The Garden Tour has come and gone. The garden looked better than it has in several years and I was able to greet visitors secure in the knowledge that absolutely every piece of garden equipment and detritus was safely stowed in the closed garage. It will probably take months to get it all out and discarded or redeployed.
The last two days before the Tour involved a final avalanche of mulch, several trips to various garden centers and lots of manual labor. My daughter, the Container Queen, put together countless container arrangements of annuals—geraniums, verbenas and all manner of draping and cascading plants—to fill the holes in the beds and borders. She cleaned and painted a metal plant stand that she found on the street on bulk pick-up day and filled it with flowering specimens. While she was creating colorful mayhem with plants and potting mix, her godmother—up from Brooklyn for the weekend–was deadheading the roses, hiding the evidence of our gardening labors and sweeping the driveway.
After much deliberation, we ended up without a water feature. The decapitated wishing well stands in the shade, making a solar fountain impractical. Other kinds of fountains that require either plumbing or wiring or both, were too expensive for people who have just spent a fortune on mulch. We decided to give the whole idea a little more thought. For the Tour, we used the stone well base as a giant container with flowering plants emerging from the opening and cascading over the sides. It worked perfectly.
We made up for the lack of water in the well, by having lots of water in the birdbaths. A last minute trip to a local big box store produced a wide, aquamarine bowl that we positioned atop the blue pillar from our old birdbath. It replaced the previous basin, which broke a few years ago when a thirsty raccoon leaned on it just a little too hard. The new one looks like elegant porcelain, but is actually practical, heavy-duty plastic. Now the raccoon can do his worst and the birds will still be able to get a drink or a bath the next day.
The big yellow peony that I bought two years ago after a decade of yearning was a hit with tour goers. The Itoh hybrid is a true survivor, having gotten through a harrowing first winter under a mountain of snow. The mild winter and spring this year inspired it to add heft like a prize fighter prepping for a title bout. Large, canary-colored blooms began opening right on schedule late last week. On Tour Day, the peony was in its glory, holding forth in the sunny part of the hell strip between the street and sidewalk. Even the local dog walkers made approving comments.
Day to day most gardeners see only individual bits of their gardens—usually the areas most in need of attention. Hosting large numbers of visitors means seeing the whole thing, including the overall condition of the landscape, access points, and, especially in the case of rose gardens, places where plants threaten to lock visitors in unwanted thorny embraces. I got impressive welts on my arms while tying up a climbing rose so its romantically drooping canes couldn’t attack tall people.
In the weeks leading up to the Tour, I forced myself to look at things that I usually don’t see. I moved a rosebush that was languishing behind what used to be a small butterfly bush. Installed in a roomy pot and moved to a sunnier space, it looked happier after only two weeks in its new location. A couple of standardized abelias had grown large and out of scale since last summer, resembling big pink muffin tops balanced on toothpicks. I pruned them back for the Tour and will give them an even more meaningful haircut once they finish blossoming. All the new plants languishing in the holding area were potted up and the porch furniture cleaned off. Most years I get those tasks completed by Labor Day at the earliest.
So what comes next?
With so many of the routine chores finished, I can go to work on the future. The few blooming iris impressed many people, but too many of the rhizomes failed to sprout flower stalks this spring. I am going to find a single home for the collection and give the plants the love they deserve. Next year I hope for an iris rainbow.
The enormous ‘Golden Celebration’ rose, which is six feet tall and about five feet wide, was grievously injured when one of its largest canes split all the way to the ground during the freak snowstorm last October. At the time, there was so much else going on that I forgot to cut it back. This spring all the canes, including both halves of the split one, leafed out. If the Garden Tour had not been imminent, I would have pruned the rose right away. Instead, I wired the damaged cane back together and got the bush completely upright with stakes and garden twine. Now it is covered with golden roses and sprouting vigorous new growth. When the current flush of bloom is over, I will do the radical pruning necessary to keep it in good health for the longer term.
The best thing about dedicated gardeners is that they never rest on their laurels or let weeds grow under their feet. There is always another project, new plants to discover and old ones to rearrange and propagate. Garden tour visitors see a snapshot in time. Veteran gardeners know the snapshot is really part of a moving picture.