The NEW Low-Maintenance Garden

It is a universal truth that nature sooths and flowers lift spirits. Gardens, it follows, are designed to do both. Yet, many of us have gotten ourselves into a maintenance bind believing every weed has to be pulled, every plant cosseted and every flower deadheaded. If you follow this path the joy of gardening evaporates. Valerie Easton has come to the rescue with her new book, “The NEW Low-Maintenance Garden,” with lush photography by Jacqueline M. Koch.

“Low-maintenance must be among the least exciting couplings of words ever written or uttered,” Easton admits. Her “new low-maintenance gardens are defined by careful, thoughtful choices and decisive editing.” And they are not “gardening lite,” although, you can skip the topiary, and the double digging.

Easton’s culls time-saving routines, practical solutions and nature-friendly techniques. She reminds us we need not garden as our grandmother’s did. Gardening too has evolved. Throughout the book Easton promotes healthy choices. As she wrote, “Our reverence for the earth grows stronger as we realize how human impact, including gardening practices, has brought on scary climate change.” One of my favorite examples shows a photo of a lush carpet of hosta, hellebores, ferns and acanthus thriving in the shade of redbuds. This garden replaced a high-maintenance sunny lawn. It is true that lawns are higher maintenance than garden borders. “Killing Your Lawn in Five Easy Steps” and “Lawn Be Gone” are two of my favorite sections. America’s quest for the perfect lawn has caused great damage to our environment through the repeated use of chemicals, pesticides and weed poisons. Not to mention the pollution and drain of our water supply. If you don’t want to pull up your lawn, Easton advocates eco-friendly lawns that don’t need mowing.

For gardeners with drainage problems, a dry stream channels rainwater from storms into cisterns or ponds before it builds up and causes flooding. Planted with plants that like wet conditions it can be beautiful solution to a difficult problem. There are many creative gardens and innovative gardeners, including simple ways to grow vegetables, and carefree containers.

Many gardeners believe gardening is working to control nature, as impossible a task as Sisyphus rolling his boulder up hill. It is time we started working with nature. As Easton says, “Be grateful for the plants that are thriving in your garden and revel in nature’s surprises. You’ll not only enjoy your garden more, but I promise you that you’ll also find your relaxed garden to be a more attractive and welcoming one.”

A dry stream can be beautifully
designed into a garden.

An open sunny lawn was replaced with a much more private shade garden.


Suzy Bales' Highly-Recommended Gardening Reference Books


Book stores and nurseries are always displaying new gardening books and it is often hard to tell by the covers which ones are written by hands-dirty gardeners, people who actually know from first hand experience what they write about. When I first began to garden more than thirty years ago, I bought a number of books that I later discovered had recycled information, much of it outdated and some of it down right false. I've discovered the dirty little secret behind many garden books is that the authors themselves don't garden. Consequently, they often pass along misinformation and even old wife's tales as truth.

When I am researching a new book or an article, I know I can find and trust the information I am looking for in the books of Dr. Allan M. Armitage and Vincent A. Simeone. It isn't too surprising as Vinnie studied under Dr. Armitage at the University of Georgia decades ago. Both authors garden at home and at work. Allan conducts research and runs the University of Georgia Horticultural Gardens and Vinnie manages Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park in Oyster Bay, New York.

The only problem with Vinnie’s and Allan’s books is I find myself making new lists of must-have plants.  I caution you, it can be expensive to read these books. But, a garden library wouldn’t be complete without all of these books:

 



Amitage's Mannual of Annuals, Biennials, and Half-Hardy Perennials,
by Allan M. Armitage
Armitage's Native Plants for North American Gardens,
by Allan M. Armitage
Armitage's Garden Perennials: A Color Encyclopedia,
by Allan M. Armitage
Herbaceous Perennial Plants: A Treatise on their identification, Culture and Garden Attributes, by Allan M. Armitage

Great Flowering Landscape Trees,
by Vincent A. Simeone
Great Landscape Evergreens,
by Vincent A. Simeone
Wonders of the Winter Landscape,
by Vincent A. Simeone



Classic Gardening Books for Summer Reading

Now is the best time to lie on the beach gathering flowery thoughts from the Modern Library Gardening Series. My favorite garden classics, circa 1819 to 1981, sprout more than garden wisdom.

Begin with Karel Čapek's, "The Gardener’s Year" circa 1929 and its Thurber-like drawings for a lift during the dog days of summer. Picture Robin Williams on Broadway in a one-man show "with his rump sticking up somewhere among the perennials." When he waters the garden, the hose "contorts itself, it jumps, it wiggles, it makes puddles of water, and dives with delight into the mess it has made; then it goes for the man who is going to use it and coils itself round his legs." His legs are always in the way. They are too long "to fold them underneath" and impossibly short "to reach to the other side of the bed without treading" on plants. His solution, hang "in a belt and swing over the beds."
Čapek tricks the weather by putting on his warmest clothes or planning a ski trip so "the temperature usually rises." He makes pronouncements: "Always the first thing, long and thin, which grows in a pot is a weed." He teaches plants to grow "from under the seed upwards, lifting the seed on its head like a cap. Think if a child should grow carrying its mother on its head."

And Čapek sighs over nice heaps of dung whenever he sees them wasted along a roadway, and consoles his plants, "In a moment I will make your bed." He muses over missing labels, planting rock gardens, collecting rare plants, pleasing the neighbors, grafting roses, bald spots, good soil, and making compost. Would there was more!

To ward off the tremors that follows the close of a good book reach for My Summer in a Garden circa 1870 by Charles Dudley Warner. He famously wrote, "Everyone talks about the weather but nobody ever DOES anything about it." His chatty, warm and witty weekly garden observations were first recorded in The Hartford Courant. As he walks you down the garden path he warns against walking into raspberry bushes with a pruning-knife-"it is very much like fighting original sin." He acknowledges you can't rise early enough to get ahead of the bugs so, "it would be best to sit up all night, and sleep day-times." He recommends setting strawberries five feet apart "to give room for the cows to run through when they break into the garden." And he philosophizes a garden teaches higher virtues-"hope deterred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation and sometimes to alienation." Consequently, he patiently encourages his wife to garden, although he frequently notes her mistakes.

Walter Fish also encouraged his wife to garden when he retired in 1937. As told by Margery Fish in We Made a Garden, he fumed, belittled, instructed, and ordered her about. She was eager to learn, yet bristled under his demands, by turns light heartedly or grudgingly. Margery didn't escape heavy labor, laying stone steps, and rock walls as well as trailing after him picking up his clippings. Walter thought she spent "too much time "poking belly-crawlers into rat-holes"(stuffing plants in the holes in the rock walls) instead of doing jobs he deemed more important. He allowed her a little of his precious manure but didn't approve of how she spread it. Even the clematis obeyed Walter, heading up the wires in the directions he sent them while Margery, like most of us, found it difficult to disentangle individual stems from the muddle. Margery, however, outlived Walter becoming one of England's leading gardeners. She popularized the idea of a four-season garden so the gardener never has to say, "you missed the show."

Ideas germinate in The Gardener’s Bed-book, short and long pieces to be read in bed by those who love green growing things, by Richardson Wright circa 1929, and Green Thoughts by Eeanor Perényi circa 1981. Wright's pillow talk won't put you to sleep; rather, it kept me reading until my
spouse turned out the light forcing me out into the cold to finish. Perényi's book organized alphabetically by titles from Annuals to Earthworms and on through Longevity, Magic, Mulches, and Toads, ending with a Woman's Place, started Michael Pollan on his quest to reprint the best of garden literature. High praise indeed!

Old Herbaceous, a novel written in 1951 by Reginals Arkell when he was seventy-eight had me giggling one moment and muffling sobs the next. A simple yet sensitive story of Herbert Pinnegar, an orphaned boy, who followed his heart as
he rose through the ranks to become head gardener at a country estate. The garden adopted him-nurturing, comforting and feeding him, as gardens are wont to do when they are loved-until he felt true happiness and satisfaction from a life that exceeded his expectations.

After reading plant explorer Frank Kingdon Ward's, In the Land of the Blue Poppies, I'll never again take blue poppies, lilies, rhododendrons and primulas for granted, nor, complain about my measly swarms of bugs. Ward's twenty-four expeditions traversing mountain paths at the top of China, Burma and Tibet over the first half of the 20th century was as dangerous a business as Indiana Jones'. He encountered rope bridges, wild dogs, storms, avalanches, thieves and murderers, when he wasn't beset by "the deadliest guardians of the Burmese jungle-battalions of leeches, blister flies, ticks, mosquitoes, sand-flies, horse-flies, all avid bloodsuckers whose bites cause fevers, festering sores and a crazing irritation." He earned his medical comforts-champagne, whiskey, and rum.

Thankfully most of these slim books slipped into my back pocket to be read at the odd moment because they are hard to put down. Now that I've finished, I'll begin again. I'm sure they're better the second time around.


The Gardener's Bedside Reader, edited by Kari Cornell brings together some of today's best garden writing. It is a good place to get acquainted with the different thoughts and styles of writers. Hopefully, it will start you collecting garden books by the writers that catch your fancy.


A Pattern Garden, the essentials elements of garden making by Valerie Easton:

We all have the ability to open our eyes and follow our hearts, and in A Pattern Garden, Valerie Easton tells us how to tap into that emotion. This book opens the door between the past and the present, altering and refining the way we see gardens. "The most successful and satisfying gardens are designed by owners themselves, or with their close participation," says Valerie. She encourages gardeners to embrace what is special about their gardens. She inspires everyone to be better than they thought they could be-more creative, more daring, more heart strong than headstrong. If you don't love a plant it won't thrive in your garden!

And I hope you'll take a look at my books too!
The Garden in Winter

Ironically, winter is when we need color most but it is the season least planned and planted for color. Learn how to plant your garden with winter bloomers and conifers to be colorful and engaging even on the darkest days. Add window boxes, containers, structures and ornaments too.

Winter is a fascinating season, a time to closely watch changes in plants. It is when I have seen miracles and been confounded by mysteries. Everything has a story to tell and secrets to reveal, from the design of a snowflake and the pattern of frost, to the first flowers piercing the cold ground, their blooms resting on a snowy pillow.


Suzy Bales' Down-To Earth-Gardener: Let Mother Nature Guide you to Success in Your Garden

Beware, I have been called a permissive gardener. I break all the rules, that's the only way to learn anything. After all, gardening is a refined form of gambling-if you don't take risks, break a few rules, you don't have a chance to win big time. If you learn to look closely and to wait patiently, a garden contains more instruction than a library. Trust what you see, give common sense a chance.


Garden Parties

It has been said, "We tire of the pleasures we take, but never of those we give." The sharing of food, drink, and your garden is a wonderful way to celebrate your friends. Entertaining is no different than gift giving. It takes thought, love and caring to get it right. Hidden in the personal touches is the magic that turns a meal into a memory.

The emphasis is on what can be done ahead, how to set the mood, numerous personal touches all from your own garden, stirred lightly with a twist of humor.


A Garden of Fragrance

The fragrance of flowers offers a whole new world of pleasures. There is an intimate quality to a scented garden that beckons you in, insists that you linger, and, at times, draws you down to its level to breathe its enchanting perfumes.

But not all plants release their scent in the same way. And that is what makes it so interesting. Knowing which flowers perfume the garden and the house, how they disperse their scent and how to help them last longer will enhance your enjoyment of them.
 
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