Quote of the day

Decayed literature makes the best soil

- Henry David Thoreau -
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Having been a voracious reader my whole life, my mental compost should by now be a steaming heap of crumbling, dark-brown soil full of nutrients and micro-organisms for something good to grow. Of course, the question is if I have fed it with the right stuff; those organic, well-balanced materials, that with a bit of added moisture disintegrate into a smooth, sweet-smelling humus ready make any plant leap to the skies with joy. Or have I unintended fed it with things difficult to digest, or kept it either too wet or dry? Or maybe, just maybe, I've been too lazy or comfortable to occasionally completely turn it over to give it more oxygen, so that the small aerobes can do their job?

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For many, summer is a time of reading; newspapers and magazines drown us in tips about what to take as a companion to the hammock or beach. This year, I will think of my mental compost heap and choose books that complement its balance well; not too wet, so it rottens to a smelly mass, not too acid, so that the heap won't heat and not too dry, so that the whole process looses its momentum. And of course, I will try to turn it properly over sometimes, to let some well-needed air to the heap.

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Today, I planted some beautiful Polygonatum x hybridum 'Variegata' that I bought at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens for a couple of days ago. I love their thick, juicy rhizomes with white buds telling in which way the plant is growing. The maroon stems and leaves with white margins are beautiful, too, not to mention the nodding bell-formed flowers that come up early in spring. I had masses of old Polygonatums that had spread themselves between the cliffs in my garden in Saltsjöbaden (not the variegated ones, though), and I enjoyed how they thrived in these hard conditions, shooting up early in the spring and staying around until late autumn.

An ultimate haven... my favourite garden

A copy of the 16th century statue of Mercury (Hermes) by Giambologna, looking at the sea over the cliffs of Källskär.

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I sometimes get the question of which garden that I have visited I have liked the most and I always have found this a very difficult question to answer; an old-fashioned cottage garden can just as wonderful, even if in a different way, as a magnificent palace garden, an avant garde modern garden or a spiritual Japanese one... It all depends on the feelings the garden is able to awake. But yesterday, while shuffling some old photo albums on the bookshelves, I randomly opened one of them and flipped through the holiday photos in it dating from 1994, from a sailing trip with my parents in the archipelago of Åland in South-Western Finland. Looking at them, I think I found the answer to this puzzling question; for despite having visited so many beautiful, serene, bountiful and/or impressing gardens, the garden in Källskär near Kökar represents for me the garden as an ultimate haven; a perfect escape, a shelter from storms and an improbable dream that became true.

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Källskärskannan

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The little island of Källskär is mostly known for its natural beauty, the special stone formations and flowing cliffs shaved smooth by the ice age and the sea. Particularly well-known is a stone pillar called "Källskärskannan", "the pot or jug of Källskär", named after its rounded form. The natural meadows were used as summer pasture for sheep until 1958, when Baron Göran Åkerhielm from Sweden sailed in and fell in love with the island. During the following years, he built a low log house between the huge cliffs, and started to build a garden with the help of sheltering stone walls. The people from the surrounding islands like Kökar, always called him "the Count" and helped him to carry soil to the barren island, and for several years, the young people were employed by him to help with the garden. He used sculpture as a contrast and complement to the wild surroundings of the garden, and he loved especially Rhododendrons and roses, getting them to thrive in this harsh and remote environment. In 1983, "The Count" donated his summer residence and garden to the county of Åland, and since then it has been used as a retreat for guest artists and cultural persons, one of the most famous of whom was Tove Jansson, the author of the Moomin books.

A stone path to the log house.

The main house of "The Count", who's real name and title was Baron Göran Åkerhielm.

Källskär is open to the public but visiting it is quite an adventure; the sea around is shallow and full of stones. My father has always loved sailing, and has taken us to most islands in the Archipelago of Turku and Åland, but if you are not an experienced sailor or/and boatman, it is best to travel there with a fishing boat from Kökar that traffics the island daily between June 25 and August 7.

Unfortunately, my holiday pictures were not of a very good quality and when I took them, I was still at the stage where somebody has to be standing in the middle of the picture, smiling. So the only picture here that is taken by me is the first one with the statue of Mercury, which I scanned in. Fortunately, I found some wonderful photos at FlickR taken by Daniel Frigo and Megan and Murray McMillan. Copyright is theirs, even if I have loaned their pictures here; please visit the links above for more beautiful pictures from Källskär and Kökar.

Compact living (for swallows)

On the way to school, my girls and I walk past this construction under the roof of an older house nearby. I think I have seen some brown little birds looking like barn swallows around, so it might be a block of nesting boxes for them, even if these "apartments" look very small for their purpose. A little old lady lives in the yellow house with a quite overgrown garden and I wonder how she cleans up the nests after the swallows every year. Maybe she gets help, as the birds seem to be coming back - or do they just nest somewhere nearby?

Huntington Garden

Two Polish chicken picking around the garden.

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Last Thursday, I had the luck to be invited by Marian to join a group of Washington Arboretum volunteers on a field trip to a couple of nurseries and to Darlene and Dan Huntington's private garden in Snohomish, about half an hour's car trip from Seattle. It was a shining day with full sun, which means that my photos look quite white-washed, but they still give an distant idea about how beautiful their garden is.

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The little garden house, complete with two brown nesting boxes for bees under the eaves.

Juicy buds of Papaver 'Patty's plum'...
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A back-lit 'Patty's plum' in full sun.

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A sitting group and steel sculpture under two Robinia pseudoacacia 'Friesia', shining like gold against the shady forest.
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Darlene and Dan started gardening some twenty years ago, after an inspiring trip to Norway, Wales and England, where they were following the tracks of Dan's ancestors and relatives. Over the years, they have visited hundreds of gardens, tens of which are in England, and turned their five acre land into a luxuriant garden of winding paths and richly planted borders with well-selected and -combined plants and shrubs. The amazing difference between the beginning and the results twenty years later were presented in a photo binder, but as Dan and Darlene told, the excellent, rich soil of the area gives an extra explanation to the abundancy of their garden.

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Philadelphus 'Natchez'.

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Browsing through the garden and talking about the plants with Darlene and Dan showed their deep love for them; many of them were cultivars with special colours or leaf forms. The paths led past several vistas with specially built benches and sitting places, giving a harmonious and relaxed feel to their surroundings. Darlene has a history of restoring Victorian houses in the Snohomish area, which could be seen in the many recycled antique objects, scattered in the garden as focal points or special features between the beautiful plants. The view to the valley beyond the garden boundaries adds also to its beauty, creating a pleasing variation between the close and the distant. The result of Darlene and Dan Huntington's work is a garden full of beauty, knowledge and personality.

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A shady walk to the house, with grouped Hostas and recycled objects.
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The Huntington garden is a private garden, but it is sometimes open through the Northwest Perennial Alliance Open Garden Days. Marian told me also about a Seattle Times article from 2007, written by Valerie Easton, which presents Darlene's and Dan's garden.

Quote of the day

What is a garden but a species of desire?

Such a short sentence, containing the true essence of gardening... I love how it leaves everything open for the reader to interpret the meaning of "desire" - for some, it might mean aesthetic issues, for other, practical or ecological; so many possibilities in one short question. This quote is by Bonnie Marranca in her preface for American Garden Writing, an Anthology (2003), in which she has chosen more than fifty essays from travel journals, letters and personal essays of the country's most famous gardeners and garden writers. Some of the writers included in this highly interesting volume are internationally well-known like Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Henry David Thoreau and Beatrice Farrand (well, at least if you are interested in garden history), but some of them are probably known to the American public only. The range of the essays is wide, from aesthetic considerations to growing beans and the morals of composting. This excellent collection has given me many new writers to study further, and I recommend it warmly for anyone who would like to get a glimpse at the ways in which Americans have worked, thought and written about their gardens from the earliest Colonial days to the present.

K

The Stewartia pseudocamellias are just starting to flower in my garden. I am totally taken by this beautiful plant that has so many virtues to recommend it: lovely, round buds that open to delicate flowers with white, fringed petals and bright yellow stamens looking from them; glossy, healthy-looking leaves which turn to a lovely bronze red in the autumn, and a grey and reddish bark that looks stunning all the year. Stewartias are quite hardy and can be grown even in the Scandinavian, cold climates up to the Swedish Zone 3, which is about as far North as Stockholm, but I've never grown them myself; in Sweden they were very pricey and the nurseries always warned about the long time they take to establish and flower for the first time, which could be up to 5 or 7 years. It is lovely to "inherit" plants like this, getting to enjoy them directly without the long wait...

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Walking under a sea of nodding belles

Magnolia wilsonii is almost past flowering in Marian's garden; its nodding flowers still hold to their pure white petals, showing off the dark, maroon centre contrasting so effectively with them. And there are still some buds left, hanging like little eggs from the branches. Walking under this sea of lemony-scented flowers is a real treat to somebody like me coming from a colder climate; so generous and exquisite. Looking up at the almost 20 feet high tree (6 m) makes me think of my mother, who for 15 years has lovingly coddled her little Magnolia stellata, one of the Magnolias hardy enough to barely survive in the cold climate of Turku in Southern Finland. It now reaches up to maybe 4 feet, despite my father's kind help of building it a sheltering tent for the winter every year.

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Once I showed a picture of my mother's Magnolia for a gardening friend in Australia, and she (quite correctly) asked why my mother bothers with a plant so obviously not suited for the climate. And despite my strong conviction that plants should be chosen after the conditions of place they will be planted in, I still find my mother's effort deeply touching. All her work just to be able to enjoy the dainty, star-like flowers for two weeks (at most) shows so well what gardening can and should be at its best; a real labour of love, to use the old, worn expression. And at the same time, a bit of rebellion against the odds, being the one who decides what to grow in one's own little piece of paradise. The gardens of Marian and my mother, so far away and in so different circumstances, still sharing some of the same ambitions...

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The "Dame Ednas" of a garden...

Pink is quite a dividing colour in garden. Maybe not as much as yellow and orange, but still one of the colours people often do not like to get planted... Last week, I made a garden plan for a friend here in Seattle, and she commented the planting plan positively as "not containing any pinks or yellows" - something I hadn't even thought about while choosing the plants. The site faces South and is quite dry, so it just felt natural to go for gray greens and bluish shades for flowers. Normally I do more research about the client's wishes and favourite colours, but as this was not a "commercial project", I ventured to choose everything myself and accidentally "hit the nail" directly.

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In my new garden, I'm both glad and also a bit troubled (only slightly, though) by seeing what opens and comes up. For the moment, I have some real "Dame Ednas" around, and I don't quite know what to do with them. I try not to be too opinionated about colours as most of them can be incorporated in a garden given them right companions, but a sea of bubblegum pink is a bit of a challenge for me. There are a couple of old, double Azaleas (above), some quite plastic looking Kalmias (first picture above), and then several 3 meters (10 feet) high Rhododendrons (below) on the outer edges.

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It might, of course, seem a bit unfair to call these plants for "Dame Ednas", that wonderful, politically totally incorrect figure played by Australian comedian Barry Humphries ("I am a lucky, lucky woman, because I was born with a priceless gift; the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others" - one of his subtleties on the video above...). But somehow, these real pinkies are not very humble either, crying for attention with their almost fluorescent flowers. Taking out such big plants would mean that I would need to replace them with something else, as they provide a good screen towards the neighbours. I could, of course, do the Japanese way and nip off the flower buds before they open (and get the extra benefit of a growth spurt as they could use all their energy for growing the new shoots...), but that is a huge task given the size of the plants. Maybe I should try adding shrubs with dark, maroon leaves, like the Smoke bush, Cotinus coggyria (below), and perennials with bright white flowers, that come out the same time, to dilute the bubblegum effect?

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