“In the Dirt” Gardening

Hello Gardening Friends, 

We have recently updated our business card so that we could display it in our community newsletter, rather than the lengthy text Classified Ad that we ran every month for the last few years. Frankly, it was not only a lengthy Ad, it was also necessary to continually update it. And so we have teamed up with a graphic artist and created a 1/8 page color Ad that will appear beginning in May, in the Parkfairfax Forum Newsletter and the Fairlington Community Newsletter. We are hoping this will be easier for everyone to find our business. 

On the back of our card we identified four (4) key service items, if you will, that we offer….. which will give you a better sense of our hands-on gardening approach.

First on this list is “in the dirt” gardening. We wanted to give you a snipet about our style, and for us “in the dirt” is simple and suggests hands on gardening. We are definitely in your dirt when we book an appointment to come and work in your garden. We are a staff of one, namely moi,”“Contessa.” We do employ a couple helpers, but the key to our true gardening work and style is to dig dirt, remove weeds from your dirt, till and work your soil with our hands and add fertilizer, compost and rich organic matter into you beds.  We garden with our own hands and a large dose of TLC (tender loving care.) We often remove plantings, divide them, reposition/transplant them and work them back into the soil where they can grow successfully and produce for you. The point being, that sometimes plant life has grown to the point that it needs a new home. Or it’s become way overgrown for the space it’s in, or it’s looking sickly because it has a bug or a blight. It could be because it’s planted in too much sun or too little sun. And sometimes it has grown so large it is crowding another plant right beside it…that wants more room.

The real point is that when we evaluate our preparation of your beds, we will definitely get down “in the dirt” with our hands, our garden tools, and our “gardening soul.” You see, for us, it’s a manual and a spiritual endeavor. We have found our soul in all your gardens. Digging in the soil is definitely our “call” and our happy place. It’s where we can be close to nature, the earth (dirt) and our great and all loving God. He is with us and we are with Him. Rest assured that we will give your garden, the plants, and the soil, our very best effort. And we will give our best effort to you also. We also give our best, to our Lord and our God. He is our constant and ever loving companion. This is our blessing, and we take it very seriously. We are called to help you and glorify our God. So “in the dirt” gardening is our gift to you.

We provide the following service items to everyone, upon request.

• In the Dirt” Gardening
• Four Seasons Bed Preparation
• Monthly Maintenance Contracts
• Nursery Visits By Appointment

In our next blog post we will address:

“Four Season’s Bed Preparation”

”Contessa” says…..it’s a very good thing!

Lenten Study – Saturday of the Third Week of Lent

Descend in Imitation of Jesus

Can you give up the upper hand? Can you let let others go ahead of you? Will you step aside and give the credit to someone else?  Will you learn the lessons of suffering, but also the way to healing? Can you experience humiliation, but also proceed on a journey to resurrection?

This  is Jesus’ descending way of love, the way to the poor, the broken and the oppressed, but it becomes the ascending way to love, joy, peace and new life.  Our descending way is what each person experiences in his own heart. Slowly but intentionally, we each must take our descending way in order to open our ascending way, to bring us to the way Jesus fills our life with his joy, peace, love and our “new life” in imitation of Jesus.

Read: 1 Peter 4:12, 5:1-5

Prayer

Dear Jesus….. help me find my way of descent ~ my way of humility, tears, of suffering and of being hidden.  I know that I must seek the lowly way of life in order to reach the heights of your eternal happiness. I seek your light and pray that it follows me and fills me all the days of my life.

• AMEN •

Property and Gardening Prep for a Successful Open House

A new assignment and new relationship has transpired. We are working on a job for a realtor and his client/homeowner. And we were referred by one of our other very good clients. It’s good to know that this is how you build and grow your business. Helping others!

Our Day #1 – 3.0 hours.

Our property is going to be on the market very soon. Our homeowner has already relocated out of state. We were retained to clean things up, tidy the garden bed in front removing all crawling vines and trim anything growing out on to the sidewalk. Pansies were left for us to install. We did not have a water source, so limited tidying of the cement porch was all we could really accomplish. We planted the Pansies after cleaning everything up in the bed by the front door, tilled and leveled the garden bed and added one (1) 3 cu ft bag of shredded hardwood bark mulch. All porch items  were everywhere as we had placed them aside to clean. Many items will be tossed, but we left things “as is” for the homeowner to either give away or toss, once she comes to do some work inside the unit over the next weekend. Her contribution to the goal.

It definitely looks better, and she is replacing her front glass door next week, as well as having the Condo Association painters come to freshen the white paint on the brick background wall and the door frame. Little by little it’s coming along.

………….

Day #2 – 5.0 hours

Bed clean up in the back patio area, narrow side bed, full of left over fall leaf debris was removed. Many left behind patio items to work around and clean up. Left side bed rubber border removed as it was bulging out of the dirt along the whole length of the wood deck. Very unattractive so we pulled it out. We then deep edged that bed after cleanup and added fresh mulch. Creating a drainage recess so mulch and rain would not escape from the bed on to the deck.

Many of our PFX residents use large stones that they have collected to create borders. We really discourage this because when the community gardeners come to clean up they cannot possibly remove all the leaf debris and the weeds that bury themselves in these rock borders. It’s so much better to create deep edges on the beds, in terms of a clean and more tidy look. But the back yard has a ton of these stones that were most luckily laid by PFX maintenance team members and so clearing and cleaning it all out, took a great deal of time.

We had contracted to complete ten hours for this project,  but at the end of our five hour day, it became clear that more work needed to be completed. So we came back for day#3 and finished up the project at 12.5 hours.

Our homeowner was pleased. Our real estate professional was pleased and on the 26th of March the property “Open House” will take place.

We trust everything will go well. Additionally, as an add-on we agreed to come the morning of the Open House and do a sweep of the property just to make sure it’s “show worthy.”

”Contessa” says…. It’s a very good thing!

THE GARDEN MUSEUM, the UK

New talk! Tom Massey: Resilient Garden Tom Massey is one of the leading designers of his generation and his new book, RHS Resilient Garden (published by DK in April) is a climate emergency call to action for us all to garden more sustainably. To celebrate the publication, hear Tom and some of the book’s expert contributors discuss the important issue of climate-resilient gardening. How can we design our gardens and green spaces to become more adaptable in a warming climate? How resilient are gardens, in the face of extreme weather events such as heatwaves and drought or excessive rainfall and flooding? Why should we be planting our own food forests, adopting green roof and swale planting, harvesting rainwater, or adding hügelkultur mounds? What are the best plants to cool the air and trap harmful pollutants? The evening will be chaired by Chris Young, who will welcome guests Tayshan Hayden-Smith, Dr Tijana Blanusa, Dr Hayley Jones, and Thomas Rainer on stage, joining Tom Massey for a panel discussion on resilient gardening. Tues 11 April, 7pm £15 Standard, £10 Friends/Young Fronds £10 Livestream Book tickets Jane Jacobs Day 2023 Join us for the Garden Museum’s inaugural Jane Jacobs Day, a day of activities celebrating the renowned urban theorist, writer, and activist Jane Jacobs, most famously known for her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). The day will include a Jane Walk in our local neighbourhood, a community workshop, and an evening panel discussion on London’s future, to commemorate the outstanding contribution Jane Jacobs made to urban studies, sociology, economics, and activism. Full programme coming soon, but tickets are available now for the evening talk! Ideas for a Greener London Chaired by Evan Davis, this panel discussion will explore how to envision a brighter, greener, and better future for London. Speakers include Architect Alex Arestis on the development of an urban arboretum; academic Dr Morag Rose on walking together to shape the planet; Oli Mould on the futures of golf courses and writer George Hudson on why utilities are the problem… Thurs 4 May, 7pm £10 Adult, £8 Friend, £8 Student, £8 Unemployed £10 Livestream Book tickets Plant of the Week: Fritillaria verticillata By Matt Collins, Head Gardener As anyone who follows my Instagram account will know, my fixation with fritillaries began in earnest while living at Benton End in Suffolk, where the appearance of various species once grown by Benton’s renowned artist-gardener, Sir Cedric Morris, still appear sporadically in the rough grass, decades after his death. Going out in the dewy spring mornings to spot dainty, elegant and sometimes curious fritillaries half hidden in the walled garden there — during the strange quiet of the pandemic — will forever remain one of my most favourite gardening experiences. Not least as it tuned my eye to the nuances and natural appeal of species bulbs more generally. This week, while the cold weather creeps on into spring, stinging hands and stiffening boots, I have rejoiced at the indifference shown by our clumps of Fritillaria verticillata— a completely magnetising species fritillary from Japan whose multi-headed, cream-white blooms appear to have almost doubled in spread and size since last year, despite the chill temperatures. Planted in the Museum courtyard as a little drift last April, I staked the emerging shoots this winter with little berberis prunings (sturdily pronged and advantageously sharp), to give its slender, tendril-clad stems something to cling to. Here at the damper, partially sunny end of the garden they have now risen to well above two feet, dangling as many as five flowers each: qualities that make verticillata (which means ‘whorled’, in reference to the arrangement of its leaves around the stem) a fantastic garden plant for spring. Verticillata wasn’t among the fritillaries I encountered at Benton End, but I came to know it around the same time during a visit to a garden once owned by late garden writer Tony Venison. Venison died in 2019, but for many years was a frequent visitor to (and great chronicler of) Benton End. So there is a small chance the fritillary is linked; if not given by Morris (who was famously generous with plants) then perhaps discussed with him in the garden. Upon seeing it I was instantly charmed: if the height, floral abundance and butterfly antennae-like tendrils weren’t captivating enough, you lift the little pendent heads to reveal an exquisite, blood-red crosshatch beneath the petals. If you’re visiting the museum, I encourage you to wander out and look.

About our gardens Otros Vinos at the Garden Café Friday nights at the Garden Café are back from next week, and to celebrate we’ve invited one of our wine suppliers and good friends of the Café, the excellent Otros Vinos, to join us and pick the wine list for the evening. Focusing on low-intervention wine makers, Otros Vinos use lesser known grape varieties from some of the more obscure regions of France and Spain. Head chef Myles has put together a Mediterranean inspired menu for the evening to compliment the list. Spots are limited so please book online in advance. Friday 24 March, from 6pm Book a table Images: Tom Massey (c) Wax London; Jane Jacobs, chairman of the Comm. to save the West Village holds up documentary evidence at press conference at Lions Head Restaurant at Hudson & Charles Sts (1961), New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress; Fritillaria verticillata

Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

Lenten Study – Friday of the Third Week of Lent

Acknowledge God’s Love

Gods Love is not earned, but freely given. Does this inspire you to think and contemplate on Gods perfect kind of love? He decided to love us in his complete freedom. His choice, His decision. If you think about this and reflect on it deeply, it can totally have an influence and change your whole life. How can our humanness fathom this, when as earthly people we think that we have to do something nice, so that we can be loved by others. We think being loved by others is something we have to earn. We find it hard to believe we can get something for nothing.

 

Read: Luke 6:27-31

Dear God….you are most high. Please take me back into your love that I can never earn. I confess my sin and my shortcomings. Your forever forgiveness is undeserved by me. I know in my heart that your love is unconditional. But my human nature always thinks that others will only love me if I  act as if I love them. I am in awe of the love you give me that is boundless and can never be withdrawn. Father please give me your grace to accept this “love gift” from You.

•• AMEN ••

Lenten Study – Tuesday the Third Week of Lent

LENT A TIME TO
Prepare

Life is a journey of preparation. All our lives we prepare to truly die for others. In an accumulation of little deaths throughout life, God is asking us to release our clinging tendency and need of others….to living for them. As we walk the journey from childhood to adolescence, to adulthood and finally to our old age, always we are offered ways to choose for ourselves, ultimately perhaps choosing for others. Questions come up; do I desire power or service, do I want to be seen, or to remain hidden; do I strive for success in the career I chose, or do I follow my vocation? In the final act of our life it is truly about the process of dying to self. This passage is where we will experience living in the “joy of God.”

Please read: Luke 12:42-48

Prayer

My Father God,

As I walk through the journey of my life I too easily do what is wrong instead of right. But you always are there for me and I know that you love me even when I have sin in my heart. As I walk along through my life, please remind me to choose service over power, and a desire a true vacation to your Word, rather than a highly successful career. I pray for a hidden self in my service to others, and I pray to be my real self and experience a true sense of what is very real and not at all real. I now examine my conscience….and I pray right now….to choose to improve my actions and my thoughts with your help…..Oh’ My Savior God.

 

••  AMEN  ••

A Re-Post…..Tips – All Purpose Plant Medicine/Treatment

NEEM OIL is a standard and common treatment for a number of gardens pests. Keeping it on hand is kind of like keeping Extra Strength Tylenol in your bathroom medicine cabinet. Meaning….. you will  use it very frequently. If you are a gardener you probably already have it on hand. It’s an effective “three in one” treatment. Combined it’s an Herbicide, Insecticide and Multicide treatment for various fungal diseases in the plant world. Rose bushes especially,  benefit from its use. If you see tiny holes in your Roses leaves, start your Neem Oil treatment right away. And treat it ever three weeks until you see the condition subside  two treatments should do the trick.

No doubt you’ve heard the term “black spot.” Using Neem Oil to cover the base, stems and leaves of an infected plant can revive it from pests such as aphids, and powdery mildew. If you are unsure, take a sampling leaf or stem to your local nursery or search common garden pests on the internet. Very often there are photos of the various pest conditions. You can hardly go wrong with Neem Oil. We highly recommend you keep it on hand. It comes in a convenient spray container and can be effective for the spring, summer, and fall growing seasons. Be sure and turn the spray dial to off once you are done with your treatment,  because it can evaporate from the container. Once the first frost arrives, of course the chill will kill any insect invasion, but Neem Oil should be used even in the fall to help protect your plant for next years healthy growing season. 

Black Spot

Powdery Mildew

“Contessa” says…… it’s all good!

Hello Current Clients of Contessa

I hope you are all reaching a point of spring expectation. I think by April we will be able to schedule initial visits. Checking out what survived and what is doing well, and setting up semi-solid appointments to begin some real spring tidy and preliminary gardening. Weather is always our definitive.

This year I am requesting that everyone purchase the products that I will need to tend your gardens. In many cases you will receive more adequate and fair pricing, if you will order these items yourself. Amazon has most of the items. This will facilitate my efforts a great deal, as going to purchase, transport and choose is just more efficient if you order online. If you need assistance however, I’m happy to consult with you.

The products I have listed are certainly universal to all of you. If you feel you don’t need a product please send me a txt msg and we can discuss.

I am very much looking forward to planting, carrying for and transitioning your yards back to spring/summer beauty.

If you wish to subscribe again this year to our ongoing “maintenance” program from June through the end of November…our plan will increase this year to $200/month. Please let me know as soon as you can as I have a couple folks on a waiting list. I want to serve everyone well. Same consistent care of your yards, but at $5.00 a day last year, it really was an overwhelming amount of work, and so this year we are raising our fee to compensate. It will now come to roughly $7/day. Very fair we believe. Our hourly “job rate” will remain at $50/hour for 2023/this year. Next year it will increase to $60/hour.  We feel that letting you know now….is very important.

So here are the products we need all of you to purchase prior to our arrival. Questions? Certainly phone us. We are happy to discuss.

AMAZON
Visit the Aqua Joe Store

4.6 out of 5 stars28,829Reviews

Aqua Joe SJI-OMS16 Indestructible Metal Base Oscillating Sprinkler with Adjustable Spray, 3600-Square Foot Coverage

#1 Best Seller in Lawn & Garden Sprinklers

Please order (2) bags

2/5 pks at $2.76 each

$10 to $12  (1 bottle)

Please order (2)

(Fertilizer Wand – Please order/purchase 2/one for spring and one for fall)

Fertilizer for hydrangeas – to acidify and maintain “blue” blossoms with a nitrogen supplement  (1 bag) Approx $20

••••••••••••

We look forward to a great season and to seeing you all again very soon. If you wish to go to the nursery with us, let us consider new plant selections in May. That is the recommended and common planting protocol in Virginia.

Happy Spring to all…….!

Penny

The Garden Contessa

THE GARDEN MUSEUM News, the U.K.

Joy Larkcom: The Queen of Vegetables Vegetable growing pioneer and writer Joy Larkcom is affectionately known by many as ‘The Queen of Vegetables’, as she introduced so many varieties to the UK that we know and love today. These include Lollo Rosso lettuce, Chioggia beetroot, and Perella lettuce, which she first encountered on her “Grand Vegetable Tour” around Europe in 1976. Her most well-known contribution is the introduction of the cut-and-come-again harvesting method, which provides the ‘baby leaves’ in bags which are so ubiquitous today. So if you’ve ever bought a bag of mixed baby salad leaves from the supermarket, you’ve got Joy to thank! Joy also had a fascination with Chinese vegetables, experimenting with them in her own garden for many years before visiting China, Japan, and Taiwan on research trips in the 1980s. In a new archive display, we’ve delved into Joy’s personal archives (which are held at the Garden Museum) for highlights from her Asian vegetable research, including photographs, correspondence, research notes, gardening tools and seed catalogues. Find out more Talk | Rachel Siegfried: The Cut Flower Sourcebook Flower grower Rachel Siegfried is joined in conversation by Clare Foster, editor of House & Garden, to celebrate the launch of Rachel’s new book The Cut Flower Sourcebook. Growing your own flowers for cutting brings the pleasures of the season indoors and cuts out the air miles associated with many shop-bought flowers. Founder of Green and Gorgeous, a flower farm and floral design studio in Oxfordshire, Rachel will be sharing her recommendations for the best perennials and woody plants for arranging – whether your goal is to have something to pick from your garden each week of the year or start a cut flower business! Tues 4 April, 7pm £20 Standard, £15 Friends / Young Fronds £10 Livestream Book tickets Lucian Freud Raffle Thank you to everyone who entered our fundraising Lucian Freud raffle! The raffle is now closed, and we are delighted to have raised over £6500 thanks to all your entries! This week our front of house volunteer Jenny helped us pick the random winners, with one lucky entrant winning an exclusive private tour of Lucian Freud’s art studio. Second place won a zimmerlinde cut from Freud’s own plant (pictured here with Jenny), and third place won a framed photograph taken by Howard Sooley in Freud’s studio. All funds raised from the raffle will help us continue our exhibitions, education and community programmes.  Support the Garden Museum Plant of the Week: Sweet violet (Viola odorata) By Matt Collins, Head Gardener Next up among the garden weeds I feel compelled to pot and display alongside the more showy cultivated varieties — particularly those boasting a high tolerance of shade — is the sweet violet, Viola odorata. Who doesn’t love violets? And who would consider them undeserving of a pot, however commonplace? The foliage is surprisingly evergreen, and the flowers, when they arrive to conclusively declare spring, are true to both their common and botanical names: sweetly odorous, and also somehow intricately beautiful yet unassuming and discrete. But there is an aura of the ancient in the presence of violets that seems to endear them further and almost stop you in your tracks, whether encountered in the garden, in woodland or below the rural hedgerow. Violets have a magnetism, and have for centuries been woven into European culture and tradition, from almanacs, folklore and nursery rhymes to perfumes, cosmetics and wine. Consequently, you weed them in the garden with more reverence — or superstitious caution — than you might a bittercress or dandelion. In advance of a new garden project beginning at the Museum relating to herbal and homeopathic plants, I have been reading John Gerard again recently, the Elizabethan physician whose illustrated plants catalogue of 1597 became the most revered of all herbals, historic and modern. Gerard’s writing was essentially the root of all future garden writing, in its blending of scientific and horticultural observation with rich, near-hyperbolic description (sound familiar?). Turning to his page on violets, this winning combination can be seen in full flare: while the author touches on distribution and seasonality (‘floures for the most part appeare in March, at the farthest in Aprill’), and on the medicinal applications of the day (as an anti-inflammatory for the lungs and for treating ‘hoarsenesse of the chest’), his description really goes to town(e), praising them ‘…not only because the mind conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling those most odoriferous floures, but also … gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all, chiefest beauty, and most excellent grace…’. Getting excited, he continues: ‘…they admonish and stirre up a man to that which is comely and honest; for through their beauty and colour, and exquisit forme, do bring the remembrance of honestie and all kindes of virtues: for it would be an unseemly and filthy thing for him that doth look upon and handle faire and beautiful things to have his mind not faire, but filthy and deformed’. So perhaps I am right in registering a sense of venerability about the otherwise humble sweet violet, and right to elevate it from uninvited guest to potted display status. Naturally, ‘odoriferous’ has now entered my ‘must use’ list of garden writer’s adjectives…

About our gardens Opening soon! Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden Our next exhibition opens Weds 22 March! Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden will bring together over thirty works by Modern British artists who found inspiration in green spaces at a time when many artists were retreating to planting and painting in their gardens. Celebrating the art of both private sanctuaries and public green spaces of London, the exhibition will explore intimate depictions of gardens, greenhouses, parks and city squares by artists of the interwar era including Charles Mahoney, Evelyn Dunbar, Eric Ravilious and Ithell Colquhoun. This exhibition is presented in partnership with Liss Llewellyn, and the works will be available for purchase, in aid of the Museum’s educational and community programmes. 22 March – 4 June Friends go free Book your visit Images: Greens in a field photo courtesy Joy Larkcom, taken research trip around China, Japan and Taiwan, Joy Larkcom typing at Capo Caccia, Sardinia, Italy (24 April 1977); Cut flowers, The Cut Flower Sourcebook photo (c) Eva Nemeth; Sweet violet (c) Matt Collins; Evelyn Dunbar (1906-1960), Invitation to the Garden, c. 1938, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn

Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

Contessa’s Signature Service

Our ongoing clients usually have us four times per year. So what exactly does a Contessa Signature Service include?

• Weeding all beds
• Pulling and trimming along brick borders; we will reset stones, bricks and any border that has recessed deep into the edge or that has moved a from a straight position
• Trimming/pruning all bushes
• Deadheading all blooming plants
• Amending soil as needed and refreshing soil around existing plantings; giving them a boost.
• Transplanting/dividing and plant relocations as requested
• Deep Edging all bed borders
• Cutting back all dead growth
• Mulching beds upon request
• Fertilizing spring and late fall.
• Raking all lawns, removing dead grass and rejuvenating new growth after mowers have weighed them flat all summer.
• Complete Watering (watering maintenance offered by the month)
• Final “Tidy” to all the sidewalks; remove all leaves and gather all leaf, twig and branch debris in large paper debris bags; positioning curbside for PFX to pick up at your location.

Our clients pretty much know the drill now, and they completely rely on us to come, execute and “do our thing,” They trust us  They leave us to our work and usually they communicate by txt from indoors, if they have requests or suggestions.

We also offer “monthly maintenance plans” that include three day a week visits to water, complete “light tidy” and leaf removal and sidewalk tidy. Please  do call and inquire about this service. Once you get used to it, you will be hooked. Its way worth subscribing too. All of our last years clients retained us from June through the end of November. It’s our pleasure and we are pretty certain “their JOY.”

We love what we are doing and clients know that we treat their garden work, as if we were working in our own yard. A  personal but professional approach.

Please do contact us if you have questions or would like to book with us, for a 30-minute “free gardening consultation.”

“Contessa” says….. it’s a very good thing!