First Garden Tour
Welcome to the very first video garden tour to be featured here in The Renaissance Garden Guy’s new Sights and Sounds section. It’s also the very first anything to be featured in The Renaissance Garden Guy’s new Sights and Sounds section. (Inauspicious start to a great new part of the website? Damn right. Shame on me.)
Welcome to the very first feature in Sights and Sounds. It’s a video tour of my cold, early spring garden, shot on April 8, 2023. It’s also (I believe) a major disappointment, and it’s all my fault. Sights and Sounds has essentially been lying fallow since I first announced its debut here on the site in The Renaissance Garden Guy April Newsletter, and a number of readers have been wondering when content was going to actually show up. In my rush to get something featured here, I sacrificed video-making production values, inserted lame content (a cold-ass, early spring garden with the recently-thawed ground vomiting up a few chunks of green foliage), tapped the non-existent skills of the world’s worst public speaker for the vid’s emceeing/narrating duties, and stumbled around my garden and babbled for 16 minutes after promising that the vid would be “really short.” Jesus.
I’ll offer here a few (hopefully) redeeming facts:
- Future garden tours here in Sights and Sounds will feature the fabulous work of a number of different, highly-talented gardeners and garden designers, and will incorporate much higher video production values than those involved in the making of this particular masterpiece.
- Sights and Sounds, as its menu discloses, will offer amazing, diverse content. Yes, there will be garden tours, but you’ll also find here live interviews and event coverage from the literary, performing, fine, and decorative art worlds. There will be curated literary events. There will be podcasts. In a nutshell, there will be interesting, entertaining, and informative audiovisual and written content here.
This very first Sights and Sounds garden tour, in spite of its many faults, does actually offer a pretty good look at what comes out of the ground in early April in a zone 5B/6A, Midwestern perennial garden. Further, a number of RGG readers (and viewers) who’ve had the opportunity to serve as a quasi “test audience” for the video have offered largely encouraging reviews. Here on American soil, Oaf Among the Oak Trees (as it’s being dubbed by previewers) “delivered,” according to one critic. And overseas, reactions have been favorable, too. One Parisian viewer wrote “J’ai aimé Babouin dans la Cour (I loved Baboon in the Backyard)!” See? She loved it. So how bad can it really be?
Judge for yourself. The link is directly below. (Just click on the shot of the baboon.) Cheers, and Happy Gardening!
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Enjoyed listening to this John! Thank you!
Thank you, Waz – I’m glad you liked it! And thanks so much for checking it out. Incidentally, I just now made the Poetry4U/TraderWaz connection! All this time, I didn’t even know it! You, Waz, are an amazing poet!
Omg, I can’t remember where I have planted what. I have dug up things I shouldn’t have. Need to get primulas. Haven’t tried those. It’s cold this weekend and teasing a frost. I’m in trouble if it does freeze.
Primulas are pretty awesome, I’ve gotta admit. Hardy, beautiful, reliable. And since they’re basically evergreen, they make great markers/reference points for nearby sleeping herbaceous perennials. Thank you for checking this one out, Everly. It’s wonderful to hear from you – welcome back!
Lovely video, enjoyed every minute!!!
Even more learning… now not only I read your words,
I watch how everything is evolving and done… can’t wait for the full video of the blooming garden in all its splendour.. ❤️🌺🌸🌼🙏
Thank you so much, Roxxy, for watching my little cold weather tour – there wasn’t a whole lot to see on April 8th (things have progressed dramatically since then), but I did think it might be interesting to show the sparse conditions in the cold first days of April for the sake of comparison, if for no other reason. In any case, I appreciate your interest and your kindness, Roxxy. As always, I am truly grateful.
Great spring tour! Thanks for taking us along. I can’t wait to see the garden in all of its glory this summer.
Oui, oui! Very informative movie : )
Thank you for sitting through it, Mary – I hope you didn’t mind the baboon too terribly! Once again, many thanks!
Very interesting and informative as I am in a similar zone. I plan to try the delphinium elatum. Should I plan on buying plants or will these start well from seed? I’m looking forward to following the progress of the limestone and pond features as well as the new roses! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you watching the video, Cathy (and thank you for putting up with me throughgout)! This particular cultivar of Delphinium elatum is incredibly hardy (all the way down to zone 3) and long-lived (at least 10 years – but much longer is possible) and I do understand that elatum can be grown successfully from seed (even by amateurs like me), though I’ve never tried. I did not grow either of my ‘Aurora Blue’ plants from seed. One was a greenhouse-grown first year plant when I got it and planted it, and the other was essentially a recent greenhouse seedling when I stuck it in the ground. They’re incredibly resilient. Based on my own experiences with these, I’d go with first year plants or semi-established seedlings with at least a bit of a root ball and a few leaves. If you do try your hand at growing them from seed, I’d love to hear how it goes. If you’re going to buy some 1st year plants/semi-established babies, you may want to start looking and ordering now. They do sell out quickly. Any number of online nurseries currently have them (Wayside Gardens, Jackson & Perkins, Plants4Home, to name a few). Thanks again, Cathy, for putting up with my apish garden antics, and for your kind interest. I really appreciate it. And of course, I wish you luck with your new elatums – I think you’ll really love them!
Great to combine your always interesting words with your video tour. It’s the complete package.
Thank you, Rick, for reading and watching. And I thank you for your kind words. I really do appreciate your interest and your kindness – thanks once again!