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restoration of family garden
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Posted by mishac (My Page) on Fri, May 9, 08 at 15:11
i have spent the last 30 years restoring the garden on my family's farm in tn. the garden was first created by my great, great, great, great grendmother in the 1830s.we have even found evidence of plantings around an old log cabin that dates back to 1788, when the property was first settled by my ancestor as a land grant in lieu of payment for military service in the revolutionary war. the bones of the garden that i garden in today were layed out in the 1830s, however. because each generation pretty much went it's own was concerning what was grown and what was added, i feel that my work is as much a continuation as a restoration and the garden is anything but a frozen museum piece.all my ancestors added new varieties of plants as they became avaliable. while i have a very nice collection of heritage plants, old fashioned flowers are my favorites, i do not hesitate to add new species and varieties as i see fit.i vet these very carefully because many new varieties strike me as wrong somhow if not out and out vulgar--encore azaleas and knock out roses are the most obvious examples. i have a wealth of letters, lists, invoices and photographs that aid me in maintaining and restoring the garden, which suffered a good deal of benign neglect for a number of years before my family came into possession of it in the 1970s. we have found many planing holes that accomodated shrubs and small trees, and there are over 10,000 daffodills that have beeen planted over the generations. the glory of the garden, however is it's boxwoods which number in the hundreds, these and the old shrub roses are the soul of the place. we also have many varieties of herbacious plants that we find nowhere else, and are probably varieties that are lost to cultivation.(the place is something of an ark of the 19th century horticulture of our area.) one example is a german iris of unusual purple coloring that blooms as early as march and is impervious to weather and very floriferous.
more to come, if anyone is interested. |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: restoration of family garden
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| Mishac, I note that you have just joined GardenWeb. Welcome! What an interesting story you tell. I encourage you to contact the following two famous plant hunters who both have on-line nursery catalogs. Check them out for addresses and phone numbers. If you do indeed have some unusual plants worthy of introducing into the market these two men are the ones to identify them and work with as there may be royalties involved. I am certain both will be interested in seeing your property with the increasing demand for heirloom plants and disease free roses. 1. Ted Stephens, owner of Nurseries Caroliniana in North Augusta, SC. 2. Tony Advent, owner of Plant Delights nursery in Raleigh, NC. |
RE: restoration of family garden
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| Your garden sounds interesting. Can you post some photos? |
RE: restoration of family garden
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| You are very lucky to have so much of your own family history wrapped up in your house and garden. I would love to see some photos too and some more stories on special plants or projects. |
RE: restoration of family garden
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| i am far from literate in computers but i have just saved some photos from my cell phone to my e-mail, with the help of my very tech savvy ( though they can't write good english sentences) students. i hope to post those soon. i talked to my mother extensivly om mother's day and most of the chat was on the subject of what was blooming in the garden. i will be there nex weekend to mow, so i will revel in the abundace of may then.i live and work(and garden too!) in ga., so i don't get home until june for any extended time. mother says that the vanhoutti spirea, the anthony waterer spirea and several others are in full bloom now with the kolkwitzia, brooms, wigelas,honeysuckles,calycanthus, early clematises an early abelia, a late wistaria, lady bank's rose, confederate jasmin, nightblooming jessamine are all in full luxuraiant bloom just now. and that is to name just a few.the shrub roses, a wonderful collection of old gallicas and noisetts and the peonies are coming on with the siberian irises and all the other early summer herbacious plants.sweet willims are a passion of ours and we grow a number from seed every year. i have and old one called 'granny' - that's just what we call it - that is the most glowingly brilliant magenta. magenta is a color i really love and i find it pairs with other colors very well, so long as they are of the same intensity, but i love strong colors.
more soon and photos too. misha
p. s. i'm no typist and my spelling is... well! m. |
RE: restoration of family garden
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| i loath most daylily varieties. most of the ones i see are ugly and vulgar beyond belief. i love the old varieties and the species, of which i have a tolerable collection. amoung my favorites are, 'hyperion','mignon','corky','alabama pink','autumn mineret','autumn pagoda',on and on. they all share the characteristics of being delicate and not flashy. i have a species that blooms in april, and one that blooms until late september, so i am rarely without daylilies. because i am restoring an old garden, i think these old fashioned ones fit in perfectly, plus i just can't stomach the lurid substantial hybrids that seem so popular today. i will write more about the species soon. anyone share my prejudices? |
RE: restoration of family garden
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| That garden must smell great! It sounds like one fragrant plant after another.... I love a garden with great smells. I'm not all that crazy about the newer daylilies. I draw the line at the ones that are all fringed around the edges and have round flowers instead of the more delicate spidery flowers that float in the garden. But to each his own..... I like looking at the new kinds in the catalogs, just not in my garden - not that I could afford them anyway! ha ha I wish some of the daylilies had better late summer foliage. A few of the newer ones look like a truck ran them over in late August. I just want to whack them with a shovel and put them out of their misery... and of course plant something new in the spot! |
RE: Restoration of Family Garden
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Hello All,
Because I am restoring an old garden, I have often paused to consider appropriate garden ornaments. I am of the less is more school- Prince Charles' Highgrove, for instance, is a veritable slough of nick-nacks and brick-a-brack- all very high quality, but honestly, with both Rosemary Verey and the Marchioness of Salisbury on board as consultants, couldn't a little editing have been suggested? On a much humbler scale, people who have gardens and porches- oh the lucky, lucky ones!- and who fill both with all manner of chachkis should be sternly admonished- and I wag my finger at them- or I would if they (my fingers), were not wrapped around my bourbon and branch. My point is, all a porch needs, by way of furnishings, is a comfortable place to sit, out of the sun, and a place to put one's drink. a good boot brush or scraper comes in handy, and old victorian ones are very decorative. I would allow several porch plants too, if not too artfully arranged. All this guilding of the lily when it comes to porches strikes me as, well, vulgar.
For a place to sit, a porch swing is good, but a couple of Brumby rockers are even better. Because Brumbys cost well over $800 now(I was lucky enough to inherited mine, or I would have none), those from Home Depot will suffice. This form of porch ornamentation is aristocratic in its simplicity- no euphemism-and frugal too! More on ornaments for the garden latter. Oh-- I just love oppinionated people, and not necessarily those who have opinions in agreement with mine. So please feel free to write with your thoughts. Misha |
RE: restoration of family garden
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| Oh Misha you are a snob! This afternoon I'm going to leave the bottle inside and trade it in for a nice pilsner with which to toast you and your Brumby! After that I might stroll the stumpery and try and come up with a few new ideas for garden ornamentation. Just a few seats (molded plastic adirondacks!) small tables, and two large glazed ceramic pots on our porch. last year one pot held a large ficus, the other was filled with chartreuse coleus. I tried to go for boston ferns in the hanging pots but was overruled in favor of colorful mixed annuals.... I would like to find one of the old fashioned, hang down 5 feet, boston ferns but it seems all that is readily available is the dwarf congested type. Maybe I can talk an aunt out of one of hers. So how do you feel about molded plastic garden furniture? |
RE: restoration of family garden
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| Tee hee, kato. I too am involved in restoring family gardens - but only from the 1930's. As of the moment, I'm into the 8th year of my five year plan. This two parcel corner lot was always a garden, but for the Victorian pile across the avenue. I found a roll of architectural plans for this house and the proposed gardens in the back of a closet. My folks must have found them too and they thought them good enough to implement them. However, as time and age advanced many things got a little out of hand. It's a fun process and not being on anyone's historical register, a little deviation isn't going to hurt. I'm not too big on garden ornamentation having only a classical urn - let Pr. Charles have his Roman copies of Greek bronzes keeping silent watch over the cabbage roses (I'll bet he doesn't have Knockouts - which are quickly becoming pretty hackneyed); let the garden junkers have their mosaiced bowling balls or rusting farm equipment potted up with petunias. Don't know from Brumby - only thing I know is, being arthritic, the only furniture I want is what I can get out of - be it molded plastic or the perennial favorite with plastic webbing. Think the Adirondacks would suit me fine. As for vulgar - float that idea over on the Daylily Forum. I will admit, though, I have and am very fond of the ancient and can never be improved upon Hyperion which has been here since the day it was introduced. We do what we do and we like what we like. Who's to say one's flock of pink flamingoes or the twirling petaled sunflower face is just oh so wrong? Okay, maybe for a property dating back to 1788. Wonder how they tarted up the fire and garbage pits back then; how about the privy? Nonetheless, mishac has an interesting projct; would love to see pictures. |
RE: restoration of family garden
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| where has this conversation gone and where is mishac ????? |
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