Why Gardens Matter

Snowdrops

Years before New York City’s high line became the fabled Highline, a close friend who knew how to break into locked spaces took me for a walk along the old railroad tracks. There was something special about being the only people trudging down the abandoned rail line, spotting anything bold enough to sprout to the surface.  We both had a predilection for trespassing despite the risk to our jobs and careers. Maybe it was because the best part of our jobs offered exactly this – the opportunity be where we were not supposed to be.

 

In the Hudson River Valley we have similar almost--empty public spaces.  This past summer I planned to visit public gardens along the Hudson River, expecting to talk to visitors about their particular affection for their choices, only to find most of the gardens empty.  Blithewood and Montgomery Place, two grand estates now Bard College properties, were devoid of visitors on the day I came by. They were as empty as the abandoned old highline railroad tracks.  Perhaps these public gardens are busier on weekends, when visitors are more likely than fulltime residents to take advantage of them. 

 

For families with children a visit to a working farm would to be a better destination than the grand estates. Rose Hill is a favorite stop; fields of apples and pumpkins ready for picking, an airy barn with beautiful views outfitted with tables and chairs for dining, couches and armchairs for drinks offered by the cheery bar, and a revolving pop-up food service hosted by local restaurants and offering bargain-price dinner options.

 

As a child growing up in New York City we had the great public parks and botanical gardens as our backyards and ball fields.  They were carefully planned and beautifully executed to bring the best experience to the largest number of visitors. But it is the small gardens surrounding the village where I live now that matter most when everything else seems lost. 

 

We have been blessed in the Hudson River Valley.  Our towns and villages are not at war or destroyed by flood or fire; our plants will reappear this spring and again year after year, surviving even the possible disappearance of the host garden itself.

 

It is well known that there are wins and losses in everyone’s garden; it is always a battleground between the gardener’s demands and the determined behavior of the elements, the soil, and the plants themselves.  Try as you may to impose your will, the garden either accepts or rejects your efforts. The earliest spring days usually let you know what came through the winter safely and what has been lost.

 

My garden on Livingston Street was planned as an April garden, but when I started to return from the city earlier in the year there was not much to see.  And so in the fall of 2023 we planted hundreds of snowdrops both in the beds and the lawn; when I returned in March of 2024 there was a sea of small white blooms. But it was a gift I forgot to share with the lawn crew, neglecting to ask them to hold off on the mowing for a few weeks to let the bulb foliage ripen; bulbs gain their food supply for the following year in the ripening foliage of the current year.  Supposedly.  We shall see.  This March will be the test. 

 

Looking ahead to June, the hydrangeas blooming are the most glorious weeks in the garden.  I started with one of the earliest, the flatleaf arborescens White Dome. The half-sterile, half-fertile flowers have a more delicate bloom then the blowsy queen of the radiatas, the popular Annabel. The arborescens require only the most judicious pruning.  In the few warm days of February cut them back to knee-high; they will reach the perfect height by the time they are ready to bloom.  If you fall in love with the entire hydrangea family remember their bloom habits vary as will their pruning requirements – some bloom on new wood, others on old.

 

In 2024 the appearance of gypsy moth (renamed spongy moth) in the township sent a shudder through gardeners, but the village seems to have escaped significant damage. We are twiddling our thumbs till spring arrives.  2025 will tell all.

The Late Garden

If I could select one hour of one day as the perfect time to be in a garden it would be a Sunday afternoon at 4 o’clock.  A comfortable chair, the Sunday papers, a glass of something iced, the shadows lengthening across the lawn. All work is done, the tools are put way, older children are off doing whatever it is they do, young children are exhausted and deep into a book or device.  If they are still standing pull out a blanket, ask them to lie on their backs and tell you what they see in the trees and sky.  Dinner is under control, having been collected at a Farmer’s Market earlier in the day.  Monday morning is still far away.  The return to the office, lab, hospital, school, construction yard, or the desk in a room just indoors – all are a way off.  The present is this perfect moment – a Sunday afternoon at 4 o’clock.

         

The late garden is at its best now.  Brown-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba) is holding its own. It’s a friendly plant, nicely shrubby, self-seeding, doesn’t overpower its neighbors, and is less attention-grabbing than Rudbeckia fulgida Goldsturm, the more popular garden variety.  The fall asters, the last blues of the season are a fine companion to the brown-eyed Susan.  I have planted Aster x frikarti ‘Monch’ although I can’t remember why this particular one.  There are many to choose from, and I suspect this was a catalog selection and not one that looked brilliant in someone else’s garden.  No matter what variety you order, if you remember to pinch them back in midsummer you will have a fuller bloom than if you left them alone.  

Crane’s bill (Geranium sanguinium Rozanne), which I seem to remember seeing in flower in the spring, is blooming in the shade of the Brown-eyed Susan.  Actea, formerly cimicifuga (and still cimicifuga to me) has passed, but the white Anemone Honorine Jobert is luminous.  Fall color is still a few weeks away, but the Black Walnuts’ yellowing leaves are drifting down – always the first harbinger of the coming cold.

         

It’s time to bring the pot plants indoors so they can acclimate before the house heat goes on.  The plumbago and mandevilla are enjoying their last burst before they go into the greenhouse at Cheshire Gardens in Connecticut for the winter.  The Australian tree fern and the aging lemon tree will go along with them.  I cut the beefsteak begonias back to nubs in the early spring to see how they would do and they did just fine.  Only a fraction of their former girth and now indoors, they should be happy in the warm light of a southwest window and grow to their former size by spring.  The red oxalis are back in their usual winter corners and in need of a shearing.  The small-leaved green oxalis has also made the move indoors, and it seems fine as it is.  The gift of jatropha podagrica, a stunning oddity, is in a corner with dim light and strictly minimal watering as per instructions from the giver of the gift.

         

Another few weeks and it will be time to put the garden to bed for the winter.  I’m planning on a heavy, compost-rich mulch which will start to break down come spring and should be enough to feed the garden. It’s been years since I laid a deep mulch so it’s long overdue.  It’s also been years since I fertilized every spring and rigorously divided and replanted perennials every three years.  Lately I’ve let them putter along on their own.  This coming year I may go back to my early practice on a few test plants and see what happens.  Fortunately for us, the plants don’t read the books.  Soon it will be time to deal with the perennials in the shared garden.  My gardening partner likes the dead flower heads left for the winter; too sad a sight for me, so I cut everything back on my side and will mulch heavily this winter. 

When the umbrellas come down and the plant stands go back to the cellar it will be time to turn off the water, drain the hoses and bring them to the cellar too.  Friends are travelling again, to Spain for a holiday or to Italy for the opera. I’m restless enough to want to join them, but Israel, where I want to be and where my daughter’s ever-growing family lives, is out of the question at the moment.  More fraught with peril than ever, that trip is on hold for the foreseeable future.  That leaves me here in this peaceful village with the coming election on the horizon, all the drama that it implies, and the world on fire.

Scilla Siberica

       When I first came to 71 Livingston Street there was no garden to speak of; the backyard was a dog run.  But there were signs of an earlier garden, shadows of beds and borders that had once been part of all houses that are this old.  When it was built in 1865 the only plantings were the trees that defined the property lines: Black walnuts on the west, Silver and Norway maples on the east, all now grown to majestic heights.   There were traces of a few half-hearted attempts at borders set as far from the house as possible, but no sign of what must have been a vegetable garden and certainly a drying yard to hang washing.  

Nonetheless, every spring since I’ve been here (and long before I’m sure), a clump of scilla appears at the back of the garden.  No matter how often their location is disturbed by new plantings they return, rather modest, but determined to show their faces.  This year they exploded, and without warning colonized the entire back of the garden.  Have they been moving slowly underground this last decade, just gathering steam? Or is this a characteristic of certain persistent plants?

Native to Southeast Russia, the Caucuses and Turkey, Scilla siberica were brought to the East by plant hunters.  They were supposedly introduced to North America from Eurasia in 1796 but it has been rumored to have been in America in the 1600’s.  It has continuously been in cultivation ever since.  

It is a bulbous perennial so it has some of the storage capacity of bulbs combined with the multiplying habit of perennials.  Scillas will naturalize in shady to semi-shady areas, but they are also suitable for planting in grass, growing dormant by the time your lawn needs mowing.  But please be wary of too-early mowing; the foliage will need an extra week or more to ripen.

Scillas follow the earliest snowdrops and chionodoxa, and bloom before the forget-me-nots and daffodils.  They are a brilliant deep blue, unlike the soft and gentle blue of the forget-me-nots and the slightly deeper blue creeping phlox, which both appear soon after.  Somewhere between the two the daffodils have come and gone, always welcome and then barely missed in the profusion that follows. The variations among the blues parallel the variations among the daffodils blooming at the same time – palest white to deepest yellow.

In my garden the scillas march from east to west while the yellow Celandine poppy, brought here as a sprig from the Catskills garden, marches from west to east – both across the same border.  Star of Bethlehem follows swiftly on the heels of the scillas. The first time it shows up in your garden it is as though you have found a new friend.  But by the 10^th anniversary of its first appearance it will have become the enemy, leaving swaths of bare soil as it vanishes for the rest of the year.  If you are vigilant about early identification and eradication it will eventually disappear. 

       In the rear of the garden, when the scillas and poppies finish their spring burst, Ostrich fern takes over almost burying two Hosta Krossa regal who don’t seem to mind struggling through.  Cimicifuga (a favorite carryover from the Catskills) is already starting its inexorable march onward and upward.  It’s the early native variety; the upright blooms are candelabra-shaped, not the droopy kind.  It will move aggressively against anything in its way, beautifully blanketing the garden.

       I owe the forget-me-nots to my neighbor and partner in the shared garden, Marian Faux.  As they begin to wane her Bearded iris appear.  Marian has a long and knowledgeable history with these as well.  Both the forget-me-nots and the Iris are stars of our shared garden.  In our village, property lines are close and there are often narrow neglected strips of land between houses.  Rather than treating ours as separate open patches Marian and I combined them into a single garden which grows a little wider and more robust each year.  

It is a gift to be able to share a garden with a like-minded friend.

Forget-me-not

Invasive Plants: Loved or Loathed

Invasive plants come in two categories; they are either welcomes or met with rage.  The loved ones first:  Forget-me-nots, Celandine poppy, Creeping Charlie, Scilla siberica.  The loathed: Star of Bethlehem. 

The loved ones are always well-received.  No matter how much territory they overrun, no one complains.  It’s impossible to forget a forget-me-not.  It shows up in April in the most beautiful shade of blue.  After blooming you can ignore them.  No attention is required; they advance wherever they like.  

Forget-me-not

Mine is a migrant from Marian Faux’s garden next door.  There are several varieties; ours is Myosotis scorpiodes, the true forget-me-not.  Our shared garden is awash with them, started by Marian against her house, and then marching over the years across property lines and into our shared garden.  There is no happier sight this time of year than that perfect blue found nowhere else.  We continue to ignore its’ official listing as an invasive.

 

Celandine poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum), a brilliant yellow, is native here in the Northeast.  I brought one with me from the Catskills garden and it has multiplied.  Its’ natural habitat is moist forest over calcareous rock but it  has agreeably spread out in a dark, well-watered corner of my garden. 

Celandine poppy

 

As for Creeping Charlie, all you will find in the literature is directions for getting rid of it.  Here it has colonized in the lawn where it is cut whenever the grass is cut.  It flowers in spring along with the scillas, followed by tidy green rosettes at its’ base.  Growing lower than the mower blades, it escapes all but the first cut.  My so-called lawn is really a collection of small-leaf green plants, all treated equally. No water, no fertilizer, no weeding.  Just a weekly mowing.  

 

Which brings me to the scillas, growing through the grass.  Scilla siberica was here when I moved in 11 years ago, at the very back of what was to become a garden.  No matter how much disruption, digging, re-digging, planting, brick-laying … it keeps returning. 

Scilla siberica

Star of Bethlehem (SB) on the other hand is greeted with groans, followed by vengeance. It starts out as pretty tufts of green followed by beautifully starry white flowers.  It dies back to nothingness, leaving gaps when it is too late to fill them.  Anything you might plant nearby in the expectation it will beat out the invader disappears in its path.  SB is relentless, spreading like wildfire, conquering everything in its way.  My advice to you?  As soon as the first clump appears remove it with ruthless efficiency, leaving no bulblet behind.  Here on Livingston Street, at great expense, the plan to eradicate it is finally underway. 

 

Unlike the persistent invasives, most herbaceous plants do not last forever.  Periodically, when you are in the mood, they should be lifted, divided, and replanted.  You will know the right time by observation; they just seem to dwindle.  This season stachys, astilbe, shasta daisies, iris are among those needing attention.  Some defy the odds, growing taller and wider each year -- hosta, cimicifuga, bleeding heart, peonies.  A few will surprise you.  My favorite and sole tulip Spring Green, supposedly only good for a year or so, keeps repeating.  

 

Spring green tulip

My neighbor, best garden friend and co-conspirator Marian Faux (first parent of the forget-me-nots) and I share a garden in which we plot to outwit partial shade and black walnut competition. This semi-sunny (often shady) border looks better each year, even though old favorites -- baptisia, peonies -- mysteriously disappear.  We attribute all losses (fairly or not) to the presence of nearby black walnuts, but we press on regardless.  

 

The pleasures of gardening with a like-minded friend are immeasurable.  Marian is a much more meticulous planner than I, with a better sense of what is right, possible, and fitting.  She pays close attention, while I am more of the crap-shoot school: roll the dice and there’s a chance you’ll win.     

 

Up until last year I kept a detailed map of the all the beds and borders, updating it annually and marking the changes.  I neglected this in 2022 and am faced now with the appearance of plants I don’t recognize and have clearly forgotten.  This is when Apps become indispensable.  I use a plant identifier and a weed identifier in tandem to jog my memory and to save me from eliminating something important. Satisfaction is guaranteed, but pointing your phone at something and receiving an instantaneous ID does nothing to train your memory or sharpen your observations.  Fair warning.

Getting Through March

 

By this time of year the gardener is usually able to report a noticeable change in the garden, but often the change is in the soul of the gardener and not the garden itself.  After a mild day or two we convince ourselves that it is the beginning of the new gardening year.  In Manhattan, a few weeks earlier than in Rhinebeck, daffodils will soon be poking their noses through the soil of street-side tree pits, cozying up to the warmth coming from the pavement.  

 

If you are dreaming of a cottage in the country with a garden and you wish to be disabused of the idea, now is the time to go house hunting.  After the snow melts a March walk through a garden can be sobering.  Rhododendrons are still shrouded in burlap.  Small piles of debris are everywhere.  Anything cut and left on the ground can be cleared away, but most of the larger material is still frozen.  Water has pooled and iced in low-lying areas.  Pots the owner didn’t get around to emptying and storing in September are still there, likely frozen and cracked.  

 

April 1 is the real start of the gardening year, and March merely the wind-up.  With all its climatic vagaries, March does manage to offer one definitive idea: Winter is over.  If you walk in the woods you will soon hear the spring peepers.  Farmers say that after they have been heard three nights in a row, spring is here to stay.

 

To help you through the winter, if you have an empty corner or a small wooded swath, consider the Snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis.  Garden writers love them, because it provides material when there is nothing else to write about.  Snowdrops give you something to look for when all else is still dormant, and leaves you free of worry about late frosts.  They are among the toughest of plants and if laid low by a late winter storm, will bounce right back.  

 

If you have been wise enough to plant snowdrops, and are on your muddy knees admiring your handiwork at eye level where they can best be seen, you will be happy to know that you can expand your crop by dividing as soon as the soil warms up enough to work, even though the snowdrops are in full bloom.  The conventional wisdom is that bulbs can be transplanted only when dormant, but that is not the case here.  If you wait until autumn there will be no trace of them above ground, and you will have forgotten where they were planted.  

 

The main danger to your flower borders in the winter months is the ground’s alternate freezing and thawing.  This does not happen where there is a guaranteed blanket of snow all winter, but in our more temperate areas you will often see plants heaved out of the ground by alternate freezing and thawing.  If you see this in your garden make notes to prevent it next year by heavy winter mulching.  Almost any mulch will do – straw, salt hay, evergreen boughs, compost or buckwheat hulls are all fine.  Just make sure to wait until the ground freezes before laying mulch.

 

March is the month when I review my notes from the fall and remind myself of successes and failures.  If a new plant has not performed to my expectations, I will give it another year or two to take hold.  A poor freshman performance should not be a death sentence. I, however, find it difficult to follow my own advice, wavering between a plant that just needs a little more time, and one that never should have been acquired in the first place.

 

If spring is not coming soon enough for you, and snowdrops fail to cheer you, visit the annual New York Botanical Garden Orchid Show, blooming in the Bronx at 2900 Southern Boulevard, until April 23rd.  It will help you get through these weeks until spring really arrives.