I play hookey with a visit to 3 of Victoria’s best gardens

a glorious spring sight

On Wednesday this week I played hookey from my day job (I’m a social media consultant, you know – a professional tweeter ) and from my own garden and put on my AIRS 2011 convention hat.

That hat is Host Garden Coordinator as part of the Host Committee for the American Iris Society’s 2011 convention in Victoria May 28 – June 3rd.  These conventions usually attract between 400 – 600 Iris enthusiasts from primarily North America and are typically held in the US.  This is the first Canadian convention since 1955.

The Host Committee plants new editions sent from hybridizers from Canada, US, and Europe at chosen gardens and delegates judge and rate each plant.  The winners gets special distinction when they bring the new editions to market.

In our case, we arranged with Government House (the Attorney General of BC lives in this fabulous old mansion in Victoria. ) Its a public garden and through constant and generous donations and many volunteers the gardens are spectacular.  Beds in the garden have been set aside for bearded, Siberian, and PCI (Pacific Coastal) Iris.  As you can see, all are growing well.  We did the original planting in early August last year – over 1,600 plants were planted throughout the 4 host gardens.

Good growth for late March

The maintenance of the iris beds at Government House is handled by those capable volunteers and Valerie Murray – head gardener – couldn’t be more helpful to our cause.

Our next visit was to Finnerty Gardens.  This is another public garden in Victoria on the grounds of the University of Victoria.  It is a beautiful mixed garden with an absolutely splendid rhododendron section.  The iris are growing fine, we’ll fertilize with 10-15-19 next week and some of our own volunteers look after the weeding.  We have a 3 foot fence around the bed as the University campus overall struggles with a rabbit problem.  No bunnies have hopped over so far!  Instead of a picture of the iris at Finnerty Gardens, check out this beautiful Rhododendron ‘Sir Charles Lemon’ that’s in full bloom.  Rhonda Rose, head gardener, and her staff are true rhodoholics!

Rhododendron 'Sir Charles Lemon'

Last stop for the day was at the marvelous teaching garden Glendale Gardens.  Master Gardeners are trained here, volunteers and students help to maintain a marvelous assortment of different sections from the Japanese Garden to the vegetable garden to the Winter Garden to the Rose garden, etc. etc.  Head gardener, Derek Duffy, is a real plant expert and 4 special beds were created for the Iris display for the convention in 2011.  As you can see, the iris here are also doing well – but for some reason the bearded are doing much better than the Siberian.  Siberians like a richer growing medium and more water so we will adjust that in 2010 to get the desired result.  Here are pictures of the iris beds and the Heather bed at Glendale.

Heather garden at Glendale Gardens

Iris beds at Glendale Gardens

There is a fourth garden I didn’t visit this week which is really where the majority of the Iris beds are located.  Hatley Castle Gardens at Royal Roads University in Victoria are splendid and hugely impressive.  The expert team of Dave Rutherford and Barrie Agar created the several iris beds for us especially for the convention and have been invaluable in working with us to overcome a few peacocks and Canadian geese to ensure all the plants are healthy with enough sun exposure and water during the summer months.

Iris at Hatley Castle/Royal Roads

The host hotel for the convention is the world-famous Fairmont Empress Hotel and the delegates will also tour the very famous Butchart Gardens.  Its going to be a glorious event!  In the meantime all we have to do is grow on 1,600 iris, keep them healthy and weeded and watered!  Not too big a challenge for a group of dedicated gardeners, eh?

Climbing Roses, Cranesbill + Fashion for Gardeners

Brenda in her gardening best

I’m not sure I am typical of most gardeners, but I bet when it comes to what to wear to garden we all are the same.  Gardening is messy business.  No one in their right mind would wear anything light-coloured unless it was an old painting shirt as you are sure to end up with stains from the bag of Sea Soil you horfed from the driveway to the plot where it needs digging in.  Pants have to be extremely comfortable, lots of stretch (more for some like me than others), not too long so you trip, and have to have pockets to jam in plant tags, carry a Kleenex, maybe a fruit bar or those things you push up that produce a little blade to cut open the soil or fertilizer bags.  Sure, if you’ve got a belt or a vest, you wear it for the spade, pruners, and claw, but big pockets in pants are essential.  Shoes and boots vary with the gardener.  Note my very chi chi pink rubber boots in the picture.  I didn’t buy them for their snazzy pink colour – if fact I nearly didn’t buy them because they were pink – but they were at a swap meet, seemed nearly brand new, and were offered for $5.00.  That was 7 years ago and they have trudged through every type of garden condition and are completely clean after a hose off.  Some gardeners prefer those holey clogs, other sensible shoes – but you can bet that whatever they have on, it wouldn’t be considered fashionable.

Retailers are continually trying to lure the gardeners of the world into some sort of must have apparel.  We do undertake the most popular pastime on the planet and many of us are in the huge Baby Boomer category.  But try as I might, I can’t think of one clothing item we all yearn to own.  I once saw a very fetching $90.00 ‘gardening hat’.  I nearly bought it – but not to garden in.  I thought it may look jaunty on a dog walk but I wouldn’t risk sweating up a $90.00 item on a hot day in the garden.  So, clad in my old stretch pants from Old Navy about 10 years ago, my old ‘Canadian Women in Timber’ sweatshirt (another long story), my trusty knee pads that are actually not gardening knee pads but the type that people who lay carpet buy and my pink boots, here’s a short overview of where I am at in the garden……

I’ll include a picture of the kitchen beds tomorrow.  They are now nicely cleaned up which generally entails trying to beat back the consistently invasive cranesbill that I planted there when we first moved in.  It is lovely stuff with little pink flowers, but tries to overcome the special Cranesbill Geranium phaeum ‘Samobar’ with splashed leaves and deep green foliage or even the very popular Cranesbill ‘Roxanne’ which has glorious magenta flowers that are persistent from May to September.  In fact, it tries to overcome the Cardiocrinum (wouldn’t it be great if it bloomed this year for the garden tour??? Not going to happen….it’s only 4 years old), the Phlox, the hostas, you name it.  I do pot up some of the non-invasive Samobar cranesbill for the Mill Bay Garden Club’s plant sale in June.

Here’s a tip about climbing roses that I learned at the rose seminar at Glendale Gardens early this month.  This tip would only be useful for beginners as I doubt there are any other rose growers other than myself that have had roses for 4 years but didn’t know this……………

You won’t get any blooms from a climbing rose unless you actually bend the canes to a horizontal level on poles or posts (bending around and around) or along a fence, or arbour, etc. etc.)  Just letting them grow straight up will produce long canes with some foliage, but no flowers.  I have had what are often described as ‘the best’ climbers – R. Madame Alfred Carriere and R. Don Juan – for over two years with very little flowering.  The site is not as sunny as a perfect location for a rose, but pretty good.  Well darn, spent some time after getting home from the seminar bending them both around the lattice support and within two weeks sideshoots (or laterals) which is the only place where the flowering happens have appearing all over the cane.  Sheesh, live and learn………….

Heading over to Select Roses on the Mainland in Langley to get the R. Royal Sunset I’ve been looking all over for, and a Kordes Fairy Tale rose ‘Brothers Grimm’ and a ‘Apricot Vigorosa’.  The last two are from new German breeders and are apparently absolutely disease free!

A reminder, this blog is attempting to describe the steps I’m taking in my garden to prepare the garden for display on the Cowichan Family Life Association’s annual fund-raising Garden Tour.  As often mentioned, the tour takes place on June 6, 2010.  Here is the website address with all the details:

http://www.cowichanfamilylife.org/events/gardentour.htm

Secret organic fertilizer recipe + epsom salts

This is the Iris bed apres weeding and clean-up.  A much better vision.  Here’s a little about the ‘treatments’ going on in The Cedars Garden to ensure healthy plants and, where applicable, great blooms.  Please bear in mind most of this activity wouldn’t usually be taking place until a month later – we are unseasonably mild here on the BC coast this year.

• The Iris beds and the roses had a light sprinkle of Dolomite lime to bring up the PH.  Both plants are NOT acid lovers and need a bit of this in the spring and the fall to create their happiest growing conditions.
• The roses all had a handful each of alfalfa meal.  They had a handful of epsom salts a few weeks ago that helps root growth and prepares the plant for better uptake of fertilizer and the alfalfa meal helps in production of healthy and attractive foliage.  The usual rose food mix won’t be applied till the first of April.  If applied before it will stimulate too much growth in the still coolish weather.
• Herbaceous perennials like hosta, Siberian Iris, cransebill, heuchera, plus fruit trees, shrubs, etc. etc. all got a handful of the secret organic fertilizer.  Actually, it’s no secret at all.  An excellent gardener and his wife – Al and Liz Murray from here in Cobble Hill – developed this mix years ago and the entire Cowichan Valley uses it for just about everything!  Here’s the ingredients:  4 parts alfalfa meal, 4 parts canola meal, 4 parts blood meal, 2 parts dolomite lime, 1 part rock phosphate, 1 part bone meal, 1 part kelp meal and 1 part green sand.  I treble the recipe for my larger garden every year.  Buckerfields have all the ingredients in tubs like the bulk section at a grocery store, but if there is no Buckerfields near you, most garden centres or nurseries should have most of the ingredients, particularly if they also cater to farmers. I am delighted to see all the hellebores all over the garden are in bloom.  Above is the haul we made over to Phoenix Perennial’s Hurrah for Hellebores sale last week.

With the Iris bed and long bed cleaned up and weeded, I am continuing around the property outside our kitchen patio, below the kitchen windows and heading for the Parthenon.  More on what the Parthenon is soon.

Finally, I also planted some Oriental lily bulbs (actually LOTS of Oriental lily bulbs) in various spots along the long bed for additional colour for the garden tour.  These are wonderful work horses in the garden.  They are upright and don’t take up too much space, are tallish and provide vertical interest, and the blooms are glorious and long-lived.  One of the best gardeners I know once told me if you have a small space tuck in a lily or two as your garden progresses.  As always, it was great advice.

A reminder, this blog is attempting to describe the steps I’m taking in my garden to prepare the garden for display on the Cowichan Family Life Association’s annual fund-raising Garden Tour.  As often mentioned, the tour takes place on June 6, 2010.  Here is the website address with all the details:

http://www.cowichanfamilylife.org/events/gardentour.htm

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Bearded Iris – the Queen of high maintenance!

View from my office

This is the dedicated Iris Bed which runs in front of our enclosed vegetable and cut flower garden.  Its a mostly sunny exposure which the Bearded Iris prefer although the far end is partially shaded by a large cedar tree which isn’t ideal on two counts.  One, Iris are not acid lovers and cedars throw down a lot of boughs and twigs and general mess and two, it shades the west end of the bed.

I REALLY like Iris – all types – and have a very modest, but much-loved collection of Bearded Iris (Tall and dwarf), Siberian, and Japanese and add to the collection of a continuous basis.  Not all the Iris are in the Iris bed…………some are in the long bed and Siberians are planted wherever I can find them some part-shade, great drainage, and moist conditions.  And yes, sigh, in our pond I have some of that darned yellow flag iris which is attractive but very invasive and thugish.  The more you try to yank them out, the more grow next year.  That will, however, indeed be a project for another year.

The pruning, trimming, and weed, weed, weeding of the long bed was finished last week and new compost/top dressing was applied lightly.  This is still a relatively new bed with brand new soil in some places only 2 years ago, so didn’t want to over feed.  To finally confirm, the long bed is 160 feet long and here are a few pictures in all their rather barren glory:

The long bed finally weeded

Delphiniums Underway

Back to the Iris bed – Here was the condition of the bed this morning – you can easily see where moss has to be removed, weeded (finickity, time consuming, careful, careful weeding to ensure that only weeds, cedar droppings, and moss are removed, the corms are not covered, and the litte shoots out from the corms that will be this year’s blooms are not broken off in the process).

Iris Bed before weeding

Most of the bed are Beardless Iris of various heights (I love those big Tall Bearded Iris and have several) but there are also Siberian iris.  The bearded iris prefer soil that isn’t overly amended, even poor, while the Siberian Iris love rich soil with lots of organic material so I apply the organic material to the Siberians after weeding and clean-up carefully.  Despite the marvelous late-spring weather, it is too early to fertilize and whereas the Siberians like a great, all-purpose organic fertilizer (really, everything does.  I have an excellent recipe which I will share tomorrow), the Bearded Iris like a combo like this – 10-15-19.

I got through half the bed today and will finish tomorrow and reward myself with a finished picture which will look MUCH better.

I also put a handful of Epsom salts on all of my 36 roses around the property.  I’ll explain why tomorrow!

A reminder, this blog is attempting to describe the steps I’m taking in my garden to prepare the garden for display on the Cowichan Family Life Association’s annual fund-raising Garden Tour.  As often mentioned, the tour takes place on June 6, 2010.  Here is the website address with all the details:

http://www.cowichanfamilylife.org/events/gardentour.htm