In mid-April, as we look to the trees for leaf buds, it is the ground layer below that comes in first. Early each morning I pace the perimeter of the garden marking the minute daily changes. The trees and shrubs are halted, but the ground layer slowly advances day by day. The early daffodils were first, then the phlox, bleeding heart, the sole apple tree, the amelanchiers, all seemingly at once. Each week the hydrangeas are a little taller, the gillenia leafier, the iris and peonies beginning to stretch. Epimedium, seemingly devastated by the late frosts, bloomed as ever. Color returned on time, blue phlox, rosy bleeding heart and the pale white of the late daffodils.
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| Phlox subulata |
The kitchen table is filled with plants bought too early to set outdoors. The oxalis, all four pots wintering indoors, are flagging and desperate for division, new soil, a change of containers, fresh air. The beefsteak begonia, started from a single rooted cutting last summer, is bursting out of its pot.
This year I didn’t bring the mandevilla indoors to winter over. It is (was) the hard-to-find Alice Dupont so each year I would struggle to have its huge pot dragged into the warm house for the winter. This year I left it outdoors, wrapped it in fleece, and hoped for the best. I tried to grow a new mandevilla from a leaf cutting of the old, and while the mandevilla did not comply a nasturtium seed traveling with it sprouted in the kitchen window, grew towards the ceiling, has flowered, and is now ready to move outdoors. Sometimes a kitchen table and a windowsill will be enough to get you through a long winter.
As for the mandevilla left outdoors, its fleece covering did not work and there is not a sign of life. The colocasia bulbs stored in the basement were other failures of this winter’s experimentation and are shriveled beyond resuscitation. Now the hard work starts. Moving the big pots, filling them again with new plants to try out, planting morning glory and nasturtium seeds outdoors.
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| Mandevilla 2020 |
I think about earlier gardens this time of year. I have stored up all of them, able to summon them at will and imagine myself in them again. Who was there with me? How old was I then? Will I be in this garden forever? I never thought to ask if the garden would be there forever.
I’ve often said that a garden dies with the death or departure of the owner, but occasionally it is a catastrophe that threatens it. A tornado, a great Northeastern storm, or a fire. The main house in my former Catskills garden caught fire last month. No one was there, no one was injured, only the history is gone. Although only one end of the house is charred, the rest is no longer structurally sound and must be demolished. Miraculously, the gardens remain relatively undisturbed. The porch garden planted in 2005, and the excavation of an old border across the way, all survived. The long porch itself with its sweeping view of the reservoir, its roof held up by birch trunks, will remain in use propped up like a stage set while the current owners decide on its replacement.
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| A Corner of the Porch |
The main house, 1918 shingle style, was the repository of stories and events of one extended family’s time there over the past 70 years. No longer the home of the Laissez-faire Gardener and myself, it has been passed on to cousins with children in their early thirties, who have the strength and the vision to build for their future families. The spirit of the place will be demanding for the new architect. Sited amidst a stone tower with a revolving observatory on the top, a bowling alley house and a huge stone pool long a habitat only for frogs, the new house will surely reflect the context of the old.
My visit there was not the tragedy I expected it to be. No longer bound to serve as keepers of the shrine they inherited, the young stewards and their partners are looking towards the next chapter. Those who would have been devastated by the fire have long since passed. Only the strong remain, as it should be.
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| Before The Fire |
