Small Goodies

I spent most of the day working on Confidence Camp. Cathy came over and we divided and packaged a lot of the items that participants will receive and learn how to use. I spent most of the rest of my time refining "lesson plans."

Meanwhile, some more areas of the rock garden are looking nice. This area of color is great. The yellow is Moneywort, Lysemachia nummularia 'Goldilocks.' This has totally surprised me by looking better than ever since I've revived the rock garden. It really prefers something more moist. There are violets, and a Sempervivum Margaret gave me that stays quite red.

This is another of the miniature daffodils I bought a long time ago but has come back. This is 'Rip VanWinkle' with violets and some of the first of the moss phlox to open behind it.

This is a daffodil I split last year that had gotten all bunched up. The other patch didn't come up, but the ones I left in the rock garden did. They are really too tall, but I put them at the very bottom, so that works. These are a tarzetta daffodil, variety 'Erlicheer.' The leaves persist way too long, so I need to figure out what else I can also put there for later in the year.

I just have to show you the Sempervivum 'Gold Nugget' again. It's starting to change from red to gold!

And for the final act of the day, we will switch to the front flower bed. This is the sunburned Brunnera I bought at the end of the summer last year. It's the first of my Brunnera to bloom this spring! Variety is 'Variegata.' I'm really happy with this one. I really bought all of my Brunnera for the foliage, but have been delighted with the early spring forget-me-not-like flowers.

It still hasn't rained, but it's been plenty windy!

See A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Sonnenberg House and Gardens

 The Sonnenberg Mansion in Canandaigua is a 40-room house built in the late 1800s in the Queen Anne style. This house is a little older and smaller than the Stan Hywet mansion we visited in 2016. Sonnenberg means "sunny hill." It was not the name of the owner. This was the summer home of Frederick Thompson, a New York City banker. His wife Mary was the governor's daughter.

The Conservatory is the oldest working wooden greenhouse in the northeast, and it is the oldest in the United States that has not been modified. It's considered one of the finest privately owned greenhouses. The estate is now operated as a non-profit arm of the NY Parks and Recreation Department, but the greenhouses were originally private.

The estate was opened to the public in 1973, but a lot of repairs and restoration have been ongoing since that time. A number of the gardens could have used a lot of attention, but it was still worth the visit. This is the formal Italian Garden. The view was the best from an upstairs porch of the house because you could see the fleur-de-lis design of the plantings.

The Moonlight Garden featured all white flowers. Many were supposed to be fragrant. This is Casa Blanca lily.

The Old Fashioned Garden used a popular 17th Century design. There were boxwood hedges with perennial beds inside and a long pergola down the middle.

I think they are saving money on the plants and putting the fund toward restoration. Most of the plants were things you could commonly buy at a good greenhouse. I guess that's OK for now. There were a couple I did not know. This is Macedonian Scabious, Knautia macedonia. Japanese anemone was in bud, but none were open. I don't think I've seen that before either.

My favorite garden was the Rock Garden, although there is still a lot of repair work to do. First of all, this is hugely different from my rock garden. Tons of rock were hauled in to make a miniature canyon and streams. They are currently raising money to restore the water circulation system so the 500 feet of streams and pools will function. And it's big- at least an acre. This is part of the constructed "canyon." You could walk a gentle incline through the middle or go up the stairs to the right.

The central path went under this arch, then climbed and curved around to cross the top of the arch as a bridge.

At the top, there was one more level of an observation deck. It was shaded by a plant that was actually planted for the original estate. This is a climbing hydrangea, Hydrangea anomala, native to Asia. It's over 85 years old. The bark peels like sycamore. This was also new to me.

I guess if you want more pictures from Sonnenberg you'll have to hope I have a "slow news day" in the near future. This is about enough for now.

But I'll show you one orchid from the conservatory. They had a tropical room, a desert room, and orchid room, and a couple more. There was a recording playing with info, but I didn't catch all that it said. Anyway, this is Brassia arachnoidea, one of the spider orchids.

When I say "we" went to the garden... Marie and I, Marie's brothers and their wives, Melanie, and Ruth and Dan all went. It was quite a production. But I spent a fair amount of the day on my own so I could take all the pictures I wanted and read the signs.

The house was open too. I got a few pictures of the interior.

Tonight, we are at Larry and Pam's house. Working our way east.

See Stan Hywet

Garden Solutions

 I told you there would be more gardens. Did you expect one so soon? I found where the demonstration rock garden is at the nursery where they develop the SunSparkler hybrid sedums. The name of the company is Garden Solutions. And they've lableled the space in case you weren't sure what it was. (This kind of thing always cracks me up.)

I'm just going to show you several long shots of the gardens today. Of course I took many pictures of individual plants, but I'm loving how these are giving such a good idea of the kind of landscape you can create with a rock garden.

Rock gardens can vary from places like this where they brought in big rocks, and so they can even use shrubs and small trees and it won't overwhelm the rocks, to rocks with tiny nooks where the plants are "micro." The rock garden at Matthaei Botanical Garden in Ann Arbor is of that type. (I have some pictures of it, but not with me) Mine is somewhere in between. Shrubs would overwhelm mine. In fact, now that I'm finding more varieties of sedums, I'm liking the 14" high mounds of geraniums less and less. But they can be thinned and removed gradually as I get more of the plants I like better.

The emphasis of this garden is to create a visual treat by varying foliage color and texture. That is also my goal, so I got a lot of nice ideas. I actually have (and/or have killed) an awful lot of the same plants, not counting shrubs) that they have used.

Of course, most of these plants do have interesting flowers at various times of the season. Those are just like frosting on the cake. But you can easily see that the color palette includes yellow, green, deep red, purple, blue-purple, and variegated leaves. They have plants that are spiky, fuzzy, bumpy, mounded, sprawling, etc.

I saw several plants that I have no idea what they are. Some were labeled, others I'll have to sleuth out. And of course, I covet several. It would just be too much for today, but maybe another day, later, I'll show you some individual plants.

So this is in Hudsonville, on Port Sheldon Street. It's a wholesale nursery company, so there is no one to answer questions and nowhere there to buy plants. But the gardens are open, right in front, for people to wander through.

I met up with friend David Snoek for lunch, and finally got to meet his wife Carol! Then we toured the garden in the rain. Actually the rain made the colors of the plants look very nice. Sometimes sunlight washes out the colors in pictures.

Now I'm in Ann Arbor for the night. Pretty beat, since I had a lot of final things to do before I left home this morning. Lots of heavy rain on the drive. It let up just so we could visit the garden! What a quality day!

See SunSparkler Sedums

Betsy's Rock Garden

Today was mostly about the rock garden. Mine. Dave even helped with a project. But I'll do a rock garden report, maybe tomorrow.

Yesterday, I went to my friend Betsy's. She used to own the Icelandic sheep (link below). She loves to garden, and also to know the names of plants. She wanted to give me some things for the rock garden.

Her rock garden is beautiful. It's everything a nice rock garden should be- stuffed full to bursting with succulents and other low-growing perennials. She was embarrased, saying there were too many weeds, but I said they would hardly show in the pictures. Seriously.

She wanted to give me plants for my rock garden because when things get as nicely crowded as hers you have to keep thinning things all the time. She gave me a whole bucket full! There are a couple of layers of plants in there.

I also went to a nursery that wasn't very much farther up the road and found more rock garden plants that are supposed to be hardy.

She has more to give me (and I have some to give her), but I said we had to stop for now because I have to plant all those! I have most of them in, but there are still a few more to get in the ground. I'm also working hard on the record keeping. I really have to completely start over because there is so little alive and/or in the same places as they were before. The record sheets for each mapped niche were getting filled up anyway, so it was time to do it. I spent a lot of time on this today, but I think I've got the method locked in now, so it shouldn't take so long for the others. Although I do have to make some decisions about some of the spaces and what is really going to be in each one. For example, NOT just a pile of the Cranesbill that I've temporarily left in place.

And what was the fun thing Dave and I did last night? We went to see the new Indiana Jones movie. It is suitably ridiculous and a perfect ending to the series.

See More About the Icelandic Sheep

More Matthaei

 
One more day of Matthaei Botanical Gardens "big picture," posts, and maybe a few more individual plants tomorrow. There is so much I could share from there, but other things are happening too, so I don't want to get totally hung up in Ann Arbor.

Anyway, I'll start with the bonsai collection. When I was there it was kept in a sealed off courtyard and the public only got to see them a couple of times a year. There's a club that meets regularly to work on these little trees. A few of the specimens were ones that were started so long ago that I must have seen them way back when.

However, I think my favorite is this one, begun in 2004. I'm drawn to the style that looks like miniature landscapes. That's sometimes called Penjing. I like the design aspect of the single trees, but ultimately the landscapes make my heart sing. This is a larch, Larix laricina. Keep in mind these are real trees, carefully trimmed so they look full grown but are only about two feet tall.


There is a small rock garden. I also love rock gardens. This one is not my favorite style, but it is more traditional. There was one section that had some lovely blooms.



I also wanted to show you the inside of the Conservatory, just to give an idea of scale. This is the tropical room. There is a similar-sized temperate room and a smaller desert house.



But I saved the "best" for last. It's only best because I also have a strong personal connection with this garden. It's a traditional Tudor Herb Knot Garden.

The knot is in the center design. This one then has four large beds arranged around the knot with paths between. The beds are divided by fragrant, medicinal, kitchen, and everlasting herbs.

The thing is... this garden was built from scratch during the years I worked there. See all those border plants. You might recognize the boxwood with the lighter green leaves. The other border plants that look somewhat blue-green are lavender (herb- pretty purple flowers- lovely fragrance). Care to guess how many of them it takes to surround those garden spaces? I don't recall the number of boxwood, but it's 2000 lavender plants. I know. I planted almost all of them. In one day. In the rain. I only helped with the boxwood... not nearly so impressive a memory.

But, again, from nothing, this is now a beautifully designed space with mature plants and plenty of educational opportunities.



In other news: I did a bunch of stuff for the Writers' Rendezvous, did some other little tasks that seem to take more time than they should, and wrote a chapter in The Bigg Boss. That took a while. I wrote half of it, scrapped it and started over because it was boring- a real snoozer. The newer version is much better. Called my friend Ester, and she helped me craft a missing piece of this entire book to make it immensely better!

	See Constructed Wetland
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