Happy Accidents in the Garden

Sometimes it is the unplanned garden combinations that turn me on the most.

 

I planted the Pink Zazzle (a hybrid gomphrena of secretive parentage), but the sweet Alyssum came up all on its own, and from a variety (one of the 'Stream' series) that I thought was sterile. Perfect partners!

This paddle plant (Kalanchoe thyrisiflora) occupies a pot that perfectly matches its coloring. And behind it, 'Red Sails' lettuce picks up the leaf margins. All of these contributors were leftovers and castoffs: the paddle plant, a lanky stem cut from a plant that began to sprout at the base; the pot left over from a bay laurel that outgrew it; and as for the lettuce seedlings, I couldn't bear to throw them out.

 And there are times, many times in fact, when being a messy gardener pays off. Lettuce, Nigella, and bells of Ireland all sprouted from seed tossed (with very little thought about the consequences) on the ground last fall. The sweet Alyssum and 'Golden Jubilee' agastache were intentional, but who knew they would be befriended so sweetly? Bells of Ireland, I have found, must move from place to place in order to thrive. It appears to be autotoxic -- even more so than sunflowers.

Rudbeckia maxima needs sturdy companions, so isn't it lovely that larkspur stepped in to fill the gaps between this trio: the giant coneflower, Agastache foeniculum, and Phlox paniculata 'Robert Poore'.

Here bells of Ireland and larkspur fill in the spaces between phlox and 'Blue Shadow' fothergilla. Dill, though not in this photo, plays a minor but beautiful role. 

I appreciate the aesthetics of these garden happenings because they came about, more or less, on their own. 

I enjoy them without the weight of pride.  

Winter Windburn 2014

The cherry laurels in my neighborhood are not looking good. Chinese Euonymus and Japanese Aucubas are a bit haggard also. Where they come from, this sort of thing just doesn’t happen. And you know the sort of thing I’m talking about: extreme cold followed by snow followed by blustery days and nights. Prunus laurocerasus comes from parts of southwest Asia that enjoy hot, dry summers and mild, relatively rainy winters. Euonymus kiautschovicus (Manhattan Euonymus) hails from eastern China, where winter temperatures generally hover around 40°F.  So there was never a need for them to develop the techniques that keep our own broadleaf evergreens fit for spring.

Rhododendrons, for example, reliably roll their leaves into cigars when the temperatures dip into the low 20s F. Their pores are located on the bottoms of the leaves and the curling mechanism protects these vulnerable undersides. It also allows them to conveniently shed any leaf-loads of ice and snow. You can tell the temperature just by watching the rhododendrons; when it warms up to about 32° again the leaves flatten, no harm done. Wouldn’t it be dandy (or should I say handy) if our own bodies had a similar maintenance system?

You can tell the temperature by the rolling of rhododendron leaves.

But no, we are more like the cherry laurel and the Manhattan euonymus. When water evaporates from these broadleaf evergreen leaves faster than their roots can replace it—which tends to happen when the ground is frozen solid—cells die. Leaves turn brown. Plants turn ugly. It’s their version of human frostbite.

Ewww-onymus

Our response to those same cold temperatures starts with the narrowing of blood vessels in exposed body parts. If this goes on long enough, blood flow to extremities drops and tissue dies, fingers and toes and nose tips being, relatively speaking, expendable.

Of course we have mittens and boots and down-filled jackets, and in fact we can make use of this bundling up concept to protect our tender visitors from rude extremes of weather. We can swaddle them in burlap or spray them with an antidessicant or, like the Staten Island Italians used to do to harbor their figs, build linoleum towers.

We could also choose to plant only natives that are adapted to the weather, but this feels rather hypocritical. We go to extreme trouble to make all kinds of adaptations to our living conditions for the benefit of our fingers and toes (like extracting stuff from 10,000 feet below the soil). It seems only fair to make the habitat suitable for our guests when things turn nasty.

The good thing is, the ugliness of cherry laurels is only spring-deep. Unlike our cold-blasted extremities, their damaged parts were destined to fall anyway, eventually, and will be replaced with fresh new functioning parts. 

How convenient for them.

Mowing the Leaves

After the first serious frost the mulberry leaves on the tortured tree in my back yard—the one that is destined for the woodpile any day now—rain down. This happens all in one gusty hour. In that very same hour, just around the block, the yellow leaves of a neighboring gingko go from dangling adornments to brilliant golden carpet. Meanwhile, the Ebenezer Scrooge in front of my house obstinately grips its green. Even as all of its fellows lighten their loads, my badly topped, misshapen silver maple insists on photosynthesizing, as if to say, “Hate me if you will, but I command you to marvel at my genetics.”

My silver maple: still photosynthesizing in November.

When Bob and I moved into the house on Cherokee street with the silver maple and the hacked and bleeding mulberry three and a half years ago, we made a deal. Phil comes, too. Every week or two Phil pulls up in his white van, gets the gas mower out, and cuts our modest lawn, as he did Bob’s lawn on Evergreen Street for many years. I do the gardens. In my last house, I succeeded in reducing the lawn to a 5-minute mow, and I’m slowly doing the same here, but until that time, there’s Phil. He edges too, not because we’ve ever asked him to, but because that’s the way things are done in our neat little town. My mower hides out in the shed until after the hour of raining mulberry leaves.

So yesterday, I dragged the 100-foot cord to the patio outlet, plugged in the mower, and gave it its first annual workout. Across the street, a man in a tractor was dragging a huge tarp filled with leaves to the curb. He raked, he piled, he pulled. My chopped mulberry leaves fell between blades of grass and disappeared behind the path of my electric mower. I’m not saying my way is the best way, but … he raked, he piled, he pulled. For hours.

Feeding the worms

Every October, Phil would rake the leaves of Bob’s sycamore trees on Evergreen Street into big piles along the curb. He never, to his credit, used a noisy leaf blower to blast every single messy leaf onto public land, but, just the same, Bob’s lawn was perfectly devoid of anything that might spoil the neatness when the job was done. And then a big vacuum truck would come along and steal the piles. Criminal.

No thank you, I tell Phil, I will take care of the leaves on Cherokee Street. Meaning, I will keep every one of my leaves thank-you-very-much. Now, I could say that I was thinking about worms and other helpful soil animals as I monotonously mowed my mulberry leaves, and how they would churn the leaf bits into lawn fertilizer with their digestive system. But that would be a lie. I was thinking that, with a fractured rib, walking behind a mower was so much more possible that raking and piling and lifting. I gave the front lawn a cursory pass. The curled maple leaves—those that had in spite of their best efforts to hang on come loose in the wind—crumbled under the blades. Striving for perfection would be a thankless waste of effort at this point.

It’s a messy time of year. The leaves of my once handsome castor bean plant hang limp and ugly on the suddenly awkward frame. It disturbs me. I would like to say that I am comfortable with my garden going to ruins. But, again, I would be lying. It’s not like in high summer, when the coreopsis is in glorious disarray and annual ageratums and petunias fill the garden gaps leaving no room for weeds or discontent. In the throes of the growing season, I revel in a manageable measure of messiness.

Stewartia leaves on 'Lavender Stream' sweet, and still fragrant, alyssum.

In a week, or a month, I’ll be mowing the leaves again. It’s a job I would happily turn over to Phil, but he would look at me funny. He would be thinking (or maybe this is my paranoia talking), “but that’s not the way we do things around here.” If I did not watch over him he would empty the bag at the curb and my leaves would be stolen, sucked up by the big vacuum truck. My leaves. Of course, my version of fall order is equally dogmatic and, in the scheme of things, just as quirky as Phil’s. On a large and small scale, we all manage our messes, continuously. That’s what we do. 

And if they get away from us, nature manages them for us.

Fall is for Digging

Fall is for digging. It’s for nudging your imagined gardens toward actuality.

Spring may start languorously enough, but it soon quickens its pace and leaves you with half-completed projects as you race to keep up—with planting, and weeding, and pruning, and mowing … and wishing and hoping.

But in fall, everything is dying anyway. It’s easy to put off boring end-of-season tasks, and re-imagine your space. And so you dig. You create a garden, knowing that you don’t have to fill it for at least six months. Such luxury. Such promise!

If you have read my Rules of Gardening, then you know that I believe in shortcuts. I believe in letting nature work for me. I believe in leaving space for things that I don’t know—yet—that I will want. I believe in simple tools, and in preserving my joints. 

I love my Radius Pro Transplanter.

And so, on Sunday, I picked up my Radius Pro Transplanter, and I turned over the sod—which was actually 1/3 clover, 1/3 mock Indian strawberry, and 1/3 grass. And I piled the upended tangle high with mulch, and with straw that had been resting and rotting all summer in preparation for just such a moment as this. On one end of my new garden space I planted a small dogwood tree that a friend had given me two years ago, when it was a mere Audubon whip, and I braced it with a bamboo tripod, which had served as summer support for a crop of rattlesnake pole beans. Later, or sooner, I will wrap it with deer netting.

After using my aged straw, I went out and purchased 3 more bales ... for next year.

My new dogwood will make flowers in the spring and shade in the afternoon. Yes, it will take time, but better to plant young things that you can shape and watch over, than “install” large expensive trees with their roots in a knot. I think of a friend—she may be 85, or she may be 90, or 91 even—who, when asked what type of tree she would like to receive as a tribute to her years of patronage, pronounced (with the aplomb only a self-confident woman in her ninth decade can muster), “I would like a white oak, a small one. I like to watch trees grow.” So we planted the small white oak, on her instructions, in the middle of an open field, where, in her aging mind, it took on the majestic proportions of lone oaks you sometimes see standing out in the middle of fields of grass. “Lone oak” is a dignified name bestowed on farms and campsites, cities and wineries, and even senior housing facilities. The stalwart, elegant image is universal, and it pleases us all.

Landscape gerber daisies

I see my dogwood spreading its roots and its graceful form toward my patio. As for the straw-mulched arm that stretches from the patio to my young champion, I have no immediate plans. Probably I will find some alluring annual flower that I will need to try. I generally do. Last year it was my beautiful landscape gerber daisy; this year, my most gratifyingly dwarf leonotis. And even while the mystery belle of 2014 is proving her merit, I will be tossing more permanent prospects around, trying them out for size in my imagination. 

Dwarf leonotis, a spectacular garden success story.

I have all winter to luxuriate in the possibilities. Nothing, not even an apple pie in October, is more delicious than a rich bed of empty soil in April.  

Rules of Gardening

There are certain garden practices I do not do, and will never do. Double-digging, for one example. Hedge shearing, for another. They are no fun. Therefore I avoid them. They are unnecessary evils. 

Gardening is not knitting. It is not a step-by-step, but an exploration. And so you will not find maxims like “feed your lawn in spring and fall” or “tomatoes must be planted 3 feet apart” in my rulebook. My rules are my rules. Take them … or write your own. 

Finches love sunflowers, so I love sunflowers.

Rule #1. Never pull out a chance sunflower seedling.

I see the little seed leaves that are so unmistakably sunflower-like and in my head I see finches doing acrobatics on the seedheads. I see slow-moving bumblebees, oblivious to all of the other the darting pollinators, systematically sucking nectar from the hundreds of tiny disk flowers.  If the sunflower seedling has emerged clumsily close to a lilac or spiraea, so be it. The shrub will just have to share the space for this one year. It will survive.

Rule #2. Never plant a shrub rose where bindweed grows.

This rule comes from experience. It comes from bloody arms and punctured thumbs. Field bindweed is a problem anywhere, but it will twine up the thorny stems of a shrub rose and erupt into flower before you can even catch sight of the rapidly growing menace. Meanwhile the ropey roots are happily storing carbohydrates well below the soil surface. Though capable of spreading more than 10 feet in a growing season, the vines are generally so content with the strategy of growing within the rose that they don’t even need to venture outside of its protective thorniness. Let the bindweed seeds mature, and the pest will assuredly outlive both you and the rose. Seed has been found to be viable at the ripe old age of 60!

And while we’re on the subject,

Pilea pumila, one of the good guys

Rule #3. Get to know your weeds.

There is a hierarchy. Some weeds must be removed forthwith, bound up in plastic, tortured, burned … Aside from the abovementioned bindweed, I include the deceptively unassuming arum, Pinellia ternata, in this category. Its common names are crow dipper and, more aptly, miniature green dragon, and the secret to its success lies in the corm that remains securely buried in the soil after you yank out the stem. But, on the other end of the weed spectrum are the good guys, what I call the placekeepers. Lovely jewelweed holds a fertile spot until you find some other use for it, and then offers no resistance when you pull. Pilea pumila, also known as clearweed, is similarly benign. It is related to stinging nettle and, like nettle, sustains the caterpillars of some beautiful butterflies, including the Red Admiral. Both jewelweed and clearweed are, not so coincidentally, native plants.

Need to save space for dwarf ginkgo!

Rule #4. Always leave an empty spot or two in your garden.

This goes back to having fun. You just never know when you are going to encounter that plant that you must have. If there’s space to play with—even if it involves moving things around—you can say yes! Conversely, that empty spot will allow for “the quest.” The delicious hunt for that special something. You don’t know what it is, yet, but it’s out there. You'll know it when you see it.

Rule #5. If there’s an easy way to do something, do it!

And this goes back to double-digging, which probably has its advantages (though how would I know?). Nevertheless I’ve had great success with gardening without ever having to resort to this extreme method, which involves much sweat and muscle, a wheelbarrow or tarp, a tool that can dig a series of deep trenches without breaking, and a great chunk of time. I started my vegetable garden by laying down bales of straw and rolling them over once they had killed the turf, then forking and adding compost as needed. The straw, by the way, makes excellent mulch and is very easy to move around the garden, unlike 3 cubic yards of wood chips.

My vegetable garden: beautiful, productive, and not  double-dug.

The benefit, of course, to taking things easy, is that it encourages one to add more gardens. More opportunities for “the quest.” More space for sunflowers and bumblebees and finches.

More gardens, fewer rules. Isn't that the way life should be?

What are your rules of gardening?

Waiting for "The One"

I’m ready to fall in love again. 

I have a gaping emptiness that needs to be filled. My past experiences tell me that it’s only a matter of time before the right one comes along, but it is feeling less and less likely that this will happen in a timely manner. I know, I know … 

You can’t hurry love. 

But the emptiness is calling. Pleading.

It’s harder now than it used to be. For one thing, my requirements have become ever stricter. Yes, “The One” must be exceedingly handsome, this has not changed. But I have learned a thing or two over the years. A candidate that might, at first look, seem absolutely perfect can turn out to be a rapacious hog, undermining my creativity, systematically manipulating me for self-serving purposes. This type of relationship never ends well. Worse yet, I might find that my love’s seed has been deposited throughout the neighborhood and beyond! How humiliating. How shameful.

And then there is the matter of self-preservation. “The One” must be strong, resilient. I don’t want to fall in love only to find that the object of my affections is a magnet for predators. My heart has been broken like this in the past, too many times.

But how long must I wait, how much more can I take?

When the right one comes along, I'll know it.

My vacant soil is like an open wound. The frilly green placekeeper will be in a salad bowl by week’s end, which will make the space feel even more barren. More needy. Must I be content with another temporary solution? Another flash-in-the-pan zinnia, which will become old and white before its time, or another sunflower that will be ripped down by rodents at the height of its majesty? I desire permanence. I want a love that will become more beautiful with age, one that will mature with great dignity as its character reveals itself. A magnificent slow-growing conifer that will adjust its habits to enhance its companions. A gorgeous blooming shrub that will perform amazing feats in withering heat. 

Love, I am waiting, heartbeats accelerating.

Love, love, where can you be?

My Favorite Garden Tools

It wouldn’t take much—an awkward turn of the ankle, a slip of the pruners, or a jolt of the knee when spade unexpectedly hits rock. One stupid move and my life and my livelihood could be upended. So I step carefully.

Favorite tools: Radius stainless steel transplanter, Cobrahead weeder, Felco pruners, holster, Swiss istor sharpener, Fiskars PowerGear Lopper, OR cotton hat, nitrile gloves, and white bucket, all in a Tipke marine cart.

My goal is to become, someday, an old gardener. The alternative—not seizing the first cool September day to sow spinach, or not having too many tomatoes on the counter and too much pesto in the freezer—is unthinkable. To this end, I try never to overestimate the capabilities of my body or my tools. The older I get the more I value my body. Imperfect as it is, it has (so far) ably enabled my excesses.

My mother taught me that cheap shoes are no bargain. I have learned, repeatedly, that the same is true about garden tools. We all meet people who say (endearingly, or so they think), “I have a black thumb hahaha.” To them I reply (with a dead serious look), “There’s no such thing as a black thumb. You just don’t have the right tools.” I truly believe this, being of currently sound body and perpetually dirty fingernails. If they had my #1 weeder, the Cobrahead, they would be equally driven to use the side of the blade to decapitate weeds just under the soil line, and use the curve of the arm as a lever to oh-so-gently unearth whatever it is that doesn’t belong there. I am sure of it.

It took me a long time to declare this my favorite weeder, due to an unfortunate misstep by the designer and chief promoter of the Cobrahead, Noel Valdes. So sure was he that his tool was “the best tool on earth” that he sent out an initial run to garden writers. Sadly, the curvature of the blade stretched with time and use, rendering the tool practically worthless. So I wrote it off and went back to my old #1, the Korean hand hoe. I still have several hand hoes, but they have shown their weaknesses: blades detach prematurely from handles; inconsistencies in manufacturing can affect the “feel.” At some point I gave Cobrahead another try. The current version is truly the best tool on earth. The blue handle is attached securely to a strong blade, which serves as a cultivator as well as a weeder. You can stab it into the soil using the force of your arm, sparing the wrist for gentler tasks, like picking tomatoes. Or sowing spinach. I never, and I mean never, go into the garden without it.

And would it even be possible to own a pair of Felco pruners and not want to use them constantly? The two things I like most about my Felcos are, 1) the blades open really wide, and 2) spare parts are readily available. Every winter I sit down in front of CSI New York, or some other comfortingly familiar set of characters and plot, with my four or five Felcos, a bag of blades, springs, and bolts, a spray can of WD-40, and my Swiss istor professional sharpener. You don’t even have to dismember the pruners to sharpen them with this nifty tool. I give them all a little love (the Felcos not the FBI guys). They deserve it.

And my pruner holster. Yes! The one mistake I make, over and over, year after year, is not clipping my holster to my jeans when I venture out into my own garden. I’ll just do this one thing, I tell myself, and four hours later I am searching through tall blades of grass (lawn maintenance not being my thing) for the pruners I set down … somewhere. When I am “on the job” I am never without my pruner holster.

For bigger cuts, I like to use my Fiskars PowerGear Bypass Lopper. As in, I look for low hanging limbs and dead branches just so I can lop them off with this powerful yet lightweight tool. This is how you know a garden tool is great—it energizes you to do stuff. Another case in point: Since I bought my Radius Garden 200 PRO Ergonomic Stainless Steel Transplanter a month or so ago, I have been edging, transplanting, and digging new beds like a crazy woman. I blame this tool. I punch it into the soil with my upper body (my knees are in good working order and I intend to keep them that way).

--> Believe me, Black Thumb, when I say that the trapezoid-shaped blade with the circle on top is fun to use and will make a gardener of anyone. And the handle’s purple! 

While admittedly not as entertaining as spades and loppers, hats and gloves are important to the garden experience. My criteria for the perfect garden hat are: 1) It must be washable; 2) It must be big enough; 3) It must have a chin strap; 4) It must be sufficiently brimmed. This OR (Outdoor Research) 100% cotton hat fulfills all the necessities, plus it has a UPF rating of 50+. 

I buy Atlas Nitrile gloves by the dozen. They’re cheaper that way. Not that this saves me any money—I give a pair to garden-coaching clients so that they’ll think to call me when they puzzle over plant choices and pruning decisions. I go through about four pairs a season myself, which is not bad considering that I spend the better part of my life in the garden. About the only task I remove them for is sowing seeds. 

For hauling flats of annuals, loads of compost, and piles of weeds from here to there, I use a Tipke Cart. Though billed as a “marine” cart, it is perfect for garden use—lightweight, rustproof, and it folds for winter storage or for transporting to plant sales and such. You’ll need a bicycle pump. I need a bicycle pump. 

Oh, and the white bucket. It’s free. And though I like tub trugs, you can’t sling them over the arm like you can a plain ol’ white bucket. And they’re not free. 

Suggestions for additions to this incomplete list are more than welcome. I’m still looking for the perfect hose nozzle for one thing. But the above favorites serve me well; they keep my knees, wrists, and shoulders in shape …  for the rest of what makes life worth living. My advice to Black Thumb is this: Step carefully, stop frequently to breathe in the whole big picture—life, that is—and carry a purple-topped spade, a blue-handled Cobrahead, and a white bucket. The proverbial green thumb will be yours.  

Note: None of the above tools were sent to me for testing. I bought and paid for every one.

Flowers that Dance

I love flowers that scent the air with intoxicating fragrances, flowers that rest in neat colorful mounds, flowers that coat the ground like a fluffy puddle. 

Late summer dance: Gomphrena 'Fireworks' and Nicotiana 'Whisper Appleblossom'

But most of all I love flowers that dance. Whisper Appleblossom nicotiana, woodland tobacco, Fireworks gomphrena. They hover over the others in a lilting cloud, like syrphid flies over sweet Alyssum, like fluttering cabbage moths over wet muck. Like lightning bugs. 

They drift aloft in a Debussian rhythm, unregimented, suspended. You forget for the moment the details of genus and species, morphology and function. You lose yourself in the whole of the dance. Everyone is keeping the beat. The eye is not directed to any one spot. It doesn't matter.

Until the scene is broken by a single frosty night, or ferocious late season storm, they dance. And then the music stops. Frosty air chills the fallen seeds. Its fingers reach into the pores of the soil. Rhythm and tender green are on hold.

And so we dance, furiously, to strings and keys and pounding palms, to keep our spirits alive.

image from Country Dance and Song Society (cdss.org)

Sterile Plants: All-season Bloomers

A lot of the plants in my garden this year have something in common: they cannot bear young. 

Lobularia 'Blushing Princess': no seeds but lots of syrphid flies!

One might say it’s a triploid revolution!

But let’s start at the beginning.

The flower exists for one purpose—to attract pollinators. Once its powdery pollen is transported by bee, moth, beetle, or some other vehicle to the ovule of another flower, its function is finished. Seeds form. Eventually, baby plants germinate. So as the summer wears on and flowers turn to seeds, the plant has less and less incentive to make more flowers. Unless, of course, some manipulative gardener beheads the dying blooms. 

But what tedium, what fussiness! 

Cleome 'Seniorita Blanca' in late August

How fortunate for the lover of all-season color that plant breeders have stepped in. What! you say? Breeders “play god” and manipulate plants just so we can enjoy cleome that doesn’t become a spidery tower of swaying seedpods, and sweet alyssum that doesn’t get ugly in August? What’s next—tomatoes that don’t rot?  

Well, maybe … but that’s another story.

Back to the point – how, and why, does a scientist make a flower that will not fulfill its function? 

The answer to how is varied and complicated. Why is a little more straightforward. Take lantana, a beautiful flower that is benign in cold-winter regions like Pennsylvania, but a menace in the south. In fact, it’s one of the top 10 weedy species of the world. And its chromosomes are to blame.

Lantana 'Luscious Berry Blend' makes no seeds.

Many organisms (us, for instance) are diploids, meaning we have two complete sets of chromosomes, one from mom and one from dad. Plants often have multiple sets. Lantana can have two, three, four, five, or even six sets of chromosomes. Those with even numbers of sets are fertile (sometimes very fertile), and those with odd numbers are largely sterile. Combine a plant with two sets (a diploid) with one with four (a tetraploid) and the result is: ta da, a sterile triploid! It will start to form seeds but they will never become blackberry-like and fertile. 

Selling sterile plants will not undo the damage caused by the rude tetraploids let loose in warm climates, but it will at least allow gardeners to plant lantana with a clear conscience. And non-seedmaking plants bloom and bloom. Yes, I am aware that lantana berries are ornamental. This, I suspect, is a rationalization that will be handily tossed when the juicy fruits are absent. 

Hibiscus 'Blue Chiffon': blooming itself silly.

Other sterile or mostly sterile plants in my garden are ‘Lilac Chip’ buddleia, ‘Seniorita Blanca’ cleome, ‘Blushing Princess’ sweet alyssum, ‘Diana’ rose-of Sharon (my ‘Blue Chiffon’ rose-of-Sharon is not a triploid but is blooming itself silly nonetheless). Some of my seed-free plants are triploids, others are the sterile hybrids of two different species. 

Burning bush triploids will be available in four to five years, says breeder Yi Li of the University of Connecticut. And other good versions of bad troublemakers are on the way. Scientists are working on making impotent Norway maples, barberries, privets, and callery pears so that they won’t wreak havoc on the few natural areas that have not yet been compromised. 

From the BIG perspective, creating a cleome or sweet alyssum that blooms all summer seems a monumentally trivial achievement. And the self-serving aspect—no self-sown seedlings means more sales—is not lost on me. Scientists working on safe-to-plant versions of invasive plants are providing gardeners with guilt-free alternatives. A sterile burning bush, however, will do little to save the earth. 

But in the evenings, when I revel in the exponential multiplication of the blooms (that still, by the way, attract scores of pollinators), and enjoy the sweet scents, I am happy that breeders tinker with odd-numbered ploidy.  

Now if they would just start working on squash bugs ….

My flagstone patio!

For two months I’ve been meaning to post this photo of my beautiful new flagstone patio, built by my son Kevin of 14-acre Farm. But distractions diverted my energies. First it was the head-to-head with groundhogs (more on that to come), followed by the Forest Ecology class with a wonderful, young, conscientious, you-must-toil-for-these-3-credits professor. Now, a thousand pounds of tomatoes and a trip to Santa Fe later, I am enjoying the Caryopteris and begonias spilling onto Kevin’s geometric patterns. This is the challenge I presented: Use my circular piece of flagstone as a focal point, and connect the utilitarian concrete slab that was poured (without a thought to aesthetics) behind my house many years ago to the part of the lawn that enjoys morning shade. 

Graciously. 

Plus, I want more garden space. 

To be honest, the part about garden space was implicit. Kevin knows that I always want more garden space. Which brings me to the point of this post, that is, addiction. Harmonious, unrepentant addiction. Are we not so very fortunate to be afflicted with the need to dig holes and scuff up the earth around petunias rather than, say, plunk our paycheck into a slot machine? A recurring mental image comes to me each time I see a person in mental dis-ease. It is a line, in the dirt or in the sand, take your pick—or, (apologies) shovel. One step over the line takes me from the garden to the dark side, where addiction is not tolerated by the same society that delights in colorful and textural displays, the creation of which occupy my mind when I drive, shop, live. We addicts are cut from the same cloth. Positively, it is called passion. Negatively—mania, compulsion. Our saving grace is that the world we manipulate in our obsession is endlessly fascinating. We dig, we learn. We strive to understand. We teach. Three-year-old Chloe, visiting from New Jersey, held a sowbug last Sunday and watched it roll into a pill. She stroked a swallowtail butterfly larva that was eating my parsley and laughed when out poked its putrid-smelling retractable orange antennae. She showed her mom. She learned, she taught. How many more can we lure over the line with the force of our passion? 

It feels, sometimes, like a race against time.

Carefree Delight, Indeed

“The rose is a rose, And was always a rose …” 

So wrote Robert Frost. 

But roses have many poses. One may take top billing. 

Magic Meidiland

Another may be part of a chorus line, made all the more stunning by the flash and glitz of a glory repeated many times over. 

I particularly like a rose that can adapt to being a part of an ensemble, a bit player in a big show, playing off of the strengths of the other members. The doggedly gifted might achieve superstardom. But the rest of us must feel our way through the tangle to reach the spot in the sunlight that allows us to spread our own distinctive brand of joy for a moment in June. 

And again, perhaps, in August. 

 

Carefree Delight and cutleaf maple

 

“… You, of course, are a rose But were always a rose.”

My No-Dig Garden

Maybe if I had hours to use up, and no books to read, gardens to tend, class work to do (or mindless crime dramas to watch) I would think about double-digging. But time is just too precious for that sort of thing … in my humble opinion. I take the lazy woman’s approach. I define the edges of a bed and lay down cardboard, and on top of that straw. And I wait. The worms take it from there, savoring the rotting lawn and tolerating the cardboard. Or maybe savoring that too—what do I know about the tastes of worms? In a month or three (depending on the season) the bed is diggable.

But I am wondering whether the worms will find my garden in this recently-acquired property.

Why worry, you might ask?

Last week a paving contractor widened my driveway, removing in the process about 8 inches of topsoil. “I can take this away for you,” he offered. “No way!” I replied. So he piled it up and I transported it around a corner and planted viburnums, and coneflowers, and roses. It should have been good topsoil, and it was, sort of. But something was missing. 

There were no worms. There were no clumps (technically, peds) held together by worm poop and fungi (technically, glomalin). There was no visible life at all. It fell apart like sand. Easy to dig, yes … in fact troublingly so. This is what happens when you spread pesticides to kill grubs, pre-emergent herbicides to kill crabgrass seedlings, and broadleaf killers to kill dandelions, as the previous owner did. Ok so the lawn is enviable. But the robins that flocked to the bare soil came up distressingly empty-beaked.

I am inoculating all of my planting holes with compost. If I cared about the fate of my lawn, which will suffer from withdrawal now that its steady supply of drugs is about to run out, I would have someone come aerate it. Then I would replace the little lifeless soil plugs left lying about like crumbling turds with compost filled with springtails and beetles, protozoa and nematodes. And earthworms. But (being predisposed to the lazy woman’s approach) I am instead placing my trust in migration. Earthworms migrate slowly—about 15 to 20 feet a year—so this will take time.
I will just have to make, and inoculate, lots and lots of planting holes. That I have time for!

Pruning Roses

Although I prune roses every year, and have for decades, I really don’t know what I’m doing. Yes, I know about outward facing buds, crossing branches, and twiggy growth, but when confronted with an actual rose, those directives feel very abstract. And somewhat useless. So before I make the first cut I think about two things. First, there was the year I didn’t get to the shrub roses at the Glasbern Inn soon enough to suit the owner. He took a chain saw and sheared them at a height of about 18 inches, and you guessed it—they bloomed beautifully that year. The second example came in an article I read a year or two ago, written by a British rose grower (who must have been an excellent gardener because he lived in England). In the article were photos of pruned and unpruned roses side by side. There was absolutely no difference between the two!

Armed with the knowledge that pruning roses is not a matter of life or death I put on my rose-colored glasses and make up my own rules. My rule with the vigorous ‘New Dawn’ rose wired to this historic brick wall is, if a lateral branch sticks out too far I cut it back. Horizontals I don’t touch unless they’re sprawling in the wrong direction. As for the dozens of shrub roses at the Glasbern, no one rule applies. Some are in locations that have become shaded over time, so I allow them to reach (through weeping hemlocks or up against stone walls) for the sun. To do otherwise would be cruel. I groom most of my shrub roses (‘Carefree Delight’, a couple of Easy Elegance roses, and a mix of Meidilands) fairly lightly, pruning off last year’s hips and cutting long canes back to two to three feet. I leave the cascading roses that drape down from a height of 15-20 feet toward the Glasbern parking lot below completely alone. For one thing, I would need a crane (and some really tough gloves) to prune them safely, and for another, I want them to eventually coat the entire bank with luxurious pink blooms. At that point I may rethink my non-strategy.

Without fail, all of the roses reward my fumbling attempts at grooming them with an exuberant show. This, by the way, was the perfect week to prune roses.

Or not.

Winter Garden

My state of mind in winter follows a similar pattern every year. First relief. Snow covers the ground, nothing is growing, and I don’t have to cut and cart away any more dead plants. Then an extravagance of energy with no place to spend it. Sit down and read? In the afternoon? Then, sometime in January, I relax into the winter schedule—sleep a little later, dive into a class, get physically lazy. But a walk at the Glasbern last week reminded me that it’s all still out there, and as beautiful as ever.

Helleborus foeditus is already in bud.

Ilex verticillata -- soon the birds will find it.

Mugo pine

Opuntia humifusa, conserving water.

Corylus contorta. Tortured. Fascinating.

Moss and lichens

And the blue tree steals the scene.