An Issue with Garden Design

In 2015, our two native plant areas, the Road Garden and the Parking Lot Garden, were planted in different styles. Three years later, one style is demanding more maintenance from us. 

Plants in the Parking Lot Garden were positioned randomly - we literally opened up each five-pack plug case and tossed the plugs here, here, there, here and over there. The resulting bed is a confusion of multiple layers and colours:

Parking Lot Garden in 2017

For example, Three Flowered Avens blossom in May. After blossoming, here are the grey-pink seed heads of Three Flowered Avens showing through other plants that will soon grow above them.

Mid June: grey-pink seed heads of Three Flowered Avens just showing above the surrounding plants

Plants in the Road Garden were arranged in individual clumps and positioned front to back based upon their heights. Here is our original layout - creases, mud, comments and all. Notice that the Three Flowered Avens were eventually planted in the lower right hand corner:

Here are Three Flowered Avens in the Road Garden this spring:

Now at the beginning of July, the Three Flowered Avens have gone to seed. There is nothing else to grow in this area and, indeed, some of the other plant groupings have failed. There are now unsightly blank areas filling with weeds, demonstrating gardening failure. These need to be weeded and replanted - right now!

Yarrow and Goldenrod gone - and, off picture, just to the right of the Giant Hyssop, spent Three Flowered Avens

The spent and failed areas of the Road Garden are filling with opportunistic weeds. Actually, that is exactly what weeds are - opportunistic. Whereas in the Parking Lot Garden, when spent plants and failed plants occur, these areas are smothered by surrounding native plants. One does not notice this natural activity in a randomly planted garden. In a tightly designed planting area, any failure is totally obvious.

So, in conclusion, plant randomly and let nature do the maintenance.

One caveat, there is random and then there is random. But that will be the topic of a future post.

Heat

Recently, while preparing a gardening article on Riel House, we were asked if we believed that climate change was influencing our activities. It was a curious question and got us to thinking: 

Had we seen any evidence of climate change?

Well, in reviewing our weather charts over the past several years, the low temperature, in comparison to 1886, stands out in most months - it is definitely higher. See for yourself at our Weather page. Now perhaps 1886 experienced unusually cold low temperatures. That combined with high daytime temperatures and lack of rainfall contributed to the crop failure of 1886. 

Certainly, this year, the heat has made our growing conditions more beneficial and it will be interesting to see this year's increased rainfall can assist in creating a good harvest.

Gardening by Walking Around

you find things out by walking around and observing what is going on

Managing by Walking Around. 

I first encountered this concept through work. Here is the definition from Wikipedia:

• a style of business management which involves managers wandering around, in an unstructured manner, through the workplace(s), at random, to check with employees, equipment, or on the status of ongoing work. The emphasis is on the word wandering as an unplanned movement within a workplace     . . .     The expected benefit is that a manager, by random sampling of events or employee discussions, is more likely to facilitate improvements to the morale, sense of organizational purpose, productivity and total quality management of the organization, as compared to remaining in a specific office area and waiting for employees, or the delivery of status reports, to arrive there, as events warrant in the workplace.

I hadn't associated this concept with gardening until I came across the YouTube channel Bealtaine Cottage whose author posts daily half hour videos of her walks through her three acre property. I was amazed by the beauty and complexity of life unfolding in these daily journeys and began a similar activity on my own property. Gardening by walking around.

At Riel House, sometimes we get very focused on accomplishing our gardening tasks and lose sight of how industrious nature can be. How bountiful. How beautiful. 

Yes, it is time to walk around .  .  .  and stop and smell the roses .  .  .  

Rose in the Theatre

Wild irises in the boggy end of the Parking Lot Garden

Cranesbill geraniums flooding the Right Entrance Bed

... stop and smell the roses ...

ps the spider in the first image is a female thin-legged wolf spider with an egg sac attached to her abdomen

Waiting for Raspberries

This dragon fly is sitting on one of the posts in the raspberry patch. I have blown up this picture to maximum size in order to show the detail in the wings.

Blossom Time

Lilac overlooking the Produce Garden - 6 June 2018

This is the lilac just to the west of the Produce Garden. It has come into bloom much later than other lilacs on the property.

Here are the lilacs on the east side of the Theatre area. This photograph was taken May 25, almost two weeks ago.

Lilacs and Red Chairs - 25 May 2018

We're thinking of setting up a spreadsheet to record when each of the plants bloom at Riel House. As you can see from these lilacs, it is not on the same day. Blooming varies by location which, of course, is influenced by sun and soil conditions.