Meet Utah Gardener Nancy Noble

Nancy Noble, surrounded by her gardens in southern Utah.

As a professional biologist, Nancy Noble knows more than the average bear about plants. Though she has fond memories of gardening with her grandmother in Missouri and her parents in Wisconsin, her own passion for gardening didn’t blossom until she was in post-graduate school. Now she says, “I’m just a gardening nut.”

Nancy’s fervor for gardening has spilled over into two separate gardens: one at her condo outside Salt Lake City, and the other at her house in southern Utah. “The condo gardens surround a small patio (20 x 30’) and are intensively planted,” says Nancy. She maximizes her space by growing vertically. The patio is fenced in and Nancy uses the fence to support sweet peas, nine different types of clematis and climbing roses. “Some of my favorite climbing roses are America, Iceberg and Golden Showers,” she says. “We’ve only been here at this house for three years, but the Iceberg rose is already growing right over the 8' fence,” says Nancy.

Daylilies put on a grand display.

At ground level, Nancy has planted tree roses and perennials, such as Japanese painted ferns, heuchera, daisies, phlox, asters and primroses. She also grows herbs and containers of petunias and gerber daisies. Because she isn’t at the condo all the time, Nancy has set it up to be low-maintenance. “I started by adding lots of compost to the clay soil,” she says. A 1" thick layer of mulch conserves moisture and keeps the weeds out. “Overall, I only have to spend one or two hours a week maintaining this garden.”

Low-maintenance is even more essential at her 90-acre country home because she’s only there 25% of the time. “Gardening in southern Utah is a challenge because we’re located at 7,100 feet and have hot days and cool nights,” says Nancy. To keep the wildlife at bay, she has fenced in a quarter-acre area for 30 fruit trees and a vegetable garden in raised beds. “I used raised bed corners to build eight raised beds and I feel like they’ll last forever,” says Nancy.

Nancy uses Trellis Netting to support tomatoes and other vining crops.

Surrounding her vegetable garden is a xeriscape garden where has planted perennial flowers and shrubs that don’t need a lot of maintenance once they get established. These include mugo pines, potentilla, salvia, daylilies, gaillardia and veronica. “I like trying new varieties. This year, my favorite is Fanfare gaillardia,” says Nancy.

Though she’s found creative ways to keep up with gardens in two separate locations, Nancy looks forward to retirement when she’ll move more permanently to the southern Utah location. “It will be nice to really focus on the gardens and feel less rushed about taking care of them,” says Nancy.

To learn more about water-wise gardening, check out my article, 8 Steps to a Water-Wise Garden.

-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening

Piet Oudolf: Dutch Plantsman and Designer

Perennials in Piet Oudolph's nursery in Hummelo, Netherlands.

Garden travel is one of my passions and, over the past 25 years of travel to gardens in Europe and North America, I’ve witnessed a shift in design and planting emphasis toward more naturalistic, low-maintenance landscapes. The new designs are based on sweeps of structure, texture, and color that change with the seasons and gardens' maturity. Plants are chosen for their durability and adaptation to the site as well as their contribution to the larger design.

Piet Oudolf, Dutch plantsman and landscape designer, has been one of the people at the forefront of these changes. His work, beginning in the 1980s, revolutionized European garden design with its emphasis on grasses and tough, hardy perennials and bulbs. In his early years, he felt constrained by meticulously kept perennial borders that required constant deadheading, staking, dividing, and pest control to remain presentable.

One of Oudolph's many cultivars, the Flames of Passion geum.

Oudolf is first and foremost a plantsman; he grows and studies the plants that he uses in his designs so he intimately understands how they look in all life stages and seasons of the year. His knowledge led him to use more grasses and complementary perennials in his plantings and to hybridize his own new varieties. He and his wife operate a plant nursery at their home in Hummelo, Netherlands, where he experiments with new varieties. His plant introductions include Aconitum ‘Stainless Steel’, Sedum ‘Red Cauli’, Malva ‘Sweet Sixteen’, Geum ‘Flames of Passion’, Echinacea ‘Jade’ and E. ‘Fatal Attraction, and many more.

His award-winning designs carried him across the Atlantic to New York City and Chicago, where he worked on the master plan for the Gardens of Remembrance and the Battery Bosque in Manhattan and the Millennium garden in downtown Chicago. He’s currently part of the team that’s working on the High Line project in New York City. This unusual project is transforming a 1.5-mile-long elevated train platform into a public park.

When planning my garden-related trips, I usually don’t consider major cities as destinations, but I see visits to Manhattan and Chicago in my future. Short of a trip to England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, it’s the closest I can get to the work of this groundbreaking designer.

To read more about Piet Oudolf’s public and private gardens, visit the following blog sites and articles at these links:

• Piet Oudolf's official site
• Darwin PlantSpotters, a blog
• Bliss, a blog with photos of Oudolf's garden
• Gardening-Guy.com
• Dirt, a blog by Amy Stewart

-Ann Whitman, Staff Horticulturist

Quail Botanical Gardens, Encinitas, CA

The design and plants used in the Undersea Garden successfully imitate the look of a coral reef.

On a recent trip to Southern California, I spent a plant-lover’s dream day at Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas. I live and garden in northern New England, so visiting a public garden in Zone 10 is a rare and wonderful treat.

Located on 35 acres 20 minutes north of San Diego, Quail is designed as a series of themed gardens that feature plants from different regions of the world as well as special theme and activity areas. One of my favorite places is the Undersea Garden, which is planted with succulents and other plants to resemble a coral reef. The effect is so uncanny that I expected to see schools of fish swimming among the crested cactus and Euphorbia. The garden also demonstrates the creative use of water-wise and fire-safe plants for the drought-prone Southwest.

The Bamboo Garden contains the largest collection of bamboos in the Northern Hemisphere. Peaceful paths meander through the towering grasses. Signs along the path explain how the different bamboos are used in their native countries, how they grow, and which one is harvested to feed the Giant Pandas at the San Diego Zoo.

The Tropical Rainforest is a soothing retreat in this arid climate. It features a dramatic waterfall and river overhung with ferns, palms, and other lush plants. Benches in this area are perfect for reading, bird watching, or eating a picnic lunch. The Seeds of Wonder children’s garden has lots to explore, too. It contains an amazing wind sculpture, animal topiaries, playhouse, and other nature-themed activities. The staff offers classes, camps, and events throughout the year.

For a photo tour of Quail Botanical Gardens, click here. And if you visit in person, don’t miss the plant nursery where you can purchase succulents and other plants for your own garden or sunny windowsill.

-Ann Whitman, Horticulturist

Dream Gardens

My mid-winter daydreams often take me back to Holland’s Keukenhof gardens. This is one of the paths I walked along when I was there on an April morning in 2006.

My garden has been frozen and covered with snow since the middle of November. At this point in the winter, I'm so color-deprived that a patch of yellow snow is actually looking sort of interesting.

This is the time of year to put your feet up, close your eyes and bring to mind some of the best gardens you've ever visited, whether near or far. If your screen is looking a little dark, no worries! We've put together a photo album called "Garden Tours and Travel" that contains pictures from some of the world's most beautiful gardens.

The photos in this album were contributed by our staff. If you have some of your own "dream garden" photos to share, please upload them into this album. There's plenty of room to add captions (please do!). Click here to enter our photo center and add your own photos to the album.

Enjoy!

-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening