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Text of the page (random words):
a tree limb thirty feet above my head it was too big to come down in one piece and the sinuous part was too long to be safely moved into the back corner the sinuous part of the branch is 16 long the rest of the branch is stacked by the tree trunk in the next photo yep those logs were part of this branch too yikes before it was cut it hung over my neighbors yard and they called it the dragon you can see why it felt menacing sooner than i anticipated this looks like the beginnings of a stumpery the arborists and i made sure the long log was well positioned so that it would not shift and possibly hurt addie or anyone else it looks pretty good in the winter too and you can see that plenty of small animals are finding passage into the back corner now i just need to ask the arborists to keep an eye out for an actual stump for me a nice big octopus i m pondering ferns and mosses in the meanwhile i ll keep you posted as the situation develops what do you think share this tweet email a link to a friend opens in new window email like loading stumps and mosses and ferns oh my 5 comments posted on january 14 2025 by judyatgardeninacity here at long last is the next post on stumperies the second stumpery i saw this past summer is known as the renaissance garden and is part of heronswood garden on the kitsap peninsula of washington state i saw it the day after the stumpery in my last post as a part of the 2024 garden fling formerly garden bloggers fling in july i still can t entirely explain why these stumps logs mosses and ferns make my heart go pitapat but they do the kitsap peninsula was extensively logged during most of the past century and this stumpery is called the renaissance garden because it represents the reclaiming of the forest and the land my friend pat webster of glen villa art garden in the eastern townships of quebec suggests that to be truly memorable a garden needs to grow out of an idea it needs to mean something this garden certainly fulfills that mission let me back up and tell you about heronswood to put it into some context heronswood was launched when dan hinkley and robert jones took possession of the property in 1987 and began to develop heronswood nursery and garden they lived on the property so it became both personal garden and showcase in addition to many more common garden plants the gardens highlighted the exotic species that hinkley gathered in regular voyages across the world to collect rare and unusual plants trees and shrubs the gardens and nursery became well known in horticultural circles in 2000 the nursery and property were sold to burpee company unfortunately this did not work out well and in 2006 the gardens and nursery were closed a period of nearly complete neglect followed happily in 2012 the port gamble s klallam tribe was able to buy the property at auction and begin a lengthy process of rejuvenation a small part of the more formal garden near the house some parts of the original garden remained if not intact then capable of restoration and significant parts of the original gardens can been seen the decision was made however not just to restore but to imagine the future in addition to the renaissance garden there is a rock garden a formal garden and borders around the house a woodland garden a garden which showcases the plants which the s klallam tribe uses and a traveler s garden which highlights the plants brought in from around the world in the woodland garden many members of the s klallam tribe had found work in logging camps over the past century on what had once been their tribal lands now they had an opportunity to restore a part of the land at the renaissance garden in particular there is the triumph of reclaiming land that had been exploited beginning the process of making it whole again the stumpery includes some of the equipment of a typical logging camp now rusting away so much life is springing up from the ruins of the old forest nature moving in and taking over with some judicious assistance and enhancement all the shades of green are present and dappled light filters through the trees i find these decaying logs the surrounding ferns and mosses and the canopy of towering trees totally enchanting we were given a tour by the garden director who talked about the ongoing process of putting it together and pointed out some of the unusual plants at first i was surprised that they had not primarily used native plants in the restoration but i imagine the exotic plants are part of the overall character of heronswood as i have been reading over this post and contemplating these photographs it occurs to me that this stumpery evokes for me some of the same feelings we had in the gardens jason and i visited in japan there is a sense of how ancient the land is the many uses to which our forebears have put it and the meaning it has had to them in these gardens i feel surrounded by history and a powerful sense of place and aware of the people who have been here before me at ginkaku ji in kyoto there are no stumps but there is a serious appreciation of tree trunks ferns and mosses as well as dappled light and a sense of reverence for place and history i m not sure how i can put a photo of one of my first stumpery logs right below these gorgeous pictures of heronswood and ginkaku ji but here it is as a teaser for my next post all about the beginnings of a stumpery at garden in a city and here s the best part i ve already written the post and it is queued up to publish about 48 hours after this one are you ready to rush off to a stumpery right now are you looking at your local trees with new eyes or are you wondering if winter isolation has driven me batty as always please let me know in the comments share this tweet email a link to a friend opens in new window email like loading i m stumped 18 comments posted on august 22 2024 by judyatgardeninacity in late july i took a six day trip to the pacific northwest to the 2024 garden fling it used to be the garden bloggers fling but some of us are using instagram and even tiktok and so we have a new name and then i got covid for the first time and was totally out of it for awhile nothing alarming just sick and then very tired all of which explains my very slow responses to comments on the last post sorry now that i am finally recovering i really want to tell you all about stumperies i ll come back later in the fall and winter and tell you more methodically about the various marvelous gardens we saw in three days of wide ranging tours based out of tacoma but my heart was stolen by a bunch of tree stumps and it s really all i want to think about right now and share with you i m smitten so i will get straight to the point look how magnificent these old stumps are in the rhododendron species botanical garden it may be that in order to fully appreciate this stumpery you have to be standing in the woods with trees towering over you have you been to the pacific northwest the trees soar not to mention the scent of the woods and moss and forest floor compost in your nose our eyes are truly wondrous because we can adjust and pick out the details in both shadow and light in ways that photography struggles to duplicate and stumperies are all about shadow and light and atmosphere let me back up and tell you a bit about stumperies first of all they are obscure enough that wordpress is quite annoyed with me and keeps trying to autocorrect to stumper or stumped for my own good i am sure the missouri botanical garden says that a stumpery is a garden that re purposes logs driftwood and the root wads of dead trees to create a unique garden display roots wads if they say so these wood elements also provide a structural counterpoint to ferns mosses and other woodland plants which are planted on in and around the stumps and logs to soften them a little dry and technical if you ask me but okay as far as it goes i was slightly horrified to learn that stumperies first arose in victorian england not the time or place that much of garden in a city is patterned around but i can t honestly say i m surprised the first one apparently was established in the 1850s i am just relieved that they are not apparently related to the vogue earlier in that century for cemetery gardens one of the most famous stumperies was created by then prince charles at highgate in england the website calls it tranquil and other worldly and notes that victorians liked to grow ferns in tree stumps not everyone agreed with the prince s taste apparently because the gardens trust blog notes that prince charles father upon seeing the stumpery at highgate for the first time asked his son when are you going to set fire to this lot i do like the idea that perhaps prince charles installed the whole thing to annoy his father much more interesting than a victorian restoration project yes i know he s the king now but he was the prince when all this happened the stumpery where i took these photos a part of the rhododendron species botanical garden is the largest public stumpery in the world according to their website the stumpery is one small part of a much larger pacific northwest woods we were of course there at entirely the wrong time to see any rhododendrons blooming there might have been a few but it was quite a fine woods particularly for a midwesterner unaccustomed to trees of such height also on the same grounds is the pacific bonsai garden which i only got a chance to look at briefly i m not quite sure how these areas came together but flingers who did manage to look at the bonsais were very impressed i m going to make this into a two part post on stumperies because amazingly enough there was another stumpery the next day splitting the post will give me space to show you more photos and the second stumpery was quite different it is called the renaissance garden and is a stumpery with a story and a purpose also as an added incentive to read the next post i ve been daydreaming about adding a stumpery to garden in a city and i ll tell you all about that too you can help me decide if it is just post covid fever dreams so have you been to a stumpery are you with me in admiring them or with prince philip ready to burn it all down share this tweet email a link to a friend opens in new window email like loading ain t misbehaving 32 comments posted on july 19 2024 by judyatgardeninacity this is a post i wrote a year ago but didn t publish i ve made a few edits and additions and i am posting it now i feel a little less at sea this year but i m sure the plants are still giggling behind my back i saw a social media post recently about creeping bellflower campanula rapunculoides and ran outside in a panic to see whether the lovely purple spikes i had welcomed into the garden knowing that they were sneaking in from the alley rather than invited guests were invasive update my gardeners wanted to pull them maybe they are the invasive who knows i ll keep a good eye on them and see how they behave thank goodness no this gentleman from the university of wisconsin went over creeping bellflower leaf by leaf to teach us how to identify it and my plants are innocent well mostly innocent not a total thug never been indicted as a certain chicago alderman used to brag i believe he is now headed to prison it has spread in from the alley into a couple of places in the backyard and i do recall that jason didn t like them as much as i do and would pull them out when he wanted to plant something else but there are a lot of good plants in chicago alleys that s a post for another time and i m keeping this one for now let me tell you however how much some plants have taken advantage of jason s absence to sneak into all sorts of spots in the garden beds uvularia waltzed around a corner jumped across the driveway and over a border into the bed with the ostrich ferns mr golden alexander is setting himself up anywhere he thinks he can get a foot in the door or a root in the ground about a third of the plants in the garden are taking advantage of the regular gardener s absence to tiptoe around and visit each other leap into each other s beds and have a good time yes they look great but those yellow celandine poppies are thugs the worst offender by far is celadine poppy stylophorum diphyllum looking so innocent and decorative above this is partly my fault as i am a soft touch when it comes to discipling wayward flowers jason noted a few years ago that celandine poppies can be quite a bully to smaller plants but that taller and hardier plants like wild geranium can fight it off i think i need to contain it to only certain beds or it will take over everything it even set itself up in a flower bed at the neighbor s house this year fortunately they welcomed it i did warn them about its promiscuity in addition to the celandine poppies everywhere look closely and you will see a bit of the uvularia which is hiding behind and just to the right of the daffodil leaves in the very center of the photo it s taking advantage of the fact that it is yellow but you can see the inverted v shapes of its flowers well camouflaged indeed another group of plants have vanished altogether well some have just vanished and i regret to say some were probably hollering at me to be saved from rabbits and thuggish plants and i heard their cries too late the flower bed above with the ferns and poppies for example used to be full of bleeding hearts did they gradually just decline or were they throttled by the celandine poppies i m not sure a few years ago jason planted golden groundsel in a blank spot at the back of the garden with a direct sightline from where i sit on the sunporch it bloomed gloriously and i loved it it vanished in 2022 but we didn t have what it took to investigate in 2023 i was watching for it closely i thought this shot above is from may 11 2021 so i knew when to be looking i didn t see it and i asked kasey from vivant to take a look she didn t see it and we made a plan to replant it for next year maybe it accidentally got pulled because it looks too much like certain weeds or maybe it just failed to thrive well i went back later and here s what i found left photo first day leaves and buds right where they should be next day on the right stumps dang blasted rabbits and probably the groundsel was hollering for my attention the whole time and i just didn t know what to look for and got out the anti rabbit powder too late i got a bit of bloom out of it in 2024 but not like before next up we have the mystery of the allium caeruleum here they are in 2022 blooming along with the allium christophii i remember planting the bulbs not long ago sigh not a one in 2023 did they die out did they get pulled as weeds because i didn t know to tell someone they were there hard to imagine either of those possibilities completely wiping them out but there you are a garden mystery one of many we replanted for 2024 but they were not as glorious as they had been i think ...