Finally Spring Part I: Progress in the kitchen garden

After a long pause since my last post, spring is finally seriously here and I have some progress to report on. First of all, I've now completed the boxwood hedging around my kitchen garden (aka potager, Bauerngarten, formal herb garden). For more information on the design and previous steps, see here. The circular hedge in the center was still missing. To plant it, I first made a compass using strings and posts (click to enlarge):

After tracing a circle of 180 cm diameter using a crowbar fastened by a string to the post in the center, I proceeded to plant the boxwoods, this time with somewhat larger ones to the left and right of each entrance to the central circle:

As centerpiece I'd been looking for months for the perfect birdbath with no luck. I even ordered some catalogs of elegant English garden supplies, but the birdbaths were either not to my taste or exorbitantly expensive. On a recent trip to Holland, I finally found one. It's out of cast iron with a brass finish, instead of cast stone or granite as I had originally intended, but I think it will do quite nicely. I found it at what must be a contender for the world's largest gardening center, Oosterik, in Denekamp, Holland.

When I'm finished, the birdbath will go in the middle where the post is. It has a sort of kitschy fairy on it, but I like it!

While I was working, this little fellow jumped out from under one of the large boxwoods in the background, ran to the edge of a path and froze, allowing me to photograph him/her. I'm afraid it's a vole.

Now I can finally begin with planting herbs, flowers, and vegetables in each of the four sectors. First on my list is St.-John's-wort (Johanniskraut), which, in addition to having attractive yellow blossoms almost all summer long, is also a traditional indigenous medicinal herb, at least in Germany. More to follow!

Another inspiration from fellow bloggers: An advent wreath from the garden

Several other Blotanists have posted beautiful pictures of the advent wreaths they've made from garden offerings, including Diana at Elephant's Eye with her Southern Advent Wreath, and College Gardener's Happy First Advent Sunday post. College Gardener has mentioned another German custom dear to my heart, as it is named after St. Barbara: the custom of cutting branches of flowering shrubs and trees on December 4th and putting them in a vase in a warm room so that they bloom by Christmas. Take a look at her interesting post on the custom of Barbaratag. I will also be in my garden tomorrow cutting forsythia and apple twigs to this purpose.

Inspired to find something in my mostly dormant garden that I could use for a traditional German advent wreath with four candles, I took inventory and came up with two candidates. First a conifer that I don't really like and I've always thought out of place in the garden, see below. When I cut some branches I discovered, however, that it has very soft fragrant needles, so perfect. (Please click to enlarge any photo.)

Second, I decided to use some twigs of the beautiful variegated boxwood that stands like a sentinel at the entrance to the garden, next to the espalier pears.

I soon discovered that fashioning a wreath out of boxwood, one of the traditional evergreen plants to do this with, is not that easy. But by using a dish to contain the whole thing I managed to get results I like. For the second photo I lit all four candles, although traditionally you light one for each advent Sunday. This year all four will be lit on December 20.

Whether it's winter or summer where you live, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I wish you a peaceful approach to the end of the year.

Trip to Vienna, a few gardens

Just back from a long weekend in Vienna, I have at least found a few garden-related things to post, despite the cold, damp November weather there.

The first place we visited was Belvedere Castle, which possesses a vast formal garden with floral patterns formed only by boxwood, grass, and colored gravel. The view from ground level is not very spectacular (see above, click any photo to enlarge), but the view that the prince had from his upstairs chambers reveals more.





















Way down at the other end of the gardens, beyond the high-hedged mazes and around to the side of the Lower Belvedere, we discovered another formal garden (with some modern sculptures) enclosed by a wall covered by vines in breathtaking fall colors, I think Boston Ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata Veitchii).


Speaking of Boston Ivy, we also encountered some growing from a small window planter - had never seen that before!


More on the level of my own modest boxwood hedging efforts (see my post), I was delighted to discover the garden in the back of the last house that Haydn lived in, from 1797 until his death in 1808. It's easy to imagine that it still looks the way it did back in Haydn's day. You can rent an audiophone and listen to "Die Schöpfung" while sitting on a bench in this garden. This last great work of his was composed in this house. I highly recommend a visit there if you're interested in Haydn and life in Vienna in his day.














We also visited the Vienna Central Cemetery, the second largest in all of Europe and resting place of Beethoven, Strauss, Schubert and many other inhabitants of that city, great and humble. The entire cemetery is laid out like a formal, symmetrical garden, with the Art Nouveau chapel and the mausoleum of all of Austria's presidents as centerpiece.


It's a beautiful place. I found the old Jewish section the most beautiful of all, and the fall colors made a wonderful backdrop to the lushly overgrown gravestones.

OK, this is completely off-topic, but I can't resist. Instead of posting pictures of any of the usual touristy things to do in Vienna, here are two pictures of the most beautiful public lavatories I've ever encountered. They are underground in the area between St. Stephen's Cathedral and the Hofburg, with the kind of stairs leading down to them that would not be confidence-inspiring in most European cities. But I braved it, to discover highly polished wood, beautiful tiling, and for each guest an immaculate personal booth with toilet, sink, soap and towels. There was an attendant on duty, and the whole thing cost 50 cents. I sent my husband down to the men's - same story.

Designing a traditional herb garden (aka potager garden, kitchen garden, Bauerngarten, cottage garden, etc.)

My son Martin turning the compost (left), me planting the boxwood hedge (right) (click to enlarge)












My biggest project in the new garden is to plant a geometrical herb garden, i.e. an ornamental kitchen garden. There are many terms for this type of garden, or rather there are many types of traditional gardens in various countries which possess some of the elements of what I want to do: the traditional German Bauerngarten, the French potager garden, English cottage gardens or border gardens, French formal gardens, and on a larger scale the herb gardens still to be found in Europe's monasteries, cloisters and manor houses.

In many of these traditions, there's an emphasis on combining utilitarian vegetables and herbs with the beauty of flowering plants, and the design usually involves geometrical beds arranged symmetrically and bordered in some way, and the garden usually has a centerpiece such as an urn, a sculpture, a sundial, a fountain, or a birdbath.

Here is my design (on the right) including a list of plants that I'm planning for each sector (click to enlarge any images), and also a to-scale hand sketch (on the left) of the overall layout of the garden showing the location of the herb garden:















My herb garden is rectangular, not quite square, and measures about 30 square meters (about 322 square feet). It will have three entries, all leading to a central round area.

The following features are planned.

Border: Before winter sets in for good I want to complete planting of the entire periphery with a border of low boxwood hedging (buxus sempervirens "blauer Heinz"). This is a very traditional and widespread plant for low hedges in many countries. Slugs and snails leave it alone. Luckily, I was able to use compost earth from one of our silos to give the boxwoods a good start. Click for a closeup of that bucket of rich compost. And on the right an overview of the progress made to date on the hedge.













Centerpiece: I plan to put a birdbath on a pedestal in the center of the garden. The garden colony is full of birds, especially on the edge of the forest where my garden is. Up till now I've seen starlings, wrens, European robins, magpies, blackbirds, thrushes, sparrows, chickadees, and various birds of prey. Also, my neighbor reports there are nightingales.

Paths: Bark or gravel.

Beds: There will be four symmetrical beds with different themes. In one bed there will be mostly vegetables and herbs, two beds will have color schemes (see colored gardens), and in one bed I'm planning to grow plants which are frequented by butterflies, wild bees and wasps, and other useful insects. See plan above for lists of plants in each sector.

I've made heavy use of the book mentioned in my previous post on slugs and snails in choosing plants that these creatures don't like.

Here's a video introduction to formal herb gardening.

And now to finish a couple pictures of some beautiful roses still blooming in the garden in late October (click to enlarge):

Inventory in our new garden

First of all, the garden was full of roses, roses, roses. Our predecessor was a rose enthusiast and collected old varieties. But I soon decided to get rid of some of them to make room for a little more lawn and for some other perennials and shrubs I want to have. But some of the roses are indeed beautiful and I'll be trying to learn how to tend them. Here an impression, still blooming late in September (click to enlarge any photo).

Near the patio the garden has a gorgeous stand of zebra grass (Miscanthus zebrinus strictus), which has now formed feathery tassels, something it only does if it feels very happy.

The garden also has remnants of a traditional farmer's garden, bordered by boxwood. My most ambitious first plan is to reinstate and enlarge this by planting a geometrical pattern of low boxwood hedges to enclose flower, herb and vegetable beds. This tradition is still alive in cloister gardens and also in gardens in rural areas of Europe. See links at end of post.





Here are the boxwoods still in the garden. In the background you can see the various compost containers, more on that in another post. Between and behind the boxwoods are many perennials. In the foreground were vegetable beds of wax beans, tomatoes, zucchini, celeriac, peppers, chives, garlic, lovage. Much of this I've already cleared out to plant green manure (lupins) in preparation for enlarging the boxwood enclosure.




One perk of being in a gardening colony is that you're likely to have wonderful gardeners as neighbors. One of my neighbors has gorgeous asters and dahlias right along the border to my garden, and they delight me everyday. The asters especially attract bees and the whole area hums!

Along the borders and in two patches our garden has a wealth of perennials. Since we acquired the garden in the late summer, we won't know exactly what we have until spring. Can't wait. But a few treasures are late bloomers, here are some impressions:













Two other great features of the garden are the row of espalier fruit trees, apples and pears along one border, and the blackberry vines enclosing the perennial bed next to the cottage. Here you see my husband cutting back the blackberries for the winter, and a view of the espalier trees behind my daughter, who is busy planting pillow asters (Aster dumosus).













Here are some links to the kind of geometrical farmer's garden I want to create, albeit on a more modest level.

English knot garden
kitchen garden blog
picture of German Bauerngarten