New York City waterfalls: "remnants of a primordial Eden"

Olafur Eliasson's waterfalls project opened in New York this week. I'll only point you to the New York Times article where you will find an analysis of this major urban artwork, a slide show and video.

Photo: Vincent Laforet for The New York Times

Highline News

Designs for the first phase of the Highline, a new urban park in Manhattan built on an old elevated freight rail viaduct, were announced today (see previous post).

Here is a link to the latest New York Times article. Though Piet Oudolf isn't mentioned, he is responsible for planting designs in (on?) the new park. If you know his plantings in Battery Park around the southern tip of Manhattan, you can see a resemblance between his containerized plantings at Battery Park and the plantings designed for the Highline. Both are essentially plants in containers - very large containers to be sure.

The New York Times also provides a brief slide show of the first phase design.

Photo: Design by Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Courtesy of City of New York.

Gardens in Argentina and Chile

We're planning a visit to Argentina (Buenos Aires with side trips) and Chile (Santiago with shorter side trips) in February 2009. I haven't been able to find a good source listing gardens and natural areas of particular interest to gardeners. The standard guidebooks are of little use. If you have recommendations or know of such information, I'd appreciate your help.

rosemontgolden[at]gmail[dot]com

Teasel: Dipsacus fullonum

For the first time in this garden, teasel is standing erect in the mid-morning sun, translucent, glowing with light. This is a beautiful plant for catching the light; its thin, rigid leaves imitate stained glass. And the dramatic flower heads are at their best in early summer, when the tissues are still fresh and bright green.

Teasel is listed by 46 states as a noxious weed and it certainly can be. If I'm not careful to cut off the seed heads before they mature in the fall, I'll have hundreds, if not thousands, of seedlings next year. Should they go to seed, it's easy to stomp them into oblivion as they germinate, but that's a risky business. You do not want to let this plant get out of control.

Teasel apparently was imported into the U.S. in the early to mid-19th century for use in wool processing. Here is an informative link.

To my eye, teasel looks best used as an occasional accent. Large stands lose something because the plant's unique, upward-reaching structure and reflective qualities are lost when too many compete for attention. They also become rather scraggly by fall, so I recommend cutting them to the ground before seeds mature. (Use gloves; they are covered with sharp prickels.) You can save one or two seed heads for limited planting.

Teasel is a biennial, so in the first year you will see only low rosettes with prickly leaves, then in the second year they soar to six or seven feet. The plant dies after making seed, so you will need to sow seed every year to assure a continuing presence in the garden.

If you are not sure you can be vigilant, do not plant teasel.

Iris versicolor: a plant for wet clay and sun

My specialty, by necessity, is plants that thrive in wet clay (I won't even call it soil) and sun. I've tried Iris versicolor, a native in my area of New Jersey, for three years, and it has passed the test. I'm sure my plants, some of which came from Lowe's, others from the Millersville University Native Plants in the Landscape conference, do not have local genetic provenance, but so it goes.Some have grown into sizable clumps and this year, for the first time, the plants have formed a community of sufficient area to make a pronounced visual impression - a field of starry blue flowers. The bloom period has lasted for about three weeks, though some plants blossom at different times, apparently because of the relative wetness of their locations, and perhaps length of exposure to direct sun, some being closer to woodland edge than others.Most of these plants were inserted directly into the existing matrix of vegetation - so they have had to compete for space and nutrients with little to no attention from me. If I have time, I do try to clear some space around the plants to give them some advantage over their neighbors, but that extra care hasn't proven to be necessary, at least in this environment. The last photo shows a drift of Iris versicolor with grass, Winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata 'Berry Nice' - hate that name!), miscanthus, and a clump of unknown Siberian iris.

Garden Diary: Lines and perspective

Building a long, straight stone wall at the base of the house has created an opportunity for structural interest in my somewhat amorphous wetland garden. Viewed from the path at the western end of the garden, the wall carries the eye across the garden to a group of ragged cedars (Juniperus virginiana) that have become a focal point.


So - what do I do with this "feature"? As soon as I have the financial means, I'd like to hire an arborist to remove the dead lower branches of the cedars, leaving simple, clean verticals topped by evergreen clouds of foliage. I've seen this treatment of cedars at William Faulkner's house in Oxford, Mississippi (see photo below). Once that's done, the area calls out for some focal object, perhaps sculptural, but certainly affordable.

The intervening area is probably the wettest in the garden. While I would like to use structural hedging to order the space and contrast with the wilder plantings, I haven't found appropriate shrubs for such wet conditions. Gardening in this place certainly does impose severe constraints. Some kind of physical structure may be the answer.

I have to remember this is a wet prairie (though an artificial one) and I can't stray too far from that concept.

Another take on Chelsea: Thinkingardens

For a more iconoclastic take on the Chelsea Flower Show, I recommend you go to the Thinkingardens website. Stephen Anderton, Anne Wareham, and Corrine Julius (l to r) comment on their picks of the show, and offer insightful commentary on the gardens. Their "Best in Show" is not the judges' pick. You will also find a Thinkingardens link to a Royal Horticultural Society video of the three discussing the gardens, along with written commentary. Explore the RHS site for other information such as plant lists for many of the gardens. Just don't try to play any of the BBC videos; they don't work if you live outside the UK.

Germaine Greer also has an article on the 2007 Chelsea Flower Show posted on Thinkingardens. The Chelsea gardens are really exhibits, show gardens put together from plants grown for the most part, in highly artificial environments. They are in no respect real gardens, and Ms. Greer has had it with the artificiality of it all.

Thinkingardens is a website devoted to those who care about gardening and garden design as a serious endeavor - a concern rarely voiced in the U.S. and, from what I read there, not in the UK either.

(Photo: Charles Hawes from Thinkingardens website)

Delicate complexity of soil

Over 75% of the plants living on the earth benefit from symbiotic relationships with small, microscopic fungi attached to their roots. The fungi are referred to as micorrhiza (my-core-i-zuh). Though we usually can't see them - they are under ground and are very small - their beneficial effects on plants are real and substantial. One major benefit is an increase in delivery of phosphorus to the root system.

One of the less well attended presentations at last week's Native Plants in the Landscape conference at Millersville University in Pennsylvania was "Micorrhizal Fungi: Hidden Friends of Plants." Dr. Roger Tai Koide of Pennsylvania State University described recent research that clearly demonstrates the benefit of such relationships to most plants.

The fungi grow very small, even microscopic, filaments - called hyphae (hi-fee) - that extend from the roots of plants into surrounding soil. These filaments, in effect, function as extensions of a plant's roots, and can effectively expand the root's surface area thousands of times. The photo above shows the white hyphae extending our from a root.

Does a gardener need to know about micorrhiza? Probably not, if you measure value only in direct utilitarian terms. But there is an important lesson to be learned from this bit of knowledge: our environment is extraordinarily complex and we can easily disrupt it if we blunder forward in ignorance, without considering what we do not know. There is a delicately balanced, invisible ecosystem underground that demands respect, perhaps even reverence.

Actually, there is one practical application for this knowledge, and there are probably many more. The highly invasive plant, garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), damages micorrhiza. Why this is remains a mystery. In addition to its ability to completely overwhelm native plant communities and to form a virtual monoculture over the ground surface, at least in North America, it has insidious underground effects, damaging the symbiotic relationships that benefit many other plant species... yet another reason to support efforts to eradicate garlic mustard from our environment.

There is another mystery too. In its native European habitats, garlic mustard does not have this effect!

Native plants: gardening without guilt

This is the first year I've come away from the Native Plants in the Landscape conference without feeling I am a total outsider, possibly even a spy, in a nest of native purists. (Just got back from the conference, held June 5 through 7 at Millersville University in Pennsylvania.) The native plant rattle in the American gardening community can be so extreme I hadn't realized before there are many, like me, who occupy a middle ground, even among conference attendees.

C. Colston Burrell's opening presentation on the 20th Century Native Plant Movement in America was a refreshing, highly entertaining, and appropriately generalist take on this sometimes politically charged subject. Yes, native plants are important to maintaining local and regional ecosystems. No, we don't have to plant only natives so long as we are responsible and don't use species proven to be highly invasive and disruptive to the environment. Yes, aesthetics is a valid concern in gardening. After all, humans are part of the ecosystem too; we get to have a say. Yes, it's hard to define "native." But, no, the arrival of white Europeans on American shores isn't a good basis for a valid definition. Regional differences in plants, even plants of the same species, and local genetic provenance, are much more important.

This conference attracts numerous professional garden designers, experienced gardeners, and nursery men and women specializing in native plants, so the level of discourse tends to be quite high. I hope to report on one or two of the more specialized sessions I attended in another posting. I particularly enjoyed Don Knezick's "Genetic Integrity of Native Plants: Provenance is Forever" and Dr. Roger Tai Koide's "Mycorrhizal Fungi: Hidden Friends of Plants."

A highlight of this conference is the native plant sale, and it's one of the best. Nurseries from eastern Pennsylvania down into the Virginias offer perennials, shrubs and trees, many of which are rare in trade and difficult to find. I came back with four winterberry hollies (Ilex verticillata) - nothing rare in that selection but needed in my garden nevertheless, five Iris versicolor of sufficient size to divide into ten plants to join my late May/early June iris splash, two sizeable copper irises (Iris fulva) to go by the pond, two "Dolls eyes" baneberries (Actaea pachypoda) for the woodland garden, one Sagittaria latifolia to go into the pond, and ten Meehania cordata to try out as groundcover in the woodland. Okay, I confess, there's nothing particularly rare in my selections, but other offerings included Moosewood (Acer pennsylvanicum), various native gingers (formerly asarum, now hexastylis), all sorts of big leaf magnolias, Jeffersonia diphylla, and on and on.

If you live within driving distance of Millersville, consider the conference in 2009.

"English Gardens"

New Hope, Pennsylvania is just across the Delaware from my house ... in Bucks County (oft referred to as "Big Bucks" County). There is an annual garden tour, only one of which I've attended. There wasn't much to see. This year two "English gardens" are among those featured. I'm not sure what is meant by the term "English garden" in this context, but it may have something to do with an undefined yearning for something more than the typical American lawn with foundation plantings, or simply with pretension. I can imagine boxwoods and some elements of formality. If English gardens belong anywhere, they belong in England... and perhaps not even there.

Chelsea links

I don't usually follow the Chelsea Flower Show but this year I stumbled on Cleve West's blog reporting the day by day building of his show garden. To get a feel for what it's like to be a part of this manic event, go to Tilth & Tillage and read about how it all comes together. To see the best of the gardens, and get an amazing 360 degree tour of each one, click this Telegraph link. You'll also find an interview with Tom Stuart-Smith, who got Best in Show, I think for the 6th time. Regardless of how you feel about Chelsea, you'll find some beautiful gardens here.

Gardens Illustrated has a podcast interview with noted garden critic Tim Richardson, garden designer Dan Pearson, and Chelsea judge Andrew Wilson.

(The photo is of a frog in my pond.)

Cicada on Brunnera

Caught this cicada lolling on a brunnera leaf this morning. I'm certainly no cicada expert, but May 25 seems very early for cicadas.

Garden Diary: Rain, sun, the rising tide

After a week of cold and rain, the weather is shifting and we have a sunny windy day. The light comes in two ways - reflected, glinting off the flat surfaces of leaves, and filtered through the forest trees. This morning it's easy to see how medieval artisans "got" stained glass windows. (I tried to take a picture but my camera isn't up to recording qualities of morning light, thus these substitute photos.)


The last sparkles of the Brunnera are being over taken by feverfew above. The plants are swelling like a rising tide, much too fast, and many will flop if not restrained, cut back, or slowed by a dry spell. Time to get out the shears and prune the feverfew, cat mint and other smaller (should be) plants that will have time to thicken up and bloom later, in June.


The new Darmera peltata by the pond are liking the wet. I hope to transform this muddy edge with an herbal necklace before midsummer. By next year, I hope the pond will be a like a brown oculus reflecting the surrounding plants (think different heights and structures) and the sky. Well... perhaps oculus isn't the right work for my brown pond. We'll see.

Garden Diary: Speaking of Groundcovers

The experiment continues in the main garden - the wet prairie behind the house. Now that our cedar forest has become an open clearing, the light and air is changing the habitat that existed before. Though it makes for a rather messy look in spring and early summer, I'm leaving the established plant colonies such as bracken, sensitive fern, cinquefoil, violets, and equisetum to do their thing. In the newly opened spaces, ruderals (pioneer plants) have seeded in, and I'm leaving them too. I expect many of them to be here for several years until the more competitive species take over. With the passing years, and some judicious weeding to control such undesirable behavior as seeding into the crowns of established plants, I hope the natural process of plant succession and competition will result in the groundcover layer simplifying itself over time.

Here are some pictures of what's happening right now. First, a blanket of equisetum punctuated by a native Scirpus.


Though the equisetum is highly invasive, I like its soft, fuzzy effect seen from a distance, and its primitive character close up. I may as well; I couldn't get rid of it without some highly destructive intervention. And the Scirpus grows so large, and so profusely, it also behaves as a groundcover though on a much larger scale.

In wetter areas, sensitive fern, another "legacy" plant, slowly spreads. I guess it would be classified as a stress tolerator. It lives in very wet places where most other plants would languish. You can even see some pooled water here from a recent rain. Not an example of well drained soil!


Bracken and cinquefoil have covered this corner with two levels.


I know bracken has a reputation for being a real thug, but in my garden environment it is rather well behaved. And it's such an attractive structural plant I'd be happy to have more. In front of it is a carpet of cinquefoil in bloom. Not a beautiful plant, unless closely examined, but useful for covering large areas quickly.

Plants I want to suppress are multiflora rose and poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans). They have no desirable qualities, in my view, and seem able to compete with just about anything in the plant kingdom, so I'm driven to digging and using Roundup in my struggle with these invaders.

Most of the large prairie-type plants I've inserted into the groundcover matrix - Eupatorium purpureum, Filipendula rubra 'Venusta', Liatris pycnostachya, Rudbeckia maxima, various Silphiums, and large grasses - have no trouble penetrating this dense cover. By midsummer, they'll begin to dominate the landscape and the less attractive lower level will disappear into the background.

Garden Diary: Two Exotic Groundcovers

Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) and myrtle (Vinca minor) make a striking carpet at this time of the year. The myrtle has been in bloom for about a month. Only in the past week have the colonies of Sweet woodruff popped into bloom. Both are considered invasive exotics, but at Federal Twist they coexist happily, seemingly without affecting the native carexes, the numerous seedling trees, or the highly invasive, but native, poison ivy.

I know the myrtle was introduced over 40 years ago because William Hunt's architectural plans called for extensive plantings to control erosion on the steep banks surrounding the house, which was built in 1965. I welcome its periwinkle blue flowers every spring, especially in the wilder woods in front of the house. I have no idea when the Sweet woodruff was introduced; it has formed several distinct colonies that, I admit, seem to grow a little larger each year.

The thick mats of mixed myrtle and Sweet woodruff remind me of William Martin's "layering" planting technique, as he described it in his Vista lecture recently in London (see post below). At his well known garden, Wigandia, in Australia, he gardens on the side of a volcano, in soil and environmental conditions vastly different from mine. His technique does not involve horizontal, visual layering of plants as in a border, but rather vertical layering. He covers the ground thickly with a low, even "thuggish" (to use his word) kind of planting, then grows the larger, more structural plants through the layer covering the ground. I was happy to hear his description because I'm trying to use a similar technique in my garden on Federal Twist Road.

The mat of Sweet woodruff and myrtle is one preexisting example of this "layering" technique given to me by Edith Howeth, the first and previous gardener at Federal Twist. I'm experimenting with other combinations in the main garden at back, where conditions are different - more open, very wet, and sunny.

If only ...

If only this ephemeral stream were about 400 feet east of its present location, I'd have it in my garden. Am I a hopeless romantic?

Well not in every way... I got Tim Richardson's new Avant Gardeners ("50 Visionaries of the Contemporary Landscape") last week. With its emphasis on conceptual gardens, it's a strong antidote to lingering romanticism. Richardson's writing is, as usual, stimulating, full of ideas, and a delight. I won't try to evaluate the book because I haven't finished it. Unfortunate that it's not a larger format though; it's rather hard to see the point with such tight page layouts. And I definitely find the graphic design to be lacking, really dated (think psychedelic 60s). It doesn't do the content justice. Nevertheless, I recommend you buy the book. The essays alone are worth the price.

Hawk in Dogwood and Alien Exotics

Sitting in the study overlooking the garden is like being in a tree house. This morning a hawk perched in one of the dogwoods outside the house. He didn't know he was sitting just above alien alliums about to burst into bloom, nor did he care, if hawks care.

Garden Diary: Battling Japanese Stilt Grass

Every summer an invasive grass fills my garden like a gently rising flood. Until mid-summer it's hardly noticeable, then suddenly it springs up to two or three feet, thick masses that lean over and flatten in rain, literally swamping smaller plants. The annual guerrilla action of Japanese Stilt Grass (Microstegium vimineum) sends me into periods of depression and despair alternating with hope for its eventual eradication.

Most agricultural research in the U.S. offers limited measures for control of large areas of infestation. There are three methods for control: use of herbicides, hand pulling late in the season (late to limit time for regeneration from the seed bank), and mowing late in the season (early mowing seems to promote rapid regrowth and seed formation).

Fortunately this is an annual grass, so it should be controllable with a preemergent or some other herbicide applied later in the season. Since I rely on seeded plantings to be an important part of my garden, particularly for weed suppressing groundcover, I'm reluctant to use a preemergent. For the same reason, I'm reluctant to use herbicide later in the season.

Last summer I tried mowing in early fall, but not early enough I'm afraid, because seed formation already had begun. This summer, I'll try hand pulling, which is quite easy in wet ground but a real chore over an acre, followed by mowing. Yes, I'll also mow the first year seeded plants, but most of those will probably not be harmed and will return the following year with more vigor.

If anyone who reads this has had any success eradicating Japanese Stilt Grass, I'd appreciate hearing how you did it.

And that photo at the top? It's not my garden.

Gardening with a Legacy: A Talk at the Museum of Garden History

In North America, we certainly have no Sissinghurst or Stowe, and relatively few gardens notable enough to give great concern about how they will survive after the passing of their owners. Nevertheless, consideration of the challenges presented by such gardens can reveal much about what is of value, and worth preserving, in a garden, even a new one, and what isn't.

Gardens Illustrated has made available a new podcast of a talk by Sir Roy Strong, former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Fergus Garrett of Great Dixter. Here is GI's summary: "Sir Roy Strong, who created his garden The Laskett together with his late wife, and Fergus Garrett, head gardener at Great Dixter in Sussex (home to the late Christopher Lloyd) talk about their experiences of gardening with a legacy. They consider whether a garden can be expected to live beyond the life of its owner, and how to move a garden forward while respecting its heritage."

To download the podcast, go directly to the GI website. This podcast is near the bottom of the page.

William Faulkner's Garden

I like the melancholy atmosphere of derelict gardens, even waste places like abandoned rail lines, old roadways, forgotten graveyards. Next to our house on Federal Twist Road clumps of daffodils, a huge deutzia, and tangles of white wisteria make it clear this was the site of someone's house many years ago. I haven't yet found physical evidence of the house, but an old well pump, probably in the front of the house, and a pond, likely at the back, suggest where it could have been. The whole area is so overgrown with multiflora rose it's difficult to explore. Nevertheless, it's a pleasant place to spend a few moments of contemplation.

Two springs ago, on a visit to see my ailing mother and my sister in Oxford, Mississippi, I stopped by to visit William Faulkner's house, Rowanoak. The house has been restored to the genteel shabbiness appropriate to the time of his residence there. The gardens around it haven't, which I'm grateful for. But they show someone's attention to a sort of formal design long ago, with old brick paths and brick lined beds, a double row of cedars along the path to the entrance, and rather gappy formal hedges of privet. Several outbuildings, most probably dating from the 19th century, add architectural interest.

The garden probably was never brought to a state of more than middling finish, but it has a peacefulness and charm, and offers a sense of privacy and security, hard to find in our 21st century world. Let's call it a strolling garden, a contemplative garden.

It's possible to make a circuit around the house, where you see remnants of old shrub plantings - hollies, hydrangea, hostas, but with no discernible plan, a simple maze-like arrangement of waist-high privet hedges in the back, a wisteria growing on a post, dogwoods (Cornus florida), red buds (Cercis canadensis), camellias.




Off one side of the house you can walk through open clearings surrounded by woods, where Faulkner kept his horses. These small fields are mowed and make a pleasant stroll to the edge of the woods where a massive grape vine (probably muscadine) writhes like a serpent in the Laocoon.

In more open space nearer the house, the cedars have been trimmed high, leaving irregular clouds of green at the tops of narrow soaring columns, dark against the blue spring sky.

Spicebush (Lindera benzoin)

Early to mid April the woods all along Federal Twist Road are sparkling with hundreds of Lindera benzoin in bloom. These native shrubs have an attractive open structure, spicy fragrance on a warm day (thus the moniker 'Spice bush'), and a multitude of very small flowers that make a dramatic impression where they grow in sufficient numbers. Warm yellow foliage in fall, too. Fortunately, deer avoid them.

This is a great substitute for the overused and, in my opinion, garish forsythia.

Is anybody listening?

I'm curious. Am I the only person in the United States who listens to the Vista lecture series podcasts? I find them stimulating, even exciting. They are a window onto another world for me, and they continue to give more even on a second, third, fourth listening. Do Americans think about their gardens; I mean think about more than how to do this, how to do that, how to make a stunning outdoor garden room. Has gardening been ruined by our garden industry, our "design/build" garden contractors, the big nurseries that offer "garden design" as a sideline service to sell more plants and more hardscaping, the general striving after big bucks?

Do we have any gardens like Veddw House, where Anne Wareham and Charles Hawes ask visitors to criticize their garden, invite writers such as Noel Kingsbury to critically assess and publish their opinions? (The Veddw site has links to critical writing on a number of other gardens. If you've been admiring the stunning photos of the prairie and steppe gardens at Lady Farm in Somerset, read about Anne's and Stephen Anderton's visit on the Veddw site. You'll be surprised.)

Yes, all of us are excited watching the snow drops and crocuses bloom after a long, dreary winter, but do we need 20 million closeup digital photos of them on blogs around the world? Surely there's more to be written about than that.

Vista Lecture Series Podcasts from Gardens Illustrated: Rozsika Parker on Gender and Gardening

Gardens Illustrated has published the third podcast in the Vista lecture series, organized by Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury to complement publication of Vista: The Culture and Politics of Gardens, a collection of provocative essays on - yes, you guessed it! Gardening. It's available in the U.S. on Amazon.com.

From the GI website: "Writer and psychotherapist Rozsika Parker joins hosts Noel Kingsbury and Tim Richardson to consider if men and women garden differently. This is a lively discussion with lots of contributions from the floor bringing up aspects of history, culture, genetics and economics both in terms of the amateur and professional gardener alike."

To download the podcast, go directly to the GI website. It's near the bottom of the page.

Memory in the Garden

I've cut down the trees and created a circular clearing in the woods. With views into the forest all around, my new garden has to be a close friend with 80-foot white pines, hickories, red maples, beech, cedar - deer, wild turkey, foxes, frogs - all kinds of flora and fauna. And it has to thrive in wet clay.

Wet Prairie

I've chosen to make a variation on a wet prairie, an ecological model appropriate to my site, and one that probably can sustain the visual and aesthetic interest I want. I'm not at all certain wet prairies have existed in New Jersey in historical times, but I do know prairies existed in the east of the North American continent. Peter Heus' admirable description of a wet prairie remnant in West Virginia is one well documented source.

Mine will be maintained by cutting and periodic burning, with no soil improvement other than what the plants, animals and insects do themselves. I'm using many natives, but also exotics if they grow well in my conditions, and taking a wait and see approach, letting the plants find their favored positions, and intervening only to keep harmony. It's to be a garden "in tune with nature." In regard to sense of place, that's my garden's story from a practical and ecological perspective.

Sense of Place

But sense of place is broader than environmental or ecological setting. The garden also exists in cultural and historic contexts, and I do want to consider those aspects of place, in a subtle way that does not shout for attention - and certainly not in a pedantic or dry academic fashion.

The word “historic” is freighted with negative connotations for many and can be off-putting. In a lecture on history in the garden, given as part of the Vista lecture series in London (see this link), noted UK landscape architect Kim Wilkie suggests that substituting the word "memory" for "history" makes it much easier to think about these issues in more personal terms: "I think what we need to do is understand what a landscape is about, the ghosts that are there, the feelings that are there, the memories that are there ... It is looking at the daubs and the tears and the hieroglyphs and allowing that, hopefully, just to give you the charge to continue the story..." Wilkie's analogy to an old manuscript is appropriate. Like a palimpsest, it carries virtually invisible messages from the past.

Blue Jingle

The rock around here is called "blue jingle." It has a bluish color and makes a metallic clink when you strike one stone against another. The scientific name is argillite, a sedimentary stone formed at the bottom of ancient lakes in the Triassic period, about 200 million years ago. (You can see it in the photo on the right, exposed in the bed of Lockatong Creek.) This stone does not fracture easily, and it is extensive in the geology of this area, making for water supply aquifers that yield comparatively little water. More important for gardeners, it slows percolation of water into the soil, keeping rainwater and snow melt near the surface, and creating a huge amount of runoff during storms. As a consequence of the qualities and distribution of blue jingle, we garden in shallow, wet soil on Federal Twist Road. Streams run full, like torrents, after heavy rain.

So the conditions under which I garden and my plants must grow are ordained by the geological history and the climate of this place. I accept this and work with it.

History and Culture

White Europeans have lived in these hills for over 350 years; they have left many artifacts. They cleared their fields of stones, making long, intersecting stone rows that separated the fields. These rows extend throughout the surrounding woods today. My property is bounded by long, capacious rows of argillite, which I'm using to build dried laid stone walls that are, in a real sense, monuments to the local geology, and to the European settlers who first cleared the land of rocks to make it farmable.

The aboriginal people of this area, the Lenni Lenape, lived here for many thousands of years, far longer than we of European descent, yet left hardly a trace. It's too easy to forget their long stewardship of the land, and their gradual loss of their place and way of life. The absence of signs of their existence speaks loudly of how they lived and passed from here. Their memory should be marked by some silent sign.

So too the newcomers, the builders of our house, the Howeths, who asked a notable local architect, William Hunt, to design it in 1964. I have 35mm slides of William Hunt surveying the site just a few days before JFK was assassinated, and many others showing open fields dotted with small junipers, and the original landscaping. Little is left of that but the images, several trees planted around the house, and a carpet of myrtle that remains from that time.

My Garden’s Story

This is the rough material for my garden's story. As I learn to read the land, watch the movement of water over its surface, observe the changes in vegetation with increased sunlight, imagine how the land has changed over historic as well as geologic time, and learn more about the human past, I also have begun to see a design, an abstract structure emerging - first the circular shape of the clearing that is the main feature of the garden, then the lines, circles and rounded forms that signaled life in the forest - curved trails, straight stone walls, meandering paths, and the circular blot of a dead fire.

Garden Design

When I first started this garden I was not aware of its past, only of the shapes that work naturally here. Taking the great circle of the clearing in the woods as a pattern, I repeated it at different scales to begin to create structure.

The simple plan shows the garden design emerging from repetition of lines, curves, and circles. The two circles shown in violet at the front of the house, one of gravel, the other of dry laid stone, screen the entrance and provide raised areas with relatively dry planting conditions.

These are reflected in the long curved path running from the front of the house around to the main garden area in the back.

The curved path is reflected, in turn, in the curve of another stone wall to the left, running around the end of the house and across the back, all of this at the base of a mound on which the house rests, to keep it above the surrounding wetness. As you walk the path to the back, this curved wall opens the view to reveal the main garden space, and creates a kind of momentum pulling you along from front to back.

Across the garden from the house, a second curved stone wall (shown below), much lower than the one at the base of the house, visually encloses the garden space and helps define it as separate from the forest behind. The large dotted arrow on the plan indicates the most distant view out through the forest wall surrounding the garden but, in fact, all views are into forest.

At the back of the garden, opposite the pond and balancing it visually, could be a final feature that exists only in concept and is still subject to change. It could be a circle about 25 feet in diameter, with a flat stone perimeter perhaps three to four feet wide. The center of the circle would be planted with native Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans). The stone would be argillite. This would be a visually prominent feature, and would acknowledge the people who originally inhabited this ridge above the Delaware.

Garden Pavilion?

Shot this porch from a moving car in Canton, Mississippi. Great columns. What an interesting idea for a garden pavilion. It might work in my garden in the woods. What about yours?