Wild Garden, King John's Lodge

The Gardening Gone Wild Photo Contest for August asks that we submit a gardening image from our travels (“On the Road Again”).  Since our travels this summer were more about nature per se than man-made gardens I’ve gone back to one of my favorite gardens for my submission to the photo contest.  Two years ago we had the privilege of visiting about a dozen outstanding gardens in England during the heights of springtime.  Even though we went to some of the best-known gardens in England one of the most memorable was that of the lodge we stayed at in East Sussex.  King John’s Lodge goes back to the 14th century and has been lovingly restored.  Although we were able to stay there at the time, it looks to me as though it is only open for tours now.  In any case I highly recommend it if you find yourself in the area.

Although the vista from some angles make it appear quite grand it’s actually got a wonderful simplicity which is part of the appeal.

King John's Lodge

There are almost 8 acres altogether set in a wonderful stretch of English countryside.  You can wander the grounds on paths that go past ponds, woods, surprising sculptures, and cultivated gardens.

A sunlit Pond

Artwork along the path

Looking out from the back steps into the garden

But what really enchanted me each morning as I walked around before breakfast was the ‘wild garden’ which had a meadow filled with small fruit trees, ‘found objects’, arbors, and paths mowed between seemingly random bulbs and wild flowers.  You have to imagine that walking these paths was accompanied by the sounds of the birds and barnyard animals.  It was a wonderfully bucolic scene that totally hid the efforts that must have gone into its creation and maintenance.

The Wild Garden

More Flowers in the Wild Garden

Ptilotus 'Platinum Wallaby'

It is Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day and I had to look hard for worthy flowers that had survived our desert-like summer.  We had another rain today so perhaps I won’t have to look quite so hard next month.  The Ptilotus shown above has a beautiful fuschia color to the flowers, but the actual plant is pretty pathetic.  Whether it’s the dry weather or just the nature of the beast in Maryland is hard to say.  I doubt if it’s going to survive over the winter.  In the same front-yard garden the Gaura have been in constant flower since spring.

White Gaura blossom

The flowers float 2-3 ft above the ground and look like an assembly of butterflies as the flutter in the breeze.  This is the third year for this plant and we’ve come to really appreciate the effect that the Gaura have over such an extended period.  Also worth noting in the front-yard garden is the Mexican Yellow-Eyed Grass from Plant Delights.  I planted it this year from a small 4  inch pot and it has prospered.  It flowered over much of the spring, well into June, and the foliage is lush and very much like a small iris, about 12-15 inches tall.  If this survives over the winter here it is going to be a really winner.

Sisyrinchium tinctorium foliage

While we are on a yellow theme we are still getting a few glads out of the garden.  They are very much smaller and fewer than we should have had based on the early growth.  But hey, we take what we can get.

Gladiolus remnant

And here there is a rose still to be found, in this case Charles Darwin from David Austin.

Charles Darwin Rose

One bright spot in the yard is provided by the Butterfly Weed.

Asclepias tuberosa

There are also quite a few Sunflowers coming into bloom in the garden.  They are all the Mammoth Russian type, but not so mammoth as usual.  The other multi-colored ones didn’t survive the drought.  I find the insides of the Sunflowers to be really interesting.  I need to do further study of their variations…

Sunflower center

One of the few bushes to be prospering despite the heat and lack of water is the Caryopteris.  The flowers are not fully open yet, but you can see what is coming.

Caryopteris in flower

I’m also beginning to appreciate the long season of the sedums.  Beth moved them into a sunnier spot this year and we have nice flower heads in bud.

Sedum (I think it's 'Autuum Joy') Flower head

Let me close with a picture of one of the Apples from my newer trees.  They’ve been slow to fruit because of the deer damage.  This year I used ‘Liquid Fence’ and we at least have a few apples in the second pasture.  They are small but as I said earlier we’ll take what we can get and be gratetful.

Kidd's Orange-Red

What was going to be a bumper crop of apples overall has been drastically reduced by fruit dropping this month and the remainders are smaller than usual.  Lest I sound too discouraged, I am, as I write, eating ice cream with blueberries from the multiple gallons that we froze.  So you win some and you lose some.  I encourage you to visit May Dreams Gardens and see what other gardens are producing this month.

Blue Water Lily with yellow cente

Yesterday I awoke at 6am with crashing thunder and multiple lightening strokes headlining the arrival of the first rainstorm in 29 days.  It was quite a storm with over 5000 people losing power in Frederick(not us) but most importantly for our yard was the total of more than an inch of rain.  It was followed by more rain in the afternoon and then again last night.  It is hard to believe how dry it has been here.  The ground has been cracking, trees losing their leaves,  and plants have been dying left and right.  Gardening has been discouraging on the whole when you see so many of the spring’s investments disappearing.  It’s not just that it’s been dry but the temperatures have been high enough to make it really unpleasant to go outside.

Two weeks ago a posting from Melissa at Garden Shoots reminded me that last year I had made a photography trip out to the sunflower fields that Maryland plants near the Potomac River.  I had heard that the fields were not up to last years display but I remembered that the Indigo Buntings were plentiful last year and I decided to journey out to the McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area to see what I could find.

The field was full of dried out stunted sunflowers that were well past the peak of flowering.

Very tired collection of sunflowers

I spent a couple of hours there hoping to see the Indigo Buntings that were so plentiful last year.  I thought I imagined I might have maybe possibly seen one or two in the distance.  But the field was loaded with Goldfinches and House Finches.  There were hundreds.

Goldfinch on sunflower

A very red House Finch

I did see a Pileated Woodpecker in flight across the field.

Pileated Woodpecker in flight

After two hours of waiting and watching on a very hot day I packed it up and decided to go find my own water.  On the way back from the Potomac I stopped at Lilypons Water Gardens.  Their 250 acres of ponds are filled with flowering water lilies at this season.  It was refreshing to see so many flowers at once and what a contrast to the dry tired field of sunflowers.

Pond of Fuschia-colored Water Lilies

You can wander freely about the grounds and it’s a great spot for photography.  Wildlife abounds as you would expect with so much water and lush vegetation.

Dragonflies mating

Swallowtail at Lilypons

I have to confess that I don’t really know my Water Lilies at all.  I’m a water gardener wannabe.  I could guess at some of the varieties I was looking at but I’m probably on safer ground just to cite the colors.  Suffice it to say, Lilypons is worth a visit if you are in the area.  And if you aren’t, they have a mail order catalog.

Yellow-white Water Lily

Yellow Water Lily

Lilac Water Lily

Pink Water Lily with reflection

Wildflowers on the hill

Last year I planted a mix of wildflowers from Wildseed Farms in several places around the property.  In particular I put down a patch on the hill leading down to the pasture.  The notion was a wild garden with little upkeep and care.  The results were everything that I could have hoped.  A distribution of flowers came forth with a variety of colors and blooming periods.    The latest Gardening Gone Wild Picture This Photo Contest for July has as a theme the Intent of the Gardener. The above photo of a wild palette of colors is my submission.

Now in the second year, with the heat and lack of water, the results from just leaving the flowers in place has been very limited.

Wildflower patch in the second year

Come to think of it, I need to go water the garden (again)…

Red-Shouldered Hawk that greeted me yesterday morning

Though the mulberries are almost gone, I still try to start the days with a half-hour watching the birds in the mulberry and cherry trees.  Yesterday morning as I was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes on the way out to the garden I heard the characteristic cry of the Red-Shouldered Hawk.  And there on the garden fence, not 25 feet away was this awesome hawk.  The cry is actually a mating call so that I was probably just a distraction.  Nonetheless the look I got was an irritated one.

Red-Shouldered Hawk getting ready to launch

Red-Shouldered Hawk takes off, note the talons

You would think that this would make the birds of the neighborhood lie low.  But moments later I witnessed this same hawk getting dive-bombed by this Eastern Kingbird (no bigger than a Robin).

Eastern Kingbird atop cherry

Just two days earlier I had seen a family of Great Crested Flycatchers amongst the Cherry trees.

Great Crested Flycatcher

Great Crested Flycatcher youngster

So despite the fact that I missed the last couple of weeks of the mulberry/cherry season there is still a lot of bird watching to do — and it remains rewarding to get up and out in the morning.

Yesterday also yielded a Swallowtail hanging out in the Agastache ‘Tutti-Fruiti’.

Swallowtail on Agastache

Swallowtail fully spread out on the Agastache 'Tutti-Fruiti'

Oriental Lily 'Time Out'

Well it is Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day once again where thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens we are called upon to describe what is blooming right now.  For us it is lillies, lillies, and more lillies.  The problem is that because of the drought we have been through all the flowers are much smaller than normal.  More about that later.  First let me share some of the flower pictures.

Oriental Lily 'Salmon Star'

Oriental Lily 'Marco Polo'

Trumpet Lily 'Scheherazade'

Lilies provide the added benefit of striking fragrance on a summer night and their smell permeates the house if you bring them inside.

Even the daylilies are getting into the act.

Red Daylily

Yes, there a lot of other players in the yard right now — the Shasta Daisies, the Black-eyed Susans, Yarrow, Gaura, Heliopsis, and Joe Pye Weed.

Joe-Pye Weed (Eupatorium purpureum)

And our favorite Glad is out in bloom.

Princess Margaret Rose Gladiolius is the first one out again

And let us not forget a cute little annual Celosia.

Celosia 'Flamingo Feather'

But the biggest feature of the garden has been the lack of water.

We went on vacation at the end of June.  June was a very dry month before we left.  But I had watered everything I could before departing.  For the full month of June this is what we got for rainfall.

Weather for June

Note the record heat.  In addition during the two weeks we were gone there was zero rain and the heat got worse. Through the first 8 days of July not a drop fell at our house and the temperature went to a 106 degrees.  I had counted on getting at least one little rainstorm and hadn’t expected desert-like temperatures.

I still haven’t finished toting up the damage.

The dead and dying on the Maple Allee

This is the sight I faced on the evening I returned.  A lot of labor and years of growth on the little Maples — wasted.

The newly planted Coral Bark Maple is toast...

Garden disasters - note shrunken water-starved corn

Potted plants on evening of our return home

The positive on this last picture is that with water our thirty year-old Grapefruit has opened it’s leaves again.

I’m sure there is some lesson here about abandoning your garden while hiking through the wildflowers in Colorado, but I don’t want to hear it.  Maryland is supposed to have better weather than Nevada…

The new growth on one of our hundreds (thousands) of Maples

One of the key elements of our property are the two green Japanese Maples that I grew from seedlings.  They are now glorious 25 foot tall trees on either side of the house with multi-season interest.

One of the Japanese Maple seedlings frames the deck

The other Japanese Maple seedling marks the entrance to the side yard

We have many other Japanese Maples but none of the others produce the prodigious crop of seedlings that come from these two trees.  For years the kids potted up some of the seedlings and we passed them on to friends.  At one point I put some of the potted trees into the garden just to hold them over during periods of limited water and then for overwintering.  Well season passed into season and they have gotten quite large.  It was getting to the now or never point for these lovely little trees so I dug them out this week (digging is the term since the roots had gone well beyond their pots).

Potted Maples looking for a home

With this many little trees it seemed appropriate to create a little Maple Allee in the lower pasture.  So I took the mower and cut an S-shaped avenue in the high grass with the end point at the two most recent Christmas trees which had been planted at the far side of the pasture.

An S-shaped path in the lower pasture

With the help of the tractor I dug holes on either side of the swath and planted the little Maple trees.  This is a lousy time to be transplanting trees but I decided that the task could not wait for another season.

Maples laid out on the boundary of the path

At the mid point of the path I placed an Amur Cherry (Prunus Mackii) that I had grown similarly in the garden (beginning with a tiny internet purchase that was now 6 foot high).  However there were still more plants that I had placed (temporarily, several years ago) into the potting row.  These included two Redwoods, a Twisted White Pine, and an Italian Stone Pine.

Giant Redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in the garden

The Giant Redwood deserves special mention because I have a history of planting Sequoias on the East Coast.  When we lived in an Alexandria suburb I planted a Giant Redwood about 15 feet from the front porch.  This was 35 years ago.  The last time we drove by the tree was still there but instead of the little 8 inch high plant I had put in, it’s now a huge tree — utterly inappropriate for the location.  Why, you ask, would I do such a thing.  Well it was directly inspired by Wendall Berry’s Mad Farmer Liberation Front where he says

“Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.”

And so, once again, I began here with a little Sequoia sprout that, after growing in the garden for years, is ready for the millennia.

The Sequoiadendron giganteum is actually reasonably hardy in Maryland.  The Coastal Redwood and the Italian Stone Pine are more of a stretch.  But each has a special place in my memory from growing up in California.  They have persisted for a number of years in the sheltered environment of the vegetable garden and now we shall set them free…

Evergreens added to the 'Allee'

Coastal Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)

Sunflower rays

The Gardening Gone Wild Photo Contest for June asks for us to submit the “best frame we have ever created”.  Now that’s a tall order — to pick one picture out of thousands.  Asking for garden relevance narrows the field somewhat but it still a lot of photos to review.  As the judge, Joshua McCullough of PhytoPhoto notes, the perception of a photo changes with time so the question is really what is your favorite photo today?  I think pictures also carry stories in your mind and that influences how you see a photo.  Anyway, for me, for today, the above image of a sunflower captures the sense of the rising sun, with a horticultural vision of the start of the day…