A collector talks about his garden

Yesterday, Kathryn MacDougald and I went for our annual tour of Ozzie Johnson's garden.  Ozzie is one of the three plant hunters we had hoped to feature in an adventure series about searching for ornamental plants in the world's most dangerous and beautiful regions.  We may yet get our show when people have seen enough alligator wrestling and tuna wars.

For plant lovers, Ozzie's garden is a paradise.  There were so many wonderful things going on - plants he's hybridizing or growing from seed collected in China or Vietnam or shrubs he's brought from nurseries in Japan to introduce to Americans.  I was so overwhelmed that I had to lie down for an hour when we got home.  I was exhausted from all the excitement and the thrill of knowing that lots of new and wonderful plants are coming down the pike.

I guess it's been over 20 years since I first went to this garden.  I remember the weeping katsura tree wasn't much taller than I was.  Now, it reaches forty feet into the air.  You could have a picnic under its curtain of leaves.

This tree brings up a confession I need to make.  I am a regretter.  A bad one.  I constantly dwell on the plants I didn't buy when I first knew about them.  Like the katsura tree.  Or, the 'Graham Blandy' boxwoods Ozzie has.  I saw them for $11 each - this was also 20 years ago - and walked away without buying any.  I thought they were too little for the price.  Ozzie's are probably eight feet tall and make the most beautiful green columns.

As we walked around, looking at his collections of weeping and fastigiate trees (have you ever seen a 20 foot tall, narrow flowering peach with burgundy leaves?), I was mesmerized.  A new dwarf weeping redbud called 'Ruby Falls' had leaves that are coming out almost red.

And, he had all sorts of plants that aren't normally variegated or chartreuse or burgundy.  There was a golden Vinca minor called '24 Karat' and a new lacecap hydrangea he's working on, 'Lemon Ice', which has lovely chartreuse leaves and pink flowers.  He also has a spectacular yellow leaved Hydrangea quercifolia next to a burgundy Japanese maple.

I could go on and on, but I'll show some of the highlights in future posts.  For now, in the photograph above, note the tall, dark green column center-left towards the back.  That's one of a pair of Leyland cypresses that Ozzie has been clipping for years.  The one on the right is getting its annual shearing right now.  I don't think Ozzie has ever done anything - including impaling himself on a bamboo stake on the side of a high mountain in Vietnam - as dangerous as his getting on such tall ladders to trim these Leylands.  They are really cool looking, though.  You can see them from about everywhere in the garden.

Ozzie is a true plantsman.  He's an explorer of the wild, he brings back seeds and grows things out and tests them for years for hardiness and desirability, he makes crosses to get an even more wonderful plant and then he finally gets them into production and out into the market for gardeners.

I was whining about the fact that I hadn't planted all the things I knew about way back when.  I just feel so overwhelmed by what I didn't do, I said.  Ozzie's reply:  "What if you had thousands of plants in the ground and in pots and flats, and all of them needed something - pruning, watering, transplanting?  That's what I call feeling overwhelmed."

He does have a point, but I still wish I'd planted a weeping katsura and had bought at least two of those boxwoods.

A collector talks about his garden

Yesterday, Kathryn MacDougald and I went for our annual tour of Ozzie Johnson's garden.  Ozzie is one of the three plant hunters we had hoped to feature in an adventure series about searching for ornamental plants in the world's most dangerous and beautiful regions.  We may yet get our show when people have seen enough alligator wrestling and tuna wars.

For plant lovers, Ozzie's garden is a paradise.  There were so many wonderful things going on - plants he's hybridizing or growing from seed collected in China or Vietnam or shrubs he's brought from nurseries in Japan to introduce to Americans.  I was so overwhelmed that I had to lie down for an hour when we got home.  I was exhausted from all the excitement and the thrill of knowing that lots of new and wonderful plants are coming down the pike.

I guess it's been over 20 years since I first went to this garden.  I remember the weeping katsura tree wasn't much taller than I was.  Now, it reaches forty feet into the air.  You could have a picnic under its curtain of leaves.

This tree brings up a confession I need to make.  I am a regretter.  A bad one.  I constantly dwell on the plants I didn't buy when I first knew about them.  Like the katsura tree.  Or, the 'Graham Blandy' boxwoods Ozzie has.  I saw them for $11 each - this was also 20 years ago - and walked away without buying any.  I thought they were too little for the price.  Ozzie's are probably eight feet tall and make the most beautiful green columns.

As we walked around, looking at his collections of weeping and fastigiate trees (have you ever seen a 20 foot tall, narrow flowering peach with burgundy leaves?), I was mesmerized.  A new dwarf weeping redbud called 'Ruby Falls' had leaves that are coming out almost red.

And, he had all sorts of plants that aren't normally variegated or chartreuse or burgundy.  There was a golden Vinca minor called '24 Karat' and a new lacecap hydrangea he's working on, 'Lemon Ice', which has lovely chartreuse leaves and pink flowers.  He also has a spectacular yellow leaved Hydrangea quercifolia next to a burgundy Japanese maple.

I could go on and on, but I'll show some of the highlights in future posts.  For now, in the photograph above, note the tall, dark green column center-left towards the back.  That's one of a pair of Leyland cypresses that Ozzie has been clipping for years.  The one on the right is getting its annual shearing right now.  I don't think Ozzie has ever done anything - including impaling himself on a bamboo stake on the side of a high mountain in Vietnam - as dangerous as his getting on such tall ladders to trim these Leylands.  They are really cool looking, though.  You can see them from about everywhere in the garden.

Ozzie is a true plantsman.  He's an explorer of the wild, he brings back seeds and grows things out and tests them for years for hardiness and desirability, he makes crosses to get an even more wonderful plant and then he finally gets them into production and out into the market for gardeners.

I was whining about the fact that I hadn't planted all the things I knew about way back when.  I just feel so overwhelmed by what I didn't do, I said.  Ozzie's reply:  "What if you had thousands of plants in the ground and in pots and flats, and all of them needed something - pruning, watering, transplanting?  That's what I call feeling overwhelmed."

He does have a point, but I still wish I'd planted a weeping katsura and had bought at least two of those boxwoods.

Miss Willie's Phlox divaricata

Miss Willie must have moved to my hometown after I had left.  She wasn't there when we were growing up, because she lived in the former pastorium.  Pastorium?  Yes, that's what we called the house where our Baptist minister lived.  My late husband used to get a kick out of that word.  By the time Miss Willie came, we had a new house for the minister - a brick ranch vs. the white clapboard cottage I had known as a child.  We still called it the pastorium, which now makes me sort of chuckle, too.  It doesn't quite have the ring of a parsonage or vicarage or rectory of other denominations.

Before I get to the main subject of the above photograph, I have to tell what happened in that little white house.  When I was growing up, all of the pastors at our church lived there.  I think it only had a small living room, a dining room, a kitchen, two bedrooms and one bath.  My friend Linda and I used to babysit for one of the ministers.  He had four little boys (I think they eventually had seven boys), and the house was chaotic and smelled like dirty diapers.  The mother of these children played the organ at church.  She was very sweet, but always looked frazzled (understandably so) and wore no makeup.  Her dresses were too big for her slight frame and were made of very old fashioned prints.  Her husband was tall and good looking in a way, but he was very strict.  He didn't believe in dancing and would say so from the pulpit.

So, one day Linda and I - we must have been in about the fourth or fifth grade - tuned into the Mickey Mouse Club on their TV.  We proceeded to do the dance mimicking the Mouseketeers - we knew every move exactly.  Little did we realize that the preacher's boys were old enough to tell on us, but they did.  Our mothers received calls, saying that we were not allowed back in their house because we had been dancing.

This was fine with me, as we weren't paid anyway.  Our mothers thought it was funny (he was the only minister we ever had who railed against dancing, something at which I considered myself rather expert)

So, it was strange when Miss Willie moved into that house and changed the yard into a wonderland of flowers.  When I would go to visit my mother, I'd always slow down to see what Miss Willie had blooming.

The spring after she moved there, I noticed a lovely patch of blue flowers.  I'd seen these wispy, delicate blooms in a circle around a tree in a yard near my house.  I'd always wondered what they were.  One day I stopped when Miss Willie was out in the yard, and she showed me that they were a type of phlox - about 12 inches high, with delicate stems and a sweet scent.

Not too long after that, I went to Mother's, and there was a bag for me.  In it was the blackest dirt I'd ever seen - absolutely the perfect soil.  It had come out of Miss Willie's yard along with a little bunch of blue phlox.  I took the sack home and divided the clumps, planting them in two borders, the black dirt spilling against my red clay.

When I called Miss Willie to tell her how much I appreciated the flowers (I've always been superstitious about not saying "thank you"for a plant), she told me she was always adding amendments to her soil.  That must have been the secret to her success.

So, my phlox spread rapidly, and soon I had two nice colonies of what I learned was Phlox divaricata.  Miss Willie died a long time ago, but her phlox has spread all over the woods and up and down a steep hill.  Just yesterday, I looked out to see it naturalized everywhere.  I thought of Miss Willie, her kind face and quiet, lovely manner.  So different from the stern, scary man who used to occupy that house.

Miss Willie's Phlox divaricata

Miss Willie must have moved to my hometown after I had left.  She wasn't there when we were growing up, because she lived in the former pastorium.  Pastorium?  Yes, that's what we called the house where our Baptist minister lived.  My late husband used to get a kick out of that word.  By the time Miss Willie came, we had a new house for the minister - a brick ranch vs. the white clapboard cottage I had known as a child.  We still called it the pastorium, which now makes me sort of chuckle, too.  It doesn't quite have the ring of a parsonage or vicarage or rectory of other denominations.

Before I get to the main subject of the above photograph, I have to tell what happened in that little white house.  When I was growing up, all of the pastors at our church lived there.  I think it only had a small living room, a dining room, a kitchen, two bedrooms and one bath.  My friend Linda and I used to babysit for one of the ministers.  He had four little boys (I think they eventually had seven boys), and the house was chaotic and smelled like dirty diapers.  The mother of these children played the organ at church.  She was very sweet, but always looked frazzled (understandably so) and wore no makeup.  Her dresses were too big for her slight frame and were made of very old fashioned prints.  Her husband was tall and good looking in a way, but he was very strict.  He didn't believe in dancing and would say so from the pulpit.

So, one day Linda and I - we must have been in about the fourth or fifth grade - tuned into the Mickey Mouse Club on their TV.  We proceeded to do the dance mimicking the Mouseketeers - we knew every move exactly.  Little did we realize that the preacher's boys were old enough to tell on us, but they did.  Our mothers received calls, saying that we were not allowed back in their house because we had been dancing.

This was fine with me, as we weren't paid anyway.  Our mothers thought it was funny (he was the only minister we ever had who railed against dancing, something at which I considered myself rather expert)

So, it was strange when Miss Willie moved into that house and changed the yard into a wonderland of flowers.  When I would go to visit my mother, I'd always slow down to see what Miss Willie had blooming.

The spring after she moved there, I noticed a lovely patch of blue flowers.  I'd seen these wispy, delicate blooms in a circle around a tree in a yard near my house.  I'd always wondered what they were.  One day I stopped when Miss Willie was out in the yard, and she showed me that they were a type of phlox - about 12 inches high, with delicate stems and a sweet scent.

Not too long after that, I went to Mother's, and there was a bag for me.  In it was the blackest dirt I'd ever seen - absolutely the perfect soil.  It had come out of Miss Willie's yard along with a little bunch of blue phlox.  I took the sack home and divided the clumps, planting them in two borders, the black dirt spilling against my red clay.

When I called Miss Willie to tell her how much I appreciated the flowers (I've always been superstitious about not saying "thank you"for a plant), she told me she was always adding amendments to her soil.  That must have been the secret to her success.

So, my phlox spread rapidly, and soon I had two nice colonies of what I learned was Phlox divaricata.  Miss Willie died a long time ago, but her phlox has spread all over the woods and up and down a steep hill.  Just yesterday, I looked out to see it naturalized everywhere.  I thought of Miss Willie, her kind face and quiet, lovely manner.  So different from the stern, scary man who used to occupy that house.

A long dreamed-of garden replaces the pool

For two decades, in the 1980's and 1990's,  Rosemary Verey (1918-2001), English garden designer, lecturer and prolific garden writer, spent a good deal of time in the United States.  She gave talks in many cities, interviewed American gardeners and wrote books about them and even did design work for private citizens and public places like the New York Botanical Garden.

Barnsley House, Mrs. Verey's home in Gloucestershire, was one of the most visited gardens in England when she was alive.  Her famous laburnum walk is in just about every book I have on English gardens and is on the cover of at least one.  She is credited with making the French potager popular and was known for adapting elements from large public gardens and bringing them to scale for home garden use.  Among her British clients were Prince Charles and Elton John.

When Mrs. Verey came to Atlanta, she often stayed with my friend and sometimes tennis partner (she was the forehand, and I was the backhand), Mary Wayne Dixon.  Mary Wayne has been a trustee and active volunteer for the Atlanta Botanical Garden since it was created.  She's been on countless garden trips abroad and in the U.S., and has a great appreciation for plants and garden design.

I posted a photograph yesterday of a scene from Mary Wayne's front entrance garden.  The above photo shows her knot garden, one of Mrs. Verey's designs.  The all green and variegated boxwoods grow on the site of a former irregular-shaped swimming pool, which the family no longer used.

After I sneaked into her garden on Saturday, I came home to read something that ruffled my feathers a bit.  I know that Mary Wayne had wanted a knot garden for a long time, but only recently had the work done.  For her, it is a reminder of a good friend and mentor, and she is ecstatic with the results.  So, when I read one critic's opinion that knot gardens are "so 90's" and that Mrs. Verey's aesthetic is passe (I don't know how to put an accent on that final e), I was sort of irritated.  That may be true, but it's not like everyone has the resources or the desire to follow every garden trend.  I like many different gardening styles (although when they tried to say that the "new American garden" consisted of waves of grasses and black-eyed Susans, that wouldn't do for me) and admire some of the edgy work being done by younger designers.

But, I'm probably stuck in the last century because I still look at Mrs. Verey's books about the gardens at Barnsley House and admire all the alliums and the clipped hedges spilling over with flowers.  It's an aesthetic I like, and it was a grand achievement over a half century (the house was bought from Mrs. Verey's son and has now been turned into a hotel).

One thing is for sure.  Mary Wayne's back garden is lovely and peaceful and suits the style of her house and furnishings.  It also looks good all year long.  I feel if we're lucky enough to be entrusted with a spot of land, we should do what makes us happy, trendy or not.  I think of the woman in my hometown who has about every whirligig you can think of in her front yard.  You might say she's "so 50's", but I'm sure she's delighted with the way it looks.  And I think that's the way it ought to be.

A long dreamed-of garden replaces the pool

For two decades, in the 1980's and 1990's,  Rosemary Verey (1918-2001), English garden designer, lecturer and prolific garden writer, spent a good deal of time in the United States.  She gave talks in many cities, interviewed American gardeners and wrote books about them and even did design work for private citizens and public places like the New York Botanical Garden.

Barnsley House, Mrs. Verey's home in Gloucestershire, was one of the most visited gardens in England when she was alive.  Her famous laburnum walk is in just about every book I have on English gardens and is on the cover of at least one.  She is credited with making the French potager popular and was known for adapting elements from large public gardens and bringing them to scale for home garden use.  Among her British clients were Prince Charles and Elton John.

When Mrs. Verey came to Atlanta, she often stayed with my friend and sometimes tennis partner (she was the forehand, and I was the backhand), Mary Wayne Dixon.  Mary Wayne has been a trustee and active volunteer for the Atlanta Botanical Garden since it was created.  She's been on countless garden trips abroad and in the U.S., and has a great appreciation for plants and garden design.

I posted a photograph yesterday of a scene from Mary Wayne's front entrance garden.  The above photo shows her knot garden, one of Mrs. Verey's designs.  The all green and variegated boxwoods grow on the site of a former irregular-shaped swimming pool, which the family no longer used.

After I sneaked into her garden on Saturday, I came home to read something that ruffled my feathers a bit.  I know that Mary Wayne had wanted a knot garden for a long time, but only recently had the work done.  For her, it is a reminder of a good friend and mentor, and she is ecstatic with the results.  So, when I read one critic's opinion that knot gardens are "so 90's" and that Mrs. Verey's aesthetic is passe (I don't know how to put an accent on that final e), I was sort of irritated.  That may be true, but it's not like everyone has the resources or the desire to follow every garden trend.  I like many different gardening styles (although when they tried to say that the "new American garden" consisted of waves of grasses and black-eyed Susans, that wouldn't do for me) and admire some of the edgy work being done by younger designers.

But, I'm probably stuck in the last century because I still look at Mrs. Verey's books about the gardens at Barnsley House and admire all the alliums and the clipped hedges spilling over with flowers.  It's an aesthetic I like, and it was a grand achievement over a half century (the house was bought from Mrs. Verey's son and has now been turned into a hotel).

One thing is for sure.  Mary Wayne's back garden is lovely and peaceful and suits the style of her house and furnishings.  It also looks good all year long.  I feel if we're lucky enough to be entrusted with a spot of land, we should do what makes us happy, trendy or not.  I think of the woman in my hometown who has about every whirligig you can think of in her front yard.  You might say she's "so 50's", but I'm sure she's delighted with the way it looks.  And I think that's the way it ought to be.

The surest way to the front door

Does this ever happen to you?

You pull up to a house and park.  You haven't been there before, and you consider your choices about where to go.  You're closest to carport side entrance which the family obviously uses.  Then, you look, and going around to the front of the house is a sidewalk.  Somehow, it looks like it's seldom used.  What to do?

Several months ago, I ran across something on the Internet, and now I can't remember where I saw it.
Anyway, I  I laughed out loud when I read about the famous French film maker and comedic actor Jacques Tati in a scene from Mon Oncle (which I saw more than 40 years ago!).  He was trying to get from the street to the front door of an ultra modern house.  The "path" consisted of round concrete pads that were neither set in a direct line nor at the right distance for stepping.  The result was that Monsieur Hulot (Tati) started leaping from one stone to the next, each time losing his balance and almost falling into the forbidden grass.  The path, instead of a comfortable and direct way to the front door, was like negotiating a minefield.

I remember when it was all the fashion for designers who, instead of allowing a "boring" straight line from the sidewalk to the front door, were leading visitors on a curving, over planted path, I assume, just to be different.  How many times have I seen examples of having to walk around in an unnatural fashion to arrive at the door.  My church has at least two glaring examples.

My friend Mary Wayne Dixon, whose garden will be on the Atlanta Botanical Garden's Gardens for Connoisseurs tour this year, solved the dilemma of which way to go from the parking lot in a very attractive way that avoids confusion.  And, by creating a front garden that is inviting and which has an obvious path, she also drastically changed the look of her house.  Now, once you step into her front courtyard, you feel like you're in Europe.  Also, you know exactly where to go.

The scene you see above used to be a typical, sloping lawn to the street.  A retaining wall was built and filled in to reach the level of the front door.  Monsieur Hulot could have easily negotiated the wide slate path from the side parking lot to the door.  If he lost his balance, he would only fall onto gravel that is flush with the path.

What you can't see is the iron arch which directs you from your car to the proper entrance that leads to the front door (one can drive around to the back, as the family does, but you don't see that option).

Where grass once grew on the sloping front lawn, cryptomerias and hollies are planted to screen the garden from the street.  The other day when I stopped by, the Kwanzan cherry trees were in bloom, with the puffy pink blossoms hanging over part of the courtyard.

To see the front door of this house, go to the post of Wednesday, September 21, 2011.  It's entitled "Changing the mood".  I took that photograph when the yellow Lady Banks rose was in bloom, as it was last week.  To see the garden in back, tune in tomorrow.