When you round a corner and turn down a street, it either immediately feels good, or it doesn’t. There is a sense of “rightness” in the space between one house and the next, or there isn’t, and the absence can leave you a bit unmoored.
Harmony is most likely the missing element. When present, you sense it as the underlying explanation for a fine street whose parts fit together in a cohesive whole. When in harmony, no matter the style of the neighborhood, the whole works together and the individual pieces don’t fight with one another. There is a sense of regularity and order.
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| A Rhinebeck Village House |
This most often occurs in historic districts, where memorable landscapes occur because multiple properties share basic guiding principles, often without conscious intent. Buildings are about the same height, sidewalk materials start out consistently bluestone until heaved out of place and replaced with concrete. Trees are spaced regularly down the length of the street and remain there until the end of their lifespan.
I moved to Livingston Street 150 years after the village pattern was laid out; the street trees and houses were in place. Trees were planted along both sides of the street, one for each house. There are now increasing gaps as the aging maples are taken down; on our block we have lost three just this year.
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| The Demise of a Street Tree |
Municipal maintenance for street trees and sidewalks has disappeared from Rhinebeck. It is a source of constant disgruntlement to residents. The village used to maintain the trees and sidewalks which are on public property, but elected officials changed the law a few years ago and now the homeowner is solely responsible for the repair and maintenance of these village-owned assets. You can imagine the level of contention between the players – homeowners, village officials, the village’s Tree Commission and the power company.
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| Concrete Replacement of Bluestone Sidewalk |
Our supplier of power, Central Hudson Gas and Electric, has its own set of concerns. It requires a large cleared space to maintain the power lines and prunes accordingly, leaving a battlefield of mutilated trees. Main Street is particularly grotesque. With autumn leaves falling, the horror of injudicious pruning reappears. The Tree Commission, not unreasonably, wants to remove the aging trees and replace them with younger, newer, and much shorter trees virtually starting all over again. Some residents have organized to stop the current pruning practices, while others are pushing for burying all powerlines underground, causing the budget watchers to shudder.
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| A Street Tree After Pruning |
We mourn the loss of our old trees. It takes 10 years or longer to produce a reasonably mature tree, and to many of us trees are the best measure of a civilized landscape. A community in which mature trees survive and young trees are planted regularly demonstrates a sense of time, history and continuity, absent in the usual speculative real estate scramble for higher and better use. The streets in which fine old trees survive are the showplaces of a community. These neighborhoods are in large part one of the economic drivers that brings visitors to Rhinebeck.
Winter is coming, and with it everyone seems to disappear indoors. The early morning gardeners are still out in heavy jackets, but not much longer. The first snow arrived on November 15th, and with it the last of my fall planting – a new witch hazel, climbing hydrangea along the fence, oak-leaf hydrangeas, a few fothergilla, and a flirtation with red-twigged dogwood.
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| My Garden, the First Snow of the Season |
A few of us with shared spaces continue to plan through the winter. On Livingston Street we have a few of these, effectively erasing property lines. A back yard linking two families for decades is graced by an ancient oak, unfortunately in questionable health.
I share a semi-sunny/shady property line with my neighbor and co-conspirator Marian, and we confer continually about our successes and failures. Marian is better than I about facing up to the shortcomings of the site, and is more realistic and measured about the selection of plants. I am unwise enough to try almost anything, believing that we have more sun than we actually do.
Our successes have been bearded iris (Marian), coneflower (Marian), epimedium (Marian), phlox (Marian), brown eyed Susan (mine). Our failures have been peonies (mine), baptisia (mine), thalictrum (majorly mine). We had a nice display of daffodils this spring (ours). I tried hollyhocks against the fence this year, but I’m not optimistic about their return next spring.
However, my optimism is not totally dead, and by next spring I should have some decent photos. This troubled zone is my favorite part of the garden; a gift to myself in the sharing of it with a friend.
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| The Shared Garden, at its First Expansion |
