A Loose Schedule and a Tight Budget

I want a river birch.

I’M ALL OVER THE PLACE HERE. I still have so much to do pull this house and garden together, I’ve hit another impasse of indecision. So I’m planting daffodils. (Though everywhere I dig, I hit inch-thick wisteria vine, and I spend more time pulling and cutting wisteria than digging holes for the bulbs.)

I’ve accomplished a lot in the four months since I bought this cottage in May, but I still have so much further to go. Not knowing whether this is a long-term home or a flipper makes it that much harder to proceed. If I knew for sure it was the former, I would take my time and spend more freely. But if it’s going to be a flipper, I just want to get it done.

Thanks to Eric Ernst, Tree Man of Montauk, my yard has gone from deep shade to dappled. It's much less oppressive than before.

Perhaps I should buy the Zen mindset my friend is trying to sell me. “You’re here now,” she says. “When you decide you don’t want to be here anymore, you’ll go somewhere else.” Yeah, but how exactly do I proceed with my renovation on that basis?

This I know: as soon as possible, I’d like to feel “Oh, how charming” pulling into my driveway, instead of “Oh, shit. Ugh.” That driveway — broken asphalt studded with weeds — is part of the problem. As is the house itself: discolored cedar shingles. And a front yard more brown than green. What’s the opposite of curb appeal?

The deer fence and patio have fallen off the top of my priorities list. I’m thinking of letting the deer have one last winter of ravaging the evergreens and rhododendrons, and spending that money indoors instead, on a fireplace, a new bathroom, a new kitchen counter, and a paint job. I also need a whole new roof. I’m gathering quotes from tradespeople: two roofers so far, two bathroom contractors, and a housepainter.

I’ve been canvassing the nurseries for shrubs on sale. I’ve fallen for a doublefile viburnum, left, eight feet across and flaming red, at Spielberg’s in Amagansett. At 40% off, it’s under $100, plus another $100 to plant (it’s very heavy). Deer don’t like it, but it needs a good sunny spot, and those are still in short supply on my lot. I also want a river birch somewhere; I love the peeling bark and delicate leaves. And dogwoods.

The truth is, I’m not in that much of a rush. This is not a magazine project done in a weekend. It’s real life, on a loose schedule and a tight budget.

Wainscott Woodland

I KNEW THIS GARDEN WAS A MUST-SEE when I read the description in the Open Days catalogue. It sounded like what my property could be, years and dollars and grueling work down the line. “Four-season woodland garden under a high oak canopy shelters a collection of rhododendrons, azaleas, kalmia, pieris, understory trees, perennials, bulbs, and tropicals in season.”

In other words, lots of shade, made the most of.

I wasn’t disappointed. The Biercuk/Luckey garden, in Wainscott in the mid-Hamptons — a mile from the ocean but deep in the woods — is the home of two men who bought the one-acre property ten years ago. In mid-September, it is lush and overflowing, an exercise in abundance.

This time of year is the garden’s swan song. Though still very colorful, not to say gaudy, with orange and red begonias and other annuals, the month of May is surely this garden’s glory (it’s also open to the public one day in May).

I took a couple of notes in my Open Days catalogue: clerodendron, it says, and bergenia grandis – self-seeding, hardy. Meaning it survives winter here on Long Island, yet looks like something you’d find in south Florida. As does the rest of the garden.

The Good, the Bad, and the Mystifying

AT TWILIGHT YESTERDAY, I surveyed my 4/10 of an acre. Now that the bulk of the wisteria and weeds have been cleared away, I can see what I’ve got here, though I can’t identify all of it.

Love those rhodies

There’s a lot of damage; what the wisteria didn’t strangle, the deer ate.

You were so generous with your cottage color suggestions, I thought I’d pick your collective brains once more. If anyone has thoughts on what I can do about these garden challenges (on a shoestring budget, remember), please let ‘em rip.

Got a $2600 quote for an 80' gravel driveway lined with Belgian block but i'm in no great hurry

Normally I avoid photographing unsightly automobiles, wires, disarray or ugliness of any sort. But in this post I’m going to show you the crappiest areas of my garden, just begging to be transformed.

Arborvitae(?) with a large chunk taken out of it. Anyone know if it can it be pruned into something more shapely?

And if anyone can ID any of the many plants I can’t (plain English is fine), I’d be very grateful.

Close-up of the foregoing for ID purposes

Sad hinoki cypress, bottom half gobbled up by deer - and right outside the back door. What to do?

Something more elegant is definitely called for in the way of a path

The circle around the cherry tree in the area where the demolished shed used to be is 30 feet wide. How to transform bare dirt into a circular garden room on a mini budget? Wood chips for starters?

I'm sure I can do better for edging

A rustic arbor on its way down, with a vine I cannot ID - no sign of flowers

Love this "picnic area" with a bit of scrubby lawn and a backdrop of juniper, a tall droopy evergreen, a blue spruce, and a couple of specimen conifers gone wrong

This one looks like something out of Dr. Seuss

Big-leaved something (what?) amidst lily of the valley

Talk about unsightly: crook of the amputee cherry tree. Could become a....?

Nothing like an electric meter to add class to the front deck

This one confounds me most - there's lots of it, it's a perennial (brown remnant from last year). Don't think it's phlox - help!