Posts by Jenks Farmer
Sure-fire Bulbs for a Spring Show in the South
So many choices! And so many enticing bulbs in box stores right now. For so many reasons, I buy bulbs only from specialty bulb farms — the best value and the best chance for success and joy. Here’s a list of the sure to flower bulbs being planted at Historic Columbia today. Click on the…
Read MoreCool Plants of the Week
Just a quick post about some of the great plants that we’re working with this week while designing for the dense shade of the renovation of the Hampton Preston house gardens. ALSO: Tuberrose No other fragrance enchants like this tough bulb with long lasting leaves that NEEDS to grow in hot, dry, terrible soil. You…
Read MoreGarden Visiting in the Upstate of South Carolina
After a few intense weeks with hands in the dirt, focused on getting new crinum planted and on getting lots of fall leaf crop and spring flower seeds in the ground, I took a little road trip up to the red hills, around Rock Hill, Great Falls, Jenkinsville and Charlotte. Here are 20 pics from…
Read More5 Favorite Flowers to Seed-In Now for Spring Flowers
As with fall leaf veggies, seeding in spring annuals now, gives you green ground cover and texture over winter; then flowers come in the spring time. There’s just no better value; in Deep Rooted Wisdom, I tell the story of a mentor who bought a pack of red poppy seeds in 1959 and still has…
Read MoreFall Planting Series
Over the next few weeks, as we are doing fall seed in and bulb planting in several different places, I’ll post a series of blogs on my favorite fall veggies, fall flowers to seed and fall bulbs to plant. We do this stuff in all sorts of situations: Historic Columbia gardens, little private city gardens…
Read More5 Favorite Salad Greens to Seed-In for Fall
Easy-to-germinate cool season leaf crops yield beauty as well as nutrients. There may be lots of choices in seed catalogs, but over decades of gardening, I’ve weeded out the the ones that take too much work. With these easy fall and winter greens, scatter the seeds then make sure the little seedlings stay moist. Then…
Read MoreFlorence Bench & Bus Stop
Andy Adams, Jenn Summers and I get to make a 60 foot long, question mark shaped, poured concrete bench. It’s a project in honor of Mrs. Nancy Bratton, whom I’m told was a great gardener and a generous soul. We’re asked to include some impressions of plants in the vertical surface of the bench. Some…
Read MoreOld Skills Make a Really Thick Hedge
Hedges can be just privacy screens. But they often have big gaps. Trained properly, they can be thick; thick enough to be more than a visual barrier. In old days (and in other countries today), hedges are living fences so they must be impenetrable thickets. Even though we’re not trying to keep the cows in…
Read MoreA New Job; Back to Building Public Gardens
I’m strengthening, building on my roots in botanical garden work by taking on a new job (more about it at the end of the post.) Those roots started with inspiration at Clemson University. Clemson Horticture wasn’t a huge leader in the field: we all knew NC State and UGA had more recognized programs. But I…
Read MoreIsaac’s Garden Design
(Isaac is our summer intern. He’s finished one year of a horticulture program at Spartanburg Technical College) Just before I set off for this wonderful internship, my mom told me that her friend Peggy would like for me to do a design for her. I was nearing the end of my design class, and I…
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