And Now to the Backyard…

On its way to pristine (those are hammock posts in the middle, by the way)

I ALWAYS LOVED THE INITIAL PHASE OF RENOVATION: DEMOLITION. Smashing walls, pulling out old fixtures, ripping up nasty carpet is a whole lot of fun, makes an instant difference, and costs very little.

Recently I’ve realized that landscaping has an equivalent to that first heady phase of renovation. Last fall I had five or six big trees taken down on my Long Island property, and a number of smaller ones. The more I got rid of, the better I liked it.

I’m not done yet. This spring, I’m continuing to pare away excess plant material (including, of course, weeds). My guiding light is a section of Julie Moir Messervy’s 1998 book, The Magic Land: Designing Your Own Enchanted Garden, called ‘Abstracting the Landscape.’ Here’s what she says:

“When you abstract a landscape, you strip it down to its essentials and choose certain elements to stand out as important [for me, those include a ‘pinetum’ or stand of evergreens, and a quirky old cherry tree with over-arching branches]. You can create an abstracted landscape by making what exists more pristine…

When you have a beautiful piece of land, sometimes the most appropriate thing to do is simply clean it up — to abstract it by making it pure. The easiest method is to remove all dead limbs and undergrowth. This allows you to see each undulation on the ground plane, to enjoy each stone that may have tumbled there, to appreciate existing trees as individuals or as groupings.

Encouraging the growth of existing ground covers or importing new ones can help you emphasize the beauty of the land; carefully pruning your trees to rid them of deadwood or diseased branches, to limb them up off the ground or to open their canopy up to light and air, allows you to honor what exists as beautiful and to make it the backbone of your garden.”

I’m so on it. On Saturday, a hard-working, knowledgeable guy named Dong, whom I hired from an ad in the East Hampton Star, and his helper, spent five hours pitchforking and hand-pulling goutweed from areas where it had spread (that’s how I’m handling the goutweed situation, after rejecting the suggestions of a garden designer and landscaper who wanted to spray Round-Up as the most expedient solution).

While they worked, I continued to wage my private war against re-sprouting wisteria. From every green bit of wisteria growth, I followed the underground roots, ripping them up and cutting them when I could rip no more, then applying Round-Up to the cut ends with a sponge paintbrush (I’m not utterly opposed to Round-Up; I just didn’t want it sprayed widely, making my backyard uninhabitable for 2-3 days to me and who knows how long to worms, bugs, and birds). I filled 5 contractor trash bags with coils of wisteria root, while Dong filled the back of his pick-up with goutweed and its spindly white roots. Cathartic! No less satisfying than filling a dumpster with plaster, linoleum, and old appliances.

Now that I’ve established a relationship with Dong (though I’m not his first priority, I can tell), I’ve typed up a list for him. I’m envisioning us walking the property tomorrow, if he shows up, tying pink ribbons on excess saplings, raggedy shrubs, piles of brush, and fallen logs to take away.

Meanwhile, the deer are also helping remove plant material, only not the undesirable stuff. They decimated a pair of heuchera ‘Palace Purple the first night after planting (I moved them streetside, where I think they’ll be safe), and have been sampling newly planted weigela, kerria japonica, and dappled willow. They’ve eaten the buds and flowers from perennial geranium and even astilbe. Will somebody please tell me why they don’t eat goutweed and wisteria?

Deer-ravaged heuchera

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.

Anomalous April

View of the Hudson River and Catskills from Montgomery Place

THIS APRIL IS A STRANGE ONE in the Hudson Valley. The forsythia is not quite finished, which is normal for the time of year, but the lilacs are already in full bloom; ordinarily that doesn’t happen until mid-May. Forsythia and lilacs simultaneously? Weird.

Things are generally much greener than they ought to be. Loomis Creek Nursery’s e-mail newsletter says  the growing season is at least two weeks ahead, due to unseasonably warm weather early in the month, and yesterday at Montgomery Place, the romantic Hudson River estate whose gardens I popped over to see, I overheard the woman who runs their farm stand saying this is the earliest spring since 1945. I believe it.

Montgomery Place, designed by A.J. Davis in the mid-19th century, is actually rather unpretentious, of modest size, with a grand open-air verandah

I just wonder what will happen from here on. Will the lilacs stay in bloom longer than usual while the calendar catches up, or fade and be gone by Mother’s Day? Will the peonies be out in May instead of June, and the day lilies in June rather than July? Remains to be seen, I guess.

Above and below, the gardens at Montgomery Place were designed in the 1920s and ’30s. The brick pathways between beds have delightful scalloped edges.

For my purposes, the season being a bit ahead is not a bad thing. I’m up here to divide perennials from the Dutchess County property where I gardened for several years. Dividing perennials has never been my favorite thing, but this year it’s imperative, both because I have lots of bare dirt to fill at my new place on Long Island, and because certain things, like threadleaf coreopsis and rudbeckia (black-eyed susans to lay folks) have been getting out of control and taking over the central island bed, below (as it looked last September).

I spent most of Saturday digging, and amassed a huge number of pots filled with catmint, lamb’s ear, coreopsis, astilbe, cimicifuga, mint, epimedium, and more. In the end, I took only a small amount of rudbeckia because it is very late to show, even this year, and I wasn’t sure what was what.

Add to that a bunch of stuff from a local couple who sell fresh eggs and potted-up plants from their own garden, for a relative pittance: a kerria japonica bush, a viburnum, bee balm, obedient plant, iris tubers, more astilbes.

Now the big question is, how much can I get in my car?

I Dig

I ALWAYS THOUGHT B&B stood for bed and breakfast. Now I know it means balled and burlapped.

Plants sold in plastic containers are a cinch to plant – you dig a hole and pop them in. Bigger trees and shrubs are B&B’d, like the two hefty mountain laurels I planted this afternoon. They’re heavy mothers.

Oh, my aching back.

Yesterday I went to Marder’s in Bridgehampton, an old-fashioned, full-service nursery where they really help you, to see what they had on sale. I was shopping on the principle that you should choose plants to suit your conditions, not frustrate yourself trying to grow what isn’t natural (and get 60% off if possible).

I went armed with a list of deer-resistant, shade-tolerant, acid-soil-loving shrubs to begin creating a ‘mixed hedge’ along the road (as opposed to the solid, all-one-kind, evergreen wall that is synonymous with the Hamptons). There’s an area about 20’x60′ along the road that is now cleared, thanks to my daughter Zoë, of most saplings and undergrowth (there’s still plenty of wisteria vine, pulled up out of the ground and coiled for later removal and ‘treatment’ — that is, poisoning [heh heh]

On my wish list was:

• skimmia
• clethera
• kerria japonica
• mountain laurel
• mahonia
• American holly

Not the most exciting stuff, but better to have un-showy flowers, I figure, than no flowers at all, because they don’t get enough sun or the deer have eaten them.

Marder’s was out of most things on my list, but I ended up buying eight plants:

• 1 pee gee hydrangea
• 2 osmanthus (purple false holly)
• 3 sarcococca (sweet box)
• 2 mountain laurels

They were delivered this afternoon. I had the delivery guy set the mountain laurels — only about 3 feet high but the root ball makes them monstrously heavy — near where I wanted to plant them. Once they were out there, right by the road, I realized I needed to plant them right away or risk their being stolen. (Call me paranoid, but this happened in Brooklyn once with two brand-new Alberta spruce; they lasted about 20 minutes on the front stoop.)

I had decided not to spring for planting services like last week, when I had a doublefile viburnum planted by the nursery and felt like a princess. Having watched the technique, I wanted to give it a try and save the bucks (planting often costs as much as the plant). It would have been easier with another person, but my daughter had gone off to the Yankee game.

Each of the two shrubs took an hour to plant: digging the hole with two different shovels; wrestling the plant into the hole, then out again and digging deeper, then in again; cutting the rope and burlap away and pulling it out from underneath; re-filling the hole with dirt (by now I was on my knees and using my gloved hands to push the dirt back in; I’d had it with the shovel); making a moat around it to hold water, much like building a sand castle at the beach, but muddier; and finally watering by hand.

I know I should have made the holes twice as wide as the plant (there’s that garden guilt again), but 1-1/2 times was the best I could manage.