It’s Rhodie Time

THIS WEEK belongs to the rhododendrons. Surely they must be king of the flowers.

Seen in and around East Hampton, N.Y.:

I’m also pleased with my irises and perennial geraniums, below. The Deer-Out is holding them at bay.

And here’s an evergreen, low-maintenance, completely deer-resistant garden solution, below: the all-boxwood garden. It has a kind of a whimsical fairy-tale look, I think, very Hobbit-y — but as much as I love boxwoods, I could never limit myself to a monolithic planting scheme like that.

Happy June

NOW THERE’S YOUR PROPER JUNE BORDER, above. A little ahead of time, as is everything in this accelerated spring. Peonies; irises; columbine; foxgloves and phlox on their way. In front of a very proper old house, below, on Long Island’s North Fork, where I was on Saturday.

It’s all happening now: the farmstands, the wineries, the traffic. There are lots of greenhouses, large and small, selling vegetable starters and annuals and overflowing, ready-made hanging baskets.

I was there to visit my cousin Susan and check the progress of her garden beds, which we planted, I think, three years ago. Two years ago this month, the full-sun beds at the end of her driveway looked like this:

The evergreen shrubs and day lilies were already there. We put in dianthus, lamb’s ear, ladies mantel, catmint, and yarrow.

This past weekend, the same bed, from a different angle (pre-weeding), looked like this:

And the one on the other side of the driveway like this:

Catmint is the best. So is June.

Pull, Plant, Move, Weed, Shear, Lop…it’s May

SO TODAY I’M OUT IN THE GARDEN, following a nice morning rain, yanking out white-flowering, foot-tall garlic mustard before it seeds, and I uncover this fellow, above, with the pretty yellow markings. I’m not much for wildlife photography — deer and wild turkeys tend to move off by the time I get my camera focused — but in this case, I was able to run all the way into the house for the camera and find him right where I left him.

The warm weather has brought out tons of weeds, most of whose names I don’t know. Wisteria, bane of last year, is in evidence, but much reduced. There’s going to be some intensive hand-labor around here in the weed department.

If anybody can identify the weedy groundcover, below, please tell me. And how to get rid of it.

Last night, I made a list of garden chores for the week:

• Pull garlic mustard.
• Plant grasses from Steph (my friend brought over three hefty miscanthus clumps, which went in today).
• Plant four nandina ‘Gulfstream’ (heavenly bamboo) and two ilex glabra (a type of holly) from Costco; they were $13 each and very healthy-looking. Which I did – but before doing it, I had to move 5 rhamnus frangula (alder buckthorn) bought last year from White Flower Farm at great expense and still only a few inches tall. Bah. They’re not going to serve as screening between myself and my next-door neighbors, so I put them in a sunny spot in the far reaches of the backyard, where I can forget about them instead of being aggravated every time I open the front door and see how pitifully small they are.
• Plant remaining things from upstate — threadleaf coreopsis, 1 kerria japonica, 1 viburnum. All done this afternoon. Check!

But the list went on, with things un-done.

• Move chelone (turtlehead) and Japanese silver ferns up front.
• Pull crabgrass and other weeds from “lawn” area.
• Shear grass in “lawn” area. I use the term advisedly — it’s increasingly more weeds and less turfgrass. Notice I don’t say “mow.” I don’t have a mower.
• Cut down browning, unattractive juniper.
• Lop Rose of Sharon scattered about the property (that which I didn’t get around to earlier in the season).
• Pick up branches and winter storm damage throughout.
• Plant more flowering trees.
• Get a handle on nameless invasive weedy groundcover.
• Collect more rocks for path edging.
• Mulch.

Suddenly I sat up in bed with my list and scribbled one last item:

• “Call help?!?”

I’ve got a flyer here for “Spring Yard Clean-Up Specials.” That’s what I need: a spring clean-up special.

My garden labors today were eased by the example of a woman my friend Caren and I met last night on our evening constitutional down to Maidstone Beach. We were admiring the plantings in front of a tidy cottage — they reminded me of my own baby beds, with many of the same things I’ve planted, edged with similar rocks — when a woman came forth with a watering can. We complimented her handiwork and got a tour. She’s fully exploited everything deer-proof — irises, peonies, weigela, ferns, grasses, and on and on; set things on pedestals made of found stone; positioned everything in the right place so all is thriving and green; made the yard welcoming to birds with a bird bath and feeders.

Her name is Lois, and she must be well into her 70’s. Lois has something I don’t have, but am trying to cultivate: patience. She’s planted a wisp of red barberry here, a tiny fern there, and she’s clearly OK with waiting for it all to happen in its own good time. Whereas I want the lush, billowing effect immediately, if not sooner. Here’s Lois, not worrying that the garden better happen quickly because she may not have that much time left to enjoy it, but enjoying it as it is right now.

With Lois as inspiration, my four hours in the garden today were more relaxed than usual. I’m doing it. It’s happening. In its own time.

Cottage Garden, Despite the Deer

IT’S WORKING. After 7 years, the perennial beds at my upstate New York place, where my wasband (thanks to Marggy Kerr for that word) lives and gardens, are finally filled in enough to suppress weeds. Two months without any weeding, and I didn’t find the situation at all dire when I was there this past weekend. An hour’s crawl-around with a bushel basket was all it took.

The island bed, in particular — a peanut-shaped bed about 25 feet long and ten feet at its widest, in the middle of the lawn — looks fantastic now, even though the poppies and irises are done and the rudbeckia yet to come.

There is no deer fencing here, amid 20 acres of woods. All the plants we put in are deer-resistant, yet oddly, this year, all the NON-deer-resistant things planted by previous owners in years past — daylilies, white hydrangeas, and hostas, which we had basically given up on — are all in bloom now with little or no evidence of deer damage.

It’s possible that an early-spring application of milorganite (an organic fertilizer that deer conveniently hate) helped, but my new theory is that three cats roaming the property (that’s Lenox, above) and leaving their droppings may scare off the deer, who don’t realize these felines are the domestic variety and not something larger and fiercer.

Anyway, it’s a theory.

My Rented Garden: Nil to Abundance in 2 Seasons

WELL, THAT WASN’T SO BAD, WAS IT? Unless we get some late snowstorms (which have been known to happen), spring is just weeks away. My thoughts are turning to my backyard in Boerum Hill, going into its third season.

I’m a renter here, which means:

• I don’t want to spend much money
• I can’t do anything too invasive (my landlady doesn’t like it, and I’m scared of her)

But as my pictures show, you can do a lot with a little, and fast.

 

 

When I arrived in November 2006, I found a scraggly rectangle of lawn about 22’x40′. Along the back was a raised bed held back by a stacked stone wall. All totally devoid of plants, except for one glorious dogwood tree in a far corner. (The photo below shows the garden in April of ’07, by which time I had dug perimeter beds and stuck a few things in them.)

The grass was bordered on one side by some phenomenal hydrangea bushes that belong to my next-door neighbors but topple into my yard, and on the other side, by a hideous, depressing, 7-foot-tall chain-link fence.

My first thought was to disguise the prison fence by lashing rolled twig fencing (useful stuff; you can buy it online) to it with cable ties.  That didn’t fool anyone, plus it blocked light.

Then I asked my next-door neighbor on the chain-link side whether he’d ever thought of removing the fence. I went out for a few hours, and when I returned, the hideous, depressing fence was GONE! My dear neighbor (who also mows my lawn of his own volition) had done a masterful job of fence-removal in a single afternoon.

That first tentative, unimaginative step in the spring of ’07  — digging three-foot-wide planting beds around the perimeter of the rectangle — was followed by outreach to friends and neighbors. I filled the beds with with catch-as-catch-can plants from a variety of sources.

These included buttercups, irises, lilies from garden-mad neighbors in Boerum Hill who were dividing their excess, as well as:

• plants imported from my own country casa (including catmint and lady’s mantle, my favorite combination, and ferns transplanted from the woods)
• Lowes and Home Depot specials: gallon pots of euonymous, juniper, and other small shrubs for a few bucks
• annuals from the neighborhood plant sales – the Hoyt Street Association and Cobble Hill Tree Fund both have great ones in early May
• birthday gifts (I had the nerve to send party invitations reading “No gifts – unless it’s a plant!”)
• vegetable starters from the Borough Hall Greenmarket

The first season was good; by the second season, I had color that lasted from early spring through October (someone gave me asters!) You know what they say about perennials: “The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap.” These seemed to be leaping pretty good by Year 2.

Summer 08

The color show is aided by containers of coleus and other annuals, and I cheat by placing large containers of annuals right in the beds. By mid-summer you don’t even see the pots.

It’s a north-facing garden, so it has challenges, but the sky is open. This past summer, I decided to try tomatoes for the first time. I bought two simple 4’x8′ raised-bed kits from a company in Massachusetts that makes them Colonial-style (they’re planks of cedar attached at the corners with pegs).

Then I made the classic newbie error of planting too much — 16 tomato plants, when four would have been sufficient. By August, it was out of control and an eyesore. I kept trimming and staking, trimming and staking; more trouble than it was worth. This year I’ll leave one raised bed in the sunnier position with herbs, lettuce, and a few tomatoes, and probably dismantle the other.

I’m raring to go with spring garden-cleaning. The next warmish weekend, I’m on it!