GardenBook

  I don't recall when I first read about Madoo, but I would guess it was a magazine article or perhaps a review of 'Notes From Madoo' , Robert Dashes' book published in 2000. How I wanted to visit , but at that time in my life it seemed quite impossible. But opportunities sometimes present themselves and this summer my friends and I stepped through the portal into a garden I  thought I would never see.   Visiting dozens of gardens every year puts you in a position of  discernment. It's easy to be disappointed when the garden toured  lands under the ever-rising bar. The more gardens , the higher the bar climbs. As grateful as I am for the existence of the venerable Garden Conservancy, there are invariably  duds on Open Days .Sometimes the garden is just not to my taste, sometimes it's just not that great--and how subjective our vision of gardens is! These gardens all belong to someone,  someone loves them, cares for them or hires someone to do so . As ...

My camera malfunctioned at the end of day one , Garden Bloggers Fling . I have added the point-and-shoot to the Permanent Electronics Packing List . It was somewhat liberating to be camera-less for 2 days of garden touring, but now that I have been liberated once, I don't care to be so again. Thanks to Alison at Bonney Lassie who did in fact have the forethought to pack an extra camera , and kindly allowed me to borrow it for Saxon Holts' photo workshop on Saturday morning. Are there any people better than gardeners ? How splendid it would be if we ruled the world.  The point here is that I was unable to take images at The Hall of Flowers in San Francisco so I am reverting to the previous weekends visit to New York -my camera was fully operational at the Planting Fields Arboretum , and this is my substitute conservatory gig.Over the years I've visited a fair number of conservatory facilities, and it seemed that they were uniformly dusty and ill-maintained spaces , full...

  There has been a frenetic pace this June , visiting gardens from coast to coast . Denise and I speculated on the Fling bus Saturday...were we 'gardened -out' ? Just a little I think, though the freak heat-wave may have been a contributing factor. Just for the hell of it I totted up the numbers : 11 gardens on the east coast starting the 19th , fly home on Monday the 24th, go to work for a couple of days , and then 13 more gardens over the weekend in the Bay Area. Whew ! Looks like Sue up there ...  ...taking a photo of this...  The walled garden featured classic perennial borders , and hardscape I can only dream of. My travel companions taking in the views.   The childrens garden was tastefully cute . How about a folly and a lake in your back yard?  Not in the budget this year I'm afraid. Old Westbury Gardens is in Old Westbury New York, on Long Island.

 The winter photo-file project continues here. The virtual recycle bin is filled, emptied and filled again , freeing disc space for upcoming summer travels. Cleaning picture files is a lot like cleaning the guest room closet ; you make headway for a while and then you find a box , open it and end up sitting on the floor surrounded by your past.  The project slows and suspends itself - the worker has become distracted. Similar diversions impede progress with the digital images.  The photos on my external hard drive tell many stories, and for a gardener in January reliving summertime horticultural adventures keeps the gloom and cold at bay. One of my favorites is the story of Idyllunion.  Once upon a time out in cyber space a group of gardeners were pulled into the orbit of GardenWeb , an online forum that goes back to early days of the internet, and soldiers on to this day. A conversational offshoot of the perennials discussion group evolved as the members became vi...