Cold Climate Gardening

I have to say that blogging has brought more surprises to my life than I ever imagined. For instance, I had long enjoyed Margaret Roach’s book, A Way to Garden, and had dreamed, no, fantasized, that I might one day visit it on the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days. Yeah, right. The other side of New York state might as well be the other side of the world, and Purdys don’t travel. That’s a frivolous use of money!

In my review of the Troy-Bilt tiller, I mentioned that I thought we’d have more use for a chipper than a tiller, but that I was going with the majority vote. Margaret responded by offering her little-used chipper, if we’d come and get it. Even with the cost of gas figured in, I reckoned it was a good deal, with the added benefit of getting to meet one of my favorite garden writers and see her garden. (And it just goes to show you can catch any fish if you use the right bait.)

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On April 19th I met my sister in Ithaca, NY. She is a graduate of Cornell University, and has made many visits since then. We were going to the ACNARGS meeting in the afternoon, but first she wanted to show me a few of her favorite places.

One of the places she wanted to take me was the Agway store in Ithaca. In my area Agway is a feed store that is slowly morphing into a lawn and garden store as the farms die away. Sure, you can get a replacement spark plug for your lawn mower, or pick up a flat of pansies–if you’re not fussy about what kind or color of pansies you get. But Agway as a garden destination? I was dubious.

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I am sure I first read A Way to Garden: A Hands-On Primer for Every Season in 1998, the year it was published. I may have been the first person to pull it off the library book shelf and take it home. It had everything I ever want in a garden book: great photos that actually illustrate the text, and text that makes you think about the “why” of gardening as well teaching you a thing or two.

Well, the book is now a blog.

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My main snowdrop “patch” exactly a year ago. They are not so far along this year. Click the photo for a close-upWith all my blathering on about snowdrops, I almost forgot to mention that Hitch Lyman’s garden will be the Garden Conservancy’s first New York state event for their 2008 Open Garden Days on April 5, 2008. If you are able to visit his garden, you will think you have died and gone to snowdrop heaven, because Hitch is the proprietor of Temple Nursery, selling the widest selection of snowdrops in the U.S. (growing over 400 different kinds, not all for sale) and the only one shipping them in the green. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Don’s Galanthus ‘Bitton’ and G. woronowii both originally came from Hitch Lyman’s land, even if they’ve made an intermediate stop since then.

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In 1878, Sherman Stowell sold to Elizabeth Brockett 30 acres of land which he had earlier purchased from George Jennings. I now live and garden with my family on some of that land, which Jennings or Stowell, or perhaps Ms. Brockett, had cleared of trees to make pasture. The forest is growing back, but it’s not the same forest. For one thing, several invasive plants are now growing here, everything from Rosa multiflora to Lonicera tartarica. And where are the trilliums?

Call me a romantic or call me ecologically correct, but I’d like to restore the native flora to my parcel of land, land that was sown to timothy and grazed by cows. How does one go about such a restoration? For starters, you have to know what plants were originally growing there. I’ve taken an informal survey of our property and catalogued all the natives I’ve found. I mention trilliums because they bloom along the roadside further down our country lane. What will it take to grow them here?

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Jane Milliman in “Put down the shovel and blog” had some nice things to say about this website. Rochester is a garden loving city and I am happy to welcome its residents to my little corner of the internet. You can browse through the blog by date, category, or tag (some of the bigger categories are in the menu on the sidebar), and there is also a lot of information in the Cold Climate and Upstate NY sections of the website. I hope you find something here that makes gardening more enjoyable for you.

Jane Milliman, the author of the article, is also the editor-publisher …

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If you are a fan of Martha Stewart Living magazine you might be interested to learn that editors Margaret Roach and Andrew Beckman will each be opening their gardens to the public as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program. Details and directions are on the Conservancy’s website.

This and other garden events for upstate New York are listed in the sidebar as I learn of them, and are also posted to a public Google calendar.

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