Garden art

Art in the garden is a very personal thing! It is a reflection of your personal taste, your tolerance for moving things while mowing, and maybe your penchant for order or chaos!

Some folks may prefer more formal decorations and hardscapes as their art, but I like a mix of things.  I have things hanging, sitting, tucked and laying all over the place.  This is over and above my container gardens, which is a whole different story.  A garden is such an individual project, it is always interesting to look at the work of other's for inspiration and consideration!

This thread at the Sprout-off website has a variety of garden art opinions and ideas.  

Here are some examples of my garden art, which is wildly varied.   

I have some original art that I have constructed over the last several years, I have several concrete mosaic sculptures of various sizes and sorts.  

Lola- 6 foot tall sculpture

face pot

Butterfly chair- my throne!  :)  Needs to be moved off deck

Garden bench- not it's final resting place

I also appreciate the art of other people and enjoy having it in my garden.

Repurposed farm part

Lovely glass

I consider this guy to be my overgrown lawn ornament!!  

I have a theme throughout my gardens- suns!

I have some repurposed/recycled/junk items that if placed appropriately doubles as garden art!

containers

I have a few more pix to post on this, but blogger was causing me issues on my last 2 photos!  

What kind of things do you enjoy seeing in your garden, or others!  Please leave a link to your garden photos if you have them!

Until next time!!

Debio

Sprout-off garden site

Let Plants Teach you About the Birds and the Bees...

Isn't funny how we talk about sex. Seems every parent, marketer, and teenage kid either uses sex as somethign to fear, draw folks in, or as an ultimate goal. Plants are no different.

The challenge for gardeners is getting plants that hold a desired form or trait, and then preserving it through generations of plants until the hybrid first created is established and repeatable. But are hybrids as desireable as heirlooms? Are hybrids stable and true to their form, or are they likely to revert to one genetic parent or another?

The discussion surrounding plants and sex on the forum today is an interesting one. Certainly cuttings produce a clone of a plant, exact in genetic makeup, true to the traits of the plant the cutting was taken from, but seedlings could be a close match to either parent, or a genetic mix of both, and having bought a plant at a garden centre, you really can't be sure what that genetic mix looks like.

In my front yard I have a Diabolo Ninebark (Physocarpus Opulifolius "Diabolo") Which is a lovely shrub, just one problem, its leaves are a stunning gold-yellow colour with a single shoot of the bronze-purple foliage that a Diabolo is known for. Why this mix of colour? Perhapse the shrub was started from a cutting (the true shoot) but seed fell into the pot creating the "other parent's" colouring on the other shoots. As a suckering shrub, its hard to tell. As teh shrub matures I wonder if teh Diabolo coulouring will strengthen or be smothered. I wonder what teh offspring of this shrub will look like.

The reputable garden centre this shrub came from has offered to replace the ninebark, but what is the fun in that? Its more exciting to watch teh plant mature and grow, and to wonder what its offspring will look like, maybe helping the traits of one part of the plant over another. Then again, the shrub may have just been mislabeled on the shelf.

Whether hybrids are to be drawn towards or to rebel against is another whole discussion. Their creation and maintenance is what I find interesting and noteworthy.

As High as an Elephant's Eye

Folks who have vegetable gardens have my greatest respect. These folks have row upon row of beans and carrots, and spend the early spring mornings behind a rototiller, and the late fall evenings over the stove blanching for the freezer and canning for the winter.

If you have one of these in your family you know the type I mean. They sniff the air and fret that its too dry. They wonder if there will be enough sunlight for the tomatoes to ripen before the frost, they wonder if the corn could grow as high as an elephant's eye.

I can remember my father, his hands caked in northern Ontario dirt shouting out with joy as he pulled one potato after the next from the ground, inspected it and put it in one of two piles. Quick eating, or cellar storage. And I can remember my mother shouting at a flashlight taped to a hoe that it was dark, and time to come in already. Dad was a zealot.

Today's target posts on the Sproutoff forum are by folks heading down the vegetable path. The first is about tomatoes. If you grow the seeds from the grocery store tomatoes, just what do you think you will get? Find out in the tomato discussion: Store bought Tomatoes

The second gardening post is about growing corn for the first time. There are rules to getting a harvest from a wind pollinated crop, and you can read how they work here: Rookie Corn Patch

May your harvest be plentiful, and may its promise ease whatever toil you endure in reaching it.

Who is Carl Linnaeus??

Who the devil is Carl Linnaeus? Its a question that has haunted me for some time, having heard his name tossed about in botanical conversation from time to time. Sparked by a discussion in Sproutoff I did a little research.

Apparently we have Carl to thanks for the modern taxonomy of almost every living thing in the world, but most importantly (to me anyways) he was foremost a botanist, sending out disciples to glean information, plant samples, and sketches from every corner of the globe. If you look at a plant tag and see words like "Athyrium niponicum var. pictum" you have Mr. Linnaeus to thank for making it perfectly clear exactly what plant you are looking at.

The taxonomy Carl established not only lets us know what plant we are looking at, but it often gives clues to the place of the plant's discovery (Cornus Florida, for example), the plant's discoverer (Kolkwitzia Amabilis) or perhaps growing conditions, plant form, or other important things relative to the plant itself.

When you hear a gardener speaking Latin, don't shy away, instead, raise a toast Carl, and ask if you might know the plant's common name. No one is offended by this, and even the most adept of gardeners won't know every plant's Latin name. The reason so many gardeners use these names is because some plants have multiple common names, and it can get confusing trying to figure out which plant someone is referring to.

And once you get to know the Latin names, you can impress your non gardening friends with your exotic plants, I mean really, don't "viola tricolour", "viola cornuta", "viola pendunculata", and "viola bicolour" all sound better than Johnny Jump-up? I hope so, because the same common name is used for all of them.

Join us in raising a toast to Carl Linnaeus today!

Container Plants and Watering

Seems a lot of folks have trouble keeping their container plants from drying out, and a few have solutions that really work. Today's keynote discussion centres on this topic, as posted by roxanna:

any really smart suggestions on how to keep planted decorative pots watered so my plants don't gasp for relief in the heat of summer? i don't mind watering as a rule, but once it gets truly hot and humid, i tend to retreat indoors and leave the poor plants to Mother Nature.

especially would like ideas for plants that would be good in large urns which are in the baking atmosphere of a west-facing patio behind the house, so the house wall acts as a heat reflector in addition to the ambient temps.

And the answers have come from all corners, with suggestions ranging from re-purposing levis to using commercial products. See all the ideas here: Preventing Container Gardens from Drying Out

On commercial soil mixes:

Read the whole discussion at: Sproutoff Soil Discussion

As posted by Ultra Denny on May 27th in response to a question by D4gw00d:

The soil mix placed in growing containers must be superior to native soil in certain respects. Because there is an interruption to fluid flow of the soil mass (in other words, the pot has a bottom), there is not the natural draw of fluids through the system. (This is a process we call capilary action*.) So, we must employ ingredients and container designs that allow for much greater oxygenation of the soil. This encourages root growth.

In order to grow plants quickly enough to make a living at it, growers must maintain optimum nutrient levels and near perfect moisture levels, conditions rarely found in native soils.

Some growers use ingredients that are too far removed from the texture of native soils. Therefore, there is a poor interface. Usually, the problem is an overabundance of large particles that knit poorly with the typical small particle native soils in which they are installed. Therefore, a small amount of native soil or sand particles will improve the interface. Some growers use this: some don't.

Keep in mind that the bigger a plant is when you go to install it, the bigger its needs. Sometimes we tend to underestimate a plant's needs during the adaptation process.

This is a humongous question to answer. That's my best in short order. Feel free to ask for points of understanding.

*Capillary action demonstrated - Take a flat sponge and soak it then, holding it flat, let the immediately available water drip out (only take a couple seconds). Next, take that sponge and flip it 90 degrees to where it's standing on its edge. Watch a lot more water poor out. This is known as capillary action.

To see more information on a variety of gardening topics, visit us often at The Sproutoff Gardening Forum