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?

Winter Drags On…

THE IDES OF MARCH are almost upon us, and what a pain. I’m up in the Hudson Valley now, cat-sitting for a few days, and if ever I thought I was going to do some gardening, which I foolishly did, I’ve had to let go of that notion. The snow was thick on the ground when I got here, and now, after two days of rain, what’s not snow-covered is mushy and boggy and muddy (here’s how it looked this morning, above). True, I did manage to shovel some compost into bags for my garden in East Hampton, and cut down some of last season’s zebra grass before the rains came.

But my hope was to dig and divide some of the cottagey perennials that are here in abundance, all deer-resistant, planted mostly between 2002 and 2006 when I spent a lot of time gardening up here in Zone 5 northern Dutchess. (See one of the beds to be pillaged as it looks in mid-summer, above.) That was, it turns out, a ridiculous hope. With temperatures here in the 40’s recently, I figured the ground would be un-frozen, and I could get some rudbeckia, bee balm, catmint, ladies mantle, coral bells, lamb’s ear, astilbe, bleeding heart, and any number of other things into plastic pots, ready to be transplanted into my newly prepared Zone 7 Long Island garden beds, below, next week.

Waaaaayyyyyy premature. I shall have to sit tight, along with gardeners throughout the Northeast, and wait for the winter to finish up in its own good time.

It’s good to know, however, that the curved beds at the front of my property back in East Hampton — about 400 square feet of them, leading from my new parking court to the front door of my cottage, are pretty much ready to go. Last fall, I laid them out by raking piles of fallen oak leaves into the desired shapes. Through the winter, I woke up more than once in the middle of the night wondering how I was going to turn piles of leaves into plantable soil, quickly.

The answer came in the form of a delivery truck from Whitmores last Wednesday, containing 7 cubic yards of topsoil and compost (cost: about $400). It was shoveled, spread, and raked smooth for me right on top of those leaves, ready to be planted up as soon as the time is right.

I haven’t ordered anything from those tempting catalogues; I don’t have the patience to wait for tiny specimens to grow. I’ll buy shrubs and perennials from wholesale nurseries, and places like Lowe’s and Home Depot, which may not have anything exotic, but in recent years seem to have gotten their act together to at least provide healthy plants. I’ll divide what’s here upstate, beg divisions from other gardeners I know, and take whatever can be spared from the backyard of one of my buildings in Brooklyn, above.

My goal: curb appeal, fast. It’s going to be a happy round robin of plant-moving and schlepping, and I can hardly wait.

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.

Container Culture

THERE’S REALLY NOTHING you can’t grow in containers, provided the container is big enough — trees, shrubs, grasses, bulbs, perennials, annuals.

So, if you happen to have a 4,600 square foot rooftop terrace like the one above and below, atop a factory converted to living lofts in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — come September, you can have your own prairie meadow, ablaze with golden rudbeckia (black-eyed Susans).

Rebecca Cole, the garden designer, created the look of natural landscaping, with metal cubes containing birch trees and grasses, ‘carpets’ of sedum, and lots of annual color. She carefully planned the placement of containers to break up the vast space into functional areas, and considered the view from indoors.

On the Greenwich Village terrace, below, also by Rebecca Cole, a Japanese maple thrives, along with a lush array of evergreens and perennials, many with chartreuse foliage.

MORE CONTAINER IDEAS

Now for something a little more attainable. First, a couple of humble containers from my own past, and what made me happy about them:

The yellow-tipped hosta in a terra cotta pot, below at left, couldn’t be easier or more reliable. The five orange lilies at right were a free bonus with a plant order. They were stuck in a clay pot and forgotten, except for the few weeks each summer when they would reappear, vigor undiminished.

The perennial dianthus (mini-carnations), below, from a farmers market, were a complete surprise. How well they bloomed had, I think, something to do with the piece of salvaged mirror I placed along the wall behind them. A south-facing wall to begin with, the extra reflected light seemed to enhance and prolong their bloom, which lasted for many weeks.

Another bargain in a pot, below: coleus and impatiens stuck in a shady, bare space among hostas, ferns, and hydrangeas for instant, portable color.

If there’s one good rule for successful annual containers, it might be ‘Stuff it all in there.’ The urn below, created by landscape designer Mary-Liz Campbell at the entrance to her home in Westchester County, has at least five different plants, including cannas, Japanese blood grass, variegated ivy, and sweet potato vine.

Two important things to do with container plantings: feed and water. A lot. Nutrients in containers get used up quickly.

Last, an unpretentious little grouping, seen last spring on an Amsterdam doorstep. Not much to it, really — it’s mostly just one plant per pot — but doesn’t it make you want to go plant up some containers and stick them on your front steps?

Mud Now, Flowers Later

Just a few more weeks: daffs and peach tree, below, bloom in April

MARCH IS MUD SEASON in the Hudson Valley, raw, wet, and long. If I lived here full-time, I’d probably have to shoot myself right about now, but for remembering what’s to come.

After gardening on this property for seven years, I know it’s not long before brown turns to green, and then to an outrageous floral extravaganza.

In the meantime, I sustain myself with pictures from prior seasons (the small ones were taken Tuesday).

If those are globe alliums, above, it must be May

June: catmint, ladies mantle, threadleaf coreopsis, and daylilies, above

The island bed in August, above and below, with rudbeckia, sedum, boltonia, and more

Above, Coneflowers in late summer