seduction: a gardener succumbs

If I were a proper Victorian gardener I would blush with shame. Shame at how I have succumbed to seduction. Seduction by the lush, the fragrant, the I-want-to-dive-in-and-bury-myself-in-its-petals...the peony!

I'm not a fan of the merely pretty flower. I need more: multiple seasons of interest, tasty fruit, edible foliage. When we moved into our house in PA the first things I dug up and gave away were four peonies. The idea of an old-fashioned, traditional flower didn't appeal to me. No, I wasn't high, I'd simply never grown peonies before. Never sunk my nose deep into the the silky softness of the too-numerous-to-count petals. Never lost myself inside the corolla, pushing deeper into the center of the bloom to brush against the velvety yellow stamens. To truly appreciate this flower, you've got to give yourself over completely.

Sure, I could tell you Paeonia hybrids are sun-loving perennials, hardy to Zone 3. They grow to be approximately 3 feet wide and 2.5' tall. Leaves are alternate, sometimes lobed, with elliptical to lanceolate leaflets. Peony flowers are 3-6" wide, in shades of red, pink, and white. They may be single or double and are always fragrant. They grow best in well-drained, fertile soil and flower most proliferously in full sun. (Even in partial sun you'll get several worthwhile blooms.) Peonies make an excellent cut flower. They should be divided in late summer, making sure to plant the crown 1" below the soil surface.

That's the run-down I give my students in Spring Perennials at the NYBG. But what does it REALLY tell you? Does it tell you even the back of the flower is beautiful? Does it tell you you can lose yourself in the abundant layers of each individual bloom? Does it tell you once you've grown a peony you can never be without them?

There are certain things you can only learn through experience, and peony appreciation is one of those things. I urge you to give in. You're going to thank me.

father of our kitchen garden

Last Friday morning I had the privilege of strolling through the gardens of Mount Vernon before they opened to the public. Courtesy of the Garden Writers Association I was inside the gates at 6 am, when the light is superb and the crowds are nonexistent.

I know most people go to Mount Vernon to see the house, the paintings, the furniture... but I didn't set foot in a single building! The gardens are magnificent, especially the lower (kitchen) garden where vegetables are stunningly arranged amongst fruits, herbs, and edible flowers.

I'm not a fan of the Brassicaceae...to EAT, that is. But they make a lovely ground cover.
Onions
can be ornamental:

An amphitheatre of strawberries:
Even a peach (when espaliered) becomes decorative as well as delicious.
Gardeners today talk about the blended garden, one that incorporates edible and ornamental plants into a single garden, both productive and attractive. Hats off to George Washington, the father of our kitchen garden.

a wild feast

Mark and I spent Saturday foraging for an evening feast. Such riches we found!

The first harvest was pokeweed. Plants in full sun had lots of red in the stems; in the shade the stems were green and more tender. Since there was so much, we could be picky and harvested only the choicest plants.


As we moved along the pokeweed path we found tons of wild onions. We were amazed at how easily they pulled up; the smell was wonderful and pungent.

Wild onion is much easier to clean than field garlic. Next time I'll dehydrate, then pulverize them, to make my own onion powder.

We found a little milkweed (milkweed season is just beginning), some asparagus (it's the end of asparagus season), and lemony dock leaves. Then we left the sunny fields and headed for the woods.

I had hoped to find stinging nettles but alas we did not...instead we found wood nettles a-plenty! Sam Thayer describes wood nettles as even more delicious and just as sting-y as stinging nettles, so I was pretty excited.

(Can you see the stingers?)

After a quick picnic in the cemetery we headed home to cook. And remove ticks. Mark had two and I had three. A small price to pay for a day of exhilirating foraging and the feast that followed:

1) pokeweed soup
2) steamed asparagus w/olive oil, s & p
3) nettle gnocchi w/mushroom and wild onion sauce. I harvested the mushrooms from my front lawn last summer and froze them.

4) mini meat loaves of local beef with chopped lemony dock leaves and wild onions
5) roasted milkweed with olive oil, s & p

6) blackberry crumble w/vanilla ice cream; I picked and canned the blackberries last August
7) homemade pear wine from 2007...it was a good year

That's what I call a Happy Meal, although I confess that the more I ate, the less I photographed. Please forgive me...I was otherwise engaged.

Thank you, Russ Cohen!

We needed a new deck. The old deck was peeling, splintering, sagging and most importantly, pulling itself away from the house. Having just finished a bathroom renovation in the city, we were hyper-aware of everything that could go wrong, and the deck construction made me especially nervous since it involved my precious garden. The only way to dig three new footings was by driving a bobcat straight through two established garden beds.


The night before our construction began I read Jayme Jenkin's post on contractor trauma, which did nothing to assuage my fears. I did everything I could think of to protect the plants (the red laundry basket in the above photo is covering two clematis!), but in the end we were at the mercy of our G.C., Russ Cohen, to whom I am extraordinarily grateful. He listened when I explained how important the garden was to me (I'm pretty sure I didn't threaten bodily harm) and one week after the construction, the garden looks like it was never disturbed.


Here are my suggestions for minimizing garden trauma during construction. Forgive me if some of them seem obvious, but when it comes to your precious garden, you can't be too careful!

1) Choose your contractor wisely. You may have to pay a little more for someone who actually listens to what you're saying, but making your priorities clear is essential. If your contractor is a gardener (or if his/her spouse is a gardener), you've got a head start.

2) Remove everything you can from the garden bed. I didn't want to move two large ornamental grasses (Chasmanthium latifolium) but when our start date was pushed back and the first new sprouts emerged I realized I'd better get them out of harm's way. It's a good thing I did because the garden soil was HIGHLY compacted by machinery and human traffic. I'm sure anything left underground would have been severely compromised.

3) Create a holding area for the plants you remove. I potted up lilacs, rose of Sharon, rhubarb, ornamental grasses, daylilies, irises, asters, mallow, and Phlomis, making them as comfortable as possible. Don't forget to water them during construction; they'll need extra TLC.

4) Protect anything you have to leave behind. I decided to leave three plants in place: a deeply tap-rooted Yucca filamentosa (at right), a wisteria just starting to bud, and two clematis. Clematis takes so long to establish; I knew if I dug them up I'd sacrifice bloom for the next few summers.

4) Go through the prepared garden with your contractor, pointing out spots to look out for.

5) Walk away. We were home for the demolition day but had to leave for NH on digging day; that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We loaded the car as the bobcat began its work and the sight of it maneuvering through my garden was more than my sturdy nervous system could bear.

6) Say thank you! If your contractor did a bad job, if he ignored your requests to take care, let him know in no uncertain terms. And if he did a great job, spread the word. Conscientious contractors are hard to come by. Thank you, Russ Cohen!

Happy Wisteria didn't miss a beat.

What's it like?

When I tell people what I do for a living they often look at me funny. "Can you make a living at that?" they ask. Then, "What's it like?" I've decided that being A GARDENER is a fantasy to most people. They can't quite imagine I get paid for doing what most people just fiddle around with on the weekend. For the record: I do very little fiddling.

As for what it's like, well that depends on when you ask me. Yesterday I was terrorized by an enormous and territorial carpenter bee.


Carpenter bees are about 2 inches long, black, and shiny. Males hover and swoop, both to check out possible mates and to chase away possible competition. I'm not sure which I was, but Mr. Bee wouldn't leave me alone. I felt like an idiot, dodging and ducking as he flew directly at my head. I feel even more ridiculous today, since I've learned males don't have stingers. I'll be back there tomorrow and I promise to stand my ground.

Also yesterday, it was 90+ degrees. That is just too hot for April. Even if you like your work, 3 hours in the blazing sun saps your energy. When I walked through the park at the end of the day I moved at half my normal speed. What's my job like? Tiring but satisfying.

But on a day like today (temperature about 60 degrees) I have the best job in the world. The air is cool but not so breezy as to interfere with sweeping. The crabapple is in full bloom, azalea buds are plump and ready to pop. Redbud flowers are open


and the Anemonella are in bloom.

My client was out of town this morning, so I listened to music as I fertilized. I don't usually listen to music while I work, because I find it VERY hard to listen to good music without singing along. And dancing a little. Some people find that entertaining...others do not. And since I always strive to be professional I usually leave the musical performance at home. But not today. It was glorious: sunny, cool, floriferous, tuneful, and a lot better than being chased by a giant carpenter bee!

Foggy Photo Essay

More often than not, this is the debate that goes through my head as I prepare to leave the apartment in the morning:

Me: Should I bring my camera today?

Lazy Me: Nah, it's going to rain and besides I'm already carrying my VERY heavy tool bag PLUS plants.

Me: Yeah, but I'll be walking home through the park and I might see something cool...

Lazy Me: Forget it! I don't want to carry the extra bulk and weight.

So, this morning I did NOT carry my camera and it's the last time I'll let Lazy Me win an argument for a very long time. There was so much to shoot on the terrace where I was working, and all I had was my woefully inadequate iPhone. The resolution is low, you can't choose a focal plain, or fiddle with aperture. Very, very frustrating.

Especially on this misty morning when there was much that was alluring: tightly pleated, young Viburnum leaves, Amelanchier flowers heavy with rain, buds just starting to unfold on the Rosa rugosa. None of those pictures turned out well enough to post here (dammit!) but I offer these few to show you what's growing today in a rooftop garden on the Upper West Side.

Japanese maple leaves unfurl.

Boston ivy looks demure and manageable in early spring.

Buds of staghorn sumac 'Tiger's Eye' are ready to pop.

I adore Rhamnus 'Fine Line'.

Next time I promise to bring my real camera.

My contest entry!

The folks at Gardening Gone Wild are having a photo contest and this is my entry, Amelanchier canadensis:


The challenge is to submit a photo of a plant native to your region that you think deserves more attention than it currently gets. Originally they wanted the plants to be water-wise, but that's no longer one of the criteria. I took the above photo last year, first week of May. The tree is one I planted on the ferny verge between our cultivated space and the un-manicured, surrounding woods.

For years I've sung the praises of Amelanchier candensis to anyone who will listen. I use it whenever I can, both in my Pennsylvania landscape and in my business in NYC. It's a low maintenance plant, with four seasons of interest, and anyone looking for a small tree or shrub should consider it. Different species of Amelanchier are native to different parts of the U.S., so there are plenty to choose from depending on where you are. They have many common names: shadblow, serviceberry, and Juneberry being the most common in my neck of the woods.

Some people call it shadblow because the flowers (blow is an archaic word for flower) bloom when the shad run. The name serviceberry comes from colonial times. Flowers bloomed when the snow had melted enough for the preacher to walk to church and perform the first service of the spring. I prefer Juneberry because it conjures neither religion nor fish.

Juneberry requires no supplemental water once established (making it, nudge-nudge, water-wise!), is relatively deer resistant, and tolerates a range of growing conditions: mostly sun to mostly shade, rocky soils, rooftop containers. There are few trees that offer so much and demand so little.

The plump, unopened buds are held widely spaced, like a candelabra. They're white, edged in pink and just this week I've been struck by their beauty. Sadly, my attempts to photograph them have thus far been thwarted by high winds. Small, white flowers follow, often before its leaves emerge and before neighboring trees have started new growth, they flash white as you drive past and in the spring garden, they’re a bright focal point.


In early summer, clusters of berries attract birds to the garden. Juneberries are slightly bigger than blueberries; they start out red, and ripen to a deep, purply-blue.

In fall, the foliage is bright yellow, turning orange, and it’s one of the first trees to drop its leaves, revealing what some consider its best attribute: beautiful bark. In fact some people prune off the bottom branches of the tree to show off its slim trunks, subtly marked with vertical, silvery stripes. They look lovely against the snow.

Even among those who appreciate the beauty of the Juneberry, few appreciate the taste of its fruit. Juneberries are delicious and firm, tasting something like a cross between blueberries and strawberries. Its seeds are small and plentiful, unobtrusive to chew, and adding an almond flavor. They don’t all ripen at once, so you can harvest juneberries for about four weeks. A single tree produces a prodigious harvest.

The berries are delicious eaten out of hand, and they freeze well. I’ve dried Juneberries for cereal and salads, made Juneberry-peach compote (below), Juneberry sorbet, and Juneberry-rhubarb jam. This year I've got a tart recipe to try out.


Seriously, what more could you ask for in a woody plant: striking flowers, tasty fruit, colorful foliage, ornamental bark, and so very easy to grow. What's stopping you?