Hardy Plant Study Weekend, Sunday: more amazing gardens
Sunday we made it to the lecture hall before 8 A.M. With diabolical cleverness, the organizers got the audience there in time by giving away door prizes before each lecture…wonderful plants and garden gear and literature (none of which we won, sadly.) Three lectures later , we were off to more gardens, unfortunately not including the Old Germantown Garden which we had originally planned on. The toll of navigating through strange territory and the sleep deprivation of just not being at home decided us to stay within Portland and visit the eight northeast gardens on offer. As soon as I returned home, I officially joined the HPSO and next time that Germantown garden has an open day, Allan and I will drive there from the coast. [2012 note, which we did, and to which I devoted a later journal entry]
Above: Everyone had that beautiful Papaver somniferum ‘Lauren’s Grape’, which I had seen in photos but not in person: a must have. “Laughing Spirit Garden” was a lovely mass of colour and whimsy.
Two gardens next door were joined by a door and by the friendship of neighbours Joanne Fuller and Linda Ernst gardening together. Such an arrangement is described in a chapter of one of my favourite gardening books ever, Gardening from the Heart by Carol Olwell. Each garden had wonderful porches and sit spots and one had a supply of hot coffee with cream, much appreciated on a drizzly wet day!
Next, we went to Jeffrey Bales’ garden of mosaics and flying carpets. We were especially interested because he has a presence on the social networking site Tribe*. And I had seen his pebble mosaics along Lucy’s hell strip.
He told us that on sunny Saturday he had carpets and pillows around and guests were lounging in the garden. Sunday the drizzle did show off the colours of the stones although we were sorry to have missed the lavish exoticism of the day before.
Onward we drove to Nancyland, the garden on Nancy Goldman, president of the HPSO, where what did we find, among her many droll garden decorations, but another pebble carpet by Jeffrey Bales. We got to meet her cute dog, then, as time was waning before I had to catch the Amtrak Thruway Coach (a grand name for a bus) back to the coast, we moved onward to another garden, Darcy Daniel’s Bloomtown.
Bloomtown was stunning, and if I had not been going home on the bus we would have hightailed it to her nearby nursery. (As it was I was taking home, wrapped in t shirts, three plants from the HPSO plant sale vendors…and how hard it was to settle on three, and to not have room for large plants!) From her small in-garden sale, I bought one small Nicotiana langsdorfii which for some reason I couldn’t find anywhere earlier this year.
The front entrance to Bloomtown garden….on the background level, the Stipa gigantea and Cotinus from today’s leading photo…and the veg garden constructed in the former driveway. The garage has become a studio. It’s all wonderful!
From the studio, a view of a lovely sit spot, with detail of lights strung in the tree. An idea for under that magestic but annoying spruce in my garden.
[*2012 notes Tribe.net was (and is) a social internet site the preceded Facebook.
Originally this post continued with the big revelation that I got in a lecture, but I have decided to give that its own entry because it so influenced my gardening business.]
[…] Four years ago these two next door gardens were on the tour and I rhapsodized about how wonderful it would be to have such a neighbour and how it reminded me of the book Gardening from the Heart. Some changes had been made to each garden. I’m sure one of them had a new back yard water feature… the sidewalk shared by the two gardens first garden driveway Tall Azara microphylla on corner of first house […]
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[…] of the clear warm day, the back yard oasis had carpets and pillows out, unlike four years ago when rain had dampened the feeling of an outdoor oasis. the grotto […]
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