Introducing Art, Whimsy and Laughter into Your Garden
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2026 · Leave a Comment
For some, gardening is serious business. Not me. Well, I do consider myself a serious gardener, having been growing things since I was a toddler, but I like to make our gardens full of plants – and things – that bring smiles or even laughs to anyone visiting the garden. Gardens should be beautiful, but also fun.
Jewel weed can be aggressive but a few add fun to the garden
When I was a small boy my older sister, Ruth Anne, introduced me to jewel weed, also called touch-me-not (Impatiens capensis). It is an annual weed that grows is shady, moist areas and has small bright yellow and orange flowers. But the best part for a kid are the seed pods. Each little canoe-shaped pod is spring loaded with seeds, and when ripe, these pods can throw seeds several feet. Pick one, and it explodes in your hand. Guaranteed to make a child – or this old guy – laugh. Mind you, I try hard to eradicate 98% of the jewel weed I see in our gardens, but I leave a few at the edges to amuse and delight kids of all ages.
Lilac squirrel Sanguisorba blossoms are delightful to touch and see
Fuzzy plants are great for getting visitors to smile. Right now I have a variety of burnet (Sanguisorba spp.) that is named ‘Lilac Squirrel’. If you are of a certain age, you may remember when bicycles sometimes were adorned with real squirrel tails on the ends of the handlebars. These flowers, a lovely pink-lilac color, hang down like those squirrel tails, hence the name. I always am delighted when I see them. They make me smile. As do pussywillows in the spring.
Then there is turtlehead (Chelone obliqua), a gorgeous, tall, fall blooming flower I grow in moist, part shade to full sun locations. It has pink flowers that mimic the open mouth of a turtle. They are loved by bumblebees that force themselves inside the blossoms, with little room to spare. Once inside, they sometimes make what I call “growling noises”. Are the bees angry they are having a hard time finding their way out? Drunk on pollen? I don’t know, but I grin when I hear them.
Back in the 1980’s, when we had real cold winters, I had grown a peach tree to size and was anticipating a good crop of fruit. I waited, come spring, for it leaf out. And waited. No luck. It was dead. Instead of lamenting my misfortune, I planted annual vines all around it: morning glories, climbing nasturtium, scarlet runner beans and perhaps others. They grew, they blossomed, they amazed visitors: “What tree is that?” When I told them it was a dead peach, they laughed, every one.
Later I had a contorted hazelnut die of old age and my wife, Cindy, who is a fabric artist, tied on strips of different colored cloth to the branches. They blew in the breeze and added color to the garden for a year or more.
Buttonbush flower
A shrub I grow next to my little stream is called buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis). This full-sun to part shade shrub is a native, often growing in standing water in swamps – I just saw some in bloom down in Connecticut in the wild, but have never seen it up here, except in my garden. Why is it worthy of a giggle? When blooming it has one-inch spherical blossoms with many tiny white florets coming out of it, sort of like what I always imagined Sputnik to look like, with little antennae sticking out. You will want to touch it, sniff it. But it is not a handsome shrub most of the year. Although rated as a Zone 5 plant, for me it dies back to the ground most years in winter – even though we’ve been moved from Zone 4 to Zone 5.
Surprise in the garden can be good for a giggle, too. For several years I had “Sister Mary-Lou” in the garden. She was a full-bodied, bosomy scarecrow in a purple dress
Sister Mary-Lou, the, Scarecrow, lived in the garden for a few years.
and old rubber barn boots. She was not made to scare away crows (as her ancestors were), but for the fun of seeing her. Even when I knew she was there, she was real enough to startle me early in the morning. Which then made me laugh at myself. She went traveling to the Tunbridge, Vermont “World’s Fair” in the late 1990’s and won Best in Show in the scarecrow competion, though she declined to brag about that. She has long been retired. A good scarecrow is always three dimensional, not just some clothes hung on a pole and a cross bar.
Each year for the past 20 years or more there has been an event in Woodstock, Vermont called Sculpture Fest on the property of Charlet and Peter Davenport at 509 Prosper Rd. and at the adjoining King Farm, a non-profit. This year it opened in mid-July and will remain open, dawn to dusk throughout the summer and into the fall. And although it displays some serious works of art, it also always has some fun and whimsy – and ideas for me about what I might add to our gardens. It is free and open to the public.
Sculpture Fest has both whimsical and serious sculpture
So what whimsy might you add to your garden? I remember when pink plastic flamingoes were popular on front lawns. Then they became passé. Recently I saw a few poking their noses out of a field of tall grass – and had a chuckle. Yard sculpture can be almost anything. I have a rusty toy truck from the 1940’s sitting atop a stone wall. I like seeing it there, and have had nice comments about it from visitors.
So stop at that yard sale you might otherwise pass by. See if there is anything interesting, colorful or weird that you might sneak into the garden. After all, garden whimsy doesn’t need to be weeded!
Turtlehead is loved by bumblebees
Toy truck as whimsy
Plants that Have Stood the Test of Time
Posted on Wednesday, July 1, 2026 · Leave a Comment
The Fourth of July celebrations are over – the fireworks, parades, hot dogs and strawberry shortcake. Leading up to the Fourth I paused to think about the gardens of Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors and signers of the Declaration of Independence. He lived and gardened at Monticello, his estate in Virginia. According to the Monticello website, Jefferson planted (or ordered and supervised) the planting of 160 different kinds of trees and shrubs as well as perennials, annuals and vegetables – and kept notes of everything. Monticello still grows almost everything he did.
Redbuds will bloom well even in part shade
Jefferson grew one of my favorite trees, the Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis). It is a wonderful early-summer blooming medium-sized tree and I’ve had one for at least 10 years. It is suitable for a part shade location or full sun. In the wild (New Jersey and south) it is found mainly as an understory tree. It blooms in early summer with small pink blossoms that seemingly pop right out of the bark. Cold hardy varieties are common now and it is rated to Zone 4.
Jefferson loved peaches. He grew over 30 kinds of peaches but we can grow just a handful that are sold here in New England. A few will survive a Zone 4 winter, but Zone 5 is better for peaches, with winters that never drop below minus 20.
All peaches do best in full sun, meaning six hours of sun or more per day in summer. They are self-fruitful – they self-pollinate and you need only one tree to get fruit. Apple, plums and most pears do need a second variety that blooms at the same time for pollination. Most fruit trees are said to”Not like wet feet.” So don’t plant them in an area where the soil is usually wet.
The ‘Reliance’ peach, developed at UNH has been around for decades and is one of the better cold hardy peaches. It is productive and tasty. Other good peaches are Red Haven and Madison. Contender is well thought of, but I have not found the fruit very tasty, and a lot my fruit has rotted on the tree. Other growers love it. Try to taste peach varieties before planting one.
Catalpas are fast growing trees suitable as shade trees
Jefferson was intrigued by sugar maples as an alternate source for sugar, but they did not do well down there. Virginia is a bit too hot. In my experience, if you have an old maple that is declining in health, try giving its some garden lime. Spread it not just under the drip line, but go out much farther because the roots do.
I gave lime to an old maple because I read about an experiment in 1999 at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Station in northern New Hampshire. Scientist found that acid rains had depleted calcium in soils there. They distributed calcium (using crop dusters) and it found increased health in stands of sugar maples and red spruce. I‘ve given my old sugar maple several applications of lime over the last 25 years and it is doing fine. And don’t park cars under your maples as root compaction is not well tolerated.
One of Jefferson’s favorite trees was Southern Catalpa (C. bignonioides). That is hardy to Zone 6, but I grow northern Catalpa (C.speciosa) and love it. I planted mine 8 years ago as an 8-foot tall tree that came in a 7 or 10-gallon pot. Now it is 30-some feet tall with a trunk diameter of 12-inches a foot off the ground. My catalpa blooms vigorously in late June or early July each year, producing cream colored flowers that are 2-inches long and flecked with purple inside, growing in panicles. The seed pods look like foot-long beans.
Catalpa blossoms
Catalpas can get 60 feet or more tall, and are a bit weak-wooded, so they are prone to wind damage or blow-overs. My solution? I use an extension ladder to get up to a spot 30-feet off the ground each fall and cut off all growth that occurred that year. I top it. That keeps it from getting too tall – it can and does grow up to 5-feet in a year. Of course, at some point I won’t be allowed up a ladder. So far, so good. I’ve done it for the last 3years.
Jefferson loved lilacs, as we all do. If your lilac has not produced many blossoms in recent years, it may also need a treatment of garden lime. Lilacs do best with soil that has a neutral pH – around 7.0, and lime will help get the pH closer to neutral. By now they have already set their buds for next year, but add lime or wood ashes now while you are thinking of it.
Calycanthus or sweetshrub is a shade-loving shrub.
A shrub liked by Jefferson is called the Carolina Sweet Shrub (Calycanthus spp.). I grow it, but found it a bit fussy. I moved mine twice to find, like Cinderella, the fit that was “just right”. I first tried it in full sun and the leaves scorched – despite plenty of moisture. After the second year I moved it into shade, but it didn’t get enough sun and did not bloom much. Finally, five years later, I moved it under a big pear tree, where it gets filtered sun all day and it blooms and grows vigorously. The blossoms are a deep wine red, up to 2-inches across and shaped like little peonies. Some specimens are very fragrant, though mine is not. It blooms in early summer,
Like Jefferson, I like keeping a list of what woody plants I grow. Since I bought my house in 1970, I have planted at least 118 different kinds of woody plants, and about 95% of them have survived. And I’m still going to plant a few more. I make it through winter and mud season each year, in part, because I want to see what plants survived, too.
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