The story of our Kitchen Garden is a long tale of process over a decade, and working with what we had until we could make it better. It has been the story of growing a bumper crop of tomatoes from freshly dug sod, of leeks that overfilled our kitchen sink and left grit in the drain, and blackberries that were buried under two feet of soil and shot up to bloom another year.

There have been two different veg gardens here over the past decade. But before that, there was grass and driveway…

Before

Below is a view of the back half of our property at Havenwood before we moved in. You will see a driveway that covers most of the back of the house, and hooks to the right into an old garage. That area has now become the Ruin Garden, and this old driveway has become the lawn, Long Border, and Kitchen Garden.

First veg garden

The veg garden was the first thing that we dug out in 2014 when we moved into our home. I had already planned to move the driveway, and so we planted the arborvitae hedge right away that year to divide the future driveway from the veg patch. These little bushes grew, as did my tiny child in the photo. The shrubs become a nice wind break for this garden, which is very helpful to pollinators, especially in a productive garden where you hope for more fruits from their busy, buzzing labor.

Tearing out the driveway

After the tear out of our old garage in early 2021 (after being delayed in 2020), it was time to demo the old driveway that covered most of our backyard. First, that meant digging out all of the rubble from the driveway and switching it with the topsoil from the front of the house to create a new lawn at the back, as well as extend the Long Border.

Leveling the old veg Garden

We decided to dig out all of the old veg garden to level it, so that instead of being a north-facing slope that felt the coldest winds of winter, we could create a level garden filled with gravel paths that would collect the heat of the sun to encourage good veg growth. Cutting away the hill below the blackberry patch would make room for us to build a retaining wall and new steps. The lower area would be filled with limestone and then dressed with pea gravel.

Gravel base

On top of this subsoil, we added limestone and then pea gravel to rake around the raised beds, though they would not be built until the following year.

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Welcome to Havenwood Garden Journal…

where I share more of the inner workings of my one-acre town garden in western Pennsylvania! We are located in horticultural zone 5/6 between the Great Lakes and the Appalachian mountains.

It is amazing how much the weather can change in just a few weeks! July may have been a “proper summer”, but August is much more cool and damp than normal. As a gardener, I have no complaints! Every green plant still has a freshness, and is still pumping out the color with new blooms. It is like a different garden this year as compared to last year when came to visit with his cameraman man from KDKA. Nothing has needed extra watering, which does mean the weeds are quite happy as well. In gardening as in life, you cannot have all the positives at once.

It was an incredibly busy summer for our family as we got ready to take daughter #2 to her one-in-a-million spot at the University of Southern California’s cinema screenwriters program. We just returned home again a few days ago after tucking her into her dorm apartment with all the fixings, including several plants to remind her of green Pennsylvania. As I return to back our green plot, I have been enjoying seeing what’s changed in just a week, taking stock of what’s next for autumn, and catching up on pruning.

Join me for a look behind-the-scenes at Havenwood, the creatures in our ponds, and the work that happened in August!

New perennials

Since it was unusually damp this summer, I took advantage of it to add some more perennials to some dead spots in the borders. I almost never plant during July-September since we are usually quite hot and dry. New plants do not appreciate those conditions. But this year is different, so it gave me a chance to visit some favorite local nurseries and see what they had to offer.

Some new plants:

• I do not have many Daylilies (Hemerocallis) in the garden, mostly because their season is so very short, but I decided to add a couple more to our Long Border and Daffodil Dell this summer since they are a bit quiet in July.

• I also added a few more shade perennials (Aruncus, Japanese Anemone, Pieris, and Virginia sweetspire) as I am always chipping away at greening our half-acre of woodland.

• A hardy Plumbago for the Entry garden, because why not give it a try?

• A few rock garden Geraniums for the alpine house.

Close-Pruning Arborvitae pillars

I have some Thuja ‘Emerald Green’ arborvitae near the entrance to our Kitchen Garden that I am asked about often during tours, so I thought I would go ahead and share some videos today of how I go about pruning these very common shrubs in an uncommon way.

I do this prune once a year, and I go over the entire shrub from head to toe. I have made two videos of how I prune the top front view so that you can see my process, and I will add some steps below…

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Easy but daring design

Out of all of our garden spaces, the Birch Walk at Havenwood is the easiest to replicate. Easy, but daring all the same.

This how-to post is inspired by my Birch Walk meadow garden in which I used our turf as mulch and planted perennial plants and bulbs straight into the grass.

Today I am going to walk you through how you might make your own perennial meadow garden by planting directly into your lawn. All that you need an unused portion of lawn, a space near the edge of the property where you hardly ever go.

This is your chance to turn that unused space into a real garden retreat!

Before: Corner of our front yard

A hedge is helpful, but not required.

In smaller spaces in towns and cities, a hedge helps give this wild garden a bit more formality and structure that will let everyone know that you are moving ahead with intention. A hedge is a “sign of care” which can be very helpful. There is a wildness to this sort of planting that may startle some neighbors, but when there is a hedge around it they can see where it ends.

No Soil Preparation

One thing that is different about this perennial meadow method compared to an annual meadow is that we can plant directly into the turf:

• No need to dig out the grass or spray with Round-up.

• Not need to buy a load of mulch to smother, or wait on leaves to decompose.

• There is also no wait at all! Just start planting. (More details on that below.)

Plan the path

The first step is to chose where the mown path will go through your new meadow. This you can decide by walking through your space dozens of times and thinking about how it will connect to the rest of your garden.

• Where do you tend to walk?

• Where do you need to walk to?

• Is there a nice view that you would like to see from the path, or maybe a view you would like to conceal by steering people away from it?

Plan seating

In order to really enjoy your meadow, you will want to place seating at the end of a path but still in the center of it all. It is at four foot height where you can really appreciate all the is going on in a meadow, as you are at eye height with the bees and slightly out of the way of the birds who will also love this garden.

Adding meadow path edging

I have found that it is helpful to have some sort of edging that protects your spring bulbs being stepped on, acts as a mowing guide, and that you can easily remove for the autumn cut. For the first few years we used Cornus and Willow whips pushed into the ground. These are a rooting risk, but they looked lovely.

When they wore out, we moved to three-foot-long, 1/4 inch steel rods that you can get at a hardware store. These are bent into a rainbow shape and then placed around the edge of the meadow borders.

Now its time to talk perennial meadow flowers and maintenance…

Seasonal flow of flowers

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Welcome to August at Havenwood!

Come take a little walk around our one-acre garden in northwestern PA, zone 5/6. Half of our property is in the shade and half in the sun, some wet and some dry, so we have a wide variety of plants growing in each season.

If you would like to have an overall framework of our gardens, here is a map of Havenwood:

Come take a walk around the garden with me for August…

#5 The Cottage Garden

Mauve and white fill the Cottage Garden in August, and draw all the bees from miles around. This garden is 60 feet by 40 feet, and sits on the south-facing slope along our century-old brick house. Add gravel paths and it is a baking hot area in our relatively cooler continental garden, a microclimate for plants that would not survive there otherwise. The spring frosts were a problem even here for our roses last spring, but the herbaceous perennials did not mind. They have been flowering well this year, and this garden benefits from having a crisp Hornbeam hedge at one end as a backdrop for all their growth.

#6 Pergola Walk

The one perk of the spring frosts this year was that our native Wisteria ‘Blue Moon’ is re-flowering in August! The bumble bees are really enjoying a sip from this spring buffet, and I am enjoying its sweet scent again after a weaker spring flowering.

#9 Birch Walk

The Birch Walk is in full summer flower with our Shasta daisies going mad. I am going to share a full report on how to plant and care for a perennial meadow garden like this one next week, as it truly is one of my favorite spots in our whole acre! It is a restful, low-maintenance space of white and green in the midst of an active garden.

#11 The Hot Borders

We are very pleased with the Hot Borders this year, as after a couple years of new planting and growing on they have matured into a good summer display.

The border by the house is the original garden, and the side by the hedge the newer one, so predictably the latter is looking really fresh and the former needs some more editing. But both together are now pulling their weight and filling this garden with the warm colors that make for an interesting transition between the white of the Birch Walk, and the shade of the Fruit Tunnel.

#14 Fruit Tunnel

The tunnel is lacking in fruit this year, due to those harsh late spring frosts, and it is also in need of a prune. But it is a delightful bit of shade in the middle of a garden walk, and creates a closed moment before you descend the steps into the back yard to find the pond, long border, ruin, and kitchen gardens. This area is surrounded by a dozen Hydrangea paniculata ‘Vanilla Strawberry’ which took a decade to grow in, but now fill this area with a sweet scent and loads of tiny pollinators.

I am always puzzled by gardeners who say that they do not observe pollinators on Hydrangea paniculata. I fear that they are not looking close enough, for ours are covered each year in a cloud of tiny native halictid bees, tiny flies, bumble bees, honey bees, wasps, and even butterflies. Since we have the H. paniculata planted near our steps and up against our back windows, we have good angles to see that they are so covered in insects as to make it a bit risky to walk by sometimes in the heat of the day.

#32 The Moss Walk

#26 Daffodil Dell

#17 The Pond & Bogs

#21 The Long Border

Our Long Border is based on a local Pennsylvania prairie, one of the few remaining in the state. It was made by sand thickly layered on top of heavy clay, and is really one of the most interesting of horticultural experiments I have going on here at Havenwood.

You can read more about how and why we made the Long Border here:

Now is the Long Border’s flowering moment, and it continues into the autumn. It is full of native flowers right now, including some of my favorites, Mohr’s Rosinweed, Silphium mohrii, which should really be grown in more native plantings in the eastern US. It is a lighter butter yellow which is so pleasing, and the bees adore it.

I wrote about native Touch-me-not, Impatiens capensis, last month as it is self-sown throughout the back gardens including the Long Border. I was planting a few new things in the garden last week, and dodging the zooming Hummingbirds who were flying around sipping from each tiny orange flower. You can see it makes a great combo with Echinacea purpurea below.

#15 The Lawn

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#25 The Ruin

#24 The Bird Garden

This is a newer garden and so its still finding its way. Russian Sage, now Salvia yangii, previously Perovskia atriplicifolia, is a plant that often dies for me over our cold winters, but it is happy here on the edge of the gravel path at the entrance. It is quite floppy right now in full flower, but since it’s a luxury around here I do not mind. It is under a small Serviceberry tree on the right, so its time will be limited in this spot once the tree gets going.

This garden is so named as its where we observe our feeders outside the window year-round, and for its bird topiary at the entrance.

#22 The Kitchen Garden

The Kitchen Garden is in full glory right now, so much so that it is hard to take it all in. Dahlias are unfurling rapidly by the hour, there is abundant produce to savor, and a wide scope for a horticultural imagination. As Margaret Armour says, it’s “where lovely things are very brief…”

Julie Witmer is a garden writer, designer, and speaker

…with an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticultural from the UK. Julie has worked with private clients for over 20 years to help them realize their own garden dreams. Her photos have been published in books by Timber Press, Kew Gardens, and Rodale, and she is a popular speaker. Havenwood will be open for the Garden Conservancy on June 6, 2026, and has been awarded an Audubon Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary status.

Thanks for joining me! What is growing in your garden this month? Love to hear!

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Practical and Personal Gardening

This year has been a bumper crop year for new gardening books, and today I am happy to share a recent release that was written by a gardener who loves a flower-packed, English-style garden as much or more than I do. She is also a gardening friend that I have been corresponding with for over 15 years, which makes it even sweeter to introduce you all to her new book, The Contemporary Cottage Garden: Climate-Friendly Mindful Methods for Growing Flowers and Food, published by Timber Press.

The Contemporary Cottage Garden

In her new book, The Contemporary Cottage Garden, garden writer Pamela Hubbard shares her personal stories and pages full of practical tips for creating a traditional British cottage garden in Pennsylvania while dealing with our harsh climate. Pam argues that the cottage garden ethos is exactly what we need during this decade of economic stress and climate turmoil, and she is a committed to sharing all she has learned to help her readers make their own gardens.

About Pam Hubbard:

Pamela has been a speaker, educator, and writer for over twenty years. She offers tips and advice for the home gardener on all garden and plant-related issues. She is a sought-after speaker for nationwide garden clubs, flower shows, and horticultural groups.

Pam was born in England and acquired her love of gardening at her grandmother’s knee. For five years, she wrote a monthly newspaper article, Gardening in the Poconos, which earned a GardenComm 2019 silver medal. Most recently, her book, The Contemporary Cottage Garden: Climate-Friendly Mindful Methods for Growing Flowers and Food, was published by Timber Press.

Pam dreams of recreating her grandmother’s cottage garden at Astolat Farm in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband, Duane, and two adorable goats named Doodles and Petunia.

Welcome, Pam!

Julie: When did you begin gardening? And when did you begin making your contemporary cottage garden featured in your book?

Pam: “I came to gardening late. I began working on the garden in 2005, when I retired from my job as a school principal. You could say I retired in order to garden.

I was raised during World War II by my grandmother, who was an avid gardener. I learned a lot about gardening from her. I always knew I would make a cottage garden like hers one day, but I didn’t know it would be in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, where I settled after emigrating in 1978 and remained following my marriage.

After moving to Astolat Farm, my husband’s family home, I began converting about three acres around the house into gardens. I designed them, made a five-year plan, and began installation. I soon found that gardening here was very different from gardening in England, so I started reading gardening books and magazines, taking master gardener classes at Penn State Extension, and many other college courses over the next twenty years. Gardeners never stop learning. Now I am a Master Gardener Emeritus, a speaker, and a garden writer. I teach classes for new master gardeners.

In the gardens I created, I used traditional cottage garden design and methods until our world began to change. As we began to experience extreme weather events, high food prices, and the rising stress of today’s world events, I turned to my garden for solutions. I learned to deal with these and other problems, and my traditional cottage garden became the contemporary cottage garden featured in the book.”

Julie: Do you have a favorite UK cottage garden from your childhood across the pond?

Pam: “My favorite cottage garden from my childhood is unequivocally my grandmother’s. I didn’t know of any other. My dad and my grandfather were coalminers who worked long hours but never owned a car.

Occasionally, however, the family would take a coach trip to Trentham Gardens, or my Grandmother would take me on the bus to Walsall Arboretum. My friends and I often cycled to nearby Shugborough Hall and picnicked in the gardens there. These trips are some of my favorite childhood memories. But none of the gardens we visited were cottage gardens; they were traditionally landscaped stately homes.

I was unaware of the beautiful cottage gardens further south until I was an adult. This may seem crazy today, but I grew up in the 1940s Midlands of England in a postwar era when money was scarce, we traveled little, and we didn’t have a television until I was nine years old.

I have a favorite UK cottage garden now, though. Great Dixter is undoubtedly my favorite, and Christopher Lloyd is one of my gardening heroes.”

Julie: What do you see as the biggest differences in gardening here in the US versus in the UK?

Pam: “I see four major differences in gardening here in the Poconos versus in the UK: the soil, the planting hardiness zone, predators, and the length of the gardening season.

Firstly, my grandmother’s garden had nutrient-rich, workable clay soil. My Pocono garden has heavy clay and rocks. My garden seems to grow rocks. Removing the rocks and then amending the soil requires so much time and effort.

My garden is USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 6a with pockets of 5b, whereas my grandmother’s garden in the Midlands of England was Zone 8. Consequently, my attempts to grow an English cottage garden are often thwarted as I find it difficult to grow certain cottage garden plants here. Some perennials in England, such as fuchia, are annuals in my garden. Other plants, such as lupines and delphiniums, just will not survive a Pocono winter.

Deer are the most prevalent predator in my US garden, but over the years, I have contended with groundhogs, rabbits, skunks, and a black bear who broke my favorite hummingbird feeder and drank all the nectar. I don’t remember any very destructive wildlife in my grandmother’s garden. I sorely miss the beneficial and extremely cute hedgehogs.

The fourth difference is the very short gardening season here compared to the UK. While my gardening friends in England are enjoying daffodils and other spring bloomers, my garden is often still covered in snow and ice. Every year, I long for the gardening season to begin. I dare not sow vegetable seeds outdoors before Memorial Day, and I put my garden to bed in October.”

Julie: Your book does a wonderful job of looking at the concerns of the modern gardener in dealing with extreme weather and sustainability issues.

Which sustainable gardening solutions have made the biggest impact on how you garden in the last few years?

Pam: “In the last few years, several sustainable gardening solutions have influenced how I garden, such as collecting rainwater, creating a rain garden, and planting many more native plants.

I no longer use a hose and domestic water to water my plants. We have six rain barrels collecting rainwater runoff from the roofs of the house and outbuildings. Serving two purposes, they prevent the runoff from collecting pollutants on its way to our waterways and provide water for my plants during droughts. The rain garden also collects runoff, allowing it to soak into the ground and percolate back into the local groundwater. The plants in the rain garden act as natural bio-filters, removing chemicals and sediments.

Many more of the plants in my cottage garden are native these days. My rain garden consists of 100% native plants, and the meadow has very few non-natives. We now know the value of native plants for our native pollinators.”

Julie: You mention having a rain garden, gravel garden, meadow, vegetables, cut flowers, and a Serenity garden on your farm. What do you enjoy most about each garden?

Pam: “Spring is my favorite season, and I love to watch my gardens come alive. Each has its own special spring beauty: the marsh marigold in the rain garden, tulips in the cut-flower garden, poppies in the gravel garden, and the Serenity Garden with its snowdrops, daffodils, forsythia, and primroses.

I especially love to see the meadow come back to life; this is the one I look forward to most. My meadow is a flower meadow for its cottage-garden look. Starting with the golden Alexander, followed by penstemon in June, the meadow reaches its full glory when the lacewing coreopsis, heliopsis, bachelor’s button, black-eyed Susan, purple coneflower, wild bergamot, Stokes’ aster, and more are blooming. In the fall, the New England aster comes into its own.

I am most proud of the meadow I created. It is quite large with a gazebo where it can be viewed and enjoyed.”

Julie: What do you hope your readers take away with them from your book?

Pam: “When I began making my garden 20 years ago, my purpose was to create one like my Grandmother’s cottage garden in England. It was about my memories. I began writing the book because I wanted home gardeners to know that it is possible to grow an English-style cottage garden in the very-un-English conditions of the Pocono Mountains. But as the world began to change, and the issues I mentioned came to the fore, the purpose of my garden changed. Now the purpose of my garden is to mitigate the effects of current global issues. I want readers to take away from my book that we can all do our part, however small, in saving our environment.

Furthermore, although it may seem an unattainable task to solve all the problems we face today, there is hope for the future through our children. I explain in the book how to nurture a love for the environment in the next generation. Fostering a child’s love of gardening and the environment is a legacy we must leave. It is how we can ensure a sustainable future for our planet.”

Thanks for joining us, Pam!

You can find out more about Pamela Hubbard at her website, Pam’s English Garden, subscribe to her Substack , follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

Also, here is a wonderful book review, An English-American Cottage Garden for Today, by Jenny Rose Carey of Pam’s new book.

Pick up your copy of The Contemporary Cottage Garden: Climate-Friendly Mindful Methods for Growing Flowers and Food, published by Timber Press, at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.org.

Julie Witmer is a garden writer, designer, photographer, and speaker

…with an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticultural from the UK. Julie has worked with private clients for over 20 years to help them realize their own garden dreams. Her photos have been published in books by Timber Press, Kew Gardens, and Rodale, and she is a popular speaker. Her garden, Havenwood, opens for the Garden Conservancy, garden club tours and master gardener classes, and has been awarded an Audubon Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary status.

Do you enjoy the English cottage garden style as well? Love to hear!

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Welcome to my “Havenwood Garden Journal”…

(previously “Notes from Havenwood”)

where I share the inner workings of my one-acre town garden in western Pennsylvania! We are located in horticultural zone 5/6 between the Great Lakes and the Appalachian mountains.

Proper Summer

This July has been a “proper summer” in our small town, which is something that we miss some years. By proper I mean days of heat (90’s), humidity and sunshine, then followed by thunderstorms most afternoons. The garden is decidedly wild at this time of year, reaching its maximum virility in every sense. Tropical plants are growing by the hour, and I have waved the white flag at the zucchini.

Like much of the northeast, we have had unwelcome smoke here, with toxic byproducts carried on the wind coming from Canadian wildfires. As someone who is allergic to smoke, it meant that I could not be outdoors for about a week this July, only dashing to my car in a mask when necessary. July is traditionally when I get all of the pruning done, so the toxic smoke came at an inconvenient time. I have made a start this week, but it sounds like smoke may return and send me back indoors to protect my sensitive respiratory system.

My free garden tour from earlier this month:

July Behind-the-Scenes

Join me today for a look at the pruning that did get done in the garden, caring for my formal pool, summer creatures from around the garden, and a host of other things going on this month at Havenwood.

Since there are so many new readers here, I have also added links to the “how-to” posts about our garden areas on JWG if you are interested in hearing more about how we made our garden in the past twelve years!

Garden Visit: Herb Society of America

We have hosted over a hundred people at Havenwood this year for guided tours and open garden days. It was a hot day when the last group of the season, the Western PA Herb Society, drove from an hour away to see our July garden. We needed iced, not hot, tea this tour, but it was lovely all the same.

Garden tours are one of my favorite things, as we can really get into the technical design and maintenance reasons behind our gardens.

Just in case your group is local, here are the details:

Havenwood Garden Tours: Enjoy our Audubon-certified sanctuary garden in one of the greenest neighborhoods in Grove City, PA. It is $15 per person (10 minimum) for a two-hour time slot that includes an introduction to Havenwood’s guiding principles and a fully guided tour. Tea and cookies included.

Hornbeam Hedge

This is one of the topiary features in my garden that never fails to get a comment from visitors. Our European Hornbeam, Carpinus betulus, is an unusual sight in western PA, but very common in the UK.

Before photos of our twelve-year-old Cottage Garden:

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Welcome to my series on questions about our intensive, immersive garden in northwestern Pennsylvania zone 5. Today we will cover one of the most common questions that I receive after speaking to master gardeners or after a gardening tour:

#7 What about deer?

Very often I am asked: “So, you do not have deer then?”

We do indeed!

We have herds of deer that roam our edge-of-woodland neighborhood. We are surrounded by neighbors with wide lawns dotted with groups of mature rhododendron, so this is one of their favorite places in town. In fact, we have had two different rare all-white deer that frequent our garden, and a few years ago, before we had added all of our fencing, one delivered a fawn near our garden pond.

White-tailed deer are one of the most destructive of agricultural and horticultural pests in the US. They cause around $5 billion in damage to cars, $4 billion for homes & gardens, and $1 billion to crops.1 Being a cautious driver can protect your car, and considering the problem carefully can help prevent garden damage as well.

Summertime Deer Despair

When researching for this article, I found that gardeners search online for “deer fencing” most through April and May. By June and July, they have given up and search for “deer repellent” instead. I have had years of gardening where I despaired of deer damage, but now I can plant what I wish with minimal to no damage. After so many years of feeling the same way, it is such a relief to have found a good solution that is suitable for my suburban/small town garden!

Three ways to fight horticultural deer damage: plant choice, repellents, and fencing.

1. Deer resistant plants - very helpful!

As a garden designer, plant choice for me is one of the most important aspects of sustainable design. There is a plant for every situation, and if your garden has a lot of deer pressure then it is wise to chose more plants that are guaranteed success. Highly scented and fuzzy plants tend to stay off the deer menu, though they can be curious creatures.

However, I do not know of a gardener in the US who does not wish to grow something edible, whether it be apples or beets, or sniff a fresh flower, rose or lily, in their own garden.

Edible plants are all firm favorites of the white-tailed deer.

Herds roam through neighborhoods in the US, and it is very discouraging to serve a buffet each evening to the village marauders.

2. Deer repellent - summer’s last resort

It’s been a couple of years since I have purchased deer repellent, which is wonderful because it is foul stuff.

For years, we sprayed Bonide Repels-All liberally in the evening—or rather my husband did after I made myself physically sick one time by applying it. It contains Coyote urine, rotten eggs, etc—all the good predator scents that do tend to keep prey animals away.

It works! But it does not last for long.

In the springtime, liquid deer repellent needs to be applied every ten days without fail, lest the munchers return to remove all the long-awaited tulips in ten minutes flat.

3. Deer fencing - the only guaranteed solution

The only true solution for deer proof hedging is an 8 foot tall exclusion fence around your entire property. But in town and city gardens, a stockade fence is hardly neighborly.

How can suburban and small town gardeners use fences to keep deer out, without building a fortress?

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Garden Design for Deer in 3 Steps

Now is a great time to assess the deer damage that you have and to make plans about how to better deal with it in the coming years. As with most things in gardening, a little bit of planning ahead can save you loads of heartache later on.

The inspiration for this method of deer fencing came from my time in the UK visiting country gardens. They have a long history of hedge rows in their country, which are managed trees and shrubs that are planted and then bent over and woven together every few years for the purpose of keeping livestock out of neighboring fields. Even modern British country gardens will have sheep or cattle outside their gate, and very often a dog to keep inside as well.

How do the British do it?

I am going to take you behind-the-scenes into the edges of my property to show you exactly how we have managed use my experiences in the UK to figure out how to exclude deer well enough to have the garden we want.

Here are three British-inspired garden design ideas that together create deer fencing for my one acre garden in Pennsylvania…

Three Steps to Make any Fence a “Deer Fence”

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Welcome to July at Havenwood!

Come take a little walk around our one-acre garden in northwestern PA, zone 5/6. Half of our property is in the shade and half in the sun, some wet and some dry, so we have a wide variety of plants growing in each season.

We are having a proper summer at Havenwood so far this July, with weeks in the high 90s (35C) and humidity to match. Thankfully June was so wet and cool that all of the newer plants have settled in well and there is not much maintenance watering to do besides in the Kitchen Garden. This productive space will always need more water for veg to crop well, and this is why I also include my dahlias in here, because they really need more moisture to bloom reliably. The garden is best in the early morning and golden evening light, so this is often when watering happens as well to encourage it to sink in without so much evaporation. It is summer for sure. Nevermind the heat, the Hemerocallis are throwing out new blossoms each day and the Hummingbirds can’t get enough of the Crocosmia in the Hot Border.

Come take a walk around the garden with me for July…

If you would like to have an overall framework of our gardens, here is a map of Havenwood:

#22 The Kitchen Garden

We are suddenly full of veg and herbs in the Kitchen Garden this month. Cucumbers, zucchini, basil, Swiss chard, and more coming on quickly with the heat and humidity.

#9 Birch Walk

Our front-lawn-turned-meadow-garden is always one of my favorite spots in July as its full of white daisies and fireflies!

#11 The Hot Borders

The heat is up in these borders, with the reds of summer popping out more each day.

#17 The Pond & Bogs

Our pond and bogs are a very busy garden in July for frogs and dragonflies. I wrote about this little water garden last week:

#21 The Long Border

Our damp PA prairie garden is just getting going this season with Rudbeckia flowering as we wait for the Blazing star to begin.

#5 The Cottage Garden

#26 Daffodil Dell

After the yellows of spring in the Dell, we are building up a collection of golden Daylilies to take over the show in July. It has been difficult to grow summer flowers here in the past because of deer traffic, but our hedge-with-fences technique has really cut down on their munching so I feel better able trying some new things here.

#30 Lantern Walk

High summer is a quiet moment in the woodland gardens, but it is also a wonderful moment because it is cool and shady. The gravel paths hold the heat, so July is a good time to wander around in the shade looking at all the structure that holds together a woodland garden after the spring flower rush.

#32 The Moss Walk

#25 The Ruin

The coolest area of all in July in the Ruin, as it is down under a deck roof near the concrete block of our foundation.

You can hear the fountain and see how we made it last year:

#15 The Lawn

Finally, the lawn is surrounded again by a Hummingbird favorite:

Impatiens capensis — the orange jewelweed, common jewelweed, spotted jewelweed, jewelweed, spotted touch-me-not, or orange balsam, is an annual plant native to North America.1

Julie Witmer is a garden writer, designer, photographer, and speaker

…with an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticultural from the UK. Julie has worked with private clients for over 20 years to help them realize their own garden dreams. Her photos have been published in books by Timber Press, Kew Gardens, and Rodale, and she is a popular speaker. Havenwood opens for the Garden Conservancy, garden club tours and master gardener classes, and has been awarded an Audubon Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary status.

Thanks for joining me!

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Welcome to the origin story of our garden pond and its two bogs!

Our pond is located at the back of our property in the lowest elevation. This means that it looks more natural than it would if I had placed it up the hill near the house. I will show you how we built this garden area, some of my favorite plants that grow here, and give you plenty of tips and inspiration for your own water garden!

Why a water garden?

Water-loving plants are some of the most interesting plants that you can grow. I am fascinated by the way that water plants grow in different depths of water, just as terrestrial plants grow in different depths of soil. We will talk more about how to design a pond around your plants as well.

First, here are a couple of books I have used extensively and would recommend for helping you to build a water garden:

The Practical Rock & Water Garden by Peter Robinson

The Water Gardener by Anthony Archer-Wills

Planning a pond

As I mentioned above, we planned to site our pond on the lowest spot on our property. It just so happened that we had a cozy corner behind our old shed that seemed to always have puddles after a rain. It was quite soggy, even more so than the Long Border area. You can just see the puddles below:

Another important part of planning a water garden is to create a list of plants that you hope to grow, and then create the conditions they need. I soon realized that my list of bog plants was quite a bit longer than my list of pond plants, so I decided to plan for two bogs.

For true pond plants, I did wish to include a couple of marginal plants, which like to grow in just a few inches of water on a shelf at the edge of a pond. These edges also make for safer use when a pond is being built in a area with children, as these shelves can be used to keep a young child from sliding into a pond.

For the deeper parts, I wanted to grow hardy waterlilies. These plants would require at least a depth of 2 feet.

Digging a pond & two bogs

Because my main motivation for building a water garden was to grow Candelabra Primroses, I knew that I would need to plan to have a couple of bog areas around the pond. These would provide cover at the edges for amphibians, and wonderful places to grow a wide range of bog-loving plants.

Here are a few photos of our excavations in 2017:

Water Level

One of the most important aspects of building a pond is to remember that the water in it will be level, so the sides should be level if you want to avoid showing a lot of black liner around the edges. We used a spirit level and a board across the opening at times, but I have a pretty good feel for level, so I often just got down low and used my eye. The area in the back by the fence (there is a yellow canoe at the lower back end in the photo above) was quite a bit lower than the area at the front of the pond area, so we moved most of the dirt to the back.

Surface area to Depth

The second important aspect of pond building is to consider your surface area to depth ratio. If you have seen a pond green with blanket algae, then it is likely that it was too shallow for its surface area. The deeper the water, the cooler it can remain during the summer. This deeper water will also stay unfrozen in the winter, which is better for fish and amphibians. So the deeper water creates a sort of insulation from dramatic shifts in water temperature throughout the year.

In The Practical Rock & Water Garden, Peter Robinson says:

“Ease of water management can be defined as the ease with which a stable, self-sustaining ecological balance is created: in layman’s terms this means creating clear water. Providing sufficient volume of water in relation to the surface area is the key, and the guidelines is to provide a minimum of 378 liters of water to every square metre of water surface (10 gallons of water to every square foot). To achieve this in a pool with marginal shelves and slightly sloping sides, you will need a depth of 60cm (2 ft). A depth less than that is an invitation to algae to spread.”

As we dug out the soil for each hole - three separate ones for two bogs and one pond - we added it to the back area to raise it up higher. We dug parts of the main pond down to 3 feet deep to balance the surface area with all of our marginal shelves. The bogs were only dug to 18 inches.

The topsoil and subsoil was used to grade the edges around the pond to the correct height, and some of the subsoil was saved to fill in the bogs. This is because lower-nutrient soils are recommended for most bog plants.

Lining a pond & bogs

We were able to purchase at a cheaper price rubber roofing off-cuts from a friend in the rubber roof business. When they cover a shopping center, for instance, they are left with several sizable pieces of very thick rubber that are quite a bit stronger than the best things sold for ponds. I did research to make sure rubber roofing was safe for fish and plants and found that indeed it was. In fact it is often used for larger wildlife pond installations by ecologists.

A fence

It is important to plan a fence for your water area, especially if you are in a neighborhood, like we are, where small children could be at risk. We planted a hedge on the long side near our neighbors, and added metal deer fencing with poles to prevent small children coming in the back, straight into the deep water section of the pond.

Edging

With snow falling on our newly-lined pond, the work to edge it with stone was delayed until spring of 2019. When we had a nice week of warm temperatures and the daffodils and forsythia were blooming, we began installing the stone edging. We were fortunate to have dug up all of these stones in our woodland area in the previous five years, finding them underneath moss all over. We hauled them from our pile to the backyard and began the process of cementing them in place:

Planting ponds & bogs

The most gratifying part of making a water garden is planting it up. It could not be simpler. Drop the waterlilies and marginal pots in the water at the appropriate height. Job done. Use a shovel to pull back the mud in the bog, drop in the roots of your plant, and then let the mud settle. There is usually no need to water, as everything is already wet! If the bog happens to be dry (such as during the summer months) I would water the new plants in as normal, but you are unlikely to need to do it again as long as there is not too much evaporation.

Water garden plants through the seasons

Spring

Spring flowers in the bogs are some of my favorites in all of the garden. The pond water is still too cold for much to bloom in the water, but in the damp bog areas, it is primrose season. This family of plants were the first to make me wish for a pond, as they are just stunning. Here are three of the primroses that bloom in our bogs in spring, as well as another classic bog plant:

Summer

Summer is a beautiful season in a water garden. Its gives a sense of coolness on a burning hot day, and brings all of the creatures in the garden alive with its supply of water. Here are a few flowers that looks their best in a summer bog and pond:

Autumn

While the pond plants start to shut down with the colder night temperatures, there are a few plants that still look great in bogs even as the first snows start to fall.

Winter

Water gardens do become quieter in the winter months, as they are primarily for plants that grow during the warm seasons. Their plants tend to lose their color - except for the sedges and Dogwoods. Native Dogwood shrubs (such as Cornus sericea) make a beautiful feature in a boggy area. Also our native Winterberry Holly (Ilex verticillata) will thrive in a damp spot, as long as it has some sun.

Creatures

The life a pond brings is truly amazing. Within days of first filling ours, we had a number of frogs and toads, and birds bathing. We have added a few goldfish which we enjoy seeing hidden under the lily pads. Here are a few photos we have captured in our pond:

Dragonflies and toads are also regular guests in our pond, especially around the plant material in the marginal shelves inside the pond. These areas create safe spaces for these predators to breed and lay their eggs, which means that they keep slugs, snails and mosquitoes in check.

Julie Witmer is a garden writer, designer, and speaker

…with an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticultural from the UK. Julie has worked with private clients for over 20 years to help them realize their own garden dreams. Her photos have been published in books by Timber Press, Kew Gardens, and Rodale, and she is a popular speaker. Havenwood opens for the Garden Conservancy, garden club tours, and PA master gardener classes, and has been awarded an Audubon Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary status.

Have you ever thought about adding a pond or bog to your garden? Love to hear!

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America’s Horticultural Ambassador

I was contacted by The University of North Carolina Press a few months ago about the re-release of a modern biography about one of the great US gardeners of our time, J.C. Raulston, and so I agreed to read through the book.

What I found inside its pages was a story that connected so many loose strands for me as a horticulturalist under 50 years old, telling me the story about how many of the modern cultivated shrubs and perennials that I love arrived in my own garden. As someone who missed hearing J.C. speak in person in the 1990’s, it is fascinating to read through his lectures which helped to form the US gardeners’ ideas of planting, and indeed bolstered the entire nursery industry in that period.

Chlorophyll in His Veins: J.C. Raulston Horticultural Ambassador by Bobby J. Ward chronicles J.C. Raulston’s life from his Oklahoma boyhood, through his horticultural education, army service in Vietnam, research and teaching. The book includes excerpts from Raulston’s lectures, lists his plant introductions, and includes some personal writings. It also covers the origin story of the J.C. Raulston Arboretum at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, which is still full of life as a hub for the U.S. nursery industry and offers mentorship for the next generation of horticulturists.

About Bobby J. Ward:

Bobby grew up in northeastern North Carolina and has an undergraduate degree in biology from East Carolina University and graduate degrees in plant physiology from North Carolina State University. He is the author/editor of five gardening books and has written for numerous magazines. His book, A Contemplation Upon Flowers: Garden Plants in Myth and Literature, earned the Quill & Trowel Award from the Garden Writers Association of America (now GardenComm).

Bobby’s most recent book is a biography of the late J. C. Raulston, the founder of the North Carolina State University Arboretum.

Welcome, Bobby!

Julie: You say in the preface that writing J. C. Raulston’s biography was “at once both easy and difficult.”

What was your relationship to J. C. during his lifetime and how did researching his life reshape your feelings about him beyond what you once knew?

Bobby: “When J. C. arrived at NC State University’s horticulture department in 1975, I was finishing a graduate degree in the botany department and did not get to take any courses under him. After the arboretum was dedicated in 1980, J. C. established the Friends of the Arboretum, which I joined. I did volunteer work in the garden and led tours, along with attending J. C.’s regular lectures and those by notable horticulturists he invited. Although I was aware of his warmth and generosity as a friend, it was only after his death that I began to understand the breadth and depth of his influence and following.

My research for the biography allowed me to examine an immense paper trail of his life, including 15 years of his personal arboretum newsletters, 30 years of annual Christmas letters, and various private correspondence. In addition, the nearly 200 interviews I conducted with family, friends, students and colleagues made me realize how much impact he had as a mentor. I found that J.C.’s greatest accomplishment was knowing how to connect people through plants, often planting the seeds of great future horticulturists.”

Julie: Were there parts of J. C.’s life history that surprised you?

Bobby: “Yes, there were many things I did not know about him. For example, I never knew that he served in the U.S. Army, including a tour in Vietnam in which he tested herbicides—destroying the very things he loved most.

In his years growing up on a farm in Oklahoma, J. C. was continually admonished by his father to do everything to perfection, which led to J. C. being in therapy as an adult, still wrestling with pleasing his father.”

Julie: There are an impressive number of star horticulturalists mentioned as friends of J. C., including Tony Avent, Dan Hinkley, Roy Lancaster, Rick Darke, Barry Yinger, Allen Lacy, Michael Dirr, Bill Noble, and more. In a pre-internet age, J. C. seems to have been a worldwide network all by himself!

What was it like to interview his various horticultural friends in North Carolina and beyond?

Bobby: “Most of the people you mentioned had come to Raleigh to deliver lectures or attend conferences that J. C, had organized. He always hosted parties in their honor, inviting students and friends to sit at the feet of such world-renowned horticulturists. Thus, I met most of them socially through J. C., unaware that later I would be interviewing these same people about J. C., his life, and his impact on American horticulture.

He was a prodigious letter and postcard writer, keeping in constant contact with numerous friends around the world. Many shared J. C.’s correspondence with me or told me first-hand stories about him, giving me additional insights into his joys and foibles.”

Julie: I remember the first time that I saw a blooming Calycanthus x raulstonii ‘Hartlage Wine.’ It was flowering in a private garden on a shady slope underplanted with blue-flowering Brunnera and the combination was breath-taking!

How do you think home gardeners could best honor the work of J. C. Raulston?

Bobby: “In the book, The Year in Trees, co-authored with Kim Tripp, J. C. wrote that, in any given region of the United States, only about 40 kinds of plants make up 90% of the landscape plantings. He knew from his various travels that there were far more plants, both native and non-native, that could be used in the landscape. Upon its founding in 1976—50 years ago this year—one of the arboretum’s main missions was to determine adaptability of regionally new and uncommon trees and shrubs.

I think the home gardener can best honor J. C. in their landscaping by choosing superior new plantings adaptable for their areas, instead of relying on monocultures of the same small group of plants.

I also encourage readers to honor J. C. by joining the Friends of the JC Raulston Arboretum to get free plants at its annual distributions and by attending its informative lecture series. (Note: Members who are not local can access a wealth of those lectures archived online as well as all the newsletters beginning with the ones J. C. himself wrote). The arboretum also relies in part on donations for its annual budget, so any contributions will help continue the important mission J. C. originated.”

Julie: What do you hope readers take away from Chlorophyll in His Veins?

Bobby: “I got the idea to write a biography of J. C. when I was interviewing eminent plant collectors around the world for a previous book, The Plant Hunter’s Garden. Once they found out I was from North Carolina, they would immediately ask if I knew J. C. Raulston. That led to their telling me impassioned stories of interactions with J. C. in person or through correspondence and the rare plants he would send them. That made me realize J. C. was not just a regional plantsman of only local interest (as one editor told me when I was pitching the first edition of the biography), but that he had a national and international reputation. The nursery industry, and therefore the public as well, are still benefiting from the plant distribution system J. C. established at the arboretum, allowing nursery professionals to take free supervised cuttings for propagation and sales.

A take-away message for readers can best be summed up in two quotes: one from his obituary in the New York Times where he was called ‘a generous-spirited giant among horticulturists,’ and the other from his memorial service, where one speaker called him ‘the linchpin of the American horticultural community.’ "

Thanks for joining us, Bobby!

You can pick up a copy of Chlorophyll in His Veins: J.C. Raulston Horticultural Ambassador by Bobby J. Ward here or direct from The University of North Carolina Press

North Carolina State says of Calycanthus x raulstonii ‘Hartlage Wine’

“Raulston’s allspice is a deciduous flowering shrub in the sweetshrub family (Calycanthaceae). The plant was bred by Richard Hartlage, an undergraduate at NC State University. It is a cross between the Chinese sweetshrub (Calycanthus chinensis) and Carolina allspice (Calycanthus floridus). The hybrid epithet honors J.C. Raulston (1940–1996), then Director of the North Carolina State Univ. Arboretum (now the JC Raulston Arboretum).”1

Growing J.C.’s Plants

One of the most interesting aspects of this biography, in addition to hearing directly from J.C. about how he experienced life, were the plant lists in the appendix! Raulston is most well-known for this help in growing the Calycanthus, but he has a dozen plants named in his honor. He was truly a beloved horticulturalist and still lives on in our gardens in Hellebores, Viburnum, Agaves, Mahonias, and more.

I hope you too pick up a copy of Chlorophyll in His Veins to learn about the gardener behind the plants that we love in our gardens!

Julie Witmer is a garden writer, designer, and speaker

…with an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticultural from the UK. Julie has worked with private clients for over 20 years to help them realize their own garden dreams. Her photos have been published in books by Timber Press, Kew Gardens, and Rodale, and she is a popular speaker. Havenwood opens for the Garden Conservancy, garden club tours, and PA master gardener classes, and has been awarded an Audubon Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary status.

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Welcome to Notes from Havenwood…

where I share more of the inner workings of my one-acre town garden in western Pennsylvania. We are located in horticultural zone 5/6 between the Great Lakes and the Appalachian mountains.

It has been a beautiful month, and we have gotten to share it with over a hundred visitors in the garden. We had an enthusiastic class from Phipps Conservatory, people coming from a 75 mile radius for the Garden Conservancy open day, PA master gardeners, and friends. Its been a full month and we will finish with our summer open garden tours in the first week of July.

There have been a few gardening jobs along the way too of course, though no major building projects. But I think that these little tinkering jobs are the ones that really make a garden special as they are responsible for helping plants to thrive and growing a larger collection.

Join me today for a look at the work going on at Havenwood this June…

Clematis Training

wrote a beautiful piece this week on finding her respite in gardening with a line I have not forgotten. She said that in her garden there is “a clematis that I coax up a piece of string every morning like a botanical personal trainer.”

Clematis like to grab with their wrists, which we call “petioles” botanically speaking. It is the short piece that connects the leaf to the stem, and usually its just a wrist attachment. But in clematis, it is how they grab on and climb up. They cannot wrap around large things, so small wire or string is best.

Here are several clematis from around the garden this month that I have been tying up and training regularly, ideally weekly:

Clematis ‘Purpurea Plena Elegans’ along the Kitchen Garden fence:

Plant Shopping trips

Read more

Welcome to June at Havenwood!

Come take a little walk around our one-acre garden in northwestern PA, zone 5/6. Half of our property is in the shade and half in the sun, some wet and some dry, so we have a wide variety of plants growing in each season.

After a rough winter and spring, summer growth in the garden is quickly filling up the gaps and flowering away. The roses have begun and the peonies are finished already. This part of the season is always a blur. When I stepped out into the garden last night, it looked like a totally new place, fueled by Sunday’s rainstorm. This is a great time for cuttings and for sowing seed, as it takes and sprouts within days at this time of year. Like a sailing crew hoisting the mainsail, every plant is standing up and shouting together—”Grow!”

Come take a walk around the garden with me for June…

If you would like to have an overall framework of our gardens, here is a map of Havenwood:

#6 Pergola Walk

In the front of our property is the best example of self-sower magic in action, which I wrote about earlier this month. The Pergola Walk is full of daisies and foxgloves this month, and this is probably my happiest spot to sit at the moment.

#5 The Cottage Garden

Rose season has begun…

#37 The Wood Chip Path & Woodland

#11 The Hot Borders

#17 The Pond & Bogs

#22 The Kitchen Garden

It is Clematis month in the Kitchen Garden! I have realized that these metal fences make for perfect supports to which I can easily tie my climbers, so I have added six more this month. Here are a few that are settling in…

Julie Witmer is a garden writer, designer, and speaker

…with an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticultural from the UK. Julie has worked with private clients for over 20 years to help them realize their own garden dreams. Her photos have been published in books by Timber Press, Kew Gardens, and Rodale, and she is a popular speaker. Havenwood opens for the Garden Conservancy, garden club tours, and PA master gardener classes, and has been awarded an Audubon Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary status.

Thanks for joining me! What is growing in your garden this month? Love to hear!

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An Ecological, Drought-defying, Low-maintenance Technique

What if you could grow colorful plantings with less water, less maintenance, and more flower power?

After spending the last six months writing here on JWG about all of the wonderful gravel gardens I visited in the UK last year, this book is a great follow up as it features many of them and explains how they were created! It was fun to read how Jeff was originally inspired by Beth Chatto’s gravel garden and how he has adapted her techniques to US gardens over the past thirty years, both in his work at public gardens and at home.

I’m excited today to introduce you to Jeff and his new gardening book, The Gravel Garden, which I believe will become a gardening classic.

A little about Jeff:

Jeff Epping has worked in horticulture for 35 years, and is an award-winning horticulturist and garden designer. He was Director of Horticulture at Olbrich Botanical Gardens for 28 years, where he transformed a lawn-laden landscape into an acclaimed public garden. He also runs his own design and consulting business specializing in eco-conscious designs. His writing has been featured in Fine Gardening and Better Homes and Gardens, and recognized in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Welcome to JWG, Jeff!

Julie: Why should gardeners consider making a gravel garden at home?

Jeff: “Well, there’s several reasons I think it makes sense to give gravel gardening a try:

Gravel gardens are beautiful, even though the name doesn’t conjure up beautiful images in your head. If you look through all of the gardens in the book you can see how amazing these gardens can be.

With our changing climate, gravel gardens make great sense, since they are composed of heat and drought tolerant plant species that need little to no water after they are established. Water is a precious resource and aquifers around the globe are in peril and we all need to do our part conserve as much water as possible. The last thing the planet needs is water guzzling lawns.

Plants in gravel gardens support insects, pollinators, birds and other wildlife - all of which need some help with shrinking natural areas.

Gravel gardens require so little maintenance compared to traditional beds and borders - they are more work up front to install, but they pay you back tenfold in future years.”

Julie: I love all of the local stone suggestions you share with your featured gardens in the book. What is the best type of gravel to use? And does the size of the gravel matter?

Jeff: “First off it’s best to find a stone that occurs naturally as close to you as possible, rather than having it shipped in from longer distances.

The gravel needs to be hard, so that it doesn’t break down and become more soil-like and lose its ability to deter weeds.

I like to use a smaller washed gravel that has relatively small pore space, but I have seen coarser gravel used as well with good success. It is important that it be a washed gravel with all of the individual pieces being about the same size. I always tell people to envision marbles in a jar - you can shake them or press on them, but you will never compact them and eliminate the pore spaces. I find that the smaller gravel and smaller pore spaces are less likely to trap leaves and other plant debris, so it is easier to keep organic matter from building up in the gravel.”

Julie: Which gravel garden plants do you suggest most often to begin a new home garden?

Jeff: “I look at the large palette of native American prairie plants that are naturally adapted to drought conditions. Many have deep roots or large water storing roots that make them perfect for the gravel garden. Some of my favorites include prairie dropseed, butterfly milkweed, pale purple coneflower and foxglove beardtongue. There are other fantastic non-natives that I like too - the seedless form of Calamint (Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta), meadow sage cultivars (Salvia nemorosa), Carthusian pink (Dianthus carthusianorum) and Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia).”

Julie: How is caring for a mature gravel garden different than a new gravel garden?

Jeff: “Gravel gardens get easier as they mature, since the plants in them develop deeper roots, bigger fleshy roots, etc. Contrary to the long term care of a gravel garden, new gravel gardens need a good deal of water to get established. It makes sense, since you just put a small plant in a sea of gravel with little to no water holding capacity and they need time to root into the soil below.

Spring cut-back is a little more work, since the plants are bigger and produce more biomass, but once they are cleaned up at the end of winter (usually late March or early April here), your work is pretty much done for the year.”

Julie: What are your favorite gravel garden plants in your own garden this year?

Jeff: “This spring my favorites are Penstemon digitalis ‘Dark Towers’, Monarda bradburiana, Heuchera richardsonii and Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’”

More on Beth Chatto’s gravel garden in the UK:

Julie: What do you hope readers take away from your new book, The Gravel Garden?

Jeff: “I hope that after reading the wonderful stories behind these gardens and seeing how visually stunning they are, readers come away realizing that environmentally friendly, climate-adapted gardens do not have to sacrifice beauty. Gravel gardens can be vibrant, immersive, and full of life while also using fewer resources and supporting biodiversity. At a time when news about climate change and environmental decline can feel overwhelming, I hope the book offers a sense of hope and optimism — showing that our gardens can become part of the solution while still bringing us joy and inspiration every day.

I also hope readers leave feeling empowered, knowing that each of us can do something meaningful to help support our precious planet and the creatures that share it with us.”

Thanks for joining us, Jeff!

You can find out more about Jeff Epping on at Epping Design, follow him on Instagram, or read more about him on A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach.

Also, here is a great talk about shrubs by Jeff at Roy Diblik’s nursery, Northwind Perennial Farm.

Pick up your copy of The Gravel Garden: Visionary, Drought-Defying, Naturalistic Designs at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-million, Target, or Walmart.

Julie Witmer is a garden writer, designer, photographer, and speaker

…with an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticultural from the UK. Julie has worked with private clients for over 20 years to help them realize their own garden dreams. Her photos have been published in books by Timber Press, Kew Gardens, and Rodale, and she is a popular local speaker. Her garden, Havenwood, opened for The Garden Conservancy, and has been awarded an Audubon Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary status. Julie is a member of the Garden Media Guild and Professional Garden Photographers Association, UK.

Have you ever considered making a gravel garden? Love to hear!

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Garden Magic: Self-sowers

If you love British-style cottage gardens, then you will want to reconsider your feelings about self-sowers in your American garden.

I find that gardeners in the US are often very afraid of plants that self-sow in gardens without the help of the gardener. I think it is because our landscape is still so wild that we are afraid of the chaos of nature entering our own garden plots. But when we take a deep breath and realize that these self-sowers are just another type of plant, and if we understand their lifecycles and why they behave as they do, we can welcome them as part of our gardens.

Far from just being a weedy hazard, self-sowing plants can actually help us by creating more magical garden scenes for both pollinators and people. Self-sowers are often emergent plants which pop up through the garden foliage and give us loads more flowers than we could possibly plant all by ourselves, particularly in summer and fall. Their ability to grow from seed is fueled by the pollinators that love them, and so they are obviously a good source of pollen for many creatures.

Self-sowers can be welcomed into our gardens as plants that do two very important things: they add to our biodiversity and they also create a more dynamic ecosystems in our gardens.

Good Plants for Pollinators

Most self-sowing plants are successful because they are being visited by large numbers of pollinators. These annual fleabane, Erigeron annuus, have seeded around most of the sunny areas in the garden and are covered in tiny halictid bees and other tiny creatures during the warmest daytime hours.

Here is a short clip of bees on annual fleabane in my Cottage Garden:

Handling Self-sowers: Selective Weeding

The way that you find out which self-sowers work for you, in your particular garden, is in three parts: discovery, observation, selective weeding.

Discovery

The discovery phase is when you notice a new plant, whether it is one that you have planted or one that has shown up by itself.

You need to take note of what it might be: Which plant family is it in? Do you know it to be harmful? What reasons might you have for getting rid of it right away?

You have a choice at this point to act, and you could cut off its head and dig out its roots now if you have a strong reason.

But what I would suggest if you do not know, or are not sure, is to proceed to step 2: observation.

Observation

This is where you watch your plant over time and see how it behaves in your garden. You can begin with a few months, to observe its flower and foliage. This might be enough for you to be sure that you have identified it.

However if you already know what it is, then it is good to observe its overall behavior in your particular garden:

Does it grow at a moderate rate or too quickly? Does it crowd out other plants? Which ones? Does it fill in the gaps? Which ones?

Do not be afraid to allow yourself time for observation, as this is where real gardening begins! Then move on to step 3…

Selective Weeding

This is where you know what you have, and you know how fast this plant grows. You look at the area it is growing in, and decide where it is safe to leave this particular plant in particular spots in your particular garden.

Which pollinators could use this plant if it’s left standing? Does this plant grow horizontally or vertically? Does it need room to spread? Will it complement what you are trying to do in this area of your garden?

This is the judgement call that will be different gardener to gardener. It is important to practice selective weeding and also to follow up with some observations later on: Did you make the correct choice? Why or why not?

Planting Layers

You can see from this video that the annual fleabane, Erigeron annuus, adds an extra layer of interest to our Entry Garden at this time of year.

A self-sower for every Garden

I took a walk around my garden today to gather photos of plants that have self-seeded in my different garden conditions: sunny, partial shade, and shade gardens. There are even some self-sowers that prefer damp or dry conditions. It is my hope that you will find a few self-sowers that you will actively include in your gardens this year.

Self-sowers for Sunny Gardens

The gravel paths in the Cottage Garden are a great place for self-sowers to pop up, and they are easy to weed out as well. I like to allow quite a lot to grow in my paths! It makes our Cottage Garden have a whimsical look about it, with daisies popping up in the paths and scabious flowers leaning over to greet visitors. There are even some plants, such as Clary sage (Salvia sclarea), which refuse to grow in the borders, preferring to grow in the gravel. I would not be without this magical plant, so in the path it stays a welcome guest.

If after a bit the self-sowers get to be too much for easy walking on the paths and they need some thinning out, I use a Dutch push hoe to cut them down and then a garden rake to pile them up for removal where needed.

Here are several plants that self-sow well for me in my Cottage Garden:

Self-sowers for Partial Shade

Forget-me-nots, Myosotis, will do well in a bit of shade and some sun. Look for them resowing in places that are underneath other plants, such as here in the Kitchen Garden where they popped up under the sunflowers last summer.

Here are two more plants that seem to reseed better with a little bit of shade, or at the edges of a perennial garden:

Self-sowers for Shade Gardens

I have several wonderful plants that are filling our half-acre of woodland after a decade of letting the leaves lie on the beds and create better soil. Some do better in damp shade, and some in dry shade.

Here are six self-sowers for shade garden areas:

Here is a short video of the self-sown Bluets (Houstonia caerulea) in our woodland garden each May, which I could never plant all by myself in these numbers:

Julie Witmer is a garden writer, designer, and speaker

…with an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticultural from the UK. Julie has worked with private clients for over 20 years to help them realize their own garden dreams. Her photos have been published in books by Timber Press, Kew Gardens, and Rodale, and she is a popular local speaker. Her garden, Havenwood, opened for The Garden Conservancy, and has been awarded an Audubon Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary status. She is a member of the Garden Media Guild and Professional Garden Photographers Association, UK.

Do you allow any self-sowers to grow in your garden? Love to hear!

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Welcome to Notes from Havenwood…

where I share more of the inner workings of my one-acre town garden in western Pennsylvania. We are located in horticultural zone 5/6, between the Great Lakes and the Appalachian mountains.

May is always one of the busiest months of the year, and this year it is feeling even more compressed than normal. With the Phipps class going on now, and the Garden Conservancy open day coming up, I have put a hold on my client work for a couple weeks to keep up.

This is time for garden making! Even people who prefer to be indoors are outside at this time of year, and they might get their hands dirty now when they will not in other times. As gardeners grow into their art, we tend to think more of gardening as a year-round endeavor — but I am willing to bet that most of us began one spring, long ago, and that is also spring optimism that helps us make it through the rough spots.

Join me today for a look at the work going on at Havenwood this May…

Planting up the Kitchen Garden

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Tour my garden on June 6th

There are limited tickets still available, so hop over to The Garden Conservancy website to book an entrance ticket to my garden! Also open that day will be The Farm, which is only 5 miles away.

Both gardens will be open on Saturday, June 6th to benefit the non-profit work of the conservancy as they foster gardening culture across the country.

Mercer County open gardens

Where: Grove City, PA - address sent upon booking with Garden Conservancy

When: Saturday, June 6th, 10am to 4pm

Register for open day at Havenwood House & Gardens:

Havenwood, June 6th

The Farm

You can also reserve a spot to visit Joel Voltz’s Farm garden just 5 miles away, also on June 6th:

The Farm, June 6th

Also - Pittsburgh open gardens!

We will be the first two gardens in western PA opening for The Garden Conservancy, but there will also be three more gardens open in Pittsburgh the following weekend, June 13th, so check those out too:

Pittsburgh PA open gardens

Julie Witmer is a garden writer, designer, and speaker

…with an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticultural from the UK. Julie has worked with private clients for over 20 years to help them realize their own garden dreams. Her photos have been published in books by Timber Press, Kew Gardens, and Rodale, and she is a popular speaker. Havenwood will be open for the Garden Conservancy on June 6, 2026, and has been awarded an Audubon Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary status.

Julie is also volunteers as a Western PA regional ambassador for The Garden Conservancy.

Looking forward to sharing the garden with you soon!

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For a sneak peek, here are recent online tours of my garden, Havenwood:

Right Place, Right Visit

If you have heard the gardening advice of “Right plant, right place,” then this is the garden tour for you.

UK garden writer, nurserymen, and designer, Beth Chatto popularized the concept of adding plants to suit your conditions long before the word “sustainable” became popular. Over many decades, she and her husband created a magical garden all around their family home in East Anglia by actively creating different growing conditions to grow a wider variety of plants. Her love for plants gave birth to an early biodiversity movement, and gardeners around the world have loved her for it.

Beth Chatto was also a highly decorated Chelsea Flower Show winner, so it seems fitting to share her fabulous garden this week while the RHS’s floral marquee is full to bursting with the next generation of plant growers and designers.

Join me for a spring walk around Beth Chatto’s legendary home garden and nursery…

Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden

Beth Chatto famously turned her old driveway into a gravel garden that came right up to her one-story home. She crushed the concrete and then added some nice pea gravel to top the low-nutrient soil and grow plants that thrive in hot/dry conditions.

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Welcome to May at Havenwood!

Come take a little walk around our one-acre garden in northwestern PA, zone 5/6. Half of our property is in the shade and half in the sun, some wet and some dry, so we have a wide variety of plants growing in each season.

It was difficult winter and it is proving to also be a difficult spring as well for our emerging plants. The warm weather has jump started flowering season so that we are a full two weeks ago at the moment, but we are also continuing to have temps plunging well below freezing so all those tender tips are not so happy. The hosta are going to need a month to recover from frost. I have a new planting of native lady slipper orchids just emerging, and they are not too thrilled about the dramatic weather either. I have protected the flowers by putting a pot over top of them on cold nights.

Despite the hot and cold flashes, spring marches on. There are over one hundred trillium in the Dell, and over a hundred bluebells in the Woodland! So much glory at once! Our public open days are also marching closer and one wonders how many more frosts we will deal with in the next two weeks. This is a good moment to take every new week for the beauty that it has and let the rest of spring sort itself out as we go.

If you would like to have an overall framework of our gardens, here is a map of Havenwood:

Come take a walk around the garden with me for May…

#2 The Entry Garden

There are Spanish bluebells planted throughout the woodland side of our garden, but they are concentrated in the Entry Garden as well. There is a beautiful dark blue haze over the garden on a rainy day that just suits May.

#26 Daffodil Dell

The Trillium are always the star of May in the Dell, and there are usually a few poet daffodils left to welcome them. I counted our largest patch this year and there are well over one hundred trillium here, and I have been spreading them around the garden for many years so they pop up other places as well.

#27 Spring Bed

#37 The Wood Chip Path & Woodland

White and yellow azaleas bloom with the bluebells and bluets along a path in the Woodland in May, along with several other special plants.

Here is an article on how to care for and expand a patch of bluets:

You can see how we made a sand plunge for cyclamen here:

#9 Birch Walk

#11 The Hot Borders

#25 The Ruin

#22 The Kitchen Garden

#24 The Bird Garden

#5 The Cottage Garden

The purples have been popping in the Cottage Garden this month.

Here is how to make a yew arch as we have in the Cottage Garden:

Julie Witmer is a garden writer, designer, and speaker

…with an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticultural from the UK. Julie has worked with private clients for over 20 years to help them realize their own garden dreams. Her photos have been published in books by Timber Press, Kew Gardens, and Rodale, and she is a popular speaker. Havenwood will be open for the Garden Conservancy on June 6, 2026, and has been awarded an Audubon Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary status.

Thanks for joining me! What is growing in your garden this month? Love to hear.

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British-Inspired Garden Design: two zoom classes & garden tour

I hope you can register on Phipps Conservatory for my newest class on adapting British design to North American gardens!

Join UK-trained horticulturist and garden designer Julie Witmer for two intensive online sessions about how to adapt British-inspired plantings and garden design elements to your own garden.

Objective: Learn British-inspired garden design elements in order to adapt them to conditions of Pennsylvania.
Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Prerequisites: none
This class is an elective in the Ecological Gardening and Landscape Design certificate programs. Approved for 5.0 CEUs for landscape architects by LACES.

The Saturday field trip is to the Instructor’s home in Grove City, details will be discussed in class.

Instructor: Julie Witmer works to create beautiful and ecologically sensitive gardens across the continental United States. She obtained a Horticultural certification from the Royal Horticultural Society in Wisley, UK, after four years of plant propagation and sales with a local PA perennial nursery.

Register on Phipps Conservatory:

Register here for Phipps Class

Looking forward to sharing this new class with you soon!

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If you find yourself in Kent for springtime, there is really only one thing for you to do. You must find yourself a nice big patch of English bluebells to enjoy! Just two miles from Charlotte Molesworth’s Balmoral Cottage, there is a 13th century manor that contains an ancient beech woodland carpeted in blue flowers.

Hole Park, Kent

Hole Park has a long history of welcoming visitors to its bluebell walk. Arthur Barham bought the place in 1911 and opened its gates to garden visitors through the National Garden Scheme (NGS) in 1927.

But why is it named Hole Park?

“The first recorded settlement at what is now Hole Park belonged to one Henry de Hole who came to the Weald of Kent in the middle of the 13th century. He is recorded as being resident in 1278. The area was then a very wild and inhospitable place, dominated by extensive Wealden oak forest, the remnants of which are still standing today. Many of the villages and farms in the area have the suffix ‘den’; indicating that they began life as camps in clearings literally cut out of the woodland.

It seems he gave his name to the estate as there is no ‘hole’ nearby and his house was located on a prominent hill top. When he departed, the name remained, becoming ‘The Hole’ and then ‘Hole Park’. "1

“In spring the famous bluebell walk is complemented by breathtaking Magnolias and an abundance of wild garlic followed by incredible wisteria, rhododendron and azalea displays.”2

Join me on a walk at Hole Park, Kent through their woodland full of English bluebells…

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