Category Archives: Gardening

My new obsession for acquisition: the Japanese Stewartia. I stumbled happily upon these trees at both the Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where they offered a bit of cooling shade on a warm July day. At the former, they made up a shaded corner of a Japanese garden, while in the latter they assembled in a small forest on one side of Ms. Stewart’s magical haunt.

In both instances they formed handsome clumps of foliage, with gorgeously mottled bark and delicate day-long flowers.

Upon researching the Stewartia, I discovered they may be hardy enough in our Zone 5 locale to try, though at their price point I may wait a couple more years until global warming gets us into a safer Zone 6 designation (hey, it’s no joke – we used to be Zone 4, and the only thing that’s changed is the weather).

I read a little further until those insipid comments started, and I saw that people were complaining about the flowers. ‘Insignificant’ and ‘simple’ seemed to be the general consensus of complaint, as if either was horribly insidious. I then remembered my cardinal rule not to read comments by the anonymous public. If someone has a problem with the simplicity of a bloom, or the thrilling fact that each only lasts a day in hot weather, then they cannot be counted on to understand the intricacies of true beauty.

Further proof that I need to be out in the world experiencing the flowers rather than reading snarky comments about them.

It’s that time of the year again, and as usual I almost missed it. This bloom would have gone unnoticed had Andy not alerted me to the fact that he saw it when mowing the lawn last week. It is the blossom of the prickly pear cactus that has survived on our South-facing bank for a number of years. There it receives full sun and dry sandy soil and little to no pampering or care. Somehow it still throws out these pretty blooms, often to a complete lack of notice.

It’s another instance of where I need to focus more and maybe build up their space since they do so well there. It’s a tricky spot that Andy has bemoaned having to mow in the past. Sometimes solutions present themselves in flowering pricks.

This gorgeous hue is usually the stuff of late spring, fading quickly before the high heat of summer. Creeping Jenny retains this lovely shade for the duration of the season, echoing the sweet potato vines and their lime-like lightness. It’s one of my favorite colors in the garden, partly because it doesn’t often last. There is beauty in the fleeting, that tantalizing temporal limit that makes certain colors seem to matter more.

Here, Ms. Jenny softens the concrete surrounds of the pool, complementing the aqua of the water in thrilling fashion. The bottom stalks of a papyrus complete the rest of her pot; both enjoy exceedingly wet environs. To achieve this, I line the bottom of their home with a plastic garbage bag with just a few tiny holes in it. There’s drainage, but not much. The wetter the better.

The battle for blue hydrangeas has been the bane of my gardening existence since I first planted a pair of ‘Endless Summer’ beauties in the front yard a decade and a half ago. Back then, before I knew any better, I envisioned billowing bunches of blue blooms, echoing the sky or some pool of the bluest water. When they finally deigned to bloom (after a season or two of bloom-killing winters and too-short summers) they were a light purple, which veered into pink territory in the right (or wrong) light. A far cry from the magnificently over-saturated vibrant hues of the ones that seemed to grow with such easy abandon on Cape Cod.

Undaunted, I offered them endless coffee grounds from Andy’s unending supply, stuck their soil with rusty nails and screws and every bit of rotting metal I could find, and watered them with an acidifier all in an effort to bring the pH to a level that turned the flowers blue. It worked, but only a little, and only for a season or two. I didn’t have the resilience to keep up such a front. They’ve largely reverted to pink, with the occasional purple stalk coming through.

This lace-cap hydrangea is actually called ‘Blue Billow’ – and it too requires soil far more acidic than ours to live up to its name, hence the pink hue we have here. I’m not unhappy about this – it’s perfectly pretty – but I may start saving coffee grounds. They make for a scented mulch and compost additive.

The traditional lavender gets a make-over in this pink version of the venerable perennial. In our slightly sandy soil, lavender tends to do well, and in the midst of all the purple these pink blooms are a charming departure. I think it may be time for some lavender martinis. (That recipe can be found here, and you will thank me if you’ve never tried it before.)

Lavender is usually an easy crop – they like sun and sandy soil, and I’ve never fertilized or amended their site with anything. The most I do is cut them back to the ground to keep them compact and tidy. (You may leave them alone and they’ll sprout from whatever growth remains intact after winter – in warmer climates they can get larger and woodier – neither of which appeals to me in the front of the border, where they are located. I also find they don’t put out as vigorous growth when you let them build on top of what has already had its season. You have to know when to let things go.

The hot and sticky morning received no respite from the previous night. The heat and humidity lingered, refusing to let up even in the pre-dawn hours. In that heavy air, a light perfume sweetly scented the floating molecules. The climbing hydrangea, whose blooms don’t often get the recognition for their fragrance, was the source of the sweetness.

Known more for its form and foliage, as well as the lace-cap elegance of its blooms, not much is written about the perfume it emits. It’s nothing all that special or spectacular, but it’s the perfect summer scent – sweet and light, and irresistible to bees and butterflies.

This particular specimen is at least a decade old, and finally coming into its own. It follows the growing pattern of so many vines: the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps.

I love a good leap year.

Sweet fragrance, wafting along on a summer breeze, this is the mockorange. With its exquisite perfume as its main draw, this is a favorite shrub – worth growing for its brief but magnificent bloom period. The foliage is unremarkable, but stays green and largely intact throughout the season. Its form is slightly sprawling and unrefined, but manageable with severe pruning every few years. (You will sacrifice some blooms, as it flowers most prolifically on older wood.)

When discussing possible landscape solutions with Suzie, she soon reached her exasperation limit and metaphorically threw her texting fingers up in defeat, saying something like “Why don’t we just plant hostas everywhere and call it a day?” At first I bristled at the intimation – then I realized it wasn’t such a bad idea. Despite its overuse in the mainstream garden, the hosta, when properly cared for and pampered, is one of the most handsome plants in existence, one whose beauty holds throughout the entire season. Most perennials have a month or two of glory, but very few can maintain their luster from spring all the way to fall. A hosta’s foliage doesn’t diminish at any point.

They send up bonus lavender stalks of lily-like fragrant blooms in the middle of summer, though these are mostly subtle afterthoughts – the main draw is their leaves.

Suzie’s cutting remark got me to thinking about my own hesitation in using them, and I realized it’s partly from her childhood home, where a large stand of hosta surrounded a sun-dial in the middle of a circular stone path. They grew cramped and unfertilized beneath the shade of an old elm, and despite their hardy return year after year, they never, to my knowledge, received any additional help. The leaves were variegated but on the small side – quantity giving preference of quality. It was the typical use of them – in difficult areas where they could easily survive but not thrive to their full potential.

I’d become accustomed to putting them in places that proved inhospitable to more delicate choices, but they always rewarded with displays that got larger and fuller and more beautiful with each passing year, particularly when I indulged them with ample manure in the spring, deadheading in the summer, and some simple foliage maintenance throughout the year (the leaves grow so big and broad, they become a catch-all for falling detritus).

This year, even after Suzie’s disparaging comment, I added four hosta plants to a tricky place beside our backyard patio. It’s partly shaded thanks to the canopy, and has, for some reason, proven reliably difficult to successfully curate. Shade loving annuals like coleus and caladium have failed to prosper, and it’s been ravaged by the pesky roots of a weeping cherry standard. We will see if the hosta can fill in and win the day. I’m confident they shall.

This interesting bloom is the Mountain Laurel, which happens to be my mother’s name. I planted it a few years ago on a whim, plopping it into the space outside our fence, which means I tend to forget about it. This year it caught my eye just as it came into bloom, so I quickly snapped a few photos to remind me to take a little better of it.

Given its shady nook and such negligence, it hasn’t thrived, but still it blooms. That’s the kind of determination I admire and reward. I’ll pamper it with a top-dressing of cow manure, the greatest gift I can give to such a recipient.

On this, the summer solstice, we look to recharge from a somber spring, and according to the garden and lawn, things are right on schedule. Beauty has dotted the landscape with these striking accents of rose campion. I planted this solely for that wonderful color, but I’ve since com to appreciate its furry gray leaves and their rosette form, as well as the way the flowers float high above them like butterflies. I even enjoy their pepper-shaker-like seed dispersal containers, like mini poppy seed pods.

As for summer, I embrace it tentatively. Too much celebration is a sure path to disappointment, and we’ve had enough of that lately. For now, a hesitant smile at the sun. And hope.

Behold the Baptisia!

Beautiful garden perennial, stalwart and loyal and true.

I forget how lovely and essential this is for a proper border.

Though the pea-like blooms are a wondrous shade of bluish-purple, it is the foliage that sees this beauty through, anchoring whatever space in which it drives its deep tap root into the ground. That foliage will last and remain fresh throughout the season, evolving into a more silvery and less chartreuse shade as the summer progresses. The branches do occasionally require staking, as it tends to open up wider and wider as it relaxes into the late summer months, and sometimes I simply cut it back by September. One less thing to clean up come spring.

Right now, it is in its glory, and deserves a bit of celebration. This is one of those wonderful plants that is so good it gets lost in the shuffle. Certain people are like that too, and it’s a shame. When you’re good at a lot of things, it’s easy to be overlooked or taken for granted. One of the great mysteries and fucked-up situations of life. The plants that need the most help and support get it; the ones who survive on their own are left to fend for their own. Still, this Baptisia returns year after year, demanding no extra watering or fertilizer, no fancy pruning or fussy placement, and it rewards with this gorgeous display every June.

Behind the dog cages and past the enormous chestnut tree lurked the hidden delights of the little forest at the edge of Suzie’s house. We rarely played that far out because there were so many other places to explore at that sprawling property, but once in a while I would find myself there, wandering alone, pulled by the sound of a distant stream and covered with a green canopy of trees. After breaking through the brush, I felt relief at the hush that descended. The cars speeding down Locust Avenue felt far away. The noise of the dogs softened too. I walked over the soft ground, padded with fallen leaves and the wetness of late spring.

It was here that I stumbled upon my first jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum). A small mound of them rose up from the surrounding earth, as if someone had dug them up and dropped them there. It is a magical moment when you first see the spathe acting like some dramatic hood, obscuring the hidden phallic spadix, which rises like a grinning secret. I was spellbound.

As an endangered species however, it was not easy to locate these plants for sale, so for many years I forgot about how wondrous they were, content to keep showier flowers that displayed their wares more openly and unabashedly. Then I stumbled upon a jack-in-the-pulpit in one of those plastic mass-produced packages that nurseries and practically every other store on the planet will offer at this time of the year. They’ve never grown for me – the sorry, desiccated, barely-recognizable bare-root is often difficult to discern from the packing material, and no matter how well one prepared the planting hole, it’s always a crap shoot. Regardless, a specimen of Arisaema triphyllum was too tantalizing not to give the $4.99 a try, so I picked one up, plopped it into the shady corner nook of the garden, and promptly forgot about it. Nothing came of it that year, and when winter comes I forget even the most prominent specimens I’ve planted, so it went from my head.

Last year, it must have sent up foliage, as I vaguely recall seeing the distinctive three-leaved sets, and not bothering them for some reason. This year, the leaves came back, and with them this flower.

Jack had risen, and he was beautiful.