Raking Leaves is a A Fool’s Errand

THAT PHRASE POPPED INTO MY HEAD TODAY as I raked leaves. It’s an impossible task, because every night’s breezes bring a fresh layer. Yesterday I observed my next-door neighbor raking, raking, raking, making huge piles for the town pick-up. Today, I glanced into his yard and saw that they’d been replenished. But I happen to know he rakes for fun, so it’s OK.

Daffodil bulbs ready to go in the ground at Bridge Gardens

Besides raking, I’ve been busy with other fall landscaping chores, inspired partly by a two-hour workshop I attended on Saturday at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton called “Putting Your Garden to Bed for the Winter.” At least half the discussion was about which hydrangeas bloom on old wood and which on new. I can’t have hydrangeas at all because of my deer friends, so I tuned out.

Below, transplanting clumps of hydrangea ‘Annabelle’ at Bridge Gardens

I was reminded of how important it is to keep watering, especially after such a dry season as we’ve had. I’ve been moving hoses around from individual tree to tree so they get soaked in the root zone (particularly some of the big evergreens that look parched), pulling up spent annuals, planting three new aronia (chokeberries) as part of my ‘tapestry hedge’ in front, and moving other things from places where they’re not thriving to places where I hope they will.

Below, annual Japanese fountain grass, perennial geranium ‘Roxanne,’ and Saturday students at Bridge Gardens

Just as I was coming to the end of today’s to-do list, the UPS truck pulled up with my bulb order from Scheeper’s. It’s not a big order — just 10 ‘Gladiator’ alliums, 10 gorgeous lilies I couldn’t resist, even though they need sun and deer like them (I’m going to plant them by the front deck and keep a spritz bottle of Deer-Off handy), and 100 Spanish bluebells for a wooded area in the backyard middle distance that I haven’t gotten around to doing anything with.

How Bridge Gardens deals with deer, below

I’m feeling a bit of urgency, as I’m moving into my Brooklyn pied-a-terre next Monday. I won’t be around much in November, and I want to leave my East Hampton place in good shape — well-watered, nicely mulched, cozily tucked in for winter.

One of several unusual types of elephant ear at Bridge Gardens, below

The Boxwood Rebellion

I wasn’t really planning something like this…

IT HAPPENED SO FAST, my head is spinning. At 3 o’clock, I was at Spielberg’s Nursery in East Hampton, now that fall sales have begun, looking to see what they might have in the way of shrubs to screen my front yard from the road. For months, I have been incubating the notion that it should be a “tapestry hedge” made up of native shrubs with varying textures and colors. A hedge that would always have something interesting going on with fruit or flowers, and attract birds and butterflies, like the books say.

or this…

I was armed with a list. Actually, a sheaf of lists. Among the suggestions: blackthorn, hawthorn, field maple, hazel, crabapple, honeysuckle, spicebush, highbush blueberry, pagoda dogwood, viburnum.

Spielberg’s didn’t have any of those. And when I factored in my two challenges — shade and deer — my options were further reduced. In fact, they were reduced to one thing: boxwood.

…something like this, perhaps?

Now I love boxwood. It’s tidy and green and reliable, and deer don’t touch the stuff. As one of my favorite garden designers, Dean Riddle, says, you can never have too many boxwoods. They’re the little black dress of gardening. But I wasn’t planning a uniform hedge, and I’ve yet to see boxwoods used as part of a mixed hedge. Not so’s I can remember, anyway.

By 3:15, I had bought three plump, 4′ tall Buxus sempervirens: Common or American Boxwood. By 4PM, they were delivered to my house. By 4:30, Dong, who has been helping me with weeding and mowing, was there with a shovel.

I hadn’t had time to plan, and Dong made it clear that once he dug the holes, that’s where the plants were going. So I did the best I could on the fly. I had him remove two mountain laurels that weren’t doing well on the roadside — not enough sun, probably — and replace them with two of the boxwoods (and move the mountain laurels to a more auspicious spot). I put a third boxwood closer to the house, where it forms a sort of triangle with the other two, for no particular reason except I thought three in a row would look stupid.

Actually, I find this one very inspiring, if ever I get a deer fence.

Among my papers is an article about mixed country hedges that calls them a “revolt against all that boxwood.” Well, now I’m in unintended revolt against mixed country hedges, I guess. I’m still planning to put some more free-flowing plants around my buttoned-up boxwoods. That is, if I can find anything shade-tolerant and deer-resistant besides box.