Episode 60 Claus Dalby on Containers in the Garden, Tulips, Garden Consulting
Leslie: Y'all, I was really in spring this past week. It was like time traveling. Welcome to Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA, brought to you by Colorblends® bulbs and Dos Amigos Landscaping. Our plant of the week is probably the favorite of our very famous guest. And if you know who the guest is, I bet you are clever enough to arrive at what the plant is too. So we'll have that plant of the week, we'll interview the very famous guest and at the end of the show in the playlist, I'm gonna answer some listener questions - real ones - and talk about what to do in the garden this week.
The reason I say I was time traveling is that Jeff and I jumped down to South Carolina for his mom's 97th birthday. We were basking in azaleas. Some had even passed by and dogwoods and millions of the cutest baby live oak leaves you've ever seen, and I even stuck my toes into the ocean for one minute. Well, actually just for a second. It was very cold. My mother-in-law has gardened for many years, but she would rather just concentrate on walking a mile a day and playing golf and going to her trainer. Yes, all of that is true. So we found her a really good gardener to take care of her little border, and it is bright with all kinds of things right now. Pansies, carnations, foxgloves, poppies, snap dragons. She's enjoying it very much, and she's simply done with all the things that I don't call work yet, but maybe I will someday, that involves making a garden border look good, and I am very happy for her decision. It's very freeing.
I put a reel of some of my daffodil bulbs on Instagram this week. I had bought a new-to-me type from my favorite bulb source, which is Colorblends, and the daffodil is called Watch Up because the large pale yellow trumpet doesn't go down, but they really look up at you. Lots of early spring flowers like the hellebores - well, some hellebores - and snowdrops and some daffodils droop down. Have you noticed that? It's like their little faces are looking at their little iPhones or something. Anyway, Watch Up is very accommodating and it practices good eye contact.
I had sprained my foot last fall and I still had to get 500 daffodils into the ground, which did happen with the help of a very good shovel and a boot. I had a couple of questions about them and daffodils in general, so I thought I would chat about them for a moment before we go into the related plant of the week. First of all, do be aware that there are 30,000 different cultivars of daffodils. So many different looks! I have a couple of friends who totally understand all of the 11 types such as Tazetta type and Large-cup and jonquil and all the parts and all that stuff. It's a lot to know, and I am very respectful of their knowledge, but I'm not particularly interested in occupying my limited brain cells with it.
Instead, I like to make sure that I always have some very early daffodils like Tete-a-Tete or Ice Follies or the classic Dutch Master. I always have some good mid-season ones like Thalia or Early Cheer -which sounds early, but I think it's mid, and some late ones such as Cheerfulness and Sun Disk, but it's very, very important to me to have some fragrant ones like Early Cheer and Sir Winston Churchill. Somebody asked me how I deal with digging in heavy clay that we have all around here to dig my bulbs in. Well, I use my biggest shovel and I dig between or sometimes under, depending on what it is, perennials. I would never plant under the thick root system of a hosta or a peony, but under ferns or heuchera or lighter fare, they come right up through that. Somebody else wrote and asked about the clumps of hers that just didn't wanna bloom, and I can totally relate to her plight. I have been very attentive to some that I think are the cultivar Replete because they're a beautiful puff ball of pale yellow and almost pinky petals. Well, it's really kind of orange, but daffodil people like to say pink, if it sneaks into the salmon range of orange, because that's close enough. I inherited these Replete ones if that's indeed what they are, and most of the clumps come up blind. In other words, they don't bloom, but the foliage is strong and I've tried over the years dividing them, feeding them in spring, feeding them in fall, feeding them in fall and spring. And at this point I'm just resigned to enjoying the few that I get and not worrying about it.
Daffodils do fine in other parts of my yard, so perhaps this spring, I'll dig up a clump of my recalcitrant Replete cultivar and try it someplace else. Maybe the location is the problem. That was a long way of saying that I cannot help the dear listener with her problem, but perhaps she doesn't feel quite as alone since I think lots of people have that problem.
The plant of the week is the tulip. We all love them, but you probably love them more if you're a follower of our guest Claus Dalby on Instagram, because as great as they are, he makes them look better. But we'll get to him in a minute. Here are some fun facts about tulips. There are 3,500 different types. Gosh, I would've thought more almost. There are short ones, tall ones, early middle, late ones, fringe ones, stripe ones, double ones. Those are my favorites. I think Angelique, which is a soft pink, late double may be my absolute favorite tulip. When you see double tulips blooming, you're like, dude, how is that a patch of small, low peony flowers? I mean, that's just what they look like and they don't tend to come back for me, but I buy them every year. I am very enchanted with double tulips.
Tulips are native to central Asia, but became popular in Holland when a botanist received some from a Sultan. How exotic! The botanist didn't share them, but apparently his garden was burgled because there was money to be made by the thieves. Tulips did very well there in Holland, and later in the 17th century, there was an economic mania that caused single bulbs to sell for incredible amounts of money. Some people thought that the price could only go up. It was sort of a “next fool” economic situation. The assumption was that there would always be that person who would spend more money than what you had paid. Although I hope that there were some really just excited gardeners in the mix who actually wanted something beautiful, instead of just finding the next fool. Some people have compared the tulip mania financial bubble - which did burst, by the way - to the cryptocurrency market, but experts say that's a ridiculous comparison and I agree for a very simple reason. Cryptocurrency is technology. You're paying for nothing that has any intrinsic value. With bulbs, at least you get a flower.
I think of tulips as an annual, well like an annual and a half. If I put in a new planting, I'm very excited to see a wonderful display in the first spring, and I'm fine with seeing what comes up in the second spring. And for me, it's usually 40 or 50% of the first show, but that's not too bad. When I'm gardening at this time of year, I always come across some of that distinctive gray-green foliage of an old tulip bulb. It's clearly the relic of some planting gone by, and that bulb has sent out the foliage but with no strength to, nor intention of, sending up a flower. So I pull it, sort of to put it out of its misery. Well, out of my misery anyway. I don't think I would've lost the family fortune if I had been living in Holland during tulip mania of the 17th century, but I am not averse to buying bulbs every year. They bring me quite enough joy for the cost. And of course, I get my bulbs from Colorblends® bulbs.
Colorblends® is a third generation bulb company offering top size flower bulbs directly to ambitious residential gardeners and landscape professionals at wholesale prices. I am definitely ambitious and greedy and I buy my bulbs from Colorblends® every year.
I wanna tell you a little bit about the upcoming interview with Claus Dalby. English is Claus' second language, of course, but he's still very articulate and extremely charming and therefore a pleasure to listen to, but our zoom connection had a few hiccups, and so please have patience with my editing. I think it's a fun interview, but it's not totally smooth the whole way through. I conducted my interview with Claus sort of on the assumption that whoever would be listening would know of him and understand his aesthetic. So if in your case I was mistaken, do this for me right now. It'll only take a minute. Press pause on this podcast, jump over to Instagram, search for Claus Dalby - Claus like Santa Claus - and just skim his feed for less than a minute. That will be enough for you to understand what he is about and why he is so fun to talk to and follow. My only regret is that I didn't get him to say 'ello, 'ello.
This is Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA, brought to you by Colorblends® bulbs and Dos Amigos Landscaping, and coming up will be chatting with Claus Dalby.
Welcome back to Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA, brought to you by Holistic Pest Solutions. Claus Dalby, who is a gardener and author from Denmark, is here with me today. He's famous for his container gardening and his remarkable aesthetic that can be witnessed on Instagram and YouTube. He's written over 30 books, but the one coming out this week - and you all won't see this until April, but we're recording in mid-March - is his first book in English. Welcome Claus. Thanks for coming on.
Claus: Thank you so much for inviting me, Leslie. I'm very pleased.
Leslie: Oh, good. I'm glad. How excited are you about your latest book?
Claus: I'm very excited because I'm running a publishing house and I have been running that with my husband for about 35 years, and I know how difficult it is in these days to get books translated. I'm so honored because there's a huge interest and yes, I'm very pleased.
Leslie: And you've written so many books before. Have you written a book like this? The name of this book is Containers in the Garden. Have you written in Danish about this particular topic?
Claus: Yes, I've written in Danish, and I can tell you the book has been published in Denmark a few years ago, but I've written, I think four, five books about container gardening because I think it's so exciting.
Leslie: You were an authority. That's fantastic. What was your goal when you dreamed about this particular book? What was your goal?
Claus: Don't know what my goal is, but my goal is always to share with people. I'm so pleased that people from all over the world are so interested in what I'm doing and I just love to share. Just now I'm in Norway on a tour. I'm lecturing. Do you say that? Sorry for my English, but I have lectures and I really love to share my knowledge with people, not just about container gardening. I'm talking about also my own garden and different projects and it's such a joy.
Leslie: You've been so successful. So many people know about you, like you said, all over the world and I have my own theories, Claus, about why that is so. Can you tell us why you think it's so?
Claus: I think it's my use of colors and also that I'm very into design and then I'm trying to to make pictures, which are good. I try to write about the names and things, but please tell me, what do you think it is?
Leslie: I think it's a combination of the following. When you look at your Instagram feed, and I've only recently begun to look at your YouTube. YouTube is a funny platform. It's a little distracting. There's a lot of stuff on the YouTube page, but your Instagram feed and the beauty of an Instagram feed that you've taken so much good advantage of is that it is just a series of beautiful colors and photographs together. I look at mine and I'm like, oh, I should probably delete that or that doesn't look right. Yours is aesthetically a calming and wonderful place. So there's that and that includes your use of colors and the containers with the terra cotta, the vignettes that you create. But I think your personality is part of it because English speakers, Americans are taken by foreign accents. Yours is charming. I love it when you say things in a different way than we would. And I'm like, oh, that's great. I speak Spanish and I'm sure I say some quite amusing things to Spanish speakers. It's not because you're doing it wrong. It's because it's just so charming. So that's what I think it is.
Claus: I'm so pleased to hear that. And I'm also so pleased because when I went to YouTube, it was in May last year, and especially from YouTube, I get so many comments from people who are living maybe in the States and they're talking about maybe their parents and their grandparents who was coming from Denmark and moved to the States maybe in the 20s. They say that my very special accent, they think about their families when they hear me. And it's also for Argentina. So many people went from Scandinavia also to Argentina about a hundred years ago. And I think it's such a pleasure to be in contact with people. And yes, I'm so pleased.
Leslie: Well, good. Yes, because I think you are reaching people all over the world. So you started gardening at age 30, which is a little older than. I was. You know, I talked to a lot of people who just basically started before they were born. I started in my 20s. I had a wonderful guest from Tasmania on a few weeks ago. She started when she was in her late 40s when her children went off to college. Anyway, what got you started and why did you stick with it?
Claus: I think it was the right time for me to start, but do you think it's early? Yes. It's early to start when you are maybe 30. I think a lot of people, they maybe first start when they are 40 or 45, maybe 50 because they will get more time when the children are away. But I also think it has something to do with age, that you are maybe more open to that when you are getting older. I have always been interested in design and colors and decorating indoors, and as I have said, I have been publishing for many years. I have always looked for people who could write books, and I have heard about an artist who was living in the north of Jutland. If you know a little bit about Denmark, Jutland is the mainland when you go from Germany. And in the north of Jutland, you have Skagen and you have maybe heard about the world famous artists from Skagen. And if you haven't, you can try to Google. But I have heard about this artist, [inaudible;14:27] and she was living on the west coast, very near to Skagen in the north. I have seen pictures of her garden and think maybe she could make a book in a garden like this, and it was amazing for me. I think I was just ready to start gardening.
My husband and I had bought an old manor house a few months before, and we were having a blank canvas that was just alone. And immediately I saw that I could do the same outdoors as I have done indoors with the colors, trying to make this atmosphere. I was even more surprised when Anna took me on a tour to England and we were getting to be best friends and had written four, five books for us. Sadly, she passed away 14 years ago now, but I was a quick learner you could say. So after a few years I was having quite a garden and we were asked by the television to make some television programs together, but it was because of Anna, the flower painter. And for me, it's such a creative space to be in, and I'm especially interested in the design, the spirit. For me, it's unbelievable to go into a garden where you have rooms and you can go around a corner and you can see something new happening. So it started in that case.
Leslie: And you've never been bored since?
Claus: It's my life passion and there's so much to do and I'm so privileged today that I have two gardens. But I always say that I'm still the head gardener. I'm the person who is ordering the seeds, the perennials and all the things. But of course, I'm very close with my gardeners, but I think it's such a joy, and I have so many new projects every year.
Leslie: Yes, it is such a joy. It never stops. This is Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA, and we're talking with Claus Dalby, the author of many books, if you read Danish. But if you don't, you will be very interested in his latest book, which is called Containers in the Garden. So Claus, you have this beautiful garden that you and your husband have transformed. Oh, by the way, does he garden at all?
Claus: No, not really. He likes to be in the garden and he has some ideas, but it's mainly me.
Leslie: Yes, yes. That's the way I feel too, which is fine actually. So you transform this property with a large lawn that I saw photographs or the video on YouTube, and no more lawn. It's all gone, which is so amazing. Talk about your garden design, in comparison with the design that you do for containers cause I know there's some similarities, but there are some differences too. Tell us about that.
Claus: Yes. I think the difference is I can say that my garden is - I don't know if you count in square meters - but my garden is around 4,000 square meters, and so I have quite big borders. When it comes to container gardening, you can do that in much smaller spaces and many people also ask me, why do you use so many containers, but it's because I think it's much, much easier to make a nice impact because repetition, it's such an important thing for me. Let's say that maybe you have 30 pots. If I have a group of 30 pots, I will never plant 30 different plants. I will maybe plant six different plants in each five pots. It will give much more quietness. Also, if you look at the pictures on, for example, my Instagram account, you can see how I work. And the good thing with container gardening is that you can always move around. One of my, let's say biggest secrets is that I'm just planting one kind in every pot. Very often you see, and it can be very nice that you have big pots and you have different plant varieties, but I find it more difficult. It's much easier if you have maybe the containers are a little bit smaller and then you just have one variety in each. It doesn't mean that you just have maybe one plant in it. Maybe you have three of the same plant in a medium sized pot, but so easy to move around and when a plant will fade, you can just cut it down. You can take it out and then it will start to grow again and maybe after five or six weeks, it looks great again and you can put it in and you can move around and you can make new color schemes. It's like a puzzle.
Leslie: It's kind of interesting to think that your garden borders have some beautiful design to them. They're very symmetrical. You have lots of geometric shapes. You have rooms and in each room you have individual color schemes, correct?
Claus: Yes, I have around 15 rooms, and yes, and some of the plants are similar because I don't really want to - it's different for me to explain - but it can also be different too. Maybe I'm using some of the same shrubs in the next room, and then I have some small trees, which I will use in the next, but I always try to surprise people. Yes. I know that compared to Denmark, my garden is quite big, but compared to England, you can say it's a small garden. But when I have 15 rooms, it's small gardens and there I also have furniture and things, and I have three greenhouses, so I really try to make the atmosphere in different ways.
Leslie: Going back to the arrangement of containers that you can play with and fiddle around with, when you create something like that, do you feel like you're creating a moderate to small garden border? Is that what it feels like? Or does it feel no, these are containers
Claus: Yesterday, I was so pleased and honored to have two pages in The Telegraph in the UK, but in the headlines they say that I feel I'm working like a fashion designer who makes a new... What do you call it when you have a new...?
Leslie: New line of clothing.
Claus: Yeah. New line which you can put together. I'm not a painter, I'm not an artist. But I think that in one way, I'm trying to paint with plants, but of course the colors are very important for me, but also the shapes. The shapes, so you have some small flowers, you have some big flowers and you have some high ones and low ones. And also the textures I'm working with, you can make it very distinct when you are using different kinds of foliage.
Leslie: So the next thing I was gonna ask was about your color schemes. In one of the YouTubes that I watched this morning, you talk a lot about pink. And I think when I think of your look, when I have your Instagram feed in my mind's eye, I'm thinking pink. I see chartreuse. I see the wonderful sort of toned down terra cotta. It's not bright orange terra cotta. All of your pots have this wonderful patina. The cover photograph for your new book is not pink. It's more of an apricot. Was that a difficult photograph to choose, and how did you choose it?
Claus: It was up to the publisher, but if you look in my book, you will see all colors and I just love to play with all colors. All colors. I say to people that it's quite easy to combine colors if you work with pastel colors, because they will always go nice together. But I also like to work with more, can you say clashing colors? I also like to surprise. Yes, maybe if you look at my Instagram account these days, you would see apricot, but as you have said, I'm also looking on the front side of my account, because if you shall attract new people to your account, I think it's very important that your account is nice looking cause they have maybe just a split second to decide if they want follow Instagram and they want us to make more features. I'm very much looking forward to that because for some people, the only thing they can do is to dance. They're dancing in the space, but I think I have so much to share and I would look forward to making small features with names of the plants. But the most important thing today is that people save what you are posting,
Leslie: You're posting artwork that people wanna save. That's great. This is Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA. We're talking with Claus Dalby about his latest book, but about his gardening and just who doesn't like to talk about gardening? That's what we're doing. Claus, what is your favorite day in the garden? How does it look? How long does it last? You have beautiful places to sit down. Do you ever sit down?
Claus: Yes. When we are taking a cup of coffee and when we are eating, but yes, it's such a pleasure to be outside in the evenings. Just go around to arrange the things. It can be very stressful for me to see when I have some new plants they're just waiting to be placed because of all the colors. It's stressful for me if they are just too mixed, but when I just place them in different color schemes, first of all, it makes me happy but it's also to give me some can you say quietness?
Leslie: Yes. Calmness. Yeah. Tranquility
Claus: Calm. Yes.
Leslie: Back to the colors for just one minute. You touched on your strength is the pastels and you're very comfortable and you almost keep things together with that chartreuse.
Claus: Yes.
Leslie: But do you ever go to hot colors? Do you ever go with red?
Claus: Yes. Yes. I hope that you have got my PDF of my book that you will see my hot borders. You will see I'm using a lot of oranges. I'm using yellow.as I've told you, I'm using all colors. If you go through my Instagram account, you will also see that I'm using what I call Kenzo colors. Kenzo, the Japanese fashion designer who was putting chartreuse, lime, purple, orange, pink together. Yes. I love to use all colors, but I think maybe people remember me from my monochrome colors.
Leslie: I have a question from my good friend, Christie, who wanted to know about your line of vases, the old English vases. Could you tell me about those?
Claus: Yes, I have been designing a line of vases. The truth is that I'm not a designer, so when I'm talking about my design, I always mention the designers, but I like to sit with the designers. It's the same when you are talking about the framework in my garden. I have worked with a very, very great landscaper, but for me, it's to have discussions with the people. The vases which are called Old English because they're mainly from England. For me, it's very important that there's space for the flowers in the vase. And yes, I also love to design beautiful things, and in November, I have launched a new web shop and in a few weeks, we can ship all over Europe. I don't know how many hundreds of vases I have, but for me, when I'm making bouquets, it's so important that they can fit together very often. I start with the vase. Do you say vase or vaze? What do you say?
Leslie: I say vase, but I think many Americans say vase.
Claus: Okay, yes. You understand what I mean. I start with the vase or the vase, and then I try to arrange something
Leslie: And it's on your container creations also, right, that you're putting together a collection of things that look good together. Is it similar?
Claus: Yes, it is. But it's easier for me to make the container plantings. To be honest, I'm just an amateur when it comes to bouquets but I love to put flowers together. I'm also fairly active on Facebook. It seems that people also like bouquets.
Leslie: Yes. All right. Well, what you do is beautiful. All right. Here's a question from my daughter, Tyler who by the way, just had a baby last week and we were there helping.
Claus: Oh, congratulations!
Leslie: She is a budding gardener, and so I was fiddling around and helping out while she was at the hospital. I went under her porch and there, just like Claus Dalby, was a collection of terra cotta pots full of soil. And I thought, well, there's some soil I could use because I was making her a new pot with an evergreen and some pansies. Oh no! It was full of bulbs, so I put it all back together and I said, everything under there is just like Claus Dalby, and she said, yes, it is. So her question is - because I think this is her first real investment of time and money and space with doing what you do - what are some common mistakes that people make with planting bulbs in containers?
Claus: I think it's very, very easy to explain because you say that your daughter has placed them under the porch so they will not get winter wet.
Leslie: That's correct.
Claus: Yes. And this is very, very, very important because if the pots get winter wet, very often the bulbs will just rot. I always say when you have planted the pulps in the soil, you water the soil and then you forget about watering until the early spring when you see the small green tips. You need to place them under a kind of cover. It can be maybe in a greenhouse; it can be under a table; it could be in a shed. But if people don't do that, I will say that in 95% of the cases, the bulbs will just rot. But if you cover them and first start to water when you see the first green, it will just work.
Leslie: Okay. So then that leads me to my next question. This is from me. So she's just had a baby and we're fussing around and helping with laundry and that sort of thing. But I said, Tyler, you know maybe it is time to pull a couple of these out? Are you tempted? I know you want many dozens to choose from to make your beautiful scenes. Do you ever bring them indoors to really force them early? Do you pull one?
Claus: No, I don't. I don't. Maybe sometimes very few of them I put in the greenhouse in case. No, I'm just waiting.
Leslie: You're just waiting, but would you recommend that to an inpatient gardener?
Claus: If you take them indoors where it's of course warmer, they will get very leggy and very long. I will not suggest people do that because they need the light so just leave them outside. There's a season for every flower.
Leslie: Okay. I did pull a couple of them into a bright window and we'll see what happens, but she had so many to choose from. I was just talking just two weeks ago with a great indoor gardener who's just made a book, and he just drove from the fact that even if it's in a bright sunny window, that is not nearly the amount of light that's just outside that window. It's just totally different.
Claus: Yes, that's right. And also, if you start to sow the seeds indoors, I say, it's too early. Yes, you can always add growing light, but this is a little bit more difficult. And if you would like to grow, for example, tomatoes and chilis, you need to start in January and maybe in February and add some light. But if you start indoors, I think it's time in the beginning or maybe in the middle of March just now, but you need to find a room where you have a very quiet cold room with a lot of light. It's much easier to do it. If you, for example, have a greenhouse, it's much easier because then you have the right amount of light and heat.
Leslie: And we are all jealous because you said you have three of them. Three greenhouses.
Claus: Yes.
Leslie: I don't know if that's fair, Claus, but I'm glad you can show us.
Claus: I am sure I can tell you.
Leslie: I have just one more question for you. We know that you buy - I know because I watch you - that you buy your bulbs new every fall and that you take the pot of bulbs when it's done. You don't bother to try again in the container, but you lift the whole thing and put it into the flower beds and you'll probably get some return, maybe not a hundred percent.
Claus: I really don't have the space anymore, but it is always best to use fresh bulbs in containers.
Leslie: What about your dahlias? Cause they're famous as the others
Claus: As I told you, I'm in Norway now. I'll go back in about a week and then I have a week home and then we will start to pot all the dahlias in smaller pots, not in containers, and then we'll place them in the greenhouse. But these, I am reusing every year because I have so many varieties from great friends and yes, they're very easy to reuse.
Leslie: It's just a matter of labeling them properly. I never do that.
Claus: You're right.
Leslie: Thank you so much for chatting with me. It's been a great pleasure. I really appreciate it.
Claus: It has been a pleasure to be with you, and I'm looking forward to hearing the podcast.
Leslie: Good. We are gonna have a giveaway of Claus's book. More on that in a moment. This is Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA, brought to you by Holistic Pest Solutions, and we're going to come back and talk in just a moment about what to do in your garden this week.
Welcome back to Into the Garden with Leslie on Newsradio WINA, sponsored by Dos Amigos Landscaping and Colorblends® bulbs. I love talking to Claus. He's the nicest man. He's really fun to talk to, and his new book is just scrumptious looking and you know you want it, so go to my website for the link to buy it - instant gratification - or hang on a tick to listen how you could win it.
After seeing photos or videos of what Claus is up to, I just wanna organize all of my containers and fill them with pretty things in order to make a beautiful arrangement like he does. And then do I go and do that? No, not yet, but hope springs eternal in the garden. I'm gonna pre-order five or six new colors of bulbs this spring and take delivery next fall and have a Dalby-esque display a year from now. Maybe that of my boxwoods that don't look so great at this time of year. I have to get to the Colorblends site and make my choices. Hey, you know what? Not only am I going to do a giveaway of Claus's new book this week, I'm also doing a giveaway of 100 bulbs from Colorblends®. I almost forgot about that. Remember I mentioned it last week? Yeah. I almost did not remember that I mentioned it last week, so let's combine the two. It's too bad I can't give away a collection of beautiful terra cotta pots, but hey, we're two thirds there, right? So let's combine the two, but let's have two different winners. One winner gets the book and one gets 100 bulbs, their choice of whatever tulip bulb Colorblends® sells in lots of a hundred. So go to LHgardens.com, go to the blog post that accompanies this podcast episode, which is episode 60, and you will see how to enter.
Questions from listeners. Deirdre from Winchester asks when do you apply pre-emergent? So the answer to that, I like to be honest when I'm really ignorant about a topic like trees and veg and insects and house plants, but on this topic, I am really pleased and proud to be ignorant. I never apply herbicides so I don't know anything about them. I'm sorry, Deirdre, and I'm hopeful that a nice layer of mulch could help your weed situation, or just pulling them, which is an activity that mysteriously I actually enjoy. But I totally understand that other people would not.
I have another question that I can answer with authority, and that is what is the consulting part of my business? So as you may know, I used to have a crew of wonderful young ladies and we would take care of the gardens around here in Charlottesville. We had about 50 clients. I passed that part of the business onto the very capable Abby and Abigail Gardens still exists here in Charlottesville. She's doing great. LH Gardens, my business also still exists, but now it's just me and it's mostly the podcast, but I still like to help people in the garden and here's how I do it. Well, I do the very occasional design, but only for small projects, because I'm just kind of busy putting together the podcast and designs take a lot of time. I love to meet people in their gardens and just consult or coach for like an hour at a time. It's really fun. I find out what their issues are or their problems are or their ideas are, and I'm able to weigh in with some information on whether something might work that they're thinking of, or maybe what they can try to DIY, or maybe what they should probably hire done.
Here's a perfect example of the two ends of the spectrum. One day I had an appointment with a woman who probably knew as much about horticulture as I do. Gardening for years, really smart, wonderful property, lovely gardens, but she just wanted a new set of eyes on reworking some beds. Later that same day, I walked around with a young couple who had just bought their first house and they wanted to know what their plants were in the yard, the plants that they had inherited. So literally I'm walking around saying, well, that's an azalea, which is a flowering shrub, and that's a box wood. Oh, and that one's poison ivy. They really didn't know anything so I know I was helpful, but in a different way than I was for the first client of the day.
I recently did my first remote consultation with a Northern New Jersey gardener named Julie who really set me up nicely because she sent me a video of the area in question, and then we followed up with a zoom and I'm hopeful that I assisted her with her plans. She knows plenty about gardening, but sometimes it's nice to go over ideas with someone who knows a lot too and someone who might ask some good questions or have some ideas. This past week for the first time, I was a Christmas present. I traveled down to Lynchburg because my now friend, Betty Lynn got from her husband John, a gift of me walking around her extensive and lovely gardens. I really liked being able to verify her own good ideas, and her listening to new ideas from me seemed to be very helpful. So if you're interested in hiring me for an hour or two, that's what it's like. That's what I do when I consult. Oh, and by the way, I don't charge for quick questions, of course and so those are always welcome. You can write to me LHarris@LH gardens.com. So that is the answer to the question, what is my consulting business like?
I spent a lot of time in South Carolina this week so my own garden went unattended for the most part. If we go back to episode 59 and look at what I said I would do, the results are impressive. I did hack back my camellias. I'd like to thank Liz Hayes who inspired me to do that. Thanks Liz. And while the ladder was out, I tortured a Japanese maple, which, if left to its own devices in terms of height, would impede my view of the little fish pond from my bedroom window, so I reduced it by several feet.
When I cut large branches like this, they don't go in my compost pile. I used to pile them up and have a neighbor's landscaper come haul them away when he was in the neighborhood. But my new thing that I'm trying is I pile them up myself on the very outskirts of the yard, and mostly out of view. I wanna create habitat and not send anything to a landfill. That's my goal. Meanwhile, there's a certain amount of convincing that I must do, and I mean convincing myself, cause Jeff doesn't seem to mind that this strategy won't drive me crazy. I can tell you in the first six months of this experiment, it is not a conventionally beautiful garden look, but we have to keep in mind who's looking. It's mostly me. I mean, you can't see these things unless you're really looking, so I'm gonna keep it up and I hope it's a good scheme for nature in my yard.
I did finally get those little ailing boxwoods out of their pots and into the ground so they could recover. I have a little arrangement of boxwood topiaries in front of the house, and they don't mind being in pots for a year or so, but then they ... Well, let's say they exhibit their disgruntlement by turning that bronzy color or getting leaf minor or just not leafing out well. This is the hint they're giving me that they should go back into the larger earth and some of their colleagues who are found in my little topiary farm should take their turns in little terra cotta pots.
Let's see what else. I did not sow any seeds. I did not shear any boxwoods. Oh, but I did however do some transplanting of early bulbs the day before we were supposed to get a good rain, which sadly never took place. So the next day, instead of being inside with rain, I went around and watered them and that was okay.
Oh, you know what else I did? Often when I mention taking a clump of snowdrops and dividing them, I sort of snicker at the notion of separating them into individual bulbs and planting them one by one. I mean, who would do such a thing? Life is too short. Well, I did. I wasn't in a particular hurry and I thought, okay, let's try this. So I had a clump in my hand, probably about a dozen of them, and I put them one by one in amongst some Heuchera, and I aspire to remember what I did and where I did it so that next spring, if I only see one come back from the one I put in, well, I'm never doing that again. But if perhaps the bounty is doubled or tripled - maybe I'm being too optimistic on that - but in that case, maybe conceivably, I would do it again. That is by no means certain. I'm not actually partisan to such nitpicky work, but I gave it a try.
At this point, I could start a list of what I plan to do in the garden after I record this, but that would be duplicitous at best because when we get home from South Carolina, I'm gonna be running around doing a very basic tidy, then we have house guests coming. My sister, Kim, the dog trainer, and my brother, Michael will be coming for the weekend. Well, how about a list for you? Here you go. Have fun without me. Divide any perennials that you want more of. So many sources say that you should divide fall-blooming perennials now and spring-blooming perennials in the fall, and you know, I betcha that's really good advice, but if I'm in a dividing mood, I do it when I please to do it. Astilbes, which are definitely a spring blooming perennial, that's a particularly rewarding one for me. I just feel like you take that soccer ball size clump, and you slice it into and you plant it back so you have half a soccer ball in each hole. Several weeks later, you seemingly have two equally soccer ball sized clumps. It's like magic. Water them a ton though. Astilbes love water.
Deadhead spent bulbs. Actually, I will do that because I'll just be passing through the garden and it's a quick thumbnail to the stem. So what you're doing there is keeping the flower from developing seeds. It's easy-peasy and I just let the spent flower fall where it falls. I have read that you should remove the entire flower stock, but that doesn't make any sense to me. Actually, I take that back. It made total sense to me for real garden tidiness as a professional gardener. So if that's what your sensibility is, you should do it because the stalk is probably going to go a different direction than the foliage, and the only way to keep things looking really tidy as that foliage ripens is to kind of keep everything going the same direction so it looks intentional and neat and stocks want to splay off at a different spot. You could cut that stock all the way to the ground, or you could just leave it, which is what I do. It's going to photosynthesize just like the foliage and it's going to feed the bulb, but definitely to take away the opportunity for the flower to form seeds.
Start looking at the night temperatures to see about moving house plants back outside. Many sources say to wait until 50 degrees is a sure thing each night, but I'm not one of them. Back in episode 58, I laid out my strategy for getting my indoor plants outdoors and you can go back and have a listen if you want, or maybe I'll go over it at again quickly next week. But I think I have prattled on enough for this week. So have a look at lhgardens.com for a giveaway for both Claus's book, Containers in the Garden, and 100 bulbs, tulip bulbs from Colorblends®. And while you're there, sign up for the newsletter if you don't get it and consider supporting the podcast by buying me a cup of coffee or becoming a member.
I'd like to thank our sponsors Colorblends® flower bulbs, and Dos Amigos Landscaping. I named this show Into the Garden with Leslie, because I'm really into my garden. I wanna get you into yours and I will see you next week.