Wayne hosting a party in his garden.

It is with deep sadness that I write of the death of Wayne Winterrowd on September 17. He was 68.

Wayne was a gardening expert, knowing intimate details about each plant and how to design them into a garden. He was also a prolific garden writer. He wrote from hands-on experience and often wove in humor, personal stories and history.

I credit Wayne for making me a better writer. When I started writing my first book, Wayne gave me solid advice—develop your voice, share your opinions, use your humor. Twenty years later he offered to write a blurb for the back of Suzy Bales’ Down-To-Earth Gardener. The publisher sent him a copy of unbound pages. Wayne told me he was enjoying the book, savoring it by reading only two pages a day. That way as he finished each spread he could use it to change the paper in the bottom of his birdcage. It fit perfectly.

Thankfully, I saved all of Wayne’s letters going back to 1989. I recently spent an afternoon rereading them. It brought back many wonderful memories—our week together in San Francisco, his birthday party in New York, visits to his home and garden and much more.

Wayne with his partner, Joe Eck created North Hill, their personal garden in Vermont. I have visited many times and I have included some pictures of their garden from my last visit on June 24, 2005.

Wayne was the author of two of my favorite books, Annuals for Connoisseurs and Annuals and Tender Plants for American Gardens. He co-authored two other books, Our Life in Gardens, and Living Seasonally, with Joe Eck his business partner and spouse.

Wayne will certainly be missed. We are all lucky that his books will live on.

The Japanese primroses in all of their glory!

The more formal garden.

Guests always admire the primroses.

The vegetable garden

What is the ethical thing to do when you discover a beautiful pumpkin hanging over the fence from your neighbor’s property? Is it mine to harvest and enjoy or should I return it to the neighbor? After pondering this for a few minutes, I decided to simply write a note thanking them for their generosity.

The pumpkin vine scaled a six-foot high fence to hang in our yard.

These pictures of the topiary displays from the Montréal Botanical Garden were sent to me in an email. I wanted to share them. Just when I am overwhelmed trying to keep up with the weeding and watering of my garden, I was overwhelmed with the craftmanship and attention to detail involved in these topiaries.

We all should visit. Here is the address:

Montréal Botanical Garden
Place page
4101, Sherbrooke Est
Montréal, QC H1X 2B2, Canada

(514) 872-1400

August 30, 2010

I met cardinal lobelia in Hillsdale, New York one August at least forty years ago. Turning a corner after walking up a dirt path to visit a neighbor, I was startled to see a field of scarlet flowers where a pond had quietly sat in April. It was one of the most beautiful Meadows I have ever seen.

 Cardinal lobelia, or cardinal flower as it is sometimes called, is Lobelia cardinalis in Latin. As you might have guessed, it likes its feet wet.  In the Adirondacks, upstate New York’s park, where I usually spend August, it blooms in groups of two or three plants along river and stream banks. I have never again seen more than a few plants together. Short lived, it reseeds readily where it is happy.  I planted a few along the side of our lake cottage and I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will spread with abandon.

If there is a garden Mecca, I’m sure it is in Provincetown, MA. Located at the tip of Cape Cod, P’town is best known for it’s National seashore, which covers two-thirds of the town’s land area. Yet, once you leave the seashore there are gardens everywhere, in front of stores, houses and restaurants. Flowers dominate front yards, not lawns. Each garden is unique, no cookie cutter designs, no copying of the neighbors. Each garden reflects the owners’ personality, likes and dislikes. Consequently, walking around town is a joy.  Take a look at the pictures below:

Even the parking lot has a garden.

Window boxes of flowers adorn many store fronts.

This house had a meadow instead of a front lawn.

The most popular hotels have gardens.

A walkway is lined with flowers.

Out with the lawn, in with flowers!

A garden in front of a restaurant.

I was lucky enough to be in town for the yearly garden tour hosted by PAAM, Provincetown Art Association and Museum. On the tour I met several guests that have visited year after year. One group said they attended many different garden tours in many different cities but they had come here for fifteen years straight and it was the best. I returned home with lots of newly inspired ideas. Here are some of pictures I took at the tour.

Front yards are ever so much more interesting when planted with flowers.

Ornamental grasses and flowers mingle in this front yard.

A flower lined path makes the house more inviting.

Even narrow front yards can be plated with flowers.

What an inviting door.

A patch of ornament grass is right at home by this front door.

I loved all of the wild and wacky planters as well as the way many of the planters were used for beauty and privacy.

These sculptures work well as planters, making the garden more intersting.

These beautiful planters add privacy to the terrace.

A great way to turn simple terracotta pots into sculpture.

Humor is always welcome in a garden. This tuba has a second life.

Hillside terraced gardens come in all sizes and shapes. They can be casual or formal.

A meadow on a hillside.

A formal arrangement of shrubs and flowers on a terraced hillside.

There are many clever uses for climbers. I inherited a red rose, the name of which I’ve never discovered. It’s feet are firmly planted at the back of a mixed border, taking up practically no space. The rose blooms once in June high up above a window on a wall covered with ivy. The dark red practically jumps off the wall in contrast to the dark green, shiny background of dense ivy. As the flower petals fall, the vine recedes into the background, and if it has any disease, black spot or mildew most likely among them, I don’t know about it because the ivy acts as camouflage. And what would it matter, as the ivy and the rose have a happy marriage, their lives intertwined and compatible for more than forty years.

Rosa 'Dortman" climbs the ivy by the kitchen door.

Many times, over the years when I passed a bare trellis, an empty pillar, a bald wall, an unattractive fence, I fancy I heard them crying out to me. The lament was always the same: “If only someone would adorn me with roses.” The romance of climbing roses should not be underestimated.

If a climbing red rose hadn’t come with our house, I might not have fallen so hopelessly in love with them. Once I realized the rose was using ivy as its trellis, hooking its thorns into the ivy as it grew, and it required little care, there was no stopping me. Now roses climb our doorways, arbors, porches, gazebos, fences, walls and even the basketball court. The roses also climb up other plants—climbing hydrangea, trees, and, of course, ivy. Over the last 20 years, I’ve added a couple dozen roses.

The impact of climbers, whether short or tall, is that they put the finishing touches on a garden. Plus, the garden appears larger when flowers bloom vertically. And the only drawback to climbing roses is their bare legs; I use their woody-stemmed canes as living supports for loose-limbed, delicate vines such as clematis, love-in-a-puff and sweet peas or I plant perennials or shrubs in front of them. Rose love shade on their roots and sun on their flowers.

Clematis climb the fence and the arms of the shrub roses.

Most climbing roses sprawl, arch and creep upward, stretching their awkward canes. Some grow to 30 feet and beyond, while others grow only 8 to 12 feet tall. For the first few years, I rarely prune until they cover the area I have allotted to them. If they grow up and out of reach—up a tree for instance—I wish them well and wait for the tree to be alive with flowers. Shorter climbers I prune to shape the canes into a classic fan shape against a wall, or along a fence or trellis. With arched branches, more of the cane is exposed to the sun encouraging flowers to form at the node.

My approach to planting climbers is the more the merrier. They add so much to a garden—fragrance, color, beauty and branches for birds to nest.

Once blooming roses climb the basketball backboard.

Rosa 'Mme gregoire Staechelin"'

Sometimes something as simple as putting flowers in the birdbath adds to the beauty of the garden. It also adds to my amusement. The birds don’t take kindly to flowers in their bath and they will struggle to drag them to the edge of the bowl and toss them on the ground.

Flat flowers, such as clematis, float easily in water and stay fresh for a week or more.

Naturally, bindweed, poison ivy, dandelions, goutweeds, onion grass and many other prolific weeds are easily recognized while walking at a fast clip through the garden and I pull them as soon I spot them. However, mixed in among the weeds are often many desirable plants. Some sprouted from a seed dropped by a bird, carried in with the mulch, floated on a breeze and parachuted down, or unknowingly smuggled in on the hair of our dog. Learning to identify seedling is a wonderful way to accept nature’s gifts.

Often, if I don’t recognize a seedling, I don’t pull it. It’s a gamble to let it grow; yet I often get lucky. (It’s my idea of living dangerously.) Of course, I first check to see if the mystery seedling is part of a group found in only one part of the garden. If it is, the probability is high that the mother plant is nearby. Morning glories are one example of a plant that drops its seeds at its feet. They would, if they could, take over the earth. Besides their glorious good looks, I grow them so curious children can pinch their puffed buds and hear them pop. Each flower blooms for only a day before it literally goes to seed. ‘Heavenly Blue’, a hybrid, drops hundreds of seeds over the course of its 3- to 4-month bloom by my estimation. But the seedling don’t look like their ma. Their small purple flowers are not much to look at. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t wipe out the entire population with one swipe because the seeds don’t germinate all at once. They keep coming all summer and fall with even more showing up the following spring. Some always escape my hoe and bloom. Because I am so fond of the mother I tolerate the kids. You know how it goes.

In a garden, new seedling appear daily. Some are showy: The red leaves of amaranth give it away. Some are gawky: A tulip tree seedling has tulip-shaped leaves too big for its britches. Some are ferny: Nigella, a miniature of its mother, is all a flutter in a light breeze. And some are instantly identifiable: Lupine, for example, has its foliage arranged in tight whorls.  Once I learned to recognize my favorites, I let them be or scoop them up and move them to a better spot. Extras are always welcome to neighbors and Friends. Here are a few of my favorite pictured below:

morning glory seedlings

The troubling bindweed.

lungwort (Pulmoniaria)

Hellebore

wood geranium

The prolific weed, marsh marigold.

a sweetpea seedling

The biannual clary sage's seedling.

An annual poppy seedling

A lupine seedling

a nasturtum

Winter can certainly wreck havoc on a garden, especially an edible landscape. However, the best-designed gardens always have interesting bones that are revealed in winter. A perfect example is the new 12-acre Heartland Harvest Garden, an expansion of Powell Gardens, located in Kingsville, MO about thirty miles east of Kansas City. I recently visited the garden on a cold, icy day, and even without snow cover it was beautiful. The bones of the garden were exposed, laid out in geometric patterns with arbors and trellises that added to its winter interest. It is a young garden, only a few years old and as the trees, shrubs and vines mature it will a garden to visit again and again. There is much to learn from its orchard, vineyard, and vegetable gardens.

From atop the silo, next to the Missouri barn interpretive resource center, the Quilt Garden’s patterns are still visible. Thankfully the foliage was left to ripen over the winter months making it a garden for all seasons. Each of four three-quarter acre squares are planted in traditional “Old Missouri” and Kansas Star” quilt patterns.

An apple sculpture sits at the entrance to the garden.

The gates by the vineyard are decorated with grape leaves.

The pruners perched on the post of the vineyard gate is a humorous touch.

The 45-foot silo is a viewing tower for visitors to see the garden.

This year’s theme at the show was “Passport to the World” and it featured gardens from India, Brasil, China,the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the United States. Here are some of my pictures from the show.

A floral rug was a hit at the India garden.

Quite rightly, the Netherlands showed a spring bulb garden in all its beauty.

The Singapore garden was wall to wall orchids.

At the African garden a metal giraffe was decorated with glass bottles of orchids.

Brazil displayed a lush jungle with floral flamingos.

The China exhibit showcased tree peony in full bloom.