There are all sorts of gardens

I've been getting out and visiting my garden friends. It has been a delightful tour of plants and personalities. Plants that make up the gardens, and personalities who pick the plants that make the personality of the gardens. Joe and I stopped in to Charlotte's lovely woodland garden a couple of weeks ago. This garden is a gem of a shade plant garden, chocked full of delicious combinations, textures, special objects and "garden moments". Charlotte is a gem of a gardener. She takes meticulous notes, pays attention to the smallest details, asks lots of questions, has every plant catalog I think she's ever gotten, and knows everyone around who gardens. She's a bundle of fun filled energy packed into a small space, and her garden reflects just that.

Barbie also has a shade garden, but on a much larger scale in many ways. Barbie's expansive eye for texture and fun has taken her in a completely different direction. Hers is the home of the "big leaf" plant. She's got Fatsias and Farfugiums, Colocasias and Alocasias, Musas in several colors, bigleaf Japanese Maples, hydrangeas, and Xanthosomas. But she doesn't stop there. In our hot and humid south, roses are usually a garden bust. Only the most studied and determined and diligent of gardeners even bothers to try. But she is the one who can pull it off, and in huge bouquets. Then there's her growing conifer collection, grasses, agaves and alpinias to bind the big plants together. She keeps records of growth rates, rainfall, temperature. She tops all this off with a full coop of Rhode Island Reds and Bard Rocks, and a huge vegetable garden. In other words, there's a "WOW" at every turn.

Now Ozzie's garden......What can I say?? This small reticent man is the opposite of his garden. He lets his rare, regal, unique plants speak for him. They tell of expeditions to China, Viet Nam, Europe and Japan; of collections of seed along mountain ridges and purchase of plants from the most sacred and secret nursery stashes; of breeding for the most exquisite, the most useful, the most desirable of plants. I've been to Ozzie's many times. I can't even get my fingernails into the breadth of his collection, much less a grasp on the true character of this incredible garden. Quietly, deliberately, patiently he answers my questions. Loudly and insistently this week's explosion of flowers or fruit or color call to me from nooks and crannies all over his garden. I could visit once a week for years and learn a completely new lesson every week.

My most recent trip was not to visit a garden. Yet as I go through my pictures, I must include Saultopaul in the lineup of plants and personalities. My friend Susan is an artist with a fine eye and skilled hand for the most minute detail. At her NW Georgia farm, she has used nature as her palette with that same skill, and orchestrated the components to their best advantage. Susan is a reader. Susan is a thinker. Susan is a moss gardener. Susan can take the most minimal of nature's elements and show me how to see them in rich and meaningful ways.

John Muir said "In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks"

No kidding......

With Pleasure

One of the very best things about working with plants is other people who work with plants. I could spend a lot of time theorizing about what makes this true but the theories don't matter. Plant people are just great, and that's a fact.
This year's rain has rejuvenated gardens and gardeners alike. In the last few weeks, I have had the great pleasure to visit some great gardeners, and to enjoy their gardens with them. For me, this is the ultimate plant experience. Out of doors in the late Georgia spring, fabulous settings, incredible collections of magnificent plants all come together to teach me how much I have to learn, and how much I will look forward to it. Walking through Willis Harden's garden in Commerce with him was like walking back in time in every sense. To be sure, his garden has some age and stature to it. He has been carefully crafting it for 50 years, and it shows. He knows every plant. No, not just the name of every plant, but the actual plant: where he got it, how he got it, when he planted it, what the weather was like when he planted it, when it first bloomed, how it fared in ice and snow..... From the specimen Windmill Palms (Trachycarpus fortunei) to the large drifts of Pachysandra procumbens;
from Magnolia sieboldii to the largest collection of
Rhododendron I have ever seen; great care has gone into assembling the garden as a perfect companion to the glorious setting that Homeplace Garden occupies.
On a completely different level, when I immersed myself in the garden, I lost track of the tick of my internal clock: my daily routines, the things that distract and nag at me, the things I need to do or have done poorly. We spent the day tromping and strolling, and tucked a heavenly lakeside picnic in between. Time to digest good food, and the delicious bites of wit and wisdom this group could offer. It just doesn't get any better than this. This was a day well spent, and each moment cherished.
One of my favorite poems comes to mind when I think about this wonderful experience.

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?


Can't wait.... Ozzie's garden tomorrow.......