Fabulous New Plant Artist

If you are looking for the special occasion indoor plant arrangement whether for the table or for a gift please check out the new, as in (hasn't let success jack up her prices) plant artist:

sarahwallerflowers.blogspot.com

sorry, local to seattle area only right now


Plantgirl's Porch is my business that offers design for your pots, porches, and other particular areas in your little piece of the planet. Send me a message and I will email you.
plantgirlchd@comcast.net

good tips for veggie gardeners

Get the most from your veggie beds:

Soil Cleaners & Builders

These store the nitrogen from the air and then they release it into the soil. Examples of cleaners include things like potatoes and corn and peas and beans are great soil builders.

Therefore, if you follow a pattern of planting leafy vegetables the first season then follow successive seasons with fruits, then root plants the season after and then finally your soil builders and cleaners, you’re establishing a good crop rotation system which not only deters weed growth but keeps disease at bay as the different families of plants are more prone to different diseases.

Therefore, by rotation, you’re reducing a disease’s potential for incubation which could then take hold if you are planting crops from the same family year upon year. This is also true for pests and insects. If they know exactly where their preferred food is located, it will be a natural instinct to head for that area each year so by rotating the types of crops you plant each season, this only adds to their confusion so they are less likely to cause devastation to a particular crop.

By adopting a garden crop rotation policy, you’ll find that the yield from the crops you plant will be greater and of better quality and that your soil will healthier in which means each group can thrive.

http://www.safegardening.co.uk

Can't Wait Until Spring!

Here is a fun project to plan for the spring-- a white textural and fragrance garden as inspired by the British gardener Vita Sackville West and shown in her garden at Sissinghurst.

This garden is lovely through the seasons, but it was was designed to be at its best in early July and especially in the evenings or when illuminated by a full moon, since this garden was always used as an outdoor dining room. In one corner there is a dining table shaded by a rose arbor supported by broken columns (dubbed the "Erectheum"), where the family would eat whenever the weather allowed.

Vita wrote a description of her plantings in the White Garden in her a regular gardening column in the Observer for July 5, 1955: “There is a white underplanting of various artemisias, including the old aromatic Southernwood; the silvery Cineraria maritima, the grey santolina or Cotton Lavender; and the creeping Achillea ageratifolia. Dozens of the white Regale lily (grown from seed) come up through these. There are white delphiniums of the Pacific strain; white eremurus; white foxgloves in a shady place on the north side of a wall; the foam of gypsophila; the white shrubby Hydrangea grandiflora; white cistus; white tree peonies; buddlia nivea; white campanulas and the white form of Platycodon mariesii, the Chinese bellflower. There is a group of giant Arabian thistle, pure silver, 8 feet high. Two little sea buckthorns, the grey willow-leaved Pyrus salicifolia sheltered the grey leaden statue of a Vestal Virgin. Down the central path goes an avenue of white climbing roses, trailing up old almond trees. Later on there will be white Japanese anemones and some white dahlias....” These plantings have remained essentially unchanged, although the gardeners have introduced a few new plants.

There is little ornamentation in this garden, with only the statue under a weeping pear and a large gray Chinese jar, purchased by Harold in Egypt. The wrought iron arbor over the jar in the center of the intersection of the main paths replaced almond trees that eventually died and were removed in 1970. The most vigorous of the climbing roses (Rosa mulliganii) that had rambled through the trees was left to be trained over, but not completely obscure, the arches of the arbor.

To read more check www.SissinghurstCastleGarden.com

Exit from the Garden of Eden

Smith and Hawken, garden store extraordinaire and my employer for the past ten years, is exiting from the scene in all of its 56 stores across the U.S. Small potatoes, you might say. But there are tragic aspects of this tale, a death of a simple relationship between seller and buyer where life counsel is dispensed along with home solutions that make Every Garden Count(an S&H advertising slogan).

Let us define garden as a home space that involves living things in a crafted environment. Products that solve issues like storage, privacy, beauty and function in one's personal individualized space. The store began in the sixties as an importer of quality garden tools and evolved into a broader footprint that included heritage garden items such as pottery, statuary as well as heirloom garden furniture in patented designs. Thirty years and fifty six stores later, the catalog and internet business in full swing, the chain landed in its fourth owner's hands, a chemical company who freely promotes the use of poisonsonous chemicals in a happy, harmless, irresponsible manner by using words like Miracle to brighten their insidious message that nature needs these synthetics to make the good things happen in your garden. A company at odds with the message of S&H and admittedly bought to soften the reputation of the parent.
Well, S&H took many chances and needed to be reigned in during recessionary times. Real estate ventures into extra jumbo stores in strip malls, bizarre product additions with new competitors like heaters, barbeques, mortared fireplaces and outdoor televisions were just plain wrongheadedly complex. No effort to scale make or redesign were made however, and many of us lost a great place to shop and work.

As we close out our days, we at smith and hawken are constantly trying to soothe our bothered customers about this liquidation. At least a dozen times a days since July we hear "I am so angry about this. " I am so sad about this." And still very often do we hear oh I didn't know. It has made me wonder why the media has seen fit not to cover this story. When approaching NPR I was told- there are too many stories like this right now. There was a small mention in our local Seattle papers, (there are two stores in this area,) and if you google the events you get no more than the article in the Marin county paper or the reuters coverage of July 9. No one has touched on the tragic elements of this demise.

To many people, S&H represented a return to the land arising from the flower children of the sixties. It was a soothing, sunny image even though most of us could afford little of the merchandise, most of us could save up for some. It was a feel good place to wander, to bring family, to learn about plants, chat, get design ideas. And as we grew older and faced new challenges it was a return to past values. It was one of the few stores that still felt like a country store with odds and ends, some risky and strange merchandise like antique thumb pots for watering seeds or wooden bird call horns with authentic sound. The staff offered friendliness, concern , advice, orientation and most of all, especially to regulars, slow relationships. Just as you built a relationship with the staff, so did you get accustomed to the product line learning what garden structure offered you, and how to use a water feature or raised bed. I feel this more and more as I say goodbye to the many relationships that I have formed while at work here.

Some quotes from past Mission Statements:
" S&H believes that gardening is a life enhancing activity...we try to be a positive presence in our community and wish to offer goods distinguished by authenticity and integrity and believe these ideals will lead us to grow profitably. The personality of our brand DNA is to be both traditional and innovative, functional and unique."

So as we slip away into oblivion I wanted to take just this moment to ponder the loss.

Awesome Gardening Blog

Check out this awesome gardening blog: http://www.digginfood.com/
DigginFood is a vegetable garden and food blog by Willi Galloway that serves up organic gardening tips, recipes, backyard chickens and coop information. One of my favorites!