I think gardeners as a rule don’t beat around the bush. We’re more likely to dish the dirt. And what’s the point of sugar coating when our world is already so delicious? I haven’t yet met a gardener who isn’t vociferously opinionated and fickle as a five year old. And it takes one to know one! We have to have a clear idea of what we like in order to find focus in our gardens - nevermind that what we like changes with the season if not daily. And although we tend to be grounded and realistic about what we can accomplish, we definitely shoot for the moon sometimes. A gentleman came into the greenhouse today and cheerfully told me that he planted 200 daffodils last fall and only 3 came up. I’d guess that like most gardeners I know, he was braced for failure the moment he planted those bulbs and has already moved on to the next thing - which happened to be a meander through our efforts. (Or, like most gardeners, he tells a good story.) And don’t we love to share?

We want to tell the absolute sugar-free truth about our gardens and enjoy nothing better than comparing notes. What do you love today? I can tell you that daffodils aren’t my personal favorite flower. Except that they absolutely are. I especially love this one at my house which I’m almost as proud of as the thousands blooming today in the Bosquet. But I’m also head over heels in love with all of the other things that are blooming today - like the flowers on the Camperdown Elm (Ulmus glabra ‘Camperdownii’).

I’ll show more of my fickle favorites tomorrow for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day which falls on the 15th of every month. I met another gardener today and when I asked her if this was her first visit to Blithewold she said, “Yes - but it’s not my last!” No beating around the bush - and no doubt she’ll have different faves and raves next time too.

The weather this past weekend wasn’t as awful as predicted and steamy sun on Saturday unfolded more daffodils in the Bosquet. And with sunny days in the forecast for this vacation week, we’re likely to get pretty close to full disclosure. I’ll keep telling it like it is! (But don’t take my word for it - come see for yourself)

I think most gardeners don’t need to be reminded to stop and smell the proverbial roses. But according to this Pulitzer Prize winning article written last year by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post, a lot of people are too busy for roses - even when the roses are world class violinists. Over a thousand people at a Washington D.C. subway stop were freely serenaded by Joshua Bell, the most fabulous hot ticket violinist ($100 for a nosebleed seat) playing his multi-million dollar actual Stradivari - and all but 7 or so commuters walked right by! It makes me take inventory of what would stop me in my tracks. — What do you brake for?

We often talk about how to entice the thousands of people who drive 40 mph along Ferry Road every day to stop here. Last fall we drilled holes for Daffodils in the entrance bed, I’ve planted a pot, we have a big sign and you can see glimpses of much of the meticulously tended property from the road. But those things might only be noticeable to those of us who are already on the lookout. Blithewold, especially in spring (and summer, fall and winter) is playing its Strad. And all we can do is hope that a few out of the thousands decide that “busy” is for the bees and take some time to pause and smell the roses - or the the stinking hellebores Helleborus foetidus (the leaves are pungent when crushed) and the Skunk cabbage (Lysichiton). You’d never notice the Tulipa ‘Johann Strauss’ from the road and you would totally miss the flowerless but stunning view of a sun patch on the great lawn. And let’s not forget the daffodils. You might get a peek from the road but you’ve got to come in to see that more and more have opened up in the last couple of days. It’s too bad our opening weekend looks rainy but the show will go on and on. Watch the weather - more sunny days means more blooms and cool nights will encourage them to take their time. -Hope you come and take your time too!

I predict that this year the daffodils will open. I really think they will! As a matter of fact, some of them have already opened! Every year Blithewold officially opens its doors for the season during the peak daffodil bloom. Or thereabouts. And every year we all try to predict when the majority of the 50,000 will be open so that visitors who travel great distances to see the Bosquet in its famous glory won’t be disappointed.

If we could press a button (I picture it as a bright yellow knob that could be smacked with the flat of the palm - or as a giant on/off toggle that could be thrown ceremoniously like a cartoon electric switch) we’d turn them on on a Friday afternoon before a sunny weekend in the exact middle of April. But we gardeners know that flowers open only when they’re good and ready not because we’re standing over them shouting “Go!”. And although some of us aren’t above peeling open a bud to “help it along”, that isn’t a recommended method for coaxing thousands of daffodils. We have to be patient and at Blithewold we cross our fingers too. If the daffs open too early, their admirers won’t be on the ball to enjoy them; too late and they’ll miss the party thrown in their honor.

I can’t say yet when the peak will be this year - predicting that with any accuracy is something only God and Julie can do. I just want to make sure nobody misses anything. The best thing to do is get yourself a membership and start taking Blithewold walks now even if you have to wear ear muffs and galoshes. Watch the weather - the sun is supposed to come out this week which will no doubt inspire a few more buds to unwrap and the night temperatures are still in the 30’s which should ensure that the blooms rest open like they would in a florist’s fridge.

And whether or not you time your timing to be dazzled by daffs during your visit to Blithewold, there are other things to notice too. Look for spring and find it in the Autumn Cherry,

fattly budded quince and forsythia, the Cornelian Cherry,

and adorable pleated baby leaves of the Siebold viburnum.

Are you planning a road trip to see a daffodil show? Ours or someone else’s? Will you wait (with bated breath) for the peak bloom or see what you see when you see it?

I could use some help. Every year about this time I start thinking about getting new roses for the Rose Garden and every year about this time I go certifiably nutty trying to read between the lines of rose catalog descriptions. My kingdom for a disease resistant rose! Some of you already know that we don’t spray the Rose Garden with any kind of fungicide or pesticide - we clean up dead and disease-y leaves and we handpick beetles (though fingers crossed that the milky spore disease that Dan applied a year and a half ago makes a noticeable difference this year). And we’ve begun to interplant the garden with a mixed up mix of shrubs, perennials and annuals so that there’s other stuff going on midsummer besides black spot and beetles.

Traditionally the Rose Garden was a mixed garden heavy on roses. Word is that the family didn’t spend much time in this garden although they had a beautiful moongate built in 1913 and had tall fences erected (similiar to what surrounded their tennis courts) for the climbers to grow on. And Estelle Clements (Bessie’s live-in companion, friend and helper) mentioned in her journal when her favorite roses were in bloom.

June 10, 1922 Most of the standard roses are in bloom and the ramblers are beginning to come out. Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, Waltham Rambler, Goldfinch, Gardenia are flowering and Thousand Beauties is beginning to come out.

(I love the archives!) But the Rose Garden might have been enjoyed even more by the family’s staff. Situated next to the carriage house and barn (where the family wouldn’t have had much occasion to go), and surrounded in the summer by a thorny fence and stone walls, this private eden would have been the ideal place for a smoke break.

Now it’s our entrance garden - a visitor’s first peek at Blithewold’s 33 acres and we desperately want to make a good impression. –Very difficult to do that with unsprayed roses along midsummer! So we asked one of our favorite (retired) garden designers, Ginny P. to give us her thoughts and I’d like some of yours too. I really want to know if any of you have favorite roses that you don’t treat like roses - do you have any that look good even without weekly hosedown of chemistry? I know you do!… One of the Florabundas (our Thursday Rose Garden volunteers) gave us the most perfect rose last year - and just what I’m looking for more of. ‘Morning Has Broken’ is a beautiful butter yellow non-stopper with a sweet fragrance and best of all - not a spot of fungus amongus all summer! And we had it jammed in with annuals probably stifled and it just never stopped or dropped. We also have the ‘Knock Outs’. They don’t knock my socks off but they do seem to stay healthy. Can you recommend any others before I place my order for a boatload more of ‘Morning ..’?

I checked the All American Rose Selections website for recent winners. Winners are chosen based on a list of characteristics including disease resistance. On the page describing their test gardens I found this: “The rose varities in these trials receive only as much care as your average home gardener would be likely to give. In fact, AARS members recently voted to remove fungicidal spraying from the testing process, to ensure that our AARS Winners are natural top performers.” And I have to admit to being irked. Call me naive but I didn’t realize testers were allowed to spray the roses. Just how exactly can they tell if a rose is disease resistant if they’re spraying it? And when exactly did the fungicide ban go into effect? I couldn’t find that information anywhere on their website and so far no one has gotten back to me. I’ll happily try more AARS winners if I know they won the award fair-n-square. Anybody know the scoop?

Blithewold is R.I.ght here!

Like many other tycoons and coal barons in the late 19th century, the Van Wickles decided Rhode Island, a southern facing scoop of shore between Connecticut and Cape Cod, was where to “summer”. The insanely wealthy came en masse in high summer from the sweltering south to build outrageously palatial “cottages” in the cool sea breezes of the Ocean State. Newport was the famous choice of the rich and fabulous but Augustus Van Wickle chose little industrial Bristol because he was able to purchase 70 beautiful bayside acres with deep water moorage out front for his yachts. The quality and quantity of land was more important to him than the prestigious folderol of summering in Newport - the Van Wickles spent long summers and holidays at Blithewold actually enjoying their property rather than endlessly attending society parties.

Rhode Island is pretty special. It’s the smallest state in the union and has the longest name. Remember “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” the next time you play Trivial Pursuit. R.I. was founded on religious freedom, was the first state to declare independence, and the last (of the first 13) to ratify the constitution. The state motto is Hope, our bird is a chicken (Rhode Island Red), the state drink is coffee milk and our official shellfish is the quahog. (Does your state have a drink or a clam?) With a population of just over one million, we’re the size of a small city and everybody knows everybody or is somebody’s cousin. We have a skewed perception of distance and time - no place in the state is more than an hour and a half away from another but to go “off island” is an expedition (we pack a lunch). And we always give directions based on what used to be there (”turn right where the Almacs used to be…”) which tends to frustrate tourists and newcomers. Rhode Islanders garden in about 3 different zones - from 5 to 7a - in a state that could fit inside Yellowstone Park.

Bristol (zone 6) is a town of 22,500 in the East Bay. We are nearly surrounded by salt water - Narragansett Bay on the one hand and Mt. Hope Bay on the other. Bristol is the home of the oldest (longest, loudest, bestest) 4th of July parade in the country and I think Bristol gardens are also particularly outstanding. Bristol has a sizeable Portuguese community, many of whom emigrated from volcano infested Azores and brought a beautiful and utilitarian garden culture with them. A few years ago the Bristol Garden Club helped sponsor a Portuguese Garden tour and I’ve never seen such lovely city gardens - every inch under cultivation with grape arbors, orchards, vegetables and ornamentals in cheek-by-jowl neighborhood backyards.

The climate in R.I. seems particularly conducive to gardening. The weather is constantly changable and we enjoy four lengthy seasons (though spring has a tendency to feel an awful lot like winter up until the moment it feels like summer) that aren’t any longer than they ought to be. Right when we’re truly ready for summer to end, fall falls. And though I was just talking to another professional gardener last night who said she didn’t want winter to be over quite yet (we’re still enjoying our rest), I’m sure in a few weeks it will seem like the most perfect thing to be back outside full-time cutting back and tidying up.

I really love Rhode Island. I moved away when I was 18 and for the next fourteen and a half years the biggest little called to me. “Come back!”, said little rhody. So I did. The Van Wickle McKees loved it too and eventually made Blithewold their year-round residence. Thank you to Jodi at Bloomingwriter for suggesting we all tell our garden’s geography story.

This is it. This is when it all begins. It’s President’s Day. It’s time to sow the sweet peas! And that means the great rush and push of spring begins this week. I’m taking just a moment at home this holiday to mark the seasonal shift with a small awards ceremony. Then I plan to curl back up with my pestering cashmere cat, a restorative cup of tea and a book.

Caroline at Earth Friendly Gardening awarded this blog an E for Excellent and I’d like to pass it back to her and to a few others. First I’d like to say Thank You to everyone who has been reading and joining the conversation here. Your comments have led me and others to your own E for Excellent blogs. The intention with the award is to single out my favorites but I want to spin it a bit back to you. To start the ball rolling, I’ll send an award to Robin at Bumblebee. I haven’t been a faithful reader but her comment on my last post led me to Bumblebee again this morning. I found this post -and others- recommending that you get out to public gardens and flower shows and bring home whatever useful ideas you find there. I loved reading that because it’s a reminder that Blithewold and all other public gardens are a resource just for you. We need you to visit and are really only gratified if you like what you see enough to try it at home. (Deciding to become a member is gratifying for us too - and keeps us in plants and ideas.) Has anyone else out there written about visiting - and being inspired by - a public garden? Please send the link(s) and take an E for Excellent home with you! (Layanee, Jodi, Pam, and Digital Flower, I know you have many posts about public garden visits - please send your favorites and consider yourselves Excellent.)

In 1926 Blithewold’s 50 year old Toon tree (Cedrela sinensis aka Toona sisensis) bloomed for the first time (and was thought to be the first one to bloom in this country). William McKee, Bessie Van Wickle McKee’s second husband, brought the flowers to the Arnold Arboretum in Boston for identification which incited plant hunter Ernest Henry Wilson and botanist Alfred Rehder to travel to Bristol to see what other amazing things the McKee’s might have on their property. Wilson and Rehder discovered a plantman’s paradise. In a letter to her daughter, Bessie wrote, “They were frankly amazed to find so lovely and interesting a place here - and kept saying, ‘Why you have a second arboretum here, we never dreamed there was a place like this.’”

Blithewold was horticulturally rich even before the Van Wickle McKees bought the property. The Gardners who owned “Ferry Hill” in the 1800’s probably planted the original Toon and other exotic trees - many of which are still living today. We know Mr. Gardner designed a meticulously kept English style garden with award winning fruit trees and flower and vegetable beds (where the Enclosed Garden is now), and he grew this area’s first orchids in his greenhouses. Clearly he and the Van Wickle McKees were plant junkies just like you (if you’re a gardener) and me.

Plants have been traveling the world with people like us since the dawn of time and non-natives have been usurping space on the land and in our hearts for pretty much ever. How many of us would hurl whole paychecks at Dan Hinkley for just a few choice finds? For a long time though it was probably only naturalists who knew to be alarmed at how the landscape was changing. Now we’re all more aware. Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) imported for its festive decorative berries is smothering everything in its path (at least in our part of the world) and invisible hitchhikers like Japanese beetle and Hemlock woolly adelgid came in with nursery stock and have proceeded to decimate whole landscapes. (Did you know that Japanese beetles eat 400 plant species? - Look around an infested garden and you’d guess it was that many.) But we addicts still want-desire-need exotic plants in our gardens and we swear we’ll keep an eye on them and we’ll never ever never let another exotic invasive escape cultivation!

It’s not just the view that’s changed - exotics are taxing the whole system. I’ve been reading Bringing Nature Home - How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens by Douglas Tallamy and am feeling so conflicted now about what to plant in my own garden that I am certifiably toons. Just ask Gail. I knew there were arguments for using natives in the landscape - we all talk about using the right plant in the right location and what’s better (less maintenance and fuss) than the plant that would have grown there in the first place? But Tallamy makes a convincing argument for planting natives from a bug’s and bird’s and butterfly/moth’s eye view. Our native creepy crawlies have specifically adapted over the millenia to eat specific plants. Sometimes an exotic plant has an edible leaf chemistry but a lot of times, not. Some people might think “but I don’t want bugs eating my garden because then I’ll have to use pesticides for goodness sake!” and this is Tallamy’s retort: “Somehow along the way we have come to expect perfection in our gardens: the plastic quality of artificial flowers is now seen as normal and healthy. It is neither. Instead, it is a clear sign of a garden so contrived that it is no longer a living community, so unbalanced that any life form other than the desired plants is viewed as an enemy and quickly eliminated. … a sterile garden is one teetering on the brink of destruction.” Nature’s own checks and balances kick in when natives are planted - preditors follow the prey. (If you build it they will come.)

I think Tallamy is (and I am) preaching to the choir. We true gardeners know there’s a balance to life and we want our gardens to be with nature, not against it. My head spins because I still feel justified as a gardener/horticulturist working in one of this country’s only coastal arboreta to try new plants as they become available (plus I want them). But I think we’ve got a bounden duty to plant and teach with our natives as well. (And in my own garden I’ll be going toons but probably not growing them.)

Gail and I were joined last week by an adorably snarky representative from Generation Y who maybe just might definitely be a gardener. Lila is a senior at Barrington High School. Her parents have a vegetable garden that keeps the family out of the produce aisle and she volunteered (of her own volition) with the Deadheads last summer. Gail and I got such a kick out of Lila that we encouraged her to come up with a senior project that would bring her back to the greenhouse this winter. Lila’s thesis goes like this: “The genetic modification of plants presents hazards to ecology and human health that outweigh the benefits of agricultural biotechnology.” For her field work, she brought in Arabidopsis seeds to test Mendel’s Laws - which in turn test my memory of high school and college biology. (Mendel is the one who said - in a nutshell - we carry dominant and recessive traits in our genes and pass a set of those traits to offspring in a ratio of 3:1) And Lila learned “old fashioned” plant propagation techniques from her project mentor, Gail.

One thing that I (as project photographer and nosey parker) noticed while working with Lila was that here was a teenager who, although she plans on studying environmental biology (or something else smart sounding) rather than horticulture, had some serious opinions about gardens and plants. (Seriously wacky opinions but I’ll get to that in a minute.) For all I’ve heard about gardening being a dying trend, I wonder - what about all the children of gardeners? Don’t you credit a parent or grandparent for teaching you -probably by example- to love gardening? My mother took over in our garden where my great-grandfather left off. As a kid, I was pretty disinterested in that garden aside from jumping in leaf piles and climbing Grampy’s trees but I have clear memories of my Mom planting flats of annuals and chewing parsley as she weeded. It wasn’t until college that I realized I inherited their gardening gene. (Maybe the love-to-garden allele is dominant and follows Mendel’s First Law)

While Lila worked on her project, Gail and I finalized the seed orders and discussed the gardens. And Lila chimed in. We may have to thank her for a new a new accent color on the cobalt chair and bench and she thinks we should have orange zinnias in the garden again and is dead-against ornamental vegetables (like our favorites Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’ and ‘Bull’s Blood’ beets) in a mixed garden. “Vegetables are for eating - not looking at!”, she said with conviction. Apparently it’s ok for a few flowers to prettify the vegetable garden though… Gail and I are secretly proud of her opinions and have no intention of following some of her advice.

It’s a sunny, breezy 24 degrees F. outside and a sunny, fragrant, toasty-feeling 62 in the greenhouse. I’d rather be in the greenhouse than out of it right now. If you’re anything like me, in the middle of deep winter on the cusp of the age of aquarius you have a serious case or at least the onset of a serious case of cabin fever. It’s raw outside and it’s funky inside. For a gardener, I think the best cure is to surround yourself with plants.

As I see it there are a couple of options. For the unwilling to venture out, you could gather all of your plant babies together (or make the rounds) and spend some quality time grooming them. Have you started fertilizing yet? If you have, you might notice bugs on the succulent new growth. There’s nothing better than a little pest-icide on a winter’s day. Do you have a favorite method of control? In the greenhouse we duke it out with aphids, whitefly, mealy bug, scale and occasionally spidermite. We recently tried a Neem spray by Organica which cost $9 for a quart. For the difference in price between that and dish soap/insecticidal soap and no discernible difference in results, I have to say I prefer using soap. With soap I can spray with abandon! Neither Gail nor I love the smell of the Neem or the insectical soap, and I’m thinking of switching to my favorite lavender scented dish soap. Doesn’t lavender oil have insecticidal properties too or am I making that up? (Not that there’s much/any real lavender oil in the soap…) When I use any kind of soap, I dilute it so that there’s just the hint of a bubble in the spray and we don’t use it on the ferns or anything else with sensitive pores. We used to use horticultural oil (again, not on ferns, etc) but probably because I do have a tendency to spray with wanton abandon, many poor plants suffered under the onslaught and their leaves burned. It is best to spray -anything- on a cloudy day. Horticultural oil will kill scale but I actually prefer picking them off by hand and washing leaves and stems to control the sooty mold that grows on their sugary poo.

If you’ve already turned your own house into a greenhouse (anytime you pay attention to the plants in your house, you’re in a virtual greenhouse) and you’re ready for an outing - think about going to an actual greenhouse to indulge in a different climate. Not all greenhouses feel tropical but they are warmer than the outdoors and more humid than indoors - a welcome sigh in the middle of dry winter! More often than not there’s a scent or 12 to sip with your breath too. This teeny weeny little cluster of blooms is part of what’s scenting our greenhouse these days. It’s a Sweet Olive - Osmanthus fragrans and it’s delish.

The trip to the Smith College Botanic Garden is still on and there’s not much time left to sign up (the deadline for registration is February 6). Don’t miss this trip - sign up now and cure that cabin fever! Check out the Smith College Botanic Garden site if you need more motivation.

(click on images for a larger view and captions)

Like most people who have eyes and ears and minds that are open, I learn something new every day - but sometimes it’s good to get out and actually be “schooled”. Now that the gardens aren’t commandeering every moment of our time and every scrap of energy in our minds and bodies, we can give ourselves the chance to be taught by something/someone else outside of our daily realm. For Gail and me it’s a winter ritual to go to the RI Nursery and Landscape Assoc. (RINLA) Conference and Trade Show.

I attended the RINLA Conference yesterday and as usual came back with my mind humming and my world a little rattled. Sometimes it’s not just that I don’t already have access to the information that’s being shared but find by listening to someone else (usually an expert) speak about it, I am handed a new way to process or think about the information. For instance, during the panel discussion on invasives (what’s currently being done to limit/control invasive species in RI and MA), Dr. Sue Gordon from URI mentioned worms. She said that as a kid she remembers crashing around the forest in leaf litter that was up to her knees. Now-a-days forest leaf litter is only ever inches thick. Native worms in the U.S. were wiped out in the last ice age and what we’ve got now (we all know this) are European immigrants and we’ve been taught as gardeners to love and feed these lowly dirt munchers. Well. Perhaps too much of a good thing is not so good after all. Worms are not meant to be in our forests and leaf litter that breaks down too quickly is not good for forest ecology (see Teeming with Microbes by J. Lowenfels and W. Lewis). Native plants get stressed and opportunistic invasives get the strangle hold and the balance goes all out of whack. Dr. Gordon who also manages Kinney Azalea Gardens in South County said that she can’t keep a root ball around her nursery plants because the worms have made the soil so friable. Have you ever had worms in a potted plant? Because now that I think of it, it’s awfully hard to keep a wormy pot watered… Maybe - could it be that we shouldn’t go quite so crazy adding organic matter to our gardens - especially those of us in places that have been teetering on the edges of drought? I don’t mean to say that we should stop making compost or ammending the soil in our gardens but I do think we might have to keep an ever more vigilant eye out for all kinds of potential invasives in our local landscapes. And we’ll have to learn methods of moderation. (Doesn’t come down to “all things in moderation”?) And I think we should keep getting “schooled” by the experts. Have you learned or heard anything that rattled your world this winter? (For lists of Blithewold’s winter educational offerings click here and here.) At RINLA I learned more than I knew about using native plants too - stay tuned for that post later (when I’ve done some more reading on the subject!).