bane of my existence

SLUGS!

Ok...well they may not be the actual bane of my existence, but they come very close!  I can't tell you how frustrating it is to go out to the garden and find half eaten petunias, holey hosta and shredded zinnias.  If you're having this problem the cause is probably a very slimy one...slugs!  Nasty!  Bleh!

Here's the scoop.  Slugs are made up primarily of water and mucous (with a little bumpy skin thrown in).  They thrive in moist conditions and are fairly nocturnal in their eating habits.  They're gross and I despise them!  Left uncontrolled, they can destroy your garden.  I have had to replace many flowers already this year.

So what do you do?  Annihilate them!  Anyway you can.  Be merciless!  I know my gentle organic friends may take offense to my tactics but my thoughts are that I spend too much time and too much money to let some slimy creatures use my gardens as a free buffet.  How do you do it then?

1.      Salt.  (sort of melts them like the Wicked Witch of the West).  I have friends who go out in the evenings with their salt shakers and take care of their slugs that way.  Downside: you can only kill the ones you see and excessive salt can harm a garden.

2.       Beer.  Yup that's right.  Pour a little Pabst Blue Ribbon (or the ale of your choosing) in a shallow dish and strategically place it in your garden.  The slugs will crawl right in and drown!  They are attracted to the yeast in the beer.  Downside: big garden-lots of dishes and you have to empty that nastiness in the morning.  GROSS!

3.       Molluscicides..   Chemicals.  Slug poison.  Now we're talking.  The most common form is 'Bug-Geta'.  This particular metaldehyde comes in granular or pellet form; just sprinkle a handful of them around your affected plants (or along the entire garden if you're infested) and the slugs will DIE!  Downside:  can be costly, you can't use it in your vegetable garden and it can be harmful to dogs if eaten in large quantities.

I'm sure there are many, many other ways to control these disgusting creatures - I suggest Google.

Before I forget - they are tenacious and only need a moist surface to crawl over so check your window boxes and containers for them too.  Sneaky, slimy, disgusting things.

the challenge - round one

A few posts ago, I mentioned a church in Bangor, Pennsylvania (Hopesprings Community of Faith) that I was going to revamp.  Well...round one is finished!  To refresh your memory, I've included one 'before' picture.  The building is a beauty, but the horrible overgrown shrubs, weedy grass and nasty orange doors were such a distraction, who knew??  While the grass and doors have yet to be tackled, at least the shrubs have been replaced. 

The challenge was two fold: small budget and small space. (I also needed to keep maintenance in mind. Because it's a busy church, garden maintenance needs be on the low side.)  My design goal was to create a formal garden that enhanced the beauty of the building, so I began with the color of the stained glass windows (which are gorgeous!) and worked my way out.  I loved, loved the blue in the windows and I love, love hydrangea so that was easy!  These are Forever and Ever - Blue Heaven; they are cut and bloom again - gotta love that in a hydrangea.  I placed one bush in front of each window and it really does bring out the blue in the stained glass.  Yea!

To add formality, I planted one dwarf English Boxwood (no link ~ boxwood are a dime a dozen...well actually they are quite expensive, but you know what I mean) between each hydrangea.  Behind each boxwood, I planted one perennial to add a small pop of color.  I also threw some purple wave petunias in the front to give contrast to all the blue and green.

One of my professional philosophies is that every client has a distinct personality that needs to be portrayed in his or her garden.  It is one of my most enjoyable challenges: get to know my client, understand who he is and what she likes and find a way to represent him in the garden.  Hopesprings is a church that is a bit different and notably creative in their approach to worship.  So in keeping with the very traditional lines of the building, I wanted to add something that would be a bit unexpected.  Thus the Alberta Spruce Spiral Topiary in place of one of the boxwoods.  Fun!

The front steps were screaming for containers, but this church is on a main road, so I had to keep in mind the possibility of someone walking off with the pots.  Unfortunately, the budget wouldn't allow for the kind of heavy pot I would normally have purchased, but happily, I stumbled upon these concrete numbers.  They were big time ugly, so my daughter faux painted them to add character.  They are so heavy, the person who decides to steal these will walk off with pots and a double hernia!  I planted Confetti Lantana Topiaries in them with Callie Orange Million Bells and Royal Purple with Eye Verbena in the base.  Lovely.

Now for round two...

lavender for the soul

As Rosemary is to the Spirit, so Lavender is to the Soul.   ~ annonoymous



If ever I loved my job, it is when I am harvesting lavender.  There truly is something soul-healing about quietly handling and cutting each bloom.  The fragrance alone is enough to quiet my chaotic thoughts.; add to that the beauty and touch of them and I'm in another dimension altogether.

One of my aims as a gardener, both personally and professionally, is to have beautiful and useful gardens.  Lavender is both.  Every year, I gather as much as I can.  I make lavender wands out of them to use as sachets in my closets and drawers, bundle and hang them upside down to dry, and use them for cooking (lavender and lemon cake is to die for!).    At Christmas time, I use the bundles in my decorating.  It's aromatic, natural and beautiful.  I've even made soap with it!

It's best to harvest your lavender early in the day: after the dew has dried, but before the heat of the day, this keeps the essential oils in the plant itself and causes it to retain most of its fragrance.  Also, cut them before the flowers begin to turn brown.  Make sure you leave enough stem to make the plant useful.

With the proper care, many lavenders will bloom all summer.

lady's mantle

Lady's Mantle: it is exploding in all my gardens!  The plants are so showy, they border on ostentation.  I am in love with them!

If you don't have lady's mantle in your garden, you should.  It makes a great border plant, ground cover and second mate to showier plants like roses.  They thrive in partial shade, but do well in full sun as well.  In the morning, the dew settles in the slightly cupped leaves and just sparkles.  In early summer, the plants produce a profusion of frothy chartreuse flowers that you can see here.

Once they flowers finish blooming, cut them back and you should get a few more blooms from them.  But even without the flowers, it is a wonderful plant.

snow princess

Every year I have my favorite new plant.  A few past winners were variegated nasturtium, purple wave petunias, and heliotrope.  I have planted them to great success and talked about them to anyone who would listen (that could explain why some people tend to run when they see me coming).  This year's winner is...

(A new hybrid from Proven Winners called) Snow Princess Lobularia Hybrid, or Snow Princess Alyssum! 

It was used in test gardens last year to great success and introduced to us this year.  It is a vigorous grower, so it needs to be cut back often (I just pinch them back every time I water and fertilize).  The difference between these and past alyssum is their trailing habit.  They are considered sterile plants, which means they are grown from cuttings and not seeds, so instead of spending all their energy reproducing seeds in later summer, they produce more and more flowers on long trails.  Million bells are along the same lines.  Pruning is for appearance sake, not to keep them from 'going to seed'.  I love them!!  Try them out!