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Local Garden Tours

August 12th, 2019

I’m lucky that we have a lot of local garden tours during the summer months. My local garden club features a different garden each Friday, which is a nice way to do it. After hitting the bank, the grocery store, and the farmers market, I visit the garden of the day. We also have several land trusts that have garden tours, I always try to make the Georges River Land Trust Tour. This year there were 5 gardens on the tour, each lovely. Here’s one that I saw 5 years ago or so, and was happy to visit again.








The espaliered fruit trees, the little handmade greenhouse, large trees, flowers, vines, and vegetables, it all works beautifully well. It’s well done, but not overdone. After seeing lots of gardens, you can definitely tell the difference in a garden when it is created by someone that loves to garden versus someone who likes gardens and hires someone else to do the work. Gardens created over years have a wonderfully settled feel, they feel real, transparent, you can see the personality of the gardener coming through.

Do you visit local gardens on open days? Have you gleaned any good ideas for your garden?

Heronswood

November 2nd, 2015

Hersonwood is a collector’s garden, the plants were brought from around the world for many years. The result is a garden that’s filled with a wide variety of interest. The sheer amount of plants was staggering, and our guide giving us the latin names for most of them was very impressive.
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I certainly wish I had recorded her tour of the garden, I will never be able to recall or find what the majority of the plants were. They were stunning nonetheless, there’s no need to know latin names or even plant names to garden or appreciate a garden. Sometimes we can feel a bit self conscious in the gardening world if we don’t know the latin names or the common names of all the plants in our gardens. Pick plants you like, compose them in a way that makes you happy, and enjoy your garden.

Friday Favorite: Hedges

October 30th, 2015

Continuing with our tour of Heronswood garden in the Pacific Northwest, I had to post about hedges. I must admit, that a beautiful hedge makes me go weak in the knees. I’ve always dreamed about having beautiful hedges in my garden, but have yet to make that dream come true. I planted a short boxwood hedge in my Ohio garden (16 plants) and it was starting to grow out when we moved. Thankfully, the previous owners didn’t want the plants, so I dug them up and brought them with me. There are still in the nursery area, waiting until I have their final garden area finished. Most likely, they will be moved next spring to a new garden area right below the house.
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On Wednesday, I talked about the scalloped hornbeam hedge at Hersonwood, behind this garden is a lovely formal garden with box lined triangular shaped beds. These beds are filled with a riot of colorful perennials that grow up and out and spill over the box borders. Here are just a few of the lovely flower spilling out of the box borders.
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The beauty of a box hedge is that it contains some of the chaos that can happen in a perennial garden. It provides structure that grounds all the other plants. I can only imagine how lovely this garden looks in the winter, when all the flowers have faded but the bones of the box remain, it must be stunning!
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I will never have hedges to this scale in my garden, at least not unless I hire a gardener to help me maintain them. There are still things I can take away from a garden like this. Even on a small scale, a hedge can something beautiful in the garden. So often we look at grand gardens like this and feel like we can never achieve anything like it. The truth is we can, we just have to look work within our boundaries. Even a five foot box hedge will provide the same feel in your garden.

Do you have any hedges in your garden? What’s your favorite hedge plant?

GRLT Garden Tour #6

July 24th, 2015

When I read the words “privet hedge surrounding the garden” in the brochure I knew this was going to be my favorite garden on the tour! I decided to save the best garden for last since it would be perfect for my Friday Favorite.
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The entrance to the garden is a beautiful perennial bed with a short rock wall in it. When you come through the arch you are instantly amazed by the beautiful garden that unfolds before you. There are vegetable, flowers, grass pathways, hedges, a small greenhouse, big shade trees, and so much more.
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My favorite part about this garden is everything, a great inspiration for the main garden in the back. I’ve been making plans an this garden is pretty close to what I want to accomplish.

What’s your favorite part of this garden?

GRLT Garden Tour #5

July 23rd, 2015

We’re on to the next garden in the George River Land Trust garden tour series. The photos don’t really do this garden justice, it’s so hard to fully capture a garden like this one. It was built in a ravine behind the gardener’s house. She had to clear out the overgrown mess that was there and found a lovely little stream when she did. This was the result.
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The sheer number of plants in this garden was amazing, simply amazing. The best part is that she says it’s low maintenance because she mulches everything well and the plants are all so close together.

What do you like best about this garden?

About

This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

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