Fairy Gardens

My rule of three popped up again this week – and the phrase was Fairy Garden. A little girl in my neighborhood has a Fairy Garden at her house. She plants tiny plants, including bulbs. It’s a cute garden. One I’m sure Fairies would enjoy. (And, good for her mother for nurturing the girl’s interest in gardening!)

Then, I gave some miniature hosta to a neighbor, who exclaimed excitedly, “Oooooh! Thank you! I’ve always wanted to start a Fairy Garden, and now I can do it!” I didn’t ask her at the time if I could help, but I still may.

And, the third encounter was when I finally met the gardener of a garden I pass on my daily morning walk. The garden is on the hill and boulevard in front of their house. I told the woman how much I enjoyed her garden and asked if she planted it herself. She said she had help, but planned the Fairy Garden theme herself. This garden has GIANT plants in it – not tiny ones like the other two Fairy Gardens, which left me wondering . . . what exactly makes a Fairy Garden a Fairy Garden? Is it tiny plants? Is it Fairy furniture (as one other garden in our neighborhood has)? Is it the presence of a Fairy object?

I have two Fairies, now—the Thistle Fairy, given to me by the neighbor to whom I gave the hosta and the Garden Fairy who currently takes up residence on a shelf in my bathroom next to my Little Gardener Hummel. I’d love to see the Garden Fairy outside in her own special garden, but I have no idea about how to go about doing it or whether it should be in a sunny or shady location.

How about it, gardeners? Anybody have tips on planting a Fairy Garden?

Buying up the Bulbs

Guess what started showing up in the garden centers this week?! Yep. Bulbs! To be more precise, spring-blooming bulbs. They’re my weakness. Don’t get me wrong. I love all kinds of plants, but after our l-o-n-g winters, the spring bulbs pop out (sometimes when the snow is still on the ground) and signal the start of spring and warmer weather and digging in the dirt. They should get some special recognition for that in my book!


I always save the cardboard info sheet that comes with the bulbs so I can write the location of the bulbs and the year they were planted. Then, I write on the cardboard how they performed. My old favorite used to be Apricot Beauty. But, last fall, I planted cute little Bronze Charm tulips and now they are my new favorite!

I saw a Fritillaria in a neighbor’s garden this spring and loved it. So, I picked up a few of those this year. And, I’m not a huge fan of the daffodils, but I found a variety that looks a little like a giant snowdrop and picked up a few of those, too.

One neighbor avoids tulips because the squirrels and rabbits get them – if not in the fall when she plants the bulbs, in the spring when they come up. So, she buys scilla, windflowers, snowdrops, crocus, scilla, and grape hyacinth. Another friend loves the giant allium and has a garden filled with the tall purple pom-pom like blooms.

I won’t plant anything for a few more weeks and new bulbs are still arriving in the nurseries. So, if you have a favorite spring-blooming bulb, post a comment and let me know! I’ll see if I can find some to add to my gardens!

Morning Glory Story

I was reminded of one of my most vivid “back to school” memories the other day when I walked by my neighbor’s house and saw the Morning Glories climbing the telephone pole, which is waiting for the school bus at the end of the long driveway by the Morning Glory adorned mailbox.

My mother loves Morning Glories – only Heavenly Blue will do. No fancy Scarlett O’Hara or Pearly Gates—just the Heavenly Blue, please. And, every year, she planted a packet of Morning Glory seeds around the mailbox. I’m sure I have pictures where I am standing by the morning glory adorned mailbox with my school bag, but scrounge as I would, I couldn’t come up with any.

We had HORRIBLE soil at the house with the long driveway—almost entirely clay, which was great for making bowls and statues, but really bad for growing things. Yet, somehow, every year, the morning glories made their appearance on the mailbox.

To give the seeds every possible opportunity of germinating, mom would carefully nick each one before sprinkling them around the base of the mailbox post. (I later discovered that putting the seeds on a sheet of paper towel in a pie plate, covering the seeds with another sheet of paper towel and keeping everything moist for a few days works equally as well, and you can see how many of the seeds germinate.)

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday, so it seems appropriate that I tell the Morning Glory story today. (Yesterday was also Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, or I would have posted it on her actual day.) Happy Birthday, Mom!

Note: In an odd case of irony, my mom gave me (and my ex) the birdbath in the photos for our wedding. I kept it for many years, but always thought more about my ex when I saw it than I thought about my mom. So, I had to get rid of it. I thought it would bug me to have it next door, but it doesn’t. Seeing the joy it gives my neighbor makes me feel great.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day – September 2010

It's the 15th of the month, and you know what that means . . . . Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. The premise is to post photos of what’s blooming in the garden on this particular day. May Dreams Gardens hosts, and provides a list of participating garden blogs.

As I looked around the garden yesterday (thank goodness I took snapshots then, because it’s storming this morning!) I realized I could almost re-post my August entry. The coneflowers have faded, but the rudbeckia, Russian Sage, phlox, salvia, and asters are going strong.




Lavender (pictured) and spring anemone (not pictured) are both having a second bloom.








Asclepias (pictured) and Stella D’Oro (not pictured) continue to add a splash of orange to the gardens.







The sedum seems more rosy this year. In past years, it has been a deeper, wine color.









The roses, which had taken a beating from August storms are back. Here’s Morden Blush and Julia Child. Crown Princess Margrethe is still in bud, but will also bloom once more before the chilly weather sets in.



Elmer, my tropical hibiscus, should be moving back inside this week, but he’s been blooming so beautifully, I’ve left him outside to soak up every last bit of sunshine. (Okay, to be perfectly honest, I’m also procrastinating about the “coming inside” routine. To prevent the whiteflies that come inside with him, I remove all the soil, hose off the roots and re-pot with new soil—a production that takes a bit of time.)

The volunteer sunflowers and cosmos are both still going strong, too. That’s what’s blooming in Auntie K’s Garden this month. My prediction for October is aster-o-rama!

Grave Tending

There’s been a spate of death again—mostly parents of good friends. So, I’ve been thinking about graveyards. I spend a lot of time in graveyards—not because I’m morose or melancholy—but because in the gardening off season, I help people with their family trees, and graveyards provide a wealth of information. You get to find out who is buried with whom and who isn’t in the family plot.

I like the old country graveyards with the upright headstones of different shapes and sizes better than the new memorial gardens with flat stones that make it easy for the mower but uninteresting for visitors.

My favorite graveyard is the one on Justøya, the island in southern Norway, where most of my family is buried. I like it because I can tend the graves there. It’s another place to garden and make lovely. It’s an act of love that provides an opportunity to remind me of my roots and history. I am used to bringing my own equipment, but in recent years, the church provides trowels and cultivators and buckets for hauling water from the well. There’s also a wheelbarrow for hauling away the weeds, but many people just heave them over the fence to the sheep that graze there.

Even though there is a protocol about who is responsible for which graves, I do pull weeds on graves we’re not tending. (I do this when I visit US graveyards, too.) Planting and painting (touching up the names that may have faded over the winter) are strictly for the responsible parties. The florist on the mainland has annuals marked especially for gravesites, which change with the season. Some graves now have perennials or rose shrubs, so the annuals get tucked in rather than take center stage.



I don’t have any experience with grave tending in the US. I don’t know whether there are similar rules about who can/should tend which graves. If you do, I’d love to hear from you. Post a comment and let me know how it works here.

Grapes—Not Just for Jams and Wines

Believe it or not, we can make wine—from grapes--here in Minnesota. Some of it is quite good, too! I had the opportunity to sample some Minnesota wines while I was at the Fair, where they defined “fruit” wines as those made from raspberries, blackberries, and rhubarb, rather than from grapes.

In my neighborhood, several people have grapevines. Most of them use it to cover old chain-link fences or to make a few pints of jelly or juice. Because of our short growing season and cold, dry winters, most years are not conducive to great grape harvests. This year, however, produced a bumper crop.

The octogenarian sisters who live a few doors down from me have a grape vine on an arbor in their backyard that has taken over their clothesline this year. And, their grapes are abundant. After a momentary vision of the Baldwin sisters from an ancient TV program called “The Waltons,” I wondered whether they were going to make jelly with all those grapes.

It turns out that the sisters don’t have the grapes for the fruit at all! Lillian explained, “We’re Greek, you know. Mother had the vine planted for the leaves.” Wow. I couldn’t have predicted that response in a million years. It never would have occurred to me that a crop many people value for the fruit would be equally as valued by others for the foliage. I love when my world gets bigger!

Neighborhood Plant Swap

I’m in a book group with the women on my block. It gives us a chance to get together and read and have a snack and visit each others’ homes. At our last book group meeting, we realized that we were all were gardeners, too. So, we decided to have a plant swap. We included gardeners from other blocks in our neighborhood, too!


We picked a Saturday afternoon so we’d have time to dig things up in the morning (or just sleep in) and then plant later in the day (or plant on Sunday). And, of course, we had snacks. We set it up in my driveway and we had the garage ready in case of bad weather.

The weather was as fabulous. The plants people brought were equally as fabulous. They came in pots, boxes, bags, and buckets!

We had iris (bearded and Siberian), day lilies, sedum (upright and creeping), turtlehead, ligularia desdemona, anise hyssop, lemon balm, liatris, Lamb's Ear, rudbeckia, primroses, baptisia, summer phlox, artemesia, hosta lancifolia, sedge, Karl Foerster grass, wild geraniums, Tiger sumac, and a few more. I put out some “shelves” and tables so some of the plants could be closer to eye level for easier viewing.

Everyone was excited about the selection. Being Minnesotans, however, the swap part of the day was slow to get going—nobody wanted to be the first to take something! But, after a few snacks, we got over it, and started making piles or trips home with our goodies.

I had a shovel and some extra pots in case people wanted to dig stuff out of the garden that I hadn’t potted. Only the big pot is left! I hooked up a hose to the rain barrel so we could water in the things we’d potted.

At the end of the afternoon, even the “common” things found a home. (Day lilies, anyone?!) We decided that all the “leftovers” will go to the community garden addition next week. And, everyone agreed it was a GREAT way to spend a sunny September afternoon. Maybe we’ll do it again next year!