Gardens by Kelly Productions

An overcast sky and a duet album by Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny has me in a reflective mood today.  I think it’s prudent to pause at the close of a year, on the doorstep of another, and take stock of the road traveled and the journey ahead.  I’m not the kind of person that makes resolutions; I prefer not to think of January 1 as some new slate or canvas on which to start afresh.  It’s merely another opportunity, albeit with some celebration to mark the passage of time towards your goals and ambitions in life–a rest stop complete with fellowship, libations, and expressions of love and friendship.

2011 has been a phenomenal year in my life, even if the adventure at times frayed my nerves, tried my patience, and sullied my temperament.  Professionally, I finished my second book and graduated with my M.S. in horticulture from Iowa State University.  I gave 18 invited lectures this year from California to Virginia (love me some frequent flyer miles).  I flirted with three different job opportunities, though ultimately none of them panned out, and at that probably for the better.  The experience of interviewing and “going through that process” as they say in the world of job hunting was more than worth it.

Personally, I grew a lot into the person I’ve always wanted to be.  I met some phenomenal people this year that have forever changed my life.  As my professional life slowed down a little bit this fall, I made an effort to spend more time with my  inner circle of friends, reach out to colleagues I don’t talk to as much as I should, and invested time and energy in getting to know and love someone really fantastic.

On the flip side of all of this personal growth was my garden, largely left to itself after June 1 when my summer spun away in a skein of line graphs, thesis chapters, and book photography.  I missed it, a lot.  I’ve never spent so much time away from it in my life, and frankly, it bothered me.  My garden is a large part of my identity–my passion coming alive in the forms of living things.  I’ve always said that gardens are expressions of their creators, and mine this year certainly mirrored me–tousled, full, and still resilient.  Though I was away from it often, it carried on, and was there to greet me when I needed to separate myself from the rest of the world.  There’s nothing more therapeutic than an ambling walk through the garden with little stops to pull weeds, snap pictures, deadhead, and prune.

I guess we write the stories about ourselves that we want to write, though I’m probably a little hyper-objective for my own good some days.  But what 2011 reminded me of is that no matter how well I may architect a vision of myself or my work, the magic of serendipity always keeps any of my best laid plans unfinished.  That I embrace now.

So what’s ahead?  I’ve got another book to write, as you’ve probably read.  I’ve got nine lectures booked already, but expect to add several more.  The iris book (link above) comes out in early May, and you’ll hear much, much more about that in the months ahead.  I’m so excited to share it with you!  I’m plotting my next career move and considering whether I want to pursue my long-held ambition of a PhD or jump ahead to another business plan that’s formulated in the last six month.  In one sense, 2012 is a canvas with so many possibilities, to paraphrase Sondheim.

So it’s onwards and upwards from here.  Blaze on wayfarers into the bright beyond.

Earlier this month I extolled my gardener’s love for November, a month that few associate with gardening in my part of the world.  Even now, on Thanksgiving, ten days or so after the first hard freeze, I’m in love with what my garden has to offer.  For that I give thanks.

Today, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting about what and who I am thankful for.  I’ve gone through an intensely personal odyssey in 2011.  For this experience, though at times trying, painful, and exhausting, I’m truly thankful.  In reflection, I’m reminded that as we step into each new year, we can never really know what awaits us.  Expressing my words like that, I really do feel like a gardener, preferring to sow the seeds for the future, one at a time, tending the seedlings through a process of my choosing, and relishing in the results, serendipitous and unexpected as they may be.  Here’s to more seed sowing, tending, and relishing in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.  Peace on the garden path my friends, and happy Thanksgiving.

Some of you remember that through September and October, I was the featured photographer at the Des Moines Botanical Center in Des Moines, Iowa.  My exhibit entitled ‘Fall is for Flowers’, featured 40 images that displayed what is all too often overlooked about autumn–the flowers that comprise the finale of the growing season.  I went a little quirky and threw in some other ‘fall-ish’ things to round out the exhibit.  After all, what’s a garden without foliage, bark, fruit, and high heels?  (Now you’re curious!)

Since the exhibit closed last week, I decided to let it live on for a little bit longer here on the site.  Click here to peruse the gallery for yourself!

Over the last few years of this blog’s existence, I’ve spent some time on a number of November occasions (in 2007, 2009, 2010) extolling my surprise, if not bragging at little, at the beauty my Zone 5 Iowa garden boasts in the penultimate month of the year, while also reporting such joy from the road (again in 2009, 2010).  The point is all the same–even for cold-climate gardeners, the opportunities to enjoy the garden well past the first few frosts are abundant.  As I wrote on Facebook earlier this evening, I’m always amazed at the beauty that persists into November. The roses, heirloom chrysanthemums, gentians, and so much more seem to saturate the garden with their farewell drips of color, stains against the fading of the fall.  It’s these persistent reminders of warmer days and fonder toils that make the end, the finale bearable.

Extending the seasons is one of the biggest things I teach people in my lectures on garden design.  Take cues from plants, their sundry characteristics, the little things so easily overlooked.  As with asters and so many composites–their seeds.  As with dying perennials, their flaming foliage.  The little things easily lost to pumpkin carving, raking leaves, and football games extend the joy of gardening well into the early holiday season.  I’ve taken a colorful tour of the garden for the last four years on Thanksgiving, and I hope I’m so fortunate again this year.

Here are three images from the garden today–undownable perennials still blooming with conviction despite nightly flirtations with the upper 20s.

Chrysanthemum x rubellum ‘Will’s Wonderful’–Let it be known:  I’m a mum hater.  There I said it.  I know, you probably buy two or twenty every year at the grocery store, bed them out with your scarecrows, and crow about them with pride at neighborhood fall socials.  Bah.  I want a mum that’s everything but mum.  I want a hardy, hot, garden heavyweight that earns its keep season after season.  That’s how ‘Will’s Wonderful’ was billed to me when my Twitter friend, (the inimitable) Margaret Roach tweeted about it a few falls back.  It’s a surefire winner for those long depressed by the bushy, boxy things in plastic pots masquerading as “mums”.  Plus, it’s just starting to bloom NOW.  Absolutely the last plant in this 7-acre garden to bloom, not including aberrant reblooming irises.

Gaillardia x grandiflora Commotion® ‘Moxie’–A hybrid gaillardia that’s earned my respect.  (As an aside, I’m also on the record for hating many gaillardias, though I found redemption in the hills of South Dakota this summer, which I still owe you a story or five about).  Blowsy, semi-double, flaring, and loud-mouthed, this yellow yowler does everything right to earn the name moxie.

Kniphofia ‘Mango Popsicle’–I’m betting I’ll mourn its passing come spring, but until that dark day, I’m enjoying the fact that this new hot poker has bloomed twice this season.  What color!  I’d say it’s good enough to eat, but I wouldn’t advise licking it.  Your health aside, the neighbors might wonder.

Today, for some random reason, I remembered this poem I wrote last fall (see below).  I often find myself thinking more about light in the autumn than any other time of year, perhaps because it’s manifested so beautifully in our landscapes.  The dancing colors in deciduous leaves.  The earlier nights and richer sunsets.  The dappled silhouettes of trees giving way to solitary lines sketched out by charcoal shadows left after the falling.

Last week I was in Santa Rosa, California for the successful first annual National Heirloom Expo–a terrific event engineered by Jere and Emilee Gettle of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  I spoke about passionate gardening with heirloom flowers–what a great audience.  I’ve posted the powerpoint from that lecture on the Handouts and Downloads page.  Here are a few ‘fall’ images from Santa Rosa.  And don’t forget that poem…

What’s fall looking like in your garden so far?

Pausing at Dusk

Tears, dew drops, and pearly

glints of sunlight

Sparkle

Effervescent

Shimmerous and slight

Dusk knows not what dawn may bring

And dawn knows not what dusk has seen

In this daystruck, nightlong

quest through modes of light

I find

Tears, dew drops, and pearly glints

Hovering madly

through my mind.

10/22/10

August weather in Iowa is rarely described with adjectives like ‘mild’ or ‘cool’.  But this August, we’re blessed, after suffering through three weeks of 95-degree heat.  To our friends in warmer climes still suffering, my condolences.  This last week has made for famous gardening weather.  I’m still behind on all the things I’ve promised–how typical–though I surely promise to get those journals polished up from South Dakota trip.  I really do have a lot to share from that trip, but I trust you won’t mind that I’m spending some time doing the things that matter most in life–pulling weeds, correctly labeling my sedum collection, and taking abstract photos of texture like the one shown below.

I’m about to head out on the road again too.  Portland and Indianapolis are the docket for month’s end with lectures at two very fun industry events–Farwest and the Garden Writers Associational Symposium.  Speaking of speaking, with at least a year of ‘freedom’ from formal, future plans, I’m happily booking lectures left and right.  I’d surely love to come to your part of the world to talk plants, design, or marketing to new audiences.  Drop me a line if you’re looking for a speaker for your next event!  You can email me by clicking Contact Kelly at left.

More soonest…

The diaphanous textures of Sporobolus heterolepis (prairie dropseed), Eryngium yuccifolium (rattlesnake master) and Talinum paniculatum 'Limon' (fame flower) dancing at dusk.

Reprising that late autumn stroll around campus in my own garden today, I ventured out into the mist with the camera to hunt up the mainstays of November, or the last of the (plant) Mohicans.  Though this fall has been colder than last year (see last year’s Thanksgiving post here), a humble crop of cold-proof doers have stayed on for the final moments of the 2010 show.  Take a look!

Aconitum columbianum ssp. columbianum–This rare aconite grows wild from Washington all the way east to Iowa and New York where relictual populations grow leftover from the period before the last glacial advance.  In the garden they’re fall fabulous, blooming well into November on 16-18″ stems.

Callicarpa dichotoma–The fruit of beautyberries lasts long after yellowish fall-colored leaves drop.  These fruity beads dripped with the day’s light rain, pearly and luminous.

Chrysanthemum x rubellum ‘Will’s Wonderful’–I learned about this raucous old mum from my Twitter friend Margaret Roach (a former Martha exec) this spring and promptly ordered it from Lazy S’S Farm.  It’s a tad frosted now, but even withering in cold it looks just as charming as it did a few  weeks ago.  Though I’ve only grown it a few months, it’s already a favorite.  Thanks Margaret.

Eryngium yuccifolium–The prairie-style rattlesnake master looks smashing in virtually four seasons.  The remnants of white ball flowers from summer, tickling nearby blades of grass, will last into early winter–a reminder of a season months away.

Liatris aspera–Looking like the prom queen after a long night of smiling and dancing, these fading flowers still manage to blush lavender while puffy fros of cypselae blow away with each chilly gust.

Lysimachia clethroides–Even though I beat most of my gooseneck loosestrife back into a small, carefully contained clump near the house, I can’t help revel in its dripping red fall color.  Insert cat call here.

Monarda bradburiana–I talk about this bee balm constantly and for good reason.  Flowers and disease resistance aside, it looks smashing in fall, burnished in bronze and burgundy well past the first frost.  Look at it all snuggled up against that goldenrod–the couple is asking for no gifts at their nuptials in case you were wondering.

Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Henry Eilers’–Another plant I crow about non-stop.  But just look at it!  These seedheads last until the end of January, the epitome of winter interest.

Schizachyrium scoparium–After sulking in the horticultural alleys for decades, little bluestem is finally getting its due.  Bronze, red, orange, you name it–fall color is what this native does, and oh so well.  On dark and cloudy days like today, these reedy stems just glow.

Yucca filamentosa ‘Variegata’–It’s no secret I love variegated plants (I’ve even kept a variegated weed or two around just for novelty and laughs).  But this comely succulent, echelons above some lowly weed, does something more for me.  It’s not just another variegated plant.  It’s special.

Since starting my M.S. degree in horticulture at Iowa State last fall, I’ve wanted to write on numerous occasions about my research, but just haven’t found the time.

Though I moonlight in my professional life as a plant breeder, by day I’m a plant ecophysiologist, someone who studies and describes physiological mechanisms underlying ecological observations and questions (i.e. why do plants respond to their environment the way they do).  Specifically, I study the effects of provenance (the biogeographical origins of plants) and the implications those effects have on the performance of plants in the landscape.  Provenance is a big deal, though sadly often taken for granted by professionals and novices alike.  Particularly for plant species with broad distributions, provenance plays a huge role in how germplasm collected in the wild ultimately performs horticulturally.  Many plant species in horticultural commerce today stem from a single or just a few collections of that species in the wild.  The genetic diversity (and thus capacity for those species to exhibit a multitude of traits and responses to environmental factors) is often greatly diminished in landscapes.  I’m often humored when I read treatises on various genera at how matter-of-fact authors are in their appraisals of species, as if to suggest that the few horticultural forms of a given taxa represents the majority.  In fact often quite the opposite is true.  As horticulturists, we have no doubt dismissed more than one new species collected from near or afar, simply because we brought into commerce a lackluster form.

To study provenance, I spend my days investigating the world of the genus Dirca.  The genus is manageably small, with only three species in wide acceptance.

• Dirca palustris (eastern leatherwood) occurs in highly localized populations across the eastern one-third of the United States from Maine and Ontario, west to North Dakota, south to Oklahoma and Louisiana, and east to northern Florida.
• Dirca mexicana (Mexican leatherwood) is known from a single reported population in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and has not been introduced to horticultural commerce.
• Dirca occidentalis (western leatherwood) occurs in six counties near the San Francisco Bay in California.

All three sport dangling yellow flowers in early spring, with D. occidentalis having the largest flowers of the genus.

A fourth species recently described as Dirca decipiens (decipiens translates from Latin to mean deceiving) is known from a few disjunct locations in northwestern Arkansas and one populous outcropping within the confines of the Overland Park Arboretum outside of Overland Park, Kansas.  Little is known about this new species, though it is morphologically intermediate between D. palustris and D. mexicana.  Details of the discussion about “the deceiver” would seem a little out of place here, more the substance of conversation between a geeky graduate student and his colleagues than a plantsman and his friends.  Horticulturally speaking there isn’t much if any debate–it’s virtually unanimous that the genus remains woefully underappreciated.

The genus lends itself to inquiries of provenance, chiefly for two reasons.  First, the most widespread species, Dirca palustris, occurs in highly localized populations across a vast geographic area (see range above).  Across that range, a number of horticulturally characterizable provenances exist–the comparison and study of which constitute the majority of my research.  Second, the other congeners (members of the genus) exist in highly localized, endemic populations, limited to geography on a much finer scale.  This ability to compare between two different kinds of ranges facilitates a variety of questions into how we might grow these species horticulturally.  Other colleagues of mine study the evolutionary history of the genus and its family members, a completely fascinating arena that generates about as many questions as it answers (perfect!)

In summary, Dirca are fascinating plants, if not a little nerdy.  Hailing from the daphne family (Thymelaeaceae), leatherwoods thrive in shade, often growing near moving water though rarely if ever in it.  As arborescent (tree-like) shrubs, they harbinger the earliest signs of spring, blooming before most trees and shrubs, and epitomizing those famous words by Gertrude Wister– “The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size.”

Iowa weather is admittedly strange.  We whine about the cold in the barest months like January and February, while often sporting a few degrees more than places farther north.  We whine about the sweltering heat in stifling months like July and August, while still registering cool temperatures and less humidity than climes farther south.  But what we really can complain about, on nights when we’ve got nothing better to write about, is the change–constant change.

Just a week ago, I left the house for an hour or less a day, driven to hibernate in the wake of a warm, humid streak that made for highs in the upper 90s and dewpoints that hovered around 80.  This morning I woke to find a cool, September-esque breezing floating through the house and never saw the thermometer rise about 69 all day.  How Seattle…

I smiled as I walked around the garden tonight.  The lawn has all but disappeared in some places, retreating to dormancy and leaving behind dying algae and moss–stark irony indeed!  Some newly planted acquisitions, like two hardy sweet peas (Lathyrus vernus ‘Flaccidus Roseus’ and Lathyrus aureus) aren’t sure what to do.  After spending most of the spring and early summer in rich, humusy potting soil, I imagine my now, hard excuse for topsoil seems like a sick joke.  August stalwarts like rosinweeds (Silphium spp.) and tube clematis (Clematis heracleifolia) rage on against the dying of good growing conditions, delighting me almost daily with their perseverance.

My trip round the garden tonight after the rain reminded me of an ever-present list of chores.  I have three Ozark bluestars (Amsonia illustris) that need moved, badly, but I’ve been putting it off so as not to sacrifice their lovely fall color display.  I may bite the bullet and relocate them to the corner of the house I’m revamping soon, possibly tomorrow if all works right.  They’ll join a host of ornamental grasses, false indigos (Baptisia), ironweeds (Vernonia), and new bearded irises (no surprise).

And after donning a jacket for this thoughtful poke-around, I’ve decided I can “feel” fall.  What garden chores top your list as fall inevitably nears?

Though you may be familiar with the story of Sisyphus from Greek mythology involving a boulder, my version involves a 10-gallon nursery container of black bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra).

According to mythical legend, Sisyphus was a Greek king punished in death for his deceitfulness with the endless and unavailing task of pushing a boulder up a hill only to watch it tumble down again as he neared the top–an eternity of frustration.

In some grossly overblown way, I think Sisyphus would feel my pain, hauling buckets of water to an ever-thirsty bamboo as I do on a near nightly basis.  If I sunk it into a swimming pool, I’m positive it would wilt by evening.

Of course the easiest way to end my condemnation to hydrological eternity would be to just plant the damn thing.  But my plans for a bog, sterling and firm last fall when I inherited this bamboo from my gardening friend Rosemary, seem to have fallen through.  So without any immediate home, I’m sure I’ll continue to prolong its plastically confined existence one 5-gallon dousing at a time.

I’m beginning to think a boulder wouldn’t be that bad.