Garden Rant

Talkin 'Bout My Generation

How this particular Gen-Xer loathes those sad articles in nursery and horticultural industry magazines about selling to that tricky new breed of customer, Gen X and Y.  Here are some gems from one such recent article (written, of course, by a Baby Boomer.  Gen Xers, apparently, don't have a long enough attention span to write an article about themselves.)

These younger generations like/love to shop.  (That's something new and groundbreaking right there, folks.  Nobody liked to shop until these X-ers came along. This changes everything!)

Gen X/Y uses the Internet, so make sure your website is up to date and "on all the major search engines."  (Normally you'd want your website to be outdated and hard to find, but you just can't keep these kooky kids away from that Internet.  And just a note to factcheckers everywhere: You haven't had to register a website with a search engine since, like, 1999.  That's so last millenium.  Nowadays, the search engines race through the tubes that make up the Internet and find websites all on their own.)

Jerry Baker, Still Quacking

My all-time favorite rant subject is at it again.  In his latest newsletter Jerry Baker offers these pearls:

Once a month before watering, aerate the soil by walking around the yard wearing Aerating Lawn Sandals. Then overspray your lawn with my Lawn Freshener Tonic: 1 can of beer, 1 cup of dishwashing liquid, 1/2 cup of ammonia, and 1/2 cup of weak tea water mixed in your 20 gallon hose-end sprayer, and applied to the point of run-off.
Every now and then, I like to water my lawn by hand. And whenever I do, I give it a refreshing drink of my Summer Soother Tonic: 2 cups of weak tea water, 1 cup of dishwashing liquid, and 1 cup of hydrogen peroxide mixed in your 20 gallon hose-end sprayer, and applied to the point of run-off. Try it next time you've got a hankerin' to putter around your yard.

Look out, worms, insects and other beneficial inhabitants of garden soil, coz when old Jerry gets a "hankerin' to putter around" his yard it's like Cheney and Rumsfeld puttering around the Middle East - scary shit!!  Ya gotta wonder how much plant and soil life can survive regular dousings of beer, soap, tea, ammonia, and hydrogen peroxide.

Why Not Paint Some Nice Pink Flowers On It, Too?

Count on the New York Times' real estate section for nifty gardening tips like this one--from an article on staging homes for sale:

“There was a wonderful hedge of bushes,” she said, “but one of them was brown. Instead of removing it and trying to find another hedge, we spray-painted it green. It looked terrific.”

Link: www.nytimes.com.

Carrying the Message of the Delawning Movement

[Readers, we've been stirring the pot a lot lately on this meaty topic and I've been taking notes. Now before the following overview is published as my next column, I eagerly await your input.  Susan]

In my relentless quest to keep readers up to date on lower-maintenance, more nature-friendly gardening, we return to the exciting topic of lawns.  They've fallen out of favor because of the vast amounts of herbicides, insecticides and fertilizers people dump on them (so much of which ends up in our Bay), plus all the water that's used to keep them green and the super-polluting mowers needed to keep them under control.  And they're SO boring to look at.  Need more reasons?  On slopes they're dangerous to mow and in the shade they ratty-looking, at best.  Ironically, this symbol of upper class leisure also requires intense labor on the part of the homeowner.  Men in particular are often swept up in the spirit of competitive lawn care and put in insane hours caring for them.  My message to Torojockeys across America: Get over it!

The Garden Gnome Chomsky

It's time once again for our all-too-infrequent feature in which we present the most extraordinary and most obscure garden videos the Internet has to offer.  Send us yours, won't you?  But don't forget to read our friendly, simple guidelines first.

And now, this.  From the truly remarkable people at Anton Sledgehammer.

The Naked and the Clean

Today's Post has everything we've been ranting about, so why didn't we think of it ourselves?  The outdoor shower stall - it's private yet friendly, wet, nude, and sensuous.  The builder of this one says it gets us "in touch with a deeper and more primordial sense of ourselves."  Yeah, baby!

Good Hell Strips make Good Neighbors

Since Amy caused such a commotion over the issue of neighborliness, let's go forth and rant some more on that one.  While I agree that backyards are great places for privacy - possibly a code word for doing things in the nude - I side with the extroverts when it comes to front yards.  Though naturally it's more complicated than that, as we see when we explore porches, fences and plants between our homes and the street.

THE CURB GARDEN
Also called a hell strip or a right-of-way garden, mine is looking awfully happy now in midsummer.  Here you see it stuffed with cherry trees, a beautyberry shrub, red daylilies, black-eyed Susans, garden phlox, sedum 'Autumn Joy,' miscanthus 'Morning Light' and groundcovers liriope, carex, and houttuynia, all in their third year.  That means they've survived snow plows, salt spray, construction trucks, kids, and dogs on the run. 

When the daylilies are blooming I check them every morning, coffee in hand, to pinch away yesterday's blooms and admire today's.  And when the cherries are blooming it's a little bit magical, or so the neighbors tell me.  People telling you wonderful things is part of the appeal of gardening in a public spot, of course.  And next thing you know, more curb gardens pop up down the street.

Guest Photographer: Sandy Saunders

Way back when GardenRant was just a twinkle in Amy's eye I became a fan of the garden-photoblogger I call "Sandy in BC".  Close-ups of flowers can be mere cliches in the hands of mere photographers but in the hands of a gardener-photographer like Sandy - well, like the shadowy waterlilies in our sidebar on the left, they just grab me.  Then there are her whole-garden and whole-plant photos like these of her own garden.  No surprise that she gardens and designs gardens for a living.

So today marks Sandy's debut as a guest photographer for our sidebar photo - our first.  We thank her for letting us brighten our little piece of cyberspace and cheer her on in her work.  And Sandy, judging from this self-portrait, green's your color!

For more of Sandy's photos and a terrific compilation of photoblogs, go here.

We've Got Flair

But you knew that already.  Every now and then, the GardenRant IT Department emerges from its dark, chilly room filled with servers and whirring fans to deliver a cryptic message like this one.  We wish these people would get a hobby, like--oh, I don't know--gardening, perhaps? 

We're getting behind the Web 2.0 revolution and adding a little flair to our feeds and our posts.  There's all kinds of ways to keep track of your favorite blogs using feed aggregators (that's what all those cute little buttons in the lefthand sidebar are all about, and a surprising number of you use them), and now we're branching out into Digg, del.icio.us, and Technorati Favorites.  What is this all about?  It's just a cool way to organize your favorite stuff and share it with the world, and it might just give garden blogs a higher profile in the tech-and-politics-heavy blogosphere.  Digg?

Personally, we'd rather dig.  But humor our pale, scrawny IT people, will you?  Check out the flair and let us know if it enhances your ranting experience.

More on Liberating the Front Lawn, Slow Food, BBC Comedies, and the Neighbors

The nice people at Path To Freedom continue to generate headlines for their all-edible garden in Pasadena.  Reminds me of the British comedy 'The Good Life,' called 'Good Neighbors' in the US.  It's a little corny, but it has some very entertaining moments, particularly when the chickens or pigs encounter the Martini-swilling next door neighbors.  Netflix that baby if you haven't already.

Meanwhile, back to Path to Freedom:

Dervaes had been running a small lawn-maintenance business six years ago when he and his family started their self-sufficiency garden project, dubbed Path to Freedom. They started the garden because of their growing concerns about genetically modified organisms and other potentially harmful additives in mass-market produce. Since then, the Dervaeses have raised everything from asparagus and jicama to kiwis and cotton -- all of it organic. They've been successful using space-maximizing gardening techniques, including raised earth beds and potted plants that hang between trellised plants.

Link: www.sfgate.com.

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?

More on neighborliness--and plant theft--from the San Francisco Chronicle:

The drawback to raising vegetables on a busy residential street is the proximity of cars racing past at high speeds -- or, as Shirley pointed out, the possibility of theft -- the benefit is the chance to meet people I might not get to know otherwise....During the past few years, I've been gratified at the compliments I've received from people walking by, and my husband, Bob, doesn't even look at me funny anymore when I tell him a stranger admired my tomatoes.

Link: www.sfgate.com.

Designer Matt James, Easy on the Eyes

Gardeners, the earthy aficionados of beauty in all forms that we are, usually have to settle for geeky Roger Swain or hanging-onto-her-looks-for-dear-life Martha Stewart.  But take a gander at the star of BBC's "Urban Gardener," Matt James, our next nominee for Sexiest Man in Gardening.  Admittedly, he looks a bit dorky here, like an Up With People singer, but I assure you he's not and he's fun to watch 'cause he gets it, big-time. 

Called the "fresh new face of contemporary gardening," James - oh, why not get familiar and call him Matt? - transforms the scraggliest little city lots in the scruffiest English cities you ever saw.  In a recent episode he used a sure-fire technique for having year-round color in the garden - PAINT.  And I say there's not nearly enough paint on people's outdoor walls; those walls are boring and a lost opportunity to have an eye-popping backdrop all year long.  Check out this example and this one.

Rant Interview: Educator Gene Sumi

The toast of the garden club circuit in Greater Washington, D.C. is horticulturist Gene Sumi, our next interviewee.  Whether advising customers as the answer man at really good garden centers or speaking to groups on an impossibly wide array of subjects, he's the best damn gardening teacher I've ever heard or seen.  When he explains pruning, you get it.  So I've sung his praises before and even put his thought-provoking observations about native plants on line.

Gene's been part of a little experiment here on the Rant - asking the same questions to two people, both informed sources but with different perspectives - and here are his thoughts on the topics we covered earlier with nurseryman/environmental activist John Peter Thompson.  Thanks to Gene for dedicating his retirement years to educating the clueless public about gardening and for contributing to our confab here on the Rant.

Q: What would you most like garden center customers to know or understand that they don't?

A:  Garden center customers need to understand plants and their environment. I am always surprised to find out that so many customers do not know the first thing about plants. Much of what I am referring to is basic information learned from life sciences subjects in elementary and high school. Many have forgotten that plants are living things, that they have a life span and are susceptible to damage and disease. There is much that we can do to help them, but there are other plant problems over which we still have little or no control.

This Must Be Stopped

Okay, I'm willing to be calm about global warming...until wine grapes are threatened. Lord knows, we're all going to need some nice fruity whites to stay cheerful in the sweaty hell that is the future.  But a recent National Academy of Sciences study raises the alarm that warmer temperatures may destroy the California wine industry.

One other hand, a piece in this week's Wall Street Journal recorded the good cheer global warming is provoking in Greenland and points out...

For every 1.8 degrees of warming, Canada's wine-growing region can expand 120 miles northward as the climate becomes suitable for growing wine grapes, according to David Phillips, the Canadian government's senior climatologist.

Of course, I live much closer to the Canadian border than any sane person should.  So check back with me in a few years.  I have a promising-looking rocky field in the country that faces southwest.  When said field no longer resides in Zone 4, but in some more civilized Alsatian-style climate, I plan on giving up vegetable gardening in favor of Gewurztraminer.

P.S.  For a great book about why my backyard is soon to be the new Napa, check out my husband's Big Coal.

Anne Raver Has Ruined My Life

The only thing keeping Garden Rant from being an entirely East Coast operation was the impression (apparently mistaken) that it would be impossible to have a real garden in Manhattan.

Well, there were a few other obstacles--most notably lack of funds--but since when does that stop anyone from dabbling in overpriced real estate?  If it wasn't for the lack of a garden, I've always said, I'll bankrupt myself to move to New York, the city I love.  Now, thanks to Anne Raver, I may have to do just that.

According to her story in today's Times, all it takes to have an honest-to-god front porch, and a butterfly-and-ladybug festooned meadow to go with it, is a nice little building in Greenwich Village with a sturdy roof. 

Well, it also took almost $15,000, not to mention 2200 sedum plants, one of the only plants that will thrive on a living roof.

Is it possible to love sedum that much?  With that view, I'd adjust.  Put a chicken coop up there and my bags are packed, baby.

Park Seed Customers Hate Their Neighbors, Love to Get Naked

Did anyone else receive the "Neighbor Blocker" e-mail from Park advertising a collection of trees that would quickly provide a barrier between you and those awful neighbors of yours?  If you did, send it on.  It got tossed before we had a proper chance to dissect it.  The message, as we recall, was disturbingly survivalist in tone, and it was reinforced by the catalog copy on Park's website, where Thuja 'Green Giant' is billed as a tree that will shield you from those deadly threats to your homestead:  "noise, neighbors, or rough wind." 

Fortunately, another missive arrived from Park's with almost the same message, and we managed to hang on to this one.  It came from their subsidiary Wayside Gardens, which means, of course, that it had a more friendly, "indie" tone.

No Tan Lines!  read the Subject line.  Privacy in Your Own Backyard!

That's right, we're Wayside Gardens, not Park Seed, and we understand that it's not so much that you hate the neighbors, you just don't want them to see you get naked, as you so often do.  (After all, you've gone to all that work to create those "outdoor rooms" in the garden--shouldn't one of them be the bedroom?) 

Or what if you're not naked? What if you're just "playing catch with the kids or lying by the pool"?  Wouldn't this be a pleasant time to wave to the neighbors, make a little friendly chitchat, or even invite them over, thus strengthening your community bonds, forming friendships with the people who live around you, and taking a stand against our increasingly fragmented, isolated, Bowling Alone lifestyle?

Hell, no!  Or as Wayside puts it, "You don't want the neighbors to factor into your enjoyable afternoon!"

Of course you don't. So how do you "eliminate" the neighbors as a "factor" in that enjoyable afternoon of yours?

Plant some Thuja--the tree that says, "Get the hell off my property and stay away from my family."

Coming soon:  The Moving Van Collection, consisting of quick-growing poison oak, the highly allergenic male cottonwood tree, and castor beans, whose toxic seeds are attractive to children and pets alike.  Your money back if they don't leave in a moving van or a hearse.

UPDATE:  Thanks to the alert readers who sent in the "Neighbor Blocker" e-mail.  Nice to know we  weren't imagining things.

Nature is Sexy

Does this look familiar?  Why, it's our Rich People's Garden, and here it is in today's WaPo article about plants in pools.  Just remember you saw it first on GardenRant.

Anyhoo, it seems that "natural pools" - think swimming holes half-filled with plants - are all the rage in Europe, a trend ushered in by Dutch designer Henk Weijers.  "The basic rectangular pool, clear and chlorinated to death, is boring and sterile," says our friend Tom Mannion, the designer pictured here.  Americans, being the cleanliness freaks that we are, are so afraid of algae and free-floating soil that even this modest gesture to Weijers separates the plant-containing water from the swimmer-containing water, with just two potted plants sitting in the swimming pool.  Even that was enough to elicit a no-thanks from the first pool maintenance company that Tom contacted.

So we have a looong way to go but we have a vision.  Pools don't have to be "big barren things in the middle of the back yard."  They can be filled with people and water and plants and maybe even fish all moving and breathing together in an Edenic reenactment.  Ooh, that's sexy.

Just call me Miss Manners in the Garden

As an organizer of garden tours and open garden days, I've heard my share of complaints about garden visitors.  Oh, don't look so shocked; they're human, too.  Or should I say "we're human, too" because I've probably pissed off my share of garden hosts - before I wised up and started my campaign save them from their visitors.  And since Stuart recently polled his readers: "Would you open your garden to visitors?" I can't resist weighing in on the topic. (By the way, 60 percent of his respondents said yes, with only one - and from the map it looks like a Texan - answering with a definitive "no".)

So here for your review and critique is "The Etiquette of Visiting Gardens," the collective wisdom of our 200+ member gardening Yahoo group, compiled and published in our Hort Club newsletter in June of '05.  I didn't know you guys back then or I'd have asked for your input, too.  But now's your chance.

• DON'T criticize - period. Whatever awful things you may think the gardener is doing, be a good guest and keep it to yourself.
  
• DON'T step in the garden, even if you think you know what you're doing.  Stay on the grass or on paths.
• DON'T do spontaneous weeding or deadheading -- it can be taken by the host as a veiled criticism. We all share the impulse, but on the receiving end it's not welcome, especially when it involves stepping into the border to do the clean-up chore.
• DO ask anything about the garden and the plants in it. Just "What's that?" or "Tell me about that plant" are welcome openings for the gardener to expound.
• DO compliment the garden and/or thank the gardener for sharing it.

My article ended with this plea:  "While we're enjoying ourselves this gardening season, let's treat our hosts well and be good ambassadors for the club."

Think all this make-nice advice did a whit of good?  The incidence of visitors stepping where they shouldn't was noticably reduced but it's much harder to muzzle those self-appointed crusaders who inspect and critique gardens in the guise of tour-goers.  You know the type - the plant police.

[Photo:  A local garden that's popular with tour-goers.]

Utopia, Inc.

Slate Hill Farm

Last fall, I got tired of dragging my ecologically correct but barely functional push mower out to the front of my city house in Saratoga Springs, NY just to do the silly hell strip.  So I ripped up the turf and planted two peach trees and 70 bargain daylilies there instead.  "Pandora's Box" was the daylily variety.  The catalog said "white."  You can't always believe what you read.  This July revealed all.  Pandora is a dispiriting flesh color.  Like a load of white underwear washed with an orange sweatshirt.

But instead of kicking myself, I decided that "Pandora" would be shipped out to my country place in Salem, NY, which is quickly turning into a used car lot for rejected ornamentals, and I would head over the hill in Salem to my neighbors at Slate Hill Farm Daylilies.  I'd never been there before when their stock was in bloom.

Guest Blogger: The Sunset of Sunset Magazine

by Kathy Cromwell

Has anyone noticed that the articles in Sunset magazine have started to read like press releases from the big ass nursery companies?  The May 2006 issue is flat out embarrassing.  An article on spicing up your garden with New Guinea impatiens follows a full page ad for VIVA’s latest New Guinea impatiens introductions. A glossy plug for the “Bold Beauty” of Monrovia’s ‘Tropicana Black’ cannas is right across from a full page ad for Monrovia Nursery.

When it isn’t shamelessly promoting its advertisers’ wares, Sunset features large font LISTS of really obvious and boring plants. The May issue provides readers with a LIST of SIX plants for QUICK PAYOFFS – Black-eyed Susan vine, Coleus, Cosmos, Nasturtium, Geranium and Trailing Petunia. Come on, Sunset--I can get this kind of gardening advice from Home Handyman magazine.