A HOT Memorial Day Weekend!

This might be slightly skewed by the air conditioner ten feet away, but not by more than a few degrees....

Greetings! Hot days here in Iowa -- it's been in the upper 90s most of the past week, which has meant a very short spring, after being so cold and snowy until mid-April. As I wrote back in early April, I was worried that we'd have only about five weeks to work before it got too hot to move plants safely or work outside comfortably, and I was right to be worried.

I've been trying to do things outside in the morning and evening, but it was already 90°F by 8 a.m. today, and the evenings stay in the upper 80s (plus we've had our usual May gnats, which seem to be worse in the evenings). So I've mostly just been watering things around 11 p.m.by flashlight, which is actually a very pleasant time to be outside....

I have been working this weekend on the getting the fountain to function in my new Islamic-style Paradise Garden. I bought a fountain pump and, after cutting a hole in the bottom of the galvanized milk can, I set the can on several bricks in the sheep tank and installed the pump underneath the can, with the output tube inside the can, and sealing around the hole in the bottom of the can with lots of plumber's putty. I then filled the tank and turned on the pump.

The good news is that it looked very nice, water bubbling gently out the top of the milk can and overflowing into the tank, just as I had planned. The bad news is that the milk can is apparently just decorative in nature, not water-tight in the least. Water streamed out of every rivet hole in the can, which necessitated taking apart the fountain and buying some spray sealant, with which I sprayed the inside of every seam in the can several times. We'll see if that does the trick, after the sealant has dried and cured. Perhaps this evening I'll try filling it again.

I've also been giving the boxwood hedges in the Herb Garden their annual trim. You can see the difference it makes in the above photo, taken midway through the job. It's much easier and quicker now that I have a cordless trimmer, even if I do have to take a couple of (very welcome) breaks to recharge the batteries.

Ah. Much more orderly now.

Anyway, here are a few highlights of the late May garden -- but I've had to keep my eye out and be quick about taking photos, as the heat means that many of these lovely flowers go over in the blink of an eye.

A single peony in the Rainbow Border.

A beautiful deep red peony in the same border, 'Red Charm', I think.

These weren't open yesterday...

Lots of yellow irises in the Yellow Garden.

Multi-hued irises and Painted Daisies (Tanacetum coccineum) in the Front Border.

We bought a large rock and rolled it off the back of our pickup truck into the North Border, and I think it looks quite nice there, drawing the eye.

Clematis and veronica near our front steps.

Anyway, I'll spend the afternoon today inside keeping cool in the air conditioning -- much like nearly every other day this past week. It will give me a good chance to read and catch up on what's going on in your gardens.

Hope you're enjoying cool and pleasant days in your gardens (I can't believe I'm already writing this, after all my wishes for warmer days until very recently...).

Thanks for reading! -Beth

Making my new Paradise Garden

BEFORE: My front yard before I started constructing and planting my new Paradise Garden.

Greetings! I'm excited to finally be able to show you my new Paradise Garden. I (and my long-suffering husband) have been hard at work constructing and planting this new garden area in my front yard.

As I wrote about in my last post, I became enamored of the idea of an Islamic-style paradise garden, filled with scented flowers and fruit trees, and decided to make an Iowa-style version of one in our front yard. It's not quite finished (as if a garden is ever "finished") but I'll show you the progress I have made so far:

(April 25th) I rented a sod-cutter and transported it home in our ancient pickup truck. But it was a different kind than I had gotten from the rental place several times before -- MUCH more difficult to control than the old kind. So my poor husband had to run it this time. Then he and I (and my son, who is now big enough to usefully bribe) moved the sod to its new home in one of the flower borders I eliminated from our back yard. Nothing wasted.

(April 27th) I had a neighbor with a front-end loader come and scoop out some of the soil from the front half, which was too high, and move it to the back left corner, which sloped down, in order to make the garden more level. I then used a shovel to excavate where the paths would be, moving that additional soil to the back corner as well.

(April 28) I had materials delivered: 150 paving stones, 80 bags of paver base sand, and lumber to build the pergola.

(April 30-May 4) I laid out the paving stones over the paver base material, working out the spacing. I also built a wooden retaining wall in the back corner to hold up the newly shored up level of soil. Additionally, I dug four post holes for the pergola at the back. This was a fair amount of physical work, I must admit....

(May 6) My long-suffering husband leveled the paving stones, re-laying them over leveling sand. He and I then built the basic frame of the pergola. It's a small, light one that I designed to hold lightweight climbing vines like clematis and sweet peas (no wisteria!), and to provide a bit of shade. 

(May 7) I could then begin to dig over and loosen the soil in each bed, sifting through to remove the many roots from the nasty runner grass that threatens to take over most of my garden beds. (I think being surrounded by paths instead of beds will make it easier to keep it out of this garden.) I then added leaf compost from our county landfill on top.

(May 8-19) Finally, I could begin the fun part: planting the new garden beds with all the colorful flowering and fragrant plants I had been dreaming about filling my Paradise Garden with!

And finally, the big reveal:

My new Paradise Garden!

I attached lattice panels to the pergola for more privacy and for vines to grow up, got a new wood bench, sewed a temporary cover for the pergola to provide shade until the vines grow up, and flanked the center entrance with potted annuals.

The orange tree that I've had in my sunroom for two years is covered in blossoms that smell
heavenly -- just like a Paradise Garden should smell.

A closeup of the pergola, with the temporary fabric cover. A clematis paniculata 
and a clematis 'Rooguchi' are growing on the near (south) posts, and a sweet pea 
on the right back post. 

I planted a lot of scented and colorful flowers in the beds, trying to mostly plant ones that have traditionally been used in Islamic gardens (although I've also used substitutions like clematis for non-hardy jasmine, and the like):

• a traditional fruit tree (potted) in the center of each bed: a fig, a pomegranate, an orange, and I'm still waiting to find an olive tree locally
• sixteen roses that I moved from other beds that I eliminated (four per bed)
• boxwoods I had elsewhere to mark the corners and provide something to look at in winter
• Asiatic lilies and scented orien-pet and oriental lilies
• poppies from another garden bed
• twenty dianthus 'Sweetness' I started from seed last year, five plants lining the outside edge of each bed
• a dozen lavender 'Ellagance Sky' plants, three plants lining the inside edge of each bed
• several dozen fragrant tuberoses that I divided from last year's bulbs
• scented daylilies: 'Persian Market,' 'Pardon Me,' 'Hyperion,' 'Pandora's Box' and 'Wayside King Royale'
• several short bearded irises that I had in other garden beds
• some wallflowers I started from seed last fall
• annuals such as fragrant stocks, snapdragons in Persian carpet colors red, magenta and orange, and orange-red marigolds
• dahlias: 'Jaipur' (a bright red bush-type), 'Bishop of Llandaff' (dark foliage and garnet-red flowers) and 'Karma Choc' (dark red flowers)

I still have yet to work on the fountain: getting a water pump and wiring it to bubble water out of the galvanized milk can into the sheep tank. I hope to accomplish that in the next week or two.

Meanwhile, my main job will be to keep everything watered until it's established. I'm really looking forward to seeing the plants grow and flower in brilliant colors and with lovely scents. And this fall I'll plant some spring bulbs like lily-flowering tulips and scented hyacinths.  

Hope your own garden projects are going well for you as we head into late spring. Thanks for reading! -Beth

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!