All My PhloxThrough colorful, personal vignettes, landscape designer Valerie Strong presents and solves specific landscape problems, including the excavations of her own ponds and the creation of three award-winning gardens. She comments on her natural surroundings, even empty lots and roadsides. Strong examines the neglected infrastructure of landscape design--the growers, carpenters, stone masons, landscapers, and labor force--with sympathy and humor, lifting the paper plans to philosophical observations of gardening and life. All My Phlox will direct the novice gardener and confirm the habits of those who are committed to working with nature. The author passes on her message of how to be a good steward of the land. |
Contents
Preface vii | |
Acknowledgments viii | |
Ohio 1 | |
Help 12 | |
Connections 24 | |
The Barn 37 | |
Pools 44 | |
A Picnic 56 | |
August 66 | |
Turkey Manure 77 | |
By Committee 88 | |
The Secret Garden 95 | |
Forced 103 | |
Back to Ohio 113 | |
List of Plants Mentioned in the Text 120 | |
Common terms and phrases
Anne arbor asked August autumn Barn beautiful beds black locusts bloom blue bobolinks bulbs called Camet clay Cleveland client color cord grass corn poppies Dick door drive edge Emily farm feet fence fields flowers foliage fragrance front garden George grass gravel gray dogwood green Greg Helen Hudson huge ironweed Jenny Jenny's Jim Bissel knew Kristine landscape lawn lilies living load locust look maple meadow mowing multiflora rose Nancy native nature needed never nursery Ohio perennials petunias PHLOX pine plants pond pool pruning purple loosestrife Rhonda road rock Roger Secret Garden sedums seed serviceberry shrubs snow soil someone spirit of place spring stone summer thing thorn apples trees truck TURKEY MANURE Valerie Strong viburnum walk weather weeds Western Reserve Academy wheelbarrow wild wildflowers winter witch hazel wonder woods woody woody plants yard