Triple Creek Flower Farm

 

 



Our gardening community experienced a big loss this week. A very popular local nursery, a destination garden center, sent out the following email blast Saturday.

“It's with almost unbearable sorrow that I am sending this message. On Saturday morning we lost our son, John Rowley. Most of you knew him or had heard us talk about him, and how he grew the plants and managed Triple Creek Flower Farm. Visitation will be today, Tuesday, September 25th, from 4:00 pm. until 8:00 p.m. at the Martin-Hightower Funeral Home on Highway 27 in Carrollton, Georgia. Funeral services will be onWednesday at 4:00 p.m. at the funeral home. Please visit http://www.martin-hightower.com/ for more information.

Please keep us in your prayers.”

Winkey and Pat Brinson

 

Located on 13 acres in Douglas County, GA, Triple Creek Flower Farm is the “go-to” nursery for our neighborhood.

Triple Creek’s planted gardens illustrate how plants will grow in the shopper’s garden. The areas of sun and shade gardens, the quiet walking paths and picnic area provide an enjoyable and comfortable setting for gardeners to contemplate additions to their own gardens.

John, along with Winkey, do all of the plant production, sales, and delivery, sharing their knowledge and love of gardening to all who enter. John’s mom Pat handles the office duties of ordering and accounting.

John will be greatly missed; he was an inspiration and a friend to us gardeners. In many ways the beautiful yards and Gardens in Fairfield Plantation will always be a memorial to John Rowley.

 

Highlands, North Carolina

I just returned from a work retreat in Highlands, NC. Highlands is located in one of only two rain forests in the United States (the other one being in Oregon). The entire landscape of the town and surrounding area was lush and green. It wasn’t just nature gone wild, though, the town of Highlands is beautifully landscaped loosely based on English garden ideas and using many native plants.

 

This was a sweet rock fountain in a natural-ish area of a garden. 

The house we stayed in was surrounded by manicured lawns, rock walls, evergreen trees, and boxwood pruned into rounded balls. It gave the garden the feeling of being enclosed. A couple of my co-workers mentioned that the garden would make a nice place for a reception.

 

Isn't this lawn gorgeous?Understated and classy. I think I could play croquet out here.

 

 

I really like the rock garden border. I may want to do a border of this type in front of my cement girl.

 

 

Don't you want to explore this secret garden?

 

 

 My bedroom had a copy of the book The Gardens at Kew written by Allan Paterson and photographed by Andrew McRobb. A superbly illustrated book published to celebrate Kew’s 250^th anniversary. I had not time for serious reading, but each evening before going to sleep I would leaf through admiring the luxurious photos. And dream.

The Cement Girl

I added a garden to the front area. It doesn't look like much in person (or on film, to tell the truth) but in my mind it is lush, beautiful, and a little mysterious.

I may be over-selling the garden...

The first time I shared pictures of my front garden you were looking at a drab brown area. You can refresh your memory here http://chichi-notes.blogspot.com/2011/08/introduction.html, or just scroll down. Anyway, The area to the right in the picture is what a person looks at while sitting in the courtyard, where I like to drink my coffee. The no-mow discussions are still going on here so I decided to do something about the area that will be behind the lawn. My dream is to have some permanent greenery directly in front of the lounge window with a low maintenance garden facing our home, giving the impression of enclosure like in the gardens in Charleston and Savannah.

We are working on adding all of the things that will give a garden the Charleston feel. Courtyard...check; Iron furniture...check; walkway...working on it; cement girl...check.

 

I took this picture while standing in front of our double windows facing the street. The house is behind me, the driveway and walkway to the right of the picture and neighbor's house to the left of the picture.

 

 



Yep, we now have a cement girl, aka The Bird Girl of Savannah, in our front garden. She is placed to the right of the imaginary walkway as you approach the house and facing our courtyard. It is a very shady garden so she has hosta in front of her. I am not sure of the name of the hosta, they are from my grandmother's garden, a living memory. To the right of the cement girl are 3 Cinnamon Fern. Cinnamon Fern ( Osmunda cinnamomea) prefer moist shady habitats and grow 2 to 3 foot tall.

To the left of the cement girl, and so tiny they can't be seen until you almost step on them, are three Purple Tiers Hydrangea (Hydrangea s. ’Miyama yae Murasaki’). It will have wonderful deep purple lacecap flowers and will grow to about 3 foot high. I saw the plants in a garden center back in the summer and knew I wanted them somewhere in my garden.

Behind the ferns and hydrangea the area is filled (or it will be when the plants mature) with George Tabor Azalea (Rhododendron indica 'George Tabor') and English Ivy (Hedera helix). George Tabor Azalea grows to about 10 feet tall and 8 feet wide and blooms prolifically in the spring, covering itself with large pink and white flowers. The English Ivy is an evergreen plant that will fill in as a ground cover. In fact it should fill in so well that I will have to keep it clipped off of the tree trunks and azalea.

I didn't think about it until writing this, but I may have just created a smorgasbord for deer...

The No Mow Lawn

As I defensively say; our front lawn is not pretty. Seriously, there were a few straggly weeds growing in lonely islands when we moved in a few years ago and we decided that the place would look better if we removed the few green weeds and covered the whole muddy mess with pinestraw.

Our plan was to plant grass seed or lay sod in early spring...but time got away from us. Before we knew it the temperature was too high to work in the yard, Georgia was experiencing a draught, and our neighborhood had a watering ban. We congratulated one another on the wisdom of having pinestraw instead of expensive dead sod.

The next spring Mister was working crazy long hours, I was working days and attending college in evenings, and the drought was still holding strong. We decided it to refresh the pinestraw and call it good.

I am using our front garden as part of my project for this course- and it has really gotten me thinking about how nice it has been to not mow a lawn. We have the ubiquitus strip of grass between the azaleas and the street so Mister gets his bi-monthly fill of mowing. I am in charge of mowing our back garden; a mixture of grass and clover mixture that the dogs enjoy running through- clover doesn't get that tall so if I am not in the mood to mow it doesn't really matter to anyone but the chihuahua. She can be pretty vocal if the grass/clover gets too tall, but I can be pretty deaf to her if I have to.

All of this time of not mowing the pinestraw has spoiled me; I don't want to start mowing the front garden. I have been checking out no-mow lawn alternatives this week. Many of the homes in Atlanta have very little grass, the greenery is provided by groundcover such as ivy, liriope, or moss.

 

Dwarf mondo grass used in place of grass. Photo found on Walter Reeves' "Gardening in Georgia" website.

 

 

Another photo from Walter Reeves' "Gardening in Georgia."

 

 

I have also been looking at clips on HGTV's website of garden makeovers and what can be done without using grass. One clip that has the feel I like is Mondo Man, he does go too far for my taste (the reason I am looking at dwarf mondo grass is because I don't want to spend all that time tending to the lawn) but I like how he adapted his garden to what successfully grows well.

 

Ivy is another green alternative we are looking at, and one Mister likes better, so we will try to fill in the area under the large trees with it. A local garden center was having an end of summer sale and I picked up a flat of ivy to get things started. I would have picked up more but an ivy shopper beat me to the sale. I hope to get the ivy planted this upcoming weekend.

 

The descriptions don't sound like much, but I am actually starting to have a better idea of how I want the front garden to look...