What a lovely walk-thru. I feel like I'm there.

Melissa - I always love reading your posts. Your garden and adventures in it are so amazing to read about. It would be wonderful if you could post some pictures of the areas you are talking about.

My shady parts of the garden are full of camellias and hellebores, both of which are starting to bloom now, despite our chilly and damp weather.

I recently discovered that one of the plants which is running all over one of our "wild" sections of the garden (along with a forrest of volunteer plum, fig, and ornamental cherry trees) is Oregon grape (mahonia). All of these are remnants of the ancient garden planted by my husband's ancestors. I love the Oregon grape's yellow flowers and blue berries - some day I will have to transplant some of it. Meanwhile, it just grows happily with no care.

Jackie

Pronto? Scriva il libro. Faccia, faccia.

My apologies - my italian is like latin anymore.

Melissa, your posts are so beautiful & evocative--I can just see a lovely midwinter garden.

Thank you, Melissa.
Jeannie

That was a lovely description of your shade garden. Oregon grape is beautiful. Hmmm, I will have to see if I can fit one in my garden.

Anne

Thanks for the kind words, folks.
You know, as I wrote this I felt emerge a shadowy suspicion that I had written a very similar post the year before...don't go and look! I bet it's there. I've noticed that the urge to write about certain plants or certain parts of the garden wakes up when I'm particularly happy or involved with them. In this case, since I haven't made any significant changes to the shade garden in the last year, a (hypothetical) post from a year ago might be very similar to this one. But perhaps that's okay.
sandandsun, I'm not too firm on the formal imperative myself, but I believe your grammar is correct, and thanks for the encouragement! Now, if I only found in myself a firm mission to write a book, and in such a confused epoch in publishing as well. Do you still use Italian? I'm currently reviewing Latin after a hiatus of a few decades, though my current involvement may prove just a flash in the pan.
Jackie, I love your garden. I doubt it often happens that a garden is loved and cared for through several generations: how fortunate you are, and how fortunate your garden is, and everyone who gets to experience it. I believe Oregon grape is native to the Pacific Northwest, hence the name, and why it was so overused in Washington. Do you have it locally as a wild plant?
You're lucky you can grow camellias--we have to keep ours in pots--but taking it all together we have about the best gardening conditions of any place short of Paradise. I can make do without acidophile plants considering all our blessings.
Anne, by all means consider adding it. Oregon grape is a very worthy example of a middle ground plant: not a showy diva, but interesting and handsome in all seasons, good for adding richness and variety to the garden. I'm all for team effort in my plantings.
I wanted to write about the garden because, even though it's midwinter, and a genuine winter with frost, snow, and short days, still there's quite a bit happening among the plants and certainly things to see, especially in this area, the shade garden, that I wrote about. I was wondering about your gardens, especially those of you who don't live in zones with very mild winters. Do you just close up shop sometime in November or December, and not return to the garden until February? Or do your gardens have their own winter life?
Tell.

This post was edited by melissa_thefarm on Sun, Jan 13, 13 at 3:55

Reading your descriptions I'm thinking your garden is much changed from the time I saw it back in 2008. A lot can happen in a garden in 4 or 5 years. It was gorgeous then; I'm sure it is even lovelier yet.

Rosefolly

Nope, haven't had the opportunity to practice italian in a very long time. I've lost the ability - that's how it's like latin.
I really think you should do it, or maybe to be more encouraging I should say I think you should start it.
You have a natural "voice" for it.
And I'd buy it as I've already indicated.

Usually the garden closes up shop by early November and refuses to awaken until the end of February when the Eranthis hiemalis (winter aconite)and the Crocus ancyrensis vie to see which will bloom first and, very rarely, the Galanthus nivalis (snowdrops) beats them both. But last winter which was a zone 8, unprecedented, and this winter, much warmer than usual, there has been more blooming during the "dead zone". Also I have planted to extend the blooming season through the winter as much as I can. Today a walk through the garden revealed blooming fragrant winter sweet Chimonanthus), winter jasmine (Jasmina nudiflorum), some precocious snowdrops, (Galanthus 'Primrose Warburg' and G. plicatus ssp. byzantinus...I think), and black and lenten hellebores (Helleborus niger and H. x hybridus) while H. 'Snow White' and H. ericsmithii 'Winter's Moonbeam showed bloom stalks with opening buds. Joseph Lemper is a H. niger that begins blooming at the end of November/early December with nice sized flowers and so I was able to use it for Christmas arrangements with cream variegated ivy, holly and white (pale yellow in fact) Nandina berries. H. niger Jakob is reputedly even earlier than Joseph Lemper. I have one on order and will, eventually, let you know.

Cath

Of course you wrote a similar post last year, Melissa....and probably the year before that....and, because I am psychic, I can predict that any time around now, you will be doing the winter countdown until warmth and light makes a return. Around early February, you will actually be putting numbers in the post, along the lines of 'only another 55 days until we can emerge from hibernation' and having a moan about dreary European chill and dullness. I know this because we are nearly always in tandem right now, doing the SAD slow dance towards spring, sisters in cold misery. But hey, scraping the leaves and mud away reveals the fatly glowing buds of hellebores ( the ones which Mr.Camps made a 70 mile round trip to buy for me last year - laughably short distance for Americans but practically an epic voyage for little englanders). Delicately stepping over the dog flowers (Ho yes, there are definite advantages to frozen poo) I see pale green shoots of snowdrops and endearing ruffs of winter aconites. I hear you, Cath - am missing the crocus but there are always Ipheon, an unassuming little bulb but, along with anemone blanda, a clear slice of blue sky when the real thing is a dreary grey. The little shoots are especially miraculous because the elderly collie has been trying to hide the evidence of forbidden bones - an entire deer's backbone in this instance (I will be having words with youngest offspring as well as the butcher).
Mmmm, Treasure Trove is a rose I rather like the look of....and may now have the space to grow it. It's closeness to Kiftsgate was enough to strike fear in the heart of this gardener but I shall be looking at a slew of these enormous ramblers (Seagull, Wedding Day, The Garland) and envisaging them growing up the poplars at the edge of the wood.
I am very interested in your descriptions of shade gardening, Melissa. When I first started gardening, there was a huge chestnut which shaded my tiny garden - how I longed for light to grow daisies, dianthus and poppies. At the same time that I started to lease an allotment (in full sum), the chestnut succumbed to a phytopthera and was removed so I have been indulging myself in sunlight for the last decade (although in true faddish style, I developed a severe epimedium habit).....but all this will be ending when we take possession of our Norfolk woodlands. I too would love to see your garden, M. You write as though you had a coherent plan in mind and it seems as though your plant choices bear this out. Plants such as Mahonia, sarcococca, yews are essential for giving substance to a garden, providing a lush but refined partnership for more assertive blooms, and, I think, tying all the disparate elements of a garden into a larger scenario instead of a demented mishmash of plants. As you say, you are all for teamwork....and here is where I find myself to be lamentably adrift. I know what constitutes good gardening practice - right plant in right place, feed the soil, prevention better than cure and so on.....and do none of it. I have fads and whims, do experiments, chop and change but mostly, squeeze in as much as possible, with only the most rudimentary attempt at 'planning' - all a bit random, really. This will not do in our woods where I hope to have a degree of serenity: the plants and styles you describe, Melissa, is how I hope to garden.

I'm glad that you are enjoying your shade garden Melissa. A rose garden can be a dreary place in the middle of winter. I've taken a few moments of solace in my shade garden too.

Cath, we have a lot of the same plants, but evidently mice and boars don't gobble up all your crocuses. I am so glad that hellebores and narcissus are poisonous and get left alone! It all sounds lovely--lots of little plants that you can pay close attention to. You remind me that for some reason I've never planted snowdrops.
There's a nandina with pale berries? I'll have to keep an eye out for it. And I need to start getting pickier about my hellebores. Most of my orientalis ones are seedlings from friends' gardens, some very pretty, but a few have flowers that could honestly be described as insignificant. H. foetidus and, I think it's H. viridiflora, are native locally; it's a clan that does well here.
Suzy,
You're right. I'm pretty well acquainted with my winter rhythms: every year I collapse around our Thanksgiving (it falls in the fourth week of November) and come back to life around the end of January/beginning of February. You could say that my illness and the bad weather will help tide me over the dreariest time of the year, since by the time both are past we should be arrived at the period when I regularly perk up anyway. Meanwhile I intend to stay warm and, perhaps, continue my review of Latin.
'Treasure Trove' is satisfactory once it gets going. Last year when it flowered it was a sheet, a wall, of pale apricot-tinted bloom, and the foliage and new growth are handsome. I don't know how hardy it is; its appearance suggests Tea not too far back in its ancestry. I wish we had more trees to grow massive climbers up. I definitely approve of your intention of growing lots of them on your new property.
About garden design vs. plant collecting: Graham Thomas said that gardeners tended to be predominantly one or the other, along a continuum of course. For my part I think I'm equal parts collector and landscape gardener, and a lot of my garden planning is dedicated to finding the right plant that the garden needs for a particular situation, and finding the right situation for the plant I want to grow. You CAN have it both ways. YOU can have it both ways, if that's what you want. As you say, you already know what you need to do; it's just a matter of deciding what you truly desire.
Henry Mitchell (my favorite garden writer and a wise man) said that gardeners generally start out just wanting a lot of flowers, and then over time start learning to plan along more architectural (for want of a better word) lines, just because they find they like the results better. I totally agree with him. Obviously I'm a collector, and I'll add that I'm allergic to masses of cloned plants; I'm for variety, once and always. But there's nothing in the garden that moves me more than a glimpse of the ignoble shed in one corner, with ill-tended grass and three happily grouped adolescent Italian cypresses: that combination of volume, form, height, and emptiness causes a thrill in my stomach every time my eyes light on it.
Shade gardening is probably easier in Italy than it is in England, as we get so much more sun than you do. Roses actually like part shade here. The difficulty of the shade garden is that much of the soil is extremely thin, as it's an old slide area, and where it didn't slide it was because of underlying rock. The garden needs a lot of organic matter, and adding soil doesn't hurt either. These may not be problems on the property you're moving onto. Your plants are going to somewhat different than the ones I grow: perhaps box will do better for you than for me; perhaps bay laurel will be too tender for your garden while osmanthus or holly are a sure bet. But I agree about evergreen shrubs. To quote Henry Mitchell on the Hick's yew: "Like all yews, it confers a remarkable air of solidity, cheerfulness, [and] sobriety..."; and similar claims can be made for many other evergreens. Best wishes for your new garden!
Thanks, Pam, and you are so right.
Paula, continue ever hopeful. I hope my garden will come together one day and begin to approach what I have in mind; so much of the that mental image seems a remote dream. But I keep on planning and digging and planting.
Visitors are welcome, by the way, if you get round to this part of the world. Suzy, I would be interested to see what you make of my activities.
Melissa