SprottHaus: A Gardener's Journey

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...

It's been seven weeks since my last day as curator of the Elizabeth Lawrence House & Garden.  Even though it was my choice to resign my position--one I never thought I would leave--I find it difficult to even type out the name "Elizabeth Lawrence".  *wince*  There's a tinge of deep pain mixed with sorrow, wrapped with a gauze of guilt in a fog of grief.  I chose to safeguard my mental health and professional integrity over continuing to steward the legacy of one of the most significant contributors to American garden literature and horticulture. The thing is, I loved my charge.  That word is thrown around so flippantly that it's nearly  a throw-away.  I don't mean it in that sense; I mean it in one of the deepest senses I've known.  The depth of the passion I had for Libba's legacy was unprecedented for me, professionally speaking.  (I can't call her "Elizabeth".  Those close to her called her "Libba".  After 13 years, four...