Primroses = Spring

Just when I think I can’t stand another minute of winter, the smiling faces and heady fragrance of primroses appear in stores everywhere. These came in their own cache pots, but I’ve also used the plants in small tabletop troughs, indoor window boxes, and ornamental bowls, to make attractive centerpieces.

Many primroses are not scented. As with roses, I wonder, “What’s the point?” Yellow and purple primroses are the most likely to exude perfume, but not all of them do. So, I stand at the display and sniff each and every yellow plant to find out whether it’s “the one.” To me, it’s worth the effort. However, I couldn’t resist that bi-color interloper despite its lack of scent --- I figured the other two would make up for it.

Select plants that have new buds coming on, or flowers just about to open, and the plants will retain their flowers for two to three weeks with ordinary care. The trick then becomes to find a spot to hold them over until they can go into the ground.

Last year, I brought home six flowerless, wilted plants that had been potted up together. They cost $4.00. My gardener’s eye told me that they just needed water. Five of them recovered by the next day and thrived at the front edge of the bog garden all season. Normally, primroses don’t like so much sun, but in that spot, once the Ligularia leaves appear they provide just the right amount of shade. This is another one of those companion plant, right-plant-in-the-right-place things you learn by trial and success.

This year, I’ll have to find another spot for my early-spring treasures, since the bog garden is nearly full. Even though being led down the primrose path implies deception and hypocrisy, a literal primrose path doesn’t sound like such a bad idea --- as long as the primroses are fragrant.

Go Play Outside

We’re just back from Bowman’s Hill’s annual Land Ethics Symposium (http://www.bhwp.org/educational/Symposium.htm) and I’m all fired up to jump back into the fray and change the world. But what had the biggest effect on me was that two of the presenters spoke of mothers who threw them out the door every morning, pockets stuffed with sandwiches or fruit, and told them to go play outdoors.

It reminded me of my own mother, who insisted I play outside and “get some fresh air on your body.” Today’s moms would, no doubt, be horrified that I was out in the woods “cooking” dirt and grass to eat and tasting the barks of various trees and shrubs as I believed the Indians had. Our parents taught my brother and I about the dangers of poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac, rattlesnakes and copperheads, so we survived.

We returned from our trips to the quarry with pockets full of stones and spent hours poring over our science encyclopedia and field guides trying to identify our “collections,” birds, trees, berries, and stars in the night sky.

We got almost no science training in school.

When I no longer required my brother’s “supervision,” I dragged my best girlfriend to the railroad yards down near the marshes, where we would watch them wash the trains, and spy on the “bums.” I noticed that the marshes and their birds were very different from the woods.

This is how children learn about the natural world. To understand it and connect with it, they have to be allowed to explore it. Children have an innate curiosity about bugs, butterflies, worms, rocks, plants, trees, birds, water, animals, spiders, snakes, salamanders, turtles, and fish. Reading about these on a computer cannot replace the experience of interacting with them in their natural environment.

As I listened to Grant Jones (http://www.jonesandjones.com/ ) talk about his youthful fascination with Puget Sound, and Jason Lubar ( http://www.business-services.upenn.edu/arboretum/uf/arbconsult-who.htm ) talk about playing in the Pennsylvania woods, I suspected that the harmonic wave that passed through me, was passing through many of my colleagues in the audience – environmentalists, landscape architects, engineers, and educators. How many of their career choices or avocations were influenced by mothers who said, “Go play outside?”

It’s never too late, no matter what your age or life experience. Go play outside and reconnect with nature.

Plan Ahead for Dogs in the Garden

A parade of Seeing Eye pups has passed through our garden during the past six years. They arrive, cute as a button at a mere 7 – 10 pounds (that’s Christine), but grow quickly into full-sized Labrador Retrievers that top the scales at 50+ pounds. Our own Emma weighs in at 70.

Because a human life may ultimately depend upon a Seeing Eye dog guide, these puppies must be raised in a somewhat more restrictive way than a pet would be, but they’re still allowed to have lots of fun and plenty of play time. At our house that means chasing Frisbees, retrieving balls, and splashing around in the doggie pool (Emma and Harriet).

When we added on to our house in 2000, our old garden was completely destroyed by the construction equipment. Gardeners are such optimists! I viewed this as an opportunity for a complete redo. Julie Moir Messervy’s book The Inward Garden was very helpful in visualizing areas for various activities, one of the most important of these being enough running room for two high speed Labrador freight trains (Emma and Christine). Planning ahead really paid off.

Have realistic expectations. You will not have a perfect lawn, because running paws compact soil. There will be the usual puppy antics of digging holes and pulling out the plants that you have just put in, but even the pups that can’t seem to be trained out of it, eventually outgrow such shenanigans. If your dog will swim, provide a warm, sunny spot for it to dry off. Unless you assign dogs a play space, they’ll choose one of their own, or worse, view the entire yard, flowerbeds and all, as one big dog park.

Emma has an accommodating personality. A simple “no” or “out of there” is enough. But even strong-willed dogs, like Okra (with Ligularia) can be trained to stay away from the flowers. What’s required is some visual cue such as flags, or an audible cue such as your voice, that helps them to understand, “I can go this far and no further.” With a new Seeing Eye pup arriving every 24 months, for us this training never ends. But the reward is a relatively undamaged planted space.

Emma ensures that I’m never lonely in the garden (Emma and me). She moves from place to place with me, finds a comfortable spot to lie down, and is content to garden by observation.

To see how other gardeners juggle the demands of their favorite pets with their favorite hobby, click on over to this month’s design workshop at Gardening Gone Wild (http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=3278). Thanks for the excuse to boast about our best friends, Nan.

Green Gardening Gloves

These gloves are green in more ways than one, since they’re made from recycled water bottles. They are constructed with a high-tech spandex mesh fabric derived from recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate) beverage bottles that have been ground up and spun into recycled yarn.

Each pair of the new West County Gardener Work and Landscape gloves removes one 8-ounce beverage bottle from landfills. Using recycled yarn versus virgin polyester yarns provides up to 75% energy savings and reduces green house gas emissions by at least 40%. The recycled fabric, called EcoSmart is tough and light, but just as soft as conventional nylon spandex. I have both kinds and can’t feel any difference in texture or comfort.

The Landscape glove is engineered with coated Kevlar^©, heavy-duty polyurethane synthetic suede, and a tough-textured polyester palm to stand up to highly abrasive landscape elements such as stone, pavers and trees. Last summer, one of my yard helpers managed to destroy a pair of West County Kevlar^© gloves, but only after having used them to dig out rocks with her hands. (I’ve since learned that teens need very specific gardening instructions).

New Tacky Kevlar^© reinforced areas on the thumb web and finger pads help eliminate abrasion and wear problems in key contact areas. Sure-Grip^© palm and reinforced finger pads allow you to hold onto heavy or slippery objects such as wet tools, pots and pavers. A dense padded palm increases impact and shock protection from power and hand tools. Compressed Neoprene knuckle guard protects users against scrapes, scratches and other common hand abrasions. Extra strength double top stitching with heavy-duty nylon thread protects against ripping and burst seams.

While these are all wonderful features, I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed half of them. What I have noticed, after four years of using these great gloves, is that mature, somewhat arthritic hands and fingers feel a lot better while using them than while using other gloves. In our stony soil, wielding even a thickly-padded trowel handle gets mighty painful after digging only a few small holes, so the extra padding on the gloves really helps.

And, you can just toss them in the washing machine when they get too dirty.

The new Landscape Glove is available in three colors and four sizes for both men and women and sells for under $30 at independent garden centers. For more information, or to find a location near you, click http://www.westcountygardener.com/

Let’s hear it for sustainable products for gardeners.