The Mysterious Garden Muse

Time for a little rant. Okay, I'm a word nerd. I like to use the right word in the right place and it bugs me when I come across words that have been used incorrectly. I do crosswords, sudokus, cryptograms, and other puzzles and it REALLY gets on my nerves when I find spelling or usage mistakes in those. So, last night I was working on a crossword in one of the Big John's Puzzle Books (which I like because the cultural references tend to be aimed at my baby boom generation) when I found two pet peeves in one crossword clue and had to give up out of frustration. The clue was something like "hearty plant." First of all, plants are "HARDY" -- as in able to survive in extreme conditions -- not "HEARTY" meaning jovial. Those words seem to be used interchangeably, especially by people who aren't avid gardeners and have simply misheard the word. But then when I wrote in the word "hosta" into the crossword spaces I realized it wouldn't wo...

I have no self-control when it comes to containers. My front yard gets hit with full sun all day, so anything in the front has to be able to survive heat, the occasional drought, and sun, sun, sun. Sometimes the heat is too much for me. It's kind of like the porridge in Goldlilocks and the Three Bears. My front yard gets too much sun, my backyard gets too much shade, but the three-level deck is just right. So, my deck is a garden in itself, with wisteria climbing the pergola -- and after five years or more, it finally bloomed this year! There are masses of hanging baskets and containers of all shapes and sizes. I like the deck to feel kind of like a jungle, so I go very over the top. I have morning glories and clematis in containers, too, so there are climbing plants to add height. I have some built-in containers where I grow shrubs. I mix styrofoam peanuts in with the potting mix to keep it light and aerated, and it seems to work. This year the dwarf Alberta spruces I started in t...

Here are some pictures from the 2006 Cincinnati Flower Show at Coney Island, which is on the Ohio River just across the river from Kentucky. I'm a big fan of this show, which used to be in Ault Park but moved to Coney Island about 3 years ago. I write for the Flower Show magazine on a regular basis, serve on the Ask the Experts panels and usually teach a class or two. The show has something new and exciting every year. The flower show is always at the end of April - be sure to check it out!

As we bake in the heat of midsummer, I'll take a minute to post some pictures taken at the spring show at Cincinnati's Krohn Conservatory. If you've never been to Cincinnati, mark it on your list of things to see. Spring Grove Cemetery and the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden are two other places to see a variety of plants.

Saturday, July 8, 2006 was an absolutely gorgeous day. The sun was shining, it wasn't too hot - we couldn't have asked for a better day for the dedication of Matt Maupin's garden at Glen Este High School. Matt's birthday was last week and if, as we hope and pray, he is still alive, he turned 23. Matt attended Glen Este Middle School and High School here in Clermont County, Cincinnati and when he graduated in 2002 I, as PTO president at the middle school, had the honor of presenting Matt with a scholarship. I remember him saying he was going to use the money for college. As the mother of two college kids, I know how hard it can be to pay for college. Well, Matt did use the scholarship money to pay for a year of college at University of Cincinnati - Clermont County. He worked at Sam's Club to help pay his way, but after a year I guess he decided it would be easier to join the service and put himself through college that way. At least that was his plan. He hadn't b...

Photo: Hosta 'Tea and Crumpets' www.songsparrow.com First published in The Landscape Contractor magazine “Little and Large: Extreme Hostas,” By Becke Davis For years, hostas have been one of the top selling perennials in the United States, competing with daylilies for easy care and familiarity. If you drive around suburban neighborhoods, though, you would mainly see fairly ordinary looking, green and cream variegated, wavy leaved hostas. Even though hostas perform best in shade, you don’t have to look far to see hostas surrounding rural mailboxes, dried out and burned brown. Planting hostas in the right place is easy enough – most prefer shade, although deep shade is not the best option. Some studies show that more important even than shade is soil that is consistently moist. Hostas in moist soil are better able to withstand the hot sun. Gold hostas are supposed to be more tolerant of sun than blue or green hostas, but no hostas should be the first choice for a site that gets h...

First Published in The Landscape Contractor magazine “What You Don’t Know About Walnuts Can Hurt Your Plants” By Becke Davis How many times have you planted perfectly healthy trees or shrubs into an existing landscape, only to have them die for no apparent reason? When that happens, do you call in a specialist from the County Extension Service you diagnose the cause of death? Do you have an arborist check out the remains of the plant? Or do you just bite the bullet and resign yourself to the inevitable loss of a few trees and shrubs? Nine times out of ten, you’d be safe to do that, but the 10th time you could be letting yourself in for a repeat performance. There are a number of reasons why a relatively new plant can die -- planting too deeply (although that usually causes a slower death), herbicide contamination, insufficient watering, root burn from over-fertilization, rootballs sitting in water that won’t drain, and so on. When you are running down a checklist of possible reasons fo...

First published in The Landscape Contractor magazine “Is Blue the Color of Money?” By Becke Davis Blue roses. Black tulips. The difficulty -- even impossibility -- of producing particular flower colors has not stopped botanists and plant propagators from making the attempt. This century has seen many horticultural advances, from increased disease-resistance to improved cold hardiness, from pest-resistance to drought tolerance -- and that is only the beginning. Flowers are being bred to bloom longer, bloom repeatedly, and even to shed their spent flowers. Hybridizers seek the ideal form, the most sublime foliage, the most artful flowers and the most memorable fragrances. The holy grail, though, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that always seems out of reach, is exactly that -- the colors of the rainbow that are the most elusive are considered by many to be the ultimate unreachable prize. Blue is one of the least common colors in the garden, and therefore one of the most sou...