Gardening: Plant Finder - Lady's mantle. Cultivating the Past -- Martha Stewart Home & Garden. Whatever you call them -- heirlooms, heritage plants, classic flowers -- the old-fashioned annuals and perennials that have brightened gardens for centuries exert a powerful appeal. In a world inundated with plants touted as "new and improved," they're a living link -- with beloved relatives and friends, with our childhood, with generations of gardeners long gone. In fact, many heirlooms have survived only because they're passed from hand to hand as cuttings or seeds. It would be a bleak garden that didn't include at least a few of these welcoming flowers. Even if you can't live without the latest sunset-hued coneflower, your new treasure will shine all the more if it's partnered with the chartreuse froth of lady's mantle or the bold spires of foxglove or hollyhock.
Indeed, the simplicity of form of so many heirlooms gives them a welcome versatility, both in the garden and in a vase. The gentle palette of many heirloom varieties is another point in their favor. 1. 1. A Nation Planted By Founding Fathers' Green Thumbs. Founding GardenersBy Andrea WulfHardcover, 352 pagesKnopfList Price $30 My first impressions of America were shaped when I went as a young woman on a seven- week road trip across the States, from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. We drove hundreds of miles on roads that never curved, along a grid that mankind had imposed on nature. Some days we passed sprawling factories that were pumping out clouds of billowing smoke; other days we saw vast fields that seemed to go on forever. Everything differed in scale from Europe, even suburban America, where rows and rows of painted clapboard houses sit proudly on large open plots of immaculately shorn lawns. Then, in 2006, I went to visit Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's mountaintop home in Virginia, and began to understand how wrong I had been.
Later, I couldn't put Monticello out of my mind. In response to the tensions between Britain and America, Franklin turned to plants and agriculture. Excerpted from Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf. Estimate Mature Size - Planning Your Vegetable Garden - Vegetable Garden Guide - MarthaStewart.com. To help you select the plants that prefer your climate, use the "Zones of Hardiness Map" published by the United States Department of Agriculture. This map divides the United States and Canada into 11 zones. Because winter cold is, in most regions, the single greatest threat to plant survival, the zones are divided according to the average monthly temperature they experience locally. Plant descriptions in catalogs and labels typically refer to these hardiness zones to specify the areas in which any given plant will thrive.
Once you have identified the zone in which your garden is located, purchase only plants recommended as reliably hardy there. Note: If you plan to grow perennial vegetables, like asparagus and artichoke, you'll need to identify your hardiness zone. Download the Zone Map. Inspiring garden pics - English Garden. Inspiring garden pics Photos of beautiful gardens to inspire you Best English Gardens Competition Gallery [offsite link]Inspiring pics from the English Garden magazine competition.
Bressingham Gardens [offsite link] Take a virtual tour around his famous gardens East Lambrook Manor [offsite link]Lots of lovely pics! Eastgrove Cottage Garden [offsite link]Photos of Eastgrove Cottage Garden a beautiful English Country garden with its 17th Century cottage and nursery. English Garden Hangman Game Want a little break in your day? English Garden Photographs Take a look at these inspiring pictures from a traditional English Garden. Photos of English Garden plants Photos of old varieties of English Garden plants that have been around for centuries.
Photos of English Gardens [offsite link]Selection of garden photos plus some pics of towns and famous houses. Plant photos [offsite link]An A to Z directory of garden plants plus details of Beth Chatto´s garden. Sissinghurst Castle Gardens The Enchanted Show Garden 2003. Cottage Gardening Guide: Planting and Design Tips.
Cottage gardening is an attitude, not a location You can achieve a cottage effect in the heart of the city as well as the suburbs. All you need is a passion for plants and a willingness to mix them all up. While English-style gardens draw heavily on hardy perennials, you can accomplish the same look of artful chaos with any plants appropriate to your climate. (See the Sunset Plant Finder.) Indeed, Mediterranean plants and succulents like agaves work quite well in coastal and desert plantings. Click ahead for a look at how the traditional cottage garden can morph to fit your own personal gardening style.
Creeping Sedums. Since sedums thrive in less-than-ideal conditions, the author adorns a stone wall with a wide assortment of them (identified in chart below). If you’re looking for a beautiful plant that thrives with virtual neglect, a creeping sedum just might fit the bill. Sedums strut their stuff where many other plants dare not venture. They make themselves at home, for example, in the cracks of a garden wall or walkway, on roofs or the tops of gently sloping birdhouses, or even under massive trees where enormous roots monopolize most of the soil’s moisture. They also perform well in rock gardens, borders, and containers. As seasonal and prolonged droughts make regular appearances across the United States, many gardeners have begun to take a closer look at members of the genus Sedum.
Creeping sedums, also commonly known as stonecrops, offer unending interest throughout my garden. Once established, sedums require virtually no supplemental water to thrive, even in the driest circumstances. Ommas Aarden Heirloom Seed Harvest Prayer. THE HARVEST PRAYER (Anonymous 17th Century Sermon) Please be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance, And none can say why some fields blossom While others lay brown beneath the harvest sun. Take hope that your season will come. Share the joy of those whose season is at hand. Their dreams are no less than yours, Their choices in life no more easily made. And give. To withhold is to wither. And your life will have meaning And your heart will have peace.
Monticello%2Bvieuw. Jefferson: the Scientist and Gardener. Thomas Jefferson was an astute observer of the natural world. The daily activities of sowing seeds, manuring asparagus, and harvesting peas between 1809 and 1826 are precisely recorded in his "Garden Kalendar," a part of his famous Garden Book.
Jefferson was often the detached scientist in the Kalendar as he recorded that his Hotspur peas were "killed by frost Oct. 23," or that his yellow squash "came to nothing" in 1809. He could also record remarkable detail as in 1811 when he noted of his Asparagus beans that "2/3 pint sow a large square, rows 2 1/2 feet apart and 1 f. and 18 I. apart in the row, one half at each distance. " For Jefferson, the vegetable garden was a kind of laboratory where he could experiment with imported squashes and broccoli from Italy, beans and salsify collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition, figs from France, and peppers from Mexico.
Jefferson the Gardener Salads were an important part of Jefferson's diet.