Papermaking Garden

When I started this post it was snowing.  Not just a few snowflakes in the air, we got 7  inches the the first weekend of April.  Don’t get me wrong, I love snow, really I do. That is one of the reasons we moved to Deep Creek, but it’s April and the ski area is closed for the season.  If we can’t ski or board on it, the white stuff should go away and make room for warm weather.  Things are a little better now, its 40 degrees and raining, and raining, and raining.

If you can’t tell, Mother Nature has me quite frustrated.  I have veggies and flowers started under lights on my sun portch. I am getting very anxious to get their permanent home ready outside. If the ground ever drys out! Here is what I am planning:

The existing veggie garden I inherited is too small so it will be expanded.  I will also be starting a paper making garden, a willow garden, and a rose garden. Jeff is having panic attacks that I wont be able to keep up with it all and that I wont plant things in rows (who me? Plant my garden with no rhyme or reason with no discernible boundaries?) and that the yard will be a mess.

The papermaking garden will be as big a plantation of rye grass as I can fit. Rye grass is a fantastically strong fiber and makes a very crisp smooth paper and is very easy to process. Due to the fact that I process my fibers with a blender and not a Hollander beater (someday i’ll have a Hollander) most plant fibers are too short to form a strong sheet of paper with out the addition of a binder fiber like abaca.  Rye grass will actually make a strong sheet of paper with out the addition of abaca, though the paper is very brittle.  I have hopes that once I am able to get a Hollander type beater, which pounds the fibers instead of cutting the fibers, I will be able to use rye grass as the base of most of my papers instead of abaca.

I am also planning a plot of ramps, yes ramps!  I know they are smelly but they make really pretty paper and I think they will grow well near the spring house in the shade of a small patch of mature trees. Eventually I would like to have a large enough ramp patch to have a ramp paper party in the spring!

Iris leaves and daffodil leaves also make really great paper, both are bulbs and need to be planted in the fall.  This year I will make do with the daffodils sprouting up all over the yard despite the weather. In the fall I will plant daffodils around the veggie garden with the hope that they will do double duty as deer deterrent and papermaking plant.

That might not sound like a lot, but there will be a lot of other papermaking plants in the vegetable garden, such as: corn Husks, leeks, onion peels, onion tops, corn husks . . . . . .

Other things on my to do list include; wildflowers along the road, a meditation garden next to the studio (the studio is in the north side of the garage), rambling roses along the fence, and willow from Dunbar Gardens for sculptures and baskets. Maybe Jeff  is right to be nervous.

Keep your fingers crossed that one of these days Mother Nature will wake up and it will be spring, but for now I will keep planning and dreaming.

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