Lois de Vries' Garden Views

Rustic cedar boundary fence repaired! Mid-August is already upon us, so it’s time to check how much progress has been made on integrating my inner gardener’s 2011 resolutions into our garden sanctuary. It’s a good way to stay on track with gardening hopes and dreams and make any necessary mid-season corrections.   First, the unfinished, or never-started, projects from 2010. The undergardener/woodworker had promised to get that fallen cherry tree out of my rhododendron patch on the east side of the house before it rotted into worm food – two years ago. Not only is the log gone, but it was also sawn up into boards that will be used in other projects. While the tree cutters were here, we had them fell a half-dozen dead trees that had come part way down during the course of several severe winter windstorms. I also had them do some high-limbing. Some trees were sawn into boards; the rest are only good for firewood.   Sometimes a project creates it...

Tour your garden just the way it is now. If you had never seen your garden before, what would you think? Do you like it? Not like it? If not, take the time to figure out why. Sometimes it’s as simple as the fact that you don’t like some of the plants, ornaments, or structures that are there. Perhaps they were put in by a former homeowner whose vision of the garden was very different from your own. If you’ve lived in the same place for a long time, it may be that the way your 60-year old self calls out to use the garden is very different from what you wanted when you were 30. No one has to live with a garden that doesn’t feel right. My garden is not likely to ever appear in a magazine, even though as a scout for a national publisher, I’ve had the chance to study hundreds of fabulous gardens and have interviewed scores of landscape designers. Why? Because I live in the middle of a woodland forest, which means that the garden’s primary summer color is green. It’s very soothing and t...

Once you’ve settled on a garden style, it’s time to break out the reference books and plant catalogs to create a list of what to buy and how much it all will cost. That's your wish list. Next, add up the cost of everything on your wish list. Even if you can afford everything on the list, think about how much time and effort it will take to install it all. Can you get it done in one growing season? If the cost is too far beyond your budget, or the work can’t all be done in one season, consider breaking your plan into more manageable phases. Don’t buy anything that’s not on your list, or before you know it, your garden will look nothing like your original vision. Stay focused and follow your plan; it’s the map to the garden of your dreams. Balancing the budget Creating a balanced gardening budget means weighing the financial cost of proceeding, against the psychic cost of denying yourself a meaningful pursuit. It doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition, of course. If ...

 If you feel unsure about where or how to invest your time, energy, or money, you're not alone. Making choices about how much money to spend, whether to grow your own plants from seed or cuttings, which plants to choose, etc., must also take into consideration where you are in your own life cycle. For example, if you want to plant oak trees in order to enjoy watching wildlife eat the acorns, remember that the trees will not produce any nuts until they are 20 – 30 years old. To begin, create a bubble diagram that shows your planned activity areas; hardscape and plantscape; an inventory of what will be left once you’ve moved, or removed, what you don’t like; and a rough indication of where you want various types of new features, ornaments, and plants. For some gardeners, the next step is the most difficult: Choosing how you want your garden to grow. Do you want to look out on masses of a specific color? Do you want to collect a variety of the same species of plants, such as rose...

Meet me at Perennial Fest on June 4th at Donaldson's Greenhouse and Nursery, 178 Airport Rd., in Hackettstown, NJ for the debut of my latest hands-on program, Garden Sanctuary a la Carte. The program starts at 1:00pm.  Wear your walking shoes and bring your wallet for this "Try and Buy" workshop designed specifically to make purchasing the basics of a garden sanctuary easier. We'll start the ball rolling with some quick relaxation techniques to set the mood, talk about what inspires you in the garden, mull over your motivation for creating a garden sanctuary, discuss focal or meditation objects, and kick around some basic design ideas. Be sure ...to check out Donaldson's demonstration garden sanctuary for a tangible example, as we grab our carts and go on a guided shopping tour. You'll get a checklist and map of the sales yard to use as I lead you from one clearly marked station to the next to select your focal ornament, background tree or shrub...

Secret #2: Reconnect to Your Inner Gardener I enjoy Garden Writers conferences. What's your favorite gardening thing? Do you feel like you’re going through the motions of gardening without getting much enjoyment? The sense of satisfaction we experience from gardening comes from within. Dissatisfaction is a symptom that we've become disconnected from our inner gardener. This discontent can arise from several sources. Someone or something outside ourselves can cause us to want to abandon our efforts. For example, if a garden club friend makes a critical remark about your painted flower pots that leads you to abandon what you had thought was a fun project, the enjoyment you derive from decorating flower pots could temporarily leak out of your life. The cure is to recall the pleasure you get from this activity and affirm that that is a good enough reason to continue doing it. Another kind of leak occurs when something that used to hold meaning for us no longer does, f...

Secret #1: How to Generate That Magical Quality What's your ideal dream garden? Have you been to other people’s gardens that seem to have a magical quality to them, but can’t seem to create it in your own? What may be missing is you. The heady atmosphere we encounter in certain very special gardens is a direct expression of their gardeners' inner being. A fortunate few are able to garden this way subconsciously. The rest of us have to learn how to do it. And that's good news, because we can learn to paint our landscapes just as we learn to paint a picture. The tools we use are the myriad of greens and greys that nature supplies as a background, flowers that come in every color of the rainbow, and the bark, foliage, and natural features that add texture. But the ideas come from inside ourselves. The ethereal feelings, or atmospherics, manifest as we invest important parts of ourselves in the garden. We have to be willing to expend thought, energy, emotion, time, mo...