Wild by Design

The calendar has flipped, it’s a new gardening year, so let’s get planning.

Join and I for a webinar on January 22 where we’ll discuss our experiences, from North Carolina and eastern Ontario, designing, planting and - crucially - managing natural gardens. We’ll each highlight a selection of gardens from small to large, sunny to shady, and urban to rural to provide some inspiration, ideas and actionable strategies for as many different home landscapes as possible.

Our gracious host Benjamin Vogt will then moderate what promises to be a lively Q&A to cap things off.

These are the depths of winter. Plan now, and plant with reckless abandon this spring!

Follow the link in my bio to register.

Earlier this week, peak summer in the garden in South Bay. Deep fertile soil and (full disclosure) some supplemental watering have helped the garden through a perilously dry month. Rudbeckia maxima taking over from Cephalaria as the tall jungly emergent plant, with a summer mix of Alliums, Coreopsis, Rudbeckia etc covering ground beneath.

The meadows are coming into their prime too, as we experiment again this year with different mowing regimes. One area is cut back in spring and allowed to grow. The other area is mown regularly at a high setting until the end of May and then allowed to grow. In the past this hasn’t made a hugely noticeable difference, but this year with the dry conditions the cut meadow is much shorter. Hopefully we haven’t compromised flowering too much, but this is why you run the experiment.

Peak midsummer madness in an adolescent garden this week, with Echinacea pallida, E. paradoxa and E. ‘Pixie Meadowbrite’ all going gloriously haywire. The garden straddles and separates different terraces and outdoor living spaces around a beautifully built new home that looks as if it’s lived in this landscape for a century. A fantastic project with a great team:

Landscape architecture:
Landscape construction: Schoonhoven SLM
Architecture: Harry Morison Lay Architect
Dry stone walls: and
Planting design and installation: Me