Marianne Willburn on Great Dixter, the Fringe Tree, Handling Nandina: 65

Great Dixter’s exuberant beds and topiary. What are those, like stylized squirrels? Photo kindly provided by Carolyn Mullet of Carex Tours.

Jealousy can be very motivating, but my true intention is to spread inspiration and information, which is what I am confident Marianne and I will gather during our week at Great Dixter and deliver to you at home. Much like my occasional synopses of good gardening podcast episodes that you may not have time to listen to, I hope to make good gardening info available to you, perhaps without you having to set aside some days and dollars yourself.

That’s sort of my raison d’ etre for making the podcast anyway, but how much better if it originates from Christopher Lloyd via Fergus Garrett?

Plant of the week

The Fringe Tree is one of those common names that would probably not get confused or confusing (I mean, look at those flowers!) but in case you like a lot of syllables, its botanic name is the Chionanthus virginicus.

So pretty, so native, so helpful to our horti-consciences, as mentioned a year ago in episode #11.

My little baby tree, named Rebecca after our wonderful crew member whom we lost in 2020, is coming along so well and I know she would be proud.

Rebecca was one of the huge but vague statistic of drug overdose deaths in 2020. The help she had in place before the pandemic slipped out of her reach, and we saw her slipping too. It was a helpless and horrible process; one we will heal from as we see her tree grow. We all planted it together, and together we will remember her.

Rebecca Kish with Daisy Brown, her favo client dog. Rebecca designed her first and only garden for this property. Abbie makes sure it stays full of color and butterflies each summer.

Marianne Willburn

First, let’s start with the article that Marianne wrote about Great Dixter in 2018. I’m hopeful you will read the whole thing, but here’s a good taste:

Lloyd was a prolific garden columnist and author whose work I credit with “turning me on” at a key point in my own gardening career to the delicious possibilities of pairing prose and patch. His writing drew from a lifetime of both professional training and knees-on-the-ground experience, and his wickedly dry sense of humor kept readers enthralled if they weren’t too busy taking offense.

Marianne also forwarded the link to a podcast which features an interview with Lloyd, which I will listen to tomorrow, when I am back in the garden (and it is not 50 degrees and blustery).

The two Christopher Lloyd books that Marianne recommends most highly are The View from Great Dixter and Color for Adventurous Gardeners. I have set up those two plus all the others I could find on my Amazon storefront, so if you are shopping, thanks for shopping there.

I ordered The Well Tempered Garden for myself, as I hear it is also very popular.

And more links… (how are you doing, do your grow weary of this already?)

To a NYT article by a participant Susan Chira

To a blog post by participant Susan Osmond

To a Detroit News article by participant Nancy Szerlag

Best to stop going on about something that hasn’t happened yet, but you can sense the buzz! More to come!

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Garden Questions, Answered

(or at least opined upon)

What do we think about No Mow May?

How to get rid of invasive Nandina?

Basic tips for planting new plants or tranplants

Here’s how PlantLife UK thinks this No Mow May will work.

What do we think about No Mow May?

Here’s how I think No Mow May will work.

I know what I think of it, even though we are only a week in. If you listen regularly, you will know that I started a ‘No Mow’ patch back in April but Jeff didn’t notice it and it got mown. No matter, we started right up again in time for the celebrated month!

I read a good blog post by Erin The Impatient Gardener on the topic, and she is even more pessimistic than I am. Besides not producing a bee haven, she brought up the point that nieghbors who aren’t into the move may be driven to up their chemical use becaues of neighbors’ dandelion seeds.

How to get rid of invasive Nandina?

If you have this invasive on your property and it is in full deep shade like mine are, it really isn’t causing any harm because it won’t produce flowers and seeds.

Nandina berries — Photo by Amber Malquist on Unsplash

But many people grow it because they love the berries, not knowing that they contain poison that birds may eat, and not knowing that it is escaping their cultivation and growing in wild spaces,

I will be getting rid of my Nandina that grows in the sun by

Cutting it down
Digging out as many roots as I can
Continuing to cut down shoots that come up from roots I missed.
Don’t forget that if you remove the flowers, you won’t get berries, so if you love the plant where it is, that is another way to keep it under your control.