October 14, 2009

Megan and I are conjoining over plant collecting. On my list are the grasses Stipa arundinacea - a brilliant orange grass with a wide leaf and another Stipa testacea also in a greenish orange with wiry leaves making for a wiry outlook on life. These two grasses make great garden companions. We are pairing these plants up with a collection of bulbs including ranuncula cafe, tulip gavota, and lily tango series honeybee. Megan's front yard will become a garden gallery for this combo of custardy yellow-oranges and maroons. We are setting this garden tango in motion as we speak. There are two new introductions I found at local nurseries this year. One is a coreopsis, the other is a libertia. (I am going to have to run over to the nursery to complete the names.)

Here are a few "before" pictures that Megan sent over to me to post. (Between putting this blog together, fall soup is bubbling on the stove. The same colors as this garden with yellow orange carrots, shallots, and I still have purply-tinged heirloom tomatoes to chop up for garnish.)

Megan's Garden Bash - Spring Garden Tour - by Megan Atchley

Last April, Keeyla stopped by the house as she often sometimes does to say hi and share what's new in her life. She walked around the garden and said, "Wow Megan, the garden looks really great. You should do the tour again next year".

As Keeyla mentioned, our garden was on the Park Day Garden Tour when I was 5 months pregnant with Lucy and Park Day was a future dream for our daughter. About two years earlier I had found my way to Keeyla through a magazine cover that featured her front yard garden. I fell in love with that garden and wanted one of my very own. I was a novice gardener at the time, having only room for potted plants and herbs in past apartments and I had desperately wanted a real garden. When we bought our little house in Temescal, putting in a garden was a top priority for me. Along came Keeyla who opened my eyes wide as far what a garden could be and created our little oasis in the heart of the city. Over the years, I would watch Keeyla work, study her plantings, and take note of everything she had to tell me about plants and gardening. I took all those "Keeyla Lessons" and did my very best to translate them into our own garden, so there was a jolt of personal pride when Keeyla voiced her thoughts about the tour. I had worked particularly hard on the garden that fall and it did look really nice, actually it looked beautiful...

...which is not how it looks now at the beginning of October and if your garden is going to be on the Park Day Garden Tour, there is a lot of work to do. I'm a Producer and I create tasks list every day at work. It's in my nature. I have lists for everything. After Keeyla and I met to discuss ideas for the garden, I put all the plans and to dos and dates into Excel for tracking.

A Partial List of Fall Tasks:

Order Bulbs (done)

Dig up the front beds and replace with new soil

Pot up Iris (Apparently if you leave this until after Oct they won't bloom as well)

Prune back everything HARD...but don't prune the roses until Jan.

November Nursery Trip (I love going to the nurseries with Keeyla)

Repaint front pots. Maybe butterscotch and cranberry.

Yes, lot's to do...but time spent in the garden is some of the best time spent anywhere...

Megan's prep for Spring garden tour

What's that flower? This is Megan's question to me about a ranunculus featured on the cover of my new book coming out in December, FEARLESS COLOR GARDENS. The flower in gold tones, in burgundy, I answered, is Cafe. Why is it hard to get? I don't know. But we went online this weekend to put in an order at Willow Creek Nursery. It cost slightly more than the ranunculus-bulb-tuberlits (my word) for the spidery roots that you plant into the ground for gorgeous ranunculus flowers with their black dot centers. Megan purchased twenty; I purchased thirty.

A propagator friend of mine, Susan, asked me if I was going to plant them in the ground or start them in four-inch pots. I said both. Ranunculus' foliage is vulnerable to snails and slugs in the ground but it's easier to place them along with planting tulips, which I usually plant right after Thanksgiving right through to Christmas.

As you can see, there is a lot of detail in planting a garden for a tour. Megan told me that she's tired of her front garden's color scheme that emanated from a Felicia rose -- floriferous in a mighty bloom of gushing pinks that hangs itself out each year along her front fence. She doesn't want to get rid of Felicia but wanted to get rid of that pink. In jumps in Cafe, a modern looking flower in golds and burgundies that combines well with grasses like the golden Stipa and a new liberdia whose flat swordy leaves are thick and glistening like an eggy custard. Our color scheme will balance between these burgundies and custards, the old pinks showing through here and there. While Felicia is staying, Rosa the fairy whose pinky bower arms I still love, will come over into my garden.

Megan and I continued to chip from one section of her garden to another, reconfirming the color schemes of each section then drawing up a plant list from that. Being that it's October, our first foray into purchases was to get our bulb list ordered. One lily from the Tango series -- Halloween, a scary combo of black and orange -- delighted Megan's daughter Lucy who was born on Halloween. Lucy goes to Park Day School who sponsors a garden tour that will feature their garden during the last weekend of April. Megan and I put in her garden the year before Lucy was born, with the garden having been featured in the Park Day School garden tour when Megan was pregnant. Preparation of Megan's garden will become a regular feature of my blog with Megan making contributions.

Remember: now it's the time to purchase your Fall bulbs for Spring bloom. Bulbs bring the garden to life and welcome you into the new garden season. I purchase hundreds of bulbs each year to renew my garden. Sharing this bulb display is my reason for having Spring Open Gardens.

Here's a list of other bulbs we are gathering for Megan's garden. I recommend all of them.

Ranunculus -- Tecote Cafe, Salmon, Gold

Iris -- Rustler, Pass the Wine, Brown Lasso, Tennison Ridge

Dutch Iris -- Eye of the Tiger

Tulip -- Menton, Black Parrot, Queen of the Night, Cairo, Gavota

Lily -- Tango series, Honeybee, Halloween, Starburst, Spotted Salmon Tigerlily, Landini (the blackest lily)

Fritillaria -- Persica, Rubra (Red Crown, Yellow Crown)

Happy gardening,

Keeyla