Summer's fleeting good bye

It's been a while since I've written on here...September has been a little bit of a trying month. My laptop crashed at the very first part of the month and we had to wipe almost everything off of it. Thank God I back up work stuff, my music, and photos on my external hard drive. The most recent photos I had taken from August and planned to show on here of the gardens, The Farmer's Daughter and other stuff had been purged. Alas, I didn't have much to share. I had a few things on my iPhone but had uploaded most of them to the laptop before the crash. We had a "hurricane" to deal with...or shall I say a rain storm to deal with. I will admit, I did get all of my preparations ready for the storm to end all storms and I'm convinced that's why nothing happened. I was a little disappointed we got weather that didn't even come close to even a Nor'easter.

But at the same time, with Lake Larson looking as great as this a couple of days before Earl was supposed to come...I was relieved I didn't have a huge mess to clean up.

My passion flower 'McCain' has been flowering over the past month or so. It's one flower at a time and I think we're getting close to the last one opening I bet tomorrow or Thursday. It's a self pollinating variety and we haven't had any fruit set on it. I'm thinking it's not getting pollinated and I haven't seen any bees hovering around it (but boy, they love my sedums!) So, Eric is going to be pollinating this one with a q-tip when it opens soon. I have to give him a lesson on how to do it so he can be the designated pollinator of the Passiflora. LOL

That flower is just too cool!

The most exciting addition to Garden Consultant HQ this past month wasn't of the plant persuasion, rather a deck accessory. Eric was finally able to add the one thing he really built Deckzilla for - a hot tub. I actually found the hot tub and it was a circumstance of being in the right place at the right time. I had met with someone who is now a design client and had it in their backyard. They had just bought the house and wanted to hire me to design their landscape. They asked me if I knew of anyone who wanted a free hot tub. Yes, yes I did. We got it here, hooked it up and lo and behold it works! Eric has now granted me the rights to his nickname of "The Larsonist" because I have proven I have worthy talent of acquiring things. ;) I just say "if you built it....it will come."

Edible Landscaping at the HQ

I have been a little quiet on the blogger front just because I have been busy with a couple of big designs. They have been a little bit consuming and between that and nothing going on in the garden other than watering, there hasn't been too much to share with everyone.
Thankfully, we've just had 4 days of good, slow rain which I know all plants in New England are sighing in relief. It has been very dry and windy here since the beginning of the month which has had me watering something pretty much every day. My soil is very sandy as I am sure I have mentioned before and anything I add to it in the way of moisture is quickly wicked away by the surrounding dry soil. Soaker hoses can only do so much and I was running them pretty much non stop when I was home. It wasn't a total fix but at least I could get some water on the root zones of my plants. I had to purchase a bunch more so I could have the vegetable garden set up with individual soakers for each raised bed and get some hoses around the back of Lake Larson and deck gardens. I started to get concerned about the lack of rain when I started to see plants around RI and MA starting to show considerable fall color in the middle of August. I took that as them going into survival mode by shutting down some of their canopy.

Viburnum in Taunton looking sad in their red leaves last week.

Hopefully, this is the end of our dry spell and we can go back to a more regular rain pattern which will make life easier for both us gardeners and our plants.

Despite the lack of rain, the edible side of the Garden Consultant has been pretty successful this season. I have tried some new things and some things we've grown time and time again. Squash was fairly miserable this season and we only got zucchini and yellow squash for a couple of weeks. Then the striped squash bug moved in and it was a slow and agonizing defeat. I attempted to make sure the plants wouldn't be stressed through lack of water and fed them very regularly with fish emulsion. I eventually lost the war even after I broke out some safer sprays to try to control them. Oh well, I'll be ready for them next year and I'm going to try some companion plants or more conventional methods of control. Cukes had been pretty decent this year and I have been pleased with them. I grow the little picklers and we eat them fresh because I always seem to throw out half eaten cukes. I just ordered a cuke trellis from Gardener's Supply Catalog and I'm dying to try it next year to lift them cukes up and plant the lettuce under it. I think it will be a good way to maximize space.


Eggplants where something we haven't grown before and I can't believe how easy they were to grow. I think I will try them again next year but do some weird ones like long asian ones and the white ones. With regular feedings and harvesting, they have been great producers. They have been taking a little bit of a break but I see new flowers coming at the top.


Tomatoes...what can I say. They are the staple of the home vegetable garden. Once again, I planted 4 plants and all different varieties. They have been fruiting their fool heads off...especially the yellow pear and grape tomatoes. Before the soaker hoses were installed, I noticed the romas had some flowers that shriveled from irregular waterings. With the fish emulsion and regular water, I see them beginning to produce fruit again.

Our little banana tree has been growing nicely this summer. I'm really excited about this plant because it is just so funky. I think it will add something fun in the living room this winter and I love the bold texture and the patterned colors on the leaves. This little guy won't set fruit, but he's cool just the same. Our passion flower bloomed over the weekend and I missed it with the camera. That one is supposed to bear fruit and it is self pollinating. The flower is a whitish with purple/blue highlights. It was super wild! I have a couple of buds ready to pop and I will be waiting with my camera for this time around.


Last but not least, my fig tree....yes, that is a fig on it! I cannot get over the growth it has thrown out this summer. It's about 3' tall and that's a long way from the spindly little thing I brought home from Logee's in February. The fig is taking a while to ripen and to be truthful, I'm not sure how to tell if it is ripened. I'm sure the fruit will soften and change color...but for now I wait. I just noticed today there are more little figs coming which is so very cool.

For my fall crops, I just planted a new crop of lettuce seedlings where the previous crop was. I also seeded white, french radishes, peas, and tat soi. I'm wondering if I should try to seed some beets for fall harvest...but I'm leaning towards not because I don't know if I have time for them to mature.

Phantastical Phlox!!!!

Phlowering in all of it's glory by Lake Larson. This is called 'David's Lavender' and it's a relatively new variety. It's a very nice pink/purple with a lighter pink eye and as you can see...it blooms heavily and this is in a location I consider to be partial shade. It's about 4' tall and even though it's been marketed as being mildew resistant...I do have a touch of powdery mildew on it this season. But, it's nothing serious and something I can totally over look.

How does your garden grow - Pawtucket RI

Three years ago I was contacted by a couple in Pawtucket, RI who are very gifted gardeners. They had done some wonderful stuff in their backyard shade gardens. This side of the house was a barren wasteland of a couple of shrubs and a slope covered with ailing grass. Her husband had the vision of the wall and the grass strip and he took that part of the project on himself with the mason. I was given the task of helping the wife with choices of plants and placement of the shrubs they had in the stone wall gardens to come.

They had a mix of sun and shade with the dogwood in the corner of the wall by the street and the north facing house. The side of the house is blazing west sun and they wanted something that would give them all year interest. We chose red twigged dogwood 'Ivory Halo', winterberry 'Red Sprite', Globe Blue Spruce for some of the new shrubs. They had quite a few perennials around the yard that needed to be moved. We also utilized a clematis that never flowered for them before until it was moved to this garden.



They installed the gardens themselves last June during the torrents of rain which became a god send for all of the newly planted plants. These photos are of the gardens in their second year. As far as I know, they didn't have any failures and everything came back.

We used mostly the shade plants they had in the back yard to build this bed here by the street. I did suggest some new things for textural differences which the clients really enjoy.




I'm very pleased with how this project turned out as are the clients.

Waterlily Wednesday!

Watching me trying to get these shots must have been entertaining....I was teetering on the pond edge with my camera set of super zoom to get these. But I **heart** waterlilies. I think this little one is darling. I used to know who was what...but over the years, variety names have become lost in the recesses of my mind.

This is my kind of yellow....soft and muted.



I've had water hyacinths off and on in Lake Larson but they have never flowered for me until this year...I've had two now! I know...they aren't waterlilies. But they are pretty just the same.

Oooo...someone forgot to turn on the A/C

If you're in the Northeast, I don't have to tell you it's brutally hot. I just checked the Weather Channel's website and it's 98 degrees out with a heat index of 103 at 4:15 pm. Ugh. I don't do heat...Lars doesn't even do this kind of heat. So, we're holed up down in the basement where the office used to be. I don't have walls or a floor, but it's cool...and that's all that matters. I actually moved back down here a couple of weeks ago because I just got tired of staring at all of the work stuff all the time. At least down here, I can close the door and walk away from it.

I let the garden be for a couple of weekends and got back into weeding and deadheading over the first part of the weekend. We haven't had much rain these past couple of weeks and watering has been my big priority the past several days. I have had all of the soaker hoses running off and on. I have been seeing some stress on some of my plants which I'm bummed about. It's mostly in areas where there are no soakers at the moment and I have been leaving the hose on a trickle on individual plants. I have been keeping the rain barrels fairly full after the thunderstorms from last Monday. I've been adding the water from the dehumidifiers down here. We do pull a lot of water out of the air in the basement which is surprising. Watering can be a big job around here especially with the sandy soil. Right now, it's like a desert here. I think the next opportunity for rain will be on Saturday which some scattered thunderstorms. It's hard to believe this past March a lot of RI was under water and now...here we sit scrambling with hoses.

I have a potpourri of photos today and we'll start with the wet pets. Chunk is getting bigger and bigger...dare I say he's getting close to 18" long. He's the most friendly out of the koi and will come say hi when he feels your footsteps in the yard. We have another spotted koi who is almost and if not as big as Chunk. We've never given that one a name and I sort of feel badly about it...I'll have to come up with one. Maybe I'll call him/her "Rorschach" after the ink blot tests. :)

I'm on a mission right now to clear up Lake Larson with polyester batting. It's acting as a cheap and throw away filter medium. I am filling porous water plant pots with it and place them in the skimmer where the pots are. There's just a lot of sediment floating in the water and it's very cloudy. It's not algae, but sludge/dirt. I think it's going to take me a while to do this and it will probably become something we always have to do with the amount on junk that falls in the pond from the fish waste, dead water plants and the trees. Once again...the un-glamorous side of water gardening no one ever tells you about - the battle of sludge loaded batting.

I took this photo below a couple of weeks ago and it's of my new Oakleaf Hydrangea I planted last summer. I won it at a Plant ID contest at the RINLA Summer Meeting! I have always liked Oakleaf Hydrangea but had never really been able to appreciate the flowers because I have never been up close and personal with them. After having them this year, I will say I think they are out of this world!! I love the contrast of the creamy white blooms against the dark purple leaves of my Palace Purple Heuchera. Oakleafs have a nice burgundy fall color that sets them apart from the other hydrangeas. Most of the other species don't offer much in the way of fall foliage color.


Last but not least, I promised some photos of the other edible oddity of ours this year. Here it is...our little fig tree. I grabbed this from Logee's earlier this winter and it didn't do much other than go partially dormant in my kitchen this spring. Once the weather got nicer and the threat of a hard freeze passed, I potted it up and moved it outside. Then it started to grow and I had to move it up to a bigger pot. Right now, it's in a #5 container and I think it can stay there for a while. I might have to shift it up again later this summer if it keeps growing the way it is. I think this winter I'll store it down in the basement and let it go dormant for real. I think this guy is hardy to zone 7/8 but I won't risk it keeping it outside.

Mum's the word Monday

The edible section of Garden Consultant HQ

Last year's vegetable gardening foray was pretty bleak with cool temperatures and loads of rain. This year is a completely different story and the veggies show it. I've rearranged some things this year to maximize light for those who need it and those who don't as well as rotating crops. Here's a basic view of the raised beds. The one on the far right is filled with strawberries. We had a great and early crop this season. Eric was able to get the nets out there early enough that we didn't lose much at all to birds and squirrels. I even made strawberry shortcake with our bountiful crop!

The bed to the left of the strawberries are green and yellow squash and onions. I really have to look up when to harvest onions because I have no clue. They are setting these fantastically tall white Allium flower buds and I'm eagerly awaiting what they will look like. Always thinking like a landscape designer I am! I took these photos a couple of weeks ago and the plants are much further along than they look here. We have several green squash coming and a couple of yellow ones developing. Again, things are a little early. I have also been fertilizing like crazy with fish emulsion and bat guano fertilizers just to see what would happen. I'm very pleased at the results to be completely honest.



In the far back bed which is getting shaded now from the neighbor's oak tree, I thought I would try to place some things that need it to be cooler. I have three types of lettuce there - bibb, red leaf and green leaf. The lettuces are thriving in their new box and I think that's where they will stay from now on. I have broccoli, cauliflower and pickling cukes in the front part of the bed. I'm wondering if the cukes will have enough light, but hey, this whole garden is one big yearly experiment on what will work and what won't.


The bed in front of the onions and squash house our beans, eggplant, and peppers. Something is really going after the peppers and I need to investigate who the culprit it. I think they will recover from the damage and I am seeing some flowers now.


In the last bed, I have the tomatoes. I have finally resigned to the fact 4 plants are enough for us because we end up throwing out piles of tomatoes that go bad before we can eat them. We actually did get sick of tomatoes after having mounds of them show up in the kitchen. So, this year, I have a red cherry, a yellow pear, a beefsteak, and romas. It's enough of a variety that I can make salads, cook, and eat fresh with.

Last but not least, one of our oddities this season - I purchased a banana tree from The Farmer's Daughter. Eric likes them and since I really don't have a place just yet for a hardy Banana, I thought one in a pot is the next best thing. I'm going to have to research this a little bit more and see if it will indeed fruit. I also just now realized, I am missing a couple of photos of the other edible oddities I have this year. I have a fig tree and a fruit bearing passion flower I bought this winter from Logee's. The fig is much more impressive than the passion flower is at the moment. I'll have to take some pictures of that and the new location of my herb pot ghetto for next time.

Water Garden Wednesday!

Lake Larson in its June glory - this has been a good year for the gardens.


I have a few holes to fill around the pond, but that will be an easy job to find some suitable candidates. I'm actually have had a hell of time finding water lettuce this year to float in the pond. Reluctantly, I got a couple of water hyacinths which the fish are beating the daylights out of! Hungry little beasties!!

HQ Fauna

Since we've put in Lake Larson, filling spaces with plants, and using more earth friendly gardening practices, I have noticed a big influx in wildlife in the yard. We have a ton of nesting bird this year...cardinals, blue jays, sparrows, and robins. These little guys are in the blue spruce we planted behind Lake Larson and I think they will be out of the nest by next week. I feel like a slum lord with them all crammed into that little nest like that.


This dude is an import...Eric's friend of a friend owns a pet store and they dropped Mr. Bullfrog off here. He was living in a 10 gallon tank at the shop and he was outgrowing his living quarters. I haven't seen him much since last week...I hope he chooses to stick around. We did have a green frog who hung out last year and sang all summer long, I'm hoping he comes back too.



One feathered guest I am glad not to have seen thus far is the heron. I think since I'm still upstairs in the kitchen as my office, there's too much movement inside the house for the heron's liking. Soon, I'll move the office to Deckzilla then Lars and I can do some serious heron patrol. I can report the foxes are back this spring much to Lars' chagrin. I have been seeing them primarily at dusk and in the morning around 8 - 9 am. I wonder if they are hunkered down with a litter of kits someplace close.

How does your garden grow - reprised for spring 2010

I had a visit with a client who has been with me for several years a couple of weeks ago. The gardens featured above were designed and planted...oh, I want to say about 7 or so years ago. We have also planned other areas of her yard since then and we have created a wonderful friendship as well as some great gardens. Her gardens are a riot of bold colors in the summer from both perennials and annuals. We went chose this color scheme because her husband is legally blind but can see the boldness and not to mention it works well with the color of the house.

I come over here regularly because Rosemary takes care of the gardens herself for the most part. She is great about asking questions or for help if she needs it. She's a really fun client and I'll show you something really cool about her gardens that you don't notice unless you're up close and personal.


Rosemary is a retired art teacher and is still actively sculpting. It's always a treat to see what's new in her garden or what has been brought back from the gallery she showcases her sculptures. A lot of her pieces have significant meaning and I love to hear her explain why she made something.


How cool are all of these guys!




I think the armadillo has been in the garden the longest...



Hee....a toad abode!

Free is for me!!!

Compost is something that all gardens can benefit from as I'm sure you've heard about. I compost but I often burn through the amounts my little bin makes in a bed or two. That's kind of a let down especially if you've been tending to your pile all season long. But, luckily...I have another source at my disposal.

The City of Warwick composts all of the yard waste they collect from their residents and offers it back to them...for free. You need to be a resident (and have proof) and be able to haul it away. Landscapers can't come and take it away in their business vehicles. However, if they were in an unmarked truck and was using it for their own gardens, that's okay. I've told many a Warwick client about the compost program but they have their reservations about the quality of it. A lot of people are worried if it is broken down enough or if they would find things in it. This is the second time we've gotten a truck full and both times I've been happy with the compost.


If you click on the photo, it should give you a larger version. You should be able to see the consistency of it then.

What the city produces in their compost piles is very similar to what I haul out of my bin. So, if you're from Warwick and you're reading this, don't fear the municipal compost. If you aren't a Warwick resident, check with your city or town and see if they have a composting program. If they do, they just may save you a lot of compost turning.

Good bye and good riddence evil yellow flag irises..

There's a funny (well, funny now) story about these plants I bid a gleeful farewell to. I had gotten them from someone who worked at Chaves years ago. I had thought they were kind of cool because they were supposed to have yellow flowers and had variegated leaves. They never did well...they just kind of languished in my soil at both the Coast Guard house and now this house. Last year, it dawned on my what they were - Yellow Flag Iris which are a water plant. Cool, right? I figured I'll put them in pots and throw them into Lake Larson. Since they were in a pot, they can't spread....right??

Well, let me tell you, they were very happy in Lake Larson. They grew to almost 5' tall. 5' tall plants in little 12" diameter pots fall over...a lot. I spent most of last summer righting these stupid things where they sitting on the pond liner. We had some near the large flat rock we stand on to feed the fish and they were in the view path of Deckzilla. I never, ever expected to grow like they were on steroids and boy, did they look dumb there.

After two years of having them annoy me with their brazen growth and they started to break the pots, I felt it was time to go on to a better place (like my compost bin, for example.) Eric was a sweet guy and started to remove them from the pond when he was doing a spring clean up. All of them he removed on his own until he got to the ones by the feeding rock and this is what he had to battle -


**gasp**

It took the both of us to get that out of the pond...the roots had grabbed a hold of every rock it could reach. Within that mess is one 12" pot and a little 4" pot...those two pots produced Frankeniris. Now, I see very clearly why CT and MA both have this plant on their invasive plant lists. They did this in my pond in pots, could you imagine what this could do to a natural pond or lake. You would have nothing by iris in a very short matter of time.

How does your garden grow and your walkways go??

This spring I have been slowly overhauling the entire website myself. (That's why you see some pages in my new, cool earthy style and some in the older sage green style.) I also do a pre-season survey of my current clients to see if there's anything they need from me during the upcoming spring. I've been asking them to share photos of their projects so I can update photos or add sections of past projects or works in progress. These photos below are from a job that we wrapped up in Fairhaven, MA in 2007 and was started to be installed later that same year.

The client had some random square cut stones laid in the turf as their pathway from the driveway to the large stairs. They really, really hated how that looked. They are right across the street from the ocean and they really wanted to have a new walkway that reflected the coastal landscape that surrounded them. Below is what I came up with...and I think this is hands down the coolest walkway I have come up with to date.


Here's the detail of the pebbles and the cobblestone skirt. OMG, I am totally in love with how awesome this turned out. They love it just as much because this was something that completely fit their architecture and existing stonework and their coastal surroundings.

I think this photo below was taken when the stones where wet so you can see the contrast of the different pebbles. So cool if I say so myself.


They have also built a stone wall across the street on the lot they own that goes down to the water. They wanted something once again that would fit the stonework on their house and the coastal feel. The clients really wanted to have some separation from the street so people would realize that someone actually owned that piece of land. They were having an issue with trespassers on that lot and since the wall has been built, the problem did decrease. For the meantime, the clients are holding off on the plantings for the front of the house and surrounding the wall across the street. As much as I love the hardscape on this property, I cannot wait to see it accented with the plants we chose.

LOVE IT!!!!