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The Writer's Wicket: from AB-Tech
Books by Peter Loewer
Peter Loewer--Printmaker
Vitreographs: Series 1
Vitreographs: Series 2
Educational Presentations with Peter Loewer
The Beauty of the Moss Garden
Ferns for the Graceful Garden
Growing Unusual Fruit
A Fungus, Among Us!
On the Green Road with Tosca and Forest
The Trip to Scotland
The Botanical Gardens
at Asheville
Smithsonian Archive of American Gardens
Past Columns from
The Wild Gardener
Plant & Seed Sources
Guestbook
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'Endless Summer' Hydrangea
This is a great hydrangea, blooming on both new and old wood so blossoms appear on and off
for the entire summer. A true horticultural beauty and the cultivar name of 'Endless Summer' is perfecto! Remember to provide some filtered shade to
protect the bush from hot mid-afternoon sun. Grows about five-feet high, and would seem
to be a gem for future years in the garden.
Ozone Alert!
. . . and you thought the ozone alerts in the newspapers or on TV-weather shows
were only attention grabbers and aimed at people with weak lungs or respiratory diseases?
Well, thanks to Pat Battle, the following link is the ozone alert we talked about on
the WCQS Garden Show that aired on July 7.
The Dangers of Ozone!
The Wild Gardener's New Book Arrives
The book is called Thoreau's Garden
published by Bella Rosa Books and it's a new edition of Thoreau's Garden
first published in 1996 when Booklist reviewed it as a book " . . . that deftly weaves excerpted
reveries from Thoreau's journals together with copious notes on native plants (and some exotics) gathered by
Loewer himself. The result is an agreeable foray into the fertile landscape Thoreau knew so well. . . .
A new book by Loewer is cause for celebration." And David Ellis, editor of The American Gardener, wrote:
"With Thoreau's Garden, Loewer has adapted the writing of [one] of America's favorite naturalist-philosophers
into a book destined to be added to many shelves. . . . The book is beautifully illustrated with Loewer's own
detailed black-and-white drawings, a graceful touch." Remember that back in 1854 Thoreau wrote: "Beware of all enterprises
that require new clothes," words never truer than today. To order the book see the bookstores listed on my book page.
My name is Peter Loewer,
I'm a writer and artist, and often become quite passionate about
plants, from daffodils to orchids to the love of roses to the lore of
poison ivy. Friends call me The Wild Gardener
and perhaps I can help you to get the best from your garden and, along
the way, give you some fascinating insights into a world that, up to
now, just might have escaped your notice. After all, I'm the guy who
brought back the evening garden and the night garden from oblivion, and
that includes the night-blooming dayliliy (Hemerocallis citrina).
They're stealing your days--at least fight
to keep your nights!
A Big Welcome to Fiona Dudley
Fiona is an old friend, who delights in the wonderful world of nature, and knows a lot
about one of my favorite creatures of the night, the great family of moths that fly about
our woods, fields, and gardens, with only the moon and the stars above to guide their way.
Fiona has a great website with some marvelous pictures of wildflowers and the creatures that
haunt their vacinity. Fiona's Website. Be sure to
put an icon on your desktop so you'll be able to keep up with her continual discoveries.
The Wild Gardener brings you the Kangaroo Fern
It's called the kangaroo fern, a common name that refers to the wandering rhizomes that will
creep over the edge of any pot that holds this beauty, rhizomes that to most Australians,
resemble the paw of the jumper, so to speak. The scientific name is Microsorum diversifolium
and it comes from Australia and New Zealand. The genus refers to the very small sporangia that appear
under the leaves and eventually release new spores for the next generation of baby ferns. The species points
to the variation in leaf (or frond) form as no two seem to be exactly alike. Temperatures are fine with the 60s in the winter home
and it will survive summer heat as long as the plant is kept in the shade. It's a good idea to let the soil
dry out a bit between watering.
Rapid River and the Asheville Art Scene
By-the-by, I've got a column now appearing monthly in Asheville's very fine
publication Rapid River, entitled "Thoreau's Garden."
If you can't get to a local newstand, it's easy to download the magazine from their
website Rapid River Magazine
and you won't be disappointed in the style or the content of this fine review of the arts.
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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?"
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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.
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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.
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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).

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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.
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It was a phenomenal spring, the spring of 2006. For some reason (closely
connected with the passing winter, the temperatures, the rainfall, and
the mountain psyche), everything seemed to bloom at once: Red maples
vied with camellias, in turn blooming above crocuses and daffs,
providing one of the best floral shows that we've seen in years. Then
came the trilliums on parade. The image on the right is the noble
yellow wake robin or toad shade (Trillium luteum also called var.luteum or
T. viride var. luteum), a yellow-flowering variety of the common deep maroon toadshade, with
flowers usually lemony yellow to a very pale green. The yellow
wakerobbin is native to the American Southeast, and found in damp woods
ranging from Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, to North Carolina and
Tennessee. Three yellow petals stand upright in the middle of three
green sepals that either lay flat or are somewhat upright like the
petals. The elflike mountain dwellers call it the goblet trillium and
unlike the maroon variety, this form has a light scent of lemons. Like
its maroon relative, the three large leaves are mottled and if somebody
could develop a variety that would keep its leaves until the fall,
their fortune would be made--many times over.
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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!
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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.
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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...
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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.
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