Helen Yarmoska is a Star Tribune employee and Hennepin County Master Gardener

I heard that Minnesota has more second homes per capita than any other state in the nation. That tells me there are more second home gardens, too!

Because I’m a garden fanatic, I’ve started a few gardens at my cabin north of Mora on the Snake River. But, over the years, I’ve learned to treat my cabin garden differently than I do the garden in my own back yard.  Here are “Helen’s Rules” for cabin gardening:

Keep it low key.

We all love to garden (or you wouldn’t be reading this blog), but do you really want to spend half of your vacation weeding? Use mulch, consider containers and, most important, take a laissez fair attitude toward your garden.  So you don’t get that many tomatoes. Who cares? Think of your second garden as your “fun” garden.

Consider critters

Whether your cabin is on a lake or in the woods, you’re going to have critter problems. I’ve seen my cousin’s golden retriever take a snooze in my Aunt Pat’s bed of impatiens and I’ve cursed the deer that shredded my hostas. And don’t forget about human critters. My niece won’t let anything — including a geranium planter — get in the way of her dive into the lake.

I’ve bravely posted a picture of the shade garden at our cabin. (I say bravely because I’ve only weeded once this season! Thank goodness the oak leaves provide instant mulch.)

What are your rules for gardening at the cabin? How is your cabin garden different than your home garden? How do you deal weeding, watering and critter control when you’re not there?

From Danika Hoffman:

Last year, I became obsessed with black flowers.  Black pansies, black dahlias, black lilies, black hollyhocks etc.  I joked that I was creating a ‘goth garden’ even though I am not really the theme garden type. I planned to use green plants and flowers like Green Envy Coneflowers and Bells of Ireland for contrast without detracting from my morbid flowers.

I quickly learned that black is subjective when it comes to garden catalogs and seed packets. All of my “black” flowers turned out to be purple, blue, or even pink. And the black hollyhocks that I started from seed? Small, disappointing bunches of green leaves, nothing more. I hadn’t really researched them, so I chalked it up to a learning experience and vowed to have a more cheerful garden next year.

Fast forward to early spring with 2 inches of snow on the ground — I noticed green leaves pushing up through the snow! The hollyhocks from last year came alive, waking up even before the tulips.  And they were HUGE!  I was dismayed at the prospect of their boring foliage taking over my garden again.

I’m so glad I resisted my urge to tear them out. They quickly grew to be over 6 feet tall and their beautiful flowers (called “Arabian Night” on the seed packet) were the closest thing to black of all my Goth Garden attempts.  They are stunning and a new favorite. I plan to let them re-seed and see what happens — they are bi-annuals and research has been mixed as to whether these will come back again.

Hollyhocks were once known as “outhouse flowers.” Back in the day, people would plant them around the outhouse so that people didn’t have to ask where the outhouse was, they could just look for the hollyhocks. They probably provided a bit of privacy when you opened the door, too. Luckily times have changed, since I planted them very close to the dining room window!

What has been your biggest garden surprise?  Have you had any experiments go wrong, but then turned out to be so right?

From London Nelson:
Jaime’s post about shrub roses got me reminiscing about my first meeting with Fru Dagmar. She was recommended to me (I call my roses she.. sorry guys) by my master gardener and chief advice-ologist down in Kansas. Patti swore it would grow here and that I would love the fragrance and cute pink blooms.

I had a gift certificate to heirloomroses.com and thought, what the heck. The teeny little rose arrived in a cardboard planter the size of a school milk carton. It was ridiculously small. Not knowing much, I planted it in a goofy semi-shady spot and it didn’t thrive. I probably didn’t take care of it and it definitely wasn’t fertilized.

The following year I moved Fru to a much happier spot, with lots more sun, in front of the house. And she took off. Every year she gets bigger. In fact, I have to whack her with the pruners a couple times a year or she’ll try to take over the front sidewalk.

What do I like about Fru Dagmar? She smells great, she’s a long bloomer and she’s a bee magnet. The whole bush seems to vibrate with bees inside every bloom. Here’s a couple shots of my Fru.

Happy gardening everybody!

Today’s guest post comes from JudyBusy in south Minneapolis:

Two of my greatest loves are reading and gardening. A common refrain of my childhood was the order to “Get your nose out of that book and come do [insert tedious household task here.]” Sometimes, this included weeding, watering, and harvesting our large vegetable garden.

So, when I grew up, the template was set: I am a reading gardener. I am not ashamed to admit that I have had to set a timer when reading so that I do go out and weed, water, and harvest. So, when I really began to garden, around 1989 in borrowed plots, then in my own garden (which has a convenient house attached) it is no surprise I turned to books.

I read for pleasure and instruction.

I subscribed to Organic Gardening and Gardens Illustrated, a high-end English publication. For some reason, I was drawn mostly to British writers. Oh, maybe because they are nearly without peer?

Robin Lane Fox taught me to be choosy about varietals in Better Gardening; John Brooks had loads to say about creating structure first, then plants. I am forever indebted to Rosemary Verey and Penelope Hobhouse for the look of my sweetly chaotic beds, with wave after wave of blooms. Elliot Coleman taught me how to plant in patterns of 2:1:2 instead of rows to maximize space, and how to plant tomatoes laying their stems in a trench. My perfect, dream gardens inhabit the two books by I have by Graham Rose, Small Garden Design and Romantic Gardens.

Then there are reminisces by Ms. Verey, Amy Stewart, Mirabel Osler, and George Schenk, who gave up his nursery and spent time living and gardening with various friends. (He also took me from despair when I had nearly nothing but shade, in his straightforward Shade Gardening. Years later, I cried when I lost my shade and had to rescue my poor, seared hostas and recreate eleven years of effort.) I have an absolutely beautifully produced book edited by Jamaica Kincaid, in which writers and gardeners share their favorite plants: My Favorite Plant. The typeface alone is worth the read.

More recently, I picked up Gardens for Small Country Houses by Gertrude Jekyll and Lawrence Weaver. First published in 1912, it was re-released in 1981. They spent two years traveling around England, drawing up plans of existing gardens, taking pictures and writing about the gardens. In it, she advocates for native species of evergreens, as they do so much better than the exotics.

But what would we have in our gardens without the efforts of families such as the Veitch family of Scotland who sent plant collectors to all ends of the earth? I read about them in Sue Shepard’s Seeds of Fortune: A Gardening Dynasty. They had a profound impact on gardens, greatly expanding what is available.

I could add another dozen titles, but I also have learned to open my ears and close my mouth: What books and authors have inspired you? What would you recommend to new gardeners and old to further their love of this wonderful art we call gardening?

From Tricia:

Dear Greengirls devotees,

My fingers are a flutter over the chance to tap into your incredible Greengirls community of knowledge! Hello, all you faithful participants out there. Hope you can help me with a nutty problem in my backyard while Miss Jaime enjoys her honeymoon! (Congrats, hon!)

It starts like this: My outdoor-loving husband and I have lived in a downtown condo since 2005. While we loved it downtown, we were hankering for a yard and all the wonderful gardening possibilities it affords. We settled on a great little rambler/ranch in the north suburbs and after moving in this May, we quickly started the plans for a lovely flower and vegetable garden. New to the whole gardening thing (I had never planted a thing until the summer of 2008 at Jaime’s urging), I was excited to add my favorite shrubs to the backyard as well. I can’t get enough of peonies, day lilies and hydrangeas. Oh, I was excited!

And the trees in the backyard! So gorgeous. So lovely. The most beautiful? A mature and heavenly Black walnut. … Yes. I said it, a Black walnut. I feel like the dunt-dunt-da-dah sound from the ‘Price is Right’ just played in the background.

No. I didn’t know they were toxic. I didn’t even know that they strike fear into the hearts of most gardeners. Jaime explained to me that Black walnut trees secrete a substance called juglone that inhibits the growth of other plants near them. So, here I am with the most gorgeous tree, but a broken-hearted hydrangea-filled dream.

I will never cut it down. It’s the character, canopy and soul of our cute little fenced area. We’ve even named it. (And no, it’s not “LoveHate,” although I thought about it). So, alas, we will learn to live together despite our opposing objectives, Marvin the Tree.

My questions for the Greengirls community: What plants have you found that can thrive in our climate under one of these divine buggers? What do you do with the leaves and twigs that fall? I had planned on a compost with the backyard’s fall foliage, but I’m told even that will be poisoned and therefore useless for planting. Has anyone has any luck selling the nuts? We’ve already got a ton of them and there are more coming.