Michael Bruce's Garden

Michael Bruce Florist is one of my favorite exhibitors at the Philadelphia Flower Show, and has also become a friend. Earlier this summer, he kindly offered me a ride to a Franklinville NJ nursery to check out some lovely plants on their open day. Afterwards, he invited me to take a tour through his own very much under-construction garden. He's facing the challenge of gardening on floodplain soil that's almost pure sand. Many raised beds and a lot of soil amendments are all that save his plants from utter extinction. He's also working at extending his terrace, creating garden features out of various elements from previous Flower Show displays, etc. He had a garden open house yesterday, in perfect September weather. I took pictures.

Not enough pictures, alas, so there's no wide shot showing the double row of columns that form the skeleton of a pergola to be populated with twining vines, or the hidden gazebo, or a number of other features. But here are photos from Flickr, mostly closeups, starting here. Click the picture, and then click the "back" (left) arrow to view the rest.



His garden is in New Jersey, a pleasant 3/4 mile walk from the High Speed Line, which as geezers we can ride for $.70 one way. It made for a lovely day.

You can see a whole set of images from Michael's displays, going back to 2005 (I think), here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lblanchard/sets/72157632778466305/

My garden: Liriope muscari

I collected some fruits from a planting by the Moore College of Art in January, soaked them to remove the fleshy pulp, and did a winter-sowing of 15 seeds in a Trader Joe Greek Yogurt container. It's a perfect winter-sowing container -- a fat quart with a clear plastic top.

Twelve of the 15 seeds grew to healthy enough plants for me to pot them out in a larger pot this morning. Behold my free Liriope muscari. A couple of them look Scamp-bitten, but then they are, after all, members of the lily family and hence irresistable to my little drug addict cat.

If they winter over and put out fine new growth, next spring I will plant them in the corners of my neighbor's tree pit.

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