SprottHaus: A Gardener's Journey

I had an unexpected emotional setback today.  It wasn't anything horrific or horrible, or anything else that starts with h-o-r-r.  It was just... well, unexpected.  And from a fragrance , of all things.   It's no secret to those who know me well that winter in the garden is my favorite time.  This was especially true when I was in charge of Elizabeth ("Libba") Lawrence's garden, as she literally wrote the book on Gardens in Winter (Claitor's, 1977), and her living legacy showcased some magical hibernal botanical treasures.   Actually, I never really thought about gardens in winter prior to curating Libba's garden.  Before I read her book, I never knew there were bulbs or perennials or shrubs (other than Forsythia ) that reliably bloom in December, January, or February.   One of the most frequently asked questions I received from visitors was, "When is the BEST time to come see the garden?"  To which I always enthusiastically r...

I don't make personal New Year's resolutions anymore.  I used to, but I never was very good with the whole self discipline thing, so my "new and improved" habits didn't tend to last much more than a couple of weeks or a month.  Maybe two. In more recent years, I found myself making mental promises (okay, resolutions ) to remember to do all-the-things-you-should-be-doing-in-your-garden-at-the-proper-time... not for my own garden, but for Elizabeth Lawrence's, of which I was primary caretaker from November 2010 through March 2024. I must admit that I did a better job of keeping those resolutions than any I'd made for myself personally, but there were always tasks that fell through the cracks or were forgotten.  For a long time, I carried the foggy weight of guilt of those discarded good intentions.  That is, until I read this: "This January, I have added a new resolution to the old promises to get behind my garden sins; the new one is to take time to e...

Today, November 11, marks the Feast of St. Martin.  This sort of date is hardly ever on my radar, but came racing to my attention as I read from Elizabeth Lawrence's Gardens in Winter this morning. "Winter begins with the Feast of St. Martin, the eleventh of November.  About that time in Charlotte we have our first killing frost, which is often followed by golden days, called St. Martin's summer because flowers then bloom out of season as they did when St. Martin died and the boat that bore his body wafted up the Loire without sails or oars, while trees on either side burst into bloom." Winter... beginning today ?!  Ha!  In the days leading up to yesterday, it was more like summer.  I was sweating as I worked outside, in my garden and Lindie Wilson's garden.  (For the record, I do NOT enjoy sweating in November.) What I found interesting, reading on in Gardens in Winter , was the next paragraph: "In America the halcyon days came to be known as Indian sum...

 So, where were we?  Oh, yes.  The wrap-up of the big crawlspace sealing/drainage pipes installation project.  It has been a busy five weeks since my last post.  (Dang it, that's nearly "a minute" again!)  Like I said, it's been busy.   My husband, Herb, retired, which is amazing!  He has been working a lot in the garden (insert happy dance here), and managing other home improvement projects.  As I type this, new downspouts are being installed.  Next spring, new windows will be installed.  Woooo hooooo!!! Even five weeks after the BIG project, we are still working toward getting things back into shape.  No, I have not begun planting the raked-over bed in front of the house .  I'm afraid that area is a bit of a lost cause, due to my naïveté in a) planting Alstroemeria psittacina 'Variegata' (variegated Peruvian lily) nearly twenty years ago, and b) allowing it to spread with reckless abandon.  The breadth and dept...

When life throws a lot at me, I tend to turn inward.  That's fine for seeking mental refuge from a transcendental hurricane, but not for keeping folks engaged with your blog.  That was a weird analogy, but it's what came to mind, so... there ya go. It's been a minute since I last posted.  And here's why... Two months ago, I was in Louisiana for a couple weeks to do research for my first book.   There will be more (much more) about that in the near future.  It was a great trip, but I can't even begin down that road right now, or we'll be here all day and all night.  (I promise... much more on that later.) One month ago, we were in the midst of a big home project: sealing the crawl space.  There was a lot involved with this, and not all of it happened under the house.  Trenching down to the footer of the foundation around three sides of our house was one part of the scope of the project.  Before their crew began, the company told us to m...

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Every year I eagerly await the first bloom scape of Lycoris , yet I am inevitably taken by surprise when it appears.  It is so appropriate that the common name for this genus is "surprise lily".  I have several types and varieties of Lycoris planted throughout our garden.  This may or may not be because they are pretty well dead easy to grow: average garden soil in part sun to part shade, in a place where they don't completely bake or get bone dry.  The season starts in early July with L. x squamigera .  (I know, it's a mouthful.  I say it "lye-KORR-is skwah-MIG-er-uh.") L. x squamigera begins the season of Lycoris . Up to November 2010, I knew nothing of this troupe of fascinating amaryllids.  That's when I entered Elizabeth (Libba) Lawrence's world, and she began teaching me (through her writings and her garden) that I had a LOT more to learn about plants.  This was especially true of bulbs.  In 2011, when I picked up her classic The Lit...

I really wanted to include an expletive in that title because that's just how I feel today.  (Oops, that's starting out with a negative attitude, isn't it?  There's probably some Blog Best Practices List somewhere that gives that as the Number One "Dear God, whatever you do, DON'T do THAT" rule.  Well... whatever.)   It's hot.  I mean HOT.  Freaking HOT and soul-smotheringly humid.  The "feels like" temperature is hovering somewhere around 105F as I type this.  Today's weather is a no-go for this gardener; it is, however, perfect for this gardener to stay indoors and watch the second round of Wimbledon. But, since our house is virtually all glass (which I LOVE, mind you), I can't help but look outside.  I can't help but stare at the garden and think about the marathon-long list of things I need/want to do.  Why did I start that new bed yesterday?  Reclaiming part of an old garden bed is better than starting absolutely from scra...

I just came into the cool after two hours of (sweating) vigorous soil amending (sweating) and planting (sweating) in the garden.  (Did I mention sweating?)  It feels really good in here.  I might have to stay in the rest of the day.  Oh, who am I kidding?!  The flit of a butterfly's wings, a zipping bee in flight, or the glint of sun off a flower or leaf will catch my couch-bound eye, and I'll have to head back out. One thing I was thinking about while I was out there (sweating), was a plant that has become one of my favorites, Tinantia pringlei .   In our garden, Tinantia pringlei grows happily in full sun and almost as happily in darn near full shade. I acquired mine in 2011 from Big Bloomers Flower Farm in Sanford, NC.  Back then the common name was "speckled wandering jew".  Now it's listed as "spotted widow's tears" and "Mexican perennial dayflower".  (This is why I prefer using botanical nomenclature.)  It's native to the mo...

 In my last post , I talked about daylilies.  More specifically, I talked about hybridizing daylilies.   The act of hybridizing is super easy.  What follows in the coming years sometimes isn't. One of the best pieces of advice I got from a local hybridizer was to be brutal.  Don't save every seedling; few will be truly worth keeping.  Are you KIDDING ME?!  After all the waiting--about three years--to even get to see what you've got... and now I should maybe throw it away?!   Absolutely. Much like a good writer, one of the greatest lessons any gardener can learn is to edit.  As Elizabeth Lawrence once said, seeking out good plant material is as important as getting rid of the bad (super duper paraphrasing; sorry, Libba).  When a friend of hers was lamenting a poorly performing plant in their garden, Libba asked, "Are you cruel enough to be a gardener?"   I think about that quote so, so often.  When my seedlings bl...

Our back yard in 2001.  Meh. When we moved to our property 23 years ago (holy moly, has it already been THAT LONG?!), the landscape was... fine.  The overall design and plant list wasn't horrible .  But as a neophyte plant collector, it bored me to tears.  Although the first full truckload of stuff we moved from our old place was nearly entirely plants, I knew that I needed to wait and watch before making too many wholesale changes to the "new" place.  It's always smarter to understand what's extant and work with that. The same view 23 years later.  At least it's not boring! The previous owners were daylily fans.  I was most definitely NOT a daylily fan.   Who in their right mind would want to grow a plant whose flowers only bloom for a day?! , I thought.  Oh, silly, silly Past Me.  I had no idea how alluring the world of Hemerocallis could be.   That first spring and summer, I watched a couple dozen cultivars bloom in th...