7 day to our Marching Band Plant Sale!

7 days, one week away from our Marching Band perennial plant sale. The weather today is glorious, cross you fingers that it's just like this one week from today.

(Sweet violets so happy to be saved from those munching bunnies)

Now that I'm finally happy with the number of plants potted up, I'm really enjoying straightening up the mess out there. I've moved my work area and tried to organize it a bit. It would have been smarter to do this before I began working but hey, that's life.

(About time I did this with my potting station.)

The weeds are growing as fast as the flowers, thank goodness my mom arrives on Wednesday. Mom's a weed machine. Just let her loose and your garden will look amazing!

A few new additions to our inventory. Some big blue Hosta sieboldiana, more Astilbe, Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant' was just potted up this morning.

Super-size Me!

(Regular, Large and Jumbo pots of Astilbe $4, $6, $8, still a great deal!)

Last year a man stopped by and asked if I had any huge pots of Hosta. He specifically referenced the big pots that they sell at Costco. This year I decided to offer different sized pots of perennials. The prices obviously increase as the size of the pot gets larger. For those of you who are like me (instant gratification), you can supersize it and get a jumbo plant.

Short post today, got to work!
Melanie

Plant Sale, 8 days away...

(Foxgloves are just amazing when they begin to bloom. One day they're just sitting there and almost over night they throw up these huge bloom laden stalks. Listen closely and you'll hear the echo of the big fat bumble bees as they slip in and out of each bell-like flower)

The weather has been absolutely perfect for gardening. Warm enough that you don't need a bulky extra layer and yet not so hot that everything wilts the second you dig it out.

Although I got a late start yesterday, it turned out to be a banner day in the garden. Lots of clean-up and organization, the lawn was mowed, and more potting. I can finally say the potting craze has left me. There are enough plants here that I can slow down and putter my way through the garden.

"Putter" gardening is great. You go from area to area, checking out your plants and suddenly you notice something that can be dug and potted up. These are the jewels of the garden that don't necessarily give you huge clumps to work with. Two pots of this, three of that, somehow I love those plants the most.

For the first time ever I was willing to dig up a clump of my all-time favorite, Stachys monierii. The only nick-name I could find for this plant is Betony but to be honest, I don't know if that's what people really call it. I could count on two fingers the times I've seen this plant in other gardens and I've visited hundreds and hundreds of gardens. Last year the plant market was finally hit with a variety named Stachys monierii 'Humello' which of course I had to buy and turned out to be a lovely purple bloom. The monierii variety I have is a pale pink, I bought years ago at Franks nursery. Four lucky people will go home with a nice big chunk of this beauty.

(The foliage on these Geranium sanguiniums has a delightful way of winding it's way through nearby plants and using them gently as a support without strangling anything.)

The hardy Geraniums are such wonderful additions to the garden. I have so many different varieties here, it's a wonder that they're not more popular. Many have lovely foliage besides their wonderful blooms. A Geranium sanguinium called out to me that it needed to be potted up. Surely I'll find more of them today. I'm also toying with the idea of taking out one whole clump of Geranium cantabrigense, I've got clumps of the pale pink variety of 'Biokovo' and also of the darker pink 'Karmina'. They are wonderful clumpers for the front of any border garden and look totally amazing if planted along a rock wall. Unfortunately they look horrendous in pots and I practically had to twist people's arms to get them to buy them in the past.

(Just look at these beautiful hardy geranium blooms! This is the variety 'Biokovo')

Of course I'll continue to dig daylilies. We still need a white variety and 'Ice Carnival' has been selected. Another yellow variety would be nice too and I've been leaning towards 'Floyd Cove'. Hmm, we'll also need some more dark purples and dark reds. The darker colored daylilies look so beautiful in a semi-shaded border and so many of the gardens around here have shade.

(Nepeta subsesslis is a tall, dramatic flower that has been on my "to-dig" list for a week now. There will only be 3 or 4 pots of this great plant because I just can't bear to part with too much!)

Ok, the itch is driving me crazy. I must get out in the garden!

See you later,
Melanie

9 day until our May 12th Plant Sale!

Inventory Time

In a nut shell, Perennial plant sale, May 12, 10am - 3pm
259 Beverly Road, South Huntington
Be there or be square

Yesterday I said I'd try to get together an inventory of plants and post it here. It's not quite finished yet and I'd rather be planting but here's what I've written down so far (not in any order, who has time to alphabetize!).

Nepeta mussinii (cat mint)
Coreopsis 'Zagreb' (thread leaf coreopsis)
Hosta 'Spritzer'
Hosta 'Veronica Lake'
Hosta 'Geisha'
Hosta 'Iron Gate Glamour'
Hosta 'Vanilla Cream'
Campanula punctata
Mazus reptens
Siberian Iris (blue)
Sisyrinchium (Blue-eyed oat grass)
Iris ensata 'Gracieuse'
Dicentra spectabilis 'Alba' (White bleeding heart)
Dicentra spectabilis ...(Pink bleeding heart)
Geranium 'Nimbus'
Daylily 'Mormon Spider'
Daylily 'Parati'
Daylily 'Mokan Butterfly'
Daylily 'Roses in Snow'
Daylily 'Siloam Double Classic'
Daylily 'Spider Miracle'
Daylily 'Stella D'Oro'
Daylily 'Chesapeake Crablegs'
Euphorbia polychroma (Cushion spurge)
Phlox 'Delta Snow'
Phlox 'David'
Boltonia (white)
Pulmonaria 'Azurea' (lungwort)
Sedum seboldii
Polygonatum (Variegated Solomon's Seal)
Polygonatum humile (dwarf Solomon's Seal)
Lamium 'Chequers'
Astilbe (Lavender variety)
Rudbeckia fulgida (Black eyed susan)
Alchemilla mollis (Ladies Mantle)
Echinacea (Purple cone flower)
Digitalis (Foxgloves)
Violas
Aruncus athusifolius (dwarf goats beard)
Stokesia 'Color wheel' (Stokes aster)
Lychnis coronaria (pink and white rose campion)
Sedum 'Matrona'
Sedum 'Vera Jameson'
Sedum aizoon 'Lemon Snowflakes'
Liatris
Monarda 'Jacob Cline' (red)
Chrysanthemum 'Sheffield Pink'

And sure to be lots more! I'll try to get back here later to clean up this list a bit. Also, HUGE thanks to Richie from Zaino's nursery in Old Westbury for coming to the rescue and delivering a mountain of pots for us! Three cheers for Zaino's!!!

Melanie

Plant Sale, 10 days until May 12th!

(Daylily 'Russian Easter' has the most amazing color combination. I've never before offered any daylilies that are similar to this one.)

Here I am, back again with Wednesday mornings post. Yesterday was one of those run-around, go crazy kind of days and I barely made my daily quota of potting up 30 plants. While I still had about 50 smaller pots left, all the large pots have already been potted up and I still have tons of daylilies to divide.

Don and I made up posters and laminated color flyers that are being distributed as I write this, so hopefully we'll get lots more viewers here. If you are visiting for the first time, you can start reading here and as you scroll down you'll find each previous day's post.

For those of you with limited time, here's the basics. Our plant sale is going to be held May 12th, rain or shine at 259 Beverly Road, South Huntington NY (use google maps for directions) We open up at 10:00 am and close down at 3:00 pm although in past years we have sold out before closing.

ALL profits will be donated to the participating students of the Walt Whitman High School Marching Band. The money will be held in an account to pay a portion of band camp. With your help, it will hopefully be a large portion. Students will cheerfully help you load your plants into plastic bags and bring them to your cars (you will have to park along Beverly Road). We take cash and checks made out to the Walt Whitman Marching Band Parents Association.

Ready for today's questions?

What do you mean by "perennial"? What's the difference between perennial, annual and biennial?

Perennial plants are plants that die back over the winter but return again next spring. Generally they do not bloom as long as annuals which might bloom for many months before being killed by a frost. Perennials need time to gather strength for our long winters which is one reason for their shorter bloom season. Some perennials have extremely short bloom times, others can bloom for 6 to 8 weeks. My tip to you is to consider the foliage of the plant. If the foliage is beautiful to look at, you will enjoy the perennial even when it's not in bloom.

(This perennial hardy geranium was rescued growing up through a crack of ground cloth at Fox Hollow farm, just over on Foxhurst Road. It has rewarded me by growing into a lush clump over the past 5 years and puts out these delicious lilac colored blooms)

Annuals are plants that will survive for one garden season. Some plants that we consider annuals are actually very long lived in tropical climate like Coleus but here on Long Island they are killed by a frost. I've had people tell me that their impatiens can't be annuals because they've come back. Well, yes, your impatiens can come back but those are actually new plants that grew from seeds that last years impatiens dropped.

Biennial's are probably the least known type of flowers. A biennial is a plant that lives for two years. The first year it grows foliage and the second year it blooms. Once it blooms it drops seeds and then dies. Many nurseries call these plants "short lived perennials" which I think is a sales gimmick that is unfair to the buyer. Foxgloves (Digitalis) are a well known biennial and I cringe when I see people buying a whole wagon full of foxgloves in full bloom knowing that they are almost finished with their life span.

Why do your plants look different than those at the garden centers? Garden centers have found that they can only sell plants that are in full bloom or are about to burst into bloom. Since most people get the gardening fever in May, garden centers import plants from other parts of the country that have been pushed ahead of our bloom season. If you buy a Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida) in full bloom in late May, you might be surprised next year when they are still very small in the ground at that time. Black eyed Susan's typically bloom late July and all through the dog days of summer in August. The Black eyed Susan's here are growing at our time table, not that of southern Georgia and will bloom for you when they are supposed to bloom on Long Island.

(Coreopsis 'Zagreb' is one of those plants that doesn't look like much in a pot right now but when it gets to your garden it will quickly shine!)

What does the future hold? If only I had a crystal ball... What I'd like to see in the future is to bring this plant sale up to the high school. I'd like us to add other booths, maybe two or three photo spots for younger children to have a picture for Mom made by one of our schools clubs. I'd also love to be able to hold lectures that show actual plant propagation or talks on how to maintain your lawn.

Today I'm going to finish up this post with a photos and a brief spotlight on plants that we will have for sale.
Aruncus athusifolius is also known as dwarf goats beard. When it comes to plant names, there are nicknames and true botanical names. Since nicknames can change from one part of the country to another, the only way to get what you really want is to ask for a plant by the botanical name. Don't worry if you pronounce it wrong, everybody puts their own spin on how they say things. This Aruncus is one of the best plants in my garden. It has lovely foliage all season long, frothy white blooms in June and it maintains this perfect ball shape as if a bonsai fairy came over night and trimmed it for you.

Alchemilla mollis (Ladies mantle) is one of those plants that some nurseries have stopped selling. It looks so sad in the pot that people just don't buy it. Yet, it's a must have in the garden. In fact, if you walk around my garden here (and please do take the time to walk around) you will see that I have Ladies mantle in at least 15 different places. First of all, it does well in a good amount of sun as long as you water regularly but even better is that it also tolerates shade quite well! First thing in the morning it's studded all around with diamond dew drops, just like the hem of a Ladies mantle (cloak). This plant is included in just about every lecture I've ever done. As far as I'm concerned, I compare it to putting up decorative molding in your dining room. It makes every plant near it look better.

This afternoon I hope to have an inventory of the 410 plants that are already potted up so stay tuned.

Getting muddy today,
Melanie Vassallo

Plant Sale, 11 days and counting

(This white bleeding heart has been divided up into a few jumbo pots)

Howdy!

I'm back again, chock full of more information for our perennial plant sale to help send the student members of the Walt Whitman High School Marching Band to band camp.

As many of you know, this is a blog and it works like a diary. Scroll down for yesterday's entry and the one from the day before. You will quickly get all the information you need about our wonderful sale which will be held on May 12th.

Ready for today's questions? The number one question I get asked is "Why?", Why do you have this plant sale? How can you have this many plants to give away?? Why do you give them to the marching band???

Any experienced gardener can tell you that after time certain plants multiply to the point where you have more than you need. This doesn't happen with annuals (plants that are killed in our temperature zone over the winter) but it does happen with biennials (more later on that word) and perennials (plants that return year after year). Some perennials increase at the base, just getting wider, some send out runners that pop up near the mother plant and others reseed through out your garden.

We have a large piece of property for our town, well over an acre and much of it is planted in perennial borders. As those plants increased, I was constantly looking for ways to share them with others instead of tossing them on the compost heap. If you grow 3 foxgloves and they each give you three more seedlings, you end up with 9 foxgloves and you are a happy gardener. If you have 40 foxgloves and they each give you 3 seedlings, you end up with 120 foxgloves and you run out of friends to share them with!

(I have a Sedum knot garden and they need dividing, nothing is easier to grow than Sedum and there aren't too many perennials that look as awesome as they do for most of the year.)

A few years ago a co-worker from my husband Don's office came by and I loaded his SUV twice with plants from my garden. Don pointed out to me that I had just given away hundreds of dollars worth of perennials and it made me start to think. What if I sold those plants instead? Well, I don't have a nursery or my own business, I just like to write and lecture about gardening. The next spring our daughter was a freshman in the marching band and they were having an early spring garage sale. I didn't have any household junk to bring so I dug daylilies, black eyed susans, purple cone flowers and sedum. They sold like hotcakes and I handed over $400 to the co-president of the marching band at that sale. There were still lots of plants in the garden so I suggested we have a second sale, just for plants, and that's how this plant sale began.

Now that you know the history, lets get back to what's important.

Got Shade? My first gardens here were for my daylilies and other sun loving perennials. It wasn't until those gardens were established that I started learning about shade gardening. Shade is something that Long Islanders have to deal with. There are tons of trees here on the north shore and if you have a 1/4 acre yard with just one large tree, you are going to have lots of shade! Over time I fell in love with my shade gardens, they're soothing and so much easier to work in once the warmer weather comes. Hosta have become a mini-obsession, along with other amazing foliage plants to light up those dark corners. Japanese painted ferns are another craze, I can't wait to have enough of those to share with you.

(What a beauty, I didn't put the name of this hosta in my photo program but it's just delicious)

Lotsa Hosta! This is the first year I have named Hosta plants in the sale. What does that mean? Well, to most of you, it doesn't mean anything. When a new hybrid plant is created, it's registered with the appropriate plant society and give a name. If you want a specific plant that looks exactly so, you need to know the registered name of that plant. Do all plants have names? No, and those plants grow just as well. In the past, we've sold seedlings from our Hosta sieboldiana (a large blue leaved Hosta) and lots and lots of green hosta. Those green ones had a name at some time but the person who gave them to me forgot the name. It doesn't really matter, they grow wonderfully and do the job I want from them, they look beautiful!

For the first time, I dug named Hosta with all kinds of different color variegations in the leaf and potted those up. They are priced between $5 and $8 which is a fantastic bargain. For those of you who need an instant fix, there will also be some jumbo pots at $10.

When buying Hosta, there are a few things you need to know. Hosta are shade tolerant, that means they will grow in the shade but they will also grow in a good amount of sunshine if they are watered often. Generally the darker the leaf color (especially the blue hosta), the more shade they need to keep that coloration. The lighter the leaf color (there are some amazing chartreuse colored hosta) the more sun they require to keep that lighter color.

(Hosta 'Spritzer' looks awesome with half a day of sunlight and we've got it potted up!)

Hosta come in all kinds of sizes from teeny tiny ones with leaves the size of my thumb, to huge elephant eared Hosta that quickly grow to 6' across. With 150 hosta here, I have all kinds of colors and sizes.

When buying a Hosta, look at how many divisions are coming out of the pot. Yesterday I stopped at Home Depot and most of their 2.5 pint potted hosta had 2 eyes (divisions) emerging. Those were priced $5.99. Here, I tried to keep my smallest divisions at 5 eyes. The jumbo pots have way more than that.

(I wish this image was sharper but this is Corydalis lutea which is a darling little shade lover that pops out of my rock retaining walls)

What other shade plants will be for sale? Many hardy Geraniums actually prefer the shade and we have a wonderful variety called Geranium nodosum. I don't have a photo of this beauty but you can type that name into Google images and you'll get the idea. Ladies mantle (Achemilla mollis) is another stunning plant that will take both sun and shade, it's one of my top five favorites here. Variegated Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum) is another favorite along with the tiny yellow Corydalis. Maybe we'll even have some white Primula.

Although I still have so much I want to write, it's sunny outside and the plants are calling me. 375 pots are done so far, I need to pot up at least 150 more! Today will be Sedum 'Matrona', Solomon's seal and of course some stunning daylilies.

Don't forget, come see us on May 12th, if you can't make it then, write to me at melaniev@optonline.net and we'll try to set up a sneak preview for you.

Pass this on, we need lots of advertisement!

Melanie

Plant Sale, 12 days and counting!

(Daylily 'Laura Harwood', a dark beauty that blooms in August which is late even for a daylily. How nice to have a perennial that blooms during pool season when so many others have finished and are browning out due to summer heat.)

Well, here I am again, hopefully bringing lots of information about our up-coming plant sale.

After yesterday's post I realized that I forgot the most important thing. Where is the sale???

The sale is at my house, just go to google maps and type in 259 Beverly Road, Huntington Sta. NY 11746 and it will give you directions. We live on the part of Beverly Road that runs south of Jericho Turnpike, right before it intersects with Fox Hollow Road and Old Country Road.

While folding the laundry last night I came up with some more possible questions so I'll post those until I hear from some of you.

This sounds like a good cause, how can I help? You can help by spreading the word! Maybe you're reading this blog but don't live on Long Island. Well, send an e-mail out to some friends who do live here, I think just about everybody in the world knows somebody on Long Island :-)

What's your goal? Two years ago we brought in $2,000. The students who worked a half day shift earned $50 towards band camp. A few worked a full day shift and earned just over $100. My goal for 2007 is to blow those numbers out of the water!

(Euphorbia polychroma (bottom left corner) is a favorite here every year and I think I'd better pot up some more!)

How do your plants compare with those at local nurseries? The plants here are at least as good as what you'd get at one of the major home improvement chains and the selection is better. Our prices run from fair to bargain basement. Many perennials such as Rudbeckia (Black eyed susans), Echinacea (Purple cone flowers), Liatris, Phlox 'David', Phlox 'Delta Snow' and Coreopsis 'Zagreb' will be $4 for a one gallon pot. There are also lots of pots of Hakonachloa (Hakone grass) for $4 and that's better than wholesale prices!

(In this photo you can see how lovely Hakone Grass (top left corner) combines with just about any Hosta (bottom left corner) to fill a shady spot in the garden.)

Some plants are extremely limited. There are only three pots of Pulmonaria angustifolia 'Azura' and I expect them to disappear almost immediately. Yesterday I began digging the Polygonatum. We'll have the dwarf humile variety and the variegated Polygonatum odoratum variegatum for sale.
(Pulmonaria angustifolia 'Azurea' has heavenly blue flowers and non-typical lungwort foliage. No spots! A big bonus is this plant grows like the dickens.)


Only three daylily varieties have been dug so far but there's 20 more on the "to-do" list. With over 400 daylilies here you can tell that I'm just crazy about them.


(Daylily 'Chorus Line' is a beauty, loved by gardeners all over the world shouldn't you have a piece in your garden too?)

If you're new to blogging, they are kind of like an on-line diary. For more information on the plant sale you have to read yesterday's post which comes after this one.

Off to dig!
Melanie

Plant Sale May 12, 2007

Hooray! It's Plant Sale Time!

Please bear with me, the next two weeks of posts will be dedicated to our Plant Sale.

What kind of plant sale is it? Why, it's a perennial plant sale :-) and this is our 4th year now. All the plants have been grown in my garden here in South Huntington, on Long Island, zone 6b or have been donated from other gardens in this town.

ALL the profits from this sale will be donated to the participating students of the Walt Whitman High School Marching Band. The money will be held in a special account in each child's name to help pay for band camp. When we say ALL profits, we mean ALL, only the costs of holding this sale (potting soil and any advertising) will be taken from the total intake.

How do they participate? They eat donuts in our breezeway. Well, ok, they really help our customers put the plants in plastic bags, load up the wagons and bring them out to their cars. But there's lots of donut and bagel eating too!



When is the sale? Traditionally it's been held on Mother's Day weekend and this year will be the same. Saturday May 12, 2007 is the date. We open at 10:00 am and close at 3:00 pm (unless we sell out before that time and that has happened in the past).

What kind of plants are for sale? Hybrid Daylilies galore, Hosta (this is the first year we will also offer named Hosta varieties), Phlox, Iris, Astilbe, and so much more! Stay tuned, every day we'll add a new post and hopefully lots of pictures and growing information.

Hopefully we'll get some local folks to visit this site. This afternoon I put a sign out on the front lawn with the address. If you know of somebody on Long Island who would be interested, tell them about us!

Questions? Please post lots and lots of questions, I'd love to answer them for you. If you are having problems posting in the comment section, send me an e-mail at melaniev@optonline.net and I'll post them here for you.

Almost 300 pots already potted up with 25 different types of perennials so far! By next week you won't be able to stand on our front stoop or walkway!


Thinking Green,
Melanie

April Showers

April showers bring May flowers...

Well, it's been pouring all morning. Thunder-storming torrential rains!

This first photo was taken two days ago at my friend Gianna's house. She is so incredibly talented and I just love her muscari pond with her faux swan swimming along.

The garden sure needs this rain so I'm not complaining.

Luckily I took a photo the other day of my double blood root in bloom. They are so fleeting but oh so lovely too. The foliage is also divine so they are well worth growing for that alone.

I wish this shot was a bit clearer but my rinky-dink camera just isn't up to it. These bloodroots have been in the garden for a number of years thanks to George Rasmussen. They've been horribly slow to increase but are not in a good spot at all. Last year I took a single division and put it in the back shade bed where the soil is much better and the sprinklers deliver lots of water. Walking Calie in the rain just an hour ago I noticed that the single division is now 4 or 5 and will be blooming on our next sunny day.

Hooray! Hopefully I've found the right spot for these beauties and I'll have some to share in the near future.

Thinking Green,
Melanie

Dedicated to Virginia Tech

Dedicated to the students, faculty, staff and families of all at Virginia Tech

Garden Tip of the day

Garden Tip of the Day

Yesterday I put together a list of garden tips for a program I did at Temple Beth-El in Huntington NY

Here's tip # 1

Amend your soil!
Would you feed your children or pets only bread and water? Your plants want extra nutrients too. Help them by amending your soil with composted manure and fertilizers.

Get rid of that tired old potting soil in those containers before potting them up this year. You don't have to throw that soil away, I just add it to my compost heap.

Instead of buying one of the pre-mixed potting soils I like to make my own. So many of the soils on the market are extremely light and once they dry out they are like clay. If there's a great price on potting soil I will buy it but it's really simple to make your own.

I buy compost or top soil, mix in peat moss, vermiculite and a slow release fertilizer. Then again, I use hundreds of pounds of potting soil so this works for me. If you are using smaller quantities, I'd still advise mixing some compost in with your pre-mixed potting soil just to add some "oomph" to the mix and some weight to the pot.

Time to split!

Hooray! Yesterday I finally got to dig in the dirt!!!

I've been growing Bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) in my garden for many years.
After moving here 11 years ago, I bought a few in boxes from local garden centers in the early spring, planted them in the ground and didn't give them much thought after that. For some reason, I was under the impression that they were finicky to move, I guess I didn't think that out too carefully. If they were finicky, they sure wouldn't have survived being packaged in those little cardboard boxes and loaded on the shelves at the stores.

One bleeding heart had been planted in my driveway, lots of sun, lots of water and lots of composted horse manure. That plant grew to epic proportions! It was just amazing in the spring, more than 6 feet across (2 meters) during peak bloom. The one problem with a bleeding heart of that size is that by mid summer the foliage disappears leaving you with a big hole in that same spot.

Last year I decided to bite the bullet and divide this monster. I dug it up, didn't know what to do with all those carrot-like roots so I snapped them off. I chopped up the pieces with my garden knife until I had pieces that fit into pots and potted them up. Finally, the pots were put in the shade so the plants wouldn't go into total shock. A few weeks later every single pot was full of lush blooming bleeding hearts. I was thrilled!

In the past I had only dug young bleeding heart seedlings. Yes, bleeding hearts will self sow if you leave the seed pods alone. Nobody had told me this and I was so happy the first time I found those distinctive little seedlings.



Both red and white varieties of Dicentra grow here. The red seems to seed more easily but maybe that's because it was the clump in the most sun. I've only found 3 seedlings so far near the white bleeding heart. They've been moved around the garden over the past few years so hopefully more will volunteer to grow here.

Every spring I hold a one day plant sale and invariably people ask if I have any of the white Dicentra for sale. This year I decided to divide up that big clump so I could share it with a few folks.

The first photo shows a close up of the root system on the Dicentra. The second photo shows the emerging foliage on a red Dicentra that seeded next to a clump of daylilies. The third photo shows the foliage of the white Dicentra (the two small pieces I left after removing the large clump). As you can see, it's easy to tell what color the plants are going to be.

Since I still had a wheel barrow half filled with potting soil, I decided to bite the bullet and also try my hand at dividing up the Euphorbia polychroma (Cushion spurge). If you look through my post titles, you'll see that I did a feature on this fantastic perennial.



The photo here is not too exciting, as you can see, I tried to get this divided up before it puts on any growth. That seemed to be successful with the bleeding hearts so I wanted to use the same method.

This last photo shows the clump of Euphorbia on the edge of my work table. The roots were even easier to work with than the Dicentra. So far the plants all look fine in their pots, one reason to be thankful for our cold rainy day.

Hopefully tomorrow I can attempt another perennial and share that here too.

Gotta love that mud!

Stay Tuned!

The past two weeks has been spent traveling. First was four lovely days in Niagara Falls, Canada and then a wonderful week in Delray Beach, Florida.

The above photo of a desert rose (Adenium multiflorum) was taken at the National display gardens for the Orchid Society in Delray Beach.

Stay tuned for lots of garden posts coming up, unfortunately I hurt my back on Monday afternoon and sitting in the computer chair is quite painful so I have to limit my time here.

Yesterday I took photos while dividing Bleeding Hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) and will share those later today or tomorrow.

Bargain Days

What's there to do when you can't work in the garden? Let's go shopping!


Seriously, some of my best bargains came about when I least expected them. This past week I was lucky to come across a whole slew of bargains.

While wandering through the Broadway Mall in Hicksville (home of Billy Joel), I passed a store named 'Tuesday Morning'. I had never heard of this store and was quickly stopped in my tracks when I saw the amount of gardening related items they carried.

Tuesday Morning is not a gardening store, it seems to be an odd-lot type of place with a little of this and a little of that. Obviously their buyer found a lot of gardening containers. Above you can see two iron containers I brought home with me. I can't wait to pack them with some moss, potting soil and then some luscious sempervivum (hens & chicks).


Another great bargain came my way when my package of garden clogs came from www.valleyvet.com

I highly recommend this company, their price for these adorable ladybug clogs was by far the cheapest to be found. With the handling charge, I was able to purchase two pairs of clogs for only $2 more than one single pair costs at the local nursery. Hooray for valley vet!

Potted People

I'm not sure when I saw my first potted person, it was probably at a flower show. One thing I knew right away though, I had to have one of them in my own garden.

Although I had seen a few smaller potted people, the first one I saw in a private garden was a majestic seated one. There I was, in a lovely garden with 100 people snapping away photos of the daylilies and all I could do was stare in wonder at this potted person.


Of course ideas come and go, so my mind quickly forgot all about having one of these people in my garden. Then I went on another garden tour, this one on Eastern Long Island where I saw this incredible standing creature. I was sold, I just had to have one of these for myself.


In the summer of 2005 I took my daughters along on the National tour of the American Hemerocallis Society which was in Cincinnati OH that year. Emily and I just loved all the potted people and even dogs that we saw.


In the spring of 2006 I designed a children's garden at the Hofstra flower show entitled "Grandma's Garden". Of course the garden needed a Grandma and my chance finally came. I could make a potted grandma!

Well, few things from the flower show usually come home with me but this time I brought home that bunch of pots. We're still working out the right combination of plant material for "hair" but since she is a grandma, we thought we'd try something blue.

The Lobelia was perfect until mid summer, this year I'll have to find something even better. Of course in our garden she's no longer Grandma, she's Omi.

Hicks Show Idea

In the last posting I wrote that I saw one good idea at the Hicks Flower show. So here it is...



One thing I keep dreaming about is a lovely pond for my garden. But, there are a few problems with ponds. Number one is the price, those spectacular, natural looking ponds just cost big bucks to install and maintain. Second is that maintenance itself, I just don't need another thing that requires daily attention and multiple trips to the store (except to buy plants of course).

Every year I find myself looking at those simple pond forms they sell at the home improvement chain. The only thing with them is that it would be hard to get them to look natural.

Well look at the pond in this photo. Rather than go for a natural look, they chose a square pond and went for formal. The wrought iron gazebo over it is a lovely touch although that again pushes the price sky high.


Finally, the skirt of moss rock all around the base does a nice job of hiding the mechanics of the pond and gives you lots of fun pockets to put new plants.

In my opinion it's a great idea!


Euphorbia amygdaloides 'Efanthia' tucked into the moss rock wall.