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A GARDEN VISIT

August 17, 2017

For a person who harps on the joy and importance of getting in every garden you can (there’s always a takeaway!), I don’t really go on nearly enough garden tours. However, our master gardener group recently had the opportunity to tour The Christopher Farm and Gardens, an expansive private garden that is often open for charity events.
It is a huge property with several diverse garden areas, lots of garden art, ponds and certainly many thousands of tons of rock. 
Here are a few shots from our visit.

Off the conservatory there was an 8-foot wire form planted with mandevilla and sweet potato vine.  It was quite impressive.

A lot of annual salvia was used.

There is a Heritage Garden, shown here, and a separate kitchen garden. Both had raised beds made of 4x4s, which I thought looked quite nice.

A Japanese garden had a lovely stream and a pond with koi.

Along the top of the Japanese garden a walkway made with these pavers guides visitors to the next garden.

An enormous grape arbor is too fun to not walk through.

I think this is the kitchen garden, but it may have been a separate cutting garden. Either way I still like the raised beds and the gravel.

Several areas encouraged you to walk OVER the water on small stone bridges. How can you resist?

Thanks to a reader for helping me identify the plant below as Achillea ptarmica ‘The Pearl’. It’s quite lovely!

About three weeks before we visited they’d had a terrible hailstorm and all of their hostas were in absolute tatters. I felt terrible for them.

I don’t know what tree this was but I loved this little starfish-like cluster of pinecones.

All of the glass art around the garden was made by local artists. I thought it looked quite nice in this bed.

Have you visited any great gardens this year?

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by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener 
8 Comments

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Comments

  1. Lisa Greenbow says: August 17, 2017 at 9:04 pm

    Have not visited any garden other than friends. I would love to go on a garden tour.

    Reply
  2. Joanna at Gingham Gardens says: August 18, 2017 at 2:10 pm

    I love visiting other gardens. It's my favorite thing to do in the summer when I'm not working in my own. Stop by when you have a few minutes to browse. I'd love to have you!

    Reply
  3. LINDA from Each Little World says: August 18, 2017 at 2:34 pm

    Love those raised beds. Makes everything look so neat and organized plus so much easier to weed or work in. Went on a couple of nice tours this summer and decided not to post about them until the winter when nothing is happening locally in our gardens.

    Reply
  4. Todd Attoe says: August 19, 2017 at 5:08 pm

    Everything about your tour was beautiful. Thanks for sharing. I have to get away from my gardening long enough to enjoy other people's creations as I would look at it. Very nice.

    Reply
  5. Anonymous says: August 30, 2017 at 6:58 pm

    I believe the plant you mentioned as possibly being from the buttercup family is actually Achillea ptarmica 'The Pearl'. I really like this plant; very hardy.

    Reply
    • Erin Schanen says: August 30, 2017 at 7:30 pm

      Thank you! You are definitely correct. I really appreciate that. I'm going to go edit the post to get the correct information in there.

      Reply
  6. Michelle H. says: January 7, 2018 at 12:41 pm

    I couldn’t agree more! I try to get to as many gardens as I can, especially when I travel. This year, I went to the NY Botanical Gardens in the Bronx, for the Dale Chihuly exhibit. We went on a Friday night and again on Saturday. It was a magical experience. Chihuly’s work just lends itself to a garden, and you have to see it at night. But the NYBG is an amazing place in and of itself.

    Reply

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The Impatient Gardener

Do you love gardening? Me too! I'm Erin and I garden in Southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5. The Impatient Gardener is all about real-life gardening: the good parts, the bad bits and even the funny stuff. It's part information, part inspiration and a little bit commiseration. Thanks for visiting.

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Here’s a combo I’m totally digging this year: Wicked Witch coleus with Compact White Sunpatiens. I should have planted more Sunpatiens because they haven’t filled in as much as I expected in this part sun spot, but it’s a great look.
When you leave your garden in the middle of summer you know there’s going to be some clean up on the back end. It’s amazing how the little things we do every day in the garden, even when we’re not “working” in it—pulling a weed, propping up a plant, tucking tendrils into a trellis—add up to important jobs. And you don’t realize that until they aren’t being done. 

When I came home after 8 days away I was planning to whip the whole garden into shape and ended up spending all day in the vegetable garden where things went awry quickly. 

I was rewarded though with lots of cucumbers and zucchini and a few pretty bouquets to put around the house. This is Madame Butterfly Bronze with White (a name I don’t understand at because I wouldn’t use any of those words to describe the color) snapdragon and Apricot Shades strawflower. 

Check the link in the bio to see the whole video and what I found when I first laid eyes on the garden after some time away.
It’s a nighttime hunt in the garden and it’s the best time to find hornworms. You’ll need a black light and a tough gag reflex but you have to remove these guys from your tomato plants or they’ll be gone quickly. If you find a hornworm with white things that look like grains of rice in it, that is parasitic wasp larvae that will eat them from the inside (everything about this is gross). Remove those hornworms from your plants but don’t kill then as you’ll be aiding the beneficial bug population by allowing those parasitic wasps to hatch. For other hornworms you can kill them or feed them to chickens or put on your bird feeder. They do turn into beautiful, big moths but you want to make sure they can’t get back to your plants if you let the hornworms live.
When it comes Echinacea, @garden.evolution (aka Coneflower king) and I don’t often agree, but I think we both feel the same about Color Coded ‘The Price is White’ being an outstanding variety. The flowers are big and flat, hold their white color really well, are sturdy and, well, put on a great show. I’m loving them growing with Rock ‘n Grow ‘Back in Black’ too. Both are @provenwinners varieties from @waltersgardens

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