Garden Rant

Because We Just Don't Run Enough Hot Pix of Adrian Grenier

Huh.  There has to be a way to make this relevant to GardenRant.

Oh yeah.  He did an interview with Sierra Club Radio on the eco-friendly upgrades to his house in Hollywood and his plan to do something or other to make things more eco-friendly on the set of Entourage.  In the interview he sounds like he just rolled out of bed, but hey, that totally works for us.

Thanks, ecorazzi.

But Can You Get the Cow Horns at Home Depot?

You know you live in California when the lead story in your newspaper's food section includes a recipe for a cow's horn stuffed with manure and buried in a field for six months, and dried yarrow blossoms stuffed into the bladder of a deer and hung from a tree. No, it's not the dinner special at French Laundry. It's a new wave of chefs who want to buy their produce from biodynamic farmers.

Don't get me wrong; there's plenty to like about biodynamic farming.  It's all organic.  You create a closed loop, meaning that you produce your own fertilizer, compost, and manure, rather than trucking it in. You treat the farm as a complete ecosystem, maintaining insectaries for beneficial bugs and  growing native plants.  That's all good. 

But biodynamics has one of those cult-like founders (Rudolph Steiner), and then there's the part where you plant according to the cycles of the moon and bury cow's horns, which "concentrates the energy of the cow; it serves as the antennae for all the energies surrounding and penetrating the animal."  Oh, boy. Now we're getting into crystal-and-mood-ring territory.   

Better late than never! The PPA responds—or at least one of them

I doubt many Rant readers will be checking back on my February Perennial of the Year post, so I want to bring this new response to that long-ago rant to the fore. It is from John Friel, a member of the Board of Directors of the Perennial Plant Association. I’m guessing the post was just brought to his attention or it came up during a google.

- Elizabeth, you skipped a crucial stage in "how the magic is made:" A committee does indeed select a short list and send it as a ballot to the members. But that short list comes from a longer list nominated BY the members. 


- firefly, for our Mission Statement, click on "About Us" and you'll find the following: "A professional trade association dedicated to improving the perennial plant industry by providing education to enhance the production, promotion and utilization of perennial plants."

- Elizabeth, you make an excellent point about Scabiosa 'Butterfly Blue'. It's not as reliably hardy nor as trouble-free as originally believed. But it performs very well in many areas. Seven years after it was Plant of the Year, it's still a big seller industry-wide. No promotion lasts that long if the plant doesn't work.

- It's not really all about promotion. Yes, the PPA is an industry association, and most of our members need to keep the bottom line in mind. But we're not all mega-growers, or even plant sellers. We also count as members many educators, students, garden writers, photographers, plant breeders, designers, and representatives of public gardens and arboreta.

- Do you want an exciting new plant, or a proven reliable plant? Choose one. Introducing new plants is wonderful, invigorating, profitable and essential. But promoting a hot cultivar that hasn't been tested thoroughly, and/or can't be found at retail anywhere, is a great way to disappoint gardeners and damage credibility.

- Thanks for the loan of the soapbox. Love this site.

Thank you, John. So, any personal nominations for perennial of the year? I just planted geranium Rozanne, which was the PPA’s choice for 2008, and have a few thriving hellebores (2005). As for a new one, I love the new orangy heuchera strain, whatever it’s called.

With apologies to those in zones where these words would not apply

I would never say that the gardens in my neck of North America are at their peak now—far from it. It's better than that. Almost everything is green, and only a small percentage of it is actually flowering. (With apologies to the geraniums, early columbines, dicentra, and other late spring beauties.) The spring bulbs are over, and the summer flowers are still in their prepubescent stage. The hosta leaves have just unfurled and are months away from looking dusty or motheaten. Ferns are standing tall (some of mine as high as five feet), the clematis are all gray-green shoots, and tight rose buds are barely showing slivers of red or pink. Even the annuals are somewhat discreet, standing out in small colorful clumps as they begin to grow into their containers.

The time when all is possibility and anticipation lasts for about two weeks at the end of May and the beginning of June here. This is the time when you can still cherish the idea of a garden, and the hope that this summer your garden will fail to disappoint in the major ways gardens so often disappoint. Sure, you can already see the seeds of disappointment and frustration beginning to mature, but they're easy to ignore. Now.

For me, this is the only time I can truly enjoy the roses. "Oh my god, I've never seen so many buds," I think to myself. The time when the resulting flowers will be too heavy for their canes, get clobbered by rain, or otherwise decimated (the dreaded beetle has made great inroads here) is far in the future. The time when the emerging shoots of a second flush will be annihilated by midge is even farther away. Even writing this and knowing this does not hinder my present delight in the upstanding array of pristine buds, weeks away from maturity.

Although there's little to like about an adolescent lily (one friend asked me why I was growing so much corn), at least now they're all standing tall, and the stakes are still in storage. Now I can imagine that the tall mid-late-summer perennials (still pretty short at present) planted to hide their awkward stature will do the job. This is one of many, many garden strategies that has yet to be proven under the sterner conditions of high summer.

And I suppose there are plenty of ways the pond will cause heartache and bewilderment in the weeks to come, but I don't see them yet. At this moment, the pond seems the smartest addition to the garden that could have been made. When almost nothing is in flower in the ever-warmer days of early October, the pond will be there, gurgling away, unaffected by bloom cycles and insect damage. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself now.

Excuse this short post. I have to go out enjoy my (almost) flowerless garden.

On-Line Gardening Videos - They're free but are they worth anything?

I've surveyed general-interest video websites and here's what's available for gardeners and gardener
wannabees in need of a little instruction.  Videos on gardening sites will be covered in a separate post.

ABOUT.COM
Readers may remember that I've ranted about this site, specifically about their landscaping writer's lack of qualifications and telltale bad recommendations.  But at least I know he's unqualified because his bio is presented.  Not so for their video "experts."  And googling their names produced a big zip. 

But straining to be fair, I give their production values a pretty high mark.  I'll even grant that the topics are generally good ones - dividing perennials, edging a garden, planting an herb garden, building a stone patio and more - and the content offered up by their mystery experts seems pretty good.  The advice is more traditional than earthwise or organic, however. 

And a small gripe.  Because home and garden videos are listed together, with less than a third of them on topic (for us), browsing the titles isn't much fun.

EXPERT VILLAGE
Now the folks at ExpertVillage have the good sense to show bios for their experts but alas, the sum total of their "qualifications" often rests in the disappointing term "extensive knowledge".  And production values?  Check out this video on invasive plants.  Can you see anything she's pointing to?  The apparent problem with shadows seems pervasive, too, so when experts says "as you can see," it's kinda funny.

And here's another example of their low production standards:  Garden shop owner Allan Watts offers his "Basic Tips for New Gardeners" videos - 16 of them - which he clearly taped himself.  We know that because the camera is static and he's a talking head, a really dull one.  Here's an example.   Also notice the location - his store.

And once again with the annoying mishmash of home-and-garden titles.

THE BRITS DO IT BETTER - VIDEOJUG.COM
Now let's see how the English fare at this endeavor.  Here's How to Care for Your Lawn in Autumn.  While the production values are professional, I may be entirely too American because a lot of the narration was lost on me.  And not just because of the accent but wow, who knew that gardening terminology could be so different and what the heck is a besom?  And in the link above you'll witness the sweeping of a lawn, a putting-green-height lawn at that.  (Are their turfgrass species really that different?)  And how about their advice to spread a "top dressing" of 6 parts sharp sand, 3 parts topsoil and 1 part peat on the lawn?  Maybe the subject of gardening isn't as exportable as we think.

"Digital culture" blogger, mediaangler.com, provides a nice segue:

Videojug is run out of the UK by a band of television professionals. Viewdo was founded by a couple of American guys seeking out a cool business to grow. Videojug goes on location to film instructional videos, Viewdo puts more onus on the user to supply video of their special skill or knowledge base.

VIEW-DO
So let's see how those two American blokes made out with their venture.  Unfortunately, their Home and Garden listings don't actually include any on gardening, though the exacting task of folding a napkin is thoroughly explored.  Enough said. 

COMING SOON - MONKEYSEE.COM
Why all this interest in gardening videos?  Because I received a solicitation to appear as an expert myself and survived the taping of my first video, a 9-part ditty called "Sustainable Gardening".  It will debut next month on Monkeysee.com, which our digital blogging friend would call a "Web 2.0 content start-up."  (Now can somebody tell me what Web 2.0 means?)

And while I'm impressed with Monkeysee's professionalism, there's no telling what my video will look like on screen or how it will function.  Case in point:  On About.com I clicked on a video about deadheading flowers only to be shown a video of Jennifer Love Hewitt selling bras.  Gotta make a buck first, I suppose. But if it turns out that viewers clicking on "Sustainable Gardening" first have to sit through an ad for Anusel suppositories, I'm outta there.  I swear to God.

Do You Remember Your First?

At this year’s San Francisco Flower and Garden Show, the Sunset staff had put up a sign showing every edition of their famous “green book” going back to 1954. The caption asked, “Do you remember your first?”

I remember my first. It was the sixth edition, about thirteen years ago. I was shamed into buying it by a garden center employee who rolled his eyes when it became clear that I didn’t know what “the green book” was. “The Sunset book!” he said impatiently. “How can you not have one?”

The guy might have had a little to learn about customer service, but he was right. How could I not have a copy of the most authoritative book on gardening in the west? Now that I’m a garden writer, it’s a professional necessity. If I mention an unfamiliar plant in an article, the editor might call me and say, “What is this plant? I can’t find it in Sunset.” If it’s not in Sunset—well, you’d better explain yourself.

So that was my excuse for rushing right out and buying the hefty, thirty-five dollar book as soon as it was released. It’s a business expense, right?

In the News

First, from this article in today's Washington Post about the new Leonardo DiCaprio enviro doc "11th Hour", recently shown at Cannes: "Did you know that kids can identify 1,000 corporate brands but not 10 plants in their back yard?"  We're not surprised.  But on a happier note, we read that "Enviros like to party."   

ON THE FOOD FRONT

For a weekly update on news-worthy food issues, check out The Slow Cook on Sundays.  Here's an example.

And here's a letter to the Washington Post editor in response to an experiment by two congressmen in which they tried to survive on a Food Stamps budget.  The letter-writer makes lots of good points but doesn't go far enough - to suggest growing one's own food, at least those expensive herbs he writes about.

A Healthful Diet, on $3.57 a Day
I am a Quaker who has owned a natural foods business for 31 years and has traveled extensively in the developing world. It is clear to me that most of the people who live in the poorer areas of the world rely on a simple diet based on grains, beans and vegetables. So, as a discipline in keeping with the Quaker call to simplicity, I began adhering to a $25 weekly food budget in early April specifically to test the economic feasibility of living on organic whole grains, dried beans and fresh vegetables.

He/she said, she/he said: the gardening tug of war

Is there anyone who truly gardens alone? Although we hear the first person singular used almost exclusively in posts and comments on Garden Rant (and many other blogs), I'm willing to bet that behind almost every "I" there's another he, she, or even they who bear some measure of responsibility for the garden in question. And even if one lives alone, there are friends and neighbors who help, advise, or otherwise influence for good or ill.

It's fun—and helpful—to have a partner to garden with, or even a whole family. It can also be a delicate balance. Just as it would be absurd to assume that sharing a house means sharing the same ideas of how to design the interior, it's equally unlikely that people who live together would always agree about exterior improvements and alterations.

In A Garden Gallery, a book about sculptors David Lewis and George Little, and the well-known Bainbridge Island garden and art business they share, Lewis says “I would like to imagine that it is a beautiful balance of give and take, compromise, and lovingly granting the wishes and vision of that other person. In reality, it is often stubborn reluctance, quiet moping or raised voices among the plants we love."

As for Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicolson, according to West she did her best to upset the formality of his designs for garden beds while at the same time respecting his overall concept. "Creative tension," she called it.

In the less rarified aesthetic air of the gardens and gardeners I know in Western New York, there are a few major causes for discord in the domestic landscape. Number one, at least as far as I'm concerned, is expense. The way I've solved this is to quietly accept that I will have to devote a good percentage of my personal income to buying the amount of plants and bulbs that I think are necessary—but which many other people, including the person I live with, would consider insanely excessive. There are many other areas where expense can be a factor, but no need to enumerate them—we've all been there.

Another area has to do with individual concepts of a shared garden. I often hear from friends that the person they garden with loves the lawn more than they do, or is attached to certain trees, or that one person yearns after certain plants that the other person hates. This is where the "creative tension" comes in, as each partner learns how far to push the envelope.

The best partnerships I hear about are those where one person takes care of a whole aspect of landscaping—like building furniture, or putting up fences, and the other has complete responsibility for planting. This was often the case in the interviews I did for the Garden Walk book, and it's the category into which I fall. My husband is totally in charge of setting up the watering system (and watering much of the time), lighting, and such hardscaping as is not carried out by contractors. I do the plants. We still have to agree about major design choices (and don't always). A recent decision to have a water feature turned out to be the only thing we agreed on—much discussion and compromise was necessary before we could finalize exactly what form that feature would actually take. But now it's in, and we both love it.

All's well that ends well. This time.

Start 'em young

That seems to be the motto at the National Arboretum's Youth Garden, where raking new gardens is a mother-daughter partnership.  Story at The Slow Cook.   

Post-Chelsea Report, with Queen

by Guest Blogger Graham Rice of Transatlantic Plantsman

The Chelsea Flower Show is a huge show squeezed into a small space. The eleven-acre site alongside the River Thames features:

• A three-acre floral pavilion containing over 100 floral exhibits staged mainly by plant nurseries and ranging in size from 50ft x 35ft (imagine 400sq ft of roses!) down to 10ft x 10ft; six roof gardens; a lecture theatre; and, in the Lifelong Learning section, 18 educational displays.
• Twenty outdoor show gardens, the ten largest all 100ft x 35ft
• Smaller outdoor show gardens in three series: six Chic Gardens, six City Gardens, seven Courtyard Gardens
• A floral design marquee
• Hundreds of trade booths
• A wide range of catering facilities
• Hospitality village
• Bandstand and informal lawns, paths and mature trees
• Press tent, TV and radio facilities, offices etc
• 157,000 people spread over five days.

The Will To Grow

Naples: home of the laundry garden

I just came back from a really lovely 20th-anniversary trip to Italy with my husband, and though I was mostly drunk on falanghina and the scent of jasmine, I did spend some time thinking about gardening.

Next week, I will post a little bit about Pompeii, which proved to me that the Italian style--basically, yardening with really, really great pond spitters--was already firmly in place 2000 years ago.  (Thank you, Jeff Ball, for that wickedly useful word.) 

But what I mainly want to talk about is Naples, where, having walked most of the central city, I did not observe a single dwelling-place that appeared to have a single square yard of actual earth to plant in.  Set on a slope above the beautiful blue Mediterranean, the city is almost entirely paved over with stone. 

It's all roads, buildings, laundry hanging off balconies, piles of garbage, and ear-splitting vespas being driven by people so aggressive, they'll use the sidewalk when the street is clogged.  Plus a thrumming street life, glimpses of the blue sea at the end of the dark alleys, a huge sense of history, food that tastes like sunshine, and the Russian-roulette-like thrill of any attempt to cross the street.  I could see how Naples could be as addictive as crack, and indeed, I did not want to leave it, even to go to beautiful old boring old Positano.

Here's the incredible thing: the city is full of plant life anyway.  In fact, the grand, neglected, ancient buildings themselves are growing plants without any help from human hands at all.  Fifty feet above the street, plants poke up in tufts off the ledges of old buildings the way hair pokes out of the ears of old men.  My husband kept looking up and saying, "The whole city is composting!"

Just another 600 year-old building sprouting plants

And it's true.  Naples has an architectural heritage so rich, it was difficult for an upstater like me to contain herself.  In fact, I don't think I did.  I think I spent my half a week there shouting, "God, what a city!"  But what the place mainly looks like is the kind of place the Italian government has not given a thought to since the end of World War II.

Dan Hinkley Gushes in Latin

The plant world has been abuzz over this NOVA series, "The First Flower."  I haven't had a chance to see it yet; if you haven't either, this will give you a taste.  Plant explorer Dan Hinkley once again gets to have all the fun, this time on the road in China with botanist Yin Kaipu.  So would it be totally intimidating to hang out with somebody who could scramble up a hill shouting out botanical nomenclature, or just really, really fun?

A garden of glass at Corning

I should love these exquisite glass creations purely for their own sakes, but I also love them because they make me think of Angels and Insects, the A. S. Byatt-based film about the Victorians and their glorious obsessions.

Just opened at the Corning Museum of Glass, Botanical Wonders: The Glass Flowers of Harvard showcases an amazing collection of glass flowers made by father-and-son glassmakers Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka. How beautiful are these flowers? My colleagues at work have been coveting the folder containing the press release; it is imprinted with one of the drawings for the glass objects. How realistic are they? Well, pretty close—worth a visit to see for yourself.

These objects come from a time when botany was actually a craze. The Victorians loved natural history, and eagerly sought preserved specimens of exotic plants and animals, often keeping large private collections—which then became the foundations of public collections. These artifacts were collected not so much to show, but to study—and to teach from.

As two of the greatest glassmakers who ever lived, the Blaschkas were commissioned in 1886 to make the glass flowers as teaching models for the Botanical Museum of Harvard. They created hundreds of glass versions of North American plants, tropical plants, flowers being pollinated, fruits with fungal diseases, and other scenes from the botanical world.

Seventeen of the glass flowers will be on view in Corning; they will be joined by twenty-five glass models of sea creatures (also made by the Blaschkas) creating probably one of the most beautiful exhibitions of glass Corning has ever organized—and that’s saying something. Take for example, the Succisa with Butterfly, which shows two glass butterfly carrying pollen from one violet-colored flower to another. I have seen—and attempted to photograph (with ill results)—such a tableau in my garden many times. I never would have imagined it could be depicted so realistically in glass.

Leopold (1822-1895) and Rudolf (1857-1939) Blaschka started out in Bohemia (located in what is now the Czech Republic), long established as one of the glassmaking capitals of the world, but moved to Dresden in 1863, where these objects were created. Over the course of their careers, they supplied museums and universities everywhere with realistic models of plants and animals. For forty-six years, everything they made went to Harvard, including nearly 850 models and 4,300 enlarged details. These were not objects meant to be worshipped purely for their aesthetic value in a museum setting; they were meant to be a teaching collection for Harvard students. Cornell University also has an impressive collection of Blaschka objects—570 models of invertebrates—all of which are stored at the Corning Museum of Glass, including the twenty-five to be shown. The conservation of the Blaschka works is complex, because glue, paint, and metal armatures were used in their creation as well as lamp-worked glass.

In addition to the glass flowers, fruits, and sea creatures, there are sixty drawings (studies for the models). I have a gorgeous book of those drawings that I'd like to give to a Rant commenter. I also have tickets for the exhibition (which runs through November) for those who would be able to visit it.

Just come up with some reasonably interesting facts or observations about Victorians and their obsessions with natural history, or the Blaschkas. The best comment gets the first book; the next gets a different Blaschka book and then there are the tickets for those that can use them I'll choose and announce the winners around 9 p.m. EST.

Many thanks to Yvette at Corning for helping me out with this.

OK, I am happy to send Layanee and Michelle Derviss the books. I will be contacting them. Thanks for reading the post and commenting! Tickets are going to Jim and Joanne so far, and maybe County Clerk. I am sure I can get more.

Book Review:Burpee's Complete Flower Gardener

Does the "Burpee" in the title put you off?  There it is, not far from our Manifesto item: "Suspicious of the 'horticultural industry.'"  But the rest of the title is "The Comprehensive Guide to Growing Flowers Organically" and the authors, Karan Cutler and Barbara Ellis are really good garden writers.  Barbara wrote me that "Burpee had zero input re content or, for that matter, anything else, and when asked, they had no objections to my listing lots of other sources for seeds and plants."  So after my review copy appeared in the mail I decided to just get over my suspicions and enjoy.  And enjoy the book I did, for its excellent content AND style.

HOW TO GARDEN ORGANICALLY
Some things I learned in the first half of the book, the basic gardening information that's very au courant, in a good way:

• "Organic" isn't synonymous with "safe."
• Landscape fabric? Not so good in practice.
• Dyed mulch is both toxic AND ugly.
• Add organic matter; it's single most important and effective thing gardeners can do to improve garden soil.
• The formula for figuring out how many cubic yards of mulch are needed to cover an area.
• In a discussion of "cold composting," that "those who don't see composting as a religious experience and don't want to purchase multiscreen digital thermometers with 10-foot probes have only to repeat the mantra 'Compost happens.'"  And lots more good intel about composting.
• The authors' advice on aggressive plants, native and nonnative alike, is to check with local gardeners.  What a concept!
• The warning that some breeders have produced "abominations."
• pH stands for potential hydrogen, the pH scale goes from zero to 14, and it's logarithmic. The whole discussion of soil nutrients, organic matter and pH is very cool.
• And of potential rant-worthiness: those nutrient numbers (5-10-5) shown on fertilizer bags are unfair to organics! That's because they indicate the amount of each nutrient that's "immediately available". So an organic source like rock phospherus may be 30 percent P but only 3 percent is immediately available, so its P value gets listed as ZERO. No wonder we're all confused.

Are Funerals Going Green, Too?

A good life deserves a good death. My great-grandmother lived to be just north of ninety and died in mid-sentence, walking down the hallway.  She lived her life precisely the way she wanted to live, hardly slowed down a bit, and when her time came--BAM.  She was gone.

I thought of her when I read this account of an elderly couple in Wales who were found dead in the garden next to the lawn mower.  Margaret and Monty were both 87 years old and had been together for 67 years.  There's no telltale evidence of any kind, but the family suspects that Monty had a heart attack while firing up the lawn mower, and when Margaret came out and found him--well, the shock was just too great. 

It's not a sad story, really--if you've ever seen a widow linger on, lonely, bereft, in failing health--you know that there is really no better way to go than to live a long, happy life together and drop suddenly in the garden within minutes of each other.  As far as I'm concerned, Margaret and Monty won this round. 

I don't really fantasize about some perfect death involving a warm day in the garden and a pitcher of mojitos and a crew of sweaty young laborers (but if you do, please share!), but I do earnestly hope that whoever ends up in charge of my remains does not pump them full of chemicals and stick them in the ground.  That would be an entirely unfit ending for an organic gardener, wouldn't it?

The green burial movement rejects the ridiculous notion of embalming a body with formaldehyde and burying it in a chipboard veneer casket with plastic handles painted to look like brass.  (You didn't think they sold you real brass, did you?)  No--instead, just drop 'em in the ground, plant a tree on top, and let the worms do the rest. There's an ecological burial ground in New York state that lets you do just that; Canada has an association devoted to natural burial; and now there's a book out called Grave Matters that explores the issue in more--well, depth. The author, Mark Harris, is blogging about the book here.

I guess it doesn't matter what happens with my remains.  I won't be around to rant about it anyway.  But I can think of no better ending that to be dumped at the bottom of the compost pile and have chicken manure and shredded leaves piled on top.  Put me to good use--let me fertilize the lilacs.

Backyard burials?  Ashes scattered at Kew?  Memorial trees?  What do you think?  Any--uh--final thoughts?

Some nice press for Garden Walk

Maybe some of you are familiar with this publication. I'd never seen it, but it's out of Maine, and has a Northeast distribution. In any case, People, Places and Plants has given Garden Walk Buffalo its first magazine cover.

There are several reasons we've been trying to spread the word about Garden Walk nationally. First—and probably foremost—we're trying to polish Buffalo's image just a bit. Even though it is true that we spend most of the year huddled in a football stadium in our parkas drinking beer and eating wings, there are a few other things—like our arts scene, our great architecture, and our wonderful urban gardeners. Buffalo=gardens is a lot better than Buffalo=Rust Belt poster child for post-industrial stagnation.

But it's not all boosterism. We believe that beautification efforts like community gardens, plantings in medians and traffic circles, and even grants for house-by-house gardens can help revitalize urban neighborhoods. I have seen cases where suburban visitors have been inspired by Garden Walk to move back to the city, and the stats show property values rising in neighborhoods as they join the walk. It's free, it's fun, and it's unique, as far as I know. Certainly, there are a lot of garden tours across the country but I've seen none so far that are as large and as free of judging and fees.

It's July 28-29 this year. If the trip is feasible (many of you are quite close) you might want to consider a visit; the Rant team will be present and we're planning a special event, just for GW volunteers, media, and bloggers.

There will be cocktails.

*Awards (grunt), What are they good for?

This past Saturday my little town had a really fun party with lots of pizza and schmoozing, the evening culminating in the presentation of the coveted Azalea Awards.   As an award show it was a total hoot.  The funky local band accompanied winners on their journey through the auditorium to the stage, and there were even thank-you speeches.  It was all tongue in cheek and sincere at the same time.  No gift bags, though -  I was nominated for the Environmental Leader award, so I'd know if nominees cashed in.  And there were plenty more categories, like Educator, Coach, Volunteer of the Year, and Cultural Event.

So the Azaleas aren't about gardening, but were named in honor of the town's signature plant.  The National Arboretum's primary hybridizer lived here and even people with a personal distaste for the plant are proud of the town's collection.

But here's something I especially liked.  None of last year's winners were eligible in this, the second year of the award program.  Instead, they announced the 2007 winners, just like previous years' winners do at the Oscars, so they were recognized all over again, while helping to recognize and honor someone else.

By contrast, consider the Emmy Awards.  Like websites and blogs, TV shows continue from year to year basically unchanged and some good shows win year after year and some tired old shows continue winning, too.  And when the likes of "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "Third Rock" win year after year, what good has the damn award done at all?  I know I'll be getting angry comments from Raymond-lovers but even if the wonderful "Ugly Betty" won again next year I'd feel the same way. 

Where is this going?  To the Mouse&Trowels, of course, and how they might work next year.  Colleen has asked readers for ideas and some new categories have been suggested - Best New Blog and Best New Site.  Sounds good, and what about having new winners in every category?  Discuss among yourselves.

*For the generationally challenged, long ago during another war there was a song called "War, (grunt), what is it good for?"

My Love/Hate Thing with the Chelsea Flower Show

Guest Rant by William Hughes of My Garden
in North Wales

The Chelsea Flower Show (still the greatest flower show on earth) starts next Tuesday and I'm gripped with excitement.  The buzz, the atmosphere - it's palpable! (Last year I couldn't attend and I suffered severe withdrawal symptoms.)

But why the love/hate in the title?  Well, maybe it's because I've seen it up-close-and-personal.  Here's my report. 

A POND-CLEANER'S POINT OF VIEW
It all starts way back before Christmas when exhibitors have to submit plans to the Royal Horticultural Society in excruciating detail, plans that then must be followed to the letter the following May when exhibits are installed.  Plants have to be sourced months in advance and specially grown, all perfect and with plenty of spares for the inevitable accidents.

I've been lucky enough to be asked to help set up several exhibits over the years during the tight window of opportunity alloted for the job. Believe me, it takes every minute of the allotted time to get those exhibits looking perfect - not a speck of soil showing, not a trace of unsightly worker footprints.  I was even tasked once with the perfection of the area around a pond - removing dead leaves and flowers, polishing the slate surround, even wading in to polish the water-lily pads!  Just tidying up a pot of Festuca to Chelsea's exacting standards takes hours, something I know first-hand.

Ah, but the pay-off for us volunteers is that magical time on Sunday afternoon when we get a chance to sneakily take photos of these absolutely perfect exhibits - and here you see some samples - even before the Royalty see them the next day. Mondays are for the Royalty, pop stars, important people, not for mortals like you and me!

This Week in Quarantines

If this week's coverage of nasty bugs and invasive plants has made you want to just lock the door and stay inside, you may be in luck. Garden quarantines are an increasingly common way to deal with pest and disease infestations.  Just consider:

The Plum Pox virus has moved into certain parts of Pennsylvania, prompting the USDA to go trampling around in backyards looking for signs of the pox, and leading the agency to ban the planting of any new trees in the Prunus genus (that includes cherries, plums, peaches, etc).

An infestation of the light brown apple moth has led to strict quarantines in much of the San Francisco Bay Area and all of Hawaii.  In additions to restrictions on shipping nursery plants out of the area, individual gardeners within 1.5 miles of a moth sighting are forbidden from allowing anything from their garden--a flower, a piece of fruit--to leave their property.

The emerald ash borer quarantine prohibits the sale of some nursery trees, and restricts the transportation of firewood, in parts of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and elsewhere.

Residents of Orem, Utah have been asked to stop growing fruits and vegetables for three years (!!) and to allow the spraying of two pesticides in their gardens to stop the spread of the Japanese beetle. Over half of Orem residents have signed up for the spraying.  The pesticides are Merit (imidacloprid), which is rated as a Category II Moderately Hazardous chemical by the World Health Organization, and is highly toxic to bees, according to its own product label.  The other chemical is Tempo, or cyfluthrin, which is also rated as "moderately hazardous" by the WHO and EPA, and which is also highly toxic to bees. Oh, and best of all, they both contaminate groundwater and kill invertebrates!   Awesome.  (And all this in spite of the USDA's handbook on IPM approaches to Japanese beetle control.) 

At least one blogger is on the job, reporting from the community meetings about the situation. And fortunately, inmates at the county jail are going to plant produce to replace what the residents have lost. So why is it that this annual pesticide treatment will make it unsafe to grow vegetables, but perfectly safe to play on the lawn, let pets frolic in the garden, etc?  You people ask too many questions.

Thus concludes our This Week in Quarantines report.  Looking for a quarantine in your area?  The USDA's probably got one just for you--check right here. 

Now--are you STILL in the mood to get out and garden this weekend?  Better get out there now, before the USDA draws a map around your garden.

Invade me, baby

That plant is aggressive. It gets really big. It elbows out neighboring plants. It spreads all over and covers a lot of ground in a hurry.

This quote from Craig's comment on Amy's plant lust post resonated with me—I had just briefly posted about invasives on GWI. Though I spend hours every summer pulling my neighbor's silver lace vine out of my trellis, cutting back wisteria, keeping English ivy at bay, and yanking viola out of the ground, I still find much that is admirable about these aggressive cultivars. Perhaps my worst fear as a gardener is that nothing will grow, that I'll be stuck with yards of bare earth with little plants stuck here and there. Some people like nothing better than a neat yard, with every plant kept in its rightful place. I like things to be full—lush, green, overflowing.

And for that, you can't beat a few well-placed aggressors. I'm a busy person, so I like my plants to be busy too. The silver lace vine (Polygonum auberti)—though it actually belongs to my neighbor—never fails to awe. No matter how brutally I cut it back, usually right into the joints of old wood on the fence, back it comes, within a week regaining all the lost ground. Every summer, unless hindered, it handily covers an entire utility pole. Which is an improvement.

Under maples trees, English ivy works well, and looks appropriate. You just have to pull it back regularly. I use it as a framework for a bed of bulbs, various perennials, and ground cover under a big tree. I should fear this plant, but I'm grateful for its utility in a difficult situation. Another good choice for such situations, sweet woodruff, is more cheerful in foliage and flower and seems to grow anywhere.

Experimentation is necessary to see if it's possible to introduce competition into beds where plants such as these dominate, but I'd rather be filling in holes in a nearly full area than the other way around. My admiration for the ability of plants to propagate and spread with no help from me has stopped me from making many necessary changes in the garden. (I should be mixing and arranging the hosta and ferns instead of pitting them against each other from opposite ends of the same bed to see which will engulf the other.)

There are certain weeds/invasives even I will not tolerate. Clover (the yellow-flowered type), bishops weed (too boring), mint, and many of the underground spreaders are too unattractive/ill-behaved even for me. But if someone out there has created a great garden using those plants, good for them. I'd like to see it.

If you consider that the first duty of a plant is to grow, and you have a rather difficult urban space, you learn to treasure your invasives.