Category Archives: Gardening

This is the best time to view the garden – just as the peonies and dogwood are coming into bloom, when the ostrich ferns are still at their pristine chartreuse stage, and as the mulch-laden ground forms a uniform backdrop to all the fresh growth. Soon, things will fill in and eliminate some of that spatial openness that I’ve come to appreciate more as I get older. Leaves will turn darker and more leathery. The blush will fade from the rose, literally and figuratively.

For now, though, I sit back and stretch the thigh muscles I’d forgotten I had, after spreading fifteen bags of manure and mulch. Surveying the garden, I take a rare moment to enjoy the present. After some cajoling, Andy has made a pitcher of iced tea. The sun is bright, a rarity this spring, and I’m hot from all the digging. I sip the cool liquid and take it all in. The rain begins a little later, but I’m mostly done with the tasks I set for myself. A small stand of hosta has been planted. A lace-cap hydrangea has been moved. The ostrich ferns have been thinned out.

The falling drops eventually force me inside, but not before I make more plans. A volunteer sedum has taken off in a spot outside the fence, and it’s doing so well I want to transplant it to a more fitting location. Good performance is always rewarded here. I make a mental note to find a better spot for it. The bamboo in the side yard is also doing quite well – it’s the running kind so I put it in the harshest section of our ground, where it sends up a dozen or so new stalks every year. The winters here keep it in check, but I’m still reluctant to have it in the garden or remotely near the pool. Maybe I’ll just throw some manure on it where it is and call it a day. Something still needs to be done with the climbing hydrangea, but it’s to pretty to touch right now, and just coming into bloom. Another mental pin until the beauty passes.

Even in the rain, it’s good to be in the garden.

One of my favorite trees is currently coming into (bract) bloom – the Chinese dogwood. Unlike its American cousin, this species sets its flowers on display after the foliage has leafed out. Here are charms to both, though I happen to prefer the later blooming period of these as the weather is usually (ahem) nicer by this point in the year. Clearly that’s not the case this year.

Rain or shine, the blooms are coming on, and after a reasonably mild winter they are happily intact. (Especially frigid seasons will diminish the blooms, which are set by the fall.) I’ve noticed that in the splendid rhododendron plants in the neighborhood too – a mild winter makes for a spectacular floral show.

Behold, this is one of my favorite plants in the garden, and it’s at its peak right now. The Solomon’s Seal, scientifically-monikered Polygonatum, is currently blooming – its bell-like-blossoms dangle two-by-two on the underside of its arching stems. Seen here after a spring rain, the effect is doubly dazzling. From a single plant I brought from my parents’ house, a few large colonies have established themselves in our backyard. One stand in particular has expanded so much that several friends now have groupings at their own homes. This is the sort of plant that lends itself to sharing, and everyone loves the results.

I find that to keep them happiest, the best thing to do is provide a healthy top-dressing of manure at the very start of the growing season, before or just as the buds are breaking the soil. Of course you can do it at any time of the growing year, I just find it easier to do so when you can get around them – once they start reaching for the sky they won’t stop until forming the gorgeously impenetrable forest you see here.

This is the season of the ostrich fern. I didn’t get a chance to capture their fiddleheads this year, and I regret that. It’s one of their most magical moments, and I’m upset that I’ve been away from the house too often to pay attention to the garden. It’s probably why I’ve been a little out-of-sorts lately. Gardening is better than therapy for some of us, and I need to make it a priority again.

This is the brightest and most beautiful these ferns will get. Our summers are too hot to sustain such freshness until the end. One can prolong the beauty with regular and consistent watering, but even that fails by August, when things go brown and begin their die-back no matter how moist the soil is kept.

With our temperatures scheduled to creep into the 90’s already, these probably don’t stand a chance, but we will do our best. A little watering work each day can work wonders for this crowd.

Depending on the winter, the Lenten rose can be a gorgeous show-off or a bedraggled mess. The past few years have seen the former, and a decade and a half of living with us has allowed this specimen to mature into a bloody good performer. These long-lived plants take a while to get going – quite a while in fact – and for about five years the only thing this one did was push up a few leaves. I had faith. It paid off.

Most years this variety nods its flower-heads toward the ground, and the interior rarely faces upward, denying viewers a look at its gorgeously unique design. This time around, however, we got a much better look at the lenten rose blooms, as they raised their heads and nodded to the sky. Even after fifteen years, flowers reserve the right to surprise and change course, and in the most beautiful of manners.

Going out in a blaze of glory, summer weather returns this week to upstate New York. I just returned myself from Washington, DC (posts to come) so I’m in catch-up mode once again, but The Delusional Grandeur Tour is on fire, and just when I thought the wind had gone out of my touring sail, a re-energized itinerary has me going places once again.

As for today, let’s ease back into the work week gradually and peacefully, with this beautiful Japanese anemone, doing its part to close out the season in fine style. Our cup plants are still throwing a few of their yellow daisy-like blooms out, on toppled stems, but the finches don’t seem to mind. A September garden Renaissance is a brilliant thing to behold.

By the end of July, even the best gardens can begin to look a little haggard, especially when there hasn’t been a steady supply of rain. Leaves curl and dry up, flowers fade and fall to the ground, and the once-fresh and vibrant grasses begin to go to seed. Our stand of ostrich ferns starts looking a little brown around the edges at that time, and only a persistent and dogged watering regime can hold off their inevitable die-back, especially when located in relatively full sun. A perennial sweet pea passed out a while back, so I cut it back ruthlessly. The first flush of hydrangea blooms was pruned away as they began to turn brown.

Yet around this time something wonderful happens. After the lull, and the hint of impending fall, the garden gets a second wind. A spell of thunderstorms soaks the ground, and the nights offer a respite from the oppressive heat.

Annuals that had re-seeded themselves later in the season begin their bloom.

August flowers such as anemone, flowering maple and Rose-of-Sharon come into their own, while a butterfly weed plant puts forth a second show of flowers. Sometimes you’ll even get a second blooming of the Korean lilac, with all its intoxicating perfume.

This flowering renaissance is a renewal of summer, and a reminder that most of September is summer too. Keep blooming.

Hollyhocks are a favorite garden plant of mine, but I haven’t grown them for years because of their susceptibility to rust and beetles. After seeing this relatively healthy stand of them, however, I may give them a go next year. While they are technically biennials (leafing out the first year and flowering the second before giving up, they reseed with such reliability that most people consider them perennials for all intents and purposes.

There are double pom-pom varieties that can be quite stunning, but they’re a bit too over-blown for me. You don’t need much more impact than their sturdy height and color. In gardening, less is so often more. When spires like this reach to the sky, there’s no need to gild the lily. Or the hollyhock.

One of the many joys of the garden is when a pair of plants placed beside each other comes into beautiful complementary bloom at the same time. In this case, a Shasta daisy goes head to pretty head with an Agastache, and the battle is one of beauty and grace and perfect harmony.

It helps that each has a lengthy bloom season, at least compared to some plants whose blooms are spent in a day.

I do find myself favoring the purple cool panache of the Agastache, but daisies carry their own potent charm, so I guess I’m still torn. It’s a very pretty place to be.