Back to my Color Scheme

 

Since my garden here is so tiny, and since I enjoy color harmonies, I had every intention of sticking to pinks and blues and purples throughout my garden, but bulb packages can lie.  The trouble is, I have a hard time being ruthless.  Another Blotanical gardener, Jack from Gardens at Waters East, compared it with a writer editing scrip.  As a writer I am well aquainted with the trauma of having to cut out paragraphs and even chapters just because they don't quite fit in.

That's what happened in my garden today.  Beautiful yellow and red striped tulips and even some plain yellow and some soft orange ones had to go. 

I couldn't quite bring myself to remove all the yellows though.  They do add a touch of sunshine to the overall scene.

 

I haven't tackled this part yet, so tell me, what would you do?

Quick change from logs to Rocks in my Cottage Garden

When we moved here, there were two tiny raised flower beds enclosed by poles.  I didn't like them much, but my initial chore of turning the lawn into more garden consumed my time.

That was two years ago. 

Last week we arranged to trade our SUV in for a very small Kia, Rio, and I decided to get some rocks from a near by field while I still had the SUV.

  I removed the rotten wood from around the beds, and stacked the rocks without doing much damage to the creeping flocks and rock cress.




I love the results and it didn't cost me anything but my time and the Gas to get the rocks.

 

Tulip Time

I love them all: Tulips, sweet scented hyacinths

and drumstick primroses

Always wishing for that little piece of Heaven

The other day I told my husband that I wished I had a little piece of land with some chickens and a cow and plenty of space to garden.


The only problem is that I could barely handle it twenty years ago when we had exactly that.  I worked at the market garden from before dawn to after dusk; we could never find where the chickens hid the eggs; the cow broke out of her stall and got into the corn mash and died, and the flowers got eaten by the goats.


I never had the time I would have needed to putter in a flower garden anyway.

At sixty two and sixty nine years old, I doubt that we could do much better than we did back then when we were in our prime.


I do long for my own little piece of Heaven, but at sixty two I guess I can hold off a few more years and wait until I get to garden in the real thing.


In the mean time I do have a little bit of Heaven - sort of.  The weeds do keep coming up and the rose leaves do get eaten by the nasty little green worms, but beyond all that there is just a teeny tiny glimpse of what Heaven must be like.

The Best Winter Medicine - wandering through my past Cottage Gardens

When I have winter fever I know where to look for help.  Here are some of the views of my former cottage gardens that act as medicine to my spring-hungry soul.

Early Signs of Spring

I looked out the window this morning and actually saw...the lawn! Yes, after about 2 months of snow cover, I can now see patches of grass. Mind you, it's still matted down and brown, but it's there!

With temperatures flirting with 50 degrees, I was on a hunt to spot some signs of spring. Lo and behold, I found some. Yeah!

 Two little daffodil sprouts

More daffodils and tulips

May 15 is considered the last-frost date here. So we still have a while to go, but at least the early spring bulbs are starting to emerge. It made me so happy to see these and now I simply can't wait for ALL the snow to disappear!

What's Blooming This Month? April 2014

April showers bring May flowers...
Everything here is just on the cusp of blooming and today's rain showers will no doubt help them along. Spring has definitely sprung and it's wonderful to see something new in bud every day.

Here's what's blooming in my Long Island, NY garden this month:

I planted this Helleborus "Cotton Candy" (Lenten Rose) last year, late in the season, along with the Chinodoxa bulbs. I am so happy to see them both blooming!

The daffodils have started to bloom. I love the small heads of these type with the orange trumpets. And no matter how much clean up I do, I still find oak leaves everywhere!

These white tulips are a few days away from bloom. Behind them, the Endless Summer Hydrangeas are starting to show signs of life.

 New this year are these cheery Primrose. A blast of color in the cool, early spring days.

More Chinodoxa, complete with rain drops! (Read more about these here)

I love spring - seeing all the new growth, hearing the birds singing and feeling the warm sun on my face. Can't wait to see it all unfold in the next few weeks.

And that's what's going on in my part of the world! Be sure to check out what else is growing around the country this month over at May Dreams Gardens "Garden Blogger Bloom Day" list.

Mohonk Mountain House - Part 1

The Mohonk Mountain House is located in the Catskills region of New York. In 1869, Albert Smiley purchased 280 acres of land and a ten-room inn at the heart of a 26,000-acre natural area in the Shawangunk Mountains. Smiley envisioned a peaceful retreat where people could enjoy the beauty of nature in a spectacular setting. What started as a ten room inn and tavern is now a historic New York hotel that can accommodate up to 500 guests.
 

The gardens are very well known and over the years, have attracted amateur and professional gardeners who come to attend horticultural lectures, demonstrations and workshops. To quote from The Story of Mohonk, "Gardening with Mr. Smiley was dangerously near a passion." Over the years, succeeding generations of the Smiley family have tried to live up to his gardening standards. The gardens reflect the influence of the French and Italian, but mostly English styles of landscaping of the mid-19th century. On the first few days I was there, every inch of the property was covered with a thick, dense fog. It was beautiful and mysterious at the same time.

The tulips were just about finishing up for the season and the moisture from the fog clung to their petals.

The formal gardens lie between the Mountain House and the surrounding woodlands. Visitors are encouraged to wander through the beds and admire what is blooming. Here, the alliums were towering over the pansies. Beyond this bed were others, waiting to be planted with summer blooming annuals and tropicals.

266 arborvitae make up this fantastic maze. I'll admit, the fog made it even more spooky to me...

A beautiful young cooper beech stood alone in the fog. The property has several fine specimens of copper, weeping and cut-leaf beech trees.

After a day and a half of fog, the sun did make an appearance and transformed everything into a glowing sight of color, shadows and majesty. Stay tuned for my post on Part 2 of my trip to Mohonk Mountain House.

Tulips in Full Bloom

The tulips are in full bloom all over my town. I think the best looking tulips are ones planted in clusters rather than a single line of them. In landscape design, you often read about the rule of sticking to one color or color family when planting in groups. But I think this unofficial rule can be broken when it comes to tulips. Look at this grouping I found along a local parking lot the other day. 

The mass of colors from tulips of the same form are simply show stopping. 

I wish I had this much space to plant this many all together!

100,000 Bulbs in Bloom!

100,000 bulbs, over 500 varieties in bloom. With beautifully landscaped grounds and so many things blooming, this garden reminded me of Keukenhof in Lisse, Holland. But it was actually the private home of my friend Deb Van Bourgondien on Long Island. Debbie is the executive vice president of Van Bourgondien and Sons, which sells bulbs via its Van Bourgondien catalog and website dutchbulbs.com.

Every fall she plants more and more bulbs on her property - a task I'm sure her neighbors thank her for every spring.

Pulling into the driveway I was met with a sea of yellow daffodils, beds of tulips and two enormous cedar trees.

The side bed was anchored by two gorgeous Saucer Magnolia trees (Magnolia x Soulangiana) in full bloom.

Because of all the different varieties, the bloom times were different. Each bed had some tulips or daffodils that were blooming, some that were still in bud and others that had just finished.

Everywhere I walked, something new was blooming and under the foliage of the bulbs, I could see the new stalks of late spring/early summer blooming perennials, like Hostas and Peonies, peeking through the soil.

I was so happy to have explored her garden and am in awe at the amount of work that has been put into it. I can't wait to go back again soon to see what the garden looks like in the summer!