Tranquil TimesSpring Newsletter 2008
March Madness, a sports term to define collegiate basketball playoffs, is an apt alliteration befitting gardeners and their state of mind. March, marking the transition from winter to spring, can be the cruelest month for gardeners. Unending days of snow, sleet, rain and mud are interspersed with a few delightful warm days. But the ground is too cold and wet to work. The freezing nights mean it is also too early to plant. The witchhazels (Hamamelis) stand up to this chaotic weather, unfurling golden petals on warm days and then recoiling against the cold. March Madness, eased by bright bursts of color. March Madness, what if it is weren’t for witchhazels? What if it weren’t for Flower Shows!March is the time for flower shows, in particular the Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s presentation of The New England Spring Flower Show in Boston. They tease us with fantastic flower arrangements, vibrant colors, lush greenery, garden vignettes flirting June flowers. The flower show’s horticultural exuberance energizes gardeners like the witchhazel flowers reawakened with warmth.I still have vivid memories of my first New England Spring Flower Show experience thirty three years ago while still a student of horticulture at the University of Maine. It now seems surreal that I might be part of other people’s budding florescence memories.Tranquil Lake Nursery exhibited a garden in the Flower Show for the first time twenty years ago. Beginner’s luck bestowed a gold medal, the Trustee’s Trophy, the first awarding of the Ruth Thayer Prize and best of all a fortuitous introduction to the Horticultural Society’s Children’s Coordinator, Debi Hogan at the Preview Party. March Madness!Tranquil Lake Nursery, Debi and I have been engaged in flower shows ever since. Visitors to the nursery who encounter purple columns in one of our display gardens may recall them topped with cascading water in the 2000 New England Spring Flower Show. Followers of the Miniature Garden category may become as intrigued as Debi and I have. Within a scale of one inch equaling one foot, we have made landscapes suggestive of those built in – 16th-Century China, and by garden designers Fletcher Steele and Roberto Burle Marx.To celebrate the twenty year anniversary of our first flower show experience and confirm a sure sign of madness, considering the current cost of greenhouse fuels, we exhibited a drought defying garden of silver and gray foliage perennials, grasses, shrubs and trees this year. Silky hairs and waxy cuticles burnish some leaves to a silver chrome. More than ornamental, this characteristic developed as a plants defense to cut water loss from their leaf surfaces.Drought tolerance is an essential quality for plants in the gardens at Tranquil Lake Nursery, as we have light sandy soils. The Silver Garden at the nursery is designed around a curved stone seat that encircles a dragonfly mosaic. This garden is a collection of hardy and tropical plants, from a dwarf Colorado blue spruce and Australian eucalyptus to rock hardy rosemary willow (Salix elaeagnos) a mimic for the Mediterranean rosemary. Explore our drought tolerant display gardens for planting design ideas from small city plots or country estates. Plant witchhazels. Warren Leach Creating Reliable and Practical Gardens Our gardens are oases, both figuratively and literally. They provide a place to escape, relax, entertain, and especially cultivate and grow life sustaining plants. A well planted garden can offer colorful blooms from late winter witchhazels to late fall asters. Evergreen leaves, vibrant fruit, multi-colored twigs, exfoliating bark and fall foliage clothe the garden and offer shade and structure to the garden guest. We want our gardens to succeed in providing multiple seasons of beauty. To be successful, the gardener needs more than plant lists annotated with flower colors and bloom season. One should pay heed to the site and gain an understanding of a sense of place. This site sensitivity is crucial both to design themes and the practical cultivation of plants. Such an examination of cultural environments was addressed by Landscape Architect Fletcher Steele in his book Gardens and People, published in1964. "Every spot in the world has its own individual character, topography, and climate -- its Genius Loci. The landscape architect learns early to consult her, because she is pitiless in branding unfit all that goes against her grain ... Her attitude does not change in cities or in forest. Each different site must be separately studied first-hand, on pain of ending with a theater set instead of a fitting work of art." Consulting the Genius Loci is a sound principle and is universal in garden making from the masterpieces of 16th century Italy to ancient China and contemporary Japan. Capturing this sense of place and time is one fundamental that Claire Sawyers explores in her new book, The Authentic Garden. She describes in one example the ephemeral qualities and gaiety of cherry blossoms in Japan. When confronted with the question as to whether extensive plant breeding could create possible new varieties that would greatly extend the bloom season, she cites that the celebration of the cherry blossoms is made all the more precious because of their fleeting beauty. This is an example of a culture where perpetual bloom would become mundane and not as worthy of a celebration. Any gardener who is devoted to growing a lilac, and who could not bear to not breath in its sweet intoxication, for however briefly in May, understands. We endeavor to heed the tenets of the Genius Loci at Tranquil Lake Nursery. The display gardens offer fanciful, colorful and contemplative oases incorporating time-tested hardy plants. The gardens at the nursery celebrate the structure of design, as well as the most ephemeral flower, the daylily. This revelry is on-going throughout the summer, climaxing in July, it continues as flowers open anew day after day. Understanding the site involves more that one component, so too understanding hardiness is much more than a record of the extreme low winter temperature. Exposure to the sun and wind, the contour of the land, soil texture and soil structure are site conditions that greatly impact hardiness. Winter wet and heavy clay soils, not extreme cold, will kill Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia). It thrives in the well drained sandy soils of our display gardens, even when the thermometer has registered ten below zero! Selecting plants that will flourish in your environment is a practical first step. One of the most common garden questions we hear each summer is "Why don’t my hydrangeas bloom?" Almost invariabally it turns out the hydrangea they are referring to is the ‘blue’ hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla). The two-fold answer relates to pruning with regard to flower buds set on new or old wood or outright winter hardiness. In our cold pocket at Tranquil Lake Nursery, even Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Endless Summer’ is a poor performer. The native Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’ which blooms on new growth with huge clouds of billowy white flowers is a reliable performer from Massachusetts to Bangor, Maine. Equally hardy are the Hydrangea paniculata cultivars. I am especially fond of Hydrangea ‘Tardiva’ with attractive flowers lasting through October when they become tinged pink. Choosing plants that are resilient to the vagaries of climate change is becoming a concern to many gardeners. The erratic temperature fluctuations like those experienced in the winter of 2006-07 and last summer’s uneven rainfall and drought which prolonged into the fall are increasingly raising havoc. Enriching our soils with organic composts and amendments does help buffer climate change, but good plant selection is essential. Some plants like red chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia) variegated five leafed aralia (Acanthopanax sieboldianus ‘Variegatus’) and ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) and its cultivars thrive in extreme opposing conditions, sun or shade, damp or drought. They offer opportunities for valuable planting combinations, together and with sun loving daylilies, patrinia and baptisia or in the shade with hosta, carex and rodgersia. The display gardens at Tranquil Lake Nursery rely on tough plants that will thrive in our light sandy soil and perennial bouts of drought. Explore the gravel garden and plant alternatives to lawns. The chartreuse foliage of Sedum ‘Angelina’ and Rhus typhina ‘Tiger Eyes’ are luxuriant in the worst dry spell. Listen to the site, consult the Genius Loci and remember to celebrate trifles in the garden, even if they only bloom for a short time. Warren Leach
The Perennial Plant of the Year for 2008 is Geranium ‘Rozanne’. This lovely geranium sports large deep blue flowers from June to October and grows 18" tall and 24" wide. This long-blooming geraniums is quite hardy and prefers well-drained soil. Making a great ground cover for the mixed border, it is an indispensable addition to the full sun border
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