July 18, 2001
Window Box Contest
Village Improvement

July 1, 2001
Dee Dee Ames
Lynn Payne
Blanca Michajlov

June 1, 2001
Secret Garden Tour, Newport, RI

Gloria, Nancy, Vivian, Sandy, Davie, and myself met at DeeDee's house at 8:30 AM for our Garden Walk. The majority of her garden is out back, but she has started moving to the front, as you may expect. DeeDee has a problem with deer, as many folks do. She has started looking into using plants that deer are less apt to eat. One of the first things noticed is the wonderful rock wall she has edging the beds and leading off into the woods (i.e. future gardens). This wall was built by herself one rock at a time. The border has lovely, free masses that from a distance really soften the transition from backyard into the woods, large clumps of mint, lobelia, fern, and sedum. DeeDee has a real sense of design. We stepped into her house and looked out into the yard and low and behold the woodland vista is perfectly aligned to be enjoyed both from the yard and from inside of the house where the table is located. DeeDee explained that she was trying to get a sense of peace for when she comes home from a busy day. She has certainly accomplished this. We all loved the bit of whimsy in the form of a "GROW DAMN IT" sign in the border. She has a beautiful agapanthus which her husband brought home after tracking the plant down. She outlined more structural work she wants to do to improve on the vista and the woodland walk. Perhaps we will see this yard again sometime in the future at another garden walk.

We then went to Lynne's house, which presented a beautiful, picture perfect composition of plants in the front yard. And I might add, very gracious when I rang her bell, forgetting that she had just returned from Hawaii and wasn't planning on joining us. Beds of lavender in bloom provided both fragrance, color, and structure, and looked just swell with the yellow heliopsis. The rosa 'New Dawn' was in full bloom as was the spirea and geraniums. Lynne was very impressed with one of the programs we had this past year- with C. L. Fornari. She had C.L. come for a design consult before starting further work in her back yard. She had ideas but then felt that she needed some professional help finalizing the design. We will most definitely need to return here to see the bluestone patio that will be going in, at C.L.'s recommendation. Again at this yard we see the beauty of using stone to define the beds. Lynne will be using more stone to draw the eye into the woods, and along her woodland walk. I don't remember why I wrote this down and I haven't even checked the sight, but I'll include it here because it was in my notebook. So maybe we'll all check out www.gardenlady.com.

From here, we (including Lynne now) went to Blanca's yard. Blanca has a whole different style of gardening. The yard is a jungle of flowers everywhere! From the hedge of walking onion, to the border of strawberries there are many, many mature plants. Blanca also has a hedge of hypericum (St. John's Wort)! She has many hostas of different varieties, grasses, herbs, lilies, and clematis. There is a large area of many different peonies, which of course were past bloom in July. Blanca's husband has created the ultimate deer-proof vegetable garden. He dug 3 feet down and cemented the border. There is a 6 foot chain link fence all around this. Blanca also had a rosa 'New Dawn'. This is a very vigorous pale pink, almost white rose which grows 30 feet. As it so happens, I was recently given this very same variety, and was most pleased to see it in action in 2 different settings.

Looking forward to August 1st! See you then!

Judges Robin Kalfelz, Kim Bertram, and Joyce Holster

First we should say the center of town looks quite lovely with all the different window boxes. We hope that everyone had as much fun creating their boxes as we had judging. Judges scored each window considering design, healthy plants, plant material chosen appropriate for exposure, visual appeal, and coordination/theme consistent with store front.

# 1 Easton Pre-school planted by Suzanne Zaff, Judi Bruno, and Denise Batches
Healthy plant material, nice whimsy, pansies in July!!!, good watering, bugs added on sticks and primary crayon colors enhance the "pre-school". This was the first prize winner.

#2 Pires Hardware planted by Debbie Bryant and Joyce Melendy
Ipomoea lookin' good! Subtle color throughout, great watering, nice hanging effect. Second place.

#3 Barbershop planted by Judy Tyler and Blanca Michajlov
Fun to look at, great color with with the barber poles, waves of plant material provide good rhythm, needs water. Third place.

Honorable Mention goes to the Gold Digger planted by Linda Shephard, Lynn Payne, and Stacy Naumes for color and long-lasting plant material.

We had fun judging and hoped that everyone enjoyed the planting and the rewards of some very interesting window boxes. In the future, we should probably talk more about the types of plants that can manage a good show in the full sun exposure, since they seem to need watering twice a day.

This day was my idea of the perfect "Garden Walks". We had beautiful and well established gardens to ooh and aaah about. We also had the "tabla rosa"; the garden new to one of our members. This new garden (less than one year lived at) has some landscaping present but also has much room for the gardener to add to. She bravely allowed us to visit and hopefully we will be able to continue to see this garden as it progresses. Anyone interested in sharing a special plant with Robin is invited to do so.

Nancy, Nancy, Rosemary, Joanne, Leslie, Marilyn, Gloria, Ruth and Alan, Darya, Suzanne and Defiance, Judy, Linda, Davie, myself and Nobe all gathered on this beautiful August morning at Linda's house. I always think of Linda's as the Hosta Garden, but it is so much more. Along the driveway is a new garden bed of very vigorous (so vigorous it wiped out the buddlea) bee balm in purple and white phlox placed in front of a short white fence looking lovely. The purple wave petunias of last year reseeded themselves. The butternut squash is vigorously growing behind it all in a raised bed. The Colonnade apple trees with which I was so enthralled a few years ago Linda says are a disappointment. They have not born fruit as they should have. Behind is another new area complete with Linda's newest (and Last she will ever build) rock wall. When Linda's family was younger they would go mining in Maine and bring back trunk loads of rock minerals of stunning colors and sparkles. She has found the perfect way to display these collections so they can be seen and yet remain out of the way. Some stand sentinel at the edges of pathways. Others are grouped together into three dimensional frames Linda's husband welded to make fantastic one-of-a-kind garden art. The yard is dotted with these functional creations. At the base of the wooden swing are four stepping stones imbedded with reject keys in a jazzy pattern. In the porch is a red marbled bowling ball fountain. Everything is looking healthy and well kept. One would never suspect that they had a pack of thirteen deer passing through last year. Linda says they remain vigilant to scare away the deer. The Hosta garden is superb. The many Hosta varieties are labeled for easy identification. Interspersed are astilbe, Joe-pye, ferns, hollyhock, Solomon's seal, and leucothoe. As we walked the path around we came to the nursery. Linda and her husband hybridize new Hostas. She has a very cool plant named hosta 'Confusion' which I find quite delightful. I could certainly spend a lifetime in Linda's garden!

From here we went to Robin's new yard (this is her first summer at the house). I was captivated with this yard from when I first spotted it on slides during one of our regular meetings. I embarrassingly have forgotten the name of the gentleman who critiqued the slides. At Robin's we all got a close up and personal look at her yard and heard what she is hoping to create over time. It is a large flat yard with a fair amount of greenery and shrubs surrounding the deck and house but without much diversity. She plans on expanding the deck and so the shrubs will be moved. She also hopes to distract from the long straight fence edging the property on the street side. Robin has begun what I call a "holding bed" with plants she has been given by others. She has both sun and shade and so can collect a wide variety of growing gifts. A good portion of the yard will no doubt be given over to the children for play and Robin has some work ahead of her to include the play areas into the yard. She is wisely considering what to put out front to decrease the size of lawn needing to be mowed. Robin took a lot of encouragement from me to allow us to visit her yard. It is so new to her that it does not yet have her personal touches added. Hopefully (my idea) we can all share something with Robin to plant and she will have a true friendship garden.

We wagon trained it over to Jim and Peter's garden. There are some garden planting concepts which I absolutely love and also know that I will never be able to do this in my yard. The bedding garden is one of these concepts. I could stand and admire large beds of begonias in color for a long time. There is just something about those beautiful rows and beds, paisleys of blue, pink and white.... I digress. The bones of this garden are magnificent. There are formal clipped shrubs, fountains, columns, an allee, rose gardens, it goes on and on. There is a new structure in the garden- an ancient gazebo- newly turned old with muriatic acid and buried in compost (another thing compost is good for). The perennial garden of last year was ripped out and re-designed by Jim using to it's fullest the concept of repeating plant material to draw your eye and create that eternal feeling that some gardens have. "What plants did we see?" you ask. We saw huge blue asters, variegated sedum, coreopsis, daisies, liatris, hollyhock, ligularia (both varieties), cleome, echinops, silver brocade artemesia, campanula, cone flowers, bloody sorrel, hostas of many types, grasses, lily of the valley, astilbe, and ferns. Bloody sorrel may be one you are not familiar with. It grows as a sorrel or a spinach might and the veins in each leaf are scarlet red. It grows about ten to twelve inches high in clump formation. When I sat down to write this review, I was amazed at the many varieties of plants that we saw. The gardens are so grand that what was left in my memory was more the emotion of such beauty rather that the specific plant material, so it's a good thing that I wrote some of these things down. The rose garden was all in bloom and sweetly scented. The waterlilies were in bloom. The lawn was lush and green. Jim shared thoughts of future plans in the continuing development of this garden. He said nothing about a six foot tall shrubbery maze, but I tell you I can absolutely picture one somewhere. It was only my misfortune to have to leave this garden early to meet a train, but I could go on and on.

What so delights me is that no matter the garden or the gardener, we are all alike when it comes time to talk about our gardens. We all delight in conversations of what works and what doesn't, what to do about bugs, deer, no water, too much water, it doesn't matter. A gardener's heart grows with the plants.