CapeCodGarden

This we dream about?

2010-07-25T14:46:00.003-04:00

The long dank winter here always finds me dreaming of sunny July days. Now that July is almost over, I'm longing for some cool weather, and so are many of the plants in my garden.

It's been such an extraordinary season on the Cape and elsewhere in New England; the unprecedented heat moved many late summer plants to flower in June, and I do wonder how the garden will look in August and September - usually the peak of bloom in my garden.

One of the stand-out plants for this kind of weather is Vitex agnus castus, commonly called Chastetree. Not hardy much north or inland from here, it's done well in all but one of the 20 or so years I've been growing it. The scent of the foliage is somewhat like eucalyptus, refreshing and not too strong. I have it planted near the house in an area with impeccable drainage, just behind my favorite hydranges, H. preziosa. The color combination varies as the season progresses, and is a little different each year as the plants react differently to vagaries of heat and moisture. The Hydrangea flowers start out white, as do the Vitex; the former then progresses through speckled pale pink to red and then to a dusky purple. The latter becomes pale blue, the color deepening as the flowers age.

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day

2010-03-15T18:44:00.003-04:00

“We can have flowers nearly every month of the year.” ~ Elizabeth Lawrence

It's March 15, Bloom Day, the day when all the garden bloggers report on what's in flower in their own gardens, on the May Dreams Garden site. Actually, last month I had one or two things to report, but by now the late winter flowers are in full swing.

Here's the list, in no particular order:
Hamamellis 'Diane' - a nice red Witch Hazel
Hamamellis 'Arnold Promise' - one of the most reliable and popular witch hazels
Viburnum Viburnum bodnantense - Dawn Viburnum
Erica carnea - winter heath, a subshrub in pink, purple, white
Jasminum nudiflorum - winter jasmine, a lax shrub that puts forsythia to shame
Helleborus niger - the Christmas rose
Helleborus foetidus - stinking hellebore
Helleborus x hybridus - oriental hellebore
Galanthus nivalis - snowdrops
Crocus - these beauties are just beginning
Eranthis hyemalis - winter aconite, a cute little yellow spring ephemeral

Almost as exciting as the flowers are the emerging foliage of plants that will put on their show later in the season. Some of the sedums have beautiful, tiny rosettes of pale green leaves emerging now; I do believe I like them now more than in summer when they're at their theoretical peak. Also going on now, the peonies are budding up, with those great bright red buds, and the spring viburnums' flower buds, which have been tightly furled all winter, are starting to expand.

Gardening ... in December

2008-12-27T15:46:00.006-05:00

I was just griping on the GardenWeb New England forum, because I dropped by a local nursery yesterday and fell for a couple of hardy camellias. Now what? I asked - plant them, hold them in my inhospitable (to plants) house, or try keeping them in the old drafty garage? Well, I split the difference and planted one, a 'Pink Perfection' that was already nicely budded up.

Now don't get me wrong, I know camellias are iffy here on the Cape. I've tried them before and lost them, one at a time. Even if they survive, sudden temperature swings can blast the flower buds, too. The one I haven't planted yet, 'April Remembered' blooms later in the year, so it's probably safe. The winter-blooming varieties need to be in evergreen shade, so they don't jump the gun when the sun warms them on sunny winter days.

The new hardier varieties have turned out to be a mixed blessing for New Englanders. My sister grows them beautifully in her Long Island garden; she has some in bloom pretty much all winter. It pains me that I can't do that here, which I guess is why I keep trying.

Now, to the point of this post. At last. Having to get outside and plant that darn camellia was such a boost. While I was outside, I got back to the fall cleanup I'd done so quickly and haphazardly back in November. The weather was amazing - a bit of sun, no wind, and temperatures in the 50s.

What was left to do? I'd left a couple of ornamental (read: unplanned, inappropriately placed, volunteer) asparagus plants standing this fall, and they had collapsed in the recent snow. There's one on the east side of the house, in full sun, in what would be the foundation planting in any normal garden. The second is to the west of what's left of the lawn, next to a little cedar arch that supports a couple of clematis; this one is, I think, the older of the two - maybe 10 years now since it appeared. The conditions are approximately the same for the two specimens, with some afternoon shade, normal garden soil. So, I ask you, why was the one out front full of gorgeous red berries? It turns out, these are Asparagus officinalis is dioecious; the individuals are either male or female. Who knew? I guess they're close enough, even with the house standing between them, for pollination. Here's a more detailed description:

The asparagus inflorescence has been variously referred to as pseudohermaphrodite male and pseudohermaphrodite female (Kerner 1897*, p. 299); dioecious, rarely hermaphrodite (Knuth 1909*, p. 464); dioecious, sometimes changing to monoecious (Hexamer 1908); normally dioecious (Jones and Rosa 1928*); and dioecious (Hawthorn and Pollard 1954 *). Intergrades from strongly pistillate to strongly staminate have been observed (Jones and Robbins 1928). In their early stages, the flowers are similar, with both sets of sexual organs present. Later, however, one set usually aborts, leaving a "male" flower with an outer and inner whorl of three stamens each, or a "female" flower with a three-lobed pistil and three-locule ovary, and the other parts rudimentary (fig. 45). Both kinds of flowers have nectaries at the base of the corolla. The individual, whitish-green flowers, from one to four in each axil, are pendulous, bell-shaped, about one-quarter inch long (the male is slightly larger than the female flower) with a characteristic odor (Knuth, 1909*, p. 464). They are freely visited by honey bees and other bees (Norton 1913, Jones and Robbins 1928, Eckert 1956, Pellett 1947*, Jones and Rosa 1928*).

In cutting back one of the asparagus, I had to trim the clematis that had entwined itself around and through the giant ferny foliage. The one in the foundation bed led me into a weeding frenzy, digging out the Muhlenbergia shreberi, or nimblewill, the warm season grassy weed from hell. And that led me to see that the hellebores were starting to bud up, and many to show signs of fungal infection, so I got into stripping the leaves to minimize the chance of damage to the new growth.

All in all, a wonderful day in the garden, a rare treat in late December.

Is it Spring yet?

2008-01-06T21:11:00.000-05:00

The January thaw came a little early this year, and I wasn't ready. Not that I couldn't find my gloves and wheelbarrow, but I wasn't ready emotionally. I haven't been cooped up in the boring house nearly long enough yet, haven't gotten so stir crazy that I felt a driving need to get up to my knees in compost. In fact, the compost pile hasn't even frozen yet, and I've been out there turning it just about every week.

It was warm enough to spend some time surveying the shrubs, finding crossed branches, water sprouts to be cut back, and sections that are overhanging some paths too much. These can cut back any time now that the plants are dormant, but I like to wait until March. There should be some nice days that month, among the cold, windy, dreadful ones, and by then I'll be desperate for some kind of garden work. Saving this chore for later will also help keep me out of trouble with my favorite on-line plant suppliers.

Just today I found a link to a great source of shade plants - it's the Naylor Creek nursery. Not a fancy site, and the catalog is in PDF, but they have 19 different Rodgersias. I'm hooked.

The Garden in Winter

2007-12-09T15:54:00.000-05:00

This is not about Rosemary Verey, or about form made visible by the disappearance of foliage, or about subtle colors and interesting bark or berries. This is about weeds; those pernicious winter weeds that, believe it or not, are out there setting seed as I write.

OK, it's technically not winter yet; some guy in a suit says winter starts near the end of December. We've already had many nights in the 20's here on Cape Cod, though, and that makes it winter in my book. So why are there weeds out there, not just green and growing, but actually blooming, and setting seed?

I usually leave all my perennial clean-up chores until Spring; I remove the leaves of peonies as soon as I can after the first frost, to lessen the spread of fungus, and cut hosta leaves soon after they turn brown, because they tend to turn mushy and become hard to deal with in spring, but I leave everything else standing (or laying down, more likely) over the winter. This not only provides some food and shelter for birds and other animals, it increases the survival rate of many perennials. It's well documented that sub-shrubs benefit from keeping their branches through winter, but many herbaceous perennials do better with this treatment. Gaura, chrysanthemum, marginally hardy coreposis (like the lovely pink bi-color Sweet Dreams) are much more likely to survive winter if left uncut.

On a few nice days, I've been out working in the gardens, clearing out maple leaves to allow some of the still-green plants, like pigsqeak (Bergenia cordifolia), lilyturf (Liriope muscari and L. spicata) and various gingers (Asarum europaeum, A. magnificum, etc.) to show. Some of my hellebores are starting to bud up, and I like to make sure they're not being swamped in those heavy, wet leaves. The stinking hellebore, Helleborus foetidus, has its flower scapes fully developed, and will be opening soon; Christmas rose, H. niger, will follow soon after, and is especially prone to damage from damp leaves and lurking slugs, who seem to love the flower petals. The Orientals, or H. x hybridus, are so variable that there's no point talking about when they'll bloom; I've had them in flower in every month of the year, including the summer months. I don't know for sure what determines their season, but they're certainly most welcome in late winter.

One of my new beds is planted pretty sparsely, since it features Nandina domestica and Schizachyrium scoparium 'The Blues' - Little Bluestem Grass, three of each, bought from Lazy S's Farm as tiny starts. They'll need the space I've allotted them, but for the time being there's a lot of bare ground in that bed. Well, there was a lot of bare ground, or rather bare pine bark, when I left town in October. On returning, I found this new bed awash in a sea of cute little Cardamine hirsuta, a.k.a. hairy bittercress. (Photo credit: Virginia Tech Weed ID Guide).

I first spotted this dainty little charmer about a year ago, in that year's new bed, out by the street. A friend was looking over the new garden, and mentioned what a darling little hitch-hiker it was. The leaves really are a nice fresh green, finely cut in a small rosette, and it has a very cute little white flower held on a somewhat wiry stem, well above the base. Cunning, and I don't mean that in the sense of charming, rather in the "Botany of Desire" sense of clever, scheming, evil Plant Will.

Late Fall

2007-11-25T19:32:00.000-05:00

A full day of leaf shredding has the 3-bin compost system full to overflowing. What a great feeling to have that done. Plenty more leaves will be falling, have fallen, since yesterday, but the rest will just have stay where they land, or maybe they'll blow across the street into the neighbor's yard. Or maybe the bins will settle down a bit and I'll be able to fit some more in... they seem to do that at this time of year.

I once wrote that I have the most complicated and inefficient compost area in the world. There's the 3-bin set-up, made of scrap lumber, that is intended to be filled from left to right, with the material turned to the right as it ages. Well, there's always more material waiting in the last bin when the first bin gets full, so there's a stand-by bin that I use for finishing the stuff - one of those round plastic bins that's supposed to allow you to add rough material to the top and remove finished compost from the bottom. Yeah, right, that might work in some alternate universe, but not in New England. Off to the side, there's a tumbler, for kitchen scraps. Also called a batch composter, it's the only way I know of to use food scraps and not end up feeding rodents. The tall aluminum legs can't be climbed, but even so I've had to nail hardware cloth (like fine-gauge, rigid chicken wire) over the larger openings to keep the critters out; apparently rodents are good jumpers. This unit becomes hard to turn as it gets full, so there's a holding bin for cooking batches of the stuff that's come out of the tumbler. That's one of the square plastic units, and it's wrapped all around with hardware cloth and set on thick concrete blocks to deter rodents. I can dump the tumbler into that about three times before it's full, adding a layer of dry garden waste on top of the slimy vegetable waste. Off-loading the tumbler is probably the messiest job in my garden; sometimes the olfactory sensation is less than fabulous; in other words, it stinks.

My compost system gives me more than free soil supplements. It's the only place to work when the ground is wet, and I happen to like the workout I get turning these bins full of shredded leaves and grass clippings. Of course I often put in material that should go into the trash; I'm a Yankee, though, and can't bear to toss out weeds or small branches that might eventually make good compost. So, my compost has lots of seeds and bits of viable roots in it; wherever I use it I get a fresh crop of Verbena bonariensis, lambs' ears, rudbeckia, coreopsis, and assorted salvias. Also dandelions, crab grass, and the new bane of my existence, Nimble Will. If you're not familiar with that grassy weed, just consider yourself lucky.

More on compost coming right up...

Back in the Swing

2007-11-12T20:35:00.000-05:00

After missing most of the fall season traveling, I had a chance to start catching up today. Leaves to rake, lawn to mow (not much lawn left, luckily), and some of the spent perennials to cut back. I got most of the peony foliage into trash bags - a few of those still need to be cut back - and most of the overly aggressive Verbena bonariensis, Eupatorium purpureum (Joe Pye Weed), Antirrhinum majus (snapdragon), and Malva alcea volunteers cut down to the ground, run through the chipper, and put into the compost - where they will make great top-dressing and (no doubt) many new volunteers for next year.

Being away from my garden during part of our short growing season is no fun, but it gives me a chance to catch my breath, repair my aching back, and take stock of what I have done and what I want to do with my little in-town garden. This time, it also gave me a chance to see some great city gardens in Charleston, SC, as well as the fantastic Galapagos Islands (though only briefly!) Walking around the old section of Charleston, I was really struck by how much beauty gardeners can create on a small plot of land. I noticed that in many yards, the areas used for parking cars double as garden space. There's no blacktop in sight, the paving materials are aged and the paving looks somewhat haphazard: very different from what we see in New England.

My own driveway is stone, and it's always sprouting weeds. An informal arrangement of pavers seems like a great alternative.

Another benefit of traveling: I appreciate the relatively minor problem insects present in northern climates. This fellow came aboard our ship when we were in Panama; the grill he's clinging to is a 2 inch wire grid:

He's got to be about 6 inches long, in the grasshopper family, I think he's a Tropidacris dux, or Giant Grasshopper. Can you imagine gardening with anything this size chomping on your plants?

Anyway, great to be back in the garden after five or six weeks of work on a ship!

Design Challenge

2007-09-28T07:39:00.000-04:00

What does your garden say about you? That's what I've been thinking about, after hearing a talk by New Egland's most famous designer, Gordon Hayward. It's much more fun to think about this, instead of bemoaning my lack of design sense. I often notice people walking by my home, looking at the front garden, and I'm trying to imagine what they're seeing. Looking at the garden myself and trying to relate it to the lush design that I've got on paper isn't working especially well for me, so this is my new approach.

There's a wide garden bed I've built along the street; it runs across most of the front of the yard, but a section still needs to be dug out and planted to complete the picture - I'm waiting for the eventual demise of a large Norway Maple, the last of 3 that dotted the front yard when we moved here about 15 years ago. This bed intersects 2 paths that lead to the house - a wide old concrete one that goes to the front door and a smaller brick one that goes to the music studio. Between the bed and the street, there's a brick pathway that delineates a gravel parking area.

In this long bed, there's a young tree, a Liquidambar styraciflua f. rotundiloba, seedless sweetgum, backed by a white-flowered Hydrangea arborescens that I've nicknamed Dolly Parton - a more descriptive moniker than its actual name, Annabelle. This section of the bed, which will be the central section once the garden is complete, has a small boxwood hedge along the street side, about 12 small Green Velvet boxwoods at about 18 inches high. They're backed by a wide-spreading Fairy rose that seems to have bloomed all summer despite the drought we suffered here on the Cape. At the southern end of this section of the bed is a Franklinea altamaha, blooming now in September with camellia-like white flowers with yellow centers.

Other large plants, in the more southerly section of the border include a Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena' that flowers in March, and a variegated Elderberrry, Sambucus nigra 'Madonna.'

Every square inch of space between these larger plants is filled with a riot of perennials, temperennials, and annuals: cottage pinks, campanula, perovskia, wild thyme, coral bells, Siberian iris, sedum, thrift, day lilies, and more.

What does this garden say about its gardener? I suspect, above all, that it reveals a high tolerance for chaos. It also shows that the gardener likes a challenge and is willing to try something new - maybe too often.

So, what does your garden say about you?

A Different Kind of Winter

2006-12-30T13:04:00.000-05:00

Because it's been so mild, I'm still working in my garden, although it's almost January. So, I'm doing things that go undone in a normal year; deadheading all the hydrangeas, adding mulch to the shrub borders, removing more and more fallen leaves, cutting back Siberian Iris, weeding, and thinning this year's crop of Verbena bonariensis seedlings and other volunteers.

All this time in the garden has given me a chance to watch closely as the different varieties of hellebores came into bloom, starting with the green-flowered H. foetidus, or Stinking Hellebore, then pure white H. niger, or Christmas Rose, and the many colors of the common H. x hybridus (aka H. orientalis) or Lenten Rose - still no sign of blooms on Corsican Hellebore, H. argutifolia. I saw Winter Jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) forming flower buds, seemingly at the very start of cold weather, and have watched it blooming for several weeks. The heath (Erica carnea) is almost too brilliant in its shades of pink and purple, though the demure Springwood White variety tones things down a bit. While the new plants come into flower, a few die-hards are still blooming. Fairy Rose is still loaded with pink flowers, a single, low-growing campanula is still going strong. The last of the snapdragon volunteers has just finally given out, after months and months of bloom.

I'm also seeing things about certain plants that I didn't know before, mostly good, some not so good. The persistent, tough, dry leaves of Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla mollis) are an unsightly surprise. The more pleasant sights include the wonderful dark burgundy of the few remaining leaves on Oakleaf Hydrangea (H. quercifolia), the dainty early growth of Columbine (Aquilegia species) and Sedum Spectabile Autumn Joy, and the way the fallen leaves of my seedless sweetgum (Liquidambar rotundiloba) retain their wonderful glaucous burgundy color and shine for weeks.

It's been fantastic to be able to spend whole days outdoors, and I wonder if my garden will be different next year because of this added attention.

I'm sure there will be fewer volunteers and weeds to deal with next spring, and that's good. And there may be more time for the fun parts of gardening because more chores were taken care of during the winter. But I wonder if there will be plants that don't do as well because they didn't really like being cut back, or deadheaded, or raked clean of protective leaves.

And, maybe, I will be a slightly different gardener next year, because of my new appreciation of my garden in winter.

Better than pills

2006-12-20T19:07:00.000-05:00

Some friends from the New England forum over at GardenWeb are collaborating on a calendar of events for New England gardeners. We named it NewEnglandGardenEvents - clever, no? This is a shameless plug for the new site, but also a testimonial on how gratifying its creation has been.

I'm really amazed at the number of interesting courses, lectures,and field workshops being offered during winter. The Arnold Arboretum is tops, but there are fantastic speakers at other less-well-known places, like the Berkshire Botanical Garden in Great Barrington, MA and Blithwold in Bristol, RI.

Working on the calendar has been a great way to find out about what's going on, and, as one of the calendar team members said recently, it's "better than pills" for getting through the cold dark season without getting depressed. We've found that some of the super-stars of the horticultural world will be appearing in New England this winter.

Please take a look at the site, at http://newenglandgardenevents.blogspot.com. And, if you know of an upcoming event that would be of interest to gardeners in the region, please add it by leaving a comment on the calendar site.

Thanks!

Almost Over

2006-12-03T12:42:00.000-05:00

December 3, and it still feels like early fall. The neighbors have their Christmas decorations up, but this girl is in no way ready for that - still have leaves to rake; some trees are still holding their leaves, in fact.

Today is the end, I'm afraid, as tonight we are expecting snow and real cold. The large pots are all in the unheated garage, more to protect the terra cotta from cracking than to save the temperennials growing in them. The fall chores are not really done, of course, there are still so many plants to be moved that will have to wait for next October. The tree peonies along the edge of the pool, which have been shaded out over the years by other shrubs, the herbaceous peonies that are being infiltrated by nearby bayberry, and the many small trees that are waiting for permanent placement, slowly taking over the area referred to as the vegetable garden.

Then there's this fall's major project, building a paved area outside the back door. It's all excavated, most of the base has been laid, but the bricks need to be set in sand. Something to do during the Jnauary thaw, maybe; in the meantime it's quite a sight, covered with sheets of plywood to keep the digging dog from excavating the carefully prepped area.

Instead of thinking aobut the undone work, I'm just enjoying the wonderful mild and sunny weather, and the beauty of my own little slice of barely controlled mayhem. It's rare to have snapdragons, salvia, nicotiana, and osteospermum (blue-eyed daisy) blooming at the same time as winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum), heath, and stinking hellebores (H. foetidus), but that's life in the northeast, I guess.

This fall has truly been a gift, I'm just not sure who to thank.
CCG

Bitter sweet

2006-09-16T19:29:00.000-04:00

These few beautiful September days are sweeter than anything spring or summer can offer to anyone who loves to garden. The days are packed with cleanup, mulching, digging, and there's a little pressure to get things ready for winter, deadline-pressure that we don't feel in the busy days of spring.

It's such a great time to move plants, to rework old garden beds, and to add new things. Almost anything, with a few notable exceptions, prefers to be moved now rather than in spring. I've been compiling a list from various sources: oak, birch, redbud, dogwood, magnolia, most fruit trees, and willow are among the common woody plants that prefer spring for transplanting; most others are best moved now. I'm trying to decide what to do about a Franklinia that's in too much shade - move it now, or wait until spring? My decision will probably be made by the calendar and the weather; if there's time, I might move it soon.

copyright MILL-PLAIN GARDEN, http://phengels.club.fr

The Garden Out Front

2006-05-02T22:29:00.000-04:00

Everyone bemoans the standard suburban front yard: evergreens trimmed to resemble meatballs, lined up along the foundation, two patches of grass flanking the sidewalk. Considering how popular gardening is, it's odd that so many of our front yards are blank, impersonal spaces.

Well, it turns out that it takes guts to garden in front of your house. I know this because I've been doing it for several years now. Sometimes I'm pleased with the results, but it's hard to be inventive when the whole world can walk by and see your mistakes.

I moved here about 15 years ago; there were 3 Norway Maples out at the street and a typical foundation planting along the front of the house. Other than that, it was all lawn, lawn running into my neighbors' lawns on either side. I began by moving out some sickly box and Japanese holly, finding them better homes in the back yard. Next I set about planting shrubs along the south edge of the yard. It was tough to get things going because of the many maple roots; any soil ammendment intended to improve conditions for the shrubs seemed to draw the maple roots like a magnet. I started using mulch then; it conserves moisture, keeps down weeds, nourishes the soil, and ties the planting area together visually.

The first plants to go into this border were a Styrax japonicus, or Snowbell Tree, a Corylopsis pauciflora or Winterhazel, a few Ilex glabra (Inkberrry, a native, non-spiny holly), a Magnolia x loebneri 'Merrill' a Rhododendron mucronulatum 'Cornell Pink,' one of the earliest azaleas, three Viburnum carlesii, and a couple of blue mop-head hydrangeas.

Before starting to dig, I had spent the winter drawing plans for this garden, trying to make sure I would have a long season of interest, beginning with the Winterhazel and lasting through the end of summer with the hydrangeas. The inkberries were there to provide some green during winter. If I could find those plans now, it would be intersting to see if any of my original ideas actually made it into the garden. Once I started buying the stock, all bets were off; I bought what I liked from the plants that were available. Once I started digging, the plans had to be ignored, because the Maple roots prevented me from planting in some parts of this bed.

This garden was an easy way to break into the front yard. It was off to the side of the house, so it could be ignored when it didn't look very good. It wasn't until about 10 years later, when the maples met their eventual fate, that I found the courage and the conditions to move forward with the next, more confident phase of the garden out front.

Uncommon Spring Pleasures

2006-04-30T15:57:00.000-04:00

This is the time of year when you need a sharp eye to keep up with what's going on in the wilds of your garden. It's easy to spot the masses of yellow forsythia or the glaring purple Rhododenrons, but there are small wonders that are easily missed unless you're out scouting for them. I've been growing Darmera peltata, or trying to grow it, for years. It's a great foliage plant for shady, damp spots, and since I don't have much damp shade, it's been a challenge.

This plant is grown for its glossy, enormous foliage, held on stems in such a way as to evoke a magician whirling plates on sticks.

Today I decided to see if the Darmera I'd planted a couple of years ago had survived another winter; I wasn't especially optimistic that I'd see it. Not only is it alive, it was putting on an unusual show. For the first time, I saw the Darmera budding up; I'd never even realized that it flowered.

Other oddities show themselves in early spring, and one of my favorites is the Checkered Lily, or Fritillaria meleagris:
It seems to be available only in mixes of white and red, which is too bad since the red is such an interesting little thing.

This is also bloodroot's short flowering season, for about a week Sanguinaria canadensis displays its charming pure-white blooms in our shady woodland garden. Its beauty is not show-stopping, it's a subtle and fleeting pleasure.

The Hellebores are finally finishing up, the late-winter flowering woodies like Jasminium nudiflorum and Hamamellis are mostly done, and the popular, splashy spring flowers are holding forth. Don't forget to look for the more uncommon, shy flowers that are blooming now; their subtle beauty is a spring pleasure not to be missed.

Shopping Spree

2006-04-23T11:10:00.000-04:00

Saturday Morning:

I'm about to head out to the nurseries with a pal who has as much trouble as I do resisting plants. Before I go, I want to think about what I really want to buy, and why I want it.

I'll be looking for a couple of trees and shrubs, because there are several areas in the yard that need to be developed, so I've got a rationale for buying a few things for these areas.

My street-side garden has lots of space because I removed a Crambe cordifolia after one season. It was fantastic, but too loud and large for the site. There is also a very big Lonicera fragranissima (winter honeysuckle) there that needs to be moved, making more space. That bed has peonies, Fairy roses, pink gaura, blue mist shrub (caryopteris), yellow Alyssum, and a row of boxwood that's still too small to be considered a hedge.

Our home is in a downtown area, and the yard is small, bordered along the back by a stockade fence. I'm looking for tall, narrow shrubs and small trees to increase our privacy and to obscure the sight of the fence; hollies planted along it have never gotten tall enough, New Dawn roses and Magnolia virginiana are also growing there but are too easy to see through. So, I'll be carting my Taylors Guide to Shrubs and T.G. to Trees around with me, looking for the perfect 12' fastigate or columnar plant.

Saturday Night:

Funny rereading my morning's thoughts.

What I planned to buy was: Not Much.

What I bought was: Two or three each of Lavender grosso, Tiny Leaf curry plant, basil, Phlox maculata Natascha, Rosemary Tuscan Blue, Thyme: pink, red, and silver-edged, Corsican mint, Helen von Stein lamb's ears, lovage, basil, Salvia guaranitica Black and Blue, phlox, red valerian, and bergenia.

Objects of Desire

2006-04-22T14:18:00.000-04:00

Some plants cast a spell. You see something in a book, or at a botanic garden, and it stays in the back of your mind like an itch. If you don't have a list of these plants, you're a different kind of gardener than I am.

Franklinia altamaha. Magnolia wiesneri. Camellia oleifera. Quercus phellos. Ginkgo biloba. Cercis canadensis. Cornus mas. Stewartia pseudocamellia. These are the trees of my dreams; I garden on a third of an acre lot, so it's unlikely that I'll ever have more than a couple of these dream trees.

Franklinia alatamaha is one I've captured. In fact I've bought at least 8 of them, maybe more. My first few attempts died quick, hopefully painless, deaths. I was determined, so I bought a pair. Those survived, so I bought a few more. So far, so good. And, unlike objects of desire in the animal kingdom, I still love these, even though I now possess them. There are five in the front yard and one in the back. Today, I saw them for sale at a local nursery. I'm considering adding a few more, maybe as insurance, maybe to help tie my patchwork garden together a little more. However, there were also Cercis canadensis at this nursery, and I haven't captured one of those. Not yet.

Not all the objects of my desire are trees, I also lust after shrubs. Viburnum x bodnantense Dawn. Ilex pedunculosa. Paeonia suffruticosa. Hydrangea serrata Preziosa. Corylopsis pauciflora. Rosa the Fairy. Calycanthus floridus.

The beauty of shrubs, if you live in town, is that you can have all the ones your really want; so, I do. I still love these shrubs, each in its own way. But I am dreaming of having a collection, I mean a big collection, of hardy Camellias. I've tried a few, but lost them. I know they can be grown here, because my sister, who lives just south of me, grows them. They remain just out of reach, for some reason.

Perennials are not hard to love, but they're so easy to acquire that it's hard to lust after them too strenuously. Helleborous, Asarum, Paeonia lactiflora, Crambe cordifolia. Ligularia dentata, Rodgersia podophylla, Gaura, Agastache rupestris. Lavandula.

Sometimes, you manage to capture the object of your desire, with mixed results. Crambe cordifolia is a case in point. I wanted that plant for years, but it was elusive; why wasn't it being sold locally? After about 5 years, I stumbed upon a single pot of it, and snapped it up. What luck, I was building a new street-side garden bed, easily large enough to accomodate this giant of the herbaceous community. It looked a bit peaked for a few weeks after it went in, but grew nicely through its first season. The following summer, it bloomed, and I must say, the flowers were breathtaking. Easily 7 feet of tiny white stars, and fragrance to knock your socks off. You could smell it as soon as you came around the corner. Awesome!

The heartbreaker, in the case of Crambe, was that it was, other than the flower stalks, intensely ugly. I don't mean a little sloppy, or slightly off color, I mean ... ugly. It is, after all, a member of the cabbage family. The leaves are an absolute magnet for slugs, beetles, caterpillars, you name it. They're enormous, usually a wonderful thing, at least to my eyes. But hugh, chewed up, dull green leaves ... did nothing to make this border look good. The plant, so long the object of my desire, was removed, and banished to the back fence in back of the back yard, where, with luck, no one will notice the foliage and the flowers will still be visible.

Plant lust. It's a wonderful thing.

CHAD

2006-04-14T19:09:00.000-04:00

No, this is not about federal elections in Florida, it's about Compulsive Horticultural Acquisition Disorder. Don't laugh, I suffer from this ... syndrome, as do millions of others. We talk about it on the Garden Web forums all the time.

How do you know when you've got CHAD? If you wake up on Sunday morning full of remorse over the tab you ran up on the Heronswood web site the night before, if you take the back row of seats out of the minivan in April and don't put them back in until November, if a big package arrives from Joy Creek and you actually have no memory of placing an order, if you are absolutely dying to to get your hands on Black Jack Sedum before you've even laid eyes on it, if you find yourself walking around the garden, over and over, holding a pot in one hand and a shovel in the other, searching for an open spot, any spot, well, pal, you've got CHAD.

I've joked before that some enterprising business person should start a 12-step program for CHAD, to be held at the local garden center; this would draw in the addicts like nothing else.

Is there a cure? I've found that having a detailed garden plan, a scale drawing of my garden, works wonders, but doesn't actually cure the problem. Knowing where you have *actual* space available, knowing that something will have to be removed to make room for a new specimen, is key.

It takes many years to develop a full-bore plant addiction, and I think it also takes years to recover. Some of the little steps forward that I've made happened almost unnoticed. I finally bought the long-coveted Crambe cordifolia, and found out within a year what a monster it is. This is just an example; there have been dozens of rare plants that I longed for, for many seasons, that turned out the be "rare for a reason." Winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) is an enormous monster. Franklinia alatamaha is remarkably fussy. Darmera petata draws insect pests like a magnet, to the point of disfigurement within weeks of its gorgeous, enormous leaves unfurling in spring.

Here's my most recent strategy. I can buy as many plants as I want, as long as they are not new. So, since I've got a sedum collection, I can buy sedum. I don't have a redbud (cercis) so although I long for one, I'm not buying it. This system not only cuts down on the overspending and overplanting, it protects my garden from the "one of each" look and forces some cohesion and rhythm in my garden.

Spring Cleaning

2006-04-09T15:39:00.000-04:00

Personally, I don't do spring cleaning, at least not indoors. Since I leave most of the spent foliage on my perennials over the winter, though, there's lots to do outside in March and April.

Just about every border in my garden has some very early spring or late winter flowers, so it's almost impossible to rake the beds out in spring for a tidy look. My solution is to accept that tidiness won't be part of my garden - there will always be dead leaves here and there. I rake the areas that I can do safely, but because I use mulch, even these areas get only the lightest touch of the rake. Other areas get cleaned by hand, or by glove. Timing is everything; some plants, like species tulips and some early allium, really suffer from having leaves on them - the emerging foliage spears through the rotting leaves and literally strangles in the small hole it's made. I try to remember where these plants are, and clean out those areas as early as I can. We tend to have cold damp springs on the Cape, so by the second week of April I'm already feeling like I'm behind in the cleanup.

As an area is cleaned, it can get a top-dressing of compost, if any is available. Sometimes I apply coffee grounds, which I get in 5-gallon buckets from a local shop. The worms love it, and apparently it doesn't acidify the soil appreciably. Coffee is acidic, but once it's been brewed the grounds are essentially neutral. The down sides are that the buckets are heavy and too many people drink that revolting hazelnut-vanilla-mocha stuff, so the smell can be unpleasant for a day or so after application.

I have lots of old foliage to cut back in spring, and for some plants it's critical not to rush this procedure. Gaura, Salvia, Russian Sage (Perovskia), lavender and the other subshrubs strenuously obect to having their foliage cut before new growth appears at the woody base of the plant. I love the look of these dormant beauties anyway, especially the bare stems of gaura, which is almost grass-like by this time of year. One problem child in the group is Lavender Cotton (Santolina) which looks like hell and takes forever to begin to leaf out. Instead of a silvery grey look, like lavender, its leaves and stems area dull brown now. It's hard to know when or where to cut this plant; I'd shovel-prune it if it didn't earn its keep with that great scented silvery foliage in summer in my dry garden.

This is also the time to cut back summer-blooming shrubs like wigela and some of the viburnums. There is a row of American Cranberry bush Viburnum waiting to be severely cut back - it's one of those "good plant, bad place" situations where I simply picked the wrong variety for the location. I don't know if these can be moved, and in any case the imminent arrival of the Viburnum Leaf Beetle tells me these plants may not be long for this world.

There's also a red wigela waiting to be stooled, or cut to the ground. It's a lovely, reblooming shrub, it has sufffered this treatment before and come back beautifully. I could simply cut out a third of the stems evey year, but it's difficut to get into the center of the shrub where the oldest stems are lurking, so I cut it to the ground evey five or six years instead.

Rudbeckia

2006-04-08T22:28:00.000-04:00

Noah was in first grade, it was the Friday before Mothers Day. I went to pick him up at school, and stood outside Mrs. Johnson's classroom with a gaggle of other mothers. Each child was clutching a styrofoam cup and looking very proud. There was a bit of a scuffle as Ali elbowed Noah to get out the door ahead of him. Noah's cup went flying, when it landed on the hall floor, there was a small pile of potting soil and a tiny green seedling, a Black-eyed Susan.

"No problem, we can put this back together and it will be just fine." Back then, he believed everything I said, but in fact I wasn't very sure. We stuffed the plant back in the cup, dumped the soil on top, and headed home.

A little over two years later, Mrs. Johnson walked by the house one day when I was working in the front yard. She told me how much she liked my garden, and I invited her to see the "real" garden, in the back. I think that was the first time I noticed that my garden was full of Rudbeckia. There were pure yellow, yellow streaked with orange, red with yellow markings, and every possible combination of yellow, red and orange imaginable.

This was twenty years ago, and Noah's Black-eyed Susans still hold sway in my gardens. I eventually started pulling a few of them, for their own sake as well as to leave some room for other plants, but I always have hugh drifts of these. I collect unusual perennials, and have lots of favorites, but I can't say that there's a nicer, more hardworking plant in my garden than Noah's Black-eyed Susans.

Compost

2006-04-08T10:41:00.000-04:00

I must have the most complicated and inefficient compost system in New England. I sometimes wonder if it's worth the trouble, but this week I sifted about 4 wheelbarrow loads of the stuff and spread it on an established mixed border out near the street. It looked wonderful, masking the 8 different textures and colors of bark chip mulch, and I know it will help sustain all the plants in that garden, from the Sweetgum tree (Liquidambar rotundiloba) to the tiny Cyclamen coum.

Here's my system. For kitchen scraps, I have a tumbler, also called a batch composter. I bought this because, in my in-town yard, I don't want to draw rodents to the kitchen scraps. I purchased this locally, but it was from Gardeners' Supply Company. I had to modify it in 2 ways: block the larger drainage holes with hardware cloth (steel mesh) to keep rodents from moving in, and drill smaller holes in the lower half of the unit. This holds a winter's worth of kitchen scraps; when it's too full to turn, I start stashing the fresh scraps in 5-gallon buckets with tight fitting lids, and let the material in the tumbler cook for a few weeks, turning it whenever I think of it.

When the buckets are full, I slop the material out of the tumbler into another black plastic unit; this one is wrapped in hardware cloth because it is also prone to attract rodents. I mix in some dry material, leaves or cardboard, whatever is available at the time. Now I'm ready to dump the buckets into the tumber and start refilling it.

Meanwhile, all the garden waste, leaves, grass clippings, spent foliage and weeds, go into a 3-bin system that my husband built for me. It's about 9 feet long, each bin is a 3 foot cube. Material goes into the bin on the left, when that's full each bin is turned into the bin to its right, with the material in the last bin theoretially fully cooked and ready to sift and use. Anything in the last bin that won't pass through the sifter is put back into the first bin for a second trip through the system. The last bin also gets the material from the second platic unit, which is pretty well broken down by the time it needs to be emptied.

The problems with this system are that the material in the last bin isn't usually ready to use by the time the other bins are full, and I may not be ready to use that compost anyway. I have a trash can with holes in the bottom to store it until it's ready or I'm ready. If I were building this again, I'd make the bin to the left, the first bin, at least half again as big as the middle bin, and the last bin much smaller.As the material breaks down, the piles become much smaller, so this would give me more room where I need it without taking up any more space. I might even use 4 bins in my next system. Since this unit is just built from pine, it needs to be rebuilt every 10 years or so anyway, so I can redesign it each time.

Having a second tumbler would also make this much more efficient - it would eliminate the sloppy mess of emptying the tumbler into the "holding bin".

Is composting worth the trouble? You bet.

Early Flowers

2006-04-01T11:26:00.000-05:00

Winter is not especially cold on Cape Cod, compared to other parts of New England, but it lasts long into the season when other areas of the region are enjoying spring. I try to make it less dreary by planting things that bloom in late winter or very early spring.

The season starts for me around the New Year, with Stinking Hellebores - don't be put off by the name. Helleborus foetidus is the very first flower to bloom in my garden, with its white or pale green flowers nodding above glossy, finely cut, deep green, evergreen foliage. It has no scent, pleasant or otherwise, that I can detect. It grows in shade in my yard, but apparently can take part sun too. Its evergreen foliage is also good in summer, as a foil to the flowers of its neighbors. It self-sows freely, but not aggressively, and seedlings are fairly easy to move around. They're also very easy to give away, to anyone who likes the idea of winter flowers.

Hamamelis x intermedia 'Arnold Promise' begins blooming - bright yellow - in early February. Although I've got two other cultivars, Diane and Jelena, which are reddish and bronzy, respectively, that begin blooming around the same time as 'Arnold,' HE is the star because of his long period of bloom. This year, this 8 foot tall shrub has been in full bloom for at least six weeks. The flowers are a lovely clear yellow. The foliage is uninteresting, even slightly coarse; I have it planted outside a west window, where I can enjoy the flowers backlit by the seting sun. In summer, it serves as a backdrop to a mixed order of hydrangea, gaura, tall sedums, and lavender.

Around the same time as the Witch Hazels begin their yellow and orange show, low mounds of pink. purple and white Winter Heath (Erica carnea) burst into bloom. I love the fine texture of these plants, and the slightly wild look. They like dry, sunny sites, though the local heather farm has them growing wild and blooming in the woods. In summer, their "off-season," they look very much like dwarf conifers. My favorite, an unnamed variety with deep purple flowers, is sited right outside my office window; it's backed by a row of cotoneaster and makes a great contrast to the glossy leaves and deep red berries of that shrub.

The Christmas Rose, H. niger, doesn't bloom anywhere around the holiday, but is in full force by early- or mid- March. Its upright white flowers acquire a pink cast over time, its foliage is a smoky green, slightly mottled; good enough to make me treasure this plant even if it wasn't a winter flower source. About the same time as the Christmas Rose, Lenten Rose (H. orientalis, aka H. x hybridus) begins to bloom. The foliage is quite different from H. niger, the plant is larger, and there's a teriffic range of colors available. I've got everything from a deep plum to white, some of the flowers are spotted or streaked with another color. The foliage often looks quite ratty by the time the blooms appear, and most gardeners remove this to make the plant look better. The down side of H. orientalis, other than the need to remove much of the foliage in early spring, is that the flower heads often hang down, so that the casual observer misses their stunning faces.

Jasminium nudiflorum is a wonderful lax shrub, which means it is grown as a vine but needs support for its stems. It begins blooming with forsythia-like flowers just after the witch hazels in my yard; unlike them, though, it takes quite a bit of shade. I have it on a lattice fence, and occasionally tie the stems to the lattice.

About the time that the winter Jasmine blooms, a small stand of Winter Aconite flowers in the front garden, in full sun. This is a new plant to me, picked up at the WOods Hole Library plant sale alast year. Its cheerful yellow flowers are finished at the end of March but are followed by very nice dainty foliage.

This year is the first for my Cylamen coum tubers. They look quite a bit like florists cyclamen, the type grown as a houseplant, but the flowers and the entire plant is much smaller. These are said to be hard to establish, so I planted about two dozen tubers last year, hoping some would survive and establish a colony under the Merrill magnolia in the streetside garden. They're blooming for the first time this March, having started out sparsely but looking quite lively on April first.

The Merill is blooming now, April first, its first flowers just opening. The fuzzy buds, which form during the winter, always prompt passersby to ask if i's a pussywillow.

Also blooming now are Cornus Mas, the Cornelian Cherry, a small tree with tiny, bright yellow flowers, and Viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn,' Dawn Viburnum. It has small deep pink flowers that remind me of a redbud. First year blooms are also out on Winter Honeysuckle, Lonicera Fragrantissima. This is a very large, robust shrub, it should be sited near a path to make the most of its fragrance. Unfortunately, it has a somewhat unkempt-looking shape. It belongs in a yard much larger than mine, but I needed to try it, so I planted three last spring. It was obvious within weeks that these plants were going to be much too big for the space I'd allotted them in the streetside garden, so I've moved two to more remote parts of the yard. One is along the back fence, where we may mostly miss its perfume, but it should help obscure the view of the back fence.

Online Design Course

2006-04-01T08:07:00.000-05:00

Recently heard about a free online landscape design course being offered by Barnes and Noble University. Designing Your Own Garden begins on April 3.

The text, Your House, Your Garden: A Foolproof Approach to Garden Design is by Gordon Hayward, one of my favorite authors. The instructor is Becke Davis, who is also a garden writer.

Update: The course isn't so much about "designing Your Garden," it's more like "designing garden beds." I'd like to learn more about drawing visitors into the garden, creating destinations and framing views, but it won't be in this course. Back to the books.

Projects and Plans

2006-03-26T19:31:00.000-05:00

My garden has grown like topsy, probably because I'm a confessed plantaholic. I do draw up plans, that's how I stay sane all winter. I use large sheets of graph paper, 4 squares to the inch, and have measured every feature in my small yard many times. The plans include the boundaries, the outbuildings, permanent features (the pool, all the fences and gates, utility items, and trees), and the house's doors and windows are indicated. It's not that I stick to the plans religiously, but it's great to know in advance how much space you have to work with, when you hit the local nurseries or spy a particularly delectable plant on line.

I spent the past two seasons working on the front garden, removing lots of lawn and completing a big mixed border and arched brick path along the road. The problem with the back yard became clear to me after my hiatus from this area and after reading Gordon Hayward's The Intimate Garden this winter; the garden does not engage visitors the way I'd like it to.

Step into my yard, come through the side gate or out the back door with me. Ignore the recent excavation, done by my young Curly Coated Retriever Ollie - yes, the lawn is a mess right now, but we'll get it repaired in time for summer parties. No, the problem is that, when you arrive in the yard, you're not sure where to go. Hayward's idea is that a path should lead right out the door and draw you into the yard. Our path runs the length of the yard, along the house, to the small in-ground pool. If you're not here to swim, you probably don't want to go sit by the pool, and there's no indication of how to get out to that cozy-looking corner with the low table near the New Dawn roses on the tall trellis out back.

So, this years project. Brick path lining up directly with the back door, intersecting the long path, and inviting you out to the (to be built) paved area near the back fence. The paved area will have rounded corners at the far edge, echoing the shape of the brick seating area at the pool. There will be the long low table, made by my husband, from very old, heavy planks, and several rustic wooden chairs, made by my son. It will be backed on the North by the shingled garage wall, to the west by a tall rose arbor covered in old New Dawn roses and vines, and to the south by a mixed border. To the east, back towards the house, there's an existing mixed bed with a young Stewartia, lots of Nepeta (Catmint), pink poppies, assorted campanula, salvia, and bulbs. I'll have to move some plants, because this path will go right through an existing bed. An old Wigela is probably too close to the new path, and several pink Oriental Poppies will have to move, as will an old Caryopteris x clandonensis 'Longwood Blue.'

I hope this bed will still work well, though, by creating a transition along the path and a feeling of seclusion in the new seating area.

Next steps will be laying out the new path on paper to determine the exact location, making up a materials list, moving plants out of the way, and then laying the path itself. Then we'll reassess the scene before proceding with paving the seating area, and think about building an archway in the old bed to rfurther mark the transition into the seculded new area.

The Season Begins

2006-03-26T19:11:00.000-05:00

As usual, I'm behind in the garden. OK, it's only March, but my list of things to do before Spring really arrives (forget the calendar, Winter stays here on Cape Cod until the end of April) is long, and getting longer.

My garden is small - we live in the center of a medium-sized town, and our lot is 1/3 acre. It's pretty tightly packed with treasures, and the lawn gets smaller every year.

I am drawn to plants that bloom in the off-season; right now there are Eranthis (Winter Aconite), Helleborus (Christmas Rose, Lenten Rose, and Stinking Hellebores) , as well as Hamamellis (Witch Hazel; Arnold's Promise, Jelena, and Diane), Jasminium nudiflorum (WInter Jasmine), Galanthus (snowdrops), early crocus, and Erica (winter heath). The heath have been at it for about 2 months, there's one deep purple one backed by the glossy dark green leaves and red berries of a cotoneaster that I can see from my desk - it's breathtaking.

Almost as appealing as the early flowers, Sedum matrona and the ubiquitous Autumn Joy are sending up their lovely leaf buds now, as are the peonies. These signs make it seem that winter can't hold on too much longer. Hurrah!