Thank you for all the good wishes and tips I received after my last post. Words can’t describe the suffusion of warmth I felt as I read comment after comment. I feel so grateful, during these times, for the community we have created here of articulate, thoughtful, generous, and of course, fashionable women. Of all the digital places I land, I feel most at home here on the blog.
I became enamored with the suggestions relating to identifying and growing native plants. I must confess your suggestions sent me down a very delightful rabbit hole. Of all the activities one engages in as a scholar and academic, I take the most pleasure from doing research. Not the statistical kind, but the good old-fashioned historical kind where context is everything. Where you read one book or article after another. You find an idea that sparks excitement and sends you down another branch of the trail and on and on until there is nowhere else to go. You fall down the proverbial rabbit hole. It becomes a liminal state where you are so engrossed hours pass by without you even being aware of it.
Living in an old house is making me even more fascinated with history than I already was. I can’t grasp or articulate the present unless I know the historical context, Perhaps I feel even more compelled to re-visit the past because we seem to live in a very ahistorical time. Let me be clear, I’m not nostalgic, not do I wish to go back in time but I have found that in the present there is always a challenge or experience had before and sometimes there are very creative solutions and with some adaptations are still relevant for today. My home is prodding me to research the transition between the Victorian era and the Arts and Crafts Movement, as there are many parallels to the issues we face today. Examples are consumerism, excess, environmental concerns and elitism.
And so we circle back to native plants and I found that the longing for simpler times during this transition time manifested in “Grandmother’s Gardens”. During this period (also during the time of a pandemic) women writers encouraged other women to garden as a release from the constraints of the lives they lived indoors and as an outlet for physical activity and creativity. Organized around everyday activities, gardens contained a mash-up of vegetables, herbs and flowers. During that time, and as is happening now, there was a migration to the suburbs by former city dwellers. Built between 1912-1914 by these transplants, the houses on our street still appear as they did in an old survey. In a deep yearning for a more stable time, there was a return to native plants and a turn away from professionally designed gardens. I see vestiges of a grandmother’s garden in the meandering, overgrown paths in our yard and in a cellar with shelves under the porch used for canning and drying herbs.
Somehow these discoveries steady me and give me a sense we will get through this time. I love that grandmother’s gardens were places where women could create, maintain their health and have a reprieve from the constant “duty of care”. They were spaces that offered a connection between family and the country’s past in a way that enriched, not substituted for the present. The women who wrote, designed and photographed these gardens turned them into professional opportunities and careers, just as some of us have been doing during this past transitional year. I will write more about “grandmother’s gardens”, sharing what I will both metaphorically and literally plant in mine and invite you to do the same.
What are you planting in your “grandmother’s garden” for physical well-being, creativity, new opportunities and balancing caring for those you love during these challenging times?
Stay safe and well.
I love your writings. ? I love to plant flowers that my mother had in her garden . Zinnias…enjoy your planning!
I think you may find inspo by researching The Bloomsbury Group for style and spirituality!
Have a look at some English cottage gardens we love them here in the U.K. original and old, nothing a designer has the plans to make! Good luck with your planting now and in the spring!
I have been reading your blog for a year or so now and love to hear your knowledgeable comments about so many topics. I have never reached out before but felt that I would this time. I am not a particularly fashionable individual although I know that all people end up expressing their “fashion” just by doing what they do and going out in the world in the way that they do. I am an RN so many of my days consist of a “uniform” of sorts. Regarding the gardening , I am very intrigued by the whole idea but unfortunately (if I want to express it that way) I love in the western part of Canada and gardening is not something we can indulge in for many months of the year. I am fortunate to have my son living with me due to COVID circumstances and he is a very “nature” kind of guy. We had a beautiful, bountiful garden last summer due to exquisite weather conditions. He also built a large greenhouse so as to extend the season next year. I feel drawn to the earth and planting but we are so restricted here that it is very frustrating. I will live vicariously through your tales and your pictures. I look forward to it…
Heather
I like to grow plants that have a scent. Flowers that perfume the yard in the summer evening is pure heaven. Our beautiful fragrant lilies !!!! We planted more bulbs this fall hopefully the moles don’t eat them. They are so fragrant their gorgeous perfume filters into the house. Glorious!
Gardening is for ‘The Birds’!
I love my gardens of herbs and vegetables!
Then there is a magical journey you begin –
discovering plants who have necessary gifts for the birds!
This will take you down a new ‘Rabbit Hole’.
You will discover butterflies, bees, valuable insects!
And then – companion planting!
The Most Grand Gift is observing Nature!
Every moment we learn more about ourselves, imagine and believe – knowing there is always hope!
We do make a difference!
Thank You, always!
Your words come purely from your heart!
You continue to inspire, WE, living in our ‘Troisième Age’!
During the 43 years at our previous home, I experimented with many types of garden beds. Then two years ago, we downsized from a 2500 square foot home to 1650. The new house has three small beds and a large paved patio. I still have turned it to a refugee with containers and and interesting plants. I now have a lovely container fountain in front surrounded with a circle of hebes. Surrounding that is a circle of white hellebores that bloom from February a august. I have white begin I as in window boxes, and white and red fushias in hanging baskets. I also have a strip of white hellebores and white astilbe and red hellebores and hostas . That is my front.
In back I have containers of roses, a bed of dahlias, and a bed with cone flowers, lavender, and clematis. In the center is a rose bush that is a cutting from my husband’s grandmother’s rose. (100 years old) I love sitting on my patio with its color and fragrance.
Gardens bring such pleasure.
Being outside and gardening has been a stress reliever forever for me. And oddly enough it all started when when I began taking care of my grandmother’s garden. She couldn’t get around any more outside and I knew she loved her gardens – morning glories and petunias, lilacs and a spirea bush. I thought the world of her and wanted to make her world still beautiful for her. Enjoy being outside in the yard and all that it brings to you. Including peace of mind.
I really enjoy the times I saw you in fashionable clothes and the article’s you printed.I would love to garden with herbs and flowers but I cannot keep anything growing.I haven’t what is called a green thumb.
Take care during these critical times.
I hear your yearning for a Grandmother’s garden. My own grandmother had a mish-mash garden as well. her flower beds were lined with asbestos rocks that I played with because you could scratch off the fluffy fibers. Great fun for a kid growing up in the 50’s. She had veggies where she could, a couple of fruit trees, and flowers here and there in those rock lined beds. I find myself busy during this pandemic with my own garden growing finally a winter crop of consumable lettuces, kales, Kohlrabi and cabbage. Flowers dot the garden – Echinacea, pansies or whatever will lend a little winter color to a vegetable garden in Arizona. Enjoy your research and your garden!
Roses. Lots of roses. Red ones for the dead among us, white ones for the hope in all of us. White primroses, standing tall, for the heroic among us, pansies, for the faces I miss smiling at us.
All you are missing in your garden are those “magic lillies” you know the ones that appear out of nowhere! They remind me of the surprise and magic that awaits me
I’ll have to plant some!
During this challenging time of the Virus-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, I have, like you found relief in simple pleasures such as gardening and cooking. Working from home I used to feel the need to justify the time it took to do those tasks, but now I think we can appreciate the value in such creative and nourishing efforts. Cooking with home grown herbs has been a source of delight, so I was gifted with a book called Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine, and am so looking forward to adding those skills to my garden toolbox.
As a brand new grandmother, I look forward to a future sharing these heartfelt activities with my granddaughter!
Hello! Although my gardening is now done out on the balcony, I derive so much pleasure from gardening in pots. It is a grandmother’s garden to be sure! I am a lover of lavender and became hard core after traveling to Provence where it is everywhere – even in the air. I do grow lavender in pots on the balcony now and I intend to grow even more. It brings me great joy and the hummingbirds love it!
Hello again! Anna Bartlett Warner’s book, Gardening By Myself is a wonderful historic read. It is out of print, but it is pretty easy to find a reprinted version. I planted Agarita (Mahonia trifoliata) in my “Grandmother’s garden”. It is a gorgeous rustic holly-like evergreen Texas native. It has beautiful yellow early spring blooms when not much else is blooming here and produces small red fruits that can be made into a tasty jam. Picking the fruits was a delicate and rather painful exercise because of the thorny (but beautiful) foliage. While searching for an Agarita jam recipe, I found an account written by a woman who used to help her grandmother collect the fruit. She described her grandmother’s placing a sheet under the bush, gently thrashing the bush with her umbrella and collecting up the berries in the sheet. I will try this less painful method next spring! Wishing you the best in your new home!
A great resource is wildflower.org. This website is run by the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, at The University of Texas. While the organization is in Texas, their database covers all states in the US. If you select “Search for plants” from the home page, you can select your state and retrieve profiles for the plants native to your state. Sitting by the fire on a cold winter day, dreaming of gardens to be… Add a mug of hot chocolate and it is one of my favorite winter activities.
Fabulous! I love your illustration. Gardens are therapeutic, soulful, beautiful spaces where we can refresh ourselves. I am anxiously awaiting more about Grandmothers Gardens and native plants. Thank you.
In my grandmother’s garden I hope I am planting seeds of hope for one of our local high school seniors. A friend of mine started a support group for the seniors of 2021 since Covid-19 has altered their last year of high school. We’re just supposed to let them know we’re thinking of them and praying for them and letting them know that we realize how challenging the year is, probably, going to be for them. I knew of my senior because we’re a small town. But, we’ve never really met.
Since the first week of September I have been sending a hand painted watercolor card with, hopefully, a quote that I think relates to both of us. I, usually, write about how I think the quote applies to my life. And, I tell her about what I have been doing and about what I hope to get done. I try to focus on a theme for the quotes for each month. Sometimes it has been a challenge for me, but I’ve really come to enjoy the challenge. We’ve heard through the grapevine that the students are impressed and in awe that we have supported them in such a way. I look forward every week to deciding what to write about and what to paint.
My friend had no idea when she assigned me to my senior that we shared a love for art. About a month ago I got a letter from my senior telling me about her life and her interests. Included was a small photo of a lion that she had painted. She then said her next project was a vase of watercolor flowers! My friend said it was a wonderful “God” thing and I truly think it is.
Hopefully, I will be able to meet Ally at Christmas break. (Social distancing, of course!). She lives about 10 minutes from me. We both live in the country. She has been a bright spot in my “grandmother’s garden “. I hope I have been in hers!
I enjoy reading your blogs! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
JaneAnn Cline
A Grandmother’s Garden!
My childhood memories of my own, maternal Grandmother’s Garden remain vivid.
Rose covered trellises against the house, reaching upward toward a second floor flat roof porch.
Irises in gaudy colors against the foundation.
Bleeding hearts in a partially shade portion of the yard.
Lilacs and rhododendrons along the property perimeter.
My grandmother did not garden. My grandfather was chief dishwasher and gardeners!
My paternal grandmother was a city, apartment dweller. Without a yard but I do remember beautiful flowering geraniums, african violets and stunning cyclamen.
My mother loved flowers, but dutifully neglected every single Mother’s Day hanging Ivy Geranium EVER given to her.
My maiden great ‘aunts’ were fortunate to have a real, honest to goodness gardener.
His name was Artie. Their wish was his command. My Uncle Frank dutifully paid the rather large, weekly bill. April through November.
An elaborate garden located on the Cape. A most challenging environment due to the nature of soil ( almost all sand) and high salt content of said soil ( sand)..
The fall and winter storms blew the wind and rain and sideways.
The home and gardens were admired by the locals and tourists alike.
My grand dame, older aunt had a cute nickname. Bunny.
Her european travels and antiquing trips to the deep south provided inspiration.
Peach trees flanked a driveway leading to “the barn”, a cutting garden held delphinium, peonies, irises, daisy’s, asiatic lilies.,
Tiny pink roses spilled over the low, white fence. The front walk was flanked by easily 100 blue hydrangea plants. Nikko variety. Stately, two story holly trees near the library end of the home. The back yard had impressive Beech trees which provided shade and a place to enjoy afternoon cocktails on Sunday afternoons. My siblings and I were served ice cream floats. Typically made with ginger ale and strawberry ice cream.
A shapely ” poodle bush” ( double sphered topiary ) stood sentry by the back breezeway door.
Perhaps my most favorite garden was Aunt Bunny’s Friendship garden. In this smallish space, Bunny had her dutiful gardener Artie replant all floral shop azaleas, easter lilies, tulips and assorted blooms never meant to endure the real elements of nature.
This mish mash of plants were given to Mabel ( her real name) and represented all her many different friends. Weekend guests. Many were older, single women ( never married). They were rather bookish ladies who were pale, powdered and lipsticked A few played golf and one of her dearest friends, Mary Brady, became my best beach/ swimming companion.
Mary taught me ( about age 20,) that life was short, take the plunge. We were going out to dinner that night and I did not want to submerge. There wasn’t enough time to shower shampoo, blowdry, etc
I learned that in different environments, you ( and your hair) can survive and adapt. My freshly washed hair that evening was worn pulled back, either a french braid or a soggy chignon. I was on Cape, rather sunburnt and completely appropriate.
Bunny’s Friendship Garden flourished in the toughest environment. To our amazement, her hot house beauties survived many winters and Easter Lilies resurrected . Blooming not once, but twice each year.
Here’s to your own rebirth in Westchester County.
Wishing you and your garden joy, peace, deep roots and hydration.
PS.
While I physically cannot see the light, shaded areas, soil, I would suggest for part shade, hellebores. The Christmas Rose is the winter blooming variety (seen blooming today, through snow and ice on Atlantic Ave Boston). Witch Hazel as an amazingly gorgeous and surprising shrubby bush. Saturated yellow blooms float and hover around their branches in January will pop out against winter snow. Ferns ( more shade), plants with movement and sound ( I prefer Japanese Forest Grass). Inspirational places for you. NYBG. Gorgeous even in the dead of winter.
We do not live in an old house though land wherever we find ourselves, holds history. Because of the pandemic, I now consult professionally from home. This home is distant from yours – Cape Town, on the Southern tip of the African continent, yet we share similar sensibilities. My garden has become an antidote to the strangeness of the world we find ourselves in. I have begun to plant. Indigenous bushes sit check by jowl with a couple of lemon tress, pots of mint, plus basil plants and so much else. A small beginning that gives so much joy.
Liebe Lyn
Ja, genau das ist es. Dieses geerdet Sein durch ein wenig Garten. An allen Orten, wo ich bisher gelebt habe, habe ich nicht die Häuser, die Wohnungen vermisst, sondern meine Gärten. Das ist für mich zu Hause.
Welches Glücksgefühl am Morgen oder am Abend die ”Ranch” umrunden, und wenn sie auch nur klein sind. Hie und da etwas essbares ablesen, da und dort etwas abzwicken…herrlich.
Dieses tolle Gefühl lässt sich auch auf einer Terrasse erzeugen mit Pflanzen in Töpfen. Ich habe in diesem Frühling (hatte Zeit wegen Corona) mein Garagendach begrünt. Welche Freude, jetzt habe die Vögel diesen Garten als Winterquartier entdeckt. Pure Freude.
liebe Grüsse
CH-Renate
Perhaps heirloom seeds would go well with your ‘grandmother’s garden”? I’ve pored over gorgeous catalogs from Baker Heirloom Seeds company, with great joy – they have seeds from other countries besides the US, and often give the histories of the seeds along with photos and other information. Really delightful, food for the body and soul, vegetables and flowers. Gardeners tend to be happy people anyway, so what’s not to like? The food tastes better and one’s own food and blooms have an extra radiance. Enjoy your adventure! I so appreciate all you write – your honesty even more than your eloquence – realness in sharing is food for the spirit as well, and I’ve felt nourished through your ‘voice’, thank you so much!
Dear Liv,
what a nice picture ,you and native plants and your comments on “grandmother’s garden”,please continue…….Me too,I’m obsessed.with my garden,I make a stoneoven,it is on progress,where I dream to cook bread,pizza and pide ( a turkish version of a kind of pizza) in the garden,cooking became a passion for me too in this extraordinary time.I also plant apple and appricose trees,I already have olive trees.I made also a pond in the garden,I wish to put some fishes there,for enjoying my granddaughter (1,5 years)next spring.I don’t remember who said “establishing a garden is to believe in heaven”,but I like it,because it is the heaven on earth.Nowadays it is the place for find balance for me,because similar to your life,I’m actually a scientist,who can’t do research in the lab now.
Best wishes from Izmir ( at the seaside of the agean sea )
Thank you for sending me down a rabbit hole. I manage diplomatic salons in the former home of the grand French diplomat Talleyrand. Talleyrand was raised by his grandmother in the Perigord region. Every Sunday as a small child he watched her receive the local serfs (seeking all manner of assistance) in a room of apothecary jars of home grown herbs. Now I need to know what were/are the local herbs grown there.
I use essential oils, to apply on my skin…Or to diffuse into the air around me.
Inhaling these scents (for various purposes) Brings me so much peace.
Great for peace of mind and staying steady and healthy
Love you!
During my morning walks this year I have picked up abandoned succulents along the way, and have created a succulent garden. The space underneath our verandah was impossible to grow anything, even rosemary didn’t grow, but succulents grow anywhere, even after they’ve been thrown out after someone else’s garden renovation.
The space looks lived in now, with low maintenance and gives me joy, and certainly a reminder of what I can do with more time (not commuting is great!).
Love your blog Lyn
Congratulations with the choice of your new home. I hope it will give you shelter and security and be an even bigger source of inspiration than it already is.
In my small city garden, I grow thyme, oregano, sage and rosemary; those are perennials and I use some of them finally shredded in olive oil to sop bread into. Sorrel makes a sour dish, prepared like spinach. With rhubarb, I make jam. All of this are good for either digestion or respiratory tracts.
Since you have a cellar, you could make cheese, a very satisfaying activity that doesn’t need a lot of your time. To heighten your satisfaction, you could hunt for antique/vintage glazed pottery molds and use them to drain the whey.
Of the petals of fragrant roses, you can make rose petal jam, rose water to mix with a syrup for a refreshing summer drink.
Pick the flowers of lavender just before they bloom, let them dry and divide the over silk sachets to senten your clothes, underwear, sheets.
Do plant arugola; it is very abundant, self-sowing and can stand some rime or frost. It doesn’t let you down and is good source for at the least fibers and you just have to let it grow, no special care besides picking the leaves.
Enjoy your garden, enjoy working in your garden; enjoy the harvest.
I love your posts and have particularly enjoyed your latest transition from the city to the countryside. You may have come across this in your reading research, but do you know ‘The Virago Book of Women Gardeners”? It’s an absolute delight of anthologised writings from women who gardened from 18th century to present day. I’m sure you would love it.
Best wishes
June
My maternal Great Grandmother who was a working farmer & a mother of six (one of whom, of course, was my Grandfather) believed in “getting your hands dirty in some soil”. She said it was beneficial for your mental health & also that there was a plant which could cure any ailment. I never knew her but she lives on in my soon to be 87 year old Mum, her Granddaughter Iris. I feel immensely proud to belong to the same family of those women.
I’m hoping your featured photo is a sample of proposed wall paper for a perfect accent wall…I so related to your musings about research…it is a delightful rabbit hole. One I’ve recently discovered. This past June I committed to witing everyday. I began writing pieces on subjects that I did not know much, if anything, about, and I got hooked on the research. The research usually directed me in a totally unexpected direction, that was it for me. So, I was delighted when I read your words about Granmothers Garden! Much happinessin your new ‘evolving’ home. xok
My garden during the summer and now fall has consisted of a variety of vegetables – broccoli, brussels sprouts, red beets, radishes, scallions, purple kale and green kale.
We have also a nice variety of herbs- basil, rosemary and thyme. I tried my hand this year at some heirloom tomatoes which were quite tasty and made an amazing sauce. My grandmother always had a lovely flower garden in Queens, NY and now I can appreciate her work even more.
I was diagnosed this past February with lupus, combined with the pandemic really put my life in a tailspin. I couldn’t do much during the day but deal with my disease. Having fresh vegetables for dinner and kale for my smoothies because I can’t eat somedays is really a comfort in an upside down world.
Last spring, I planted a vegetable garden for the first time in years. It was a joy to tend in the first months of the pandemic. Then we decided to sell our house and my focus turned to sprucing up the ornamental parts of the landscape, with more native flowering plants, succulents and cacti. Now I am still only vaguely thinking what to do with our small patio space in the condo we moved to. The previous resident left us with a beautiful little outdoor space dominated by flowering shrubs, perennials and annuals. I have been watering them faithfully, and appreciating the lush beauty. Ultimately, I will transform this to a much more low-water, desert friendly set of plants. I will miss the beautiful lushness of the bougainvilleas, etc. But morally, we need xeriscaping, and it can also be beautiful. I will also set up a small culinary herb garden though; it won’t use too much water and having fresh herbs just outside the kitchen will be a joy.
At the moment, the idea of a “grandmother’s garden” is both interesting, and personally a bit painful. My granddaughter is 1700 miles away, and in this time, we are listening to the experts and not traveling. When will my little one get to come visit here? When will I get to go see her? It seems like it will be so long; we used to go back and forth regularly. What I do with plants here will only be for me, it seems, though I also know that by making it more desert appropriate I am doing my part to make the earth healthier for future generations in a general way.
When I read your text I assume that you are now experiencing a very fascinating period and it is so pleasant that you share this, the beautiful description of Grandmother’s gardens and actually the whole philosophy behind it paint a complete picture of gardens, plants and women those who find their peace of mind there a blissful description! I am very curious about your next post … and I wish you a fantastic holiday season for you and your family!
Reread Alice Walker’s classic “In Search of Our Grandmothers’ Gardens.”
I have been a gardener and landscaper for years and am so glad you are finding this part of life! You will find yourself very grounded when planting and discovering all the small green corners of your property. ? You will walk barefoot in the grass and enjoy having a little spot of your very own. Good luck with your gardening. I am really happy for you and your discoveries to come. ❤️
I want lilies of the valley in my yard now. I love your new house.it’s s whole new kind of blog now. Thanks.
I would love to belong to your grandmother’s gardens community.
Graciously gardening,
Kellie Barrow
It’s so nice hearing from you. I love the new adventure that you are experiencing. Can’t wait to hear more about your new home.
Happy Holidays!
I love rabbit holes and this slowing down time has allowed me to explore all sorts of them! I plant many things as a remembrance to those I’ve followed…geraniums, tulips, peonies, perennials and as many dahlias as I can fit throughout the garden. Enjoy your new home. I look forward to seeing how you make it your own.
Love this picture
Absolutely beautiful like all your work ?
Always roses – a new lilac – phlox – Sweet William and lily of the valley – Shasta daisies – dahlias.
One can see the above planted also at the houses built in the 1930s – 1950s in the “old” part of my city. As newer houses were built and the city spread further east one saw only roses being planted. Even rose planting by “younger” people is now on the decline.
This year adding poppies and sweet peas – asters and maybe black eyed Susan.
Hi Lyn!
Recently I had a wonderful session with my friend who creates personal flower essences.
She told me that flower essences work to heal body mind spirit but begins healing at our energy level. The physical feelings are very subtle but the effects overall are very good and a lot faster than just working on physical ailments. Also, flower essences have a more gentler footprint than say essential oils, because you need a lot of land to grow a lot of flowers to make essential oils.
To make a flower essence, simply take the flowers and soak them in pure and/or distilled water. Place bowl in direct sunlight as the water soaks up the flower essence. I don’t know all the details, but that certainly sounds doable. Then it will be fun to research the types of flowers that grow near you and learn about their energetic properties.
Take care! Stay warm! And stay safe! Eager for this pandemic to be over! Cheers to 2021!
My mother in law grew gorgeous Japanese peonies in Peekskill, NY!
We live in a 91 year old rock house that we love so much! It has a great history, and a bit of haunting (stories shared by the previous owner). We sit close to a creek that was a rest stop during an important battle during the Civil War. Many relics have been found all over our neighborhood. Our home sits on a shady wooded property that is home to deer and fox. We are in the middle of a mid sized city, yet our property feels isolated and magical. My gardening style consists lots of busy flowers! I’m especially drawn to echinacea and Black Eyed Susan. Also peonies are a favorite for their big colorful blooms and lovely scent. I plant various herbs and natives. It’s busy and a bit messy, but beautiful. I do have lots of problems with deer and rabbits, but we all have learned to live together and share. Enjoy your new home and plant beautiful flowers!
For native plants, check out your state natural resources department. Sometimes they will even give you plants. Also find a landscaper that uses native plants.
Wow, this last post was so in sync with what I am doing—researching where I can find an authentic Sweetheart Rose bush, not a hybrid. There are two places that say they have them, so I will venture out soon to investigate. My mother (1916-1999) grew those beautiful pink lovelies that smelled heavenly in our backyard. They climbed our chain link fence, and I can still remember the fragrance when I close my eyes and recall their beauty. They were hardy and always came back in the spring even after a freeze. Your illustration prompted me to pull Elizabeth Gilbert’s “The Signature of All Things” down from a bookshelf and thumb through it again. It’s all about botany and a family of botanical explorers set in the 1800s—the illustrations are artful and enchanting. It was published in 2013, so not sure the hardcover is still available as the paperback does not do it justice. Enjoy your new home and garden and keep us posted on how everything is progressing.
I love the concept of the grandmother’s garden. It really does capture our shared experience over the last year. For me it has been all about shade plants. Ferns, hostas and some sturdy grasses. I even managed to plant a shade-friendly herb garden. The pandemic was well-timed for me, in a sense. I’ve been living in my home–one of four self-owned strata apartments in a house built in the early nineteen hundreds–for four years now. After three gardening seasons of fighting against conditions such as varying degrees of shade and poor soil, I had decided this year I would make peace with it all and focus on planting things that would flourish. So when we became shuttered in, I had the luxury of time to pour into the project. Like you, I found myself spending hours researching which was half the fun. I found myself captivated by designers who have transformed small garden and patio spaces into luxurious retreats. Influenced by these gifted people, I now have a lovely (small) green space that really feels like an extension of my indoor living space. It is my refuge–a place of solace when I need. Also, what a gift it is to hunker down for the winter with gardening books and blogs, researching and planning for additions and modifications in the spring. Enjoy the “armchair gardening” season!
Living in St. Louis Missouri I am limited for a winter garden…but I have created a haven for the birds Setting up many feeders with different seeds to attract as many different species as I can. Even having window feeders gives me a ‘birds eye view’ of my feathered friends. Also added bird bathes & a heated bird bath to provide fresh water when it’s freezing outside. What a joy…such a simple pleasure…takes me to a quiet place watching them while sipping my morning coffee…ahhh….
Hi Lyn
I’m grateful for your very thoughtful posts on both your Instagram and blog accounts. I have a third of an acre in Pasadena with six existing oak trees. I’ve been working to kill the Bermuda grass in my front yard in preparation for planting native plants. They will provide food for the local bird, insect, and native bee populations in addition to encouraging biodiversity. Another benefit of planting natives is that after the first two years the plants will need no supplemental water.
Good luck with your garden and all of your research. We need native plants. Our local bird and insect populations have not evolved to digest food from non-natives. Additionally, we need our native bees. Native plants support native bees.
My wish is that my neighbors will follow suit and do the same. Many already have. 🙂 it’s for the benefit of our insect and forty friends and our future generations.
Cyn
Gardening is part of my soul . I come from a family of gardeners. Growing up I remember visitors having a tour of mum’s garden and leaving with a handful of cuttings .
There is so much to love about a garden, weeds and all.
During the pandemic I have planted a vegetable patch. The joy ( and exercise) I am receiving from this is wonderful. To nurture them, to watch them grow has been like a ray of sunshine .
I am always cultivating and harvesting, whether from my own apartment gardening or daily life experiences. Now that my beloved father has passed, I find myself peeking around the curtain of a new stage of my life. Perhaps willing to take greater risks without fear of tarnishing that “good girl” status. Yesterday, for the first time, I pulled on a 1982 vintage Molly Hatchet tee for the first time, a gift from a dear friend who sent it after going to their concert. She has since passed, too. In the process of preparing for a move into the city, I delightedly found it tucked away with cherished items. Moving into the city is a big move for me, as I’ve always been attracted to the quiet rural; however, quiet rural is a part of my state of mind. I look forward to applying it to my little, loft apartment overlooking the city. And as always, I continue to cultivate, harvest, and indulge in the fruits of my labors.
“articulate, thoughtful, generous, and of course, fashionable women.” This makes me smile from the top of my faux-fur hatted head to toes in ten-year-old Ugg boots. And yet you are so right! A personal je-ne-sais-quoi keeps me in the fashionable. Even home-alone, the top half of the body, at least, can go to town without my mother rolling in her grave for shame. Never mind the bottom part – this is a wood-chucking woman speaking.
Lyn, I love your writing, preferences, values. I love your intelligence, sensitivity and aesthetic, and share much of it in practice.
Why in the world would we reserve the garden for emergencies??? as though real life were the madness and garden the medicine, only taken when sick. It is because we have left the garden, in so may ways, that we’ve not ‘caught’ but become the virus. You may edit my thoughts but still I write them.
Arugula in window planter!
I have a night blooming cereus plant that started from a cutting my children brought home from kindergarten. It’s now 20 something years old and still growing/blooming. I’ve added a few heart shaped shells that I found on separate walks along the beach.
I love growing plants, too, especially flowers!
I’ve been reading and admiring the urban side of AI for so many years, it’s startling and fantastic to see you make this transition. You’re at one of the loveliest moments in a human life I think: the brink of loving a specific place on earth with rapturous, get-your-hands-dirty intimacy. Part of the process is going one’s own way, but if older-me could talk to my newbie-gardener self embarking on two decades’ love affair with the grounds of our Mendocino Coast farmhouse, I would tell her not to wait to research and position native trees and shrubs, because they often need years to mature; and to put up owl, songbird, and bat houses early on, so those creatures can return to play a part in their rightful ecology. You may already know these books but if not, they might connect to your vision: A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future, Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition by Robert Pogue Harrison, and gorgeous gorgeous Jamaica Kincaid’s My Garden.
I have been growing lavender and rosemary — both with fragrant, healing properties — the kind of sturdy, beautiful plants which forgive you for a bit of neglect or forgetfulness here or there, but also appreciate one’s loyalty upon return. I also have a giant ficus and a monster philodendron that has grown into a corner statement, standing his ground and waving all others away. It is in my garden where I feel safest and most at home . . .
Thank you for the post.
It was a happy reminder of my grandmother and my childhood at her home. Every morning a guided tour of her garden, tulips, and peonies in the spring, tomatoes. cucumbers, lettuce, geraniums, poppies, roses and hydrangeas in the summer, chestnuts and new bulbs to plant in the fall – waiting for the spring.
For me a new plan – Grandma’s garden, just this time, not in Pennsylvania, but in Virginia. Beautiful things she would love.
Olá. Linda sua ilustração! Sua observação sobre parecermos estar vivendo de maneira a-histórica o tempo presente me fez lembrar de Eric Hobsbawn em seu ” A Era dos Extremos”, como se vivêssemos sem nenhuma relação histórica com o passado, como se os elos que o unem ao presente fossem muito frágeis em uma espécie de presente contínuo. Por isso a tarefa dos historiadores é lembrar quando tantos parecem esquecer ou negar. Sua reflexão contribui nessa direção, recuperando traços, fortalecendo laços, entre tempos e seres vivos, humanos ou não. Obrigada! Fique bem.
Have lived in a mid Atlantic state again now for about 15 months. Am loving pollinators and milkweed to support the monarch butterfly population; there are many native kinds. Herbs to use and to dry in the winter. A small Japanese maple. Siberian iris. Clematis….
Been gardening since a small child with my mother, and before that my grandmother. Presently live in the woods so mostly have a shade garden. Have left the back natural woods. A little bit of sun in the front. Have ginger lilies, cannas, bee balm, ferns, lenten roses, hostas, herbs, native daisies, aram, jack in the pulpit, and more than I can remember. It is basically a fairly natural wildscape.
I feel sure you must have read of Vita Sackville-West and the wonderful garden rooms she created at her home Sissinghurst. She was a successful novelist, poet, and journalist, as well as a prolific letter writer and diarist. Married with copious lesbian affairs she is perhaps better still remembered for the celebrated garden at Sissinghurst created with her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson. I think you would find her fascinating.
Mignonette, violas, PEONIES!! Those all should do very well in areas where winters are cold. Also consider an herb garden but include beautiful as well frequently used herbs: lemon balm, beebalm, borage, hyssop – or even a “Shakespearean” herb garden! In small but beautiful planters near a door so they can be appreciated every time you to and fro Small shrub (small-planter suited) vanilla scent, sarcococca. Meadowsweet! Sweet William! All these are old fashioned, tried and true, climate and water-use friendly. In my area of the country which was settled by pioneers 120 years ago most of these can still be found on roadsides or just popping up in pastures. Don’t forget to check with the local butterfly society to learn which butterfly-attracting flowers you could plant here and there – be sure to get the specific subspecies to attract specific butterflies in your geographic area (hint: Monarch butterflies are super picky).
I love your writing and love the new challenges you are fearlessly taking on.
My garden surrounds an 18th century house in the UK. We cannot grow anything that is not hardy, i.e. any plant which does not like the cold ! It becomes a game of chance, keeping us on our toes, sometimes elation when it grows and disappointment when it fails. To greet the Spring in these desperate times, we have planted hundreds of tulips in pots around the house. They provide wonderful colour against the background of burgeoning green in the planted garden. Primroses are already budding despite the freezing weather and waterfalls of snowdrops are beginning to show their heads. The garden is surrounded by a variety of tree species , offering shade when required and planted over our 45 years of living in this house. At our time of life ( just into our eighties ) we look for ease ! The garden has aged with us but loyal plants remain – peonies, roses, hellebores, primroses, snowdrops, dahlias, verbena, holly, ivy, bergenia, hypericum, lupin, foxgloves, euphorbia,
laburnum, oak, ash, holly, acer, Apple and varieties of fern. A stream borders our property and so we can nurture marsh marigold and iris together with the wild life which enjoys our garden alongside us. It has become a contemplative patch rather than a laborious work of art with wild plants which have been in the plot for hundreds of years before we attempted to tame them. I wish you much pleasure in growing your garden as a mirror to your soul.
I am an expert in gardens. They are my passion. I love them
Last year I ordered plants online from a local nursery for delivery as nothing was open due to the pandemic. I had no idea what I was ordering…. I’ve lived in apartments in massive cities the entirety of my adult life. One happened to be alyssum and the second I smelled it, I knew it… it had been all over my grandmother’s garden and my mother later confirmed it. I couldn’t recognize by how it looked but the smell instantly brought me back even though I had to have been no more than 6 years old. A grandmother’s garden is a powerful thing for sure.
Oh how I love to share the first items I planted in an area at the edge of the forest behind my modest home of two years. I was a muralist for thirty years before moving to Georgia from Colorado. Grandsons, the only thing that would get me away from the mountains. Since I was a small child who loved walking through grandma’s gardens I have adored flowers. They found their way into nearly every mural I’ve created. One flower in particular stood out, the agapanthus. I was hired for a project at a hotel in Virginia. Never having been to Virginia I was researching flora indigenous to the area when I discovered this beauty. I decided if I ever lived in a climate that the agapanthus would tolerate I would plant it. Well, twenty years later I found the place. I planted them the first spring and I’m elated each spring as they bless me with their “presents”. When I moved into my little cottage I painted my master bedroom charcoal with white trim, leaving the coffered ceiling white. Not at all my usual taste, who knows why I do what I do. Anyway, I have decided that I want to look at these beauties year-round. I am painting several-foot-tall white agapanthus on a wall in my bedroom, so big they felt a need to wrap the corners. There will be no watering, no fertilizing, no trimming, just forever flowers and as always my a bumble bee.
How inspiring! I am going to think of how to incorporate the plants I decide to plant intp. my on-going writing and work.