A Color Selection

Pink Veronica

White Ox-Eye Daisy

Magenta Rose Campion

Orange Lilies

Purple Asters

Pink Houstonia

Red Red Fire Pink

Pink Spirea

White Fleabane

Orange Flame Azalea

Pink White and Yellow Peony

Blooming some where out there in the wild cultivated gardens now.

Just Around The Barn

Did I mention the Posh Estate is going to be on the Haywood County Master Gardener Tour on June 21st? This is a tiny slice of an expansive garden covering several acres.

I may have let one of the native weed flowers get a little rambunctious.

That's the barn and a teeny bit of the barn gardens. You can see the whole thing on the garden tour.

The Second Mowing

Our group of Master Gardener volunteers are coming by to case the joint tomorrow evening. I am ready for inspection. The sunny utility meadow and the garden becoming got their second mowing. Each successive mowing makes the paths and the Great Lawn more lawn like. The grasses begin to dominate in what is a very mixed species meadow.

What little road shoulder there is along the scenic byway from the bottom of the property at my end, all the way up to the top and a bit into the next county got a weed whacking. I hope that helps with parking. Too many cars at once could prove to be interesting.

The ridge top garden will get it's second path clearing on Thursday before the pre-tour for the garden owners and all the volunteers next Saturday. Then I will do the entire thing once more before the official tour on the 21st. It gets easier and takes less time every time I do it. The final mowing should be pretty quick and easy.

And I must say the wild cultivated gardens really look good when all the paths are freshly mowed. Yes, all sins are forgiven. A strong element of order does wonders to the chaos.

All the hosta are looking good in the shade of the ridge top garden. After the phacelia finishes blooming is when Bulbarella starts to weed around all her hosta, astilbe and other plants in the garden. You don't mess with the phacelia when it is blooming. Fortunately it is a winter annual and once it is done blooming it pretty much disappears on its own.

Something will be blooming in another two weeks, more so in the sunnier parts of the garden than in the shade.

The Ox-Eye Daisy and Rose Campion have begun. They will be in bloom for the tour. Much more will have joined in by then.

I learned last year that I need to weed whack the paths and the Great Lawn on a regular basis for my own sense of well being. Certainly not as often as I am doing it this month, but often enough that I feel like I actually do have a garden.

This tiny bit of order does wonders to help keep me calm.

The Normal Routine At A Faster Pace

I have been editing in the wild cultivated gardens non stop for months now. I even edit as I walk back and forth from one garden to the other. None of it is really for the garden tour. This is just routine editing that needs to be done. There is just a little more incentive to do it now rather than later.

All my prep work for the garden tour was actually done over the winter. That's when rubbish piles were made to disappear, steps and railings were built and entry signs, arbors and pergolas were built, repaired and painted. I'd like to get new bamboo poles for the Blue Pot Art Project before the tour. That was on the list and I haven't gotten to it yet.

This is the time of the Lush when I normally do the first weeding around all the baby trees and shrubberies. That is what I spent my day doing. It makes them a bit more visible and adds a tiny dash of textural definition in all this green. The main point is to prevent them from being smothered.

This is not a proper garden bed. If I ever had that notion it was quickly abandoned after being here a very short time.

It will take a well trained and interested botanical eye to spot the wealth of plant species in the wild cultivated gardens. There are bound to be a few of those who show up.

All the others? Well one can hope they are more mesmerized than shocked by the spectacle they are going to see.

Garden civility of a suburban kind is sparse in the wild cultivated gardens. I may get closer to that in time.

Bulbarella and I go about our business pretty much as we normally would. The pace has just quickened a bit. And that could mean we get to coast for the rest of the summer and enjoy the floral abundance that doesn't even really begin high on the low spot until about the 4th of July.

The Roadside Vegetable Garden Is Full

Every row is taken. There is no more room in the field. Every year I contemplate taking over the east end which is only a so so patch of weeds and wild flowers. We don't really need more produce. I just enjoy growing it.

My half hearted attempt to alter the roadside strip of wild flowers has resulted in a near pure stand of goldenrod. That is what I was trying to get rid of first. I think I'm going to need to get vicious and start over from scratch. A brown strip of death will be involved, but that can wait for another day.

There is a full row of potatoes that are AWOL under that dill. Another half row of the same potato is also missing. I may go digging for a look see pretty soon to find out what is happening under there. Until then that row is occupied.

I planted the squash and cucumbers I had seeded in 4" pots and seeded a half row of parsnips. Then there was no more room and I had plants left over. A gardener can never let a good plant go to waste.

Or maybe they can. I have four large piles of waste that were not going to be moved any time soon. So I weeded them and planted some of my extra vegetables right in my piles of composting dung. An unknown squash had already come up in one pile.

Why not? Those piles of manure were certainly producing a bountiful crop of weeds. So I commandeered them directly into vegetable production instead of dragging the dung up the hill to expand the vegetable garden.

And I still have some squash plants left over and a row of ungerminated cucumbers. I suppose having a little backup can't hurt.

The 2014 Haywood County Master Gardener Tour

Something will be blooming.

I've been getting visits to the blog on searches for the Haywood County Master Gardener Tour. I have blogged it in the past. That is how they end up at Outside Clyde. What people want to know I'm sure is when is this year's tour.

Here you go. This year's Haywood County Master Gardener Tour is on Saturday, June 21st, 9am to 4pm. Rain or Shine. Partly cloudy with a gentle breeze and a high of 75 would be my preferred conditions.

The tour begins at the NC Mountain Research Station at 589 Raccoon Rd in Waynesville. You can buy tickets there and then pick up directions to all the gardens on this year's tour. For more info call the NC Cooperative Extension at 828-456-3575.

There are five gardens on this year's tour, three extensive private gardens - two I am quite familiar with. Extensive is an apt description, possibly an understatement - a perennial garden maintained by church volunteers, and an elementary school teaching garden.

Something is bound to be blooming in one of those gardens.

The gardens are spread from one side of the county to the actual county line on the other. Between the extensive private gardens and the drive, this will be an all day event if you want to see them all.

It is not in the least bit unusual for a private guided tour of the Wild Cultivated Gardens to take up to two hours. That's just one garden on the tour, though it's actually a twofer with the side by side converging gardens of mother and son.

Something will be blooming. Next week I may have a better idea of what that might be.

This is the native wild flower Houstonia purpurea. It has quite a long bloom time over the summer and there is plenty of it in my half of the Wild Cultivated Gardens.

The Posh Estate is the other garden on the tour I know quite well. I do a bit of gardening there. If you want to see what excellent taste and design ideas combined with a healthy budget and a knowledgeable gardener can accomplish in a few short years than this garden must not be missed. I know there will be plenty of blooms in this garden.

You might even be a bit perplexed that the same gardener tends such dramatically different gardens as the Posh Estate and the Wild Cultivated Gardens.

The Black iris won't be blooming, but plenty other somethings will be in bloom.

So don't miss it. Saturday June 21st, the Haywood County Master Gardener Tour. See you here. You could end up at Outside Clyde in reality.

Japanese Stone Structure Several Years Later

I designed and installed my first ever Japanese garden three years ago. It is looking pretty good and has held up well considering. The dogs have been using the pondless fountain basin as a toilet and the clumps of acorus and sedges as nesting places. Thank goodness they are very old and small dogs.

There have only been a few minor changes in the planting since it was installed. One 'Gold Mop' chamaecyparis was taken out because it wasn't happy in the dry spot under the eaves and the ceramic pot was switched.

This is a closer look at one end of the planting. That holly in the bottom right was looking half dead today like something was spilled on it. I cut that part off.

Overall it has been a no fuss garden with minimal upkeep. The pondless fountain is still on it's first pump. The client still loves it. That is a big plus for the garden.

So we did another one. A new entry, covered front porch and walkway was added to a back portion of the house. This cut off a former, way overgrown foundation planting creating a tiny narrow courtyard type space. The only access is by crawling under the deck and walkway. Fortunately I installed it before the railings went on the walkway.

The entire space is viewed from above. Keep it very simple was the idea. There is another 'Sky Pencil' Holly to the bottom right out of the picture. Three shrubs, a dry stream bed, gravel and a Celtic cross on a trial basis. Something else was needed and the cross was available.

Maybe with a large polished round stone? It still needs something more or something different than the cross. What it needs will show up in time.

And this, this is as close as you can get to a no maintenance garden.

All Sins Are Forgiven

Yesterday there was weed whacking, a whole lot of weed whacking. I estimated once that if you add them all up, we have close to a mile of paths in the wild cultivated gardens and that was before I had paths of my own and the Great Lawn.

One thing is certain, the simple order of mowed paths makes a world of difference in the garden. What was once a disaster becomes completely delightful.

The garden is transformed and beckons you to enter. The weeds seem to disappear.

The cultivated begins to stand out.

I still see plenty weeds of course, but it is a little easier to just walk on by.

I have been doing good with spending an hour after dinner each evening weeding in the ridge top garden. A lot of progress has been made. I take a section divided by the paths and weed that section until it is done. The next day I do another section.

The removal of the froze to the ground Deutzias revealed a mystery shrub. I searched online and ID'd it as Beauty Bush, Kolkwitzia amabilis.

Miss Dinah is enjoying the freshly mowed paths.

I finished off the the first haircut of the Great Lawn too. Some trilliums were lost in the process. I waited as long as I could. Hopefully they had enough growing time to replenish the bulb.

Trilliums were not the only casualties from weed whacking. All kinds of nice wild flowers are lost in the process. But it must be done. A garden full of wild flowers is being born. Soon it will be full of visitors and if just one of them thinks, Hey I don't need to mow the whole place. I can just make paths through the Lush. Then the sacrifice will have been worth it.

There will be another mowing before then, possibly two. The paths will be cleared for the garden tour and all sins in the garden can be forgiven.

The Black iris will be gone by then, but something will be blooming.