Welcome to the (Finally)
Spring Pages, of The Wild Gardener!

Peter Loewer - Printmaker

Vitreography: Hand-pulled prints using glass plates instead of stone.

Please visit my galleries on this site:
Illustrations
Vitreograph Series I: Botanic Wanderings
Vitreograph Series II: Images and Botanicals

I also have a new Web site devoted to my prints, powered up by Microsoft with sound and fury, possibly signifying absolutely nothing!

A Salute to Leeks and Garlic:

Morris Graves (1910-2001) remains today one of the more interesting of American artists, a man who devoted most of his life to extolling the wonders and beauties of nature. In 1932 after graduating from high school he settled in Beaumont, Texas but soon returned to the Northwest living around Seattle. His early work featured oils and often touched on birds, especially birds that were metaphysical orphans of the storm. In the early 30s he bagan to study Zen Buddhism and in 1934 built a small studio in Edmonds, Washington that soon burned to the ground and included all his works to date. In 1940, Graves began building a new house, which he named The Rock, on Fidalgo Island. He lived at The Rock with a succession of cats and dogs, all called Edith, in honor of poet Edith Sitwell.

The Wild Gardener on the Radio

We're back on the radio just in time to celebrate the coming winter, where in addition to plants, gardens, and both natural and artificial lore, your three intrepid gardeners (me, Allison Arnold, and Patryck Battle) meeting under the stewardship of David Hurand at WCQS, Public Radio in Asheville. Look for us at FM 88.1 on the first Wednesday of the month at 6:00 PM. Hopefully we will entertain and answer the latest questions about poison ivy, bugs that threaten (and those that do not), and how to shepherd your garlic through the mountain winters we adore. Now, thanks to the continuing march of science, you can listen to past programs by going to the radio Web site WCQS Public Radio in Asheville and in addition to those past programs listed in the WCQS Audio Archives, the program is now rebroadcast Saturday afternoon at 3:00 on WCQS 88.1 HD Two and on WYQS 90.5.

Tough Plants

The following pictures (except for the Arundo donax, phototgraphed in a Wake Forest garden) were taken in my garden during the late spring, summer, and early fall of this year. I call them tough plants because they are growing in garden clay laced with shredded leaves and if in pots, bagged potting soil that is fertilized two or three times during the growing season.

The Wild Gardener Blogs:

When thinking about the madness of today, remember what W. G. Sebald wrote about Austria's Thomas Bernhard, as quoted in the December 25, 2006 issue of The New Yorker:
"He found a dark humour in the tension between the insanity of the world and the demands of reason."

The following digest of a poem by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is a salute to the continued stupidity of the White House and the Cabinet and the Generals and the Congress and the whole ball of Washington wax.

The Conundrum of the Workshops

The tale is as old as the Eden Tree-- and new as the new-cut tooth-- For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth; And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying heart, The Devil drum on the darkened pane: "You did it, but was it Art?"

We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg, We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart; But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, but is it Art?"

Recently, thanks to the instigations of Byron Belzak and Byron Belzak's salute to Asheville, I have started my salute to the upper level of Society Asheville and its all-in-fun, continual pursuit of pleasure here in the mountains. Of course The Green Road is the road less-traveled but eventually, the public will jump on.

Here's another bit I was tardy about:

Some months ago I promised to run the old column on what you can grow in the vicinity of walnuts. Walnuts, as most gardeners know, produce a poison known as juglans, a chemical that attracts a number of other plants causing them to languish, then slowly fade away. But there are a number of plants that appear to be immune.

Read the Walnut Tolerant Plants List Here.

And let's not forget the squirrels of Asheville, rather entaining but by some considered trouble-makers, as they spend their fun-filled days in eating birdseed, chewing off high branches of oak trees, and using all the tactics of jewel thieves in Topkapi when finding that birdseed. Look below and hear that tap of clashing sabers. Listen! You can almost hear the memorable score of Manos Hadjidakis as these furry critters play at fencing (courtesy of a Victorian stuffed-animal display in a small antique shop just down the road from Sissinghurst).

Remember the world of strange flowers-- There are a number of very, very strange flowers living in the world today, having nothing to do with prehistoric times. One belongs to a group of tropical plants with blooms referred to as peilican flowers or calico flowers.
The most bizarre is the pelican flower, Aristolochia gigantea, which first arrived in England being shipped from Guatemala in 1841. This is a high-reaching vine that can reach up ten feet, and bears flat, smooth, heart-shaped leaves that have a slightly rank odor when crushed. The six-inch flowers are off-white, veined with purple, and sit on top of a U-shaped tube of a greenish color and also with an unattractive odor. Best as a flower for the evening garden, this is a showstopper.
The vines do best in pots that hang on wires, allowing plenty of room for growth. They can also be carefully unwound from one wire and rewound on another but remember to maintain the counterclockwise turns.

Last October the toad lilies bloomed in my garden and the election came and went--with about twenty percent of Ashevillians voting while eighty percent sat at home, apparently watching survival shows on TV as their city continues to embowell itself with dirt, traffic, noise, and woeful development. This year Asheville pits those who want to keep the city green and thriving with those who want commercial developement (like the Grove Park Inn condos in our downtown square, a project soundly defeated by the citizens of the city), brought in to eventually strangle that golden goose who only awaits more developement in order to burst! The rain promises to wash out our air remember, the higher up the mountains you climb, the worse the ozone levels get. But be of good cheer, the power companies to the west of North Carolina, continue to spew smoke and the President wants to roll back any responsibilities for those power companies. And the congress (lower case, here) bows to political pressure believing that if the citizenry want to breathe, let 'em don masks!

A while ago, moving some houseplants around the livingroom, I disturbed a very small napping spider who was resting from building a little small web that stretched between two branches on a flowering maple. It reminded me to watch a great Sherlock Holmes' movie that I have on VHS entitled Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman, with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock, Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, and Gale Sondergard as the Spider Woman. In a dank basement in Soho, The Spider Woman was busy raising a special breed of poisonous spider using a cultivar of the night-blooming cereus as pet food. Upon reaching her goal, she was prepared to attack the Houses of Parliament, freeing dozens of the spiders and aiming them in the direction of politicians in general. Only two things could stop her devilish scheme: The government could pay her big bucks (or pounds) or Sherlock and Dr. Watson would foil her dastardly plot. The government went to Sherlock and the Spider Woman fell victim to her own little beasts. It all reminded me that Vanilla Sky was very, very bad and would have benefited from spiders somewhere in the plot.

Dear Wild Gardener: I realize there is often no answer to what market forces perceive to be in the public's interest but I thought I would bring the latest threat to good gardening to your attention (I will keep the process called "Donut Mulching" for another letter). It comes from northeast Pennsylvania where "colored mulch" has hit the scene with the physical force of an old mushroom but the mental "POW" of a juggernaut. The wood-chips are dyed with a fast color that borders on bright orange but (thankfully) does fade over time. But, today, orange! Tomorrow, possibly red, yellow, and blue! Imagine: Smiley Faces to beat the band! Adding insult to injury, they spread the mulch over layers of black plastic sheeting. I realize that education continues to be under assault in our United States but imagine the future of gardening as these folks continue to march in the name of the masses?
Best, J.H.

NOTE: The term donut mulching might be in transition as the new moniker turns out to be volcano mulching, the mulch being the volcano cone and the tree assuming the guise of the spurting lava, usually brown instead of fiery orange! And so it goes...

Occasionally, bad taste rears its ugly visage in the garden and often the horror is brought to the backyard in the name of art. Remember, I'm not talking about rubber tires, turned inside out, painted white, then filled with masses of petunias because I salute this method of container gardening, finding it far more respectable then nothing. No, I'm talking about gnomes, elves, and the polka-dotted garbed rears of rotund ladies who are made of plywood and painted in primary colors. For example, at left is one of the uglier elves (if it was a gnome it would be subterranean), I've yet encountered and quickly point out, it's not from around here.

Here's a case where the urge to do something decorative has been pushed into service with no thought given to what is one of the fastest fading trends in society, that of good taste. I am reminded of the old addage: "Everybody to their own taste," said the Old Lady as she kissed the cow. As to the "OL" look for her to the right where she continues to garden away, possibly there until the mountains fall, all based on the longevity of the plywood and the paint.