Aiken Gardens

Down the Garden Path called I-20

2010-05-20T00:00:00.002-04:00

I hit the road with some gardening buddies a few weeks ago for a tour of a few gardens around the state. We left home at 7:30 in the morning, traveling east toward our first stop, a private garden in the Pee Dee, where Beech Island native, Jenks Farmer is curator.

Now you can imagine that a private garden that has its own curator is a pretty wonderful place, though it is hard to imagine how the sandy flat soil, good for growing tobacco and soybeans, could ever host such a breathtaking ornamental garden.
Carnivorous pitcher plants, ablaze in chartreuse and red, grow near the farm’s offices. The bog garden is fed with water collected in a cistern on the building’s roof.

Jenks is partial to bulbs, and a meandering path through the garden takes you past spent narcissus and burgeoning iris and crinum lilies oversewn with multicolored Toadflax. There are dozens of places to sit and ponder around this garden, many with a view of the pond. Purple Louisiana Iris frames the view from one spot, Spider lilies frame another. Pomegranates were in flower this day.

Take a seat under the thatched roof of the tea house and swing awhile in the swing that’s as comfortable as a sofa, or move along to the gazebo, where, if you’re lucky like we were, you happen upon Botanist John Nelson, the USC professor who writes the “Mystery Plant” column in the Sunday paper. Dr. Nelson sat a spell with us to explain what he was doing with some plants he was collecting (pressing them in a homemade press he had with him) and to tell us all about the A.C. Moore Herbarium at the University where he studies and teaches.

The $10 fee that’s collected from the folks on this tour – you can give more in you like, goes toward support of the herbarium. Like Dr. Harry Shealy here in Aiken, Dr. Nelson was quite the raconteur and we left his company reluctantly, in time to eat lunch and move on to our next stop, Pearl Fryar’s garden in Bishopville, South Carolina.

If you travel over I-20 between Columbia and I-95, you’ve probably come within a mile of Pearl Fryar’s amazing topiary garden. Take a left off the main road, down an ordinary street, with neat ranch style houses and well-kept yards, and you come to Pearl’s place. Fryar got his start, the story goes, back in 1984, when he decided he wanted to have the yard-of-the-month in Bishopville. He began sculpting a few evergreens near his front door and he liked the result.

Today he has at least 145 trees and shrubs in the garden surrounding his home. They are as intricate and expressive as any sculpture, made all the more impressive by the modest man who created them. There’s even a movie about him, “A Man Named Pearl” and he has addressed audiences as diverse as a garden club at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the local elementary school in Bishopville. His work has been exhibited at Spoleto and the State Museum, and a story about him appeared in Newsweek Magazine.

South Carolina has dozens, maybe hundreds of private gardens from the mountains to the sea that exhibit the iconoclastic creativity and imagination for which South Carolinians are often known. Some of those gardens are open to the public all year (Fryar’s is open Tuesday through Saturday). Others, such as the first one we visited, are open only a few times a year and by invitation only. Both these gardens have websites with plant lists and more information about how to get an invitation if you want one.

Pearl Fryar’s garden is a preservation project of the Garden Conservancy, an organization whose goal is to save and preserve America’s exceptional gardens for the education and enjoyment of the public. His is the only South Carolina garden in that group. Elizabeth Lawrence’s Charlotte garden is the only other one nearby. He is in pretty fine company.

The Garden Conservancy sponsors Open Garden Days in twenty-one states across the country, mostly in regions other than the southeast (Charlotte and Raleigh have Open Garden Days in September).

Maybe Southern gardeners consider everyday Open Garden Day. Like Pearl Fryar or Aiken gardener Linda Christine, we love our gardens and we want other people to love them too. People who tour gardens aren’t likely to steal the silver or write graffiti on the garage wall. Still, it might be nice to dedicate a few days when we know it’s OK to ramble through your neighbor’s rose beds. What do you think?

Click to learn more about the first garden we visited
Click to find out about Garden Open Days and the Garden Conservancy
click to see photos of Pearl Fryar's topiary

2010-05-18T12:10:00.001-04:00

I guess Hank and I are just getting old. I’m not sure what we used to do for fun on a weeknight, but nowadays, one of our most pleasant and relaxing evenings are spent watching British mysteries we order from Netflix. Many of them have confusing and complicated plots that you can barely follow without taking notes. One Hank likes, “A Touch of Frost,” is a dark and gritty police detective drama set in Leeds. Another one I like is about two women named, cleverly, Rosemary and Thyme. One is an amateur sleuth and the other is a plant pathologist. There are, of course, lots of plants, and plant problems to be discussed amidst the whodunit drama and the setting, always some lush, scenic English garden, is better than a travelogue. “Midsomer Murders” is another favorite with great scenery.
Hank’s greatest favorite has just returned to Masterpiece Theater on Sunday with new episodes. It’s called “Foyle’s War” and tells the story of a police detective in the south of England who is constantly called on to solve some murder or other. The female character is Foyle’s War also has a lovely name – in real life, she’s called Honeysuckle Weeks.
Now somebody named Honeysuckle Weeks sounds like she could be from Aiken, even though she is clearly quite British. We have a lot of Weekses around here, and we have a lot of Honeysuckle. So now do you see where I’m going with this?
Japanese Honeysuckle is in full bloom right now around town. It’s the plant we remember fondly from our childhood, but the plant Dr. Jeff Priest, in a class I took from him once, called only “Bad Plant!”
The fragrance of Japanese honeysuckle evokes memories of spring and walking barefoot and holding hands and sucking the drop of sweetness from the fuzzy corolla. How could it be that bad?
It was introduced into this country in the 1800’s as an ornamental vine and for erosion control and eventually escaped into the wild across the country. It is most abundant in the southeast where it is considered a “pernicious weed” that is almost impossible to control. Though there are wholesale nurseries around the country that supply Japanese Honeysuckle to retail outlets, it still has maintained a bad reputation with conservationists.
Perhaps because of the relative size of its leaves and flowers, the Oriental interloper doesn’t seem nearly as treacherous to me as say, Wisteria or Kudzu or Water Hyacinth. I’ve never seen a barn or a mule swallowed up by honeysuckle (actually I’ve only heard that about the mule and the kudzu). I’ve never heard of Honeysuckle clogging up a waterway. And I’ve never had honeysuckle choke out a perfectly good tree, though I’m told that it can.
The genus Lonicera contains about 180 deciduous or sometimes evergreen species of bushy or climbing shrubs, many of which are less invasive than the Japanese variety. It was named by Linnaeus after Johann Lonitzer, a German naturalist. They are usually grown for their masses of trumpet shaped, perfumed flowers.
A mannerly choice for Aiken gardens is our native honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens or Coral Honeysuckle, so named for its coral color blooms which resemble those of its Japanese cousin. It will withstand our winters, sometimes even putting forth a bloom when our landscape is otherwise gray and bare. It will grow is in dry shade but thrives in rich, moist soil in full sunshine, and will grow to twenty feet or so.
Several years ago I planted a yellow variety of the native honeysuckle named “John Clayton” on the fence that is crowded with ivy and Virginia Creeper and roses. It’s always sent out growth, but never flowered. This year, the growth is even thicker, but miraculously it has chosen to bloom, quite beautifully. “John Clayton” was found on the grounds of historic seventeenth century Abington Church in Gloucester County, Virginia and was named for the colonial botanist Rev. John Clayton of Gloucester County.
Woodlanders Nursery, where I got “John Clayton,” says it is a compact repeat bloomer selected by the Virginia Native Plant Society, a favorite vine for mailbox posts or small garden arbors.
There appear to be many cultivars of Lonicera sempervirens, and some claim to bloom longer than others, all are quite lovely though, and I think Dr. Priest would never call them bad.
Another good honeysuckle for Aiken gardens is Gold Flame Honeysuckle or Lonicera heckrottii. It is a vigorous vine which grows 15 to 25 feet but can also be pruned back to form a dense shrub 4 to 6 feet round. It has long, very fragrant 1 1/2 inch coral pink to purple flowers with a pale yellow inside that more closely resemble Japanese Honeysuckle.
So now I am thinking of changing my name. How does Honeysuckle Elder sound? Or maybe I should just get a cat. Honeysuckle would be a fine name for an orange tabby.
click to read about Foyle's War and the Real Honeysuckle Weeks

First Rose of Summer

2010-04-29T17:26:00.000-04:00

LIVIN' EASY IS A FLORIBUNDA THAT IS ALWAYS AMONG THE FIRST TO BLOOM IN SPRING AND THE LAST TO STOP BLOOMING IN FALL. SHE IS QUITE THE THORNY LADY, BUT SHE MAKES UP FOR THAT BY BEING FAIRLY RESISTANT TO ALL THOSE ANNOYING ROSE PROBLEMS. THIS ROSE HAS BEEN MY GARDEN FOR A GOOD TEN YEARS!

Banksia Rose

2010-04-13T09:47:00.000-04:00

Both White and Yellow Banksia Roses bloom on the same bush! Because of someone's long ago goof, we can enjoy both flowers at once.

Phinizy Swamp Nature Park

2010-04-11T15:09:00.000-04:00

Red Wing Blackbird

2010-04-10T16:54:00.000-04:00

Bird man?

2010-04-03T17:02:00.000-04:00

Enjoying an Easter Egg Hunt with our grandchildren at The Church at Sandhurst in Florence, SC, I spotted this birdnest in the low branches of a crepe myrtle. The nest looked like a bird had made it, but there was a pliable branch woven around the nest and branches that appeared to be holding it in place. Could any kind of Coastal Plain bird have made such an intricate arrangement? Was somebody giving the bird a hand? Was it an elaborately conceived Sunday School lesson?

Aiken is Busting Out All Over!

2010-03-23T19:50:00.000-04:00

Forsythia is a little late this year, making it all the more appreciated. Give it plenty of room and let it go.

Evergreen Clematis tumbles over a fence like a frilly waterfall.

This delicate quince is a perfect reminder of spring.

Floating Hellebores

2010-03-18T18:58:00.001-04:00

Hellebores, or Lenten Roses, are a shy group. They tend to keep their heads down, for protection, I suppose, but whatever the reason, it's hard to get a good look at the flower unless you lie down on the ground. Try cutting a few on a short stem and float them in a crystal bowl, as you would camellias.

I have Been Inspired

2010-03-17T17:51:00.001-04:00

Aiken has been a tree city for years. If Woodlanders' Nursery's Bob McCartney has his way, many of those trees will be named and blessed in a unique citywide Arboretum, encompassing hundreds of species of trees in a six mile radius from downtown - trees in parkways, Hopeland Gardens, Hitchcock Woods, and private gardens.

After weeks of cold dreary weather, at last we have - more cold, dreary weather. But the Saucer Magnolias and the Star Magnolias and the Flowering Cherries just couldn't stand it any longer and have burst into pink, delicious bloom. Daffodils are everywhere. Springtime, you wouldn't come to us, so we're coming to you!

Neighbor With Garden - LIkes to Share

2009-11-25T16:20:00.000-05:00

Our next door neighbor when I was growing up owned the lot behind his house. He was an engineer for the Southern Railroad, but had grown up in north Georgia in the country and was an able gardener in his spare time. Mr. Lingerfelt’s lot was at least a half acre in size, set in the suburban Atlanta subdivision where we lived, and on it he grew fine tomatoes, squash, corn, and okra in the summer and various greens in the fall. He’d load up a basket and bring it to the back door and offer them to my mother for a few dollars he used to help support his large garden and large family. You couldn’t get much fresher than Mr. Lingerfelt’s vegetables, and we enjoyed them for as long as my parents lived in that house. He even brought over a squirrel stew once, not to sell, just for them to taste. That, my mother turned down.

Here in Aiken, our next door neighbor, Wade Brodie, is equally generous with the bounty from his garden in the country east of town. He reminds us through the summer that there are tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers out back, sometimes still on his truck, and we can help ourselves. Occasionally, Sissy, Wade’s wife, brings a jar of her famous gazpacho, the perfect meal for a hot August night.

A few months ago Wade called with an offer of scuppernong juice, ready to be made into jelly, and last week came the greatest gift – a huge bag of collard greens he and Sissy had picked that day. I suppose they knew their citified neighbors well enough to know that, even if we had the inclination to wash those collards – and it takes, I’m told a great deal of washing – we probably weren’t up to the task and would wind up with a pot full of greens and South Carolina grit. So, he brought them washed and chopped and ready to go in the pot. It beats squirrel stew any day.

Mr. Wade’s collards and Mr. Lingerfelt’s turnip greens all belong to a large family of vegetables called Cruciferae, which gets its name from its four-petaled flower that looks like a crucifer or cross. This clan also includes arugula, bok choy, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, kale, mustard, and radishes.

Collards are a form of a variety of cabbage called kale. The leaves are thick and rather rounded like cabbage, while kale has leaves that are usually curly and often finely divided. Turnip green leaves are less dense, more elongated and have an edible root called, of course, a “turnip.”

Collards and turnip greens have been discovered by the foodies lately and some of my favorite cookbooks have recipes for them. Donald Barickman’s “Magnolia’s Down South - Uptown/Downtown Southern Cuisine” from his famous East Bay Street restaurant in Charleston ( I saw Oprah there once), recommends cooking collards with a little onion and garlic and olive oil, cider vinegar, lots of chicken broth and a ham hock or neck bones – “till the greens have a good flavor and are silky in texture.” Silky collards – who’d have thought it? I put in a little sugar too.

My gardening neighbor and mentor Judy shared her gardening space with me this summer. Out behind our houses, it’s the only sunny spot available to both of us. She planted tomatoes, some okra, and green beans, and I planted lots of basil, a row of zucchini and yellow squash and, rather as an afterthought, three ichiban eggplants.

The tomatoes are played out now. The squash is turned under. The basil and okra and bush beans have been replaced by Judy’s sweet peas and spinach and some broccoli she started from some heritage seeds she found at a farmer’s market this summer. The eggplant, however, plays on. It is even sort of pretty, as vegetables can be when they’re healthy.

Ichiban seems less bitter than big old eggplants we’re used to, and the long narrow body, peeled, hollowed out a little, and dipped in flour, beaten egg, and breadcrumbs, make a perfect little boat for the seafood and sauce that go into Eggplant Bayou Teche, the tastiest Cajun dish I’ve ever eaten. It’s also the most time consuming, but you can get it at VZ’s Big Easy now in Aiken.

I looked the other day to see if Mr. Lingerfelt was still living in our old neighborhood, and found he’d died just a few months ago, still living in the house where he’d been for over fifty years. There was his picture, grinning, with a big cigar on one side of his mouth. The obituary even mentioned the half acre garden I remembered, and I found a google earth shot of it, probably taken in spring or early summer. There it was - that red Georgia clay, surely enriched by now from constant tending, fresh plowed, looking ready for the first summer crop of tomatoes and squash.

I hope another gardener buys his home and his garden. What a great selling point for the houses around him, and around the Brodies and around my friend Judy - “Neighbor with garden – likes to share.”

It's A Sure Sign That School's Starting...

2009-08-20T16:07:00.003-04:00

when every other recycling bin holds a box for a laptop. Dell, HP, Toshiba, and Apple boxes sit on top of beer and Diet Coke cans and newspapers that line the Tuesday morning walking circuit for Bell and me.

And with the beginning of school comes the end of summer. We’re back from the beach - Isle of Palms, South Carolina, having waited until the last possible week to rent a house, in case David chose to go to summer school. It gives you something to look forward to, we say, and it’s cheaper then sometimes, the week before school starts.

After last year’s disastrous rental, with dangerously loose porch pickets and a fraternity house floor, where, in the words of my sister-in-law, Kathy, “The three second rule did not apply,” I was determined to upgrade. And so we did - to a rather grand, for us, six bedroom affair with an impressive collection of TV sets and dvd players, cable – stuff you really don’t need at the beach, but the all important view of the Atlantic.

It was a far cry from the 70’s houses we used to rent, with no air conditioning, no telephone, no television, no washer and dryer or dishwasher, sometimes a few rows back from ocean front, where the only breezes came from the box fans we squeezed in the car.

But nothing is too good for the newest addition to our beach crew, Lauren Elizabeth, now nearly two months old, who probably wouldn’t have minded one of those 70’s houses. She looks like her brothers, only softer. “I want her to learn to put herself to sleep,” her mother says, “please try not to let her go to sleep in your lap.” - pretty stiff demands for a granny who’s finally got a chance to hold a baby girl after a host of boy children. I tried my best. “It’s OK, my mom does it too,” says Lauren’s mama, by way of forgiveness.

The weather was good – not as suffocatingly hot as you might expect for mid-August. A couple of rainy mornings came and we were off to the Fire Museum in North Charleston – a good place for our two preschoolers to get their fill of fire trucks, then to the Children’s Museum downtown, near the Visitors’ Center, where I think, at least a million children had chosen to spend their last day of freedom before school starts.

Three-year-old Elliot decided this was his year to ride in the boat and go fishing. He caught the most – five baby sharks, but got away from his quarry as fast as he could once they got reeled in.

Hank and I will have been married forty years this weekend - if you see him, suggest something sparkly. David surprised us with a digital copy he’d made of the tapes we sent back and forth when Hank was in Vietnam in the very early 70’s, the first time we’d heard them in all that time. It is a great gift to be able to hear ourselves at the beginning, to hear our early plans, some that turned out and some that didn’t, to hear that some of the things we argue about and worry about haven’t changed much in forty years. We were more polite to each other then, and our voices were a little higher. I sounded a little more redneck, (though I may still sound redneck, it’s hard to shed Georgia cracker, I think).

We came home to a lush, green garden, some ripe tomatoes, four ichiban eggplants, and a brand new crop of weeds. We’ll take care of them, I expect, while we begin thinking about fall planting, and also - next summer’s beach trip.

Blaze Away Aiken!

2008-11-07T17:32:00.002-05:00

“Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! … A village is not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They are important, like the town clock.” Author and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau would be happy in Aiken I think. Aiken is Blazing Away, as the man says, with autumn color. The Maples, first in his list of necessary trees, have made a breathtaking appearance this season.

Maples belong to the genus Acer, a word that comes from a Latin word meaning “sharp,” since most of the maples have pointed leaves. There are many handsome maples, and, many are quite happy in our Aiken soil and climate. Maples are deciduous trees grown for shade and color and, in the case of the northern grown sugar maple (Acer saccharum) for the syrup made from their sap. The wood of maple is sometimes used in furniture, and the neck of a Fender Stratocaster Electric guitar is also made of maple wood.

The fruit of a maple tree is a winged seed called a “samara,” or commonly called a “key.” These little whirlybirds are fun to watch and are attractive to wildlife, and very likely were your first exposure to the science lesson of how seeds are spread by nature.

There are four species of maple tree adapted to all areas of South Carolina, according to the Clemson extension. Red maple (Acer rubrum), Japanese maple (A. palmatum), southern sugar maple (A. barbatum) and chalkbark maple (A. leucoderme) are fairly easy to grow. Bob McCartney of Woodlanders Nursery tells me that the northern grown sugar maple grows well here too.

The ideal soil for most maples is rich, porous and well-drained. Most do well in a fairly wide soil pH range, although many favor slightly acid soil. Red and silver maples thrive in fairly wet soils. Some maples tolerate moderate drought. Most thrive in full sun or partial shade. Some should be protected from the sun to prevent leaf scorch and provided irrigation.

Japanese Maples trees come in a great range of sizes, from under six feet to 40 or 50 feet tall. They are slow growers, but we don’t mind, because the leaves, which can be narrowly or broadly dissected, are so exquisite in color and form, sometimes arching and spreading gracefully down, other times projecting up, that we take them anyway they come.

Some Japanese Maples have red foliage in the spring as new leaves emerge, change to green in summer and run red again in the fall. Others emerge green and remain so until fall, when they become a showy copper, orange, red or yellow. The Japanese Maple can be used as a small lawn specimen, an accent plant, a patio tree, a container plant, or in grouping.

Be sure to plant a Japanese Maple in dappled shade, as direct sunlight may scorch the leaves in summer. Too much shade, Clemson warns, may cause the tree to grow more slowly and purple leaves to become more green. Prune in late summer or early fall and prune only branches or trunks that rub against each other. Once established, keep pruning to a minimum.

A non-dissected leaf of a Japanese maple looks sort of like a hand with fingers. Cultivars in the Non-dissected group are “Bloodgood’ and the slightly smaller, ‘Burgundy Lace.’
A dissected leaf has narrow cut leaves. Those in the dissected group are lower growing (8 to 10 feet) and include ‘Crimson queen,’ ‘Waterfall,’ and ‘Inaba Shidare.’

We can spot another maple species – the Red Maples, in spring, while driving around the highways of South Carolina, by the showy red clusters of flowers that sprout on the branches in early spring.

Plant your red maple in moist, slightly acidic, fertile soil. It likes partial shade but will also thrive in full sun. Clemson mentions ‘Columnare,’ ‘October Glory,’ and ‘Autumn Flame’ as good cultivars. Woodlanders Nursery offers an unusual variety called ‘Candy Ice’ with variegated leaves. Cold Creek also carries Red Maples.

The Southern Sugar Maple (Acer barbatum - AKA Acer floridanum), like the ones growing on York Street in front of Wade and Sissy Brodie’s are large trees that show off their spectacular yellow color this time of year. The three trees also have a job to do in summer. Planted on the west side of the Brodie’s house, next to the street, they provide shade from the hottest summer sun. Woodlanders also carries these.

I’ve read that the yankee version of the Sugar Maple, Acer saccharum, doesn’t perform well in these parts, but if you’ve ridden by the Aiken Standard Building in the last week or two, you’d have to disagree. Those Sugar Maples, Acer saccharum, have put on a dazzling display this year. I don’t know if the folks at the Standard have tried harvesting syrup from the tree, but theoretically, at least, they could.

That Sugar Maple is a large tree, slow growing and long lived. The leaf colors range from yellow to orange and red with attractive pale yellow flowers in the spring. Plant your sugar maple in fertile, moist, slightly acidic, well-drained soil.

If you ever wonder why you like living in Aiken, drive around town this weekend and see just what a beautiful town in is. Thoreau would have to admit that it is, indeed, complete.

While you’re out, don’t miss “St.Thaddeus Creates” this Saturday and Sunday in the church gym. There will be lots of handcrafted items, all ready for Christmas, and part of the earnings go to local outreach projects and to Mead Hall.

This is the last weekend of summer, 2008

2008-09-18T06:00:00.006-04:00

We know it by the calendar, but our senses also hint that season is winding down. The sunlight falls at a different angle through the kitchen window, the Chessers’ dogwood is sporting its first blush of red, and the birds are quieter, their chirps replaced by the occasional pop of a wisteria seedpod setting seeds for spring. And, best of all, it is blessedly, blissfully cool.

One of best things about writing a garden column in a small town is the contact it gives you with lots of people – people you see often and people you’ve never met. They call you and invite you to come by and look at their unusual plants, or send you a photo by email or snail mail.

The past few weeks yielded a bumper crop of those kinds of contacts. One call came from New Ellenton. Like me, June Cofer is a plant collector. Less concerned with design and more interested in finding interesting plants, she and her husband have a huge garden filled partly with vegetables – she was harvesting the last of the peas when I arrived – and partly filled with unusual plans she’d purchased, been given, and in many cases, dug up.

The promise of a clump of Coral vine was the thing that tempted me to the Cofer’s garden in the first place. Coral vine is an annual or perennial vine, depending on how the winter treats it, that is evergreen in warmer climates where it may become invasive. Here it will die back in winter and, if mulched and protected a little, will reappear in spring with a mass of delicate pink flowers and arrow shaped leaves. “Give it something to climb on,” she warned me. “It grows a lot over the summer.”

Though Ms. Cofer’s Coral Vine had no flowers, my friend Linda Christine knew where there was one blooming and took me to Gem Lakes to see it. The Shealy’s garden in Gem Lakes is abounding in color now, and the Coral Vine, buzzing with bees, made a lush cover over the trellis where it was planted.

Mrs. Cofer had other plants she wanted to share that I would have loved to take off her hands if I could - a healthy loquat tree, a sprawling Angel Trumpet.

It’s Angel Trumpet time now. Kathy Walker, also of New Ellenton, sent me a photo of her Angel Trumpet, taller the roof of her house.

I don’t know if there’s a more beautiful, more elegant flower than the easy to grow Angel Trumpet. Like hydrangeas of early summer, we can’t let fall go by without at least acknowledging its presence. We whacked it down to the ground after the freeze killed it last winter. Then, with the first warm days of spring, shoots begin to emerge from the mass of roots. By now, it’s gigantic, with fragrant, trumpet-shaped blossoms dangling from its branches.

Lisa Roberts sent me a photo of another plant on steroids she has growing in her front yard. She’d purchased the seeds for Castor Bean at the Pascalina Herbe Faire in the spring and said she felt like Jack that planted the Beanstalk. The plants are already twice the height of her 6’2” son with burgundy palm-shaped leaves and fuzzy seed pods that are a great contrast in shape and texture with many other late summer flowers and foliage plants. They grow from seed fairly easily. Just be careful. They are quite poisonous.

"In Georgia, the legend says ...

2008-09-11T06:00:00.000-04:00

The May River toward Palmetto Bluff

That you must close your windows
At night to keep it out of the house."
from “Kudzu” by James Dickey

I’ve learned a lot about gardening from my patient friend Judy. She’s introduced me to dozens of interesting plants. She taught me about how I should be careful not to get fertilizer on the leaves of the plants I’m fertilizing and which kinds of tomatoes she thinks are the best to grow and when to plant sweet peas. Best of all, she didn’t even complain when I planted a potato vine and a five-leafed akebia vine on the arbor that stands between her garden and mine. These two have the Banksia Rose in a full-nelson now, despite my efforts to get rid of them.

Anytime a gardener plants an unusual plant, it pays to look into its background first. No matter how attractive or how beneficial a plant is, it looses its charm when you can’t control it. Take Kudzu, for instance. Judy and I were sitting near a bank overlooking the May River in Bluffton this weekend when I noticed a purple flower spike jutting up from a healthy looking vine covering the river’s bank. The flowers were pea-like in a rich purple color, on six or eight inch long spikes, and they smelled like grape Nehi.

If I hadn’t known better, I’d have picked some of it and brought it home, but being a Georgia girl, as I am, I recognized the thing by its leaves. Pueraria montana var. lobata is its botanical name, but it’s more commonly known as Kudzu.

You see Kudzu all over the southeastern United States, but it always has seemed the most abundant along I-20 between here in Atlanta. That may not be my imagination.

Kudzu was introduced into the United States in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Japanese exhibit contained a garden filled with the vine, bearing sweet smelling blooms and healthy green leaves. It began to be planted first ornamentally. Then during the Great Depression, the Soil Conservation Service encouraged people to plant it for erosion control.

Alabama filmmaker Max Shores tells us that Kudzu’s most vocal advocate was Channing Cope of Covington, Georgia, a WSB-AM (Atlanta) radio personality. During the 1940’s Cope traveled across the southeast starting Kudzu Clubs to honor what he called “the miracle vine.”

Covington, Georgia is right there in the Kudzu corridor along the interstate. Maybe the proliferation of the vine there was not just in my head.

Cope was disappointed when the U.S. government stopped advocating the use of Kudzu in 1953. Kudzu just grows too well here it seems. Our winters aren’t cold enough to kill back the roots, and Kudzu spreads like a creature from a science fiction novel. The vines grow as much as a foot per day during the summer, over trees, power poles, and anything else it comes in contact with.
To get rid of it, you must continuously cut back the leaves to deplete its carbohydrate supply or destroy the root crown, a fibrous mass of tissue that sits on top of the root, which can regenerate, even it’s dumped in another site.
Some parts of Kudzu are edible. The young leaves can be used for salad, or cooked like spinach. I’ve read about, but never tried, the flowers of Kudzu that may be battered and fried or made into jelly, and the roots that can be cooked as well. Parts of Kudzu are used in herbal medicine.
The southeastern United States is no longer the only area with claim to Kudzu creep. Dr. Harry Shealy tells me that it has spread north to Illinois and west to Texas. It’s also invaded South Africa, Malaysia and some western Pacific Islands. But we may claim the most acres covered – over 2,000,000.

Kudzu blooms everywhere, he says, not only along the coast. The flowers just don’t show up well from a distance. If I like the flowers, and they are quite attractive, I could plant a Millettia, or Evergreen Wisteria vine, a much more mannerly look-alike. But I won’t plant a Kudzu vine on the arbor or anywhere else. That might push Judy over the edge.

For a county of around 150,000, Aiken is well represented in “Garden and Gun” magazine’s “50 Best of the New South” this month. The article names Beech Island native Jenks Farmer, Best Horticulturist . Jenks is curator and designer of Moore Farms in Lake City, SC and owner of Lush Life Nursery, a great mail-order source for Crinum Lilies. Woodlanders’ Nursery, right here in downtown Aiken, is listed as “Best Nursery.” There is plenty of competition in both arenas. Hometown boys make good!

If You Go To the Beach, You're Going to get Sand in Your Bed

2008-08-21T08:00:00.001-04:00

It was not the worst house we’ve ever rented. In some ways, it surpassed the houses where we stayed on Pawleys Island in the 70’s. This house had air-conditioning, practically unheard of in a rental then. It had a dishwasher. We washed and dried by hand. It had a washer and dryer. We either went to the laundromat or wore dirty. And this house had a microwave, which, in the early 70’s, had been invented but nobody owned one.

This house, on another South Carolina beach, was surrounded by a little grass, a lot of ants and a whole lot of sand, which, because the house sat flat on the ground, made its way into the house, and even our beds, with regularity, and the house broom didn’t get much rest.

Here in Aiken, on the edge of the sandhills, we fight another battle with sand. Peaches, watermelons and peanuts love sandy soil, but most other garden and landscape plants need more nutrients than it provides. Sandy soil is good for plants that don’t like wet feet, but hard on plants that need a lot of water, so we must constantly amend with humus and other organic material.

But Sand is what makes the beach a beach, I think. A rocky beach should be called something else. Sand is “nature’s true grit,” says Todd Ballantine in his wonderful book about beach ecology, “Tideland Treasure.” .

Three things make up our beach sand, he says. Quartz is weathered from Appalachian granite and was transported here by ancient rivers. Ground up sea shells are calcium carbonate pulverized by sea surf. The final ingredient is detritus from plants, animals, plankton skeletons, fecal pellets and bacteria. Sand feels gritty, as opposed to silt, which is smaller grained and feels smooth. Sand feels especially gritty when it’s rubbed between the bottom sheet and your bare legs.

It was only a short walk across the sand dunes to the beach from our house. Sea Oats are the most plentiful plants on the dunes. They are the seashore’s indispensable “amber waves of grain” with creamy panicles on six foot stalks that bend in the intense beach wind. A wild relative of the oats from which oatmeal is made, Sea Oats are there for more than just decoration. These Sea Oats send roots deep down into the dunes and help hold them in place.

Other beach grasses populate the dunes as well. Bitter panic grass, broomsedge, nutgrass, and the nasty, foot-puncturing sandspur help keep the dunes from blowing away.

Besides the sandspur, other shore plants have developed thorny defenses against marauding herbivores. Horse nettle, Solanum carolinense, is close kin to our garden tomato (the same genus) and is familiar to Aiken gardeners as an irritating yellow flowered, thorny spined plant that pops up regularly in our flower and vegetable beds.

Other spiky plants that grow wild on the dunes are also grown as ornamentals in xeriscaping. Yucca has sharp, pointed leaves that grow in a rosette shape with a tall candelabra of white flowers. Prickly Pear cactus pops up here and there and bears a flower and a fruit that can be made into jelly.

Closer to the ground, yellow flowering Evening Primrose still blooms along with wild Morning Glory. One of the most prevalent beach plants and one that that we don’t seeing growing wild in Aiken is the round leaved Beach Pennywort. And there’s smilax, of course.

All these plants have adapted to grow in the sand in the hot, windy, salty conditions that exist along the shore. If it weren’t for them, the dunes would blow away or wash away and eventually the houses would too. We wouldn’t have our yearly family vacation, where the big boys can go fishing and the little boys can dig a hole to China and fill it with ocean water.

So it wasn’t the best house. Most mornings began with the chirp of two-year-old Elliot calling, “Mammommy! PopPop!” and ended with a quiet night on the porch with his big brother who’s now four and fascinated with sea turtles. “Look, grandmommy, the moon looks like a seashell.” Angel voices. What’s a little sand in your bed?

Picks and Pans for Summer 08

2008-08-20T15:34:00.000-04:00

There’s nothing like late August in the South Carolina midlands to separate the sheep from the goats. We’ve rolled along all summer, enticed by wonderful flowering things we’ve seen growing at the nursery or in glossy photos in magazines. We’ve brought them home and planted them in the appropriate place in the garden and expected them to look like they did in the picture or newly emerged from the greenhouse.

Just like the dress from Talbots that looks fabulous in a size 6 on a 5’9” model in the catalog but not quite the same in a size 14 on you in front of the full length mirror in your bedroom, real life sometimes doesn’t live up to exactly what we expected.

Still in a testing mood after last week’s tomato test, I want to gather some recommendations from Aiken Gardeners for their favorite hardy plants for local gardens. I’ll start with some of my picks and pans:

Dragonwing Begonia. The bright red flowers and thick shiny leaves of this annual make it a star in my book. Dragonwing seems resistant to pests – something I’ve been fighting all summer in some parts of my garden. It’s able to stand up to a few weeks of low water when the sprinkler head was broken, and to just be an all around good plant. It seems happy in shade or a whole lot of sun.
Alternantha. I think this variety is called “Party Time,” though there are dozens of other varieties in many colors with different leaf shapes to recommend. I planted a few pots of this rather late and it still seems to be thriving. Alternanthera is grown for its foliage, and this particular variety has pink and green leaves that fill in the holes with color without the demands of a flowering plant. Tom Rapp uses a chartreuse alternanthera with small, bright green leaves in some of the city plantings and has for several years. That’s a clue that it’s a hardy plant.
Purple fountain grass. There’s nothing like the drought tolerant grasses to add interest and texture to a bed. This fountain grass is especially attractive as it nods in the morning breeze. Too bad it won’t bloom year round.
Black-eyed Susan. Probably the most common wildflower across the United States, a sign that it can deal with hot summers and occasional neglect.
Lantana. Any plant that survives the summer on the west side of my house out of sprinkler range, and returns every year in a burst of yellow, butterfly loving color, can stay in my garden as long as I can turn a spade.

And now for the plants that did not live up to my expectations.
Sun Coleus. I know I have mentioned more than once that whatever is eating plants in the back bed must be especially fond of these coleus. I have grown them for years and they always seemed to stand out as good plants. This year I’m ready to be done with them. Is it something I said? Have I taken them for granted? I’ve vowed to give this bed a thorough renewing this fall and then again in spring. Coleus gets one more chance and we’ll part for good.
Plectranthus ‘Mona Lavender” She looked so pretty in the hanging baskets – so hardy and soft. Mona must have given the critters of the night a come hither look and they took her up on the invitation. They’ve been munching on those leaves all summer. No leaves, so no flowers. No more Mona for me unless it’s in a hanging basket.
Some of the new coneflowers. I think I’ll stick with the old reliable varieties. ‘Magnus’ is a good one that’s been around a while and has proven itself.

F.A.T.T.

2008-08-20T15:29:00.000-04:00

.“You know what they said when the old lady kissed the cow…there’s no accounting for taste.” Old Elder family saying.

They’re celebrating in Atlanta these days. Not because the Dogs were the preseason pick for number one in the nation for the first time ever. That seems to make everybody a bit nervous. But they’ve had rain! Though Lake Lanier is still low, this July’s rainfall was above average and watering is again allowed, though there are still some restrictions.

Judging by the abundance of produce at one small Farmers’ Market, in the parking lot of St. Phillips Cathedral on Peachtree Road in Buckhead, there’s a bumper crop of vegetables – and not your ordinary vegetables.

I’ve been reading, and writing, about heirloom vegetables, primarily tomatoes, for the past two years. I planted some heirloom tomatoes last year and some more this year, but had not had much success. I wanted to taste them and see if they really were as good as promised. Wanting some to keep and some to give some away, I chose four, maybe five, varieties, picked two of each variety and divided them into two bags.

“That’ll be $17.95,” said the girl behind the table. Gulp. That was somewhere around two dollars a tomato. These had better be good.

I gave some away, supplementing my gift with some less expensive hybrids, and brought home one of each variety for the First Annual Tomato Taste Test – held in the kitchen, just before dinner on Sunday night. The pricey heirloom tomatoes would be judged against hybrid tomatoes straight from the side bed, just picked that afternoon. These hybrids were planted in fresh, fertilized soil back in the spring. They get regular watering from the sprinkler and have stayed healthy all summer without additional fertilizer or insecticides.

The judges of the F.A.T.T. Test were my husband Hank, our son David, and me. Each type of tomato was sliced and put on a separate plate, with a light sprinkle of salt.

We found, not surprisingly, that after thirty-nine years of marriage, Hank and I have similar taste. The bright red, juicy, fresh out of our garden tomato was our favorite. Were we influenced by the fact that it was red and juicy and we knew it was fresh? Probably. David liked his a bit firmer and liked one of the heirlooms better.

“Aunt Ruby’s German Green,” “Georgia Streak,” and ”Black from Tula” were the heirlooms we tried. The comments about them were inconsistent. We thought the heirlooms were tasty, but hardly worth two bucks each.

I’m not sure what I expected. I suppose the heirloom tomato sensation is, in fact, a reaction to those awful grocery store tomatoes, the ones grown for their thick skin and shippability that are totally lacking in taste. If that’s your basis for comparison, there’s no contest. The hybrid vs. heirloom race is about even until you consider that heirlooms are a little harder to find and harder to grow. Then hybrid’s the winner I think.
What’s the difference between a hybrid, a heirloom, and a genetically modified tomato? Heirloom vegetables are simply vegetables that come from seed that has been saved and grown for a period of years. To be capable of being saved, they must be open pollinated, meaning the seeds produce seedlings just like the parent plant.
Hybrids, the kind of tomatoes we usually grow and buy at the local farmers’ market, are crosses between different plants in an effort to get the best features of both parents. The reason varieties such as Better Boy, Early Girl, Marion (developed at Clemson – my friend Judy’s favorite) have survived to be grown in back yard gardens is that they are fairly easy to grow, are resistant to disease, and they’re pretty tasty, especially when you pick them straight off the vine.
Genetically modified plants have been genetically altered using molecular genetics techniques such as gene cloning and protein engineering. The FDA promises us they are safe and are being developed so that we can buy a tasty tomato at Kroger in the middle of the winter. With some exceptions – the Romas and Grape Tomatoes aren’t so bad – I’d say they need to keep working on it.
Give me the Aiken Farmers’ Market any day, where the vegetables are reasonably priced and taste as good as any I know. Hollie Gartman tells me she hopes to have sweet Silver King corn until September to go with the table full of tomatoes she displays every week.
But I’m still pulling for the Bulldogs.

This is a Love Story

2008-07-31T06:00:00.001-04:00

It is about a couple who love each other, and about a woman who loves her garden. If you are the sort of person who would opt for “Dark Knight” over “Mama Mia!” and you do not want to read a love story, keep reading, there’s guy stuff at the end.

Both loves began in England, where Rich Waugh, raised in Aiken, was studying for a graduate degree at the University of Leeds, a city in West Yorkshire, about 200 miles northwest of London, where Jan had lived all her life.

Jan and Rich married, moved several times and eventually settled for good with their two children in Aiken. Jan later became co-owner of a restaurant, Number 10 Downing Street that also did outside catering. The restaurant kept her busier than she’d ever imagined and all the while Rich was on the road, traveling around the world, often gone for a week at a time. They didn’t get to spend much time together.

Then, in 2004, Jan and her partner sold the restaurant, Rich retired, and their life suddenly took on a new dimension. You would see them around town together – at lunch, shopping, about the two happiest people you can imagine.

The garden around their Westcliff home had always been well kept, as were the grounds of Number 10, both made sure of that. But there had been no time to do much extra. Suddenly, like many of Aiken’s retirees, they had the time and the energy to put into their garden.

All gardeners get their passion for gardening from some place or some person. What about Jan? “I think it was the English blood in my case,” she says. “I realize not all Englishmen are gardeners but all the people I knew were. When visiting a relative or friend's house, even as a child, it was expected that at some point you would tour the garden, however small, and comment appropriately. Family outings were taken to stately homes, and gardens. School trips were to Roman ruins and gardens. You learn the names of flowers along with nursery rhymes and the alphabet. We had "I-Spy" books in which you identified birds, trees, flowers and noted the date and place where they were seen. It was ingrained!”

The Waughs’ front lawn is neatly landscaped with hydrangeas and other shrubs, but, as is often the case, it’s in back where the love shows. “If we couldn’t live near the water, we brought the water to us,” Jan told me once. Birdbaths and trickling fountains abound, surrounded by seasonal flowers, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, and interesting grasses.

A recent remodeling project added a balcony off the bedroom, overlooking the secluded backyard (or back garden – Jan would never call it a “yard”), where the couple can watch the sunset and the bird feeder where, they’ve observed, the birds come in shifts all day.

The remodeling project yielded an unexpected bonus. Underneath the bedroom, with a door to the garage, is a neatly appointed room with a shiny concrete floor and gray pegboard walls, tidily stacked pots, a sink, and a place for the lawn mower. It’s the perfect place for a gardener to spend a cold winter afternoon or a hot summer morning - the potting shed, or as only they could imagine – The Posh.

Here’s the manly part. One of the lessons we Americans could well learn for most of the rest of the world is the business of recycling. I don’t mean just putting newspapers and aluminum cans in a bin and setting it out by the curb, but serious attention to reusing kitchen and yard waste, as well as capturing rainwater. It’s a win-win deal.

Composting is a given in England, and for years Jan and Rich have used the large plastic bin, meant for that purpose, to recycle everything from coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable waste, eggshells, to grass clippings and some (not all) of the pine needles from their lawn. Just one look at the rich, black soil that comes out of the bottom of the bin is enough to send you googling for one of your own. I haven’t seen any available locally.

Birdbaths and fountains aren’t the only place in the garden to find water. The Waughs came up with their own rain barrel (called a “water butt” in England) using a plastic garbage can, but that split when it got too full. Rich found at Walmart a rain barrel, made by Fiskars, the scissor people, with a spout at the bottom and holes in the top for the water to get in. You can set it up under a gutter downspout or purchase a diverter that you attach to the downspout. Rich added a bigger hole in the top with a screen on it as well. The 56 gallon container was overflowing after last week’s rain. It may save only a few pennies, but, more important, the rainwater contains fewer chemicals than our treated water. That’s a plus for plants.

What other part does Rich play in this Aiken-English garden – besides the mowing, rain barrel installation and other heavy lifting? “Whatever I’m told,” he answers.

Now that’s love.

I thought Juliet was supposed to stand on the balcony.

Three things to do that can be done indoors on a hot summer day

2008-07-25T15:43:00.001-04:00

If you're looking for a good book to curl up with on a hot summer night, get a copy of Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale. It's a captivating book with mystery and suspense, English Moors and an evil twin. The only thing wrong with it is that I couldn't put it down and finished in only a few days. This is Setterfield's first book - or the only one available, so I'll just have to wait till the next one comes out. Hope it's not long.

I have confessed, to anyone who is interested - few people are, to being an anglophile. We signed up for Netflix a few years ago when we learned that we could rent the entire series of Upstairs, Downstairs, and Jeeves and Wooster (House's Hugh Laurie in a totally different character) much cheaper than we could purchase them. After exhausting both series, we went through a few of the mystery series - Campion and The Midsomer Murders, and then we discovered Monarch of the Glen.

I understand Monarch of the Glen was quite a hit in Great Britain where it ran for seven seasons, having just recently ended. It is the story of an up and coming young Scotsman who comes home to the family estate in the Highlands of Scotland to keep the castle going. The scenery is breathtaking - and the story is engaging and funny and, I guess you could say - tasteful - as a TV series can be.

If you haven't checked out the posted links lately, have a look. The Augusta Rose Society has a new website that will have you preparing your rosebed by the end of the month.

The Nutrition Date Site has more than you ever thought you wanted to know about what's good for you to eat, and on the other end of the food chain, there's the Varsity!

Summertime, when the Working is Optional

2008-07-23T15:26:00.003-04:00

“Hire a professional and go to the mountains,” landscape designer Elliott Johnson told me once, when I’d asked him what to do here in the middle of the summer, when it’s ninety-five degrees outside and you feel like you’re enveloped in a giant zip-lock bag and you’re using up the oxygen fast.

There’s that gift certificate for a weekend at the Grove Park Inn David gave us for Christmas. Maybe it’s time to use it. But that’s only a weekend. We would have to come back eventually. There’s the usual weeding and spraying, if you are disposed to dispose of unwanted flora and fauna in that way (see below), but that’s no fun. What else?

You can still plant, Elliott told me, as long as you water thoroughly. If you’ve waited until mid-summer to plant or if some things need replacing, in Aiken you still have months to enjoy your garden. Some years things don’t die back here until Christmas.

“Just be sure to choose plants that adapt well to the heat. Purple coneflower, sun coleus, pentas, angelonia, the smaller salvias, rudbeckia, lantana, of course, will all tolerate high temperature and humidity.” Mid-day is not the best time to plant. Early or late is better, for you and your plants.

Thorough watering is a necessity. A daily sprinkling probably won’t do the trick. It’s good to let most plants dry out a little between waterings (a recommendation echoed by Suzanne Holmes, our Clemson Extension Agent) so that they send their roots down deep, looking for water. Brief, shallow watering causes the roots to look for water close to the surface. When the ground is dry to start, check beneath the top layer to be sure the water has penetrated.

Sometimes it seems the water just sits on top of the soil or mulch, creating puddles which eventually all drain to a low spot. Here’s a tip from Elliott to help make the water soak in quickly: Add a tablespoon of Ivory Liquid to a gallon of water in one of those containers that fits on the end of your hose. For some reason the soap helps the water soak in and the soap doesn’t hurt anything.

The damage to my coleus and basil that I was blaming on slugs might not be the fault of the slimy creatures after all. The ragged, chewed holes, it seems, were on the top leaves of the plants, eighteen inches off the ground. Slugs, when last I checked, do not fly (thank goodness). Nor would they opt for climbing to the top of the plant and working down. They’re not that farsighted. I was outdoors after dark last week and spotted some beetles fooling around on the basil leaves.

I checked, once again, with Master Gardener Bill Hayes, who knows more about getting rid of evil doers than Batman. “Ahh, the mysteries of the garden!” he wrote. “If you have a magnifying glass, check the leaves for very small black specs. That would be something like a sawfly worm. It’s about an inch long with stripes and a great appetite. They eat coleus and leave tiny droppings. If it isn’t that, it’s something like it.”

The beetle I saw probably is a Japanese beetle, since July is their month to shine. It’s black with an iridescent green back. Whatever it is, Bill says Sevin dust should take care of both of them.

Sevin dust is an insecticide that’s been around for years and is sold now by Bayer, the aspirin people. It is approved for use on vegetables, with some restrictions as so how long you should wait between application and ingestion. It’s available everywhere plant care products are sold. As always, read the label or go online to bayercropscience.com and read the label before you purchase.

You may decide you can live with imperfect leaves, after all. Just take Elliott’s advice and go to the mountains. The beach is nice too.

Candy Apple Red and Neon Green

2008-07-23T15:15:00.003-04:00

I saw my first hummingbird of the season this weekend. Turk’s Cap, or Sleeping Hibiscus, never fails to get the attention of those delightful creatures. I got these Turk’s Caps, old garden favorites and hibiscus relatives, at Woodlanders years ago, and, though they are considered tropical plants, they come back reliably ever summer with bright red two-inch blooms that look like hibiscus that never finished opening. Turk’s Caps have a protruding stigma that is a siren call to hummingbirds.

Neon green and neon orange are all the fashion rage this summer, I’m told. A child in an eye-popping green swim suit is easy to spot on the beach, and the color is equally attention-getting in a woman’s tank top. Neon is not, however, the most flattering to our hair and skin tones (“sallow” comes to mind) and maybe that’s not the kind of attention we want.

But imagine neon in the garden, especially in a part shady corner. I happened earlier in the spring onto a few pots of Hypericum calycinum ‘Brigadoon’ at Park Seed/Wayside Gardens’ Greenwood, SC nursery, and brought them home to put in a pot with ‘Nigra’ Elderberry, a lovely cutleaf shrub that I thought I needed. After all, not everybody shares a name with a plant.

Gardeners and non-gardeners alike have looked for years to Hypericum, or St. John’s Wort, for its therapeutic powers. Another species of Hypericum is thought to be antibiotic and antidepressive, though it has some other, less appealing, properties.

This ‘Brigadoon’ turns out to be even more attractive than I realized. It has the brightest, yellow-green leaves I ever seen in a garden, and promises even more treats when it blooms.

Unlike many of the tropical plants I’ve tried this year, ‘Brigadoon’ can take winter temperatures down to zone five, with its bright green foliage appearing in spring, followed by yellow flowers typical of the Hypericums, about a quarter size in diameter with pronounced stamens attractive to bees and butterflies.

‘Brigadoon’ is a low-growing, spreading ground cover that grows twelve to sixteen inches tall and two feet wide. It likes full sun to partial shade and is very adaptable to different soil types. It is listed by Wayside Gardens for zones five to seven, so it should come back next year.

I got a phone call last week from an Aiken gardener asking why her Calla Lily wasn’t reblooming, and I had to admit that my Calla Lily blooms are smaller and fewer in number this year as well. I think having success with Calla Lilies, in many ways, depends on the luck of the draw. You need to have found the right variety for our Aiken soil and climate. Calla Lily needs sun, but not too much sun. It needs cold, but not too much cold, and water but good drainage.

There are also two things worth trying. We can fertilize them after the leaves come up, though it may be too late to do any good this year, or we can dig them up in the fall and divide them into new plants. Calla lilies are just too beautiful not to be worth the fuss, or worth the price of some new bulbs. Online the price of bulbs ranges from a package of ten for twenty-five dollars to one ‘White Giant’ at Plant Delights for sixteen dollars. You get what you pay for, I expect.

We’ve been blessed with recurring afternoon showers lately, and weeding has become our main chore of the day. But the mornings seem cool now, considering it’s nearing the end of July, and weeds come up more easily from wet ground. Hummingbirds dart, butterflies sup. Life is good. Thanks be to God.

2008-07-06T16:45:00.003-04:00

In the mystical world of plant taxonomy, there are characteristics that group plants together. Some plants in the same family don’t look like they even know each other. But there are other plants that, if you saw them sitting together, you would know were cousins. Such are the Arums.

The Araceae is a family of herbaceous plants. They are also called Arums, though the true Arums are a genus, or smaller group, within the Araceae family. The Araceae may live on land or in the water and have simple leaves or compound leaves, but the family trait most easily identifiable is the peculiar flower – a long, round spadix swathed in a silky petal called a spathe.

One of the handsomest of the summer flowering bulbs, I think, is an Arum of the Zantedeschia genus, called “Calla Lily.” Now, to add to the confusion, the Calla Lily is neither a Calla (yet another genus), nor a true lily (a whole different family). No matter. It is elegant and easy to grow and is quite happy here in our Aiken soil, surviving our mild winters outdoors nicely.

The Calla Lily flower is quite dramatic and is at its most eye-catching when it’s shown alone or with other Calla Lilies. I’ve seen the large florist varieties in white, carried by brides and bridesmaids and on the altar on the day of a baptism. Remember the Diego Rivera flower vendor paintings or the Georgia O’Keefe flower studies? There’s a book titled Georgia O’Keefe and the Calla Lily in American Art, 1860-1940 that credits Sigmund Freud for the flower’s popularity.

I think it could have made it without Freud, but whatever the reason for its popularity, the Calla Lily has continued to be a well-loved flower, both in the garden and in a vase.

Jim Wilson lists Calla Lilies in his book, Bullet Proof Flowers for the South, reminding us to plant them in well-drained soil so that the bulbs won’t rot during wet winter weather, or grow them in a pot fill with “moderately fast-draining soilless mix.

The bulbs I planted several years ago in the sunny side bed have blooms that have lasted several weeks already. Propagate them by dividing the tubers in late summer or early fall, and cover them with pine straw mulch and they will very likely make it through the winter.

I stopped by more than once at the Shady Characters booth at this year’s Aiken Garden Show and one of the unusual plants that caught my eye was another handsome Arum called Pinellia tripartita ‘Dragon Tales.’ Each of the light green three lobed leaves of this plant is variegated with creamy yellow. Some leaves are all yellow, some half green and half yellow, some streaky yellow and some all green. “The unstable variegation pattern is what makes this a truly fascinating plant,” says Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh. The flowers are produced all summer and can also be variegated.

Pinellia likes moist woodland soils and, like all Shady Characters plants, part shade. I brought it home and put it a pot with ‘Molly Bush’ Heuchera and some lovely peacock moss, also from Shady Characters. They make a handsome trio.

Everette and Karen Jones opened their nursery called Shady Characters out Wire Road near 1-20 several years ago, and they offer a huge selection of cool plants made for the shade. They began with a good collection of Heuchera and Hosta, and have continued to expand to other shade tolerant plants such as Heucherella (a sterile cross between Heuchera and Tiarella) and Pulmonaria and another unusual flower called Spigelia marilandica.

I haven’t dared make a trip out to their Wire Road place this year. Though their prices are quite reasonable, I find too many things I can’t live without that I know I can’t find anywhere else. If you have some shady spots that need some attention, give them a call to be sure they’re open at 803 269-3309 and take a drive out to see them. You won’t be disappointed.

A Very Welcoming Place

2008-06-25T15:42:00.008-04:00

Bell and I paid a visit to Sam and Linda Christine this week after Linda emailed me about a new plant that was blooming and ripening now in their magnificent garden. Last year Jenks Farmer, a Beech Island native and well known horticulturalist, had passed along some seeds to her from a plant he called “Plum Granny.” After seeing and smelling the Plum Granny fruit at the home of Jenks’ mother, Linda brought home the seeds and started them in pots.

Also known as ‘Queen Anne’s Pocket Melon,’ ‘Vine Pomegranate,’ and ‘Perfume Melon,’ this fruit is about the size of a small apple or a large plum and with skin that feels like a plum. When ripe, it is yellow with deep orange-red strips and white flesh. There isn’t much flesh, though the flesh is edible and some folks, I’m told, like its taste. Plum Granny is much better known for its fragrance than for its flavor, and a bowl of them, or even just a few, will fill a room with the melony smelling perfume.

In Harold McGee’s book, “On Food,” it’s listed under the category of “Minor Melons.” There are six groups of melons altogether, he tells us, and the Plum Granny is part of the Dudaim Group, which includes small, especially musky, melons used in the United States South. McGee also says that the name Dudaim is Hebrew for “love plants.” I don’t know if “love” is a verb, a noun, or an adjective in this case.

Plum Grannies are part of the huge Cucurbit Family that includes watermelons, cantelopes, cucumbers and squash and is thought to have been brought to the colonies by Europeans colonists. The plants will easily hybridize with other melons, including cantelopes, so it’s best not to have them growing near each other.

The Christines’ garden, as always, had some interesting flowering plants that were new to me. This time it was a dazzling flowering shrub called “Ixora.” There are many varieties of Ixora, but the flowers on this one were especially eye-catching. Imagine the mophead of a hydrangea with tiny, closely packed flowerets, in bright yellowy-orange.

Also called ‘Jungle Flame,’ ‘Flame-of-the-Woods,’ or ‘Jungle Geranium,’ this plant likes acidic, well-drained soil and makes a good evergreen hedge. That would make it perfect for Aiken conditions, except for one small problem – it is not winter hardy, and even temperatures in the thirties will damage the leaves.

Linda, and anyone else who is so fortunate as to have a greenhouse, can keep their Ixora inside when the temperatures drop and move it outdoors in the spring. If you’ve got a space inside with bright light, Ixora may also be kept as a houseplant just as you would a tropical Hibiscus. Any major pruning should be done in early spring as plants begin to send out new growth.

I don’t know that there is a more welcoming garden in the state as Sam and Linda Christines’. The daylilies were in full bloom, of course, as were the many varieties of hydrangeas. Folks from Connecticut had stopped by for a visit after seeing the article in the May issue of Southern Living Magazine. Linda presented me with a pot of basil, one of fennel, and some vining Plum Grannies ready to go on a trellis. Sam even tended to Bell while I took pictures. The Christines are pleased to show you around their garden as well. Call first - they're in the book.

Spoleto 2008 - An Ecumenical Weekend

2008-06-22T21:21:00.005-04:00

We had not meant to stay in “Charleston’s only Kosher Bed and Breakfast.” It just happened. Broad Street Guest House happened to be where we wanted (Broad Street, Charleston, South Carolina). And available when we wanted (during Spoleto) with an attached carriage house that made it easy to get all the stuff we travel with (we do not travel light) in and out of the car.We arrived, as instructed, before 7 p.m. on Friday in keeping with the guest house rules for observing Shabbat. “Shalom ya’ll” was posted on a plaque beside the front door, and the Charleston single house, built before the turn of the century – the last century – was filled with aromas that promised good food to come.

Breakfast was provided and, for Orthodox Jews, other Kosher meals are provided as well. We had other fish to fry, or to fish to eat, since every visit to Charleston, even during Spoletto, is as much about finding new restaurants and enjoying the familiar ones as it is about anything else.Getting our Explorer into the narrow parking place in back of the house was the only hitch in the day, and once that was done, we decided the rest of our traveling would be done on foot. But that was easy from the house, located as it was, just a few blocks from King Street.
Fleet Landing, a casual restaurant on Concord Street, just a block from East Bay, was our first stop before "La Cenerentola" at the Galliard Auditorium. Fried Oysters with Southern Comfort Barbeque Sauce, served over Lowcountry Creamy Grits, with Applewood Smoked Bacon & Cheddar Cheese sounds just as rich and delicious as it tasted. An appetizer serving was all I needed, while my husband had a hamburger, better than anything he’s had in a long time, he said.
Saturday morning, we met the other guests at Hadassah Rothenberg’s charming B&B. Hadassah is passionate about her faith and seemed ready to share with us anything we wanted to know. We learned that our breakfast was an Israeli breakfast, with cucumbers, tomatoes and feta cheese, plenty of fresh fruit and thick slices of homemade bread. Breakfasts the following day were more elaborate, with luscious fruit smoothies, bread pudding and more of the tomatoes, cucumbers and feta.

We learned about keeping Shabbat, that it is a time for rest and study, visiting with family. We especially like the idea of the Shabbat Nap, a tradition we were ready to adopt immediately.
We spent the day doing Spoleto things, Chamber Music for Hank and a lecture on Long Leaf Pine Restoration, by Jack Hitt, and Rice and Sea Island Cotton culture, by Richard Porcher, for me. Perhaps my favorite Spoletto experience and possibly the least expensive, was the Piccolo Spoleto performance at the First (Scots) Presbyterian Church by Charleston Pro Musica and The College of Charleston Madrigal Singers. The church's magnificent acoustics offer the perfect setting for the program, billed as "An eclectic program with some of the most beautiful melodies of the past featuring a diverse collection of instruments including a large variety of percussion, with percussionist extraordinaire, Danny Mallon." It was breathtaking.

After our own Shabbat nap, we spent the evening talking with Hadassah in the cozy courtyard behind the house, feeling like cousins who’d stopped by for a visit.

At 10 p.m., late for us, we walked across the street to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, where we heard the Charleston Renaissance Ensemble perform Cathedral music ranging from 12th century chant to majestic High Renaissance polyphony.
Sunday, after church at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, our favorite place to be on Sunday morning in Charleston, we went to hear Chamber Music, temporarily (we hope) being performed at the Memminger. Chamber Music director and pianist, Charles Wadsworth may walk slowly, but his fingers are still as nimble as a youth’s as he played a cello duet perfectly. As usual, he threw a modern piece in the middle of the program, Kodaly, I think.

And then on to our favorite place for Sunday Dinner – Jestine’s Kitchen on Meeting Street. We’ve been eating fried chicken and fried shrimp and oysters and pork chops and meat loaf and pot roast and fried okra at Jestine’s and washing it down with gallons of her perfect sweet tea almost since the day it opened. It’s not far from the College of Charleston, where two of our sons went to school, and it’s always seemed almost as good as going to Grandma's for lunch, maybe better, since you don’t have to help with the dishes. Dana Berlin, the restaurant’s owner, recognizes us and sometimes sends out a little extra treat, some bread pudding or a corn fritter.
We’re not the only ones to notice Jestine’s. Anthony Bourdain (“No Reservations”) visited there last fall and declared her fried green tomatoes first rate – although he probably used some other term.
Despite the fact that we’d nearly O.D.’d on fried seafood, we felt good when we checked out of The Broad Street Guest House on Monday morning. Maybe it was the kosher food. Maybe it was all the walking we did.

We also felt like we’d learned something, about being Jewish, about what a commitment it is to keep a kosher kitchen and to be an Orthodox Jew. We’d heard music across eight centuries, and that we loved best the older harmonies.

Hollyhock surprises

2008-06-19T11:15:00.002-04:00

If you have been gardening for more than, say, a week or two, you have probably learned this one thing – plants have a mind of their own. Just as we raise our children to behave in a certain way and expect them to continue to exhibit this behavior into adulthood, they still surprise us now and then. And so it is in our garden – we read the label, plant in the right place at the right time, then comes the surprise.

Biennial plants are, perhaps, the most notorious for offering us surprises. Foxglove and parsley are both biennials, as is that other mallow, the Hollyhock.

As you know, a biennial plant is a flowering plant that takes two years to complete its lifecycle. First, it grows leaves, stems and roots, then enters a period of dormancy when the weather turns cold. It produces flowers the following spring.

Some of the first flowers I planted in the side bed were hollyhocks, given to me by my friend Judy, who is as knowledgeable and as patient a gardener as any I know. These hollyhocks behaved just as they were supposed to.

Judy had started the seeds in mid summer, given them proper protection and water, and the plants were six inches to a foot high by the fall when I planted them in full sun by the fence because I knew they would grow tall and need extra support. They bloomed beautifully the following June, reseeded, and bloomed again for several years.

The first surprise came with the second bloom. The flowers weren’t the same as the ones that had bloomed the year before. These hollyhocks, it seems, had cross pollinated, and had come up with a new look, attractive, but not what I’d expected.

Eventually, my garden got too crowded and the descendents of those first hollyhocks disappeared. I started more hollyhock seeds two years ago, following Judy’s example, and once they got big enough, I planted them against the fence where they’ve spent approximately a year and a half (a year longer than they were supposed to – surprise number two) doing their thing, producing lots of pretty round leaves and no flowers.

Finally, in the last few weeks, my hollyhocks have begun to bloom. Of course, I’ve lost the name of the variety, but the flowers are deep, deep purple, almost black, with bright yellow centers – strikingly beautiful. And they open, like the foxglove, a few at a time.

Hollyhocks come in a wide range of colors, but if there’s one you’re partial to, plant it alone, since you can expect them to cross pollinate. They grow three to six feet tall normally, but can grow even taller if they’re grown in rich, well drained soil with plenty of moisture.

Because it grows tall and because the leaves are susceptible to diseases, plant hollyhocks in the back of the bed with something to lean on. The double bloomers especially need support. Seed, either purchased or collected, can be planted any time between May and September. Young plants, grown from late season planting, need winter protection. The seed germinates in 2 to 3 weeks at 60 degrees.

I can’t attest to this, since I haven’t tried it, but I’ve read that after the hollyhocks finish blooming, I should cut them way back and they may bloom again in the fall.
Hollyhocks are wonderful, old fashioned flowers that remind us of impressionist paintings and grandmother’s garden. I found a letter recently that my grandmother wrote at least fifty years ago from her home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, back when Stone Mountain was still rural. She’d planted hollyhocks by the back door, she said, and promised they’d be blooming when my aunt came for her yearly visit.

Park Seed advertises Hollyhock seeds from varieties it promises will bloom the first summer if they’re planted in February. I’d love to hear if anyone has had success with these first year bloomers.

Of Hair and Hydrangeas

2008-06-11T14:24:00.004-04:00

We women spend a lot of time fretting about our hair. Is it too gray, too short, too long, too thin, too straight, or, in my case too curly? Not curly really, just wavy. I would have made a good flapper, I think. I became a teenager in the 1960’s and pined for long, straight, silky hair like my best friend Sharon. Nowadays, I would be thrilled with course gray hair that didn’t need constant tending like some of my now best friends have. Sad to say, finger waves have not been around since I was a toddler, and my hair has gotten thinner, grayer, of course, but no less unruly. And so my battle against the forces of nature continues.

What the heck, you say, does this have to do with gardening? What it has to do with gardening is this: you always want what you don't have. People in Charleston want to grow delphiniums and peonies that last for more than a week, and people in Alaska want to grow dogwood trees taller than three feet. And what do people with blue hydrangeas want? Pink hydrangeas, of course, and, presumably, the opposite is also true.

I have to say I am less dissatisfied with the color of my hydrangeas than I am with the color of my hair. The good news is that changing either of them is pretty simple. All it takes is a little patience, a bag of lime or a bottle of Clairol. I don’t know what would happen if you put the Clairol on your hydrangeas, but DO NOT put the lime on your hair.

Hydrangeas left alone in our slightly acidic Aiken soil, tend to be blue, but if you are bored with blue, you can pretty easily make them pink.

If you kept going past my house, my street would make a turn and change names, and if you keep on going on that street, it would change names two more times until you come to the garden of Ann and Don Robinson.

The Robinsons have lived in their house for about forty-five years. It’s a ranch style house with almost an acre around it that they’ve filled with beautiful and interesting shrubbery, some of which came from the garden of Ann’s mother.

In front, in a bed that has grown considerably over the years, are hydrangea bushes. Each spring, over about three years, more out of curiosity than dissatisfaction, Don Robinson threw several handsful of lime, the same lime with which we dress our soils in late winter, around the bases of these blue hydrangeas, just to see what would happen, and, over the years the plants have grown pinker and pinker.

According to Michael Dirr’s book, “Hydrangeas for American Gardens,” hydrangea color is determined by the amount of aluminum in the soil solution which can be absorbed by the roots of the plant. The pH of the soil affects that process in a way that is more involved than most people care about knowing, but the bottom line is, if we want to make the hydrangeas deeper blue, we should drench the soil with an aluminum sulfate solution.
Dirr goes on to say that “excess phosphorous in the soil will also tie up the aluminum in insuluable precipitates, even in acid soils. Hydrangea macrophilla grown in pine bark medium, pH 5 to 6, are typically pink because, even though the acidity if high, but there is almost no aluminum present in the bark. To make them blue, aluminum sulfate is added to the surface of the container at a prescribed rate, usually 0.75 to 1.5 ounces evenly distributed on the surface of the 3 gallon container medium. Greenhouse growers also apply it as a drench at the rate of 2.4 ounces per gallon solution with 8 ounces applied as a drench per 6-inch container. Greenhouse treatments start at budbreak and continue every 2 weeks for three additional applications.”

There are other formulas, but whatever you use, you should be sure to water thoroughly after each application and too much is worse than too little, Dirr says. He also suggests that pink hydrangeas are beautiful and if the soil pH is too high, we might just want to enjoy them, but, if we really, really can’t live without pink hydrangeas, we can put lime on the soil, as Don Robinson did. Both lime and aluminum sulfate are available at garden centers.

I heard a lecturer say once that in our hot climate we could never expect to see the deep red hydrangeas that grow in cooler places.

The Robinsons have many other beautiful hydrangeas besides the pink and blue ones, including some huge oakleaf hydrangeas that have so far escaped my capabilities as a gardener.

There are healthy, red and yellow climbing Gloriosa Lilies. The Gloriosa has flowers with yellow petals flamed with red on the upper two thirds and turned up like a turban or an umbrella blown inside out. The stamen and pistil splay out from the center of the bloom.

Gloriosas are planted from tubers in the spring and will survive the winter if they are kept from freezing. Mulch them well in the fall and have them planted where they are protected. They appear to reproduce tubers easily and may be dug and divided in the fall after the plants have completely ripened their foliage, then kept indoors. Make sure that each severed piece has an eye, or growing point. You may also divide the tubers in the spring if you’ve left them in the ground. Be sure they have a tall trellis to climb. Gloriosas, like most lilies, make beautiful cut flowers.

The Robinsons also have a Smoke tree and, Don says, a “smoked tree.” It seems his Texas Star hibiscus leaves looked so much like marijuana leaves that once some marauding youngsters chopped off a branch and tried to smoke them. Wonder what that was like.

It was one of the hottest days of the year when I visited the Robinsons’ garden. Still it was as cool and peaceful as could be. You can see why they’ve stayed there for so long, and I’m guessing they’re not about to make any changes, except maybe to the color of their hydrangeas.

MOLES AND VOLES AND SHREWS, OH MY!

2008-06-09T15:50:00.004-04:00

A face only a mother could love

The children’s book, “Arthur, for the Very First Time,” by Patricia MacLachlan, begins with a chapter titled “Moles.”

“What do moles look like?” asked Arthur.

“Ugly,” said his father.

Arthur wrote in his journal: Moles: ugly

“And they always come no matter what I do!” said his father angrily.

Ugly, but loyal.

The same day that I read that chapter to a class of second graders, I ran into a friend in line at Home Depot. “You should write about moles,” she said. “They’ve invaded my garden, killed a new fifteen dollar ginger plant from the roots – overnight. It was just like in ‘Caddy Shack’!”

A few days later, while I was taking Bell for a spin around the backyard, I encountered the mortally wounded, though quite recognizable, body of a mole.

It was fate. I asked my friend Linda Christine to give me the name of our local mole expert, and she sent me to Bill Hayes. Bill is a Master Gardener and plant lover, and he has a talk that his gives about moles and their fellow burrowers, voles.

Moles, he begins by saying, are misunderstood. They may not be loyal, as Arthur suggests, since they are solitary creatures who do not tolerate company; but they are not all together bad since they are not rodents, only eat insects and aerate the lawn. They are therefore beneficial to your garden, unless of course you want to grow something. Then they are pests and must by eliminated, according to Bill.

Moles can move fast, and when tunneling, will often surface, creating a volcano like mound of dirt. This differentiates the mole from the vole.

“The moles’ main food is the earthworm and they will follow the worm,” writes Bill. “That’s why most of the tunnels are at the surface during cool wet weather. The worms like to come up to the surface into soft wet grass. In times of drought we get fewer calls about moles. That’s usually when the surface temperatures are hot and harder than usual. Some homeowners contribute to the problem by over watering and creating the perfect mole/worm environment.”

That’s another reason not to overwater.

You can tell a mole is there if you see a raised tunnel that you hit with the lawnmower. The grass above the tunnel may be turning brown, and your feet may sink into the surface in several locations.

There are many old wives tales about how to get rid of moles, but most of them don’t work, says Bill.

The only way to get rid of moles is to “trap” them!

Trap is in quotation marks because you do not trap them with traps, you kill them, he says.

With names like “harpoon”, “scissors”, and “strangle”, the traps are pretty clear about their purpose.

There is a set of procedures or steps that you must follow to catch the mole.

1. Flatten all mole runs (tunnels). Use your feet or rent a roller. You must locate the primary run. The primary run will lead to the mole’s den or resting place. It is usually in soft soil around a flower bed.
2. Wait 24-48 hours
3. Return to your yard with enthusiasm and locate the active runs.
4. The primary run should be the longest with several shorter runs coming off of it.
5. Insert and set the trap in the primary run close to the den according to instructions.
6. Wait about 24 hours.
7. Exhume mole and discard.

You will now have free time to do other chores until the next mole moves in.

Kind of cute - if you like rodents.

Then there are voles. There are two kinds of voles around Aiken. The pine vole lives below ground and feeds on the roots of plants. The meadow vole (also known as a meadow mouse) lives above ground and eats succulent plants such as hostas, cannas, elephant ears and anything else that you treasure in your garden.

Unlike moles, the voles are sociable critters. They live in large colonies and can do severe damage to a garden or to large plants. Pine voles’ exit holes, resembling those of a snake, can be found around azaleas, camellias or other large plants that they are eating. They eat bulbs, tubers, seeds, and bark

Meadow voles are typically a little bigger than their cousins and live in pine straw piles and other vegetation and return to this vegetation after feeding. They eat grasses, sedges, seeds, grain, bark, and some insects. Both types of voles can be caught with mousetraps.

Bill suggests that it was probably a pine vole that got my friend’s ginger plant.

Meadow voles live in pine straw piles and other vegetation and return to this sanctuary after feeding. Both types of voles can be caught with mouse traps. Care should be taken to avoid poisons that can be eaten by cats or dogs.

Pine voles can be tricked into coming to the surface by creating an artificial tunnel above ground. Place a raised object like a box, pail or roofing shingles over the exit hole and put a few small pieces of apple under the cover. Put a weight on top of the cover to keep any light from entering. The vole will enter the space and eat the apple. After baiting the area for a few days, place a mouse trap in the space baited with apple. You should be able to trap several before they stop coming.

The easiest way for me to tell the difference between a mole and a vole is by the size of their feet. Voles have tiny feet proportional to their size, and they are actually kind of cute – if you like rodents. Moles have feet that look like the mole version of clown feet – without the shoes. I guess to dig that fast, you have to have special equipment.

For the record – I know there are moles and voles around my yard, since I’ve seen them. I haven’t noticed any damage, so I am willing to let them be, but if they are damaging your lawn and garden, you must choose whether or not you want to fight them. That will mean killing them using some kind of trap.

Once you have rid your lawn and garden of moles and voles and shrews (which can also do damage), or you have decided to coexist peacefully with them, you will have a chance to sit down and read. Try reading “Arthur, for the Very First Time” to your favorite elementary school student. It is a beautifully written book I nearly missed.

Atlanta May Not Have Water, But It's Got the Varsity

2007-10-30T16:02:00.000-04:00

“It’s hard to imagine civilization without onions,” said Julia Childs. Spaghetti Sauce, pot roast, enchiladas, potato salad, cornbread dressing, the list goes on for miles. Onions are a staple in our diet, no doubt about it.
Allium cepa, the common garden onion, is consumed at a rate of approximately 21 pounds per year per person in the United States, and a half cup of chopped, raw onion contains one gram of fiber and 5 milligrams of vitamin C. What more delicious way to ingest those necessary nutrients than in an order of that great comfort food - fresh, hot Varsity Onion Rings?
Having made the three hundred mile round trip to Atlanta three times in the past three weeks (one funeral, one wedding, and a reunion) Hank and I felt that a trip to the Varsity was the least we could do for ourselves.
The Varsity, we are sure, is as much a part of our shared family tradition as Thanksgiving dinner or church on Sunday. My parents went to the Varsity on dates, when chili dogs were two for a nickel, long before it became necessary to negotiate the harrowing, ever evolving, mass of interstate highway that surrounds downtown Atlanta.
My daddy would take us there when we were kids, and we’d eat in the car, since only old men and Tech students ate indoors. He was very particular about the condition of his cars. “This car will smell like a weenie joint for a week,” he’d complain. But it was worth it, even to him. As a teen-ager I made more than one spin around the parking lot in a souped-up Chevrolet, and Hank and I went there on a few dates ourselves.
So, we went on Friday, and enjoyed once again together the unmatched flavor and perfect texture of a Varsity Chili Dog and side of Rings. It was just as good as we remembered.
Since I moved away from Atlanta, I’ve noticed that there are certain topics that seem to be on everyone’s mind at any given time. For years that topic was the fearsome, eternal traffic. Traffic that was getting bad when I lived there forty years ago, is now nearly intolerable.
There’s a new worry on everybody’s mind these days. That is the problem of water. “We were supposed to get four inches,” my Uncle Jeff said, when we stopped by for a visit. The sky was already growing lighter on a day that was to have been filled with thunderstorms. “Instead we only got a half inch, if that. It’s the worst drought since 1931.”
There are water restrictions so intense that neighbors turn each other in, and if you dare appear to be extravagant, you risk having your water turned off with a thousand dollar fine to have in turned on again.
Aunt Faye, a dedicated gardener, has maintained the small garden of their condo with efficiency, having saved the latest advice from Georgia’s garden guru Walter Reeves, and having come up with some ideas of her own. She passed the paper along to me.
“Make better dirt when you plant and dig deep,” says Reeves. The soil’s moisture is more constant the deeper you dig, and you should amend the soil around your new planting with plant matter.
Spread a double thick blanket of mulch. “Stay away from hockey puck sized nuggets,” he said, “and stick to mulch that’s more finely textured.”
And, speaking of mulch, here’s a hint from the Terminix man I talked to a few weeks ago. Cockroaches, or as we South Carolinians say, “Palmetto Bugs” are attracted to many kinds of mulch that we use near our homes, taking a thick blanket of pine straw or pine bark as a welcome mat to come on inside, BUT they don’t like cedar mulch. So he advises, if you’re planting near your foundation, use cedar.
Aunt Faye plans to work some type of “water grabbers” into the soil around her pansies when she plants them. I’ve had good luck with these in potted plants. I expect they’d work the same in the ground, though it might get expensive if you have a lot of plants.
I’ve also heard many people talk of using dishwater or shower water, if you have a way to capture it, to water plants. It seems a good idea, and I can’t find any advice against it. One thing I read said that dishwashing liquid won’t affect the pH, but that detergents from the clothes washer might and that it might be illegal to water with what’s called “gray water” anyway.
I expect be the time we make that trip over I-20 again, the leaves will finally have changed and fallen off, and North Georgia will, I hope, have come up with some long term solution to its water shortage. Georgia’s problems should be an object lesson for us. We are fortunate here in Aiken to have a good source of water, but it is not endless. As gardeners, we must consider more sustainable, adaptable garden practices. As citizens we need to be sure that our state’s and city’s growth is planned around the resources available to us.

You Can Take A Ride Around Aiken's Old Downtown

2007-10-16T14:56:00.000-04:00

“At the request of Major Alex Black Ag’t of the S. Carolina Canal & Rail Road Company we have surveyed and laid off 27 Squares or Blocks in the Town of Aiken bounded on the North by Edgefield St., on the East by Williams St., on the South by Rail Road Avenue and on the West by Newberry St, as in the above plat represented – This 19th September 1834.”
(signed) Cyril O. Pascalis
(signed) Andrew Alfred Dexter

And so Aiken was born. The plat that Pascalis and Dexter, two of Aiken’s resident engineers, refers to shows twenty-seven neatly ordered rectangular blocks, lined up in three rows of nine, where the first residents of Aiken would build homes and shops and around which our beautiful, vital city would soon grow. The outer perimeter of the city went from South Boundary on the south, Charleston Street on the east, North Boundary (now Hampton Avenue), and West Boundary (now Florence Street). The railroad ran down Railroad Avenue, now Park Avenue. The streets were one hundred fifty feet wide and lots, which we would call city blocks, were four acres. Could those first citizens have ever imagined what good things would come of Aiken in the next one hundred and sixty-three years?

To get an idea of the size of Aiken in its infancy, you can take a short drive around the perimeter of those twenty-seven blocks, starting in front of the Washington Center at 124 Newberry Street, a relatively new building that stands comfortably beside the century old Aiken Club Room and Court Tennis Building.

Stop at the lights that cross Richland Avenue and continue north past St. John’s Methodist Church. This active and ever growing church has been doing the Lord’s work here in Aiken since before the turn of the century (the last one).

Continue up Newberry and before you turn right on to Edgefield Avenue, have a look north. It’s peaceful vista with wide parkways and comfortable homes that very likely hasn’t changed much over the past century.

Turn right onto Edgefield Avenue and continue as far as you can. At Kershaw Street, you’ll come to the sprawling campus of Schofield Middle School, another of Aiken’s historic sites.

The Schofield Middle School website tells us that Martha Schofield, a young, determined Quaker lady from Buck’s County, Pennsylvania came to Aiken following the Civil War in order to help educate young Negro children. With help from the Society of Friends and others throughout the state, she was able to have begun one of the most important schools for Negroes in South Carolina. The original building here was completed about 1870. There were sixty-eight students and a total of three staff members. Schofield has grown considerably since then and has recently been renovated into an attractive modern building that sits on grounds that cover several of Aiken’s original twenty-seven blocks.

To get around the school, turn left onto Kershaw Street, then right onto Abbeville. When you reach Williamsburg (called Williams in the original plat) turn right and you’ll be back on the perimeter road. If school’s out, on the weekends or after 3:30, you can stop and have a look at the park and Wetlands project established several years ago on the grounds of Schofield Middle School. Listen for the bullfrogs and watch other tiny frogs skitter across the pond abounding with water lilies and purple flowering pickerel weed.

Continue south on Williamsburg, crossing Richland Avenue. On your left, you’ll see the Aiken Farmers Market, bursting with activity if you happen by on a Saturday morning. When you reach Park Avenue, called Rail Road Avenue in the original plat, you’ll face the railroad track and remember that, like many towns across the country, the railroad was in large part responsible for Aiken becoming a town.

Ride several blocks and look to your right and you’ll notice something new growing out of the old Aiken setting. Five new, beautifully landscaped Charleston type houses invite folks to sit a spell on a side facing porch, originally designed to catch the sea breezes that blew in from Charleston harbor.

Keep driving, past the old caboose and railway cars that are soon to be part of the Aiken Depot project and you’ll come to the first of several blocks of shops and galleries. If you’re lucky you’ll encounter Bill Jackson in his beautiful and ever evolving garden. You can stop and look in, through the wrought-iron gate and notice the outstanding collection of Japanese maples and unusual sculpture that could be at home in any big city.

You can’t see the train for much farther here. A railroad cut that takes it below street level was completed in 1852.

Keep going and you’re almost done. Pass more magnolia filled parkways and stop for a minute to look south at handsome St. Mary’s Catholic Church and then at the Aiken County Courthouse and the monument to the Confederate dead that stands in front of it.

Now past the antique shop and the Chesser building and you’ll find yourself back at the Court Tennis Building, one of only eight active Court Tennis courts in the country.

These twenty-seven blocks, still identifiable after over a century and a half after they were first laid out, remind us of Aiken’s artistic and educational and agricultural and horticultural and religious heritage and why I think those first Aiken citizens would still be happy to call Aiken, South Carolina “home.”

All You Ever Wanted to Know about Naked Ladies

2007-10-05T16:06:00.000-04:00

“In the South, fall comes like a second spring, but with decidedly tropical overtones…It’s as if a gentle breeze from Africa had blown into the garden to awaken the inhabitants. This rich and rewarding season includes a surprising number of bulbs,” says Scott Ogden in his book “Garden Bulbs for the South”, published in 1994, with a second edition in February, 2007.

Take a ride around town or into the countryside and you might spot a row or a patch of one of the bulbs Ogden tells us about. Lycoris radiata is the botanical name of this handsome red flowering, fall blooming bulb that reminds us of the native azalea, with its long, feathery stamens. The stems are graceful and slender.

In his book, Ogden goes into great detail to explain to us the origin of this handsome flower. In the South, he says, they were long referred to as Guernsey lilies because of the similarity to another lily, Nerine sarniensis, that is said to have washed up after a shipwreck onto the island of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands between England and France, where it thrived.

Our Lycoris radiata is quite a different genus altogether. Nerine lilies are better as cut flowers, but don’t grow well in America. Lycoris, on the other hand, is quite comfortable in our hot, southern climate.

“Lycoris,” by the way, he says is correctly pronounced LYcoris, if we are alone or among botanists, but that we would probably say liCORis if we want to be understood around other gardeners.

As for the preponderance of names for this handsome flower, we shouldn’t call it “spider lily” lest it be confused with Hymenocallis or Crinum, so we must call it “Fall Spider Lily.” It may be called “Hurricane Lily” since it often comes into bloom during hurricane season, or, since the Lycoris come into bloom without accompanying foliage, it is fancifully and properly, and, I suppose, uniquely called “Naked Lady.”

Studies performed by geneticists found that the old Southern Lycoris, probably itself an import, is a triploid, meaning it has an extra dose of chromosomes. This gives it tremendous vigor and hardiness, but also makes it sterile. After World War II, commercial growers in Japan began supplying American dealers with Lycoris at inexpensive prices. They are fine bulbs, says Ogden, and the flowers of the diploid types come into bloom a few weeks earlier than the triploid. If you’re lucky enough to have both types, you may have Naked ladies around your garden for a month.

We can plant Lycoris radiata in well drained slightly acidic soils (perfect for Aiken), in a woodland garden among trees or in borders of shrubs or in full sun, though full sun can cause premature withering of the delicate flowers. All Lycoris like soils enriched with leaf litter and humus. If you are fortunate to have some of the old garden varieties passed along to you, you may plant them in soil with more clay. Five to seven flowers appear on each stem, and after the flowers have withered basal leaves appear and deteriorate by the following summer.

Divide Lycoris in spring and don’t be surprised if they take a year off before blooming again. Naked ladies can be persnickety.

There are several similar species of Lycoris: golden spider lily (L. aurea), white (L. albiflora), salmon/orange (L. sanguinea). Another close relative, (L. squamigera) has more typical lily-like flowers that are light pink.

You can get Lycoris radiata bulbs now at Cold Creek Nursery here in Aiken. Plant them now and you should have flowers next year, but remember to mark them. The strap like foliage that comes up unattached to any flower might fool your highly efficient yard man into thinking it’s a weed. He’ll whack it, and you know the rest - no leaf, no photosynthesis. No photosynthesis, no flower. It, I am sad to say, has happened to me.

Finally Fall

2007-10-05T15:50:00.000-04:00

Aiken is blessed with a number of good nurseries that offer handsome, healthy plants for our fall planting. One of them, Woodlanders offers many unusual and sometimes rare perennials, vines, shrubs and trees. I stopped by the nursery the other day and saw at least a dozen plants I was dying to try. At the top of that list was a vine called Evergreen wisteria. If I’d heard just the common name, I’d probably have stomped the thing to death, since I have spent the last twenty years trying to get wisteria out of my yard and wouldn’t think of introducing another Wisteria. Fortunately, Woodlanders never leaves us with anything so common as a common name, and I found that this plant isn’t another evil cousin in the wisteria family, but a more mannerly Milletia reticulata.

This Milletia is a vine that has beautiful deep purple flowers that bloom about now on racemes that resemble those on Wisteria and leathery dark green compound leaves that stay on through the winter. It has twining stems that grow twelve to fifteen feet or more and needs good support. It also needs full sun and regular watering. It is hardy down to zero degrees.

I can’t find anybody with a bad thing to say about Milletia reticulata, though I think it’s good to remember that it is not native to this area, but to China, and that probably when people first planted Wisteria here they didn’t know how invasive it would become. In any case, it’s a beautiful plant for a late summer show.

Years ago when I visited a Spring sale at Woodlanders, I asked Robert McKintosh, one of the nursery’s founders, if he could just buy one plant, a perennial, not a tree or shrub, what would it be. He answered without hesitation, “Lobelia Cardinalis.”

Lobelia Cardinalis (wasn’t there an Italian movie star with that name?) or Cardinal flower, as it’s also called, grows in clumps one to three feet tall, with tubular flowers that are the reddest red in your flower bed.

It’s a plant native to North America from New Brunswick west to Minnesota, and south to central Florida and eastern Texas. It grows in moist meadows, bogs and stream banks, so it needs moist soil and will even tolerate flooding, but not drought, in full sun to partial shade. If you grow it in ordinary garden soil, keep it watered.

Among the best things about this flower is that it’s pollinated by the ruby-throated hummingbird, and I’m told they are attracted to it in droves.
If you end your spring or fall planting season with a garage full of empty black plastic nursery pots that look like they will outlive the planet, recycle them! Woodlanders asks us to put our recyclable pots inside the gate on Beaufort Street. Cold Creek Nursery and Palmetto Nursery will take them also.
Sam Stephens at Palmetto Nursery has snapdragons ready, as well as lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, collard, and onion plants. Pansies will be ready about the second week in October.

The Christines' Heavenly Garden Offers Many Scenic Views

2007-07-24T12:10:00.000-04:00

I paid a visit to the Kalmia Hill garden of Linda and Sam Christine the other day. Even though I visit several times a year, there's always something new to see.

Sun coleus invites you to stroll in, past the old iron bed Linda found at the dump and painted blue

Duranta Erecta - Sky Flower, Pigeonberry or Golden Dewdrop, dies back in winter the resprouts in spring

Clerodendrun Ugandense - Blue Butterfly Flower also dies back in winter, but so far has survived our Aiken temperatures (zone 7)

Pineapple Lilies

Stargazer Lilies

And a pot of purple

A Love of Gardening Should Be Passed Along

2007-07-24T12:04:00.000-04:00

My Grandmother Remelle Wilhite
My mother taught me many things. She taught me how to fry chicken and bathe a baby and make a prom dress and many other necessary skills that I’ve been doing so long I forgot where I learned them.

She did not, however, teach me but one thing about gardening. When I bought my first twelve pack of pansies to plant in the three by three foot square of red dirt next to our apartment in Stone Mountain, she suggested I work in some “woods dirt” from my grandmother’s yard to improve the soil. The hard red clay was not likely to inspire my pansies to perform at their best she said. It was a valuable lesson, but it was the only lesson.

Though she would attack indoor dust and dirt with inspiring vigor, she did not like to get dirty outside. She planted hydrangeas along one side of the house in Decatur and climbing roses across the back fence and that was all. Whatever foundation plantings came with the house when we moved in when I was thirteen were only replaced once in the thirty-five years my parents owned the house.

Her mother, my grandmother, on the other hand, must have enjoyed gardening, and shared her pleasure in it with me. She had lived most of her adult life in the city, but was not far off the farm, and, after my grandfather retired, she moved with him to Stone Mountain when it was still rural Georgia.

I remember digging potatoes with her in a small field where the soil was enriched by the chicken manure from my grandfather’s chickens, and I can see myself and one or two cousins dunked in a bath of something lethal, to get rid of chiggers after a morning spent picking blackberries on land that stood between her house and Stone Mountain,. In an old photo, taken at a family gathering in the early fifties, I can pick out canna and aspidistra near the mortared granite pillar beside the porch, and in one of her letters, she mentions planting “hollyhawks.” In another photo I have on my desk, taken when she was in her seventies, my grandmother stands smiling under an arbor of lush, pink roses that she must have tended herself.

I have one brother who started gardening late in his life and only after he had been married for some years to a Tennessee Farm Girl who had to explain to him exactly what "compost" is.

Now he understands what compost is, AND the importance of horse manure, and even better, when it comes from you own horse. So every year this brother, who grew up in the same household with the same mother as I, puts in tomatoes, pole beans, turnip greens (he has finally learned to love them in his mid 50's) and swaps them with neighbors and friends for watermelons and cantaloupe.

Nothing like your own garden, he writes. Nothing like your own "stuff" just to give to friends, eat for yourself or "put up".

Then another brother, the youngest, says the only gardening advice he remembers is, "You’d better get that grass cut by the time I get home." By the time he got old enough to hold a hoe, our grandfather had died and our grandmother had moved to a smaller house where there was no potato patch.

I always wished that my children and their children could have the experience of spending time on a farm as I did, but we’re city folks so they must settle for a bit of a garden where they can find it. My grandson and his parents and little brother have just moved into a new house in Florence with a lush, green yard. The house came neatly landscaped with manicured shrubs and a tree or two, but over in one corner, up against the back fence, is a rectangle of bare soil that measures about three by seven feet. The first thing three-year-old Aiden showed me when we visited a few weeks ago was this spot. It was nothing but a patch of dirt at the time, but he got out his “shuggles” and began to dig, moving the dark PeeDee dirt from one end of the plot to the other.

This weekend we planted a garden in Aiden’s corner. It’s a heavenly place, with Sunflowers, perennial and annual, Moonflowers, a few watermelons, and seeds for pumpkins. I think, as enthusiastic as I was about the plants, he would just as soon have spent his time digging, but, when the moonflowers start to bloom, I’ll read him Jean and Peter Loewer’s beautiful book, Moonflower, that tells the story of a moonflower vine and all the night creatures that are drawn to it, and I’ll be sure that he notices when he wakes up one morning to find that the yellow flower at the end of the watermelon vine has become an egg shaped green fruit.

“How long until Aiden's big enough to lift a fifty pound bag of pine bark?” asks my youngest son, just to be sure I don’t get too serious about this issue. “Uncle Dave is ready to turn over that piece of his childhood to the next generation.”

Maybe a love of gardening runs in families, like twins or red hair, but isn’t bestowed on everyone equally. Or, maybe, it’s more like Aunt Bessie’s silver tea service - a family treasure.

Some Roses to Take the Summer Heat

2007-07-06T13:08:00.000-04:00

While our hybrid teas and polyanthus are taking a breather during the hottest part of the summer, there's another rose blooming now, not of the genus Rosa, that revels in the heat. That is the Rose of Sharon, also called "Althea." The name comes, I suppose, from the Rose of Sharon referred to in the Old Testament's Song of Solomon. Though there are, I read many flowers thought to be that rose, Hibiscus syriacus is the one to which the name stuck. It's also called "Althea."

‘White Chiffon’ Althea or Rose of Sharon is blooming now in the back bed. ‘White Chiffon’ is a relative of the old Rose of Sharon shrub that used to bloom in your grandmother’s garden, but so much better. With flowers that resemble those of cousin tropical hibiscus, which won’t survive our winter, these Hibiscus syriacus hybrids are hardy to -15ºF. They are also deer resistant, and heat and drought tolerant. They are deciduous and may be heavily pruned in late fall or early spring. The varieties offered by Proven Winners other than the Chiffon series include the Satin series- Blue, Blush, Violet, and Rose.

‘White Chiffon’ has delicate, 3-inch single white flowers with lacy centers, almost camellia-like. It will grow from six to eight feet and spreads to six feet. There is a pink variety called ‘Lavender Chiffon’ as well.

Besides its wide open appearance, this Hibiscus has other differences with the old-fashioned Altheas. The older varieties were notoriously invasive, since they bore hundreds of seed pods which were easily spread by birds and then sprouted willy-nilly all over the country. In addition, the spent blossoms would fall from the shrub and leave a sometimes slippery mess. Some folks considered it a weed.

‘White Chiffon’ is a hybrid that shouldn’t even be propagated without a license, so it won’t be included in the next edition of Passalong Plants, and it shouldn’t take over your perennial bed.
A walk around the block shows me that I’m not the only one to have discovered this great midsummer flower. ‘Lavender Lady,’ still bearing her label, is blooming now in the garden of a neighbor. It is more nearly pink than lavender, with a deep maroon center and pronounced stamens that beg for the attention of passing hummingbirds. There are other varieties as well. The Chiffons are available at Cold Creek Nursery.

Another Good Reason to Live in Aiken

2007-06-21T16:39:00.000-04:00

There is no more perfect time of year, I think, than these gardenia-scented days of June. The promise of a bouquet of fresh blue hydrangeas and creamy white gardenia blossoms beside a bowl of peaches, still warm from the stand, is what keeps us going through the dreary days of February.

Once warm weather arrives, it’s always a fun to see what handsome combination of plants city Horticulturist Tom Rapp has come up with for the parkways and beds around Aiken. He has so much territory to cover these days, he has to choose plants that are reliable, drought tolerant and pretty showy as well. Imitating Tom’s beds is a safe bet when choosing plants for our home gardens.

Aiken’s signature fountain this year has two annuals to grace the feet of the laughing children who stand for eternity beneath the umbrella at the corner of Laurens Street and Park Avenue.

Against a backdrop of boxwood that stays there year round, Tom planted Pink Dragonwing Begonia and Alternanthera ‘Purple Knight.’ In this and other city plantings, the bed begins with a fresh layer of Bricko Farms’ soil conditioner called ‘Aiken Mix.’

Dragonwing Begonias are a cross between Angelwing begonias and the old wax begonias that have been a staple of our partial shade gardens for years. Dragonwing has glossy green, wing-shaped leaves and flowers in red or pink. It will grow in full sun but will thrive in part sun as well. It grows eighteen to twenty-four inches tall with an eight to ten inch spread. Plant it in a bed, like the one around the fountain, or in a pot.

Alternanthera, the foliage plant in the fountain bed, is just one of about eighty plants in the genus with the same name. Many of them have become popular lately as accompaniments to their flowering brethren. This particular alternanthera, with purple, metallic foliage, appears to be a vigorous grower and may want to engulf its bedmate if not kept in check.

Tom has also interplanted chartreuse potato vine with the begonias in some of the other beds, for an appealing effect.
You may also see around town another species of alternanthera. Low growing Chartreuse Alternanthera is a great accompaniment to many summer annuals and perennials. The plants grow in a compact mound, from four to eight inches tall and six to twelve inches wide with small linear shaped leaves. It is sometimes called “Joseph’s Coat” owing to its many colors. Unfortunately, it shares that name with another colorful plant, Amaranthus, so landscapers use its botanical name.

Landscapers call this Alternanthera an “echo plant” because it tends to enhance or echo other colors, making them appear more vibrant. A favorite of the University of Georgia Trial Gardens in 2004, it is, they say, a favorite addition to container gardens and hanging baskets, where it spills over the side like froth from a bubbling stream. Joseph's Coat is actually an heirloom plant that was popular in the Victorian era when formal gardens were in vogue. Today, thanks to the introduction of several exciting new cultivars from Mexico and South America, there is renewed interest in the plant. It is an excellent plant for today's busy gardener because it provides season-long color while requiring little routine care.

‘Red Threads’ has deep burgundy colored foliage that is almost grass-like, with narrow leaves. ‘Summer Flame’ has multicolored foliage in pink, white, and green with a broader leaf. Both prefer full sun and are low growing.

Tomatoes and Freewill

2007-06-18T16:33:00.000-04:00

Our neighbor, Richard, is an interesting person. As a dermatologist, he spends his days warning people of the damage brought on by too much time in the sun. As a gardener, he know that the good tomatoes he craves must have plenty of sun to produce the sweet, red, juice-running-down-your-chin tomatoes we expect from our back yard gardens.

Despite the efforts of the tree-trimmers that the power company sent to massacre the live oaks on his side of our street, in the name of protecting our power lines, or maybe because of it, Richard found one spot sunny enough to support his tomato plants – smack in the middle of his front yard, between the driveway and the street. So he dug up the tired old azaleas and in their place set his tomato plants.

Ever the inquisitive gardener, Richard further researched and built a self watering contraption in which to plant his tomatoes. It is sure to provide them with that other necessary element – plenty of water.

He then had hauled in a truckload of the compost the city sells that they make from the yard waste they collect around town, put down a layer of newspaper, and he gradually spread the compost across the bed, where he planted more tomatoes and peppers.

In these days of neighborhood covenants and deed restrictions that would give some people apoplexy at the thought of tomatoes in the front yard, Richard has struck a blow for independence I admire - though he yielded eventually to that most persuasive covenant – the marriage one. At the request of Richard’s wife, the workmen came Friday and planted a row of pickets that hides the vegetable garden. But I know it’s there. From the window where I sit at my computer I can see over the fence the tops of the tomato plants, stretching for sun, and my mouth is watering already for that first real taste of summer.

To find out how to build Richard’s self-watering tomato planter, go to www.josho.com/Earthbox.htm

Aiken has a great variety of trees and even greater variety of people

2007-05-31T17:13:00.000-04:00

According to an interview on ETV’s Road Show, Aiken has such a variety of trees that it has been declared an arboretum. These trees not only give Aikenites something different, or even exotic, to see, but also give them the opportunity to watch the Memorial Day parade in the shade.

Aiken has, within a four-mile radius of downtown, one of the best tree collections in the southern United States. Twenty-five years ago, when Robert and Julia Mackintosh and Bob McCartney first established Woodlanders Nursery on the grounds of an old house of Colleton Avenue, they began planting new and unusual trees on some of the nearby parkways. A few years later, with a $10,000 grant from the South Carolina Forestry Commission and a matching grant from the city, they worked with the Aiken Parks Department to establish Aiken’s citywide Arboretum project.

The grant paid for a dedicated computer and an intern who labeled trees at Hopeland Gardens, Rye Patch, Odell Weeks, and the Arboretum Trail. The Arboretum trail begins at a slash pine beside the library on Colleton Avenue, where there’s a box containing a brochure that lists the names of and information about each tree. It continues for seven blocks to Marion Street. At Marion the trail turns back, winding through the wide parkways and crossing over itself until it ends at a Strawberry Tree on Park Avenue.

There are eleven species of oak on the trail, five different pines, ordinary trees such as Dogwood, Sweet Gum and Crape Myrtle, Eastern Red Cedar, valued for its wood used in cabinetwork and cedar chests, and the graceful Deodor Cedar. There are several Magnolias. The Saucer Magnolia sends out extravagant blooms on bare stems every spring, making us wish we’d made room for it in our patch of garden, and no southern arboretum trail would be complete without a Southern Magnolia.

There are a few hollies, a Pecan and a Redbud along the way, as well as Osage Orange and Honey Locust. There’s no Palmetto Tree, but there is the slightly hardier Windmill Palm.

A total of 48 trees are listed in the walk brochure, but Bob has continued to plant trees around town anywhere he can find the space and a reasonable belief that the trees will be cared for.

City horticulturist, Tom Rapp, has “branched out” in his choices of trees for Aiken’s public places, too. Chinese Pistacia trees, relatives of the edible pistacio nut tree, are planted in the Laurens Street Parkway. They produce attractive hanging blossoms in the summer and nice fall color.

Last fall, Tom removed the Bradford Pears near the corner of Laurens Street and Park Avenue and replaced them with unusual Tung Oil trees. After a rough spring, the trees are beginning to leaf out and should add yet another bit of interest to our treescape.

Not far from the end of the arboretum walk, beneath the shade of a crape myrtle tree, we witnessed a great Memorial Day parade. We honored those who served and those who fell. Included were veterans from World War II, Korea, Viet Nam, Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom and other actions. Some vets were undecorated, some highly decorated and one was a Medal of Honor recipient. We don’t all agree on the wisdom of the wars, but we honored all the veterans with cheering and applause.

The crowd watching, as well as the crowd of participants, included people from different backgrounds and different age groups. There were many native to our town, and people, like us, who have lived here thirty years and feel like natives. There were newcomers, too, who must have felt right at home.

Where else could one band play “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” receive enthusiastic acknowledgement, followed by Confederate Re-enactors marching to “Dixie”? And no one seemed to catch even a hint of irony. Good for us. There’s room for everyone here in Aiken.
I’ll bet there are more kinds of people in Aiken than there are varieties of trees here.

The Tree That Fenced the West

2006-11-14T14:21:00.000-05:00

If you take a walk down Aiken’s Colleton Avenue this time of year, you might notice some strange looking fruit lying in the grass beneath a large tree. This tree and its green, bumpy, softball sized fruit are called Osage Orange.

I’m not sure why this green fruit is called an orange. It’s round like an orange and has a slightly citrus fragrance, and it has the thorny stems characteristic of true citrus. But it isn’t edible unless you’re a squirrel or a wooly mammoth and it is actually more closely related to the mulberry.

Though the Osage Orange is native to a small area in eastern Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, an area that was also home to the Osage Indians, it was introduced into other parts of America where it was planted extensively for fencerows. "Horse high, bull strong and hog tight" was the recommended size and shape for the Osage Orange fence. Its stiff, thorny, interlacing branches work like the barbed wire that eventually replaced it.

The Indians used the strong, elastic wood of the Osage Orange for making hunting bows and war clubs, and today some of the best bows are made of wood from the Osage Orange tree. Unverified stories claim that the fruit from this tree cut in half works as a bug repellent, and that the fruit kept around the base of you house keeps away cockroaches.

Several years ago Martha Stewart magazine ran an article suggesting cutting the fruit into half inch slices and letting it dry over a small ball of aluminum foil. The finished product looks like a little flower.

If you’ve a yen to plant an Osage Orange tree around your house, you might have a little trouble finding them available, though I did find one online source. If the fruit is what you’re after, remember that you need a male and a female tree to produce fruit.

Could You Substitute Chicken?

2006-09-14T15:16:00.000-04:00

Once about twenty years ago, while we were living in California, Hank and I took the children on a trip to Maui. One evening while we were there, we were feeling especially worldly, got a sitter, and went out to have dinner at the motel restaurant that overlooked the island of Molokai.

Hank is one of those people who can talk to anybody about anything, and this evening he struck up a conversation with some folks at a nearby table. We chatted about being from South Carolina and living in California and how much we liked California, but were a little homesick for the South. Hank casually mentioned, apropos of our meal I guess, that he and the children had really grown to like the homemade pasta I’d learned to make.

“Possum?” the neighbors responded in unified amazement. “You cook Possum?”

By now, Mario Batalli or Paula Deen may have come up with a good Possum pasta recipe. If so, I might pass it along to my friend Kent Smith, who asked me the other day if I knew what to do about possums in his garden. They especially prefer his yard, he said, to the exclusion of his neighbors’. Though they hadn’t done much damage to the plants, they like to dig through the grass and pinestraw, creating a mess and insinuating themselves upon the hospitality of Kent and his wife Carol (who works at Plum Pudding, a great downtown kitchen store). The Smiths are happy transplants from colder climates, where there are also possums, but people don’t expect that you have them for dinner.

Should they choose to go this route, recipes for possum abound, probably not in any of the cookbooks on the shelves at Plum Pudding, but on the internet and in a few of my old cookbooks as well. My mother passed along to me a faded blue copy of Mrs. S.R. Dull’s Southern Cooking, first published in 1928, that includes in the preface a tribute to Mrs. Dull, as well as a chronicle of her forbears. The cookbook was the one my mother’s most often consulted, though I’m sure she never tried “Alma’s Recipe for ‘Possum.”

Charleston Receipts, published in 1950, also mentions a recipe for Roast ‘possum. I started to include some of the details, but decided that any recipe that includes the words “…pull off hair while hot” and “cut off ears, remove eyes and head if desired” would not likely tempt the modern appetites.

The National Gardening Association suggests that opossum control may be accomplished by keeping food or plants you’re growing covered, dusting with baby powder, cayenne pepper or blood meal. Loud noises scare them away they say, but might keep you and your neighbors awake as well. Otherwise, about the only solution is to trap them, being very careful to avoid the critter’s razor sharp teeth, and take them far away to release them. Or you can do the-other-thing-that-people-sometimes-do with large household pests – call Aiken Animal Control.

And if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em I guess. There is, believe it or not, a National Opossum Society which reminds us that Opossums are beneficial: eating the harmful, unwanted pests around your home such as snails, slugs, spiders, cockroaches, rats, mice and snakes. Think of the opossum as your free gardener. The opossum is known as “Nature’s Little Sanitation Engineer” for a good reason!
Join me online at www.aiken-gardens.blogspot.com to see a photo of a possum and for other news and advice about life and gardening in the South Car

Iris: time to Split!

2006-09-07T19:45:00.000-04:00

This Dutch Iris (I think) grows from bulbs, but may naturalize.

It’s an odd time of year to think about Irises, unless you happen to be reading of the mythological Iris, who took messages to the gods along the rainbow to the ends of the earth and lead the souls of women to the Elysian Fields.

The blooming Irises are named for the goddess because of their many colors. Most of them bloom in spring and summer – or not at all.

“Why didn’t my Iris bloom?” is a question I hear a lot, and I even heard a caller ask that of Roland Austin on South Carolina ETV’s “Making It Grow” the other night. Roland’s answer was, predictably, “It probably needs dividing.”

So, when and how does one go about dividing an iris? If it’s a Bearded Iris, this is the best time of year to go about the process. Here is a short version of how.

First, carefully dig and lift the Bearded Iris rhizomes out of the ground. The rhizomes are the long thin tuberous things with whispy roots growing out of them, from which the iris grows. Next, with a hose, clean off all the soil clinging to the rhizome so you can see what you’re doing. Then, cut off the leaves to about six inches. This will remind the rhizome to quit worrying about growing leaves and worry about growing next year’s flowers.

When you can clearly see the rhizome, inspect it for borers and rot. Get rid of any problem areas. Then, using a disinfected knife or pruner, separate the rhizomes into pieces at least three inches long. A fork in the rhizome is a good place to make a cut. Be sure each piece has healthy roots attached to it.

When you’re ready to replant your divisions, and you should replant as soon as possible, dig a shallow hole, about 2 to 3 inches deep and wide enough to spread out the rhizome’s roots. Make a mound in the center of the hole, just above soil level. Soak the soil in the planting hole and place a rhizome division in the center of the mound, spreading the roots around and down the mound. Cover the rhizome with no more than an inch or 2 of soil. “Like ducks on a pond,” is the rule of thumb for planting the bearded iris rhizomes. Plant them too deeply and they won’t bloom.

I found a great website with photos and complete instructions for dividing our bearded iris at www.gardening.about.com.

There’s another iris that I once loved, that used to bloom beautifully in my garden every spring. The delicate purple Siberian Irises are my favorites, but they produced nary a blossom this year.

Siberian Irises grow in clumps and mine, sad to say, have taken on a suicide pact with the clumping liriope that grows around them. Though they can be transplanted now, Siberians may do better to wait until spring to be split apart and divested of the grassy interloper. That is a chore I should put high on my list.

I should simply dig up the huge clump, divide it up with a sharp knife, try to pull out all the liriope, and put a piece back in the same spot it came from. Then I can share the rest.

The Only Solution to September Mayhem May Be a Good Freeze

2006-09-04T13:38:00.000-04:00

Morning Glory is thick as kudzu, reaching up into the sweetgum tree, twining around the rose bush, and covering the daylilies with a blanket of its heart shaped leaves. I have let my garden get away from me once again. Chaos reigns.

I think of leveling the whole mess and starting over, but decide against it. The morning glory flowers are dazzling on cool, September mornings, and I know there is not much to see beneath them.

Dozens of other interlopers have shown up around my garden, thanks to my inattention. Volunteer hackberry, wisteria, smilax, and Carolina cherry are the primary invaders. Elegant eleagnus bursts through on occasion as well.

Hole Number 9 at Augusta National is named Carolina Cherry, so it can’t be such a disreputable shrub, though Prunus caroliniana, is an opportunistic plant that tends to pop up whenever it can. With shiny, simple, alternate, evergreen leaves, it has black fruit that birds love to eat. The bark is gray-brown and smooth on young stems, becoming grooved and scaly on older stems. Carolina cherry is respectable enough to be sold as a landscaping tree, claiming kinship to other cherry laurels, such as Otto Luyken. It’s shade tolerant and can make a good border shrub.

Hackberries are tolerant of a variety of soils and climate conditions. For those reasons, you can see them popping up through the most well-manicured and densely planted borders. Its pale green, diaphanous leaves make an airy canopy above the warty trunk. I suppose a golfer would shy away from a hole called “Hackberry,” but the berries of these trees are a favorite of birds and a host of insects, such as the hackberry woolly aphid that develops on the leaves. The sticky “honeydew” from this insect rains heavy onto whatever sits beneath it, and if the object happens to be your car, you’ll want to do some serious pruning or resign to giving your car a daily bath.

The sound of Bill Peterson's old truck alerts me that he has arrived to take down the blasted tree, after years of suffering through sticky windshields and sooty leaf drop. Its loss will mean our thicket a little less thick, but our cars are a little more clean.

There are somewhere between 200 and 300 species of smilax vines, several of which can be found on the edges of my garden. The thorny catbrier has a pale, droopy leaf and we could surely do without it. But the handsome, smooth stemmed lanceolata always shows its glossy evergreen leaves best at Christmas when we can adorn our doorways and mantles with the stuff, just like our great grandmothers did before the days of twinkling lights and vinyl pine swags.

Virginia Creeper has taken a strong hold around my garden as well. This vine, with its leaves made up of five pointed leaflets, can be useful in covering a wall or fence, but it can be invasive. It is handsome in the fall when its leaves turn ruby red.

I read suggestions every year about planting marigolds now instead of mums, since the flowers will last longer and they’ll put on a better show. The suggestions hasn’t leaked to the garden centers, however, and the choices for adding color to the faded flower beds seem limited to mums and asters. It’s too soon to plant pansies, since we’ll have more warm days, so I spend an hour pulling up the weeds near the back door, fertilize the roses one more time, hunker down and wait for a freeze to do the rest of the cleaning for me.

Flower Children Need Love, Too

2006-08-27T15:29:00.000-04:00

Henry Shaw was an Englishman who moved to St. Louis, Missouri in the early nineteenth century and later became instrumental in establishing the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Shaw never married. His real love was his garden. A story is told that a lady visitor was amazed that he could remember so well the names of the garden’s rare plants. “Madam,” he is said to have replied, “did you ever know a mother who could forget the names of her children? These plants and flowers are my children. How can I forget them?”

Well, sad to say, if my flowers were my children, I’d probably be hauled into family court on the grounds of neglect.

There are, fortunately, a few late summer bloomers that can take the heat and my periodic negligence. Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is one of my favorite summer flowers with dusty pink daisy-like flowers that start blooming in mid-spring and keep right on into the fall. The dried flower heads bequeath hundreds of seeds that can be left to self seed or harvested and started in flats for next year’s bed. Go ahead and get them started now. Don’t wait until spring.

Shasta Daisies (Chrysanthemum X superbum) inhabit another corner of my side bed and are still going strong now in late August. Shasta daisy is a member of the Asteraceae family and is a hybrid created by Luther Burbank in 1890. The name “Shasta daisy” is said to come from the fact that the clean white petals of the daisy reminded Burbank of the snow on Mount Shasta in California. This cheerful, sun-loving, long-lasting daisy has white petals surrounding a yellow center atop sturdy stems that make it great for cutting. Leucanthemum ‘Becky’ was named the 2003 Perennial Plant of the Year by the Perennial Plant Association. Like the coneflower, it starts blooming in spring and will last into fall. Just give it sun, regular water, and keep it groomed. It will reward you with years of beauty.

Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida) is yet another popular, sun-loving perennial that makes a good cut flower. It tolerates poor soil and drought and blooms from summer into fall across a wide range of climates. ‘Goldsturm’ grows about three feet tall and was honored by the Perennial plant Society as the 1999 Perennial Plant of the Year.

Autumn Joy Sedum must be one of the hardiest plants in my garden and, though we don’t get the bright flowers that appear in cooler climates, there are flowers still, and this sedum is certainly worth growing for its foliage. There are hundreds of plants in the huge and varied sedum genus. Some are low-growing. Others are upright. Most are succulent with thick, fleshy leaves. The best thing about the sedums in my garden, I think is the fact that in the deep, dreary winter when the garden is bare, you happen upon a pot of them and already the new baby plants have begun their spring journey.

Salvia leucantha, or Mexican Bush Sage has tall, deep purple flower spikes that don’t show up until late in the summer. It’s worth the wait, however, and this handsome tender perennial graces gardens from the upstate, where it’s not likely to survive the winter to Charleston, where it probably will. In my salvia madness period in early spring, I bought a pot and left it on the west side of the house where it doesn’t get much water. It’s hanging in however, and will burst forth any day and last until frost. I might have sheared it back a few times during the summer to get lusher blooms.

So, at least my more resilient flower children have nearly made it through another Aiken summer that seems to be getting hotter as we plow into September. Maybe when it cools off I will become a more attentive mother.

Aiken's Weather Suits Tung to a T

2006-08-16T20:35:00.000-04:00

Aiken city horticulturist Tom Rapp tells me he had several problems when trying to replace the Bradford Pear trees planted up the Laurens Street Hill near Aiken's famous fountain. Bradford Pears, though quite eye-catching, tend to split as those trees did, so he didn’t want to plant more of them. Bell South had a large line under the planting strip and recommended that the city not plant any big trees there.

Tom searched for something unusual that would be attractive, fairly drought tolerant and hardy and that could take whatever stress might come from standing so near the street. Aleurites fordii, or Tung Oil tree, was his pick, and that it what is planted there today. Though they look a little scrawny now, they promise to spiff up that spot come spring.

According to Floridata, a website that gives in-depth information about many flowers, trees and shrubs that grow in Florida, Tung Oil trees grow best where summers are long and hot and temperatures are consistently warm day and night throughout the growing season. Aiken sounds like the perfect spot.

The Tung Oil tree is a spreading round-crowned deciduous tree that should grow to about twelve to twenty feet tall. If you’ve ridden by, you can see the leaves are large (3-5 inches) and heart shaped. In the spring, before the tree leafs out, we can expect to see creamy colored blooms, growing in clusters.

After they’re pollinated by honeybees, the female flowers develop into two to three inch round fruit that contains nut-like seeds. The oil from these seeds is used as a waterproof coating for wood and as a drying agent for paints and varnishes. It has many other industrial uses.

Tung Oil trees like slightly acidic soil, thoughthey will tolerate a wide range of soil types.

All parts of the tree, especially the fruit, are toxic.

Like the Bradford Pear, this Tung Oil tree promises a handsome display to announce the arrival of spring.

On a visit last year at the home of Gloria Farmer, mother of well-known South Carolina horticulturist Jenks Farmer, Jenks cut open a Tung Oil fruit to show the valuable seed inside.

Not So Far from the Madding Crowd

2006-08-11T06:54:00.000-04:00

St. Thaddeus Church and the churchyard surrounding it stand between busy U.S. Highway 1 and a spot that is, for nine months a year, the Mead Hall school playground. It doesn’t sound like a spot you would go for quiet meditation. Nevertheless, it is a peaceful place. Old live oak, cedar, and magnolia trees tower over dogwood, camellia, an assortment of colorful annuals, perennials, and an historic graveyard.

Some of the graves and some of the trees in the churchyard predate the Civil War. The flowers are new, however, and for this our congregation can thank the efforts of Tim Garvin. Tim spends hours of his time all year, tending these beds, experimenting with plants that will thrive in conditions that are sometimes less than ideal.

Soft purple Mexican petunia waves its willowy leaves along the drive.

Bengal tiger canna dances behind the brick wall.

Melampodium blankets the bed near the ramp that leads to the front doors.

By the Sea, By the Sea

2006-08-04T09:03:00.000-04:00

You can drive from Aiken to Folly Beach, South Carolina in less than three hours. Only one stoplight slows you down after you get out of town, through Salley and North, past Bull Swamp and onto I-26 north of Orangeburg. It's a peaceful ride, skirting downtown Charleston and across the wide and easy James Island connector, out Folly Road to the Island.

Sea birds, outboard motors, and a violent Saturday night thunderstorm were just about the only sounds we could hear from the deck of the condo that overlooked the Folly River.

Oleander, not native to the area, but very much at home here, lines the causeway from the mainland, as it lines many of the roadways near the southeast coast. Other wildflowers catch you eye as well, if you risk jumping out of the car for a quick shot.

Can anyone identify this dainty pink flower I found growing beside the road?

'Spellbound' has me Spellbound

2006-08-01T20:42:00.000-04:00

I shot a quick photo of the 'Spellbound' Rose blossom before we left town on Friday and it and the remaining blooms succumbed to the heat. This is a perfectly beautiful rose I added to my garden this spring and so far it's been quite happy there. 'Spellbound' is a hybrid tea with thick satiny petals and delicious coral blossoms. So far it's been resistant to black spot and keeps coming back despite the heat. The weather this week, with temperatures hovering around 100, will put it to the test.

It's a bird, It's a plane, It's Supertunia

2006-07-25T09:43:00.000-04:00

Two shades of Coleus and Supertunia Vista 'Bubblegum' can take even Aiken's steamy summers

Aiken's round intersections sometimes present problems to drivers who are new to the area. They also present great opportunities for City Horticulturist Tom Rapp and his crew to display their talents, often showcasing plants new to the market. 'Black Pearl' ornamental pepper and Supertunia Vista 'Bubblegum' are two hot new plants for this season. While you're waiting to "left turn yield," have a close look at these lush beds.

With so many beds to tend, Tom includes plants that are heat and drought tolerant and low maintenance. He's also careful to make sure the soil is everything it should be. Every year the landscaping crews replace the existing soil with 3-4 inches of Bricko Farms' "Aiken Mix."

'Black Pearl' Ornamental Pepper

2006-07-22T16:52:00.000-04:00

I do love roses and have planted many rose bushes over the years, though I'm afraid some of the serious rose growers I know would be horrified at my technique - or lack of it. I plant roses the way you're supposed to, adding organic matter and lime and superphospate and Epsom salts for strong stems. I spray about every two weeks, add a systemic fertilizer that takes care of diseases, and, now that I have irrigation, I water my roses regularly. But that's about it. I don't inspect my roses daily for Japanese beetles and blackspot, and in some cases I plant too many other things too close to the roses so the air can't circulate well enough.

Here's the deal. For a rose to do well in my garden, it's got to be tough. For as long as they last, I'm going to post a photo of my favorite easy-to-grow Rose of the Week. This week's winner was one of the 1994 All American Roses Selections, with bright yellow petals and dark green foliage. It grows upright to five feet tall with four inch musk scented flowers. Introduced by Jackson and Perkins, this week's award goes to 'Midas Touch.'

This rose made the Augusta Rose Society's "easy care roses" list. For lots of good advice for growing roses in the steamy South Carolina midlands, follow the link to their website.

If you have a favorite easy care rose, please post a comment below.

Knock Outs™ and Sunpatiens™ - worthy of the hype?

2006-07-20T17:22:00.000-04:00

Knock Out™ Roses have been around our gardens for several years now. Shrub roses bred for their winter hardiness, drought tolerance, and resistance to disease, they appear to be the darling of the humid southern garden. Knock Outs™ come in three colors, red, pink, and blush, and they get my vote since they're blooming beautifully in the middle of steamy July.

Tropical Orange Sunpatiens™ seems to tolerate the afternoon sun in my garden, as long as I water it everyday. But I'm not sure that other New Guinea impatiens wouldn't do the same. It has lasted well though, just as long as we don't run out of water.

Could I borrow a cup of bandwidth?

2006-07-14T16:30:00.000-04:00

We arrived home yesterday, after a visit with our brand new grandson to find that our cable was out. A nonfunctioning cable is for us a double whammy - no TV and no internet.

Having spent six hours in the car together over the last two days, we were not interested in getting to know each other better during this unassigned time. We know each other well enough for the time being. We could read, but we usually do that anyway, later.

We were able to entertain ourselves briefly with the satellite radio. Hank watched an old DVD, but I had news to get out and pictures of the most adorable baby ever born to show the world. I was suffering world wide web withdrawal.

We called our neighbor across the street to find out if his cable was out too, so we would know if it was our problem alone. His cable was working fine he said, "but hey, you want to surf? Get on my wireless connection! I know it'll work, because when my connection got hit by lightning, I got onto yours."

Hmm. Imagine that. You can get on your computer in your house and with no wires or anything (hence the name - wireless) you can get service using your neighbor's connection. It worked perfectly. He was out for the evening so I didn't slow him down any. I sent photos of the new baby to everyone I thought might be the least bit interested, and everybody was happy.

Glomming on to someone else's internet connection with the intention of never paying for one yourself is illegal of course. You can be caught and prosecuted for it, and, just like you wouldn't steal a cup of sugar, you wouldn't steal a connection someone else has paid for. But the cable guy, who fixed it the next morning after we decided the cat pulled the connection loose, assured me it was OK this time.

I always knew I liked this neighborhood. From the day we came to town thirty years ago, I thought I wanted to live here. I pictured neighborhood picnics and the kids playing baseball and a glass of wine in the garden with old friends, but who'd have imagined then, that someday we'd move in and be able to share something invisible with our neighbors? That we'd be using each other's electromagnetic waves.

Maybe we should take up a sport.

'Workman' is the Perfect Name for this Aiken Gardener

2006-07-13T20:42:00.000-04:00

Denny Workman spends 12 hours a day working in his spectacular shade garden on the south side of Aiken. This is just one of the many delightful vistas you can enjoy on his nearly two acre spread. Hostas, like this 'Tattoo,' share the space with hydrangeas, magnolias, ferns, pine, oak, and hickory trees. Even sun sensitive rhododendrons survive the Aiken heat in this shady spot.

Denny is also an artist. He created this magnolia blossom from scraps of copper roofing.

2006-07-10T14:20:00.000-04:00

Life is just a bowl of Okra.

Fuzzy, green bullet-shaped Okra, Abelmoschus esculentus, is a cousin to the Hollyhock and Hibiscus, with a flower that's attractive as vegetables go.

A half cup of boiled okra, if you can stand to eat it that way, is only 18 calories. It's low in Saturated Fat and Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Protein, Riboflavin, Niacin, Phosphorus, Potassium, Zinc and Copper, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Thiamin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Calcium, Magnesium and Manganese.

Fry it up in a flour and cornmeal batter, and you've multiplied the calories by a factor of 10 or so and you can forget about the low in fat designation, but team it up with a bowl of butterbeans or crowder peas and a couple of juicy red tomatoes and you can sit down and take a bite out of summer.

Question: What's better than your own vegetable garden?

2006-07-08T18:09:00.001-04:00

Answer: A neighbor with a vegetable garden!

A fifth of an acre under a canopy of live oaks and sweetgums is not a good place for a tomato garden. Our neighbor, Mr. Wade, an ex-banker with roots in the country, has a yard not unlike ours, but he has a farm, and on that farm he grows the sweetest tomatoes and the tenderest squash and cucumbers and cabbage and some other things we haven't even tried yet. About twice a week he arrives from Salley with the back of his truck full. All we have to do is walk around the hedge that separates our driveways and fill up a bag.

When I was growing up outside of Atlanta, our next door neighbor Mr. Lingerfelt had a garden like Mr. Wade's in the lot he had bought behind his house. All year he grew vegetables that he shared with us. The difference was - he charged. He also offered an occasional taste of squirrel stew. We declined.