Garden: I Didn't Know What I Didn't know...

I've been doing a lot of good reading lately.  Currently, I'm working on Essay on Gardening by Henk Gerritsen and I'm really enjoying it.  Gerritsen, (1948-2008), was a planstman, garden designer, artist, and writer living and working in the Netherlands.  He is well known for his personal garden, Priona, which he developed with his partner Anton Schlepers.  The story of the development of this garden provides a framework for Gerritsen's musings on plants which comprise Essay on Gardening.  Gerritsen's plant knowledge and level of scholarship is deep--you'll need to keep Google handy to look up plant references--but his writing style is conversational and often amusing and the book is an easy read.  

Photo from Amazon

Gerritsen's horticultural focus was on close observation of plants in their native habitats and recreation of similar plant communities within the garden.  While he rued the loss of native habitats both in the Netherlands and abroad, he was not a "natives-only" type of guy--he felt that plants sourced from around the world simply contributed to a bigger palette of plants from which to choose the most suitable for any given habitat. Priona demonstrates the kind of garden Gerritsen favored--one in which self-sustaining communities of plants coexist and thrive in a natural way with little human intervention and without the use of fertilizers or pesticides.  

I'm a big believer of "right plant, right place" and I think that the plants in my garden should look as if they inhabit a similar environment--no mixing bananas and cannas and cactus and roses and whatnot--so Gerritsen's words found a receptive audience.   Before long (in fact, before I even finished reading Essay on Gardening) I was researching the native habitats of many of the plants in my garden.  Two plants specifically, Sedum telephium "Autumn Joy" and Pennisetum alopecuroides "Hameln", were left over from a previous iteration of the garden.  I became familiar with these plants through their frequent use in "xeric" gardens, hell strips, and commercial plantings all around the city.  Because of this, and because of plant tag wisdom such as "drought tolerant, requiring only minimal water once established, plant in full sun and dry, well-drained soil" I'd chosen both plants as part of a previous, dry-looking garden design.  I thought that they evoked "dry" but knew that they would survive our winter-wet climate.  Now that my garden features predominantly plants from moister environs, I'd begun to feel that these two plants no longer fit the scheme.  But where do these plants come from, originally?  I'd no idea.

Sedum "Autumn Joy"--picture taken about this time last year.

Imagine my surprise to learn that, according to Plants for a Future (pfaf), the Sedum is said to be native to stream sides, hedges, and the shady sides of damp woods. Perfect!  And "Hameln", according to Missouri Botanic Garden, enjoys moist to wet soil and can commonly be found along streams and around pond edges.   Doubly perfect!  No wonder both of these plants are  thriving in sun/part sun with average to moist soil.  So...I got lucky with these two plant choices and have plants that are better-suited to my growing conditions than I'd imagined.  

Reading Essay on Gardening has given me a lot to think about.  For one thing, I realized how limited my gardening knowledge is--and how hard it is to acquire good quality information.  Based on my own observations and on plant tag wisdom, I'd thought that both the Sedum and the Pennisetum were "xeric" type plants suitable for (or even favoring) arid conditions.  Diligent searching on the web turned up some new information but also many sources sharing the same (somewhat inaccurate) plant-tag facts.  I soon found myself wishing that there were a comprehensive data resource containing information such as who collected the plant and brought it to cultivation?  When?  In what geographic region and specific habitat was it found?  What is the plant's current range? The limited and often inaccurate information that is shared and shared again among growers and wholesalers is not adequate.

Of course, as soon as I finished writing this piece, I read a blog entry by Joseph Tychonievich of Greensparrow Gardens about Encyclopedia of Life.  He writes that it is his new favorite web site.  I hustled on over there to do a little research and, you know, I think it may be MY favorite new website as well.  Much of the plant information I sought so fruitlessly is readily available on this site.  I welcome this new gardening reference to my small arsenal of gardening resources.