Another take on Chelsea: Thinkingardens

For a more iconoclastic take on the Chelsea Flower Show, I recommend you go to the Thinkingardens website. Stephen Anderton, Anne Wareham, and Corrine Julius (l to r) comment on their picks of the show, and offer insightful commentary on the gardens. Their "Best in Show" is not the judges' pick. You will also find a Thinkingardens link to a Royal Horticultural Society video of the three discussing the gardens, along with written commentary. Explore the RHS site for other information such as plant lists for many of the gardens. Just don't try to play any of the BBC videos; they don't work if you live outside the UK.

Germaine Greer also has an article on the 2007 Chelsea Flower Show posted on Thinkingardens. The Chelsea gardens are really exhibits, show gardens put together from plants grown for the most part, in highly artificial environments. They are in no respect real gardens, and Ms. Greer has had it with the artificiality of it all.

Thinkingardens is a website devoted to those who care about gardening and garden design as a serious endeavor - a concern rarely voiced in the U.S. and, from what I read there, not in the UK either.

(Photo: Charles Hawes from Thinkingardens website)

Delicate complexity of soil

Over 75% of the plants living on the earth benefit from symbiotic relationships with small, microscopic fungi attached to their roots. The fungi are referred to as micorrhiza (my-core-i-zuh). Though we usually can't see them - they are under ground and are very small - their beneficial effects on plants are real and substantial. One major benefit is an increase in delivery of phosphorus to the root system.

One of the less well attended presentations at last week's Native Plants in the Landscape conference at Millersville University in Pennsylvania was "Micorrhizal Fungi: Hidden Friends of Plants." Dr. Roger Tai Koide of Pennsylvania State University described recent research that clearly demonstrates the benefit of such relationships to most plants.

The fungi grow very small, even microscopic, filaments - called hyphae (hi-fee) - that extend from the roots of plants into surrounding soil. These filaments, in effect, function as extensions of a plant's roots, and can effectively expand the root's surface area thousands of times. The photo above shows the white hyphae extending our from a root.

Does a gardener need to know about micorrhiza? Probably not, if you measure value only in direct utilitarian terms. But there is an important lesson to be learned from this bit of knowledge: our environment is extraordinarily complex and we can easily disrupt it if we blunder forward in ignorance, without considering what we do not know. There is a delicately balanced, invisible ecosystem underground that demands respect, perhaps even reverence.

Actually, there is one practical application for this knowledge, and there are probably many more. The highly invasive plant, garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), damages micorrhiza. Why this is remains a mystery. In addition to its ability to completely overwhelm native plant communities and to form a virtual monoculture over the ground surface, at least in North America, it has insidious underground effects, damaging the symbiotic relationships that benefit many other plant species... yet another reason to support efforts to eradicate garlic mustard from our environment.

There is another mystery too. In its native European habitats, garlic mustard does not have this effect!

Native plants: gardening without guilt

This is the first year I've come away from the Native Plants in the Landscape conference without feeling I am a total outsider, possibly even a spy, in a nest of native purists. (Just got back from the conference, held June 5 through 7 at Millersville University in Pennsylvania.) The native plant rattle in the American gardening community can be so extreme I hadn't realized before there are many, like me, who occupy a middle ground, even among conference attendees.

C. Colston Burrell's opening presentation on the 20th Century Native Plant Movement in America was a refreshing, highly entertaining, and appropriately generalist take on this sometimes politically charged subject. Yes, native plants are important to maintaining local and regional ecosystems. No, we don't have to plant only natives so long as we are responsible and don't use species proven to be highly invasive and disruptive to the environment. Yes, aesthetics is a valid concern in gardening. After all, humans are part of the ecosystem too; we get to have a say. Yes, it's hard to define "native." But, no, the arrival of white Europeans on American shores isn't a good basis for a valid definition. Regional differences in plants, even plants of the same species, and local genetic provenance, are much more important.

This conference attracts numerous professional garden designers, experienced gardeners, and nursery men and women specializing in native plants, so the level of discourse tends to be quite high. I hope to report on one or two of the more specialized sessions I attended in another posting. I particularly enjoyed Don Knezick's "Genetic Integrity of Native Plants: Provenance is Forever" and Dr. Roger Tai Koide's "Mycorrhizal Fungi: Hidden Friends of Plants."

A highlight of this conference is the native plant sale, and it's one of the best. Nurseries from eastern Pennsylvania down into the Virginias offer perennials, shrubs and trees, many of which are rare in trade and difficult to find. I came back with four winterberry hollies (Ilex verticillata) - nothing rare in that selection but needed in my garden nevertheless, five Iris versicolor of sufficient size to divide into ten plants to join my late May/early June iris splash, two sizeable copper irises (Iris fulva) to go by the pond, two "Dolls eyes" baneberries (Actaea pachypoda) for the woodland garden, one Sagittaria latifolia to go into the pond, and ten Meehania cordata to try out as groundcover in the woodland. Okay, I confess, there's nothing particularly rare in my selections, but other offerings included Moosewood (Acer pennsylvanicum), various native gingers (formerly asarum, now hexastylis), all sorts of big leaf magnolias, Jeffersonia diphylla, and on and on.

If you live within driving distance of Millersville, consider the conference in 2009.

"English Gardens"

New Hope, Pennsylvania is just across the Delaware from my house ... in Bucks County (oft referred to as "Big Bucks" County). There is an annual garden tour, only one of which I've attended. There wasn't much to see. This year two "English gardens" are among those featured. I'm not sure what is meant by the term "English garden" in this context, but it may have something to do with an undefined yearning for something more than the typical American lawn with foundation plantings, or simply with pretension. I can imagine boxwoods and some elements of formality. If English gardens belong anywhere, they belong in England... and perhaps not even there.

Chelsea links

I don't usually follow the Chelsea Flower Show but this year I stumbled on Cleve West's blog reporting the day by day building of his show garden. To get a feel for what it's like to be a part of this manic event, go to Tilth & Tillage and read about how it all comes together. To see the best of the gardens, and get an amazing 360 degree tour of each one, click this Telegraph link. You'll also find an interview with Tom Stuart-Smith, who got Best in Show, I think for the 6th time. Regardless of how you feel about Chelsea, you'll find some beautiful gardens here.

Gardens Illustrated has a podcast interview with noted garden critic Tim Richardson, garden designer Dan Pearson, and Chelsea judge Andrew Wilson.

(The photo is of a frog in my pond.)

Cicada on Brunnera

Caught this cicada lolling on a brunnera leaf this morning. I'm certainly no cicada expert, but May 25 seems very early for cicadas.

Garden Diary: Rain, sun, the rising tide

After a week of cold and rain, the weather is shifting and we have a sunny windy day. The light comes in two ways - reflected, glinting off the flat surfaces of leaves, and filtered through the forest trees. This morning it's easy to see how medieval artisans "got" stained glass windows. (I tried to take a picture but my camera isn't up to recording qualities of morning light, thus these substitute photos.)


The last sparkles of the Brunnera are being over taken by feverfew above. The plants are swelling like a rising tide, much too fast, and many will flop if not restrained, cut back, or slowed by a dry spell. Time to get out the shears and prune the feverfew, cat mint and other smaller (should be) plants that will have time to thicken up and bloom later, in June.


The new Darmera peltata by the pond are liking the wet. I hope to transform this muddy edge with an herbal necklace before midsummer. By next year, I hope the pond will be a like a brown oculus reflecting the surrounding plants (think different heights and structures) and the sky. Well... perhaps oculus isn't the right word for my brown pond. We'll see.

Garden Diary: Speaking of Groundcovers

The experiment continues in the main garden - the wet prairie behind the house. Now that our cedar forest has become an open clearing, the light and air is changing the habitat that existed before. Though it makes for a rather messy look in spring and early summer, I'm leaving the established plant colonies such as bracken, sensitive fern, cinquefoil, violets, and equisetum to do their thing. In the newly opened spaces, ruderals (pioneer plants) have seeded in, and I'm leaving them too. I expect many of them to be here for several years until the more competitive species take over. With the passing years, and some judicious weeding to control such undesirable behavior as seeding into the crowns of established plants, I hope the natural process of plant succession and competition will result in the groundcover layer simplifying itself over time.

Here are some pictures of what's happening right now. First, a blanket of equisetum punctuated by a native Scirpus.


Though the equisetum is highly invasive, I like its soft, fuzzy effect seen from a distance, and its primitive character close up. I may as well; I couldn't get rid of it without some highly destructive intervention. And the Scirpus grows so large, and so profusely, it also behaves as a groundcover though on a much larger scale.

In wetter areas, sensitive fern, another "legacy" plant, slowly spreads. I guess it would be classified as a stress tolerator. It lives in very wet places where most other plants would languish. You can even see some pooled water here from a recent rain. Not an example of well drained soil!


Bracken and cinquefoil have covered this corner with two levels.


I know bracken has a reputation for being a real thug, but in my garden environment it is rather well behaved. And it's such an attractive structural plant I'd be happy to have more. In front of it is a carpet of cinquefoil in bloom. Not a beautiful plant, unless closely examined, but useful for covering large areas quickly.

Plants I want to suppress are multiflora rose and poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans). They have no desirable qualities, in my view, and seem able to compete with just about anything in the plant kingdom, so I'm driven to digging and using Roundup in my struggle with these invaders.

Most of the large prairie-type plants I've inserted into the groundcover matrix - Eupatorium purpureum, Filipendula rubra 'Venusta', Liatris pycnostachya, Rudbeckia maxima, various Silphiums, and large grasses - have no trouble penetrating this dense cover. By midsummer, they'll begin to dominate the landscape and the less attractive lower level will disappear into the background.

Garden Diary: Two Exotic Groundcovers

Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) and myrtle (Vinca minor) make a striking carpet at this time of the year. The myrtle has been in bloom for about a month. Only in the past week have the colonies of Sweet woodruff popped into bloom. Both are considered invasive exotics, but at Federal Twist they coexist happily, seemingly without affecting the native carexes, the numerous seedling trees, or the highly invasive, but native, poison ivy.

I know the myrtle was introduced over 40 years ago because William Hunt's architectural plans called for extensive plantings to control erosion on the steep banks surrounding the house, which was built in 1965. I welcome its periwinkle blue flowers every spring, especially in the wilder woods in front of the house. I have no idea when the Sweet woodruff was introduced; it has formed several distinct colonies that, I admit, seem to grow a little larger each year.

The thick mats of mixed myrtle and Sweet woodruff remind me of William Martin's "layering" planting technique, as he described it in his Vista lecture recently in London (see post below). At his well known garden, Wigandia, in Australia, he gardens on the side of a volcano, in soil and environmental conditions vastly different from mine. His technique does not involve horizontal, visual layering of plants as in a border, but rather vertical layering. He covers the ground thickly with a low, even "thuggish" (to use his word) kind of planting, then grows the larger, more structural plants through the layer covering the ground. I was happy to hear his description because I'm trying to use a similar technique in my garden on Federal Twist Road.

The mat of Sweet woodruff and myrtle is one preexisting example of this "layering" technique given to me by Edith Howeth, the first and previous gardener at Federal Twist. I'm experimenting with other combinations in the main garden at back, where conditions are different - more open, very wet, and sunny.

If only ...

If only this ephemeral stream were about 400 feet east of its present location, I'd have it in my garden. Am I a hopeless romantic?

Well not in every way... I got Tim Richardson's new Avant Gardeners ("50 Visionaries of the Contemporary Landscape") last week. With its emphasis on conceptual gardens, it's a strong antidote to lingering romanticism. Richardson's writing is, as usual, stimulating, full of ideas, and a delight. I won't try to evaluate the book because I haven't finished it. Unfortunate that it's not a larger format though; it's rather hard to see the point with such tight page layouts. And I definitely find the graphic design to be lacking, really dated (think psychedelic 60s). It doesn't do the content justice. Nevertheless, I recommend you buy the book. The essays alone are worth the price.