Planning and Making My New Garden Area

My picket fence-enclosed front yard, which I have been wondering what to do with.

I'm excited to reveal the new garden area that I'm working on this spring! -- please excuse the length of this post.

Background: For the past two years since I had our front porch enclosed into a sunroom, I've been wondering what to do with the area in front of our porch. The wooden steps that lead up to the center of the porch are now useless, and I had considered removing them. But then there would be a concrete sidewalk to nowhere (which would be difficult and expensive to remove). I thought about making a garden there using the sidewalk in the design, but I've been trying to reduce my gardens, not make new ones, so last year I didn't do anything in this area.

Instead, last year I re-designed the area behind the spot from which the above photo was taken, and made a new Scented Garden around my East Patio:

The new Scented Garden that I made last year around my East Patio, filled with fragrant flowers, photographed last August.

During the previous winter, when I was deciding what kind of garden to make around that East Patio, I had considered several different sorts of gardens, including a tropical-themed garden.

But I also read a truly inspiring book about Islamic-style paradise gardens, written by a French garden designer. His magical descriptions of the fragrant and fruiting plants in exotic paradise gardens (and quotations from lyrical Islamic poetry about gardens) made me yearn to make such a paradisiacal garden here. But I couldn't see how my patio area could have a water feature, which is absolutely required, nor could I figure out how to divide the garden into four parts, which is the traditional design for Islamic gardens.

A glorious book that made me long to have a
beautiful garden like those in Morocco and the
Middle East.

So last year I simply surrounded my patio with the fragrant plants that I would have planted in an Islamic-style paradise garden. And the Scented Garden turned out quite well, becoming a lovely, fragrant spot to sit on summer evenings.

But I hadn't forgotten my desire to make a paradise garden. And this January, I was very excited to watch British garden personality Monty Don's new BBC documentary about Islamic paradise gardens. And as I did so, it occurred to me that perhaps I could after all make such a garden in front of my sunroom.

Monty Don at Amber Fort in India, during filming for Paradise Gardens.
(The Times.)

I read a lot more books about Islamic gardens in January, and became convinced that this was the type of garden I wanted in front of my sunroom.

Another good book about Islamic gardens that
was very helpful in planning my version of one.

But there were two concerns: First, what about my intent to reduce the number of garden areas that I maintain? I had promised myself that I would get rid of two major garden areas if I wanted to add a new one. I actually decided to do away with three borders in my back yard that haven't worked as well as I had hoped. (I've been able to re-use most of the plants from those areas in the new Paradise Garden or in other borders.)

Appropriateness?

The other, bigger question is: would an Islamic paradise garden look appropriate next to my Iowa farm house? Obviously, I couldn't have white marble, colorful Moroccan tiles, and exotic geometric shapes in my garden.

This style of garden looks beautiful and appropriate in Damascus, but not in Iowa. (Maktab Anbar Museum from Wikipedia.org)

To avoid an inappropriate style, my paradise garden couldn't look like an Islamic-style garden at all, at least to the untrained eye. But it could still contain all the key elements of an Islamic paradise garden, Iowa-style:

1. Water. Flowing water is the absolutely essential element in every Islamic garden, as most of the Islamic world is in desert areas where water is revered as the source of all life. While a large octagonal marble fountain would look ridiculous in front of my house, there are many water features that would be quite appropriate here.
2. Shade. As with water, a shady place to sit is of paramount importance in the desert. Iowa has scorchingly hot summers like the Mediterranean, so a bench under a vine-covered pergola is appropriate and useful here too.
3. Enclosure. Most Islamic residential gardens are private, enclosed spaces in which intimate family life is off-limits to the gaze of casual passers-by. My garden area is in my front yard, which gave me hesitation, but our entire yard is enclosed by evergreen windbreaks in the middle of corn fields. It's true that the UPS guy will see my garden when he delivers to my front door, but otherwise I think that my picket fence probably lends enough sense of enclosure to be OK.
4. Fruit trees. Islamic gardens originated to grow fruit, and only later became ornamental. The traditional fruit trees planted around the Mediterranean include dates, figs, pomegranates, olives and citrus, together with grape vines. Figs, pomegranates, olives and citrus are all perfectly happy grown in pots, and I will sink one of each in the center of the four beds of my garden, overwintering them in my basement. And if these exotic fruits don't work out, I could later replace them with patio-sized hardy fruit trees that won't have to be overwintered indoors.
5. Four beds divided by paths. The great Islamic palace gardens in the Chahar-Bagh (quadripartite) design often have four canals or water rills flowing outward from a central fountain. But modest gardens are simply divided into four parts by paths, with a fountain in the center where the paths meet. 
6. Scented flowers. The traditional flowers planted in Islamic gardens during the Medieval period included the rose, lily, iris, poppy, carnation, wallflower, lavender, hollyhock, lilac, jasmine and numerous spring bulbs, particularly in Turkey. And by the 17th and 18th centuries, Ottoman and Mughal gardens included numerous flowers from the New World, including marigold, four o'clock, and tuberose. Although I won't be absolutely strict about the historical accuracy of plants, I will prefer traditional scented, colorful Islamic garden plants in my paradise garden.

I drew a rough plan of the new garden area I'm making:

A rough sketch of the layout of my Paradise Garden. At the center top (north) are the steps to my sunroom. At the bottom is the front gate through the picket fence to the driveway.

• Each of the four beds are about 6 by 9 feet in size, and I'll plant some extra boxwood shrubs I have in the outer corners, for winter interest. 
• A small pergola, 4 by 6 feet and about 7 feet in height, will be at the west end of the garden, providing shade for a bench under it. I'll probably plant a vine on the south side to cover the pergola.
• The paths will be made from 16"x16" concrete pavers laid over sand, two pavers wide, for paths of 32" in width. 
• The central water feature is something I thought about a great deal. Because a fancy fountain would look ridiculous in front of my farm house, I asked myself: what would look appropriate in a rural setting like mine? On Houzz.com I have noted recently that galvanized stock tanks are becoming quite popular even in non-rural locations, and a number of people are making water features and raised beds out of them. Then, while walking around Hobby Lobby, I came across a very large galvanized milk can, and realized that it could be part of the water feature: 

Waiting on my patio: The galvanized sheep tank from
a local farm store, 4 feet in diameter, and 2-foot-tall galvanized 
milk can that I intend to  make into a bubbling water feature.
 I'll have to figure out how to run electricity to it and fit a pump inside. 
Simple, inexpensive and unpretentious, just right for a rural 
Iowa farmhouse.

Here is a rough drawing, with Photoshop effects, of the layout of my new garden:

After crudely adding a pergola and water feature using Photoshop, I printed out the photo and drew the beds and paths using a Sharpie marker. Not a high-tech computer rendering, certainly, but I think it gives a 3D idea of the layout (minus all the colorful flowering plants, of course).

What's not included in my black & white rendering are the brightly colored, flowering plants that will billow out of the beds, the whole point of the Paradise Garden:

• In the center of each bed will be a small fruit tree: an orange that I already have, a fig and pomegranate that arrived via mail order, and an olive that I have yet to procure. I'll also plant a grape vine on the fence.
• Surrounding the fruit trees will be plants that I'll move from the gardens that I'm eliminating. Roses, lilies, irises, pinks and poppies will find spots in these four new beds. 
• I'll also buy some fragrant annuals, some new lavender plants and perhaps a small lilac for the bed in front of the porch.
• In autumn, I'll plant some bulbs for spring, especially lily-flowering tulips and scented hyacinths.

This was delivered two weeks ago -- my work was certainly cut out for me!

My long-suffering husband and I have been hard at work in the past two weeks. And although removing the sod and laying all the paving stones has been a lot of work, I think this new garden area will be much easier to maintain than the larger borders in my back yard that I'm eliminating.

We've been making good progress: grass removed, pavers laid, pergola mostly built. I've finally reached the planting stage, and I'll reveal the results of all the work in my next post.

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And even more fun: In the first episode of Gardener's World on BBC in March, host Monty Don announced that he will be making his own version of a Paradise Garden in his garden at Longmeadow. So I'll be able to watch as he designs, lays out and plants his new garden, as I'm doing the very same thing in my own, much more modest, version of a Paradise Garden.

Monty Don on Gardener's World several weeks ago marking out one of the four garden beds (which will be excavated sunken beds, unlike mine) in his new Paradise Garden at Longmeadow. A circular fountain spilling into a square pond in the center (marked out with a single stake at left) will overflow into a long water rill that will lead to a large, paved seating area in a structure at the back end of the garden, behind the camera. I'm sure his garden will be magnificent when finished! (BBC)

Unlike Monty Don, I don't have garden assistants and construction crews helping me out -- but it still makes me feel better that he is going through the same process that I am. Great minds, and all that.... :-)

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Thanks for reading this very long post! I hope your own garden plans are getting underway this spring, and wish you warm and sunny days to work in. Best Regards, -Beth

My visit to the Missouri Botanic Garden in St. Louis the weekend before last was wonderful, and I especially enjoyed the Ottoman Garden there, filled with tulips and Persian buttercups (Ranunculus).

Truly a paradise... gotta get me some of this....

Spring is here, and it's Tulip Time!

Greetings! I've been incredibly busy in my gardens for the past couple of weeks, now that the snows have stopped and beautiful spring weather is finally here. I'm making all sorts of changes to my gardens -- getting rid of some, adding a major new garden area -- but I did manage to take time to enjoy the spring bulbs that are blooming everywhere. Here are a few scenes:

Another shot from my Front Border.

Orange Princess double late tulips in my Scented Garden around the East Patio.

Mixed Darwin hybrid tulips in the Mint Circle.

And about those changes I've been making in my gardens, here's one major change: I've eliminated the front curvy flower border section of my North Border. I (and my husband) removed the sod from my new garden area and moved it here, after I dug out all the plants and moved them to other borders or to put in the new area:

You can see the lighter colored sod in what was the front curvy section of my North Border. No more flowers in that section, only the evergreen back part of the border remains.

It's been a chore trying to keep the transplanted sod watered in the hot, windy days that we've been having here recently. But we got two inches of much-needed rain over the past couple of days, which I think will help the grass establish in its new home.

And I will reveal my major new garden area in my next post, I promise (it's still very much "under construction," in the hardscape stage, and not much to look at yet).

I hope you have been enjoying many beautiful days in your own gardens too, now that winter is finally and blessedly behind us. Thanks for reading! -Beth

Where the #$%@ is spring??

Another 1-3 inches of snow again?!

The forecast calls for snow again tomorrow! This will be the fourth time it has snowed here in the past two weeks. The average last snow date in this part of Iowa is around the end of March, which isn't to say that it never snows in April -- just not four times! And April 18th is getting to be pretty late in April for snow -- by this time last year, temperatures were nearly 80°F.

But I'm hopeful that this will be the last time it snows this spring, and that warmer days are coming after tomorrow. The ten-day forecast looks pretty good: mostly sunny and temperatures in the 50s and 60s, which is what they should be in mid-April.

Despite the frequent bouts of snow, a few stalwart bulbs have been blooming, although not completely unaffected by the unusually cold temperatures:

Daffodils next to the house in a south-facing border.

More daffs on the east side of our house.

Some hyacinths are blooming in the North Border, although I think the cold has stunted their growth. They're only a few inches tall and look ridiculously stubby. But they still smell nice though, way down next to the ground.

These crown imperial fritillarias are similarly afflicted -- not quite blooming yet, but still only about ten inches in height. They don't smell as nice as the hyacinths. :-)

I'm hoping that the sun and warmth will encourage more perennials and bulbs to emerge from the ground. Things are definitely coming up in some areas, but not everything yet, and not everywhere.

It's not just that I want to enjoy warm spring days -- although I do, of course. But also, I'm itching to get started on the new garden area that I'm planning. And I can't do that until I can move some perennials and late bulbs around, which I can't do until they're all up and I can see where they are. It's kind of frustrating -- I feel sure you understand.

Plus, I'm also worried that I have so many things that I want to do in the gardens this spring, and that despite the late start to spring, it will still get too hot to work outside comfortably, and move plants safely, by the end of May as usual. We may only have a five week window to work, which sounds like an awfully short time to get everything done.

I have already been able to work outside a few times this spring. Several days in March were nice enough to start cutting back and raking out borders. And then last Thursday was the first pleasant day since March: 75° and sunny! It was a glorious respite from the cold (but alas, followed by more cold, rain and snow last weekend). I did get quite a bit done (and enjoyed being outside doing it) on that beautiful day, though.

And today was pretty nice, nearly 50° and sunny, so I pruned my roses and did a few other things outside. With any luck, there'll be more days like today later in the week, and I'll soon be able to get started on my garden plans, which I will tell you about in a post soon.

I hope you are finally enjoying some warmer days in in your own gardens, and spring is arriving for you with beautiful weather and many spring flowers. Thanks for reading! -Beth

Greenhouse Travails: How do I make this thing functional?

93°F, and it wasn't even that sunny. Yikes!

I've been trying to figure out how to make the most of my new 4'x6' greenhouse, and it's been a saga of uncertainty and adjustments. I hope I'm on the right track though.

Here's a timeline of my progress:

August 2017: Brand-new and all in one piece. What could go wrong?

October 2017: Knowing the fierce winds on my hilltop location, I had the foresight to get my builder to make a solid base to attach the greenhouse frame to the south side of my garage. So the frame stayed in place. The same can't be said for the polycarbonate panels and the door (seen leaning inside), all of which blew off in what was actually not a very high wind.
They were strewn across the lawn. Sigh.

November 2017: I used two rolls of tape to bind the polycarbonate panels in place.

March 2018: Last month, since a few panels continued to come loose despite the tape, I wrapped the entire lower part of the greenhouse in a single 15-foot-long sheet of heavy plastic. Not pretty, but now the lower panels aren't going anywhere.

March 2018: I also adjusted the automatic vent window opener, so that it would close all the way at night, but open during sunny days. These are pretty cool: some kind of expanding material pushes open a piston that levers open the window --
no batteries necessary.

March 24, 2018: I installed a small heater, and began to experiment with how high to
set it to keep the temperature above 50°F at night, but not too warm.
(Embarrassingly, the first few nights I didn't realize the extension cord wasn't plugged into
the outlet in the garage, so the heater wouldn't come on no matter how high I set it.
Plugging it in really helped -- all part of the learning curve....)  :-)

March 31, 2018: One of the top panels blew partly out in a storm the night before, and needed
to be taped more securely. But by this point, the greenhouse was staying above 50° at night,
and was nice to sit in during sunny days (the overturned bucket with paving stone on top
at lower right is my makeshift seat -- I read in there for a while and it was quite pleasant).

April 1, 2018: 64° is much more acceptable -- although the 104° high from the previous day is somewhat worrying.
I wonder how accurate the thermometer is though.

April 1, 2018: Since the next ten days are forecast to be overcast and cold, and the greenhouse
shouldn't get too hot during the day, I decided to throw caution to the winds,
and moved some potted starts from my basement into my new operational greenhouse!

I've only moved things in that aren't too sensitive to low temps, in case the heater should fail or heat the greenhouse inconsistently. As spring progresses, I think I'll be able to move more warm-season starts in there.

And I will definitely have to open the door on sunny days to prevent the temperature inside from soaring to 100°F. I've ordered another thermometer to check the accuracy of the one I have.

I've also ordered and should receive in a few days:

1. An inexpensive remote thermometer with alarm, so if the heater or electricity fails, I will be alerted. I'll sleep better at night.
2. An electricity usage monitor, so I can calculate how much it costs to heat the greenhouse.

I'm determined to make a go of using a greenhouse, despite my total lack of experience and the many challenges. How can I call myself a real gardener if I've never grown anything in a greenhouse? (Even a very modest 4'x6' plastic greenhouse like mine?)

My learning curve will continue as spring progresses -- stay tuned for further adventures in greenhouse growing.

Hope you will enjoy warm spring days in your gardens soon. Thanks for reading! -Beth

On a more cheerful note: I found these pansies in a local greenhouse, and they are highly scented. Since it's still too cold for them outside, I put them on my kitchen windowsill, where I can enjoy their bright, cheery color and lovely fragrance up close for a week or so. Soon we'll enjoy this kind of color outside too!

Spring Wake-Up

Winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis).

Springtime is slow to arrive this year, but it is arriving. I've been enjoying some warm, sunny days over the past weeks here in Iowa, and have been starting to cut back and rake out some of my garden beds, as well as start seeds and make garden plans for this year. But the ground remains colder than average this year, and early blooms are opening nearly a month later this year, compared to last. We impatient gardeners are always raring to go in spring, but I suppose this teaches us to be patient and concentrate on doing other things that still need to be done inside.

Caution: Falling Figs!  A huge Mysore Fig (Ficus drupacea), the largest in the United States
at 102 feet tall and 305 inches circumference. Our visit to the Edison & Ford Winter Estate in
Fort Myers, Florida was fascinating.

My husband and I spent four days in southwest Florida in late February, and that was a wonderful escape from winter and a preview of summer -- no wonder Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had winter estates down in that part of the world! We visited the Edison & Ford Winter Estate and the Naples Botanical Garden on our trip to Cape Coral, Fort Myers and Naples, and collected shells on the beaches of Sanibel Island, and it was a lovely trip.

But back to reality.... Actually, I was quite happy to return to Iowa to see our spring unfold, and it was sunny and 65°F when we returned (we really did bring back some of that Florida weather!). 

The little irises were blooming last week. (And something -- I suspect rabbits -- has been munching our tulips... Grrr.)

And one miniature daffodil has bloomed!

But I woke up this morning to this:

Ice, sleet and snow blowing in sideways with 30 mph gusts of wind!

Trees covered in ice.

Everything covered in ice, including the Yellow Garden, in which not a trace of yellow
can be discerned.

I was supposed to work at my store today, but as I live in the country on gravel roads and there's a severe winter travel advisory, my store will be closed today (along with many other businesses in town). It's a Snow Day! (A good day to catch up on reading garden blogs, to see what everyone's up to as spring slowly arrives.)

So I'll continue to stay inside, where it's cozy and warm, and enjoy my indoor garden:

Starting seeds inside. I'm still working on making my new greenhouse habitable for some of
the seedlings as they are potted on.

My Calamondin orange has both fruit and blooms.

My Dipladenia has been flowering during most of the winter -- much better than the Mandevilla I grew that stopped blooming and immediately fell prey to some sort of blight as soon as I brought it inside.

Even when it's not sunny, my sunroom is still a pretty nice place to be. On a sunny day, it's simply glorious. It's definitely
my Happy Place!

I've been making plans this spring for a new garden area, and eliminating several other areas that haven't been as satisfactory. I'll reveal my plans as soon as I have made some progress (which, with any luck, will happen in the next few weeks).

Until then, I hope you are are enjoying warm, sunny springtime days in your own gardens, as plants pop up and flowers open. I look forward to reading about your own spring plans, and I'm so glad you stopped by -- thanks for reading! -Beth

Autumn Catch-Up

Autumn greetings from Iowa! It's been more than six weeks since I last posted, since, as I mentioned in that last post, I've been overwhelmed with all the work of remodeling a new space for my retail store, moving everything into the new space, and organizing it all, but things are finally starting to get settled there. My house went mostly uncleaned and my gardens completely untended for more than six weeks, and blogging had to fall by the wayside -- but now things are once again tidied up indoors and frost has taken care of many things outside, so I have time to make a quick report.

The big new addition to my gardens are the new greenhouse and cold frame that my handyman and I put together next to the garage. I felt that I really couldn't be a serious gardener unless I had at least a very small greenhouse in which to start seeds in spring, so I ordered one online last May, and finally assembled it in August:

The shiny new greenhouse, back in August, on a
paving stone base that I laid myself. The new cold frame
is just beyond.

Unfortunately, all the panels blew out several times (we live on a windy hill in open country), and this is what the greenhouse looked like by October. Even the door blew off -- Grrr. I had gotten the builder who remodeled my front porch into a sunroom to build a wood base around the bottom and to firmly attach the frame to the side of the garage, using spray foam to seal the gaps, so at least the frame didn't blow away. But the panels just wouldn't stay in, despite my buying extra clips to attach them, and then trying to tape the panels to the frame and to each other.

By last week with frost approaching, I decided that I simply hadn't used enough tape, and used a whole roll on both outside and inside to hold the panels in place. Not beautiful, but it seems to have held together thus far, and it's better than looking out in the morning to see polycarbonate panels strewn across the lawn.... I think I'll further batten it down by wrapping the whole thing in plastic sheeting, held on by -- yes -- more tape.

Since we got such a late start, all that's in the greenhouse this fall is a lone, sad-looking
tomato plant. It was mostly eaten by tomato hornworms (giant green caterpillars that my husband
picked off at least two dozen of ) so we have scant hopes for ripening tomatoes.
However, it's an experiment, to see how long the unheated greenhouse can keep the
tomato plant alive as temperatures get colder.

My husband also planted some lettuce and chard in the cold frame, but again, we got a pretty late start because the cold frame wasn't in place until late September.

We plan to use the both the greenhouse and cold frame only to extend the growing season in both fall and spring, and may heat the greenhouse only minimally, if at all, in springtime. My sunroom is pretty good for starting seeds until about the first of March, when the angle of the sun is too high to shine directly into the sunroom very much. At that time I plan to transport seedlings to the greenhouse to grow on, and a heater might not be needed much, if at all. (I did install an automatic opener on the venting window on the top of the greenhouse, to control for too much heat.)

At any rate, it will interesting to experiment with using the new greenhouse and cold frame, and I'm glad I finally have them -- I feel like "real" gardener now!

Some other scenes:

By late October, my Scented Garden around our patio, which I designed and made this year, was starting to look pretty over, despite some last blooms of the annuals. 

But alas, it was struck down by frost last week. The Four O'Clocks were utterly destroyed overnight.

In advance of the approaching frost, I had over the past month been bringing many potted plants inside to their winter home in my sunroom, which is pretty full again. A number of plants will also overwinter in my basement, under florescent lights. 

More house plants, back inside for the winter.

A nice spot for home school lessons with my two kids, as well as for reading alone and napping (preferably with cats). On sunny days in winter, this is my paradise, my tropical vacation right at home.

But very sadly, our outdoor cat, Little Kitty (next to the newly-planted Scented Garden in May) developed pneumonia, and despite my veterinarian husband's treatment, she died last week. We buried her at the edge of our windbreak. She was my outdoor gardening companion, often purring next to me as I planted or weeded, and is greatly missed.

There is still garden work ahead of me this fall -- bulb planting, some potted starts that I desperately need to get into the ground, tidying up annuals, etc. -- which I hope to do in the next week or two. But I actually find myself looking forward to winter spent among my plants indoors -- the sunroom has made all the difference.

I hope you are enjoying a gentle autumn in your own gardens, and settling cozily into warm sweaters and comfy slippers as winter approaches. Best wishes for the coming holidays, and Thanks for Reading. -Beth