danger garden

Friday, January 12, 2024

Chanticleer Friday: The Gravel Garden

We're back at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania. This is week nine of in depth coverage of my September visit to the garden as part of the Garden Fling (there are links to all the posts at the bottom of the page). I have only one more post after this and then it's a wrap!

Today we walk through the gravel garden, which we enter from the patio off the Ruin Garden...

"Sun-baked from its southwestern exposure, the Gravel Garden creates a feeling of mounting enchantment as you walk through the series of stone steps. Here the garden eschews plants that need constant irrigation, emphasizing instead tough, resilient plants — all set in a gravel mulch. Silver-leafed lavender, santolina, and thyme add a Mediterranean flavor with their aromas and textures, while spurges writhe like serpents among species tulips and diminutive daffodils. Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) brings airiness to the structured planting. Narrow spires of juniper (Juniperus virginiana ‘Taylor’) draw the eye up towards the pergola covered with purple wisteria in late spring. Trough plantings offer a viable and aesthetic alternative to conventional, water-thirsty containers. Perhaps the most striking sight are tree-like yuccas with their powder-blue spiky foliage and hula-skirted trunks. Uncommon in the region, Yucca rostrata needs full sun and resents winter wet ground." (source)

The Gravel Garden was the most difficult section of the overall garden for me to write about. I walked thru it back and forth and side to side several times and on two different days. With no structure to act as a mode of wayfinding my photos were a bit of a mess. C'est la vie. We shall soldier on.

There are many great plants to see, they may be a little out of order but that doesn't subtract from their fabulousness!

Looking backwards toward the Ruin.

I was thrilled to come upon these variegated Agave attenuata looking so happy, healthy and at home.

Yucca rostrata in the distance...

Backwards again.

There is a significant slope downward away from the Ruin, it's hard to tell in these photos.

Yep, looking over my shoulder, again.

The containers of desert plants were so well mixed into the Gravel Garden the illusion of permanence was seamless.

(another backward shot)

Yucca rostrata with major personality!

Yes, it's lifted.

Agave ovatifolia in the shade...

And on a sunnier day (I visited twice).

From the opposite side.

And heading back up towards the Ruins now. This photo was taken during the Fling visit on Friday afternoon and had I panned to the left you'd have probably seen a bar table and my fellow Flingers lining up for drinks, I wish I had. I was so intent on capturing the garden though.

The folks at Chanticleer treated us right during the Fling official visit. There were several food and bar stations set up, a band and dancing, and we stayed even later than we were scheduled for, it was extremely fabulous and quite decadent!

Alluaudia procera I believe.

Salvia argentea

Closer to the Ruin there is an outdoor living room with furniture made of stone.

They're more comfortable than they look.

I'll end this post with two photos I snapped back up near the Ruin Garden, just three minutes apart. I have no memory of taking these images, but it's terribly fun to see the garden empty...

And then filled with my fellow Flingers and staff member Dan Benarcik, on the far right.

Next week we wander through the Cutting Garden, Vegetable Garden and down thru Bell's Woodland.

— — —

To receive alerts of new danger garden posts by email, subscribe here. Please note; these are sent from a third party, you’ll want to click thru to read the post here on the blog to avoid their annoying ads.

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

A new wreath too...

In my last post I wrote about the new mantel for the New Year, well there's a new wreath too...

I'd grown rather attached to the aluminum Christmas tree wreath that hung on the wall behind our bed for the entire month of December. When I took it down the whole bedroom looked empty without it. I thought about buying a big grapevine wreath but hesitated, feeling like that just wasn't the right fit. I knew there had to be a better idea and one morning while laying in bed staring at the ceiling fixture I realized what it was.

Metal! Isn't that always the right answer? Bonus points if it's either shiny metal, or metal with a great patina, like my bedside lamp.

Aha! A friend had dropped by a couple of wine barrel rings last fall, one of them quite large. The perfect size to hang on the wall behind the bed...

Obviously it need a little spicing up, aka plants! I used various protea stems, a banksia bloom, leucadendron, leucospermum and mahonia—all dried, leftovers from the holiday decor.

The color isn't nearly as vivid when the flowers are dried, but it still remains—and the texture is unbeatable.

In case you're the practical type—like my husband—and look at this photo and worry about an earthquake, (we're overdue), and a ring of metal falling from the wall, and hitting us while we're sleeping; worry not. It's firmly wired to the nail it's hanging from which is in a stud in the wall.

Monday, January 8, 2024

That certain shade of green with shiny black, a New Year mantelscape

Once the Christmas decorations are in place I can't help but start to think about what I'll put on the mantel when the holidays are over and the decorations come down. After all having an empty horizontal surface to fill is not something that happens often in our small house.

This year's scheming began when I used these black glass tumblers as water glasses and remembered how much I loved them on the mantel—plus I had the larger footed glasses that I'd never used. Bonus: my collection of black and white Royal Copley vases and planters are the same shiny black.

Oh! And I have matching candle-sticks—yes things were really coming together!

But what to use with them? Hmmm, I've been cleaning in our basement storage room and admiring the large green Bauer Swirl pot my mom gave me, it's too large for the mantel but...

Looking around I realized just how many things I had that were that exact shade of green.

And that's how it came together...

The bromeliads I got at Little Prince of Oregon (LPO) went in the big green Bauer pot, the blooming bromeliad is a holdover from the Christmas decor.

A crocodile fern, aka Microsorium musifolium 'Crocydyllus' and the Begonia chloroneura from LPO went on a side table.

Taking a closer look at the mantel, starting on the left...

I bought this cholla skeleton with a couple of tillandsia on it when we were in Spokane at Christmastime. Of course I added a few more before I hung it.

This tillandsia came home with me from my visit to Lotusland last November. The aspidistra will go outdoors, in the ground, come spring.

The green bud vase is filled with cuttings from the garden.

This cutie is a Syngonium rayii...

Mahonia nervosa, that dark cool-weather color goes with the scheme so well.

This Cryptanthus zebrinus was shallow rooted, enabling me to plant it (temporarily) in a short-sided green bowl. Many of these plants will eventually work there way into different containers and/or outdoors.

You also might be wondering about light, as we've definitely entered the dark time of the year. I've got rechargeable clip on lights that I move around, so each plant can get a nice session in the sun, so to speak.

Pyrrosia lingua 'Cristata' leaves, or, er, fronds.

There are three of this little Peperomia 'Ruby Cascade' worked into the mantelscape.

Tillandsia chiapensis 'Gigantesco', a gift from a friend.

Stems from Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum 'Hindwarf'.

Turns out I wasn't the only one putting things on the mantel. Do you see Andrew's addition?

He definitely fits the color scheme.

Clockwise starting with the tall planter; a Pteris cretica (I believe, it came unlabeled), Pteris quadriaurita 'Tricolor' and another Peperomia 'Ruby Cascade'. If you think this all was an an excuse for more plants, well, you wouldn't be wrong...