Dirt Therapy

Behind the garden wall is the "secret garden". I have tried to keep the flowers in this area white and oakleaf hydranges are dominant. I tend to think about our garden as a play with several acts. Act 1 comes with the emergence of Spring and transforms the barren limbs with capes of greenery. The dominant color, besides green, would be yellow (daffodils, kerria, forstyhia, Carolina jessamine). Oddly, we don't have that many azaleas. A slight intermission before Act 2 begins with the roses commanding complete attention for an all-too-brief period before Act 3 which brings on the hydrangeas. We have a lot of hydrangeas - around 50-60 varieties - and they do exceptionally well in our garden. The hydrangea binge started when we got tired of mowing a sloped area underneath a huge pecan tree. We planted hydrangeas and they did well and we were hooked. I cannot think of a plant that is easier to grow and offers so much in blooms and landscape enhancement. Granted, occas...

Early morning sunrise It was a wonderfully long and eventful weekend. Actually the entire past week has been busy. Last Monday we were visited by fellow Alabama garden bloggers Eve , Deb and LaRue (owner of John's Native Plants ). What a wonderful group of ladies - we had a great time! On Saturday, Jenks Farmer visited! He had been in the Iuka, Mississippi area for a series of events and a bold spur-of-the-moment Tweet from me invited him to see the Shoals and our garden (I think I am getting bolder in my older age!). I had just finished "Deep Rooted Wisdom" which is a fantastic book. I urge all of my readers to read it. It is filled with wonderful stories and practical advice from gardeners who do gardening the old-fashioned way. I learned many things from this book and highly recommend it. The rest of the weekend was spent pruning and trimming in the garden. I was up very early on Sunday morning and took a lot of photos (including the one above) which I wi...

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

" Veilchenblau " on archway, " Mutabablis " below. "Mutabalis" is a bit puny from the winter die-back but it is rebounding. Roses on top of the pergola - "Russell's Cottage Rose" on the left and "Rambling Rector" on the right. Rose along the pergola border - "Double Knock-Out" on the left. On the right you can see "Gourmet Popcorn" (white miniature), "Gartendirektor Otto Linne", "Russell's Cottage Rose" and "Rambling Rector". The hybrid musk rose "Moonlight" always put on a good show. "Daydream" is a modern shrub rose that I purchased on a whim at Home Depot a few years ago. It is beautiful when it first blooms but usually tends to get blackspot later in the summer. "La Marne" - all around fantastic rose. "Peggy Martin" aka The Hurricane Katrina Rose, is growing up the trunk of a declining...

The rose that almost ate the garden - Rambling Rector. You may recall I tried to remove it a few years ago and gave up. Severely pruning it back, it just came back with a vengeance and was back to the top of the pergola by the end of summer. They call it "Rambling" for a reason! Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

We recently visited the Cheekwood Home and Gardens in Nashville. This was my second time there (I toured it a few years ago with the Master Gardeners). Although we missed the tulip display, which I heard was spectacular, the gardens have a lot to offer. It is worth a trip if you are in the area. The name "Cheekwood" derives from a combination of the names of the husband and wife who built it - Leslie Cheek and Mabel Wood. The Cheeks were an entrepreneurial family - Leslie's father was a wholesale grocer and his cousin developed Maxwell House coffee. The Cheeks were investors and in 1928, General Foods purchased the Maxwell House brand for $40 million.  The Cheeks purchased 100 acres in West Nashville to build a country estate. They hired New York architect Bryant Fleming to design both the house and gardens. The home and grounds were inspired by great English homes of the 18th century and the project was completed in 1932.  Leslie Cheek died two years later afte...

"Aloha" "Clair Matin" "Fortune's Double Yellow" "La Marne" "Madame Plantier" "Marchessa Boccella" "Marie Daly" "Mrs. B. R. Cant" "Mrs. Dudley Cross" "Nearly Wild" "Pink Knockout" "Pink Knockout" "Pink Knockout" "Prosperity" "Russell's Cottage Rose" "Souvenir de la Malmaison" "Windchimes" "Buff Beauty" "Climbing American Beauty" Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy