I haven’t read the book club’s selection for this month: Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing (every time lately that I sit still with any open book I pass out cold - it’s spring…) but there’s an invitation to join the club with a story — and as luck would have it, one of Blithewold’s extra special “passalong” plants just started to bloom!

Around the turn of the (20th) century, the Ladies Association of Mount Vernon sold rooted cuttings of a chestnut rose (probably the one called ‘Martha Washington’) as a fundraiser to preserve and restore that property. According to evidence found in Blithewold’s archives, Bessie Van Wickle, a member of The Colonial Dames, visited Virginia around that time and quite probably returned with (at least) one of those roses. The Rosa roxburghii by the Visitor’s Center is a massive shrub that blooms a clear pink single that a horticulturist at Mount Vernon agreed looks to be the same as theirs. British author, Marion Cran, visited Blithewold in the 1920’s and in her book Gardens in America, commented on Bessie’s chestnut rose - it must have been in bloom when she visited…

Things sometimes come around full circle, and now that Blithewold is a non-profit public garden in need of funds for preservation and restoration, seedlings and cuttings of Bessie’s Chestnut Rose have occasionally been potted up for sale and passed along!

It’s already been a weird week of elfish triumph, freakish nature and things that nightmares are made of.

First the triumphs: our garden elves and selves yesterday planted the cutting garden and spread leaf mulch (every one of us was eyeing it jealously - why can’t we all have arboretum leaves for our own gardens?!) and the Rockettes changed venue to attend to post-planting details in the North Garden. A fresh layer of buckwheat hull mulch makes that garden look extra fancypants!

The leaf pile gave us this little treasure yesterday — qu’est-ce que c’est??

And I noticed this little sporty thing in a North Garden Clematis integrifolia today – it’s hard to tell but it seems to be one of the petals choosing a different path in life. (”I always felt like a leaf in a petals body…”) Anyone else notice this sort of thing ever?

As for nightmares - I was too bereft to take pictures: we lost a bunch of dahlias to rot. I was feeling so smug for packing them so diligently and - I thought - so successfully in sawdust last fall. As a matter of fact, I unpacked some and potted them up on the 18th and they were fine! Less than a week later Gail went to unpack more and noticed the wildlife (gnats… a family of mice…) and rot… What happened???!!

and I had to take a picture of this because if anything causes me to question my calling in life, it’s a tangle of garden hose…

But miracles bring me back from the brink — the bamboo shoots are up! We’re often asked if we sell it — we don’t. It’s the kind of thing that makes neighbors angry when it runs to their side of the fence and under foundations! (say it with me — “it’s invasive!”) There are nurseries that stock it though if you’ve got the space to let it run. We (I mean, the guys) mow the edges of our grove to keep it in bounds.

I wonder if everyone had as glorious a Memorial Day weekend as we had here in sunny RI? Every nursery and garden center I passed by seemed packed with color - both human and floral. Local nurseries have a lot to contend with - sales are fair-weather driven/dependant and competition is fierce. I was happy to see that gardeners were shoppers this weekend and even I succumbed to a busman’s holiday - I was lured into one of my favorite nurseries and totally taken by the most abundant fuchsia on the planet!

I couldn’t stay away from Blithewold this weekend either - look what’s blooming now! The Tamarix went from this to this over the weekend. Julie (the Director of Horticulture) told me this morning that she’s never seen it so floriferous and she also told me that it was Bessie’s favorite shrub and she also had planted them down by the water. (Bessie Van Wickle McKee was Blithewold’s founding mother)

The North Garden is beginning to burst - the Lady’s Mantle is showing signs of froth

and the perennial bachelor buttons are bluer than blue.

Clematis integrifolia is just getting going too - this one doesn’t climb but if we don’t hoop it, it flops right over.

Clematis is getting going all over elsewhere too! - here is ‘Guernsey Cream’ by the Moongate

and old favorite, ‘Nellie Moser’ hanging by the Visitor’s Center.

Memorial Day is the official opening of the summer season - especially in New York resort towns like Rhode Island - and today’s weather, instead of being an appropriately crisp (or rainy) farewell to Spring, is a muggy slide into the middle of Summer. We had our chance yesterday to acclimatize - it was only 80 something…

The Florabundas took the temperature in stride and without the least sign of wilt, forked out more tulips and planted 219 more plants in the Rose Garden — it’s really going to be specacular this year! We placed 90 Heliotrope (an old fashioned variety that’s hard to come by which is strange because it’s vigorous and super highly scented. Why isn’t it the one that’s widely available??) all over the garden rather than just in the entrance beds. If the fragrance was cloying, it might be too much but I think it will be a delicate wash of vanilla nostalgia to linger in.

A note on forking out the tulips: Visitors have asked - what do we do with them? Of the new ones we buy every year, we try to save about half to replant for next year. (We try new ones in the Visitor’s Center beds and the North Garden every year and last year’s go usually to the Cutting Bed. Because the 2nd year show tends to be less dramatic, we also buy new ones for the Cutting Bed.) To save the tulips that we fork out, we allow them to slowly dry with the foliage attached for a couple of weeks. (It’s best to let them dry in the shade rather than leaving them in the blazing like we did this year - Oops! Do as we say, not as we do!) Then we paper bag them by variety and store them either down cellar or in our pot cubbies until we’re ready to replant them in the fall. The viable extras are snapped up by staff and volunteers (there have to be some bennies for all their hard work!)

Here’s just one bloom for today because it stole the show: Paeonia suffruticosa ‘Yachiyotsubaki’. I had to put my hand in for scale because how else would you know that it’s the size of a dessert plate and that I didn’t need the macro setting to fill the frame!

And to tempt you and the kiddies to visit — I wonder what’s behind the bamboo?!….

The North Garden is done! (pretty much. for today, anyway. mostly.) Yesterday on the way over with carts full of plants in nursery pots, Gail and I remembered almost at the same moment that we had intended to borrow just a few more things from the Idea Beds for the North. According to Gail, Sheila Loerke (who was Blithewold’s Assistant Horticulturist before she passed away in 2004) always thought the North Garden could use some distinctively shaped shrubbery. In her honor and memory, we relocated 4 pencil thin boxwoods, one to each bed and 2 blobular boxwoods to the entrance path. As soon as they were in the ground Gail and I stood back and said “Yup. That’s what it needed!” (Sheila is up there saying “told ya so” and smiling, hopefully.) This morning the Rockettes forked out tulips while I went back to the greenhouse twice for forgotten items (I’m much too young to call all the forgetting anything but dingy-ness) and then planted 215 tender color makers (Salvias, Zinnias, Ageratum, Dahlias, Browalia, Cosmos…) in about an hour. What a group!

The Deadheads were also a mighty workforce: Yesterday they forked all the cutting bed tulips yesterday and weeded the fig/melon bed down by the compost area and then said “what’s next?”. I honestly don’t know what we would do without them.

Things just keep blooming! If only the computer had scratch ‘n’ sniff — this (Carolina Allspice) smells like juicyfruit gum and this one (Empress tree) smells like grape cough syrup. You don’t believe me but it’s true!

The Tamarix by the water is all budded up and the Beach plum is sweetly blooming away down there.

and remember the little butter burs? This is what it looks like now!

(”wish it was Sunday”) But it rained all over “funday” - somewhere between 2 and 4 inches for the weekend. There’s always plenty to do on Monday to get (dis)organized for the week. This week we’re planting. (That is going to start sounding like a broken record!) We’ll fork rain-mushed tulips out of the cutting garden, North Garden, and Visitor’s Center beds and start emptying the greenhouse of pot bound seedlings and cuttings.

Meanwhile here’s some up-the-skirts and other more demure pictures of blooming beauties:

The Dove tree is full of hankies - almost like it’s been t.p.ed - but so much prettier!

I think I might like the Pulsatilla vulgaris (Pasque flower) even better naked than clothed (I could never get a good shot of it in flower - that shade of violet/blueish is a toughy.)

Remember the tiny sleeping Cinnamon fern? This is the same one today:

And the May apples are blooming! The light wasn’t quite right to get a good picture but here’s one anyhow because they’re so cool - you have to really look for these guys!

And now I wonder if there are any other 30+ somethings out there that I’ve managed to infect with an 80’s girl band earworm? So sorry!

Gail and I need a good catch-up day in the greenhouse and the rain is forcing us to stay in and get to it! There are seedlings that still need transplanting (poor stretched out, pack-bound little things…) and plants to pot up for our sale table (open daily at the visitor’s center — bring $5s and $10s and $20s for the honor box) and pinching back to do and weeding and deadheading and tidying the potting shed and and… !

It’s also a great day for the new and improved Rose Garden to settle in. Yesterday we and the Floribundas planted 2 dozen new shrubs and 11 new roses (in 2 and a half hours!). For years the Rose Garden has struggled through humid summers and tough winters and although it’s always beautiful during its June peak, after that it gets to looking like “black-spot on a stick” (I can’t remember who said that but I know I can’t claim it). We can no longer allow the first garden that visitors see to be anything but stunning every day. The problem is that the garden has too many roses and not enough other stuff! A mixed garden is a healthier garden (everything in moderation! - A rule that applies where ever obsessions reside.) So Gail has come up with a design that is heavy on fragrant shrubs and has planned for a scent rotation from spring to fall - Lonicera fragrantissima, March-April; Daphne x burkwoodii, Daphne transatlantica, Viburnum carlesii ‘Compactum’, May; roses, June; Clethra alnifolia ‘Sixteen Candles’, Buddleia davidii ‘Adonis’ and Buddleia davidii ‘Petite Indigo’, July. Old fashioned heliotrope will waft it’s grandmotherly comfort scent as soon as it’s safe to plant it (soon) through the season to a light frost, and we’ve got Datura and Nicotiana sylvestris waiting in the wings for their gorgeous August evening perfumes. My contribution to the overall design (besides saying “mmm that sounds perfect!”) was suggesting planting three Pinus strobus ‘Blue Shag’ because I love the little blue muffins (I could have baker’s dozen!) and thought the garden could use a 4 season living rock-formation.

I also spent some time with the Sylvan Nursery catalog choosing a new round of high-hopes roses. Last year we got some Knock Outs and we understand now what all the fuss was about. Personally I like to do a little rose maintenance now and then because I find the challenge perversely gratifying. We didn’t touch the Knock Outs all summer -just to see what they would do - and they bloomed on and on and the foliage never looked terrible. This year we’re trying ‘Home Run’ - another one that’s over marketed for being (too) easy; Carefree Beauty, Delight and Wonder (the names say it all!) - these are Bucks roses which were bred in Iowa by a Griffiths Bucks who selected for toughness and vigor; Rosa ‘Champlain’ which is one of the Canadian Explorer Series - known for hardiness and disease resistance; Rosa ‘Angel Face’, reputed to be very fragrant and disease resistant as well as an AARS winner; Rosa ‘Betty Boop’ (if it’s half as cute as it’s namesake, I’ll be happy) and climber ‘Fourth of July’ (because Bristol is home of the oldest 4th of July parade) - both AARS winners. So cross your fingers for us and with any luck I’ll have success stories to share (although sometimes failure stories are funnier…)

In other news, just a quick note (because today is the day I wish I had about ten rain barrels filling up at my house): Rhode Island has its very own “Water Lady” who buys barrels in bulk and passes the cheaper-by-the-dozen savings onto anyone willing to pay ahead and pick them up at her house in South County. Sounds like an excellent reason for a road trip to me! The barrels she buys are big, attractive and half the price of buying retail not even counting shipping! It’s water-wise and wallet-wise. Click here for more information.

I couldn’t resist a couple of pictures today — Here’s Augustus Van Wribbit kicking back on the lotus. Earlier this week, I falsely accused Gus-Gus of dining on one of the new fish but Milo, Edwin and Gracie are all present and accounted for.

Gail pointed out the Halesia to me this morning (I had my blinders on) - what a beauty!

and I was reminded by one of you to turn my gaze to Father Hugo’s Rose - the buds are like candles and it’s just about to burst into bloom!

Now that we’ve relocated all the perennials we had-to-had-to move and frantic spring is speeding along to an early languid summer (can you believe the maples that are fully leafed out already?!), I feel like we’ve turned a corner on the track and gone from a mad dash to a steady lope. We’re placing and planting cool season annuals, new perennials and shrubs and now the gardens are really taking shape. I have renewed energy to just go and go to the finish. We’ve still got self-imposed deadlines (everything planted by the 4th of July) but Gail and I can pace ourselves now. Three weeks ago, even Dick, who plants and tends the Vegetable Garden, said he felt at least a month behind. Now he says he’s not worried and not feeling rushed. (He is here every day though…) — I love seeing Dick in the garden - somehow, all’s right with the world when he’s here.

Yesterday, the Deadheads weeded the Idea Beds while Gail and I placed plants in the Cutting Garden and in the new raised bed by the pond. We’re planting that with our favorite Pennisetum ruppelianum, Salvia, Dahlia combination for old-time’s sake (the dahlia/grass beds around the pond were taken out in the first phase of the Display Garden redesign).

In the Cutting Garden we use concrete reinforcement mesh as a staking system. Planting through the grid is a little tedious but it’s worth it in the long haul because the heavy-on-bloom plants don’t flop over! (we raise the grids up on stakes for the plants to grow through - like a peony hoop).

The North Garden is being planted now with the first round of annuals and a few new perennials and later, Gail and I will place the new shrubs for the Rose Garden re-vitilization project. (I’ll have a lot to say about that as we go)

Here are a couple pictures of my current obsessions. One of the things that’s great about public gardens (whether you work in one or are a visitor) is that you get to look at established plants with an eye for how they’d look in your own garden! (so much better than just looking at a picture on a tag or a runty individual in a nursery pot!). I can’t stop thinking about crabapples and blueberries… Look at those colors!

We are asked - fairly frequently - what do we do to make our gardens grow so lusciously? - What do we use for fertilizer? Our answer “not much” is hard for fellow Rhode Islanders and New Englanders to believe. When we really want to push plants along, we use Neptune’s Harvest Fish Fertilizer which is OMRI listed organic. We also add Electra to the potting soil we use for our container plants and we feed the Rose and North Garden roses with Electra once a year. We’re lucky because our gardens are blessed with dreamy dark fluffy cake mix soil - only a mile and a half down the road at my own house, I can’t jump on a digging fork without a teeth rattling bounce against a pile of rocks embedded in clay. These gardens though, have been under cultivation - ornamental and otherwise - for almost 100 years - just think if your own garden had been annually ammended with compost and an arboretum’s worth of leaves…

The plight of the honey bee has been all over the news lately (Colony Collapse Disorder) and with garden chemicals being one of the possible causes, we all (I’m editorializing) should really think long and hard about how our choices impact the eco-system. For years now, Gail and I have refused to use chemistry on our infested roses - not only would our visitors and volunteers be in constant contact with it, but the beneficial insects and organisms would suffer. So we have plucked spotty yellow leaves and squished aphids and drowned Japanese beetles in soapy water. Last fall, Dan (one of our groundsmen) applied Milky Spore to several patches of lawn for beetle grub control. We’re crossing our fingers that that works! And instead of fighting a losing battle with blackspot - if the only way to win is with destructive chemistry or a weekly regiment of organic solutions that we haven’t got the time to apply - we’re raising the white flag, taking out some of the most disease prone roses and starting to interplant the rest with a healthy-garden mix of shrubs, perennials and annuals. Why fight it? (and don’t get me wrong - I love roses!)

In a nutshell (and there’s so much more to say but the greenhouse beckons - there’s a plant somewhere in there rasping, “waaater… cough.. cough … I’m thiiiiirsty…”), I think Blithewold’s gardens are gorgeous because we try to make sure our choices are healthy for everyone - creepy crawly or otherwise.

If I’ve raised more questions - please ask them!