Port Potager

Last week was April school vacation week here in Massachusetts, and we used the time to take a vacation through Pennsylvania and New York. After visiting family over Easter weekend, we headed west to Lancaster County, where we visited the Moravian town of Lititz. The town museum is housed in an old German building made of stone, and behind it is a small public garden, which you enter via a very inviting arbor: The only flowers there right now are some new pansies since it’s still early spring, but you can see some green perennials poking up as well: The centerpiece is this diamond-shaped bed, which for some reason I failed to center in the photo: This is all probably quite lovely in the summer. What you can’t see is that if you keep walking through the garden, you’ll continue down a slope that goes to the small river that runs through town.  The next day we went to the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum , which has original buildings, buildings ...

Back in May, I decided to revamp the little daffodil and hosta border in front of our three-season porch to be filled with more fragrant flowers. The idea here is that these plants are right outside the screened jalousie windows where the furniture is on our porch, so we could enjoy plants that smell nice right outside the windows. The challenge is that this area is also shaded by the sugar maple , which makes choosing flowers tricky. There are lots of leafy plants for shade, but not many flowers. Luckily, not all of the area is in darkness. The left is the shadiest; the right has more sun: So as you can see, I moved the hosta into the shady section, and set out a new hydrangea in the partial-sun portion. Hydrangeas don't smell like anything at all, but I love blue ones, and wanted to create a little vignette of my summertime favorites: blue hydrangeas, white daisies, and orange daylilies:  That should look better in the future when everything fills in and bl...

Even though I'm far away from our Newburyport garden, I do have a several small gardens here at our house in Costa Rica. One garden is inside the house: This stone wall (which I'm pretty sure is actually cement carved to look like a fieldstone wall) separates the living/dining room from the kitchen in this urban, open-concept house. Leafy and vining tropical plants grow from a trough along the top of the wall and well as in pots along the floor. There is an irrigation pipe that drips water into the trough — this water also runs down the wall into a small, walled pool along the floor, where the potted plants can also catch a drink. There is a corrugated plexiglass skylight above for sunlight, and through which some rain also falls when there are heavy squalls. Here is a view from the kitchen side: We have also discovered that (at least) two little house geckos live up on that wall. They are small, brown, and way too fast (so far, anyway) for me to catch in...

Last summer we (okay, this was really mostly Kirk's project, but I helped a little) built the grape trellis with some posts and bamboo . But we only built enough to support the vines at the time, and put off finishing the arbor that we had planned. Well, this past weekend we finally finished it up!  Again, this was mostly Kirk's project for the build. I collaborated on a few design questions, and I took some photos. The new addition is easily visible right now, but by this time next year that bright new wood should be greyed down to match the existing posts. The major design idea here was that the arbor would create a doorway from the garden to the lawn.  One aspect of the arbor that still isn't finished: We are also planning to install a small bench on either side of the side of the arbor, beneath the (eventually) shady roof and over the empty section of bed between the posts and the brick path.  The visual doorway created by the arbor als...

When I wasn't at the ball fields for the kids' baseball games this past (long) weekend, I finally was able to tackle a project I'd been meaning to get to all spring. The weather decided to cooperate (mostly), and I buckled down got to work on updating the perennial border.  The harsh winter we had wasn't at all kind to some of our perennials. Several plants that normally wouldn't have trouble overwintering died back to just a few scraggly stems, or bit the dust completely. Some casualties included both artemisia, some stonecrop, the carnations, and most of a heucherella (if you're really interested in the evolution of the border, you can scroll through previous posts about it to see just what I'm talking about). This left me with some holes to fill this year, which I did my moving some existing things around and buying some new plants. My hatchback full of plants include a white peony ("Mrs. Edward Harding"), three white salvia (...

Ok, so all of our actual roses are bare now as winter closes in. It's snowing and sleeting tonight, but spring will be back. And when it comes, I'll be adding roses to the cutting beds. After some tea and cookie-fueled research, I decided on these three from Heirloom Roses : Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons Golden Celebration Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons Tamora Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons Heritage The cutting garden is shaping up to be full of sunset colors: gold, apricot, salmony pinks, and a few blues for contrast. These are always my favorites, and the reds and whites already have a home in the perennial border, so they won't be missed here. I'm not a huge fan of icy pinks and magenta-purples, so they are not invited. All of the roses I ended up choosing are David Austin roses . He is a breeder who works to create old-fashioned looking English roses. I looked at lots of actual old gar...

Although this summer was been mild and hurricane-free, we often do get a good deal of wind here. Our old row cover fabric  from the spring took a beating because of it, so we picked up some new to protect our broccoli bed from cabbage loopers : This fabric is of much better quality than the stuff we used before, and it comes in rolls 13 feet wide. We got a 16-foot length, which (as you can see) is too big for our 4x8 broccoli patch. Turns our we based our measurements on our older, taller PVC hoops. Better too big than too small, though. We folded up the ends and used bricks to hold them in place: Another upgrade to help hold the row covers in place are these pvc clips: I read about these in  The Year Round Vegetable Gardener , by Niki Jabbour. All it takes is a bit of PVC a size up in diameter from the ones you use for hoops. Kirk cut them into these short pieces, then cut a slice out the long way, leaving the black PVC in a C-shaped piece. Then you j...

When I started this blog, we already had our vegetable garden design well in hand and made only a few relatively minor changes to the berry beds. That design didn't just emerge fully formed, though, and I thought you might perhaps be interested to see how our garden designs evolve over time as we think about our needs for the space and the resources we have. Because we have so much extra loam , I am getting those cutting beds for flowers. You can check out a photo of the space here  if it's hard to get a feel for it in the drawings below. This is located on the northwest side of the screened in porch, adjacent to the berry beds. In the drawing, the berry beds are visible in the lower part — you can see the edges of those raised beds in the center and to the right. In the lower left-hand corner is the edge of brick path that runs across the back of the house. The border to the left is the porch foundation, across the top is a fence and gate opening, and to the right is mo...