No vember

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 9, my uncle taught me this ditty:

No birds No bees No flowers No trees

No wonder…November.

I still find it amusing, even though it’s not true. The goldfinches are still at the thistle feeder. I saw bees burrowing in the catmint just the other day. My cimicifuga sent up about a dozen white bottle-brush flowers, and even the rhododendrons, below — which I thought didn’t bloom this year because the deer had eaten all the buds — have a few stunted magenta flowers on them, months behind schedule. The trees are still pretty leafy, and seem particularly brilliant this autumn.

Perhaps because I’m leaving? Tomorrow I’m heading to Brooklyn to start my experiment in leading a double life — the Hamptons/New York City circuit that so many take for granted, but for me is a whole new chapter.

On Monday morning I’ll be in my Prospect Heights pied-a-terre, awaiting delivery of most of the furniture I put into storage a year-and-a-half ago, when I came out to live in East Hampton full-time. That was by default, as some of you may remember, when the Brooklyn place I was to have moved into around the same time I closed on this Hamptons cottage fell through at the last minute.

Above: Awesome sarcococca, male of the species

I feel like I have unfinished business back in Brooklyn. I’m getting excited about volunteering at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, taking $10 yoga classes at Shambala, going to BAM more often, hearing some klezmer music, shopping at Sahadi. But most of all, having a city home again, furnished with city stuff. The orange Ligne Roset chairs, the steel and glass coffee table, the Nakashima-esque side table my son made, the inlaid 1950s Italian cabinet we bought in Tuscany and had shipped home, the 8-foot-long beige chenille sofa with cat-scratched arms. Maybe inanimate objects shouldn’t matter so much, but somehow they do. Even more than memories, I think, they’re about identity. It’s been hard sometimes, these past 18 months, to remember who I am in a new place, new house, surrounded by new (pre-owned, of course, but new to me) stuff.

November will not be boring. After settling into Brooklyn, I’m off to Maui for a week (yes, I know, too bad). I’ll be exploring the island with my daughter, who lives there. I’ve got our itinerary planned out. No modern resorts; we’ll be staying in vintage B&Bs. I’ll visit some botanic gardens and flower farms and historic houses and maybe even go to the beach. Then I’m heading down to Philly to cut a hole in a wall that should make one of the apartments in my Queen Village building much pleasanter and more livable. Thanksgiving will be upstate with lots of cousins.

It won’t be until December that I begin to figure out how this pied-a-terre thing really works.

Photos by Debre DeMers

Perennial Bargains

NOW IS THE TIME to make like a vulture and swoop down on sale perennials. From mid-August on, local nurseries have them for 30-50% off. A smidgen of gardening knowledge goes a long way here; you need confidence to buy things that are long past flowering and may be looking a little tattered.

That’s normal. You’ll be cutting them back anyway, almost to the ground, before winter. Next spring, with their roots well-established, they’ll be raring to go again.

<- Digitalis purpurea ‘Candy Mountain’

Yesterday I popped into Wittendale’s in East Hampton and bought three foxgloves, left (biennials, which put out attractive rosettes of leaves the first year and spectacular flowers the second — next summer, that is). I also got a variegated lirope, below, with yellow-green leaves, to fill in a bare spot in my front garden, and three long-blooming (still blooming, in fact) bleeding hearts, bottom, which I know will do well, as they tolerate both shade and deer. All are big and healthy- looking and attractive as-is. Total: about $35. Would have bought more, but that was all they had of what I could use.

Lirope muscari ‘Silvery Sunproof’

In the next few days, I’ll check out other area nurseries. Perennials need to go into the ground at least six weeks before the first frost of the season, which could be as late as November 10 here on eastern Long Island, so there’s plenty of time as far as the plants are concerned. But I want first pick of the sale items — they’ll go fast, and only get more bedraggled as time goes on.

Dicentra formosa ‘Luxuriant’

A Year in Springs, and How My Garden Does Grow!

My front beds have gone from bare to ongepotchket (‘Slapped together without form, excessively decorated,’ according to one Yiddish dictionary) in a month. No, not true, but I see how easily it could happen…I can’t stop planting!

EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO, I had just moved to my new home in Springs (East Hampton), N.Y. I had no heat. No refrigerator. No driveway — just a sea of mud. And a backyard that was impenetrable, due to overgrown wisteria and weeds, with a fallen-down shed in the middle of it. I was cold, scared, and lonely; I didn’t know many people in the area. The weather was foul, and I prayed for a bit of sunshine to put a more comforting spin on things.

Greener than brown…

These days, I’m warm and toasty, with a fully functioning kitchen, a new roof, and a yard that’s at least partly under control. To be sure, there’s a ways to go: I still need a new bathroom, a deck, and a paint job. But I love living here. It’s home. I have wonderful new friends and neighbors. I no longer choke on the word “Hamptons.” I’ve even caught myself saying “up-island,” as in “Whenever I go up-island, I stop at IKEA [Costco, Home Depot…]” (Up-island is a term we East Enders use to refer to parts of Long Island closer to…what’s the name of that city again? Right, New York.)

Still rock-hunting for those edges…only the best will do.

Today, in fact, I went up-island, to visit my cousin Barbara and pick up her birthday present to me: five big bags of compost — a most welcome gift. Yes, it was teeming, but that didn’t stop us from dividing some of her astilbe, epimedium, and liriope, which I hauled back in my trusty Honda. Tomorrow I’ll plant it, rain or shine. My front-yard beds have gone from bare to practically stuffed in about a month.

Moving on to containers…

A very satisfying day. While the Long Island Expressway is still soul-numbing (I listened to a new Anne Tyler book, Noah’s Compass, on CD — also somewhat numbing), I didn’t mind the rain. As a civilian, I would have preferred pleasanter weather. But as a gardener, I’m thrilled that Nature is doing the watering.

New favorite: an old concrete birdbath planted with sedum and scaevola, an annual.

GARDEN VOYEUR: Same Designer, Different Styles in Park Slope

HERE’S AN ILLUMINATING EXAMPLE  of how a professional landscape architect, working to address clients’ unique needs and properties, comes up with totally individualized solutions.

The professional is Liz Farrell of Park Slope, who has degrees in environmental science and landscape architecture, and has been in business since 1994. The clients are, in the first case, a family with three teens, two dogs, and a small budget; in the second, an empty-nest couple with an 800 square foot, excessively shady backyard.

#1: COTTAGE

Sunny, tiny (18’x35’) and cost-conscious, this Park Slope garden was originally a rectangle of struggling lawn with a concrete perimeter.

Four years ago, the homeowners called Farrell to rethink it. They wanted an area for entertaining as well as space for their two yellow Labs to let off steam; they also had a desire for a cottage-style garden full of herbs and flowers.

Today, they have all that. Farrell divided the space into two functional areas: a paved half of Belgian block and a symmetrically planted garden centered on a circular area made of salvaged slate. To save money and raise the back and sides of the garden up a few inches, Farrell re-used the original concrete curb that rimmed the lawn. An arched trellis at the entrance to the planted area and a metal tuteur with clematis in the center provide vertical structure, along with two tall junipers at the back.

Bold primary colors on the house extension (a mud/utility room) provide cheer in all seasons.

Japanese holly divides the paved and planted areas. Summer-flowering shrubs (spirea, astilbe, honeysuckle, azaleas, climbing hydrangea, barberries) border the perimeter; perennials (geraniums, clematis, and more) and herbs are toward the center. Pink roses climb the fence on either side of the garden in early June.

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#2 ZEN

This 800 sq. ft. garden behind an elegant row house was a “real shade challenge,” in Farrell’s words. The homeowners wanted privacy while sitting on the deck and a focal element they could enjoy from the kitchen’s square bay window.

Farrell designed a spiral-shaped water feature of pebbles from Long Island Sound, with a simple, low fountain made by drilling a hole through natural rock. The stacked stone bench and bamboo fence, made from rolls of bamboo threaded with copper wire on a wood frame, give the garden a meditative, somewhat Asian feel.

Plantings include white paper birches, wood hyacinth, ferns, liriope, oak leaf and climbing hydrangeas and rhododendrons. The irregular paving stones have moss joints. A stand of bamboo under the metal deck and tall taxus in corners provide additional privacy from surrounding neighbors.

GARDEN VOYEUR: Foolproof Plants for Brooklyn Backyards

THIS IS WHERE I cut my gardening teeth: the 21’x35′ backyard on Verandah Place in Cobble Hill where we lived for twenty years, above, as it looked in May/ June.

We inherited a graceful Japanese maple, a stand of honeysuckle (abelia ‘Francis Mason,’ I later learned), and climbing hydrangea that served to disguise a rusted chain-link fence. There were a few slabs of slate on the ground, which we gradually expanded to a good-sized patio, with pieces salvaged from vacant lots in Red Hook and contributions from friends (I remember one summer night being surprised by a delivery of bluestone slabs from a friend who saw them going begging someplace).

We added a small wrought iron balcony and steps going down into the garden from the parlor floor, and had some old-school masons build steps and a landing with bricks and railroad ties — nothing elaborate — leading down to the well area.

Little by little, through trial and error, I learned how to create a garden. The main challenge: excessive shade. Though south-facing, sun was limited by gargantuan ailanthus trees in the neighboring yards.

A couple of the principles that served me well:

• Use variegated foliage – that is, shade-tolerant plants that don’t flower showily but have green and white foliage to bring light to dark corners of the garden, e.g. ‘striped’ hosta, caladium bulbs, variegated lirope (the festive-looking silver stuff in the left foreground below), vinca and ivy – anything at all that comes ‘variegated.’

Below: The white feathery plumes on the right (there’s a purple one too) are astilbe — shade-tolerant, reliable, ironclad.

• 

• Limit color for cohesiveness. I stuck to a palette of blue, purple, pink and white. Very little orange, red or yellow, a situation partially dictated by circumstances; most hot-colored flowers require a lot of sun.

Most satisfying: oak leaf hydrangea along the back line of the property. Three plants (expensive at the time; about $50 each) grew in a couple of years to create three-season glory, with huge, neat, colorful leaves and massive white panicles from June until frost.

See below for more plant suggestions. Any and all of these are recommended for Brooklyn backyards; they’re foolproof and readily available.

Below, left to right: chartreuse andromeda, Japanese fern, ‘money plant’ (those purplish flowers will turn to dry, translucent, coin-like things come fall), the blue spikes of ajuga, all under a climbing hydrangea, soon to flower white.

Below, a deep shade corner, with (left to right) the round glossy leaves of European ginger, Japanese fern, small leaved ivy and small-leaved chartreuse hosta, and yellow-tipped houtonia — pretty, with white flowers, but invasive — you have to be prepared to pull it out where you don’t want it.  The cardboard is from a package of caladiums, to remind me where I planted them (they don’t show up till July).

Below, my favorite afternoon reading spot. Left to right: pink creeping phlox; white ‘starry eyes,’ a sun-loving groundcover; the remainder of some pink bleeding heart (easy, showy, great for shade); small white flowering bulbs (the name escapes me  – anyone?); variegated hosta; blue wood hyacinth in the background.

This last picture, below, is a bit earlier in the season — late April. The hostas are just coming in. The fuchsia azalea was too gaudy for me; I got rid of it. In the foreground, you can see brownish huechera (coral bells), more ‘starry eyes,’ yellow-flowering lamium or dead nettle, and some tiny hybrid tulips on long thin stems — ordered early on from a bulb catalogue, they came back year after year, providing great pleasure.

Mind you, these are all perennials, not annuals. They don’t flower all season, just for a few weeks. But you plant them once and have them for years with no additional effort or expense. Perennials are the way to go if you’ll be staying put for any length of time. You can divide them in spring or fall to create more of the same, and take some with you if you move.