Here in the South, we .i,e to joke that we have twelve or more seasons, which include “first winter”, “false spring”, “second winter”, etc. We are now in the throes of “second winter”, as proven by this morning’s snowfall. It was so pretty as it came down! And now my garden is blanketed in white.
Snowy day
I haven’t had to go to the lengths I did last January, when the temps dropped so low, without the insulation of snow, that I wrapped many shrubs in frost covers: Christo Garden. I covered just a few new or small ones, though I did put bubble wrap around most of my pots, reusing what I kept from last year.
Our elderly dog Lucy is completely unimpressed by the snow, and barely went outside early this morning before it really came down. She prefers her warm bed, the sensible girl!
I’m just glad I got the last bags of bulbs into the ground last weekend! I have a few more to put in pots, but they’re fine getting chilled in my garden shed for now.
I can’t believe how long it has been since I posted here, except I can believe it, because I’ve been doing a LOT of gardening instead of writing about gardening. Specifically, in May our next door neighbors approached us to say that their brick wall between our properties was in danger of collapse, and that they could either demolish and rebuild it entirely, or, with our permission, build up the support pillars with buttresses on our side (at their expense). Because the wall runs all along the side of our lot, quite close to our house, and demolition would have been extremely disruptive and destructive, we went with the buttresses.
The good news is that their contractor did an excellent job, the pillar supports look really nice, and he rebuilt or built new raised beds all along our side of the wall, after clearing out all the weedy vines that had grown up over the years. So I’ve spent much of the summer redoing that side of the garden with new hydrangeas and perennials, as well as transplanting others from other parts of the garden. The contractor also cleaned up the pathway on that side and reset the edging bricks and flagstone pavers that were disturbed during the work. So it looks very nice, and I’m excited to see how the new plantings look next spring once they’ve really settled in! Just in time, too, because in March I will be hosting a monthly meeting of a women’s club I’ve joined (retirement is great!), and I want the garden to look its best.
I’ve also continued on my rose “kick”, and their fall flush has been excellent. I’ve even added to my collection, so I’ll be busy repotting several, moving others, and generally getting them ready for colder weather. Not that we’ve seen any of that yet! It is still reaching the 70s during the day, though the nights have been cool.
I’m awaiting a shipment of fall bulbs, mostly daffodils, and this year I plan to take more proactive measures to protect them from the chipmunks that have colonized our back yard. I actually like them, and they don’t do much harm, but they do gobble up bulbs. Supposedly they don’t like daffodils, but I’ve lost too many over the years to fully endorse that theory. So I’ll place plastic netting over my bulb plantings in addition to the usual repellent granules and cross my fingers.
Have you undertaken any garden renovation this year?
Retired perfumer Robert Calkin is the man who developed a scent classification system for the great English rose breeder David Austin.
— Read on storytellergarden.co.uk/how-to-smell-roses/
Roses, David Austin, perfume … this article was written for me!
Our newly Zone 8a (we used to be 7b) garden is shivering with unusually cold weather: temperatures in the low teens at night, sometimes not rising above freezing even on sunny days. Because I have a number of newly planted shrubs and some cherished David Austin roses in big pots, and because we suffered plant loss and damage in last winter’s hard freeze, I decided to take more active measures to protect my plants, even though I had already sprayed many of them with Wilt Stop (which I hadn’t done last year).
First, I added a few more inches of mulch to flowerbeds and mixed borders. Then I wrapped large pots with 1/2 inch thick bubble wrap. Next, I covered one row of big pots with newly ordered, heavier frost cloth, secured with clothes pins. Then I placed another length of the same heavier frost cloth over the berm where I lost several lavender plants last year, supported by plant hoops. I put the lighter frost cloth I already had around the tea olive that was hard hit last year but has been growing back nicely, and the Debutante camellia that lives in a pot next to it.
I ordered several frost cloth bags with drawstrings, and those went over the roses I had planted this fall, some in the ground and some in pots. A couple of extra bags went over the still small native azaleas I planted two years ago. A large green frost “planket” was tied down over a cluster of pots with herbs like lavender and sage, and another over a prized Japanese maple. When I shared photos of my work with friends, one of them commented that it looked like a Christo garden, referring to the artist who was famous for his outdoor art installations that involved wrapping of landscape elements.
I hope you and your gardens are well-insulated against the cold!
Yes, my roses are still blooming, having taken a pause during the hottest weeks of August and September and now producing a cool-weather flush of fall blossoms. This never ceases to surprise me, as I grew up in New England where one just doesn’t get outdoor roses blooming in late November. I went out yesterday to gather a few blooms before we got a lot of rain and wind, and I’m really enjoying them, few as they are. I always plant roses with a lot of fragrance; these are all David Austin roses, which are bred for scent among other characteristics.
A few English Roses
Among many other blessings, I’m thankful for my garden and the ability to keep adding to it. Would now be the time to mention that I’ve ordered several more roses?
Hello again! It has been too long since I posted here, so this will be longer than usual; my other blog, “Serenity Now: Scents and Sensibilities” has been taking up a lot of time as I’m doing two monthly blogging projects with a blogger friend. And in between, I’ve actually been doing the gardening! I will retire at the end of this month and have been using up vacation days that won’t get paid out, so the garden has gotten much more focused attention lately. I think I’ve finally tamed the vegetable garden; I planted a lot less this spring and have been more regular in pinching off tomato shoots and redirecting wayward morning glory tendrils. My eggplants and herbs have been a major success!
Eggplants Rosa Bianca and Listada de Gandia for the grill; parsley for chimichurri sauce
I’m especially proud of how well my David Austin roses have been doing in their large pots on our sunny front terrace. My working from home two days a week since 2021 has really served them well — I’ve been more diligent about everything from watering to feeding to spraying, and I’ve been rewarded with multiple flushes of bloom, especially from Lady of Shalott and Winchester Cathedral. Gotta admit, my attraction to the latter is based more on the pop song of that name than the actual cathedral, which I’ve never seen. I remember the song from my childhood, when my English mother played pop radio while raising three children, while her younger sister cavorted through Swinging Sixties London as a model and actress. Yes, she sent us Beatles albums before they were released in the US, which made me a lifelong fan. The first song I remember singing by myself was “She Loves You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)“.
Winchester Cathedral, by The New Vaudeville Band; film from The Ed Sullivan Show.
My poor neglected Teasing Georgia has not bloomed well this year, and she’s usually a trouper even in our hot, humid climate, so I’m trying to do better by her with more regular feeds, including with micronutrients. I need to climb up a ladder to prune out dead wood, and I think I must get my husband to prune away another branch from a nearby dogwood that now shades part of the rose arbor.
Speaking of doing better by my roses, I’ve been looking into planting one or more into bottomless planters. I have a beautiful Generous Gardener rose in a large pot that I placed in a border. Lo and behold, GG has sent its roots right down through the drainage hole, which means the poor rose now gets waterlogged on a regular basis with all the rain we’ve had this year. That will finish it, so I need a better arrangement, but I did that in the first place because the soil where I wanted to plant her wasn’t great, and it was full of competing shallow roots from azaleas.
Here’s a great video about bottomless planters by Bunny Guinness, a noted horticulturist and landscape architect, garden columnist, BBC radio panelist, and multiple gold medal winner at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. She also happens to be the niece of the late David Austin, hybridizer of the marvelous English Roses, who named a rose after her.
Bunny Guinness on bottomless planters
Okay, I am seriously not prepared or qualified to saw out the bottom of terracotta pots! BUT I think I’ve found a solution. I was considering using grow bags and cutting out the bottoms (because, of course, on top of the long-suffering Generous Gardener et al., I have pre-ordered four more DA roses for delivery next January), but this seems to be a much better option.
Have you ever used a bottomless planter? For roses? All comments and advice are welcome!
Opening on May 30, 2023, at the Palace of Versailles, will be a new “Perfumer’s Garden”, sponsored by the high-end perfume house Maison Francis Kurkdjian. One of my favorite fragrance blogs, “Now Smell This”, shared this video:
Le Jardin du Parfumeur, Palace of Versailles.
I can’t wait to go see it! Maybe next summer, when we are planning a family trip to France.
Well, my winter vegetable garden looked great this fall and winter — until we got temps at or below 10 degrees Fahrenheit for two nights in a row, a few weeks ago!
How it started …How it’s going.
Almost everything collapsed in a heap of frozen mush. So last weekend, I cleared out the debris, leaving a few hopeful stems that were still green in case they might sprout leaves again. Even my parsley died! The Bull’s Blood beets seem to have survived; the pansies will come back; a couple of kale plants are trying to regenerate. That’s all, folks! Sigh. Even the Swiss chard gave up the ghost.
Interestingly, some of the lavender in another part of the garden has survived very well (“Phenomenal”). The “Black Scallop” ajuga around it looks discouraged but not defeated. I will probably plant more cool weather vegetables in a while, but not until February at the earliest. Any suggestions? I’m in Zone 7, in Atlanta, Georgia.
I’m quite pleased with how well my winter vegetable garden is doing. I love planting all the colorful winter leafy greens, like rainbow chard, red romaine, purple mustard, “Bull’s Blood” beets, different kinds of kale. I’m even growing cauliflower whose heads will be orange or purple! I have a few pea vines, mostly for their looks although they are thriving. I learned a year ago that it takes a LOT of pea plants to get enough shelled peas for one meal! I also enjoy planting pansies among the vegetables and herbs, as they will bloom all winter in this climate. Finally, there are many fewer weeds in the winter, at a level I can manage to keep under control.
Old Herbaceous 