Mr I~ Tear Down This Hedge*

Let's imagine a sunny border in place of Hedge. I so can! It might be like this planting at a rather delightful store that sells pottery, garden accessories and brewing supplies. It's where I found the Bottle Brush Tree that came home with me earlier this week. The designer has done a great job of planting for late season bloom...and for critters! Bees of every kind were busy on the Blanket Flower and the Blackeyed Susans

But they were especially busy buzzing around the large planting of mint.
The bees were everywhere and reminded me of the extensive mint planting at the Lurie Garden in Chicago. (You can go here for a late summer or here for our Spring Fling visit.) Did you know that you can smell blooming mint on the air? It was at the Lurie Garden with it's vast mint planting that I noticed the sound of happy bees and a the hint of spearmint on the air. It was delicious! So surely any full scale sunny border would have to have a mentha or two! I'm imagining the possibilities right now...

Or, perhaps, you might enjoy this planting of Mexican Bush Sage at Cheekwood Garden...It was close to noon and with no clouds it looks even more fluorescent. Salvia leucantha is spectacular in a fall garden and it's still fall here. It was covered with bees; a buzzing frenzy.

I love the mixed border in Cheekwood's Perennial Garden
It was a lovely grouping of grasses, annuals perennials and shrubs.
A good mixture of natives and exotics.


It was a Pleasant Interlude. An October day in the middle of November~~Now, back to reality!

Tearing down Hedge and planting a sunny border is wonderful to imagine~ There is a fly in the otherwise pleasant ointment of imagining! Hedge's main job is Noise Abatement and Privacy Maintenance! Perhaps we need a very tall
holly hedge, or
a fantastic wall. I have always wanted a walled garden~~ You know, one of my favorite books was A Secret Garden. To build a wall, I would certainly need the backing of folks like the Cheeks! This wall is the official gated wall to the former home of the Cheeks~~of Maxwell House Coffee fame. Cheekwood was opened in 1960 as an art and garden center. From their mission statement~

"Cheekwood is a 55-acre botanical garden and art museum located on the historic Cheek estate. Cheekwood exists to celebrate and preserve its landscape, buildings, art and botanical collections and, through these unique means, provide an inspiring place for visitors to explore their connections with art, nature and the environment."

They do a pretty good job of it.

I want to thank Peter Robinson, one of Mr. Regan's speech writers for inspiring the post title. Thank you all for indulging my little play on words; a segue for the the garden tours....Well, we hope!

I leave you with this last photo of a tattered Autumn beauty.


Gail

Wildflower Wednesday~Native Bottle Tree

Not what you expected!

Perhaps, you were thinking of this beautiful Bottle Brush Tree~~C&L November 2009

Aesculus parviflora, dressed in the Nashville fall "it" color. I fell for it when visiting the Missouri Botanical Gardens a long time ago...We were walking away from the Climatron when we passed through a planting of very tall shrubs with palmate green leaves (5 to 7 leaflets) and foot long brush like spikes of white tubular flowers. The flowers had showy red anthers that attract hummers. Missouri Plants website*

It was gorgeous and smelled delicious.... Finally, it's growing here!

C&L's Aesculus parviflora is a baby plant! It's planted in the Garden of Benign Neglect on the edge of the dry stream~~In somewhat moist, but, well draining conditions. Bottle Brush Buckeye is not native to Tennessee~~It is found naturally growing in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina DC, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It's hardy to zone 4 and will grow in sun or shade. It is not a xeric plant. Here's what it looked like this morning~~All the pretty fall color has faded to a rich brown. You can see hints of the golden color that it once had. It's a slow growing plant that's known to sucker and create colonies! Although, it's described as not invasive. A big bold planting is just what is needed in the back garden...

Here's a photo of what we can hope to have some day!

Thanks to Mobot for the photos of the mature specimens

The Southern Bottle Tree on the other hand
Has no need for anything other than a level spot of lawn or garden.
The new 'garden tree' is sited for maximum viewing...(You might even be wondering where in the world the stock tank can be found? I promise to finish that tale in another post!) I've been hoping to find a bottle tree that had a tree form.

I think this one fits the bill.

The flowering gaura has absolutely nothing to do with this post!
It's just a pretty bloomer that's still going strong in the garden!
I am so very glad you stopped by!

gail

photos courtesy of MOBOT and J.S. Peterson @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database
http://www.missouriplants.com/Whiteopp/Aesculus_parviflora_page.html

Mish Mashing Away

Witch Hazel/Hamamelis virginiana

The garden is slowing down even more...
There are no longer great swathes of fall blooming asters; even the long blooming Goldenrods have fewer blooms to tempt the late season visitors.
Grasses are turning deeper browns, clearly on their way to decay. Seedheads of perennials are everywhere
and bulbs have arrived in big and small boxes.


Gardening does not come to a full winter stop in this Mid South Zone 7 garden, activities merely slow down. There is no rush for us to get bulbs into the ground before snow covers the garden....The ground may not even freeze for months. But, this gardener has her own time line. Let's get those bulbs planted by the end of November, please!

Gaura has been the best surprise in the Garden of Benign Neglect.
It flowers and flowers!

Our perennials act like perennials everywhere else and die to the ground. Most annuals disappear with the first big frosts. Pansies, violas and cabbages will add color to the garden all winter. Hamamelis virginiana has already begun to bloom (see photo above); next will be H intermedia 'Diane' and then the vernalis witch hazels will bloom during the late winter. A few cyclamen might pop up. It's in full bloom now. There will be cold days and the ground might freeze for a few weeks, but, the sun will warm it all up and you can move plants around safely. It's not unusual to see aster blooms in December and a few brave bees venturing out. The biggest deterrent to winter gardening will be the winter rains and the gardener's need to take a break! Let's get those bulbs planted by the end of November, please!

Purple has popped up in the garden again! A few of the sweet last flowers of the native PFKAA~~Plants Formerly Known As Asters dot the garden. Also, still in flower are fall blooming crocus where I found a sleeping bee one morning this weekend.

The biggest pop of purple are these Adirondack chairs~~

They have have been reborn. All it took was cleaning and sanding and an afternoon of staining to make this big change in the garden! My favorite shot~below~ It gives me a better sense of the promise of purple coloring! It's also a truer photo of the purple stain. The asters, golden leaves of the nearby Juneberry and the red leaves of native dogwoods will be showcased next fall against the purple chairs. For a nano-second, I was tempted to paint the chairs red. Red would have been fun, too, but, the purple is perfect! Instead, Tulipa gregii 'Red Riding Hood' has been planted at the feet of the chairs. Aren't the gregii's delightful tulips! This photo is from Paghat's Garden~~Have you been there? Paghat the Ratgirl has been an online resource since 1999! Her site is chock full of good garden info and nice photos. I thank her for use of the photo.

I know you love befores~~ You can see (well, maybe not clearly, it's a fuzzy, low light shot) that the bluish asters will get along well with the purple chairs. This winter they will be a spot of color in an other wise brown landscape.

Elsewhere in the garden the Sheffield Mums are attracting these diurnal moths!

Yellow-collared Scape Moth and a multi-colored Ailanthus Webworm Moth

There is still enough pollen and nectar in the fading bloom to attract
the small pollinators. Little cutie pie bees and wasps have been visiting the Sheffies since they started blooming.

Check out these members of the mint family!Agastache x 'Raspberry Summer'

Hummingbird agastache has been covered with little metallic green sweat bees all weekend.
If you enlarge the photo you'll see what I mean.

Salvia elegans and Fred.
...and Pineapple sage has finally come into her good looks and is attracting Sulphurs like nobody else. If you want to see some very lovely photos of Sulphurs and honeybees~~Please pop over to my friend Sweetbay's blog!


Thanks for joining me on my meandering Mish Mash Monday posting.
MMM is the brain-child of Monica, Garden Faerie's Musings.


Gail

“In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.” Abram Urban

Gentle Bee The Hand Of The Gardener

The gathering bee

rests upon the goldenrod

the hand becomes the flower

Goldenrod is still blooming at C&L. It is a goldmine of goodness in any garden~~A protein rich pollen and good sugar nectar source for visiting critters. They are still flocking to its golden goodness.... Bees of every sort, wasps, moths and even predators have staked a claim and a space on the last of the flower clusters. They've come to drink nectar, collect pollen, nibble leaves and stems, prey on other insects, or lay eggs.
Its rough and tumble golden beauty has begun to dim and most flowers have
turned to fluffy seeds that will soon be blown about the garden.
Until it completely fades away it will be
a cozy bed for sleeping bees to cling to and
the last stop for many on the journey to winter.

Gail

Warmest thoughts of you all~~Have a good weekend and thank you for stopping by.

Moments In A Garden

If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass

you live more richly those moments.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Gail

Crocus sativus

Autumn Scenes For The Fall Color Project

Do please remember to click to enlarge!

Shagbark Hickory in full golden glory at C&L

All photos taken at Edwin Warner Park and C&L garden

I CRIED over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds. The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come from my garden

in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.*

Fall finally arrived and cloaked our world in beautiful colors...Please join our host, Dave, The Home Garden and other participants in celebrating the Fall Color project.
Edit: Has anyone noticed their comments disappearing? I had a lot of trouble with blogger this weekend and a commenter has told me she knows her comment posted~~then wasn't there later.


Warmest thoughts of you all.
Gail

* Poem is Carl Sandberg's Autumn Movement
For a list of the trees at the Warner parks go here

It Was A Dark & Scary Walk!

Wait a minute!

That sounds familiar.

A gnarly dead tree and shadowed woodland paths.
Wasn't that last year's dark and spooky garden post?
(I liked that post)

Do you remember when
the wayback backyard REALLY was scary?
If you don't recall go here to see it!

Today, it's all dressed up in fall colors.
But, once upon a time, it was a muddy, dark, weedy space
fit for hide and seek with my nieces and nephews and a
hidey hole for the dear deer that found the gate open!
It was a dark and scary walk, but not anymore.

The Dancing Tree kicking up her heels in celebration.

But, just in case,

you are the kind of reader
who likes to sit on the edge of the seat,
thrills at being frightened, or
delights in the ghoulish....
Here are a few really scary things going on at C&L!

Vampire mosquitoes still biting when it's 50 degrees!
20+ inches of rain that's be-witched hamamelis 'Diane' to mildew!

New invasives taking root overnight!
Were they dropped off by alien space ships?

Close your eyes if you don't want to see anything too scary!

The area near my computer
has spilled over into bedlam!

If that's not scary enough
Take a look at my mosaic shed! There are surely cobwebs in the corners!

YIKES!

This scary looking Pterodactyl Seedpod has taken up residence in the garden!

But, it's not completely horror filled!

The sun did manage to peak out from behind the clouds
for a few minutes and fall has arrived in Middle Tennessee!
But you'll have to wait
to see those photos!

~Happy Halloween~



I sure hope your holiday has just the right amount of spookiness!

Gail