What a great topic and it is fun to hear of your tales.
I have a couple.
My garden is a cottage garden and certainly not weed free (think of the cobbler!). I am out on jobs making my clients gardens beautiful and weed free. One year, several years ago now, I got a call from a fellow gardener that Country Garden Magazine was in the area, with appt to shoot her gardens, and they had a cancellation. Would I be interested? "Heck, yes!" I answered and then thought how could I manage? Well, I decided to focus on daylilies. End of the season but something should be in bloom. I wanted examples to show off different styles of daylilies. 10. Well, they come at 7 AM in the morning! Nothing is open in my garden until the sun gets over the tall oak trees and warms up the area. And the night before it was below 50! Yikes!
They came, with ladders to stand on, and a big sheet thing (like an umbrella) and a grey/white umbrella the size of a market one - 10 ft across! We had to hold the tipping ladder while the photographer climbed up. We faked backgrounds by picking foliage and background colors and setting them out near the featured plant. I remember picking perilla which immediately went limp. Funny! Don't ever believe closeups in magazines!!!
Man did we clean for that day. In two days, 2 helpers. Biggest piece of advise for making your gardens look neat? EDGE the beds!
I have an open garden twice a year. Memorial Day Weekend when customers come to buy potted perennials, etc and then during daylily season. Heck if no one came and oohed and aahed over them, what's the sense in collecting them, right? Always found that they head right to whatever is in bloom, and they think a weed is just some special plant that hasn't bloomed yet! Cottage gardens can get away with that!
Another quick note - The mother robin was once like this - very friendly where we got to know one another over the internet. At the time, Allen and Carolyn, from Miss were the Journal editors, or were just about to be. They were headed up to New England and wanted to visit my gardens. This was in October. Well, NO ONE visits here after Aug (tired garden, tired gardener). And I was redoing - taking apart a complete big bed so everything was cut down for easy digging. Imagine their shocked faces when they did not see what they were used to seeing in my photos! Nothing was blooming, a complete garden in makeover and weeds that well, looked like weeds. They were used to year round, or almost year round color down where they lived.
We went looking for the local lighthouses instead. Had a great time. Nice people. Nice memories. But I will remember to warn southern visitors that we here in the north do not have show gardens in Oct!
More stories, please!
