Planning a garden pond
Every garden should have a pond! I have five, six if the wet weather, dirt bottom pond is included, and nothing in the garden, not the hellebores or irises, the mahonias or Japanese maples, provides greater enjoyment. Of course I started with one (as you most likely will), then on a whim added a second pond…
Today and tomorrow
Today there seems a need for a dose of optimism. One snow after the other has left a deep snowy blanket covering the garden, and spring seems so far away. In fact, the gardener’s spring is less than three weeks ahead. Gardener’s spring, of course, refers not to the seasons as determined by the path…
That’s the breaks
My short driveway is an asphalt valley between two tall snowcapped peaks. Beneath the thick snowy blanket are roses, nandinas, liriope, hollies, camellias, a fernspray cypress that is growing too wide for its proximity to the drive, and an old weeping theadleaf Japanese maple that encroaches on the drive by several feet. No doubt there are problems under…
… and again
In the early hours of this February snow six deer passed single file through the forest edge behind our home while my wife and I lunched on chicken soup and sandwiches, gazing out the kitchen window at the rapidly accumulating snowflakes. The last in this leisurely procession walked with a prominent limp, a result, I…
Here we go again
The snow is piling up …. again! And so, what else to do but relax with a good book, perhaps even a gardening book, or work on the spring seed order, or compile the list of perennials that can’t possibly be lived without. Today I have completed reading The Explorer’s Garden: Shrubs and Vines from…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 