The Garden Buzz

African Violets: Do They Just Need an Image Consultant?

The problem with African violets, that is, if there really is a problem, is that they are never mentioned without the word 'grandmother' somewhere in the first two paragraphs of any write-up. Google a couple, see what I mean.

 

Maybe African violets need jazzing up like this photo I juiced up just a little

There's certainly not anything wrong with grandmothers. We love our grandmas. I even aspire to be one, someday.

All of our grandmas had them and that's the first thing we garden writers think of when we ponder these pretty little flowers. My grandmother had a single African violet sitting on an end table. This was in complete contrast to her lush gardens outside.

 
I love the painterly romantic effect of this photo I took recently

Another older relative grew prize-winning African violets. However this required one of those tiered stands with the sickly pink-purple flourescent lights. They were fertilized within an inch of their lives. These robust and ruffly violets sat obediently like the almost hothouse flowers they were; terrified of the fate of those that failed.  You see, she tossed them down the hill behind the fish market next door.

I always like to think when this happened they were actually liberated and grew wild down there amongst the other trash. I liked to imagine them flowering amid the rusty soup cans and old toilet seats.

So this past summer when the man in the Optimara booth offered me a couple, I almost turned him down, but heck, the guy in the booth, well, he reminded me of my grandad. What's a girl to do?

Turns out I'm glad I took them, thanks again, Optimara guy.

Long after the last kalanchoe blooms dropped, and after the poinsettia went kaput...the little flowers that could are still blooming in only that prim and proper, cheerful and earnest way that African violets do. But that green one is just a bit edgy. Green? We'll get to that in a moment.

 
The African violet that never blooms, but you don't mind

There's something decidedly domestic about the way they sit on the windowsill, but I can tell by the brochure that came with them, the Optimara people are hoping to change that perception.  

 
Like looking at little worlds within worlds in this closeup

NeverFloris is the name of their green African violet that never quite blooms. Abundant tiny stems and buds stay on hold so to speak, giving the plant an even greater sense of texture beyond the fuzzy leaves. It's shown in comtemporary containers with all sorts of ah-KOO-truh-mAWnt. I like the tall  pot with curly willows coming out the top. Not a new look until you figure the flower component is an African violet. Hmmm.

I think it's not too much of a stretch to think of planting and designing with AV as if they were succulents. They have that living but static quality that lends itself to modern presentations. Think long line of them in a skinny trough. How about multiples in shallow basins?

All I know is that the little wine-colored one, the one I lost the label to, planted in McCoy pottery just like my grandma's, has helped to lift the gloom on many a day this especially long and snowy winter. So once again, maybe Grandma was onto something..

 

 

 

 

 

A Bottle Tree Grows in Minnesota

The photo of the snow-daubed bottle tree in my deeply dormant garden brought so many emails and comments, I'm going to push back the post on African violets and delve into the story of bottles trees.

 

Long ago and far away I was once a traveling saleswoman. While I grew up in 'southern' California, I next spent six years treading the ground of my truly southern ancestors. During this time I drove my trusty little blue Renault over the highways and back roads of Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas selling frames for an optical company.

Well, at least that was what I was supposed to be doing, and I did put forth great effort. However it was still more of a man's world, and I lacked the expense account, golf skills and alcohol tolerance that seem to bode for success in that arena.

But enough excuses. I will freely admit I was mightily distracted by the exotic, rural landscape of plants and people that populated the tiny towns and backwaters of the south. Kudzu-covered forests, floating lotus meadows, shotgun shacks, ditch lilies and Dorothy Perkins roses sprawled over discarded kitchen appliances were so more interesting than the beige and boring optometrist offices where I would wait patiently while thumbing through faded Field and Stream magazines.

On the best days I would spot a bottle tree. These were not the contrived concoctions put together by gardeners and yard-decorators for kitsch and color. These were the real thing; blue bottles, most likely Milk of Magnesia, sparkling on the tips of a dead crape myrtle tree in a dirt-swept yard.

My mother would tell me they were to scare away evil spirits. Just as I had heard that "new paint will scare the haints". But blue, seems to have more magical powers than other colors. Blue paint around windows, blue porch ceilings and blue roofs are all seen in the south and were supposed to shoo bugs and/or bad vibes.

Going back to ancient times it was believed that spirits could be captured in glass vessels. Think genie in a bottle. And when the wind blows over the rim, you could hear the moaning of lost souls. Back then it made more sense.

Nowadays bottle trees are just fun, but then it never hurts to give your garden some good juju.

I'd been wanting one for quite awhile, but didn't have the spot or the talent to build one of the wood and rebar variety. My neighbors are kind of fancy too. Then opportunity presented itself. Not wanting to tear up a wedged-in bed where a shrub died, I realized I had just the place to put my bottles. After all I had been saving different colors ahead for the day.

 

 

I trimmed and shaped the dead limbs for better display, and to be honest it's more of a bottle bush than tree. As the garden tour approached and I still hadn't filled it out, my daughter and I took a trip to the liqour store in search of blue bottled beverages. As we suspected, blue bottles often disguise bad wine.

I have heard rumors of other bottle trees here "up north", but figured that this was the uppermost boundary for such southern traditions. Yet when I was traveling up the St Croix looking for fall color, I found a totem pole type of bottle tree. So who knows, maybe they have them in Canada. Anyone?

 

I don't have any photos of authentic bottle trees, but this one comes close. In Dallas this summer I toured a tasteful contemporary garden that had an alter ego. Beyond the koi ponds and meditation areas, a gate lead to a self-described "white trash garden". There grew not only a  beautiful blue bottle tree but a mayonnaise jar tree, filled with odd tokens and found treasures.

 

 

I like how my bottle tree is half-hidden; as you come around the corner, there it is, a colorful surprise, a gentle poke at convention and an homage to my southern roots.

 

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: January 15, 2011

Bloomin' snow. That's what I got.

Well, it is Minnesota. We're having what the natives call a good old-fashioned winter. Yippee.

I sense even the old-timers are tiring of this every-other-day snow situation. I know I am. Yikes, it's only mid-January. At this rate I just hope it all melts by May.

One of the difficult parts of winter for me is the absence of color. In the dull, dreary light, color photographs appear like black and white. Shadows show themselves as blue and trees featureless gray to greenish black. Seeking color, I look to "blooms" of another kind out in the deep snow.

 
I hate to take down the Christmas lights just yet...

 
The bottle tree shows a bit of color...

 
This scene outside reminds me of Japanese paintings where they always put one stroke of red...

 
Finally, there are African violets blooming inside...

I'll be blogging about these little beauties later next week.

For some of you spring isn't far off. As for me, I have to go back to earlier Garden Bloggers Bloom Days to reassure myself I didn't just dream it all. Thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting GBBD!

The Secret Garden: A Recurring Theme

I must be the only middle-aged woman in America who wasn't in a book club until now. I've wanted to join one, but the fates have just not allowed it. Not that I haven't tried, but the literary planets would not align for me.

So I was excited to see announced the "Books in the Garden" book club at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Books. Garden. You got me.

For tomorrow's first session, we've read "The Secret Garden"; the children's classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I've realized lately that there are a good many of us who count children's books as a sort of guilty pleasure. In fact, there are book clubs based solely on that genre. I really should get out more.

Reading the unabridged version illusrated by Tasha Tudor has been such a joy during these dreary days.

However, it coincided with my winter activity of completing the upload of all my photos onto digital storage to Flickr. Oh, I had all the recent ones, thousands, since I am always creating garden and nature photography for my writing. But this week I had been catching up with the pictures of my old kitchen garden in Kansas; a surefire way to get depressed as the snow sifts over my now home in Minnesota.

 
Zepherine Drouhin rose meets Henryii clematis at the entrance to my kitchen garden

The paralells between the secret garden in the book and my old kitchen garden were so touching and bittersweet, yet with the endings reversed. I've written before about my foursquare food garden that got the neighbors talking. It was my homage to the productive walled gardens of England I had envied while living there. Determined to capture this healthy/tasty old-fashioned way of life for my own, it's funny now to see it as forward-thinking.

 
My kitchen garden in messy abundance at end of season

After a series of cross-country and overseas moves, five in four years, I needed that garden more than anyone will ever know. I needed grounding, literally. My kitchen garden became my sanctuary, my laboratory, my pantry; a healing place for my soul that nourished my family just like in The Secret Garden.

 
Early spring in the kitchen garden looking toward the herbs

Leaving that soil that I had coerced from hard clay to crumbly chocolate cake was painful. Leaving the Zepherine Drouhin climbing rose  with the heavenly smelling, traffic-stopping flowers was even sadder. Leaving it to other people who might not understand or want it was heartbreaking. And then there were the people who walked by admiring, I felt almost a responsibility to them to keep it going.
From inside the kitchen garden looking out...

Then in August I passed through Wichita to visit friends, and to see for myself what people had been telling me about the happenings at my old house. My husband, there recently on a business trip, described it as a "mighty fortress is our God" wall. So when I drove up, I knew it was bad, but seeing it was worse.

My kitchen garden was completely hidden behind this massive wood/rock/cement/whatever wall. The uppermost branches of the rose were visible but withered. The new owners had undertaken this "makeover" before moving in and with the hottest, driest summer on record, it's doubtful if anything perennial survived without watering.

 
I guess the new owners are into 'extreme privacy'

After re-reading "The Secret Garden", I've had a more hopeful thought. We know that gardens are a work in progress. Perhaps my old garden is only at the stage where it is walled up and hidden away for awhile. In time, someone might remember it or discover it and tear down the wall and work the soil again.

Only time will tell.

 

 

 

 

 

Join the Club: There's a Gardening Group Out There For You

I know people who ask for a load of compost for their birthday. I know people who schedule vacations around their vegetable harvest. I know people who go out to their gardens first thing to just check on things, then realize they are still weeding in their jammies at noon.

Does this sound familiar? Do they sound like your kind of people? Or does it sound like you?

Maybe you should consider joining a garden club, plant society or conservation group. There's no better way to find like-minded gardeners; people who will understand why you'd rather buy plants than shoes, why your jeans are always green at the knees, and other such telltale signs of garden addiction.

There are garden clubs and then there are garden clubs. Some are for refined ladies and gentlemen who direct and delegate the goings-on in their gardens, They usually serve lovely beverages and food at their meetings. Other garden clubs are for those of us who like to grub around in the dirt. We often do potluck, straight from our gardens.

I think there's a place for both kinds of garden clubs and don't find it odd if a person belongs to both of them at the same time. In fact, one of my top horticultural fantasies is to belong to a 100-year old, high society garden club with other grand dames of dirt, inviting them to stroll the grounds of my ever-so-perfectly landscaped estate, while sipping tall glasses of iced tea with mint. A girl can dream, can't she?

Meanwhile I'm excited about a "Books in the Garden" book club I just signed up for this week. The first month, we go from The Secret Garden; Frances Hodges Burnett's classic children's tale to Genesis to the heavy verses of John Milton's Paradise Lost. This book club is obviously not for beginners. I'll let you know how it goes.

 
Just beyond, a secret garden                     The Garden Buzz

Plant societies are as varied as the passion of the members; there are hordes of hosta lovers, iris fanciers, and daffodil experts, along with avid African violet people and crazy-for-cactus folk. Not every town may have a club for the object of you adoration, but so many plant societies are national with newsy newsletters, online information and opportunities to meet up at conferences and conventions.

Just as diverse, conservation groups are popping up all the time, God bless them, hellbent on saving the whole earth or some particular cause they feel fiercely about. These people are often headstrong and outspoken; such is their fervor.

I belong to a number of these gardening groups; Extension Master Gardeners, Herb Society of America, Minnesota Horticulture Society, Garden Writers of America, Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Wild Ones, Xerces, and many more. I'm not as involved in some as I am in others; I might volunteer many hours at one, while only reading the newsletters of another. However I've found many friends and fellow gardeners I would never have known otherwise. For a few of us, these meetings and events are the only time we come up for air from our dirt-caked hands and knees.

Maybe this is the year to find your garden community. Among the many benefits, you'll find:

• Knowledgeable gardeners
• Like-minded gardeners
• Unlike-minded gardeners who'll challenge your garden philosophy
• Education
• Garden tours
• Plant swaps
• First dibs at plant sales
• Local gardening information not found in broader-based books
• Conferences and conventions
• Networking and employment leads
• Friends!

Have a favorite garden group/experience/suggestion you'd like to share? Let us know in the comment section.