View from Federal Twist

A Wall Like No Other: Gardino Borghese

2012-01-27T00:14:00.000-05:00

We're having quite a mild winter this year ... so far. This morning I even saw hellebore flowers emerging just outside the living room window at Federal Twist. This unusual climate is, in a way, worse than a winter of heavy snow and howling winds, which would be more appropriate and comforting. I can imagine the pleasure of a roaring fire with a nor'easter blowing outside, but these unnatural warm spells make me think even more longingly of spring. We on the Northeast coast of the US know spring won't really come until well into May.

So I'm diverting myself with memories of a spring visit in Italy almost a decade ago. And I'm finding some surprises.

I took these photos at the Borghese Gardens with my first digital camera. In looking through them, and doing a little Internet research, I discovered a garden device I've never been aware of before.

It's kind of like a three-dimensional, paradisaical, stand in for the conventional wall. A way to separate public from private space that's elegant, delightful, and gentle--no hurt feelings because you're being kept out.

Cardinal Scipione Borghese began the Villa Borghese (now Galleria Borghese) and gardens in 1605 as a kind of 17th century party palace, a villa suburbana on what was then the outskirts of Rome. His uncle was Pope Paul V, so he had status, money, good connections and, I imagine, many "friends." The building was designed more to display his artworks (he was a patron of Bernini) than as a residential retreat. He had many other residences for that purpose.

So it was intended as a kind of spectacle, a place for display of art, good taste, the prizes of wealth, and appropriately, a good deal of attention was given to creating a rather spectacular garden setting, something to dazzle the Roman glitterati of the early 17th century.

From very early in its history the public was allowed access to the front gardens of the villa, and that tradition became so well established it continued for centuries. But the other side of the villa was private. The Villa Borghese handles the difference between public and private in a beautiful way. To assure that privacy, linear gardens extended out from either side of the main villa. These were not open to the public, and they prevented access to the private, backside of the villa.

Your can see the layout--like a giant baton--below (courtesy of Google Earth), clearly separating the public side in the lower part of the photo from the private area in the upper half--a much more attractive solution than a garden wall.

To the right is the Garden of Bitter Oranges (Gardino dei Melangoli). The oranges are planted in pots, and at the time I was there--the end of April--they were swimming in a sea of irises. All the gardens immediately surrounding the house are still quite formal and geometric. Interestingly, the surrounding Borghese Gardens were redesigned in the "English" style from the 18th into the 19th century, and clearly imitate an English landscape garden, in contrast to the baroque gardens immediately around the villa.

Functioning like a startlingly ornate, three-dimensional garden wall, the Gardino dei Melangoli blocks public access to the back of the villa, which as you can see below, has no grand staircase, only a simple entrance for private use. Here too the garden is very formal, with box parterres planted with bulbs and annuals for seasonal flower display.

This private garden was also used for display of sculpture, though the grandest sculpture was safely housed inside, where it was protected from the elements.

This portion of the garden, which opens to the larger (now "English" style) garden beyond, is amply proportioned and has wide gravel pathways. The sense of open space on this cool, sunny day was heightened by the feeling of enclosure, awakening a sense of an ancient open glade amid a forest of trees. Quite a contrast to the rather fussy flower plantings of the parterre.

Then at the other end of the villa is another linear garden, which also functions to separate the public from the private sides. This baroque aviary or vivarium was designed by Girolamo Rainaldi. John Evelyn called it "an Elysium of delight" in 1644 and wrote that the vivarium housed ostriches, peacocks, swans and cranes "and divers strange Beasts."

This is the other side of the vivarium. A second one was built later further down from the villa.

These last photos show that view looking out and walking away from the villa proper into the English landscape garden.

And eventually the gardens, located on the Pincio Hill, end at the Spanish Steps, where visitors can reenter the busy urban life of Rome.

Of course, I'd like to take some kind of lesson away from this, something that might further the development of my little garden in Brooklyn (not so far fetched; I recall seeing a brand of chewing gum in Italy with the name Brooklyn Bridge!). I suppose my lesson is that enclosure can actually create a sense of space by calling attention to its limits.

(I should credit Wikipedia for much of the historical information in this post, and for calling

my attention to the public and private aspects of the original Villa Borghese.)

Roman spring

2012-01-20T23:20:00.002-05:00

A recent comment from Ross Hamilton set me thinking about two "aquatic" features I remember with great fondness from visits to Rome ... Ross was writing about suggestions for an architectural feature in a masonry wall I had imagined constructing in my new Brooklyn garden ... "My only thought ... would be to have a screen that has a (large) architectural fragment at its centre, and perhaps at its base, a small pond? A fragment would fit nicely into the Brooklyn sense of place, I think. Think of moss and fern covered ruins in Italy."

I was feeling a little winter tired when I read this, and I immediately recalled two wonderful memories of Rome, even had these photos from my last visit to Rome, in 2003 (so long ago!) ... one at the Forum and another in the Vatican Museums, both of which seem to fit Ross' description of moss and fern covered ruins.

First the Forum, which was actually full of fascinating vegetation in early May ...

At the entrance to the Palatine Hill is this striking composition of ferns, mosses, a few callas, and I don't know what else, water seeping continually down through the mass of vegetation on rock. Is this a vertical garden from antiquity? I've always wondered whether this was created in more recent times, or perhaps started as a spring, its beauty recognized and "cultivated" over the centuries. It's quite large, maybe twenty or so feet tall, as I remember.

Whatever it is, it captured my fancy when I first saw it many years ago, long before I became a gardener, and has remained as a powerful visual memory. If you know anything about this "vegetable fountain," please let me know.

The other similar aquatic feature is in the Octagonal Courtyard in the Vatican Museums, the very courtyard where some of the most famous sculptures in western civilization reside--the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoon ...

So this is how I interpret Ross' suggestion for my Brooklyn garden. Crazy, I suppose. So very out of place to my mind. Even if something like this could be created in our climate, would it ever seem right? But what a wonderful fantasy!

Garden Diary: Speaking of geometry (footnote to previous post)

2012-01-16T00:02:00.002-05:00

I won't be doing anything like this since I won't see the garden from above. But food for thought.

A garden design from House and Garden in 1956, courtesy of Leaf magazine, via Anne Wareham, via Susan Cohan:

http://leafmag.tumblr.com/post/15726198647/a-vintage-patio-from-house-and-garden-february

Garden Diary: Reimagining the garden

2012-01-15T17:11:00.003-05:00

The external structure of the new room is up. Now I can see the pattern and geometry of the facade that will form the most prominent side of the garden--the entry side. The surprise is how very off center is the twelve-foot-wide door opening to the garden. (The doors are black, and their sharp definition against the rough masonry facade has a lot of visual punch.) The scale of the back wall in comparison to the door opening creates a simple but powerful geometry I can't ignore. It will be a dominant element in the garden.

The grand revelation. Now I can see the back wall of the new garden
room, and it demands reimagining the garden.

I'm remembering what I learned in the books of John Brookes about using a grid derived from the dimensions of the house, or a significant component of the house, to define the garden space. It appears I need to work with a series of rectangles--the rectangle of a single door, the rectangle consisting of the unit of four doors, and the rectangle formed by the back wall of the extension. And, of course, the position of the door opening within the wall itself, which will determine how the body moves out of the house into the garden, which in turn sets certain spatial and aesthetic expectations.

The garden has to 'grow' out of this nest of shapes, and invite the human body to enter ... what? To be determined ...

I don't intend to abandon earlier concepts, those described here, and here, and here. But I do have some rethinking to do.

I'm quite happy about this. More challenges, more problems to solve. More fun!

Garden Diary: Down on River Road

2012-01-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

Hey! Look at this... yet another post on my city garden to be. I'll try to remember to label these "Garden Diary" so potential readers will know obsessive navel gazing continues in this quarter.

I caught sight of this clearly man-made planting driving by on the river road a couple of weeks back--a grove of sycamores underplanted with boxwoods.

Another thought for the city garden. But instead, I'd have a small grove of Sunburst Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos 'Sunburst') underplanted with box. With one important addition ... spots of randomized perennial planting worked into the box matrix. The surface might be gravel, or gravel with stone.

Not exactly copied "from nature" since this is a utilitarian planting in a nursery, but one example of the place of chance and contingency in garden making.

I'm recalling Dan Pearson describing the planting technique he developed for the newly landscaped area in the enormous Millennium Forest project on Hokkaido in Japan. On a Gardens Illustrated podcast, he described the development of "modular" planting groups that were used to cover a large area of newly created garden, filling the space between the public entrance facilities and the more distant forest.

The hosts of the discussion, Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury, had brought up the idea of random planting, which is having a great surge of interest among gardeners in central Europe, and they asked the panel of Dan Pearson, Cleve West, and Andy Sturgeon what they thought about this concept, and were they using it in their work.

The following is my attempt to transcribe spoken dialogue and it tends to ramble a bit, but I think you get the point. Describing the making of a meadow of cultivated plants that took inspiration from regenerating woodland floor at the Millennium Forest, Dan said, "We made about 18 zones, which were large drifts ... that may have only had 5 or 6 plants ... and then I worked out what I thought [would work] ... a guess, because I didn't know what this climate was going to do with this plant combination I was putting together ... I'd choose maybe one emergent plant that would be very tall and fine ... and one plant that would be a groundcover, something for early in the season, something for late ... I came up with this system whereby the plants were put together in this very random arrangement that was an absolutely fascinating exercise ..."

The important point is the use of random planting combinations, and having the willingness and knowledge to follow the changes in the plantings as they thrive or not in their various microclimates. Here are some images of the Millennium Forest project on the Dan Pearson Studio web site.

So this concept I'm thinking about for my new city garden is very much not about the crude, ugly layout I will show below, but about a process whose outcome is uncertain, and demands continual engagement and willingness to commit to working with what comes. (Does this really differ from any other kind of gardening, I ask myself. Not really.) I realize the process Dan Pearson describes is taking place on an extremely large scale, not in a small garden, but I'd like to think about how random planting might work in the smaller context.

I suppose it's best to define what is meant by "random" in the context of a small garden. In this case, not a totally random distribution of plants, but a selection of plants "right" for the conditions and then a kind of ad-libbing, grouping and positioning plants without a preconceived planting plan in mind, working in the moment. This is more easily said than done, but an interesting way of engaging with the garden design process.

My intent would be to use a limited pallet of durable, long-season plants grouped with box balls to create a unified visual effect. For a start, the list might include tough plants I've had success with in the past--Bergenia, Helleborus foetidus, Epimedium, various Carex and ferns, even an occasional tall plant--Thalictrum, Angelica gigas, Inula sonnenspeer, Sanguisorba tenuifolia alba--if I could work them in.

I'm no graphic artist or draftsman, and I'm limited by my use of Excel as garden drawing software, but here is a crude representation of the concept I'm talking about. The groupings and distribution are not intended in any way to represent a final design. Only to suggest a concept.

Two or three small chairs, Bertoia chairs as one example, might be moved around the garden as wanted, so the gardener and visitors can sit in private, where neighbors can't see through the tree canopy. The chairs would need to function as sculpture.

Vines and groundcover plants, plants I probably haven't even yet imagined, might go into the narrow strips along the fence lines.

Though this is in no way a garden "design," I find it an interesting concept to contemplate during the coming cold months. I'm thinking this would involve continuous change to more or less degree, room for lots of trial and error, or simply change or not, as desired. Not so much a garden concept perhaps as a way of living.

And of course all this could be brought to a full stop and fixed to some degree, whenever necessary or desired.

Hilltop

2012-01-07T11:25:00.002-05:00

Near sunset on a hilltop near Oxford, Mississippi, early January 2012.

White oak (Quercus alba), a growing population of American beech (Fagus grandiflora), Sweetgum (Liquidambar Styraciflua) are the most notable trees, though the woods are full of vines and undergrowth, and many seedlings, especially beech. This is a forest in transition.

I spent my formative years here and this landscape speaks to me. This is William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, and the myths he created still linger in these hills and in my memory.

"Memory believes before knowing remembers, believes longer than recollects,

longer than knowing even wonders."

- William Faulkner, Light in August

My left foot

2011-12-30T09:59:00.001-05:00

I've looked everywhere for a supplier of these pavers. I saw these on 17th between Park Ave. South and Irving Place, just across from Union Square Park. For scale, I put my left foot (shoe, actually) into the picture. About four and a half inches across. Squarish cobble stones, used in historic areas throughout New York City. If you know where I can buy these, let me know. Please.

It's all about scale. Like my foot defines the scale of the stone surface around it, measuring the extension of the paved surface, giving rough dimensions of 6 by 8 feet in abstract measure, but more significantly, a feeling for the space in human terms, relating the space to the human body, my body.

The more I think about how to design my new city garden, the more I find myself wrestling with the concept of scale. In memory, things seem larger than they really are. My 20- by 40-foot space is smaller than I think. Much smaller. I look at similar spaces, and see the need to cut back, edit, make choices, simplify.

So I need to start with my foot, then my height, my body, how I move in the space. I need to walk the garden space more. Sit out there. Get the feel of the space, the objects around it.

I like the scale of these stones, their elegant patterns, the way their small size can play off larger slabs of stone, contrast with gravel, I like their texture; they break up the space and carry the eye toward detail.

Garden Diary: Small city garden

2011-12-21T22:36:00.000-05:00

We're building a new room on the ground floor of our Brooklyn house and intend to move there when construction is complete (no, we're not leaving Federal Twist; this is an alternate abode). I've posted before about the opportunity this gives me to have a city garden for the first time in over ten years. Construction will probably last at least four months, so I have time for long winter deliberation.

Gledistia triacanthos 'Sunburst'

The garden must fit into a very constrained space: approximately 20 by 40 feet. The survey below shows how the garden (the green rectangle) will fit into the narrow 20 by 100 foot lot.

I think it's important to keep the physical constraints of a 19th century Brooklyn house and lot in mind because the spatial layout affects the emotional "feel" of the garden space, and will influence the character and form the garden takes. Think linear. You enter the house at the front, walk down a hallway, and enter the small apartment entrance chamber at midpoint, with the bedroom to the left (at the front of the house) and a dining room then living room (the new room under construction) at the back, looking out onto what will be the garden. The open plan of the dining and living area (the existing back wall of the house will be removed) will eliminate any obstruction of the view. A 12-foot wide opening with sliding glass doors to the garden will be almost like a beacon, immediately pulling the eyes to the back and into the garden. The walls will probably be in dark colors, further focusing attention on the garden.

First a dose of reality. Here is the garden as it presently exists--a construction site. I have to try to imagine the space wiped clean, new fencing all around, delivery of tons of gravel, stone and wood, which must be brought through the house during construction (too destructive after it's complete).

The remaining space will become the garden. This plan below is conceptual, but there are some absolutes. Privacy requires a complete fence layered with vines, a relatively high spreading tree canopy of fine foliage to allow light through, thus the Sunburst Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos 'Sunburst'), and perhaps some strategically placed bamboo. I want water to catch the sunlight and sky, and at grade level to allow a good view from inside the house. A very low deck, really just wooden paving, not so much for actually sitting in the garden, though I will do that if I find enough solitude and quite, but more for the conceptual possibility of sitting in the garden, that is, to see a sitting area and be able to imagine sitting there looking back from the garden and to create a sense of "felt" space. I'm also wedded to the idea of using blue stone paving in certain areas; it's the traditional Brooklyn brownstone paving material. And plenty of gravel through which I may plant some strategically placed specimens, perhaps Bergenia, a small grass or carex, equisetum ...

I'm pretty sure I must have a wavy box hedge in the shade of the south wall. As Peter Holt, a garden designer cyber friend has pointed out, its dark green will contrast nicely with the golden foliage of the Gleditsia. I also want fall color, so I'm considering a small, heavily fruiting crab apple tree, even though I'd prefer to have an uninterrupted Gleditsia canopy of delicate, light, airy foliage. If I could fit in a Magnolia delavayi, I would. Time will tell.

While I have a clear idea of what I want, I think I should also consider one or more options far outside my immediate preferences, so I'm thinking about a pared down, simpler, and more formal garden of regularly spaced Gleditsias, a simple rectangular pool, and an at-grade paved area, probably of concrete or blue stone squares. At back a major feature, perhaps a red masonry wall hiding a utility space. This would be more of a strolling garden, a place for a quick breath of fresh air.

This concept doesn't work well in plan view, so here is its inspiration as elevation--Paley Park in Manhattan--but without the multimillion dollar waterfall wall at the back! I'm intrigued by the linear patterns of the tree trunks against a contrasting background.

So what is my garden brief? I don't particularly care for cooking out or eating in the garden. I want it to be a visual ornament, a space for recreational aesthetics and contemplation. I want privacy from the many surrounding neighbors, at all levels. And I want a place for experiencing the life of plants throughout all four seasons.

And somewhere lurking in the background of these thoughts is Dan Pearson's Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City, not as a model to imitate, but as a way of being I'd like to find in this process of making a garden in Brooklyn.

Is that a lot to ask? Comments, new ideas, critiques welcome ...

Juan Grimm: a garden in Uruguay

2011-12-03T22:04:00.000-05:00

The four elements: fire, air, earth, water. Inspiration for many a garden, but especially appropriate for this garden by Juan Grimm, the Chilean garden and landscape designer, on the strikingly beautiful southern coast of Uruguay, a place that is made of fire (as brilliant sun), transparent air, sandy earth, and water everywhere.

The sunny, open site in coastal Uruguay, with wetlands, eucalyptus groves, and sandy meadowland (actually, Monte psamofilo, roughly the Uruguayan version of a sandy meadow near the ocean) sets the expectation for a naturalistic garden in keeping with the nature of the place, and this is such a garden, but one with a surprise. Near the house, the naturalistic elements are abstracted in a strict, severe geometry. The plant pallet throughout is lean.

We were taken to visit this garden by Amalia Robredo, a Uruguyan landscape designer, on a late summer day in February of this year. The sun was low, but bright and fiery. Amalia, who I knew from blogging and previous internet contact, had encouraged us to visit Uruguay when I told her we planned a trip to South America. She invited us to see her garden and other gardens in the area. With Amalia, we were a group of eight.

The expansive lawn, with many coves edged by naturalized plantings and hedgerows.

The garden has a simple layout of three principal parts -- a "land" side with extensive lawn, curvaceously edged by naturalistic hedgerows (or the South American equivalent) and two large, prominent eucalyptus groves ...

... the house and immediate garden surroundings, which bifurcates the garden into two parts ...

... and the lake side with a broad view of wetlands, stone walls, wooden walkways, terraces and an infinity pool, all offering a view of the wide, flat landscape over which the sun sets.

The back lawn quickly gives way to the lake and the wild landscape.

Grimm's garden is a lean, elegant use of space, mass, and light to reveal the nature of a unique and subtle landscape. Its appeal is more intellectual than sensual or emotional, an Apollonian garden of light not a Dionysian garden, with a seeming hardness that resists an easy sensual appeal. Light, water, wood, stone, plants all are elements manipulated for aesthetic effect, and subservient to a rather focused conceit. I'd call it a conceptual garden, an abstract paean to the sun, the air, and the beautiful coast of Uruguay. Not much for the plantaholic here.

Grimm's gardens are usually about integrating house and landscape, and the courtyard at the entrance to the house is what does that. It gives this garden an aesthetic tension and a meaning. The courtyard is highly geometric; it abstracts elements of the larger landscape into a pattern of lines and grids. A pergola-like feature carries that grid into three dimensions and structures the space immediately around the house.

Light is the magical element of this garden. We are looking through the house, from the shady side to the sunset side with lake and wetlands, here out of view.

This courtyard is like the "hinge" of the garden, physically mediating between the lawn side and the lake side, and accomplishing that mediation through an abstract conceit.

The fountain (left) couldn't be less fussy--a simple stack of rectangles with water gently bubbling into the pool.

Grimm has created a formal abstraction of the site's natural features in this highly geometric design--the concrete pads with miniature grass "lawns" floating on the water, the thin, vertical Juncus, which is massed in the lake behind the house, growing here like a representation or "model" of the real thing in the sharp-edged reflecting pool, the minimalist fountain of stacked rectangles gently bubbling water into the pool. All very understated, literally an abstract of garden concepts. Whereas the rest of the garden is full of curves and wavy lines, this part plays with squares and rectangles, integrating the straight edges and right angles of the house into the landscape, moving from solid boxes to airy pergola, to open walkways.

On first impression, the square concrete "pads" seemed out of place, breaking up the reflections in the pool as they do, almost too self-consciously intruding, demanding to be interpreted. And one can't overlook their humor: concrete lily pads with miniature lawns. It's clear they reference the lawn to one side of the house, as well as the lake and wetlands on the other side of the house. The concept is that simple. They're playful too. Convention would say you are invited to walk on them, but you can't. They are sized and spaced to make such an exercise very difficult (and you'd certainly damage the thin "lawn" beyond repair).

This abstract, gridded, model of a landscape gives way to informal naturalism on the lake side of the house. In contrast to the concrete lily pads, the pier extending into the lake is easily walkable. Here is our group taking the view back toward the infinity pool and the house.

A few eucalyptus trees relieve the severity of the landscape.

The infinity pool.

The passageways from one side to the other are more sensually appealing, lusher, suggesting more vigorous life, and it is only in these passageways moving around the structure of the house that the garden allows a feeling of profuse growth and seclusion to intrude. Here, a passage lined with a wall of planted ferns ...

And here the walkway out to the pool area.

I found this garden hard to warm to, and I've come to appreciate it more in retrospect than in the actual experience. It's a garden like none I've seen before. Walking it is like visiting a conceptual work of art, one that reveals little at first, like a puzzle asking you to tease out its meaning. It doesn't yield its rewards easily.

This garden is very different, at least in external appearance, from Grimm's more famous gardens on the rocky Pacific coast of Chile, with their precipitous verticals, houses nestled in rocks, dramatic changes in elevation, and distant views. But in both cases, there and here, in a gentle landscape characterized more by flatness than verticality, one can see the mind of a master designer at work, using materials at hand, materials appropriate to the place. And the result is challenging and rewarding.

Is it an enjoyable place to visit? Yes, through I do believe it offers its pleasures more fully to those who can experience it at different times of day, in different seasons, and especially at night under the huge starry dome of sky.

Paley Park by mobile phone

2011-11-26T17:05:00.001-05:00

Utter simplicity.

Paley Park is one of the great small urban spaces. A simple rectangle, a couple of steps up from the sidewalk of 53rd Street, the park is backed by a 20-foot high waterfall that drowns out the noise of midtown Manhattan, with ivy-covered walls on each side, and tall, elegant Locust trees reaching upward for the light. Hidden between tall buildings, the park is a visual stunner. As you walk by and glimpse it unexpectedly, the welcoming open space and the sound of the waterfall draw you in. The experience is like an epiphany.

I rarely pass it, but last week I attended a day long event at the Museum of Modern Art. That brought me by Paley Park, both coming and going. Cameraless on such occasions, I took these photos, near dusk, on my cell phone.

I first visited this park in 1973, discovering it during a lunch hour walk from my work place near the UN. I loved the park then and I still do now. I can't say it's changed much over those intervening 38 years. It's still magical.

Small tables and movable Bertoia chairs allow park users to arrange seating as they wish. It's informal, practicle, and beautiful.

The park was opened in 1967, a gift of William S. Paley, the chairman of CBS. Though it was designed by Zion and Breene Associates, Paley took a direct hand in the design.

Battery Bosque by mobile phone

2011-11-14T16:43:00.001-05:00

Although construction has virtually cut off direct access to the Piet Oudolf-designed Battery Bosque from the Financial District at the southern tip of Manhattan, you can still get to it from either end, most pleasingly via the Gardens of Remembrance (also designed by Oudolf), a contiguous walking parkway that extends the New Perennial-style plantings around the Battery waterfront. Finding myself downtown with time to spare a few days ago, I stopped by to see how the plantings are doing after a summer and fall of unusually severe weather.

Rather well, it appears. Here are some pics I took with my mobile phone camera.

Trycirtis - Toad Lily

Chasmanthium latifolium

Symphyotrichum oblongifolium 'October Skies'

Amsonia hubrichtii

Salvia uliginosa

Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Rosea' with Trycirtis

Trycirtis - Toad Lily

Sesleria autumnalis and Hydrangea quercifolia

Symphyotrichum again, with switch grass and much construction in the background

Silphium terebinthinaceum, Eryngium yuccafolium, Symphyotrichum

View along Gardens of Remembrance toward towers of Jersey City, World Trade Center site off to the right

The Bosque and Gardens continue to be well maintained and a credit to the care of the Battery Conservancy and its staff. The construction is unfortunate but necessary, I suppose, and once it's complete the Bosque will regain the openness it originally had. I continue to be amazed that herbaceous perennials can maintain form and structure so well in this exposed coastal environment.

Garden of Light

2011-11-10T10:33:00.001-05:00

"We garden with light!" - Anne Wareham

I thought the heavy, wet snow storm of October 28 (an extraordinary storm so early in the season) would have destroyed the garden, at least for the rest of this season, and for the most part it did.

But the clear air and low sun yesterday morning showed the power of light to transform even a scene of ruin into a kind of beauty--light, and the frame of a camera, can create appealing pictures, even of colorful destruction, but a walk through the garden in the morning light was something much more special than I had expected, more than a series of pretty pictures; it was more about atmosphere, context, and illusion.

Certainly no one would call this a "flower garden."

A garden of light, perhaps?

Even this scene of apparent devastation has quite a bit of interest, for me anyway. A kind of botanical archaeology of the garden year. If you click on the image to expand it, you may see what I mean: evocative contrasts of color, shape, and tone, like impasto on a canvas.

This morning encounter set me thinking about the limits many of us put on our use of the word "garden" because what I was experiencing, while certainly appealing to my senses and thought-provoking, wasn't typical of what most people seek in a garden visit. That is changing, I think, as more gardens imitate, or seek to replicate, the processes and "look" of wildness--gardens like the High Line in New York City or any of many gardens in the "New Perennials" style. As these new gardens become more popular, they may be leading to a gradual change in expectations.

The scene before me was of destruction in large measure--flattened plants, mangled grasses lying in heaps and broken spires, circles of green iris foliage looking for all the world like they had been exploded from their centers and laid out flat on the ground, leaning towers of rich leaden brown Joe Pye Weed, limber willows sprung back from their ice-covered flatness with feathery foliage still intact, the giant miscanthus badly battered but still mostly upright. It was a scene of colors and shapes clearly akin to a kind of abstract painting, some elements a result of intentional choice during planting of the garden, others completely random.

Grasses, even torn into such asymmetrical shapes, are one key to gardening with light. But not just any light; backlighting the tangled foliage makes such a damaged garden come to life. Grasses become like myriad and intricately shaped lanterns, catching the light, amplifying and transforming it through some process of inner refraction and building up of color effects into a bit of the ethereal, a hopeful glimpse into potential, the possibility of beauty in ruined things.

The opening of the woods as the leaves fall lets the light stream through in picturesque shafts of brilliance. Ironic though it may seem looking at these images, the pleasure of my garden is an old, and obvious, one, going back to the Picturesque tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Consider the effects of light, atmosphere, color, scene in the paintings of the Hudson River School, a vision of landscape, with a powerful dose of nostalgia for the past, that formed one of the most enduring myths of America. Much of my appreciation of the ruined garden is a similar romantic, even sentimental, feeling for "nature," an old and very traditional sense of landscape characteristic of the American experience with the natural world--also my penchant for seeing the garden as a theatrical stage set, though one that takes years to make and that constantly changes. Smoke and mirrors, a human kind of seeming magic.

The spaces in the woods created by the fall of the leaves and the newly penetrating light bring a sense of release after a summer of profuse growth. This seems appropriate to the time of year. In summer, the focus is on the garden; the woods are simply a wall, an enclosure. Now, with the shortening days, the light of the sun streaming through the woods makes me raise my eyes from the low plain of the garden to the bright depths of the surrounding trees, to the wooded world beyond the garden, reawakening awareness of the interconnections of garden and natural world, of human culture with nature, present with past.

The smells were sweet that morning. The fragrances of autumn will soon become the odors of fermentation, rich, earthy, savory, but this day the early processes of slowing growth and decomposition were sweetly reminiscent of freshly mown grass or fresh cut hay.

So this is my goodbye to the garden for another year.

Rick Darke on the High Line

2011-11-01T23:04:00.003-04:00

Rick Darke discusses the nature of wildness in a presentation sponsored by Friends of the High Line, in preparation for the start of work on Part 3 of the celebrated elevated park and garden in New York City. News was announced just today that Part 3, the most northern portion of the High Line around the West Side Rail Yards, will indeed move forward.

Rick Darke is one of the foremost writers on landscape design and horti-culture (with an emphasis on "culture") in the US, if not the world. He's also a superb photographer, and an exciting speaker and lecturer. Thanks to Friends of the High Line for sponsoring this series of talks, and especially for making a Rick Darke presentation available on the web.

Northern Spur in October 2010

These two photos of the Northern Spur Horticultural Preserve, taken a year apart, illustrate the complexity of wildness manifested over time. Watch the presentation for an explication of this process.

Northern Spur in October 2011

Is this the end?

2011-10-29T22:56:00.000-04:00

Is this the end of autumn?

Yesterday, when I heard snow was coming, I went out to look at the garden in the sunny morning light. Good that I did. When I woke this morning, a heavy, wet snow was falling. It continued all day, and with leaves still on, trees are coming down everywhere, many across roads. The landscape will surely be marked by this early snow storm for years to come.

The energy visible in these plantings is almost electric. Though it was a sad sight to see the flattened garden in this afternoon's dim light, I know next spring will bring it all back.

Progress of autumn

2011-10-26T22:59:00.000-04:00

The leaves are falling from the trees, opening the forest to the light for the first time since early spring ...

and revealing the garden in a new space ...

like an island floating toward winter ...

Talking Gardens

2011-10-18T22:49:00.000-04:00

Tim Richardson and Noel Kingsbury lead a talk with Dan Pearson, Cleve West, and Andy Sturgeon on the latest Gardens Illustrated podcast. This is GI's annual lecture held at the end of last spring's Chelsea Flower Show (where Cleve West's garden won Best in Show).

I find this discussion fascinating because I've become quite comfortable "translating" the British garden world into the world I know here in America. The conversation ranges from the application of the New Perennials style to small gardens (and whether that can even work ... Dan Pearson makes a case for it), how availability of plants has changed (the selection of shrubs is much more limited and they are harder to find; perennials are far more available), to Cleve West's interest in the so-called Sheffield School of gardening (scientifically selected seed mixes for randomized planting), and Dan Pearson's clear description of the benefits of layered planting (an imitation of natural layering of plants ... starting with trees and shrubs, down to the understory of sun loving and shade tolerant perennials).

We have little offering this richness of subject matter and intellectual stimulation available on our side of the Atlantic. Perhaps, because our country is so large and diverse, it's just not possible for such ideas to make it into the American media, which isn't friendly to garden-related subjects, except in "life style" or "how to" formats. Listen and see what you think.

Contradictions? Not here ... plant and human ecology on the High Line

2011-10-16T16:37:00.001-04:00

This simple planting of Birch, Amelanchier, Huechera, and Carex has remained a favorite of mine through many visits to the High Line. It's a good illustration of how a layered planting can work--small trees or shrubs underplanted with a simple, pared-down selection of perennials--a good way to pack a lot of impact into a small space.

Much as I admire this extraordinary community of plants, it is not a natural environment. It is, in fact, a giant planting box embedded in a concrete surface. It bears some comparison to an exhibit in a zoo.

How strange that a naturally evolving and self-sustaining community of plants on an abandoned railroad trestle could have been the genesis of such a sophisticated, very expensive, and ultimately unsustainable construct as the High Line (unsustainable because it can't continue to exist on its own). This High Line seems almost a contradiction of the original, "natural" High Line.

Don't get me wrong. I admire the High Line as a masterpiece of garden and urban landscape design. But I think we need to call a spade a spade. This is a complex recreational, aesthetic, and perhaps spiritual machine, requiring enormous amounts of money and labor to create and maintain it. Without continuous funding, knowledgeable planting and horticultural expertise, and hordes of maintenance and security forces, it couldn't continue. It is not natural, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a bill of goods.

But it is a superb example of naturalistic planting, and the horticultural practices that sustain its plant life are derived directly from observation of nature. This simple planting uses small trees and shrubs to create a micro-enrivonment. Within their shade only two perennials--carefully selected for their ability to thrive in understory, rocky conditions, and for their aesthetic qualities--make a beautiful design.

Both Heuchera villosa 'Brownies' and Carex eburnea look great in their rectangular island planting, even now, well into autumn. They are reminders of "Nature" in the big sense, but also of nature on a stage set, displayed with great self-consciousness and much forethought, the better to attract the interest of the human ecology of the High Line ...

... for human ecology is very much what the High Line is about.

Look about ...

2011-10-06T16:14:00.000-04:00

Just photos ... from a September 30 morning look about ... a rare sunny day ...

5:07 am

7:09 am - Pontadera cordata in the pond

7:10 am

7:10 am - Sanguisorba canadensis

7:11 am - Spartina pectinata 'Marginata'

7:11 am - Hydrangea quercifolia

7:11 am - Salix koriyanagi 'Rubikins' - these I coppice (cut to the ground) every spring - graceful, light-catching verticals

7:11 am

7:12 am

7:13 am - Lobelia siphilitica

7:14 am

7:15 am - Aster tartaricus 'Jin Dai'

7:20 am - Rudbeckia maxima seedpods

7:21 am - Silphium perfoliatum seed heads

7:21 am

7:21 am - native aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides) with Iris pseudacorus

7:22 am - New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)

7:22 am

7:25 am

7:28 am

7:29 am - toward the house, Eryngium yuccafolium seed heads in foreground

7:29 am - Molinia caerulea 'Skyracer'

7:30 am

As the rains ...

2011-10-05T22:39:00.002-04:00

Balder's Traume by Anselm Kiefer

As the rains continue, and I look out on the garden, I have mixed feelings. It looked so much better in July and August. Though autumn is normally its peak season, the recent tropical storms and waves of heavy rain continuing day after day, with almost no breaks for plants to dry and spring back, have changed it into a wet, soggy mass pierced by the leaning towers of tall perennials. But, as I said, my feelings are mixed, some negative, some positive. This is the process of living and dying, to be repeated again in another year.

So much depends on the weather, the light, the wind. The garden has yet to show what it will be this autumn in its visual aspect, tossed about as it has been these last weeks, but the meaning of what I see now is clear: while the visual experience of the garden may be diminished, garden as symbol remains a potent source of meaning.

In a blog comment Anne Wareham recently questioned how we can develop the skills "to know exactly when naturalistic tips into too messy." As I watch the effects of the weather, Anne's follow-on remark--"This boundary may change as our 'eye' changes as well as when the light and weather change..."--is certainly accurate, as far as it goes. The line between ripe and rotten is a changeable one, depending on what you might want from your garden.

Of course a garden first should be appealing to the senses, should give pleasure. But it can offer other things, perhaps something more than prettiness? When messiness comes, that doesn't mean the end of the garden year I think. The images of disarray contain useful information, lessons to be learned.

So where is the dividing line between naturalistic garden--"wild" garden--and too much disorder? That line is wiggly and it moves all over the place. The constancy of change is just about all one can be certain of.

I'd like to adopt a term William Martin used to describe my garden to get to the point I want to make. When he referred to the "flowing 'emergentness' of the whole," he opened my eyes to something I hadn't been able to put into words. Awkward as the phrase is, that flowing emergentness is what this garden is about, and it can only be perceived over time, through the seasons. It can't be seen in one photograph, or in one visit. So I guess I'm one of the few who can experience it. And my blog readers, of course, if they look at my incessant reports on my own garden!

I drive a lot, and I always pay close attention to the vegetation along the roadside. I'm excited when I see pattern emerging naturally, pattern that I'm sure reflects some underlying organizing principle--seed distribution, wind, aspect, soil type, moisture level ... and though I do decide where most plants go in the garden, I'm looking for that kind of "found" order, an order in precarious balance with disorder.

So the garden now, after a long time of bad weather, tends toward disorder, and, with the constant moisture, toward disintegration and decay. The level of disorder is certainly greater now than at this time last year. Yes, it's messy ... entropy in action.

Messiness is like noise. Or perhaps a better comparison is with my tinnitus. I have a ringing in the ears. At times, it's in the forefront of my consciousness and can be maddening, but most of the time I'm unaware of it. Likewise the experience of the garden depends on focus and awareness. I can walk out of the house and, looking across the garden, even in rain, experience visual pleasure or a kind of depression. After the rain, I can walk thorough it and see "vignettes" of order and disorder. If I keep the long-term perspective of the year in mind, I can see this as just a stage in an annual cycle of growth, decline, decay and dissolution, the "messiness" of death, then regrowth. All is order in the large scale. All of this is appropriate to this place in the woods of western New Jersey.

I yearn for extremes. In fall, I want to see the late winter garden, flat and empty after I've burned and cut what's left. I suppose that's my final answer to the decline from romantic decay into messiness. Take what lessons, what messages, are offered, then wipe it away and let it start again.

Knowledge of the plants and their ecology also plays an important role in appreciation of a naturalistic garden, and in differentiating between the effulgence of growth and messiness of disintegration. While growing plants in appropriate conditions (right plant, right place) does not necessarily make an attractive garden (some "native plant" gardens are indeed unattractive exercises in ecological correctness), seeing plants growing in appropriate conditions is educational and provides useful information. Moreover, awareness of the processes and patterns of plant growth in communities, and the changes in communities caused by competition, distribution of resources (soil, moisture, light vs. shade, exposure), and weather contribute to an understanding of the process of the garden over many years. You can see the past and the future when looking at the garden. Photographs can be a bad thing if they capture only some passing fantasy of a garden, a phantom that doesn't really exist. (Too many pretty flower pictures, scenes shot from just the right angle.)

How to appreciate such a garden? To someone not familiar with the plants I know it's simply a mass of undifferentiated, undulating green, but to anyone with knowledge of prairie perennials and grasses there is plenty of interest. So detailed plant knowledge is certainly one skill needed to appreciate such a garden.

Knowledge of plants also helps one see the garden in four dimensions, so to speak, because it forces you to be aware of time, and changes over time. Messiness and decay, punctuated by strongly structural plants, can maintain visual interest and "extend the season" of the garden, even on occasion carrying it from the merely visual to the intellectual, even the emotional, as with the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi.

Which brings us finally to the matter of personal disposition and perception. What do you, or I, choose to see at the moment? What filters are we viewing the garden (or the world) through? This brings us close to the difficult concepts of psychology and aesthetics. In this case, it's probably wise to limit the inquiry to what is "appealing to the senses" in some way. Take this painting by Anselm Kiefer as a starting point.

This is certainly appealing to the senses, though in a rather horrific way. It powerfully draws you in, makes you ask questions. Can a garden work in this range of emotions? I think it can, and most likely when it's in a state of disintegration. And a "conceptual" garden with a message certainly can.

Here are two garden photographs from a couple of years back, full of decay and signs of dissolution, even with some of the same colors and something of the mood of the Kiefer painting, but with autumnal coloring and spot lighting that create an entirely different emotional response. Unlike the Kiefer painting, they do not evoke a barren, destroyed landscape, though they do seem to be moving in that direction.

The garden photos have that "beatific" sunlight slanting through the trees, as if something godly might be lurking off to the side. Is some kind of physical beauty ... haze, slanting rays of sunlight ... necessary to meaningful engagement with the garden (not speaking of the "acts" of gardening here)? It's certainly good for a start, to draw you in, but I don't think always necessary.

Depending on what you bring to it, the garden can set off ruminations on many things, including reminders of banishment from the Garden of Eden, apocalyptic images of destruction, or simply the natural cycle of life (perhaps they're the same?). What do I want to see today? What can I see today?

It may be no surprise if I tell you my first "garden" was a cemetery, a beautiful ground blessed by huge Southern Magnolias, full of mysteries from the past, hints of unknown stories, ancient (to me as a young boy) monuments of lichened stone, some thrilling and beautiful, some with mysterious messages in Latin and Hebrew, row upon row of markers for the Confederate dead. It was my safe place, my refuge from a frightening world. Strangely, I always associated that cemetery with life, never with death.

Plants for Wet Clay: Ludwigia alternifolia (Seedbox)

2011-09-29T23:46:00.001-04:00

This little native plant isn't of particular interest until early fall. It does have small yellow flowers in mid-summer, but it's more inoffensive than pretty.

Now the foliage will quickly turn a fiery red. Seedbox does well for a few spots of early fall color. Below it's come up next to another self-seeder, Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica). Quite a blast, however brief.

But its seed cases are it's main claim to a place in the garden.

If it were more prolific, I might have to call it a weed.

Naumkeag

2011-09-25T22:46:00.002-04:00

Among the most iconic of all American garden scenes, the Blue Steps at Naumkeag.

From Gilded Age to Art Deco, Mabel Choate and landscape architect Fletcher Steele made this classic American garden by freely adapting influences from cultures around the world--England, China, particularly Renaissance Italy.Though rooted in the Picturesque tradition, Naumkeag broke new ground in several ways, introducing large earthworks as a major landscape element for the first time in the U.S., and making Art Deco a significant garden style. Mabel Choate and Fletcher Steele avoided pastiche by staying true to the sense of place, to the low, misty, magical Berkshire Mountains, and by using simple, ready-to-hand materials like concrete, brick, wood, and paint. No imported marbles or recreations of European gardens here ...

Below, the entrance to the house, a building of subdued opulence, designed by Stanford White, only for seasonal summer use, and located in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, near Edith Wharton's home, The Mount, not at the shore in Newport. The Choates bought the land and fell in love with the mountain views early in the life of the family, and their love of this place and its distant views was an important influence on the garden that would come to be, assuring the house would be sited high, and the gardens would surround the house on high terraces.

Below, the Top Lawn and terrace, behind the house, with a view of the mountains. Making a garden must have been a challenge on this steep slope. Frederick Law Olmstead, who they first consulted, told them to build at the bottom of the hill. They had visited the land and picnicked there for several years, and were not willing to give up the views. So they promptly hired another architect.

Renaissance Italy haunts this garden. The Choates named this view at the end of the Top Lawn the Perugino View.

A glance toward the South Lawn, just before entering the Afternoon Garden, Fletcher Steel's first design at Naumkeag ...

... the Afternoon Garden functions as an outside room ...

... with (Italy again) painted Venetian gondola poles (though of simple materials, reclaimed from Boston Harbor, carved and decorated with paint) ...

... a pergola ...

... a boxwood parterre ...

... and Mabel Choate's sleeping porch, like a treehouse, overlooking the garden ...

... a formal, yet quiet, intimate, tranquil place ...

The Pyramid Steps are an unobtrusive and beautiful transition, leading from the Afternoon Garden to a runnel of water sloping away to the iconic Blue Steps (we'll get to that later) and the South Lawn, which stretches off into the distance.

Looking back toward the house, the South Lawn is defined by a double hemlock hedge on one side and a curving line of globe locusts (Robinia pseudoacacia 'Umbraculifera') in the other. It provides a long, sunny walk ...

... to the Pagoda ...

The South Lawn is one of the earliest examples of use of an earth work for landscape purposes in the U.S. By chance, Mabel Choate stopped a fleet of trucks carrying loads of earth, bought it on the spot, and had it dumped in the rough area that was to become the South Lawn.

Research conducted for the application nominating Naumkeag as a National Historic Landmark notes that "here, Steele was inspired by the shape of distant mountain silhouettes and by the experiments of modern sculptors such as Brancusi. It was the earliest modern 'earthwork' recorded in this country and the progenitor of many later experiments with abstract modeling of earth forms. Steele wrote, 'So far as I know it was the first attempt that has ever been made to incorporate the form of background topography into foreground details in a unified design.'"

Fletcher Steele used the material "to create an abstract form in the manner of modern sculpture, with swinging curves and slopes which would aim to make their impression directly, without calling on the help of associated ideas, whether in nature or art." The National Historic Landmark application documents the influence of this work on earth artist Robert Smithson and landscape architects such as A. E. Bye, Rich Haag, and George Hargreaves.

A beautifully designed reference to the Italian water steps of the Renaissance and even earlier Islamic gardens, the Water Runnel leads from the Afternoon Garden and Pyramid Steps ...

... to the Blue Steps. Though the design concept comes directly from history, Steel's success, perhaps genius, was his adaptation of the design using modern materials--a blaustrade of simple metal tubing painted white, concrete steps and ramps, blue painted niches--that make it Art Deco of the highest order, and more closely akin to a Hollywood or Busby Berkeley stage set, than to Renaissance Italy ... not to mention the white birches, which are pure New England.

Though at the bottom of the steps there is nothing but grass.

This is quite a disappointment. After this brilliant descent, the bare expanse of grass with a few diseased fruit trees seems like an unkind trick. Mabel Choate had her cutting and vegetable garden here, but I doubt it could have provided a satisfying conclusion to the journey down the steps. A creative solution would be for the Trustees of Reservations, who own and operate this extraordinary property, to commission a modern design, or hold a competition, to complete this work.

Otherwise, visitors will have to resort to cropping out the lawn at the bottom of their photos, as I did. But only this piece of the garden seems unfinished. Back at the top of the steps are other pleasures ... such as the misty landscape views ...

... which could indeed be the background in a Renaissance painting.

The Rose Garden is another Fletcher Steele tour de force (not because of the roses; almost anything would look better than those gangly, bare sticks), but because of the striking abstract, geometric design, best viewed from above.

Here is a borrowed photo from Todd Haiman's Landscape Design + More, which gives a better view. (Do click the link to Haiman's blog for a fascinating and more detailed account of Naumkeag.)

Though the most notable parts of the garden only began when Mabel Choate inherited the property, and began a 30 year friendship and collaboration with Fletcher Steele, Nathan Barrett developed the original design for Naumkeag's terraced gardens in the 1880s.

Barret was responsible for some of the more traditional parts of the garden including the Arborvitae Walk, shown below, which leads ...

... to the Evergreen Garden.

Here we find a different spirit entirely, more traditional, certainly less playful than the rest of the garden, nothing modern at all.Tranquil, certainly, though the symmetry is marred by the slightly misplaced, or mispruned, Thujas on the right.

But a glance to the right reveals Fletcher Steele again, with a terraced approach to the Chinese Garden. I admit this isn't my favorite, though I find the subtle terrace plantings and the cloud motif of the large stones embedded in brick to be masterful.

And the moon gate. Beckoning, dramatic, intriguing, mysterious, stalwart, magical. It leads directly to the front of the house, completing the high circuit of gardens that is Naumkeag.

Garden Diary: Aftermath of Irene (in the country)

2011-09-06T17:29:00.005-04:00

While the seemingly endless tree removal continues in Brooklyn, I made a quick round trip to the Federal Twist house and garden to check on hurricane damage, which a neighbor had told us was minimal. After seeing the gravel drive washed away (the force of the water made ruts nine inches deep), I didn't know what to expect back in the garden.

I discovered the effects were a lesson in letting nature take its course. Apart from a few plants that had fallen in the sustained high winds and driving rain--some of which lie in graceful arcs and at attractive, odd angles--the garden was mostly unscathed, a comforting reminder that nature takes care of itself. Some plants need to be cut--those blocking paths or otherwise contributing too much to the chaos, but that's easily done and hardly noticeable.

Seeing the garden falling into a relaxed state of apparent neglect was a pleasant reminder that the advent of fall is near; the garden will finally reach its climax in the next month. And the easy dishevelment left by the storm reminds me of the long-term future of this garden. It's something I've been working toward and, as we start a small urban garden in the city, I think it's time to consummate the plan.

That plan is to let the garden at Federal Twist go a little. Not entirely "go," not in the sense Germaine Greer recently advocated in the Telegraph, and Robert Webber so vociferously denounced in The Hegarty Webber Partnership blog, but to make some trial in allowing the garden to survive on its own terms, with minimal intervention. That doesn't mean I will stop paying attention; an abandoned garden would soon become chaos or, in our location, woodland. What I will do is focus maintenance on essentials. Weeding, and editing to remove inappropriate self-seeded plants will remain on the agenda, as will occasional cutting with a string trimmer. And of course, the annual burning and cleanup in early spring.

This past year, I've tried to give some of the larger plants "breathing room," clearing the soil around their bases and mulching, one last "huzzah" push into independence. Next year will be a time of waiting to see which plants win over the next few years. Part of this, of course, is psychological ... finding out just how far I can take this process, and how much dishabille I can comfortably live with.

I'll do my best to pull back quite a bit and see just how much maintenance is absolutely necessary.

The upside of Hurricane Irene's passing is that I got to see just how little difference it made. Certainly, there are debris to be removed and plants that need cutting back, branches that need to be picked up ... but all in all I've judged the garden a success just because it wasn't destroyed by the storm. This is so mostly because its "ideal" state is one of ordered naturalism, with structure provided by stone walls and paths, the house raised above on one side, and by a loosely structured arrangement of plants in groups, drifts, in contrasting shapes and textures.

I have no doubt Penelope Hobhouse would not approve. But this works for me. (No criticism of Ms. Hobhouse intended ... I'm a fan of her work.)

So here are some record photos of the aftermath ...

Above you can see some of the clearing done around the bases of large plants, even some mulch, just to reduce competition for one more year. I'd like to infill this area with Pycnantheum muticum and orange daylilies (Hemerocallis) as groundcover.

I do note that the silver Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum), visible in the middle of the above image, will be increasingly important in the "lower maintenance" garden of the future. It's a beautiful plant, especially its silver color in mid- and late summer, it thrives in this place, is a formidable groundcover, is extremely fragrant, and attracts an enormous variety of insects.

More Pycnanthemum muticum with storm tossed Petasites, another great groundcover, though far too invasive for most gardens (not mine), and Miscanthus 'Silberfeder'. All the miscanthus are great groundcover plants.

Ironweed (above) is increasingly important to the structure of the late garden. This New York Ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis) was added only a couple of years ago, but it's spreading and will need control in the future.

If I had to pick a "most important" plant, it would be the Prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) leaning precariously above. It was thrown about by the storm rather violently but is none the worse for wear.

Not that it's the most important plant to the structure of the garden. Not at all, but for me it's the most distinctive plant, one with an unmatched magical quality. Its strong, thin stems tower and dangle above the plant's enormously large, paddle-shaped foliage for a good three months, suggesting a world of airiness and fragility. It's marvelous.

I don't normally care for much of the sculpture I see in gardens, but I find Marc Rosenquist's piece makes an important structural contribution, serving as a kind of anchor, a center point that conceptually and visually organizes the experience of the garden.

The long, curving stone wall and gravel path have a similar function, "containing" the garden, "retrieving" it from the inward pressing woodland ...

... as does the house.

I have at times thought my garden too wild, and longed for something more controlled, more formal. This visit from Irene has made me realize I've finally made a garden that can even survive a hurricane unscathed. I'll try to be content, and try to maintain my commitment to minimal intervention for a while.

Garden Diary: All changed, changed utterly

2011-08-28T19:16:00.002-04:00

I don't mean to belittle the seriousness of William Butler Yeats' line from his poem Easter 1916, but the violence with which Hurricane Irene's big winds tore our huge mulberry tree from the ground last night, and the thoughts I have looking at its image (sent by a kind tenant), do recall something of the tumultuous event that poem refers to.

We're in New England just starting vacation and now will turn back to deal with this surprise. Just a reminder, this is, of the fragility of the skein of imagination, in this case, insubstantial thoughts about a new city garden for our house in Brooklyn. My post of only three days ago was about the certainty of a new shade garden there.

Now it appears we will have quite a sunny garden, certainly much more sunlight than I ever anticipated. But I get ahead of myself. I won't know until I observe the sunlight for several days, after all the cleanup.

Garden Diary: Growing older in the garden ... a little navel gazing

2011-08-25T10:36:00.006-04:00

Ah, the changes that come with age...

It's a subject that should be of interest to everyone since we all will grow old some day. I admit it's a subject I'd rather not think about, but living in the country where a visit to the grocery means a 20-mile round trip in the car makes city living seem a prudent alternative. We're fortunate to have both, and to be able to adapt to future conditions as necessary, having both a country house on Federal Twist Road and a city house in Brooklyn.

We're also thinking we should maximize rental income on our Brooklyn house as we move into retirement, so have made plans to enlarge the garden apartment and move there (probably a wise option if the "Tea Party" types manage to wreck the American economy.)

What this introduces into my life is a new city garden.

The new room we're adding, shown on the left in the plan below, will have twelve feet of glass windows and doors looking out onto what is now a derelict back yard. Thus, the need for a new garden--something to look at, for a start, and a real garden where I can do what is done in gardens. It will certainly be very different from the country garden at Federal Twist.

This is the view out back today. The tree is a Mulberry that, fortunately, never fruits. An arborist we had look at it about ten years back speculated that it might be one of the largest Mulberries on the eastern coast of the US. It's probably 80 feet tall and I'm guessing it may have been growing here when our house was built over 140 years ago.

Someday it will have to be removed. Can you imagine the cost of cutting up this monster and moving it out through the house?

So we'll have a shade garden. I've sprayed the plant growth with a glyphosate herbicide in an attempt to clear the ground. I'm not too worried about that right now because building the new foundation and adding a room will be terribly destructive. We'll have to wait for construction to end, let the air clear, and see what we're left with.

We certainly will need an attractive, new fence. And a plan for the garden. I'm thinking about gravel paving with clustered bluestone. We have over 200 square feet of it, some of which you can see sinking into the ground below. Until recently, this was a tenant's garden. He kept it up rather well. but once he lost interest, it quickly became overgrown and reverted to the mess you see now.

The back of the house is not attractive, but imagine a 16-foot-deep room added at ground level, new surfaces, new colors. The addition will leave a 20- by 40-foot garden space. Small understory trees will be essential for privacy. And I'm thinking about using bamboo on the right side to screen a neighboring house with four stories of terraces ... probably clumping bamboo ... but perhaps a beautiful, tall running bamboo, if I can bare the expense of a liner to contain it. (I need a bamboo expert. Know one?)

The back wall of the existing house and new extension will have to be painted in colors complementary to the garden to be. Something warm, not this cold, bluish-grey.

The neighbor on the right (the house with overlooking terraces) has many trees, casting our plot into shade. That, added to the high canopy of the massive Mulberry, makes it impossible to think about any but an all shade garden.

I've been mulling over what to do for the last few months. This is my initial sketch. It may, or may not, become a reality. I really have to evaluate the space remaining after the construction ends, probably in November. But here is food for thought. I'm also considering hiring a professional for some "coaching" and to do phased, finished plans.

I recently read Dan Pearson's Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City. Though I'm in no way trying to imitate Dan's former Peckham garden in London, his book has been present in my mind as I think about my own urban garden and what I want from it. On first thought, for example, I might have made a sitting area close to the house. But I remembered Dan's writing about how important it had been for him to make a decked area out in the garden, away from the house, to pull people out into the garden, and make a setting where they could enjoy being "in" the garden, not at its edge. So I've used a deck for a sitting out area, toward the back of the garden. It would be surrounded by large-leaved plants that give visual interest, interesting scale, and a sense of shelter.

Though it gets lost in the bus-y-ness of the sketch, the small rectangular pool will be the heart of the garden. I'm imagining a still, tranquil, reflective surface, at grade, with no fountain or flowing water. An edging of bluestone, the historically appropriate material for brownstone Brooklyn. Frogs, or perhaps goldfish, will control mosquitoes.

I'm also thinking about plants, just to get the juices flowing. Decisions will come later. Here is the rapidly morphing, rather random, list:

Acorus gramineus 'Ogon'
Ajuga
Asarum
Astilboides tabularis
Bamboo (clumping but upright)
Boxwood
Darmera peltata
Pulmonaria
Grasses: Chasmanthium latifolium, Hakonechloa macra,etc.
Galium odoratum
Hedera helex
Hydrangea arborescens
Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight'
Kirengeshoma palmata
Helleborus
Hosta
Ligularia japonica
Ligularia Othello
Parthenocisus henryana
Petasites
Schizophragma hydrangeoides
Tetrapanax paperyfera (if it survives in Brooklyn, which theoretically is in Zone 7)
Trycirtis, other tall spiky things for shade

Perhaps a shady spot for rocks and a small moss garden ...

(Just possibilities ... do you have others to suggest?)

It will be an intimate space. Nothing like this.

Garden Diary: After Rain

2011-08-15T17:35:00.000-04:00

I've always thought one of the of the disadvantages of a herbaceous perennial--or prairie--garden is the aftermath of heavy rain, especially late in the season. Grasses tend to be flattened and splayed in most ungraceful shapes, and the tall perennials lean precariously. Some will recover when the sun comes out, some won't.

This is the Garden at Federal Twist after several inches of overnight rain.

It looks better from a distance. Blurring gives it an impressionistic look. You can see an even blurrier video by clicking on the photo above (you'll also hear frogs, crickets, and the pop of lingering rain drops).

This mid-August deluge tells me fall is on the way. Increasing complexity of line (call it chaos if you will) marks the dropping away of excess growth, revealing the underlying skeletons of highly structural perennials, the start of structural failure among weaker plants, the "relaxed" forms of those that have passed their peak and are headed downhill.

Thomas Rainer of grounded design gave me a useful concept for understanding what's happening here. Speaking of my garden, he referred to its "nice balance between legibility and intricacy." Wish I'd thought of putting it so succinctly. It's certainly something I've worked to achieve, but Thomas "got it" and gave it back in a couple of clear, concise words ... proof, if we need it, that professional designers are called "professional" for a reason.

I think you can see that in the close-ups. Even after heavy rain, amid the complexity of the storm-tossed garden, the plants, their lines, forms, textures, colors remain legible.

Garden Diary: Yellow to Mauve, with Sound

2011-08-07T18:44:00.192-04:00

High summer and ample rain have given me a garden almost profligate. The large prairie plants have grown even taller than in past years and spread by self-seeding into new areas. The invertebrates, the insects, appear to be thriving, usually more apparent by the sounds they make than their visibility, with healthy populations in good balance. That I had no problem with Japanese Beetles this year, only a few, I attribute to a diverse invertebrate community in equilibrium.

Angelica gigas, a honeypot for insects from Heronswood

The tall yellows continue and now they've been joined by the mauves--broad masses of Joe Pye Weed (Eupatoriadelphus maculatus), intense and transient deep violet of Iron Weed (Vernonia), somewhere in between a few Prairie Blazing Star (Liatris pycnostachya), which survive only in propitious locations, not being as successfully competitive as some of their neighbors; even my only Angelica gigas, a dark, burnished, purple-almost-brown. As these colors fade through August, the grasses have just begun to put on their late summer fireworks.

I've linked a short video of the garden to this photo. Take a look (click on the photo above), and you'll see a panning shot across the garden from the raised position of the house. This gives a good overview, but it really misrepresents the garden, which looks entirely different when you walk down into it. Looking at the video, you'd have no idea a network of rather wide gravel paths, and other smaller paths, run through the plantings. You see much more of the intricate detail only by walking through, and the rest of this post will take you on that walk.

Here are several views of the main path across the garden showing the plantings beginning to overflow the edges, a desirable state of affairs to my thinking.

Vernonia, Eryngium yuccafolium, Aster tartaricus 'Jin Dai', Silphium terebinthinaceum, Rudbeckia maxima, Physostegia virginica, Panicum, Hemerocallis crowd the path edges.

This isn't planned color, and I make no excuses for it. My interest is line, mass, form, movement, visual tone in the sense of emotion more than color. Above, the tall Rudbeckia maxima on the left, fluffy aging flower heads of Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula rubra) below it contrasting with the sword-like leaves of the early spring Iris pseudocorus, then a bunch of Joe Pye Weed, which really is much more colorful than this photo shows, and Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) on the right, all softened by the gauzy screen of flowering Switch grass (Panicum virgatum 'Shenandoah').

Further down, form, texture, and the enormous variations of green make an entirely different effect, less impressionistic, more literal in a comic sort of way. Paddle-shaped leaves of Prairie Dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) and giant coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima) make a busy show of themselves against a background of now silver Mountain Mint (Pycnantheum muticum) and Panicum 'Dallas Blues'.

I want masses of white Obedient Plant (Physostegia virginica 'Miss Manners', above) and have more growing on for planting after the weather cools. My goal is to treat the Pycnantheum and Physostegia as a groundcover, and spike it here and there with red to orange Daylilies (Hemerocallis). I suppose I'm more a creature of fashion than I'd like to think, and have unconsciously absorbed a liking for hot colors--though it's not just a matter of fashion; in my intensely green garden, the spots of brilliant color add a pleasing depth and complexity, passion smoldering in dark recesses.

You might think they would clash with the very different color scheme of the garden as a whole but, because their blossoms tend to occur in isolated spots, and are highly transient, they don't. Hemerocallis also seem to do well in a highly competitive garden environment, and the other plants hide their tattered, unattractive foliage after the blossoms pass.

On to the sound part of this post's title ... All these plants attract hordes of insects, and their movements and sounds are entertaining and stimulating, sensuously and intellectually. At this time of year, these "incidental" insect performances happen against the constant roar of cicadas emanating from the wall of woods surrounding the garden. The sounds come in rhythmic waves, as the insects answer one another. And the night sounds, of course, choruses of frogs serenading.

The audible landscape is like a separate world ... one I can't understand at all but perhaps understanding isn't necessary. You can just give yourself over to the sound, "rest" in it like a giant sonic cushion of vibrant air.

About eight feet off the main path Marc Rosenquist's sculpture, though not mauve or purple, certainly associates easily with those colors. These daylilies are the last to bloom of about fifteen planted throughout the middle of the garden. You see them from one angle and ...

... from another you don't. Again, a demonstration of the need to walk around to see the plants from various points of view.

The pathway across the middle of the garden. Another way to get up close to the plants. I'm adding yet another, less obvious path branching off from the left of this area to make it possible to get deep within the plantings.

A European grass, Molinia caerulea 'Skyracer', with tall, delicate flower stalks, crowds the entrance path, so close it touches you, but so light and airy you don't mind a little crowding (well, some do).

Last weekend we added this small new entry path on the opposite side near the house. We put it in by violent means, just digging across trying avoid established plants. I don't really like it; it's too neat and tidy. The edges need to be muddied and planted, and some larger plants will have to be moved next spring. Then, perhaps it will look a part of the garden.

This is the view up toward the house from the new small path ...

... and here a glance off to the side.

High Line: Urban Theater in the Garden

2011-08-02T07:00:00.006-04:00

"In clinical psychology, voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other activity usually considered to be of a private nature. In popular imagination the term is used in a more general sense to refer to someone who habitually observes others without their knowledge, with no necessary implication of sexual interest. Voyeurism (from the French voyeur, "one who looks") can take several forms, but its principal characteristic is that the voyeur does not normally relate directly with the subject of their interest, who is often unaware of being observed." - definition of voyeurism, Wikipedia

The opening of the High Line's Section 2 prompted me to make a visit in early June. My previous visits have been on tranquil, cool, breezy days, near sunset, and my response to the garden was almost a spiritual one, like an epiphany. I was curious to see if the time of day, the beautiful light, was the cause of that response. The day I chose was very hot and humid, and I went at noon.

The High Line starts in the "cheek by jowl" Meat Market district. Hard to believe such a sublime experience has its origin in this hard edged, urban neighborhood.

But first, some preliminaries. This time I visited the garden alone, and being alone allowed me to focus on the plantings and the experience of the High Line in a way I hadn't done before.

The "hanging gardens of Gansevoort Street" seem rather incongruous in this setting. But once you go up the stairs, you're in another world, meaning not natural at all, a theatrical creation of great artifice (and artistry).

The entry stairs make you look at the sky, and at the striking building of the Standard Hotel, which, cleft down the middle, with its arms folded toward you, draws you up.

Once on the upper level, the swank materials and finishes tell you you've clearly entered into a highly "designed" landscape, a sophisticated world in dramatic contrast to the gritty streets below. How ironic that the High Line, which bills itself as bringing nature into the city is, in fact, an extremely artificial construct. This is not a negative attribute.

As soon as you reach the top of the stairs, the plantings announce a profound change from the nether world of the street below. To one attuned to Piet Oudolf plantings, the delights start immediately. I do wonder what others, those who don't know who Piet Oudolf is and who don't particularly have an interest in plants, see. I have no idea.

The plant forms, textures, and colors play off one another, setting off a pattern of seeing that is reinforced by the design as you move along the linear park. On this visit, I was struck very powerfully by the "musicality" of the plantings. A visual theme will be introduced, perhaps two contrasting forms like the Carex and Amsonia in the image below, then that contrast will be carried on with other plants as you move along.

All the High Line plants are very much on public display. The artificiality of the situation--an expensive, well appointed yet severe platform elevated above the mundane world of the city--puts the plants on display, almost as if they were staged on a table. It's hard to avoid looking at the plants with anything less than intense concentration.

But that's not the whole story. The High Line design also makes you look at people. Again, as in a stage set, everyone is on display. Even the buildings along the line are on display, right in your face. We'll see examples of this below. Yes, there is a voyeuristic element to the delight of the High Line.

There are stories, perhaps apocryphal, that some residents of the Standard Hotel, which straddles the High Line (just visible in the upper left above), performed various lewd and lascivious acts in full view of the public when the park first opened. I don't know whether those stories are true, but the anonymity New York bestows, and the exhibitionism that anonymity makes possible, is very much a part of the experience of the High Line. Perhaps this is what accounts of the intensity of its effect on visitors.

I think this is akin to the heightened sense of awareness many feel when traveling to new places.

This lovely specimen of Red Bud (Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy') beckons for the attention of passersby almost like a harlot. (I jest, but there's some truth in the metaphor.)

And its color prepares the way, visually, for a "grove" of purple Smoke trees (Cotinus) just down the way.

This use of Cotinus is, I think, exemplary of the transformation the High Line can make in the way we see plants. I, like many gardeners, cut my purple Cotinus to the ground each spring. It gives them a much deeper color, though the bloom is lost. I've often seen Cotinus left to grow year after year in anonymous front yards and thought how ragged they look. Oddly shaped, scraggly. I've been quite critical of these plants that haven't been treated "properly."

Yet, by focusing attention just on that irregularity, that awkwardness--on the very things I normally would dislike--the High Line works a kind of transformation in the way I see. They are planted where they stand out in open space, "naked to the world" so to speak, and they are absolutely beautiful ... full of drama.

Are these people seeing and liking the Cotinus? I wish I knew. Note the people stand out even more than the plants. This, too, is part of the unique experience of the High Line--the voyeuristic focus on other people living their private lives in public. We'll see more of that below.

Speaking of voyeurism, here is a look down to the plaza area of the Standard Hotel. You can watch people from here too. And they can watch you.

And how about this thoroughly not private space? Think of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, with Jimmy Stewart leaning out his apartment window, watching his grotesque neighbors, and discovering something. He thinks it's murder. Remember his obsession with putting the pieces of the story together. His use of the camera (like me in this post). There, you've got it!

Not all the plantings shout at your. Some quiet musicality is going on. As you walk along the pathway, you may notice that a new plant will appear, then a little further along, several, or several groups will appear at irregular intervals, and further, perhaps a big clump or mass. These photos do not capture that, but it's one of the most moving parts of the High Line's design.

Many plants are used in similar "waves" of planting, appearing singly or a few at a time, gradually building to a crescendo, then diminishing in frequency, and all the while, other plants or combinations of plants repeat similar patterns.

As I walked the High Line on that hot summer day, I experienced something akin to a visual music, an almost abstract plant painting achieved through repetition of complex and changing patterns. It brought to mind an image of spiraling galaxies, their organization most visible at their dense, swirling centers, with dissolving arms of stars drifting off from the edges.

Like Jimmy Stewart. Putting the pieces of the story together.

The highly geometric foliage pattern of the native plant, Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum), calls attention to itself, particularly next to the bare gravel and hard, rust covered rails. (I think this is what the Japanese call Wabi Sabi.)

The combination of Amsonia hubrictii and Sumac above is certainly an intentional comparison of similar, yet differing, shapes and textures. This is another of those comparisons on put display for your pleasure.

The view off to 14th Street, another opportunity for "hidden" gazing at people and things.

An opportunity to lie down and take the sun, read a book, people watch--if you don't mind being watched yourself.

A flooded portion of the walkway offers a refreshing respite from the heat. A place to take off your shoes or sandals, and walk barefoot through the flowing water.

Of course, this isn't anything approaching nudity, but it is sensuous.

The shade of the Chelsea Market underpass is another way to beat the heat. It's certainly appealing to the senses, like most of the High Line, but isn't every garden supposed to appeal to the senses?

This is a garden?

Yes, an urban garden.

It's easy to see right into the offices ...

... but the vegetation provides some measure of privacy. Ha!

A male Sumac stands proud and erect.

The Northwest Spur Horticultural Preserve goes nowhere, but it's a striking artificial prairie, probably most beautiful in the fall. Here is probably as good a place as any to put the comparison of the High Line experience to voyeurism and exhibitionism in its place. These are certainly part of the defining characteristics of the High Line, as is delight in the plantings, as well as the opportunities for recreation, play, and socializing it provides.

Think back to the original garden, where Adam and Eve were happily naked, until they disobeyed the rules and gained knowledge of good and evil. Then they wanted to cover themselves. What does the High Line say about our culture? I think that is a valid question, though I'm not sure I have the answer.

A window on the world, or more accurately, 10th Avenue. Need I say more?

And next to it is this park-like setting, where a visitor can get a little shade, talk to a friend, maybe listen to her iPod.

A billboard. Can you see what it shows?

The High Line before it was the High Line. A clever juxtaposition of past and present. (But the old line shown here appears to be a section that has yet to be made part of the High Line park, a piece running east to west that would become part of Section 3, when, or if, it's built.)

We're nearing the end of Section 1 here. Section 2 is much narrower. It forces you to be closer to other visitors to the High Line. But leading into Section 2 is a prairie like area suffused with sunlight and openness, until it ends in a thicket of trees (called the Chelsea Thicket), then a new lawn.

Here is the lawn. By public demand. I don't care for it, but maybe I'll think better when the construction on the building on the right is completed. Does the High Line need to be all things to all people?

And what do we have here? Are these guys exhibitionists or just sun bathers on the grass? Am I a voyeur or just a passing stroller?

She, certainly, is taking a stylish stroll.

This striking building has a deck right up against the High Line ...

... and its owner has constructed a quite beautiful driftwood (natural material) screen to provide a bit of privacy. Privacy, who's kidding whom?

To be clear, I'm not panning the High Line. I love it. I believe most people who have visited it also love the experience. This park/garden is an extraordinarily creative endeavor that broadens the concept of what a garden can be. Though I repeatedly refer to its voyeuristic and exhibitionist meanings, I don't think those elements interfere in any way with enjoyment of the garden. History will probably tell us, if we seek it out, that these are also pleasures human beings have taken in gardens since the beginning of civilization.

People haven't changed that much!

Edges

2011-07-25T22:05:00.006-04:00

Willowwood Arboretum: small garden and edge

I felt like a third thumb.

Not knowing what to expect, but intrigued by a day-long outing to three former grand estates, now part of the Morris County park system in New Jersey, I signed up with the Garden Writers Association for its Region I and II event. Friday was the day. The temperature in New York's Central Park reached 104. It may have only been 102 in Morris County, but it was a killer.

The three former estates we visited -- Willowwood, Bamboo Brook, and the Frelinghuysen Arboretum (to be the subject of another post) -- all offered a mix of formal gardens and informal meadows and woodlands. What I found of most interest were the edges, where the "gardened" gardens merged with the surrounding fields. The entrance road at Willowwood wound through acres of grasses, golden rod, monarda, and milkweed. It was a beautiful site, and I would have liked to stop to explore it, but we were given no time for edgy exploration, only some well orchestrated presentations on the history of the estates, photos of the founders, and tours of the more formal grounds immediately surrounding the historic buildings.

Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center, formerly known as Merchiston Farm and home to Martha Brookes Hutcheson, one of America's first female landscape architects, was particularly stunning with its restoration of the garden's water features, which take advantage of the landscape's dramatic changes in elevation to harvest storm water from the surrounding landscape, collecting it in an Upper Water, from which it flows down a rock lined stream to a large round pool situated in a natural bowl of land.

Restored brook and circular pool designed by Martha Brookes Hutcheson

The pool is treated in an Italinate manner with four symmetrical approach ramps and steps creating two strong visual axes, one of which looks out across a ha-ha to a grassy meadow ... another edge.

There was much talk of axes.

Back home, as I peruse the Willowwood brochure, I see walks are offered in many edgy areas.

So I'm wondering why we were only shown the tame side of things, but not the edges. Perhaps because it costs a ton of money to restore these vast estates, and the staff wants garden writers to write about that. To help the cause. I agree. It is a worthy cause, one not often enough recognized in the good ole USA, so you should click on the links above and go visit these places.

I actually find it quite amazing that a county government (with much private fundraising, I'm sure) operates not one, but three, such estates as part of the public parks system. The Frelinghuysen Arboretum -- perhaps the grandest of the estates, though the least personal -- even has a library with rare florilegia and herbals dating back to the 16th century.

It has edges too. One was a "demonstration" storm water detention basin planted in native plants appropriate to such a wet, sometimes flooded, site. That was one of the highlights of the day, for me, though apparently not of much interest to anyone else.

Can you make a storm water detention basin look pretty? Yes, you can.

Like I said, a third thumb.

Garden Diary: twilight with yellow, orange, green, white

2011-07-17T19:26:00.006-04:00

Walking through the garden, seeing it in three (four) dimensions, is very different from looking at the photos in this post. The moving plains of plantings, changing perspective, perceived changes in relative sizes make a visit to the garden much more rewarding than two-dimensional photos frozen in time. I invite anyone in the area, or just passing through, to contact me. I welcome your visits and your suggestions.

Twilight is best time in the garden now. Several hours either side of midday the direct sunlight, heat, and severe contrast between dark, shadowed woods and the bright open garden make walking less than pleasant and photography almost impossible.

The tall yellow tipped verticals -- Silphiums and Rudbeckias -- are mostly in bloom now, and that bright color shows best in the fading light of evening.

Filipendula rubra 'Venusta' (above) is fading from Pepto-Bismol pink to a much more pleasant copper ...

... and along the path the orange daylillies are in bloom. Even in midday, but particularly at sundown, that orange punches through the masses of green and carries the eye to the small, delicate, star-like flowers of the Silphiums (perfoliatum, terebinthinaceum, lacinatum) and Rudbeckia maxima. (Yes, I will have to do something about the color clash with the Astilbe taquetii 'Purple Lance' low down on the right).

The daylilies are particularly suitable to naturalizing in grasses, and I intend to add more on both sides of the path, starting right now. Eight more are going in today. I'm also transplating more of the wild daylilly (Hemerocallis fulva) into the garden (there are plenty on the road in front of the house). I don't particularly care for daylilies as plants. Apart from their bright flowers, their tattered foliage can be a real negative in the garden. By treating them purely as a design element, and planting them where their declining foliage isn't very noticeable, they can be quite useful. I don't try to remember their names. As long as they are orange to red, I don't care.

A mass of red-purple daylilies adds some midsummer interest to the area around Marc Rosenquist's sculpture. More are there, but the camera's not seeing them. These have been around for a couple of years now. I admit they'd be more effective if they were taller, but I'm willing to live with this kind of compromise in the garden.

White too becomes very evocative at twilight and Obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana 'Miss Manners') makes the start of a low-level field of brightness that, if planted in profusion, could really light up the dry end of the garden as darkness falls. I've tried to get more but it's hard to find around here. Last time I ordered white, I got pink!

Prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum -- how do you pronounce that?) with its hard round buds (above left), Rudbeckia maxima with exaggerated black eyed Susan flowers, more terebinthinaceum, then Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum), the large plant blooming behind the Miscanthus.

Sorry there's not much to give a sense of scale. Most of these tall yellows are several feet above my head. (The grey back of the "Wave Hill" chair above does give some visual clue of the comparative scale of a human body.) The garden is about one acre in size.

This shot gives a better idea of how the orange daylilies could become an effective component of the "prairie" planting (I realize Hemerocallis has never been considered a prairie plant) ... call it modified prairie, then.

Eryngium yuccafolium, form emerging from incipient chaos ...

Entrance to the central sitting area, a mass of Mountain mint (Pycnantheum muticum) center right ...

... and a new Redbud (Cercis canadensis 'Hearts of Gold') in the center, a recent replacement for a moribund Magnolia grandiflora 'Little Gem', which continued to put out elaborate lemony scented flowers, but just looked a wreck. Yes, that's a bunch of Inula racemosa 'Sonnerspeer' that's seeded in beneath it. I'll decide which ones stay next spring.

Above, more self-seeded Inula 'Sonnenspeer' stand sentinel over a planting of Pycnantheum muticum.

View from the other end ...

Rising from a planting of Veronicastrum virginicum is one lone, and persnickety, Compass plant (Silphium laciniatum). I think the garden just doesn't get enough light to make these happy. They always fall over and have to be rescued with long stakes. I hate staking. But since they're self-seeding now, I'll wait and see how the seeded ones develop. If they find the right place, and perhaps are shorter, they may become a useful part of the garden. But if they pass away, so be it. These are too much trouble.

A view across the garden showing Marc's sculpture from the "back" side (back, in this case, means looking generally in the direction of the house).

Speaking of which ... the house, an integral part of this garden. The mostly dead dogwood on the left was cut and removed today.

That's how things go at the garden on Federal Twist Road this July 17th. Have to go. Some neighbors are coming over to see the garden at twilight.

Hummingbird Moths

2011-07-11T10:49:00.000-04:00

Monarda 'Blaustrumpf' and 'Clair Grace' don't shout for attention, even in the entrance garden, but their nectar brings a frenzied whirl of bees and wasps, and, in great numbers, these Hummingbird moths.

This is a North American genus, Hemaris thysbe. Wikipedia says it is not to be confused with a similar Hummingbird moth prevalent throughout Europe and across Asia to Japan, which is an entirely different genus, Macroglossum stellatarum.

In fact, a local New Jersey web page tells me these photos are not of Hemaris thysbe, but a variant named Hemaris gracilis.

I suppose the point is that my garden seems to be quite wildlife friendly.

The main garden in the back is a haven for the Praying mantis and many other insects. Strangely no mosquitoes, probably because our thousands of frogs (I do not jest) prevent them.

Twice recently I've found the skeletons of small animals--a fox and a rabbit, I think--so there must be predators too. Interesting to speculate what they might be.

Two weeks ago a great black bear was at the front door!

Garden Diary: still green, but not all green

2011-07-03T16:58:00.003-04:00

The June hiatus has passed and the wild daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva), which I love even though many despise them, Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula rubra 'Venusta'), Rudbeckia maxima, and Ligularia japonica are bringing a little color into the green, green garden. If you garden in heavy clay, even very wet clay, most of these plants will probably do well for you, but some are quite large! This will be a clockwise walk around the main path.

The broad view across ...

Petasites hybrid with Carex muskingumensis (Palm sedge) in foreground (note Petasites is a highly invasive plant; don't use it unless you know you can keep it under control) ...

... and Darmara peltata (Coltsfoot)--very different leaf shape and surface reflectivity--with the Carex muskingumensis ...

... looking across from an area of Filipendula ulmaria, irises, Silphium perfoliatum (Cup plant), Panicum virgatum 'Heavy Metal' ...

...Filipendula rubra 'Venusta' just starting into bloom, Salix alba 'Britzensis', Thuja 'Emrald Green', Pycnanthemum muticum (Mountain Mint), which will take on a silver bloom in two or three weeks ...

... a big Ligularia japonica at the start of the path, looking toward the house ...

,,, turning toward the woodland garden; shafts of light from the setting sun ...

,,, Miscanthus giganteus on left, Lysimachia ciliata 'Firecracker', below, Iris pseudacorus (for a little spring color), Rudbeckia maxima, scattered Filipendula, and in mid-distance, a large Silphium perfoliatum. Last year this was a single stalk. All of these Silphium love the heavy clay. They grew from randomly broadcast seed, and continue to seed around rather prolifically.

The box and Bergenia planting. The dark green of the box has become an important color contrast in the garden and a constant reminder of how many colors green can be.

... Marc Rosenquist's sculpture peeking out from behind Filipendula, Rudbeckia maxima, and Calamagrostis acutiflora 'Karl Foerester' (Feather reed grass) ...

... I'm looking back, turning a 360 degree circle ...

... the "dry" end of the garden (planted over the waste water leaching field, so drainage is good here). More Rudbeckia maxima with Silphium terebinthinaceum (Prairie dock), Pycnantheum muticum, Physostegia virginica, Panicum 'Shenandoah' ...

... looking back again, across the garden ...

Budding Silphium terebinthinaceum ...

... and Eryngium yuccafolium ...

... the large mass of Miscanthus 'Silberfeder' at the back of the garden ...

... and the new sitting area next to it, in the middle of the garden ...

... self-seeded Inula racemosa 'Sonnenspeer' has popped up in the planting of Pycnanthemum muticum ...

... and a final few shots walking across the narrow waist of the garden ...

Casa Glebinias: a green peace

2011-07-01T19:30:00.008-04:00

Amid the arid, dusty landscape of Mendoza, Argentina’s premier wine-producing region, our delayed arrival at the lush garden refuge of Casa Glebinias was almost a shock.

We got lost after leaving the airport, and drove through miles of dry, brown, exhausted-looking countryside until I pulled off the road at what appeared to be a gasoline station and restaurant ... the sun bright and harsh, the landscape desolate.

So when we got back on track and finally turned off the highway into the town of Chacras de Coria, the grand sycamores lining the road were a welcome relief. It was clear they only survived because a ready supply of water was available from what looked like crude drainage ditches on either side of the road. (We were to learn that these are small canals, part of an enormous system of canals that have brought water from the nearby Andes to this arid landscape for centuries.)

The locked entrance gate emphasizes a sense of privacy and refuge.

That imported water makes Casa Glebinias possible. The owners, Alberto (who speaks Spanish, Italian, English and French) and Maria Gracia (who speaks Spanish, Italian and French), have created a place where landscape, garden, and built structures achieve a graceful unity. As you reach Casa Glebinias, you stop your car, unlock a shining wooden gate, and drive in, where you're immediately engulfed in vegetation, the low tree limbs brushing across your windshield as you move slowly forward.

On entry, no buildings are visible and the drive is obscured by low-hanging tree limbs, creating a sense of mystery and heightened awareness.

Only after driving 30 or 40 feet does space open up enough to reveal glimpses of buildings in the distance, but it's hard to tell where the buildings end and the gardened landscape begins.

An old wagon wheel, a sign of the intentional creation of a place that evokes a sense of history and age.

Our cottage, just off the drive, hidden in layers of vegetation.

Reaching the main house, the residence of the owners, is a little disorienting. The steps up to the house rise from a sudden curve in the driveway. The house itself is invisible at this point, and the parking area is hidden off to the left. The uncertainty about where to go, which way to turn, could be could be disconcerting, even annoying. But it isn't. Instead, it heightens awareness and anticipation, a feeling that something unexpected is about to happen. So when the car is safely parked, and you get out and look around at this garden setting, there's a strong sense of arrival, of calm refuge. If you're at all like me, you'll also feel excitement, anticipation. You'll be itching to explore the garden.

The main residence? Yes, but you can't yet see it.

Note above how little space is allowed for automobiles to turn left for parking. It's clear that cars are an afterthought here; something else is much more important than mode of transport. In the US, local codes would probably force the owners to provide a spacious, paved, traffic-worthy parking area that would do much to destroy the pastoral ambiance of Casa Glebinias.

The owner's residence (below), at least in summer, is always open; windows, doorways frame views to the outside, and bring outside inside. Going into the house doesn't feel like going inside. There's an airy lightness of space that subtly calms the autonomic nervous system. It just feels good, like standing in open shade looking out to the sun.

Before the history of Casa Glebinias was told to us, we assumed the guest cottages were perhaps 100 to 150 years old. Large trees come within inches of the exterior walls, and the architectural elements--windows, doorways, wooden beams, lock sets, doorknobs--clearly have great age. Imagine our surprise when Alberto explained that these had been built only five or six years ago.

It's difficult to conceive how our cottage (below) was constructed without damaging the surrounding trees, and not just ours, but all the cottages are situated adjacent to large trees ... their construction is an amazing demonstration of care, intention, and focus. Working with their close friend, architect Octavio Vitali, Alberto and Maria Gracia achieved an amazing feat of design and construction within their 30-year-old garden.

On first impression, you might think such a project couldn't possibly follow sustainable principles. But the cottages were built of salvaged materials. Even wood for support beams was taken from old structures and reused, as were doors, windows, and ornament. For cooling, the windows are screened with lace curtains inside (to keep out hot sunlight but let through air) and outside heavy grass mats--which have a Tolkeinesque "Hobbit" charm--can be rolled down in the height of the day.

The entrance to our house, from the inside, showing the care taken to reuse an old doorframe and doors, and old wooden beams in the ceiling structure ...

... and from the outside. I watched the old musical Brigadoon last night. That extraordinary and magical place appears only once every 100 years. But should you choose to visit Casa Glebinias on any day in any year, it will be there. The patina of age and sense of place the owners have created recalls just such magical stories.

Shady sitting areas are hidden away throughout the garden, providing relief from the heat during the day, and a pleasant place to read or talk away the twilight hours.

Ornamental conifers, a cosmopolitan selection of deciduous ornamental trees, fruit trees, grasses and some perennials are the principal elements of the landscape. This is definitely not a native plant garden. It's a garden that uses plants that are suitable to the place, considering the climate and almost universal availability of water from the Andes.

Here is Pinus patula, the Weeping Mexican pine ...

... Robinia pseudoacacia 'Freesia', which I thought was unusual to see in Argentina, but well informed sources there tell me it's widely planted. There are several at Casa Glebinias.

A pretty contrast of colors and textures. Sorry, don't know the names. Not up to speed on conifers. Or acacias (silver leaves).

View across the lawn to the pool, nestled into a hedgerow of shrubs, roses, and conifers, with another Robinia to provide dramatic highlight to the scene.

The theme of purple and gold is repeated throughout the garden ...

The Pinus patula again, at the entrance to a cottage, showing how ingeniously the buildings were built within the existing plantings. I wish I had asked Alberto how he managed to accomplish this amazing feat. I've never seen anything like it before.

A fruit of a North American tree, the Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), on the pavement in the parking area suggests the foliage "reliefs" Alberto and Maria Gracia used in some of the paving stones shown below ...

I was curious what the word "glebinias" meant. When I asked Alberto, he explained that he and Maria Gracia chose a name that reflected their love of trees. Sort of a private pact only those who ask will understand. They combined the names for two trees they use throughout the garden--Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) and Robinia pseudoacacia 'Freesia'--to make Gle-binia-s.

Even if you don't go for the garden, this is a quite and peaceful place to stay when visiting Argentina's wine country.

The center of it all

2011-06-17T15:13:00.000-04:00

Marc Rosenquist's bronze is most prominent in late winter when all the herbaceous perennials and grasses have been burned and cleared away, leaving a flat, largely empty field. Ironically, it becomes even more important in the summer, when the rapid plant growth makes it increasingly hard to see.

As the plants grow around it like a slowly rising flood, its fat, vertical presence becomes the focal point of the garden, a point of reference that plays with one's sense of scale--it's much larger than you think it is--making perception of relative sizes more ambiguous, but at the same time making it easier to judge distances, actually making space more visible. I guess you could say it introduces a perceptual playfulness into the garden.

It's so different from anything else, it exudes a sense of mystery. It seems both alien and at home, dramatically contrasting with the soft plant materials, yet echoing their shapes in permanent form.

The color is very different from the colors of the plants (at this time of year), but it's the same as the color of the house and the stone walls and the bark of the trees pressing in at the edge of the garden.

Mounded leaves of Silphium terebinthinaceum (Prairie dock) and Rudbeckia maxima have similar size and shape, though I think their similarities actually highlight their differences.

Even the lacy verticals of Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) and Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) share similar visual resonance with the bronze, though they are certainly very different in form.

Do I go too far if I relate the bronze sculpture to my circle of red logs amid tall cedars (Juniperus virginiana)? I don't think so. If you see curves and lines in the abstract, just about anything in the garden relates to this object. Like musical theme and variations, thematic statement and answer.

Likewise the mounds of Miscanthus, daylilies ...

... the rounded box balls ... and across the path, the more generic mounds of mixed perennials with emerging spikes of Filipendula rubra, Silphium perfoliatum, Salix alba 'britzensis' and Thuja in the background.

... even the purplish color of the Lysimachia ciliata 'Firecrecker' relates to the browns of the sculpture.

Moving away from that central point, the rising path beside the pond goes off into the woodland garden ...

... where a turn back shows you the wide prairie field ...

... and in the middle of it all, Marc's sculpture, still visible from a distance ...

Two months of change

2011-06-16T15:47:00.000-04:00

Early April ...

... to June ... quite a change, don't you think? Scary ...

Garden Diary: Mid-May

2011-06-08T07:59:00.001-04:00

I was busy and neglected to post some mid-May photos, so here goes ... The garden is quickly changing from a flat plain into an undulating mass of planting, making a new landscape as the individual plant forms emerge from the earth.

On this rainy day, we start in the woodland garden looking down toward the main prairie garden ...

Ground covers are essential to controlling weeds. Here Ajuga 'Caitlan's Giant' and Sweet Woodruff (Galium orodatum).

Planting the utility area, where piles of chipped trees were stored for years, with Carex pennsylvanica, Pulmonarias, ferns, Helleborus foetidus ... who knows what else? Have to see what works here.

Out into the rain soaked prairie ... looking down the long pond.

Ligularia japonica ... it's becoming a magnificent specimen ... three others haven't attained this size, but they get less water ...

Massed plantings of Filipendula rubra 'Venusta' and Iris virginica against a background of horsetail (Equisetum arvense), which become significant structural elements as they grow larger ...

These giant coneflowers (Rudbeckia maxima) have become a signature plant in the garden. They're everywhere, even starting to self-seed. I read they like dry conditions, but they have thrived for years in my wet clay. Off to the left, one of two spreading colonies of Lysimachia ciliata 'Firecracker'. The color makes them a dominant presence in the garden.

Shaggy boxwoods and bergenia ...

One of three Gleditsia triacanthos 'Sunburst' for early color.

Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis), a native ...

Marc Rosenquist's bronze, which is becoming an organizing feature of the garden (more on that in another post). Its dominating presence draws the eye, and its shape strongly echos many plants (particularly the more formal shapes of Thuja and box).

More Rudbeckia maxima (there are many such surprises) ...

Another source of early gold, Euphorbia palustris, with Miscanthus ...

And bracken ... it was here before I was, and it will stay. Beautiful form and autumn color.

The mid-garden sitting area, added last year. That wretched Magnolia 'Little Gem' is coming out, to be replaced by ... what? Grasses? Cercis canadensis 'Hearts of Gold'?

A self-seeded Silphium perfoliatum, which came up last year, has grown like topsy, as they say.

Many of these self-seeded Silphium laciniatum have appeared this year. Can they take the competitive pressure and grow? I don't know so must wait and see.

Another self-seeder, Eupatorium perfoliatum, a native that just appeared three years ago.

A planted Sanguisorba, amid native Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis).

Views from a bedroom window.

The Bad Tempered Gardener by Anne Wareham

2011-05-30T15:58:00.003-04:00

Anne Wareham’s new book, The Bad Tempered Gardener, is irreverent, honest, funny, gossipy, and personally revealing. It's one of those books that practically reads itself. I didn't want to put it down.

Anne isn’t well known in the US, but in her home UK she has a reputation for stirring up quite a storm of controversy. She questions the status quo, the veneer of complacency that permeates the gardening world, the unspoken rule that one can say only polite things about gardens, never be critical or even honestly analytical. She annoys people—and many are important people in the British gardening firmament. Anne does have the manner of the elephant in the china shop, which she readily admits.

She also sees the gardening media as being complicit in all this. Not to say they are evil; they need to sell books, magazines, TV shows, and of course everyone wants to see pretty garden pictures; almost no one wants serious discussion or critical analysis; this is a sign of our times. Anne is one of the few, apparently, who is bothered greatly that gardening is relegated to an irrelevant place in our culture. She asks why that is. She apparently can’t stop herself from wildly gesticulating and pointing lewdly when she sees the Emperor walking naked in the street.

Anne Wareham takes “The Garden” seriously. She wants the garden to return to the important position it held in past times and cultures. I think she’s on to something: the diminished importance of the garden as an artistic and moral work in our culture—now viewed as a hobby, like making model airplanes, or at the opposite extreme, as an expensive trophy of the wealthy—is a symptom of something out of kilter at a much deeper level. (I should admit my bias here; I’m on her side of this issue.)

A miscellany in the good sense, with a bit of biography, soul searching, garden history, media criticism, funny stories (“I hate gardening”), all presented as a series of generally chronological essays, varying widely in subject and tone, it’s just the kind of book you can dip into at any time of day or night; great for commuters. A collection of thematically related essays, generally covering the making of her garden, The Veddw, on the border of Wales, The Bad Tempered Gardener, to my mind belongs with a group of fine, lesser known works, some classics. At the moment only a handful immediately come to mind, and they are all personal and idiosyncratic in some way—Eleanor Perenyi’s Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden, though you would probably have a hard time imagining two more different sensibilities, Mirabel Osler’s A Gentle Plea for Chaos, likewise a vastly different style and voice from Anne’s, G. F. Dutton’s Some Branch Against the Sky. They may disappear from sight for long periods, then be found again, bob to the surface on some metaphorical seashore, perhaps to be republished, or used copies will be ordered from Amazon or Ebay. They’re like messages in bottles, simply there in the mass of garden media “noise,” carrying messages that may be found by like minds in the future, perhaps to spark new ideas at a more propitious time.

As I was looking through the latest issue of Gardens Illustrated this week, I was wowed by the photos, but the text hardly registered as anything more than a neutral ground against which to display the photos. Even when I read an article, I was left thinking, ‘What’s the point of this?’ Perhaps someone designed, or had someone else design, a beautiful garden, but to what end? A few pleasant places to sit? Pretty vistas and plant pictures? Dramatic allees of hornbeams or pristine topiary? A spectacular display of garden talent? Why is there no consistent concern with meaning, with aspiration for making something more than pretty gardens?

There’s no slickness in The Bad Tempered Gardener, no “garden porn,” though Charles Hawes' small garden photos give us helpful windows into The Veddw. I think of the glossy garden magazines, innumerable books displaying the gardens of the wealthy or famous—all surface glitter, stimulating unrealistic aspiration among the less well-to-do, giving The Garden a romantic glow but no meaning beyond the appreciation of a well designed stage set.

We need more books full of words about gardens. This one is funny, annoying, stimulating, and immensely sad. Please read it with an open mind and see if you don’t find much to think on.

Judy's visit to the High Line

2011-05-23T16:37:00.000-04:00

On her visit to the High Line last weekend, Judy had only her cell phone camera with her. These look pretty good. Good enough to make me want to put railroad tracks into my garden.

Glimpse of the High Line

2011-05-22T10:26:00.003-04:00

Friend Judy Mann visited the High Line yesterday and sent me this photo, asking the name of the tree: "...quite glorious, but I never saw anything like them before. Do you know them?"). My answer: Purple smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria), exact cultivar not known.

I'd normally have described this as a scraggly specimen in need of a drastic pruning. But this planting makes me see it anew. And quite striking it is, with its awkward pompons stretching toward the open sky, and the contrasting low perennial surround. (And note there are several more in the distance.) The High Line is doing interesting, creative work, delightful horticultural accents to the Oudolf-designed plantings, and obviously entertaining park goers. These eye-catchers are capturing the public's attention and making them want to know more. A good thing.

Garden Diary: Closing the ground

2011-05-21T12:29:00.006-04:00

An open scar in the woodland garden marks the spot where I stored piles of cedar chips, now gone, left from clearing the land in the spring of 2005. Behind those piles is the utility and composting area. This place is one of the first you see on entering the woodland so I'm starting a restoration program to hide the composting area and close up this blot on the landscape. The soil is compacted, full of tree roots and stone. I have no idea what years of stored cedar chips may have done to the soil chemically and biologically.

On walking through the garden gate, the first thing the eye goes to is the scene below. The light and open space naturally draws the view there. So far, so good.

The early spring meadow area in the center between the paths is well along now; at least it's green, so I can turn my attention to the right side of the main path, which presents the major problem.

Ground covers are my first concern. On the right side (below), where the neglect is most evident, Hosta 'Francis Williams', Ajuga 'Caitlan's Giant', Spodiopogon sibiricus (hidden by the hostas), and Sweet woodruff are successfully negotiating the thin, heavy, wet soil.

And just past the "scar," another colony of Sweet woodruff is doing its thing. But looking slightly back to the right ...

... is the scar itself. Perhaps "scar" is too harsh a word. This is not an unacceptable floor for a woodland, but my preference is for a tapestry like groundcover of carex, pulmonaria, fern, epimedium, and hellebore. A few plants of Aster divaricatus (Eurybia divaricata) have seeded in from across the path, indicating this may also become a successful addition to the tapestry. I've planted some clump bamboos and hydrangeas in the background to get enough height to hide the composting area, but don't yet know whether they will do well in the conditions offered.

In other parts of the woodland garden I'm trialing other potential ground cover plants. Here Leucothoe auxliaris seems to be making a successful plant life.

And here Mattuecia struthiopteris is spreading into a colony--not as large as this fern usually gets, probably due to the packed clay it's growing in, but it is successfully spreading.

I could go on at length about groundcover plants in other parts of my "impossible" garden, but I don't want to frighten you. More on that later.

Plants for wet clay: Zenobia pulverulenta

2011-05-19T10:38:00.001-04:00

Zenobia pulverulenta is a small shrub native primarily to coastal wetland areas of Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia. It's a strikingly beautiful plant whose delicately glaucous foliage seems to belie its unsophisticated origin. It prefers rather wet conditions, coming from raised wetland areas, usually underlain by peat, called pocosins. (Pocosin is a native American word meaning "swamp on a hill.")

Foliage color is this plant's main asset. Too bad it's lacking in structure and rather shapeless. It would look much better associated with other plants or a background that offers pleasing contrast or complementary color.

After a few years of growth, this shrub has grown large enough to make a significant visual effect. Zenobia seems to be a rather rare plant in cultivation, and the glaucous form isn't the only one. Some are simply green. I bought two at the Native Plants in the Landscape conference, a well known native plant gathering held annually at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, three or four years ago.

I was uncertain how the plant would fair in my often saturated, wet clay; its natural habitat, which is wet but apparently well drained, very acidic and low in nutrients, is quite different from conditions in my garden. So far my Zenobias appear to be thriving, vigorous, and in pristine condition. Their small, bell-shaped white flowers are borne in profusion in the summer, and the plants are bulking up into admirable specimens.

The lesson, I suppose, is that you can research a plant's origins and native conditions, but you can never successfully predict how well it will adapt to differing conditions in the garden. You just have to make educated guesses, and see what happens. Take a risk. There are serendipitous surprises.

Inside-Outside

2011-05-10T22:58:00.000-04:00

Transient phenomenon

2011-05-09T21:00:00.001-04:00

Sunset, golden light against a dark gray sky, lasting about 90 seconds, then gone.