gentle gardener: green: laugh out loud

green. and pink. and white and chartreuse and blue and purple and and and SPRING!

So much biomass, so little time. So much more colour, in so little time. To paraphrase my teacher, David Orr, "If it's not beautiful, it's not sustainable." The human impulse to shape nature into what we consider to be beautiful is fundamental and innate; we garden for sustenance and our prosaic needs, but the process sometimes shows us the way to poetry.

This year: the early bloomers were late and the late ones early: the result of 4 months of snow on the ground, with #Mount Chipotle in the Barracks Rd Shopping Centre in Cville melting April 27 or so after accumulating since December 19 (roll your eyes if you must, Buffalo and Boston, but this is Virginia!).
Spring in central Virginia, in the Piedmont, yields so much so quickly, with temperatures seesawing between 26F yesterday morning, and 89F predicted tomorrow.

Plants! Scarlet quince blooming in shade, intermittently, still! along with dogwood, aesculus x carnea 'Ft. McNair' pink horsechestnut, and now native fringe tree, chionanthus Virginicus, a bit early (fringe tree is usually a Mother's Day bloomer).

Bradford farm home-fringe & smoke low rez

Native woodland phlox divaricata, mertensia virginica (VA Bluebells), and English and Spanish bluebells mingle companionably with helleborus foetidus, orientalis, and variegated false Solomon's seal (polygonatum falcatum variegatum).
And the drama of native Quamash: camassia, punctuating the garden.

And yes, even the azalea: on the north side of the farm office & studio, with hakenochloa 'All Gold', heuchera 'Amethyst Mist' and 'Citronelle', and tiarella, heucherella, variegated Solomon's seal, plus gold creeping jenny duking it out with the weeds. Magnolia 'Kay Parris' did well in snow, 'Little Gem' not so well. Osmanthus 'Goshiki', Cotinus 'Golden Spirit', and Pieris J. 'Valley Valentine' , plus my first ever camellia japonica left over from a garden show display last year, all appeared to LOVE being buried in a snow bank.
Did I dig them out or fret or kvetch? No. I left the snow drifts to support the branches when the snow load off the roof let go in big heavy icy sheets. Damage: Minimal.

And is a designer's garden perfection? Ha! No, my garden has not been weeded. We pruned the trees and shrubs of damage, my able farmer husband used the grapple rake on the tractor to claw it up into a burn pile, and on a cool March Sunday evening, we burned it. That, and some rock phosphate on everything, was it. Clients' gardens demanded my attention, and the 'shoemaker's children have...well, actually, lovely, careless, glorious shoes.......including ladyslippers along the wooded driveway. We creep in the truck and count, a game each April since our daughter was two. This year, we counted over 40 ladyslippers. We are blessed with such mysterious riches.

Enough words. Pictures are better. Later, I'll post more to web.me.com/gentlegardener.
when I have time, but meanwhile, here are a few shot with my iPhone:

May 1, 2010 6:59:01 AM | about, archives, design, family farm, green, home, laugh out loud , plants!glorious plants!, rants & raves, sustainability

Garden Rant: So You Want to Be a Garden Designer--We Have a Winner!

Thanks for playing, everybody! From the responses to her guest rant, Love has chosen a winner. Gentle Gardener, you're getting a free book.

via www.gardenrant.com

Wow! I won a book on GardenRant! A real, paper book that can be read in a bubble bath after gardening. From Love Albrecht Howard, author of So You Want to Be a Garden Designer from Timber Press....a sistah corporate marketing refugee...#in