Heirloom Gardener

Gardening with Children: A Child’s Garden by Molly Dannenmaier

February 12, 2006 julia erickson2 Comments

I hope that by teaching children to love nature that as adults they will save and maintain native and heirloom plants. With that in mind, I am always looking for ideas and information to help kids fall in love with the garden. A Child’s Garden by Molly Dannenmaier is the best book I’ve read on creating a garden for both children and parents in an average backyard:

A Child’s Garden: 60 Ideas to Make Any Garden Come Alive for Children

The book offers information on how children play, which garden elements provide essential sparks for imaginative play, and how to integrate this into a residential garden. Photographs support the text by giving concrete examples of how to affect these ideas.

This coming spring I’m planning to incorporate several of these ideas into my own garden. Here are four of my upcoming projects:

create a space for kids to dig besides the vegetable garden
build a bin to gather natural materials such as seed pods, sticks, pine cones, and leaves as material for creating
make simple topiaries with wire frames with the kids
plant a living hiding spot with either a weeping mulberry, ornamental grasses, or a tepee made with grape or bean vines

Other good books I’ve read on kids’ gardens are Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots and Great Gardens for Kids.

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Madame Isaac Pereire

February 5, 2006 julia ericksonLeave a comment

Madame Isaac Pereire blooms in spring and autumn. It has very large blossoms and is quite fragrant. I purchased it last year and it arrived approximately one foot in height. By the end of the season it was three feet tall. Although some say that the foliage is susceptible to black spot, I did not find that to be the case. Madame Isaac Pereire is available at http://www.weareroses.com/.

Elwes Snowdrop

February 4, 2006 julia ericksonLeave a comment

Unseasonably warm weather has my Elwes snowdrops blooming in the garden already–one month ahead of last year’s blooms. The Elwes snowdrop, otherwise known as giant snowdrop, is native to Greece and dates back to the late 1800s. It is larger than the common snowdrop and blooms earlier, but has the same wonderful fragrance reminiscent of lilac.

I love snowdrops. They are the first bulbs to bloom, oftentimes pushing through the snow. Not only do they offer the promise of spring, but also make wonderful cut flowers. The three petal flowers open to look like helicopters and reveal little white hoods with green markings and yellow stamen. I love to put a vase of these on a cake pedestal so I can look up at the flowers from my library table.

Plant snowdrops in the fall in groups of at least ten. Snowdrops can easily be tucked under shrubs, at the foot of deciduous trees, around evergreens and in between perennials. The key is to plant a lot of them: think 100s. My favorite place to buy bulbs in large quantities is Van Engelen Inc. They offer fall bulbs wholesale by catalog and on the web at http://www.vanengelen.com/. A hundred bulbs will cost less than $30. Snowdrops will also increase and in a few years you will have nice clumps of them.

Feverfew

February 3, 2006 julia ericksonLeave a comment

I was looking at pictures of my mixed border. The white daisy-like flowers in the lower right hand corner are feverfew. I decided to compost my feverfew at the end of last year because it re-seeds everywhere and the flowers have a most unpleasant fragrance. Forgetting this, I once mistakenly brought them into the house as cut flowers.