Tiny Gardens Healing Herbs Coming Soon

Over these past few years we at Tiny Gardens have been exploring the powerful and oft-hidden world of medicinal and healing herbs. Please check back soon to discover the new line of Tiny Gardens herbal products.

Winter Color

The winter garden is as colorful and generous as other seasons, and in some way may be more so. The sky is vaster, tree bark brighter. Berries pop likes jewels and sunlight plays with the frost and snow. Remember to look up this winter and behold your garden!

Callicarpa dichotoma (Beautyberry)

Callicarpa dichotoma (Beautyberry)

Hamamelis mollis (Chines Witchhazel)

A frosty morning on a farm in Maine

Betula nigra  HERITAGE (Heritage River Birch)

Ilex serrata 'Koshobai' (Koshobai Japanese Holly)

Fagus sylvatica (Copper Beech)

Ilex verticillata, Winterberry

Ilex verticillata, Winterberry

The Generosity of Trough Gardens, Season to Season

Tiny Gardens' Trough 

at the Sedgwick Estate, Long Hill

Beverly, MA

Along low wall in rear garden ~ Spring

Sedums, conifers, ornamental grass ~ Spring

Top view ~ Spring

Detail 

~ Fall ~

~ Fall (detail)

A Morning of Seeing Spider Webs

Day by day the garden is full of surprises. A fall morning:

A Surprise in the Garden

I began to deadhead the hosta. But stopped. Can you see why?

If not, take a closer look:

Praying Mantis

The Praying Mantis or, Mantodea (or mantises, mantes) is an order of insects that contains over 2,400 valid species and about 430 genera[1] in 15 families worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats. Most of the species are in the family Mantidae.

The English common name for the order is the mantises, or rarely (using a Latinized plural of Greek mantis), the mantes. The name mantid refers only to members of the family Mantidae. The other common name, often applied to any species in the order, is "praying mantis"because of the "prayer-like" posture with folded fore-limbs, although the eggcorn "preying mantis" is sometimes used in reference to their predatory habits.

The closest relatives of mantises are the termites and cockroaches (order Blattodea). They are sometimes confused with phasmids (stick/leaf insects) and other elongated insects such as grasshoppers and crickets, or other insects with raptorial forelegs such as mantisflies.


In her Pultizer Prize-winning book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard said, “The whole creation is one lunatic fringe,” citing (among other things) that the female praying mantis eats her male sex partner.

From the Tropics to Tahoe

My sojourn of family visits continues as, after a prolonged visit in tropical Florida I have traveled west and north, to the Sierra Nevadas and the Lake Tahoe region. I am enjoying mountain vistas and brisk morning walks in a new landscape that starkly contrasts to waxy, exotic effulgence of tropical horticulture (as seen in this post). Here, at an altitude of approximately 6,225 ft (1,897 m), the air is dry and so is the soil.


The climate of the Sierra Nevada varies from hot desert (similar to the Sahara) at its eastern base to an artic-alpine climate only a few miles away on the highest peaks. However, most of the Sierra Nevada is enjoys a Mediterranean (low temperature) climate that dominates the Sierra below about 6000-7000 ft. (where I am currently visiting). These climates are characterized by warm to hot dry summers and cool to cold wet winters.

As was true of my visit to Florida, I am unfamiliar with the standard flora of this region. Hailing from New England, the alpine/desert mix is fascinating, inspiring and confounding. I've included a few photos from my morning walks, gloriously illumined by morning haze, sunlight and dew. I have not, as yet, pinpointed the proper names of these simple yet generous prairie grasses.

Common grasses and shrubs that thrive here include:

• Yellow Monkeyflowers, Orange Alpine Lilies, Yellow Arrow-leaved Butterweed
• Purple Tower Delphinium and Yellow Buttercups
• A strange red plant called a Snowplant
• Low growing Evergreen Squaw Carpet
• Mountain shrubs:  Deer Brush and Tobacco Brush
• Mountain Mules’ Ears: large fuzzy leaves that look like donkey ears
• Sagebrush and Bitterbrush 
• Willows: common water loving shrubs that grow in meadows and along creeks
• Cow Parsnips: flat-topped clusters of blossoms that form one point like an umbrella 

Other prairie grasses include:

• Prairie Dropseed [Sporobolus heterolepis]
• Little Bluestem [Schizachyrium scoparium]
• Switchgrass [Panicum virgatum]
• Indiangrass [Sorghastrum nutans]

A Day at Leu Gardens

During my prolonged visit with family this summer, today I was exposed to the incredible diversity and extravagance of tropicals when my niece, nephew and I visited the Harry P. Leu Gardens in Orlando, FL. Leu Gardens showcases plants suitable for cultivation in USDA Zone 9b,  a zone I am completely unfamiliar with, hailing from northern climes.

Harry P. Leu, a successful businessman and his wife, Mary Jane, purchased the property in 1936. The Leus traveled extensively and brought back plants and seeds for their garden. The Leus deeded the house and the gardens to the city of Orlando in 1961.

I include below some photos I took as we meandered. We barely scratched the surface of all there is to see there because it is, after all, July in Central Florida and the heat became daunting. Tropicals are an altogether different adventure when it comes their species and sub-species. Wildly colorful, succulent and bizarre, they make their own statement.

I have not attempted to identify them for fear that I would become overwhelmed and then not post them. Enjoy the adventure!