Category Archives: Gardening

One of the most charming giants of the garden has been its summer show, as the cup plant is sprinkling the sky with its sunbursts of blooms. The yellow finches have returned as well, and the other morning I watched a hummingbird dart from flower to flower. The cup plant gets its common name from where the leaves attach to the sturdy square stems, forming little cups where rainwater collects and offers drinks to the birds and the bees and the butterflies. 

The blooming period of this plant has traditionally signaled the arrival of high summer. It feels a little earlier this year, which is the way the world has been headed. Faster and faster, with nary a moment to slow down. And so I make the pause, trying to stop the day, and mostly failing in the effort. As soon as something happens it is gone from the mind – only once in a while can I imprint a new memory. Maybe these aren’t days I’ll want to remember. 

It’s much earlier than usual for the second blooming of our Korean lilac, but everything has been early this year. Good gardeners feel the shift and know that climate change is real and happening right now. The reblooming of the Korean lilac is not a guaranteed event, though in the past several years it has produced at least one or two bloom clusters later in the summer. Often it comes when the nights cool down nearer the end of the season, when conditions mirror the late spring atmosphere of their first blooming period. One of the happier tricks of the garden. 

This is actually a rather robust collection of blooms for a reprise, and their perfume has brought back the earlier flush of spring, while reminding of how far along we already are in this summer. Time plays its tricks like the garden hides its scented secrets. 

In a way, these little blooms remind me that there’s always a chance to start over again, to find another season of flowers even if it’s a little different than what’s expected. They’re also a little gift, a reprieve before the sadness of summer returns. 

This shockingly-hot pink variety of Monarda – better known as bee balm – called to me last year, and I promptly gave it a prominent place in the garden. Keeping it well-watered and pampered with a decent dose of manure and compost, I took extra special care of it. Most perennials require a year or two to really get going and show what they can do – and it is in this time when the care and watering is most important. 

After it finished its first bloom cycle, I cut it back about halfway down the stalks, hoping it would throw off a few flowers later in the season. Its color was so grand I wanted more. Rather than do that, however, it quickly became afflicted with a debilitating bout of mildew, its leaves shriveling and blackening like Dumbledore’s hand when he dared to destroy a horcrux. 

It died down tot he ground, something I’d never seen a Monarda do, but I had faith it would survive the winter, and come back in some form. As part of the mint family, they are scrappy survivors, even if mildew does wreak its havoc in our humid summers. This spring, only a few stems poked through the ground, but they grew well, and this one is now in glorious bloom. We shall see how it fares as the summer arrives and progresses. 

After twenty-plus years of blogging on this website, I tend to re-tread the same familiar paths, particularly when it comes to seasonal blooms. The parade of peonies happens at the same time every year, the American lilacs put on their show right before the Korean lilacs – and they go up and out here before they go up and out in Maine – and right now the Chinese dogwoods are finishing their typically-extensive “blooming” period (use of quotes for the fact that the prominent white ‘blossoms’ covering the trees now are not actual flowers, but bracts – modified leaves that give the appearance of a bloom). 

When you’ve posted twenty years of dogwood trees, there’s not much more to see, other than attempting to see things from a different vantage point, like from the inside of the tree looking out. 

The world is framed by foliage and ‘flowers’ when you place yourself within a tree. The best trees are those that become cozy lookouts for birds and bees and butterflies and dragonflies, providing protection when there is wind or rain or hawks about. From within the interior, the world almost looks like a manageable place.

Only when you have a safe haven like this does such a sentiment come into play – without it, you might wonder if there’s anything manageable about the world at all. 

Named for the way the black, wiry stems look when they are matted down at the end of winter, the Maidenhair fern also has a more slightly-vulgar common name – the Five-Finger Fern. Why not just call it a Hand Fern and destroy its reputation completely? No matter – the beauty and delicate appearance of this fern makes it my all-time favorite – and such an elegant and dainty look is merely a mask, as this beast is as hardy as any other fern in the forest. I love when things are pretty and deceptively-strong. 

This fern is a clump former – gradually spreading out into sizable masses that are happy to be divided and planted about the garden. Again, it’s hardier than you think, and its divided leaflets render even the strongest of wind gusts harmless. A pretty strong thing that is so gleefully dismissive of brute force is a thing of beauty indeed. Don’t fuck with this maiden.

Everyone loves an allium. Like magic wands shooting stars of purple pixie dust, they rise quietly from the earth, soaring with unobtrusive promise, before exploding into these gorgeous balls of bloom. The stunning Allium giganteum is one of the largest in this genus, rising upwards of five feet, and topped with hundreds of tiny flowers forming a transfixing orb of purple majesty. 

I tend to admire them in the gardens of others, as once thy finish their bloom cycle the foliage does a slow die back, and it should not be removed until the bulb has rejuvenated itself for next year. An early stunner that then leaves a blank space in the garden for the rest of the summer, but what a show it provides. The garden posits such tradeoffs and the gardener must pick and choose which are worth the price. 

Looking for a gentler and softer palette of colors for our backyard, I found this cooling hue of catmint flowers a good way of calming the view. Aptly named, as the cats do seem to love it based on the occasional trampling they performed when I used to grow this, catmint makes for a fine perennial border plant. Its profuse clouds of light purple flowers held above silvery green foliage is an ideal antidote from the heat of summer to come. 

I’m seeking out gentler and softer ways of going through this summer, and clouds of catmint may be one path to getting there. 

Many a previous post have extolled the fragrant virtues of the Korean lilac, and it’s in full bloom now (at least, it was at the time of this writing before all the 90-degree days). Such hot weather spells a fast wilt-and-fade-away process for these delicious blooms. One of the penalties for the warmer weather. 

This is one of the greatest garden plants, as it works on so many levels. With proper pruning (which should be done immediately after this first fish of blooms) you can keep it a manageable size – or you can let it grow into a sizable shrub, upwards of ten feet high and round. Its foliage is beautiful, and stays green and free from most powdery mildew even in our humid summers. Its flowering season is usually later than the American lilac, offering an extended season of good scents in the garden. All in all, it gives and gives and demands just some manure every spring, and a few deep soaks if the weather is dry for a while. Highly recommend. 

Our fragrant zenith of the spring season comes as these lily-of-the-valley plants spread their perfume throughout the backyard, ,angling with the perfume of the lilacs – both American and Korean – and it’s a heavenly mash-up. It was their fragrance that actually alerted me to their early blooming season this year – everything just sort of came up at once – leaping into so much green that I didn’t notice these quiet white flowers. Like many small white flowers, their perfume is potent – one of the neat tricks of the garden, especially when you’re seeking out some extravagantly-colored and bold bloom to match the scent in the air.

The garden is rarely so straightforward.

The garden wants you to work for its rewards.

A few more shots to welcome you in to the fragrant season…

This appears to be a day of green, as we follow the green light of Gatsby with this ferny post exemplifying the splendor of the Ostrich Fern. It is the best time to appreciate the unfurling fronds of this fern variety, as they are at their freshest and most chartreuse hue. They will happily retain much of this color throughout the season, though if it’s a hot and sunny one without ample water these will begin their burn-out in late July. The trick is to keep them watered well for as long as possible, as you can stave off the turn, but you cannot stop it once it begins. As in so many other instances prevention is key. 

Along with their stunning shade of green, ostrich ferns also provide great architectural interest in the garden, with their magnificent fronds, particular in the early unfurling stages. Once opened up, they arch gracefully – surprisingly stalwart in wind and rain – though they will get tattered if brushed by branches or wayward wanderers in their space. Such beauty doesn’t come without a bit of carefulness. 

For now, all is freshness and verdant promise – the very best qualities of any fern worth such ample space in the garden (and the ostrich ferns will demand a decent stretch of space and then completely claim it, particularly if there’s a steady source of water). 

Spring is in full effect, even if it’s been a bit on the slow side. Summer will likely simply click on without any transitory relief and we will simply have to go with the flow. You know you can do it.

The lilac that Andy’s Mom had gifted us almost a quarter of a century ago is once again in bloom, along with all of its descendants in three different areas of the yard. So prolific has its growth been that we’ve had to cut it back as it attempted to take over an entire corner of lawn in the backyard. In the process, I transplanted several suckers over the years, each of which has developed into a sizable shrub. 

This hybridized version – all fancy double blooms adding to the florificence (a word I just totally made up but that should totally exist) – is like a supercharged lilac – packing perhaps even more fragrance than the old-fashioned variety. There are all those extra flower petals to emit even more perfume. Blessings upon blessings. 

Lilacs seem to carry childhood memories with them for many people, and I am no exception. It is the scent that instantly and singularly brings me back to a very specific suite of childhood recollections, starting with the sight of them over a neighbors fence. There was a large stand of them in all sorts of shades – from the deepest purple to the traditional lilac, and a few creamy white ones as well. They would fill the yard with their perfume, which drifted over to our side, and I distinctly remember a feeling of envy as I craved to be closer to their tantalizing fragrance.

After growing a glorious double-flowered hybrid in our back and side yards over the past few years, I recently planted the traditional old-fashioned variety, which has spread into a sizable path by the driveway and is the first of the lilacs to bloom. 

No matter what I’m doing, no matter what kind of day I’ve had, I always pause to smell the lilacs when they come into bloom. I pause, and I remember, and the joy of spring always comes back. 

It was around 1986 or 1987 when I stuffed five one-dollar bills into an enveloped and mailed them out with a request for a catalog to White Flower Farm. At the time, it was an exorbitant sum for a child to collect, but it was worth it because I had read that the White Flower Farm catalog was the standard against which all flower catalogs were judged. Way back then there was no internet, and I had to find any information on plants, and a burgeoning gardening obsession, in books and magazines and plant catalogs. 

During those years, Amos Pettingill was the ‘writer’ behind the catalog, and their introduction to the catalog – and hat was new that year – was golden text for me. I pored over each and every word, finding daydreams and a hazy future hope in the invitation to cucumber sandwiches that Amos offered in every spring catalog. 

White Flower Farm supplied many rare plants and species to all of the gardens I’ve cultivated. There is a Baptisia only a decade younger than myself at my parents’ former home that still blooms, and the Japanese umbrella pine that I purchased from them twenty years ago is about twelve feet tall now. This nursery and I go way, way back. 

When I asked Missy how far she lived from Litchfield, we were both surprised at how close it was from Southbury, and she mentioned she had been wanting to visit there for a while, so we set up a floral weekend anchored by the short drive to the Farm. I knew it would never capture the palace I’d built it up to be in my head, and I went in with reasonable expectations. 

We caught it at just the right time – all of the spring bulbs were in full, gorgeous bloom. The Narcissus spread out in every imaginable form, while the tulips and hyacinths were resplendent in every possible color combination. Taking in the layout of the land, I was transported back to my childhood – the trees and the gently-roling hill were familiar, as though I’d been here in a dream, when it was merely all in my imagination, and the tantalizing peek of landmarks from the photographs in the catalog. 

At first it felt smaller than I’d imagined, but slowly, as we made our way through each garden and walkway, it opened up, revealing all the intricacies and myriad plant varieties that were on display and just beginning to appear in this late-starting season. The promise of another summer visit when things were further advanced put my mind at ease. For now, I simply enjoyed the magic of the moment, and the realization of reaching my own little Mecca after four decades.