Maybe it’s the influence of living through the hoopla surrounding the 4th of July in Bristol, RI (home of the longest running - and longest marching - 4th of July parade in the country) but it seems like life is eventful at the moment.

Last Friday Gail and I celebrated the last hurdle hurdled before our July 4th week got-to-get-the-gardens-in deadline by a marathon planting of the newest Display Garden bed. Even though we were still tucking things in today, it feels like a major event to be officially finished planting!

After finishing that on Friday (and after scraping the most of the dirt from my fingernails and elbow wrinkles) I tagged along to the last garden in Blithewold’s Intimate Garden Tour Series. Our hosts welcomed the group with open arms and showed us what it means to actually live within the landscape - this was no mere garden! (Not that I’m dissing mere gardens - I, myself have one of those.) I have to say honestly that I didn’t expect to covet the house or even the property - 40 acres along a branch of the Westport River (erm, why wouldn’t I want that?). The house is ultra moderne but so site specific - it was designed and built for exactly that spot, no other - and really blurred the boundaries between inside and out which is what they were going for. It works in the dreamiest way possible. One of the couple is a landscape architect and rather than build things like a lot LAs do, he talked about “editing” the landscape. Sure there were elements they added but most of their touch was felt in care-full revealing of views. Sublime and sweet and magnificent all at once and although I can’t bring much of what they did “home” with me, I feel richer for seeing how elegantly it can be done. I’m only sorry that this was the last tour of the season and can’t encourage you to join the group for the next one.

I can encourage you to join us for Blithewold’s evening soirées - the next one is in the North Garden on July 16th - click here for details. That same week the Rhode Island Federation of Garden Clubs is presenting a flower show at Blithewold. Their gala is on July 17th and the show is open on the 18th and 19th. I haven’t found any information on line about how to or whether you can enter your own arrangements and horticultural specimens (and win as many blue ribbons as possible) so if you’re interested in finding out more, ask your favorite garden club member. Meanwhile, I’ll do the same and hopefully have more to tell you about it next time…

Seeing this fellow (and many others) in the last of the shredded leaf pile was eventful for the volunteers and me this morning. Anyone know what it’s going to grow up to be?

Finally the most major event in my recent days is a visit from none other than the famous and favorite Layanee of Ledge and Gardens! Thank you for the strawberries and I hope the sweet peas made the long ride home without wilting!

Gail doesn’t want me to admit this but we’ve both hit The Wall. It’s a June wall and I think we hit it every year as we finish planting and every year we think there’s something really the matter with us. We’ve been so wiped out for the past couple of weeks that Gail’s convinced that she has the flu and I’m so prone to inappropriately timed naps that I’m pretty sure I’ve developed narcolepsy. But what ails us is probably nothing more than “the slows”. Our slows generally coincide with summer humidity to which we haven’t yet acclimatized and that has made the blood in our veins turn to fluffernutter. And we’re ready to be done with the digging, heavy lifting and mental strain of design and placing plants. The good news is we’ve almost finished planting and moving out of the greenhouse. We just have one… more… new bed in the Display Garden to plant up as soon as Fred, Dan and Matt (their summer intern) finish creating something magical. Look out, kiddos - this one’s for you!

And we’re starting to move on to the next phase of garden chores that are perennially romanticized for being therapeutic: We’re weeding and deadheading! The Cutting Garden got a thorough going over this morning by the Deadheads who made their way at a steady pace through the beds.

It’s also time to do battle with the bugs - Dick’s veggie garden has a bad case of potato beetles - shown here in the larval stage. He finds drowning them slowly to be wickedly cathartic (though back breaking). Some of the Deadheads who helped him did not get the same degree of enjoyment out of plucking and drowning…

And the gardens are looking amazing - everyone says so - not just me! It’s good for us to take a minute to really gaze at them and enjoy them at their June peak (so long as we don’t take stopping for a minute as a nap’portunity). In the next week we’ll be lost in deadheading the roses and Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) but right now, this moment, they’re pretty perfect.

We’ve been entertained by a rather exciting electrical rainstorm this afternoon that has brought back some chilly breezes and I’m feeling a titch more energetic all of a sudden (which isn’t to say I couldn’t nap on the bench right now). Do you hit a Wall or get “the slows” this time of year? What do you do to get over it?

And the plants are too. For the last few days we’ve been hit by summer like a sucker punch to the gut with no chance to acclimate - one day it was chilly sweater weather; the next sent us gasping to our storage closets to find a pair of shorts that still fit. Even though we had a good soaking rain at the end of last week, plants are wilted. New growth on things like daphnes (this is Daphne ‘Carol Mackie’ on the right) hasn’t had time to “harden off” and is too wimpy to stand up to early onset hot washcloth summer weather. And the beach roses (Rosa rugosa) are in a floppy full bloom - their scent mingled in the heavy salty air makes breathing deeply seem like a really good idea.

There are weather advisories to stay indoors but at Blithewold the work is outside no matter what the weather - because it’s planting time! We gave the volunteers the day off though to seek A/C and Gail, Joel, Cathy, Lilah and I finished (almost) planting the newest Display Garden bed and then we spread a cool shady layer of shredded leaves. And I pondered on all the ways we give our annuals a fighting chance (even when we plant during a heat wave). Spreading mulch on newly planted beds really gives new plants a leg up by cooling the soil (you might think a thick blanket would warm it, but no…) and slowing evaporation.

And then there’s care-full planting: Have you ever popped an annual out of the ground at the end of the season and noticed that, like canned cranberry sauce, its root ball is still in the shape of a pot? Teasing root bound roots seems like abuse but most of the time it’s a good idea (there are a few things that resent root disturbance - when in doubt, best to look it up). I start by loosening roots from the top down to encourage the spiraling feeders to go south and depending on just how bound the plant was, I scuff the sides and bottom until there’s little evidence the plant was ever in container jail.

I’ve also noticed that some plants fail to thrive when they haven’t been planted deeply enough. If you can feel the edge of the root zone above the level of the soil, it’s been planted too high. Dig again! No cheaters either - if you just pile soil on top and hope for the best, what you’ll probably get is a wash out and an dried husk of a snapdragon. As a matter of fact, if you plant deeply enough to create a pocket all around the plant for catching water you’ll save yourself the disappointment of runoff when you water. My last tip of the day (I’m full of them today, aren’t I?) is to cut back your annuals when you plant them especially if they’re in full forced bloom. I know it’s tough but I’m pretty sure you’ll appreciate the gusto of branching and new blooms later.

Phew. If I hadn’t already retreated to the (dis)comfort of home, I might be inclined to stretch out on the guys’ latest creation. (It’s another Fred Perry original.) You’ve heard of stepables? What about sitables?! The herbs they planted in their hypertufa bench will be an overstuffed cushion in no thyme.

- make light work, so the saying goes. I totally agree! I just read a blog post here by veggie garden guru Barbara Damrosch in which she shares a how-to put your houseguests to work in the garden. What a great idea! I can imagine plying my friends with promises of a super refreshing beverage if only that bed over there got weeded and mulched… But would they still want to stay at chez nous? (As it is now, g&ts and pots of tea are doled out with no strings attached.) Nearly every visitor to Blithewold that catches a group of us working says “Can you come weed at my house too?” I always want to say, “Hold your horses - my house first!” When the volunteers are all happily weeding and chatting and planting and chatting and having a tea break and chatting I wonder why I never hear about garden work parties. Just think: like a bookclub or movie group you could meet every month at someone’s house and help them plant a bed, build a wall, weed the back forty or dead head the zinnias. The host could be expected to provide something delicious from the garden or the local pizza place. Sounds ideal, doesn’t it? Or do you prefer a solitary putter? When I work on my own I like not having to worry about being organized. I can shooting-gallery-bear back and forth to the shed for tools and get lost in a catatonic gaze now and then. But on the other hand, when I have help things actually get done!

Today we had many many hands helping at each end of the property. Some of the Deadheads went to the Rose Garden to spiff it up before our annual meeting tomorrow night. I think attendees attention will be stolen from the volunteers’ efforts though by the Clematis ‘Nelly Moser’ that is poised to engulf the Visitor Center and the sublime and luminous Clematis ‘Guernsey Cream’ as well as all the roses that are bursting to bust into bloom.

At this end of the property we motored right through planting more (more! more!) in the new bed. For the record, I am LOVING the new bed. We placed groves of basils (Pistou, Minette, Boxwood, African Blue and Queenette), rivers of Swiss Chard (Flamingo Pink, Vulcan, Oriole Orange, Canary Yellow) and acres of grasses and Dahlias among other things too numerous to mention on this page. And after tea the entire group of Deadheads converged on the Cutting Bed - another layer of which was planted in about 10 minutes. It’s amazing how quickly it all comes together with so many hands to help!

p.s. Remember the plant we weren’t sure was a weed? It’s my new favorite! Turns out it’s Rudbeckia ‘Green Wizard’ finally in bloom (yes, that’s a bloom you betcha) and we planted it on purpose last year.

Gail and I have been thinking about the big new bed in the Display Garden at least since last year. We shifted all of the keepers out of the Idea Beds last fall to make way for the new bed and then waited (im)patiently for the guys to dig it all up, re-grade, re-sod, place pavers and decorate.

(Check out Fred’s new fountain! - the guys made it from recycled greenhouse gutters and a parking lot stone that the caterers kept crashing into.) All the while we kept our eyes glued to the size and shape of the new bed and tried to form some how-should-we-plant-it-? ideas in our heads.

I think Gail and I have different methods for idea making but what I realized again (I realize this every year when we plan and place the gardens) was that we are amazingly in tune with each other and what we want the gardens to look like. Gail has memorized all of the plants we grow and makes copious lists of them on random sheets of paper and in notepads. We talk about themes and schemes - for instance, one bed this year will be heavy on green and pink flowers; others are cottage-potage garden mixes. Gail organizes the plants in the greenhouse by color and then by garden and meanwhile forms a mental image. I on the other hand am not particularly organized and if I’m not looking directly at a plant, I’ll pretty much have forgotten what it looks like. I can form hazy mental pictures of colors and textures but really need to “see” what I’m thinking. I got out Gail’s lists and my tiny tin of watercolors and tried to capture my vague fog of thought but it wasn’t until I actually went out this morning (while I was still fresh and well caffeinated) and started “plunking” that I could begin to see what the bed was going to grow up to be.

After Gail came to work and said “Yup - that looks good!” and Tara approved the holes, we got right down to planting. It’s only a start but the bed I have been calling “the big empty” suddenly today needs a new name! How do you come up with the design for your beds and gardens? Do you ever work with a partner?