It's going to be HUUGE!

If you are a garden blogger, you might consider going to the Garden Bloggers Fling. This year's fling is in the Washington, D.C. area, June 22-25. Not only do you get to see a wide variety of public and private gardens, there is lots of swag plus the opportunity to win stuff.

To qualify, you need to be a semi-active blogger and most of your blog needs to involve gardening of some sort. The garden bloggers I met last year ranged from gardening experts to a few bloggers like me. The one common denominator is they all love gardens. They are also a friendly bunch, eager to share their knowledge and experience if you but ask. This year's tour includes a winery visit and a dessert bar. Neither appeal to me, but then I am old and ascetic.

I'm wavering over whether to attend this fling as I have something else going on the week before. I haven't been to DC since the 1971 May Day protest against the Vietnam War. At the time, I was not yet a gardener but even had I been, gardening was not the point then.

But YOU could go! And share your pix. And if I can't attend, I can be there vicariously through YOU!

Not hip to be square

I recently checked out a satellite shot of my property from Google maps. The last time I looked, it showed the raised beds being constructed in the middle of the backyard. Now those all are done. There are a few things missing, like the newest trees, but all in all, this is a fairly accurate snapshot.

I am very left brained, and my mind favors grids, square corners, symmetry, etc. (The concrete guy who poured the driveway had to talk me into adding the swoop to the front walk.) Yet when I consider the many gardens we saw on the Garden Bloggers Fling, rarely were these design concepts employed. Instead, there were curved beds and meandering paths and visual surprises. Stuff was layered - plants, hardscape, houses. The gardens looked both deliberate and casually constructed.

I also have a tendency to position plants in a patchwork of singles (maybe because of quilting?) In the Fling gardens, I saw instead groupings of odd numbers along side the larger singles. A designer from Toronto (sorry! I am so bad with names!) explained that with singles, there is no place for the eye to rest, whereas groupings and masses draw the eye.

My yard includes almost all these plants, but not arranged like this.

When I saw the sedum below, every which one I have, I immediately wanted to drive home and rearrange the plants by the front walk.

When I did get home and looked at that bed, I made some interesting observations: the Dragon's Blood had migrated to one end of the bed and some of the Purple Emperor looked great while other plants struggled (the bed gets variable amounts of sun), the Autumn Joy and Lemon Ball were positioned willy-nilly, the coreopsis did not "work" with the sedum, etc. I didn't want to risk moving plants in the midsummer heat, but I'm making mental notes for next spring.

I've also been looking at garden design books from the library. These are visually frustrating, as the photos show what one can do with ACRES of rolling countryside. I find it difficult to translate the sweeping vistas to something I can use in my rectangle of a yard. But I am picking up some useful knowledge. We'll see how it manifests on my third of an acre plot.

We saw plants, too

It occurred to me that I have posted very few photos of plants from the Garden Bloggers Fling. Believe me, we saw LOTS of plants, from acres of daylilies to native cactus. I didn't photograph many, just the ones to remind me of this or that.

These orange lilies remind me of the "ditch" daylilies growing in my yard, but in color only. They are Turk's Cap Lilies, a native wildflower. The blossoms perch on long stems. They can spread to form large colonies, but usually not in cultivation, where growing conditions may be less than ideal (like my claybound yard).

At the Eloise Butler Wildfower Garden

This plant is growing in my blueberry bed, among the milkweed. I did not plant it, nor could I figure out what it might be. Now I know: it's Indian Hemp. It's the kind of cannabis one makes fiber with, not the kind one smokes. It's related to both Dogbane and Milkweed. It's also poisonous.

At the Eloise Butler Wildfower Garden

This plant is also in my yard. I did plant it and I do know that it is Blue False Indigo. I did not know it would get so big. So now I am thinking I need to move it to a location more accommodating to its future size.

At Vera's Garden

I used to have the tall reddish plant in my yard (if it is Red Husker Penstemon - I need to replace it), but that is not why I took this picture. Below it grows what I have always considered a weed. And of course, I can't confirm it's identity, but it is some kind of mallow or althea. We were shocked that it is deliberately allowed into the garden, along with other "weeds" like mullein (said the gardener spreading fleabane seeds all about).

At Vera's Garden

I was impressed with this tall specimen of what turned out to be Queen of the Prairie. It prefers moist soil, but so does Joe Pye and it grows in my yard, albeit through the deck. I bet I could get this going, too.

In the garden of "Ruth," a member of Wild Ones. At least, I think that is where I took this pic.

This is bent grass, the same kind of grass used on golf courses. Separating garden beds, it looks like a smooth green carpet. The owners said it was there when they bought the house, in the 1930's. It takes some special care, which made me remove it from my list of must-haves, but it still was a spectacular contrast to the lush garden beds.

At the garden of Lee and Jerry Shannon

My front yard is made up of primarily purple and yellow plants of one sort or another, but mostly purple. When I saw this Sunkist Arborvitae, I immediately pictured it as an anchor plant in my front yard.

At Bailey's Display Garden

Ditto this Golden Spirit Smokebush.

At Bailey's Display Garden

My Blue Muffin Viburnum refuses to produce the profusion of blue berries it is named for, so when I saw one lush with fruit, I had to snap it just to prove to myself that it is me, not the plant.

At Bailey's Display Garden

And finally, we have this echinops. I thought it might be some kind of rattlesnake master, but it is actually a kind of globe thistle. The pollinators *loved* it.

At Squire House Gardens

The Garden Bloggers Fling has filled my head with so many ideas, I barely know where to start. But hopefully I will at least keep in mind the plants above that I want to add to my yard.

"It's easy!"

So said Wouterina Riana DeRaad when I swooned over her garden sculpture park. "When you start, you won't want to stop!" That latter I'm sure was meant to be encouraging, but for someone like me, it also serves as a warning: DANGER! DANGER! NEW HOBBY AHEAD!

This stop on the Garden Bloggers Fling was the epitome of garden art and creativity. While I would love to take a workshop, a little voice in my head carps that this is not my art form. The artist learned to work with stucco when she and her former husband purchased a fixer-upper, the themes in these functional yet whimsical pieces reflect her personal history and upbringing, and living in the country, she can put pretty much anything she damn well pleases in her yard and on her house (including the red flying Pegasus from a Mobil oil ad, which I neglected to photograph).

I have some garden art in my yard, all purchased or gifted. If I wanted to create my own, what would my media be? What would be the theme? I'll have to ponder that a bit.

Other examples of creativity abounded on the garden tour, from the use of natural materials to the repurposing of a variety of objects.

Deconstructed weather vane hides chicken wire fence

Saw bowling balls in several gardens - is this a thing?

Sticks...

...more sticks...

... another stick.

Tea kettles to planters

Bird cage?

Shovel birds

Something or other as plant holder

One lump or two?

It's a garden party!

Stone bird bath

Painted lumber

One of the more intriguing DYI projects we came across were these concrete planters. They are not actually concrete but styrofoam containers treated to resemble concrete.

We were first fooled, then amazed. But now that I Googled for some instructions, I see that they are not such a secret to the Internet.

After seeing so much creativity everywhere we went, I came home wanting to somehow duplicate everything. But do I really want a bowling ball in my garden? Where would I put faux concrete planters and what would I put in them? Where would I find enough straight sticks to make a trellis, big or small? And then there is the underlying talent, which I seem to lack - my stuff ends up looking "homemade" instead of "handmade".

But I bet I could put together a door mat from bottle caps.

What makes a Japanese garden?

While on the Garden Bloggers Fling in Minneapolis, we visited (oh so briefly) the Japanese garden at the Como Botanical Zoo and Conservatory. There was a lot of hosta and pachysandra. Today my son and I visited the Japanese garden exhibit at our own Botanical Conservatory. More hosta and pachysandra. Hmm. That got me wondering just what exactly constitutes a Japanese garden.

I consulted Google and wound up at a Wikipedia entry. Among other info, the elements that make up a Japanese garden are listed. I didn't take many photos at the Japanese garden at Como, but I could see the elements elsewhere in not-very-Japanese gardens (including my own), so they must be somewhat universal.

Water

I've long considered adding a water feature to my garden, but a little research reveals just how much work they are. Also, my imagination has been limited to the rubber ponds sold in big box stores. However, a water feature may be a pond, a stream, or even a dry stream of white sand or polished river stones. It's the metaphor that counts.

Rocks and sand

Rocks and sand may be incorporated into the water feature (see pix above), or installed in their own right, as garden art, a path, a wall, a border, etc. I confess the use of rock in my garden is limited to pea gravel around the AC unit and under the spigot, in the interest of keeping each area clear of weeds. I could add a couple of small boulders for interest.

Garden architecture

If a shed counts as garden architecture, I have this one covered. I don't think that is the intention, although there are countless garden buildings around, some practical, some rustic, some formal, some cute, some functional, some that are all of the above. I am still considering a screened in gazebo like the first photo below.

Garden bridges

No bridges in my flat, flat yard. I dimly recall crossing some bridges here and there on the Fling, especially in the Japanese garden. Apparently, no pix, though. Does an arch count as a bridge? Probably not, but I'd still like to add an arch somewhere. Or maybe my pergola counts as an arch?

Stone lanterns and water basins

I *do* have a stone lantern! Only because a garden design from long ago included some elements of a Japanese garden (I now realize). Do bird baths count as water basins? If so, I have that, too.

Garden fences, gates, and devices

There were some great gates (which I neglected to photograph) on the Fling. I have a (chain link) fence with three gates (two cedar). I'm contemplating replacing the chain link with a privacy fence, which could be simply functional or serve as a visual enclosure. OR it could be incorporated into the garden design as a wall for art, trellises, etc. Devices are trickier. The example on the wiki entry is of a shishiodoshi, designed to scare away birds. All I use are strips of mylar.

Trees and flowers

Interestingly, plants appear near the bottom of the list of elements of a Japanese garden. Naturally, we saw plants everywhere we went on the Fling, especially hostas, hostas, and MORE hostas. (There is a Minnesota Hosta Society. Also, I think it is a state law that every yard contain at least one hosta.) In a Japanese garden, plantings may be selected to hide something, provide a backdrop, or create a vignette. I recently planted a pagoda dogwood and was excited to see what it might look like one day, but only with selective pruning, I was sad to learn.

Fish

When one thinks of fish in a garden, koi immediately spring to mind. If one has a pond, the next natural step might be to add fish. But I have noticed quite a few garden art pieces that are either fish or are meant to imitate fish (like salmon leaping among the shrubs). Fish would be one step too far for me, but maybe some colorful ceramic koi would be a nice addition to the hosta bed.