Garden Rant

The Plant-Free Garden

Today, the Wall Street Journal has a deliberatively provocative piece called "The Concrete Gardener" about a big trend in gardening: no plants whatsoever.  Just hardscaping.  And TV's, dishwashers, couches, hot tubs, and all the things that really make heading outdoors worthwhile.

Of course, here at Garden Rant headquarters, we think this is all horrible, reprehensible, these people ought to be stopped--except I was stopped by the accompanying photo of a side yard in Alexandria, VA. 

Undeniably beautiful.  Utterly appropriate for its brick-Georgian-house-filled urban neighborhood.

If my non-gardening neighbors ever decided to replace their weeds and juniper-filled side yards with hardscaping of this quality, I'd applaud.

Park Seed's Got a Blog, and the Blog has Rules

This just in:  Our friends at Park Seed must have gone to one of those "How To Reach Gen X" seminars, because guess what?  They're blogging, baby!  Check it out here.  And they tell us in their e-mail that their blog was even mentioned in USA Today!  Awesome!  Can anybody find that?  'Cause I just couldn't find it.  I'm sure it's there somewhere.  (Oh, and while you're at it, if you find USA Today's garden coverage, let us know where that is, too!  What's up with no garden section?)

OK, back to the Park Seed blog.  There are rules.  Kinda like a manifesto, only different.  The rules include:

Guerrilla Gardening for Open Spaces

What you see here is the work of the arts collective Rebar in San Francisco and this is one of their Park-In sites, drumming up support for more parks and open spaces in cities.  On one day all over town they bring in sod, trees, benchs, plastic bollards and signs, install them in city parking spaces, hang out for the two-hour Park-In demo period, and take lots of photos and video for promotional purposes.  The stunt must be working because it's spreading across the U.S. and Europe.  It reminds me of the sit-ins of the '60s, so of course I love it.

Rebar's idea was to put together the "fundamental elements of good outdoor public space" - seating, shade, a place to watch people and view scenery, and a sense of being in nature.  Well, okay, considering that you're actually sitting IN a city street, I guess the sod and the boxed tree count as nature.  Their website has some helpful hints for pulling the stunt together, like the fact that sod can be had for only $2 for a 1x5' roll.  And how about that bench?  "Don't be afraid to utilize 'Big Box' retailers with liberal return policies."  Clever!

You Be Dr. Bleedingheart!

Our good friend Chuck at Episodic Whoreticulture has poured his heart out to us in the comments below.  You can read the whole story here, but basically Chuck is trying to maintain a civil relationship with his neighbor, while simultaneously coveting a neglected rose in his overgrown and possibly hazardous back yard.  Read the tale of woe and take our poll.  Oh, and then check out Chuck's blog, a mixture of politics and plants.  (and by the way, we love, love, love that blog's name.  It was Dorothy Parker who once said, in response to a challenge to come up with a line using the word 'horticulture,' "You may lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.")

Gardener Resents Shakedown

(Editor's Note: Why run our own questions when our nation's syndicated columnists are already getting all the good ones?  This ran in Dear Abby; our own Dr. Bleedingheart responds.)

Dear Dr. Bleedingheart,

I spend lots of time and money on my flower garden. While I'm outside working, it is not unusual for complete strangers to stop and ask me for plants and bulbs. Believe it or not, three women were even brazen enough to ring my doorbell.

It is one thing to share flowers with friends and family -- but with people I don't even know? Please give me a clever response to these nervy individuals. --

--APPALLED IN WINCHESTER, VA

Dear Appalled,

How about this:  Laugh as if you know they're joking, and say, "Ah yes, if only (NAME OF LOCAL NURSERY) considered plants and bulbs to be free for the taking, too!"

Or this:  "You want some of these plants? Absolutely!  Let's see what else I've got around here that you might like.  A flower pot? A deck chair? Do you like these flagstones? And after we're done here, we'll head over to your house and take a look at your stuff.  I bet you've got something around there  I'd like to have!"

And finally, "Actually, I love giving away plants, as long as you don't mind digging them up yourself.  Really? You don't mind?  OK, here's a shovel.  Help yourself to all the dandelion, bindweed, and Himalayan blackberry you can dig up."

Thanks, GreenGirl!

A quick shout-out to GreenGirl at the Star Tribune for her kind post about GardenRant.  Eco-nerds, indeed!  She's got lots of interesting links and other stuff over there--check it out.

"The American Rose Society Needs Smacking Around"

by Susan, with Guest Expert Barrie Collins of GardenMob
In recent years, many gardeners have ejected roses from their gardens because they require waaay more spraying than they're willing to do - at least those hideous hybrid teas that produce the biggest flowers.  And with all the concern about eco-friendliness and low maintenance, ya gotta wonder how the rose world is adapting.  Um, not so good.

THE EXPERT
"Serious rose gardeners are among the worst offenders when it comes to inundating their gardens with all manners of sprays and chemicals," says rose expert Barrie Collins.  And he takes on the big guns:  "If one travels over to the American Rose Society website, there is an entire section dedicated to teaching us which sprays are dangerous.  Interestingly, it's all about how these chemicals affect humans.  What I want is information about what other species of insects or animals are affected.  Somebody over there should be throttled (metaphorically of course)."   And Barrie notes the statement on their website that "spraying is often essential for the control of insects and mites and for the prevention of diseases that attack roses. As a consequence, most devoted rosarians accept the need to spray their roses."  And his reaction: "Besides my general feeling that anyone that identifies themselves as a ‘rosarian' needs a smack in the nose , sorry, but I've got to take issue with this statement, especially since it might give new gardeners the wrong-headed idea that this kind of behavior is acceptable."

I got to know Barrie recently as a Rant reader and he's a very cool guy - a landscape architect and researcher for the Institute of Ecology at U.of Georgia.  He even looks like a rapper and would be perfect as the poster boy for our Gardening-is-Cool campaign.  Let's flaunt him! Anyway, seven years ago he started his site about roses and unknowing web-surfers must be surprised to find such heresy.  So I enlisted Barrie to help me understand what's right and wrong about roses today. If you don't already know why you shouldn't be doing all that spraying, Barrie explains it all for you here.

More on Garden Podcasts

Check out my story in Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle about the Wiggly Wigglers podcast.  You can also find out about other garden podcasts, including the super-cool Geek.Farm.Life.

Thanks, Mo!

Thanks to garden writer Maureen Gilmer for her kind words about GardenRant.  She says, " These chicks are smart and witty, and have obviously been around the garden..."

You're damn right.  But here's what we really wanted to tell you:  Mo has produced a cool new e-book all about botanical illustrations. It's quick and easy to download from her website, and it's a useful guide to online resources for old botanical art.  She shows you where to go online to find horticultural art, and what to do with it once you're there.  If you're the crafty type, she's got all kinds of ideas for using botanical illustrations on cards, collages, and so on.

They do WHAT to our Food?

This op-ed piece in the morning paper got me heading out to my local farmer's market with an extra mesh bag.   It's entitled "Something's Rotten in Food Oversight."

Today American food is more manufactured than grown. Following a scorched-earth approach, workers wearing "spacesuits" inject nerve agents into the soil before planting, leaving nothing alive. Hogs grow enclosed in facilities several stories high. Tomatoes are picked green, gassed and then canned.

Read the whole thing but I'm warning you - the big-picture look at the issue is even grimmer.  The authors' sarcastic sign-off is "But don't despair.  September is National Food Safety Education Month."  Mine own sign-off would be something like: "Despair big-time if something major doesn't change in November.  Like control of our worse-than-useless Congress."

GardenRanter Moonlights as MovieRanter

Will readers indulge me in a quick off-topic plug?  The Queen of Elderbloggers, Ronni Bennett, invited me to write a review of the indie movie "Boynton Beach Club," and the results are up now on her outstanding site, Time Goes By.  The back story of how this guest-blogging thing came about is told over at my blog.  

And to Ronni's readers - WELCOME!  We hope you look around enough to find out what all the ranting (and raving) is about.

The First Ever Weekly GardenRant Survey

We just love all the chatter over at Golden Gekko about independent garden centers vs. big boxes.  In the world of books and publishing, the argument goes something like this:  if a people at a few big chains make all the buying decisions, they have the power to influence what gets published.  And that, in turn, has the power to influence what gets written.  And pretty soon we've got a free speech issue on our hands.  Barbara Kingsolver says that she would still be working at her day job if not for the support of her local (and now defunct) independent bookseller.

So you can see how quickly these arguments get beyond the "gosh, we miss those cute little Main Street shops, but we sure do love those low prices" debates.  Books are not shoes, I always tell people.  Buy your shoes at Target, it's none of my business.  But buy your books from an indie.

But what about gardening? What's at stake?  Our liberty?  Our freedom?  Our planet?  Maybe.  In an era when homeowners associations can threaten to take your house away if you don't plant what they tell you to plant; in an age when biotech grass seed can drift into your yard, and the owner of the seed's patent can then sue you for patent infringement; at a time when the difference between the right pest management and the wrong pest management can make a difference in what shows up in your drinking water--hey, maybe it does matter whether we buy what the big boxes have to sell or what the independents offer us.  What are your thoughts?

It Takes a Garden Walk

By Guest Blogger Elizabeth of Gardening While Intoxicated

In July I attempted to entice other garden bloggers into attending Garden Walk Buffalo, and failed miserably. Fine. I’m over it, and now I have a new challenge: why not start your own walk? Garden Walk Buffalo was started as much to show off city living to a suburban audience as it was to show off our gardening prowess (or lack thereof) and now it is one of the most eagerly anticipated events on the local summer calendar.

We’re not talking about a guided tour for eighteen ladies from the local garden club (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Buffalo’s garden walk is free, advertised throughout Western New York and beyond, and is self-guided. Participating gardeners have the choice to open their back, side, and front yards—or any combination thereof—to the public for the last Saturday and Sunday in July between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. We started with twenty gardens in 1995 and now we have 260 plus. The gardens are not juried; anyone may participate, as long as their garden is within the roughly three-mile radius of the walk.

The event has received tons of newspaper, TV, and radio coverage, and we’ve found that housing values have routinely risen after a certain block or neighborhood joins the Walk. It is truly a blast. My husband was leery at first, but after his first experience of sitting in our back yard basking in the interest and compliments, he looks forward to it as much as I do.

Clearly, most of the players in this particular corner of the blogosphere have some element of exhibitionism in their make-up. Many, I am sure, participate in garden tours. Starting a garden walk is a great way to get friendly with your neighbors and a wonderful reward for all your hard work. The time to begin organizing one for next summer would be—yeah, right around now.

P.S. Though the Walk is technically free, we get so much revenue in donations that we have started a funding program for community gardens and are publishing a book/DVD this fall.

Have a Seat

The surprisingly sober EAL at Gardening While Intoxicated tells a sweet story of a couple who placed a bench at the edge of their property with a welcome sign on it.  And sober or not, I agree with her about the profound effect that seating can have on our gardens - and on us.

Pictured above is a charming stone chair (of questionable comfort) from the gardens at Oatlands, a Virginia plantation founded in 1798.  Which, by the way, had 128 slaves at the time of the Civil War, housed in what most of us would call slave quarters (left), though this photo from their website is entitled "dependencies."  Technically though euphemistically correct, I suppose.

Now back in my own garden, you've already seen my Adirondack chairs and woodland bench, but here for the first time are my most rustic seats - an old stump placed streamside and a sliced tree section along the woodland path at the bottom of my property. There's no welcome sign but everybody knows the seats are for all of us. (One more photo below the fold.) 

200-Year-Old Seed Startled To Wake Up In 21st Century

Seeds tucked in the 1803 notebook of a Dutch merchant have been successfully germinated at Kew Gardens, according to the BBC.

A bean, a protea, and an acacia emerged from their long sleep, but not without a little help.  To mimic the conditions found in the wild, scientists simulated fire by nicking some seed coats and blowing smoke over them.

According to news reports, the plants are less than thrilled with their twenty-first century surroundings.

"Frankly, I was hoping we'd spend another couple centuries snoozing away in that library," said the bean.  "That Dutch guy had some big idea about planting me by the millions back in Europe, but I told him to leave me out of it. I didn't want the publicity.  And now look at me--I'm on the BBC. I'm just a bean, for crying out loud!  You people are media-obsessed.  Can't a plant have some privacy?"

The acacia agreed.  "These so-called scientists want to keep feeding me and feeding me until I get big enough for them to do genetic testing on me.  They're hoping to find out if I'm different from my modern-day counterparts.  Am I different!  Hello?  Have you seen those hip-huggers these girls are wearing?  It's shameful.  I don't even want to meet those trees.  I heard they're planning a family reunion, but I told them I'd rather be tossed on a compost pile."

Only the protea showed any interest in life in the Internet age.  "Have you Googled me lately?" the protea asked.  "I'm a cut flower now!  Chicks in New York are paying top dollar for me!  I've got an agent negotiating a development deal with HGTV.  The bean tried to talk me into doing a boring old lecture series instead, but I told him that is so two centuries ago."

HGTV was not available for comment.

Would you--could you--with a mealworm?

  So there I was in England at Wiggly Wigglers, minding my own business (well, not really--I being led around the farm and shown the many marvelous things they do) when we peek inside a fridge and what do we see but millions and millions of mealworms, all squirming around in the cold?

Mealworms.  Tenebrio molitor, the larva of the mealworm beetle, also called the darkling beetle, or in Britain the flour beetle.  You can guess why--they munch on flour and grain (they'll also find plenty to eat in a compost pile or in leaf litter.)  The larvae are perfectly happy to just live in a box in your garage.  Just give them a little bran to eat, and they'll hang out, perfectly clean, odorless, and quiet, until it's time for them to become bird food.

Mealworms are an important food source for wild chicks and fledglings.  If birds can't find enough juicy worms and bugs to bring to their babies, adding mealworms to bird feeders is a good alternative.  Just ask the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which provides instructions for breeding your own mealworms with a diet of bread and cabbage.

Now, if anyone could get excited about breeding little protein-rich wiggly things in a box, it would be me.  But frankly, these critters give me the creeps.  Somehow I don't think mealworms are going mainstream in the United States the way they are overseas.  In fact, the Audubon Society's page on feeding wild birds doesn't even mention live food as an option (although you can find info on mealworms if you did a little deeper.)

So, what's up?  Would you?  Do you?  Or do the birds need to fix their own damn dinner?

As Seen on TV

Looks like my old friend Jerry Baker has some competition for your gardening dollar from this equally folksy-looking entrepreneur.  Since accidentally discovering a home brew for greening up those yellow spots in the lawn, he's concocted recipes for durn near everything.  And now for $49.95 (or the bargain price of $29.95 if you act before 9/18) he'll send you his ebook, in which he reveals his secret recipe for killing insects ONCE AND FOR ALL.  (Permanency is key.)

His website presents this hard-to-refute argument for buying the book.

In order to get all the recipes found in this ebook "Forceful Insecticides & Fertilizers: Homemade Recipes" you would probably have to do as John Perez did. Study chemistry, meet the best exterminators, read dozens of books, talk with experts for hours.  And most of all, you would have had to create recipes, analyze their results and draw conclusions.  Now, the best recipes and techniques... can be found in this condensed, practical, complete and immediately exploitable work.

Yeah, think of the tedious research we'd all have to do, since NOBODY in academia or industry has ever done any. 

The benefits of using his recipes are obvious.  If you buy this ebook and you're a professional exterminator, "You'll be obtaining a major, systemic career edge."  And if you're a professional gardener, "You'll reduce in your insecticide and fertilizer costs.  Your pocket will of course feel the change."  [Bolding and punctuation in the original.]

And here's a quote for Amy and all her worm-loving readers:  "Treat your lawn with a deworming concoction. (learn how and why you must do it once a year)  [Yeah, that's all in the original.]

My favorite quote from the site?  "3 Reasons to Believe What John and I say: Reason one: Maybe you've seen John on television."

Take-home message?  If these guys can sell ebooks about gardening, maybe there's a market for people who aren't QUACKS. (Sorry, he's got me bolding and ALL-CAPPING and now I can't STOP.)  Ya sure can't argue with the economic model of getting 30 bucks for sending an email.  And if you've ever been interviewed on local cable (and I have!) you, too, can use the guaranteed credibility-inducing "As Seen on TV."

Link via email from Kathy Jentz.

Oak Gall Art

I met artist Chris Beards  at a show of his work in northern California a few months ago.  I thought his sculptures were beautiful and whimsical and I liked that they were made from odd bits of natural and recycled materials.  But what were those organic pod thingies he'd strung together to form a sculpture?

Oak galls.  A gall, as you may know, is an abnormal swelling of plant tissue.  Sometimes it happens in response to an injury, but usually this strange growth plays host to some insect.  Galls are usually considered to be harmless and in some cases can be very beneficial:  some galls play host to insects that protect the tree from predators and even care for the tree in that strange way that only, say, an army of ants could do.

Chris told me that he was drawn to the galls and started collecting them for possible use in a sculpture along with found bits of machinery.  (His artist's statement says, "The fragility of the organic is contrasted with the cool logic of the mechanical."  Yeah, I can dig that.) 

He brought the galls indoors and began working on this sculpture, when something surprising happened: they hatched.  The wasp larvae that had been snuggled inside the galls all decided to emerge at once, and soon the house was filled with the pitter-pat of little wasp wings.

And so this art project met the fate that so many art projects do.  "My wife made me take it outside," Chris said.  He managed to get it finished anyway, and here's the result. Brilliant?  Crazy?  You decide.

The Friday Orchid Blogger

What the hell IS that thing?  My thoughts exactly.  It's an orchid called Brassia 'Eternal Wind'  and it was posted yesterday by my favorite orchid grower/political blogger in the world.  That would be John Aravosis of Americablog and you can go there to learn more about this bit of botanical exotica.  Notice he's gotten 92 comments so far about this plant, so gardenbloggers, read 'em and weep.

What got this popular lefty blogger posting about his orchids was the tradition somewhere in the blogosphere of Friday Cat Blogging.  John here is catless - thus the cat-substitute, his stunning orchids.  So we win, coz there's enough cat photos on the Web to give us all hairballs and not a lot of gorgeous plant photos.

I've written about John before and I figure if I keep doing it, he'll notice me and say hi.  We're practically neighbors, ya know. 

Lowest Maintenance Front Yard Ever

My absolute favorite front yard along my regular power-walk route is also the lowest maintenance.  And it's completely filled with shrubs.  I know some of you are stubborn nonbelievers in the doctrine of shrub supremacy in the landscape, despite my repeated sermons, and this post is for you.  Whether it persuades, cajoles, or just annoys, I'll soon learn.

What you see here are crapemyrtles, spireas, shrub roses, and various evergreens along the house and at the curb.  Do I need to mention that it looks good all year?