Out and About in Manhattan

If you spend a lot of time walking around the city -- and look up at buildings instead of watching where you’re walking -- you’ll notice floor after floor with empty balconies.  Granted, those postage stamp bits of outdoor space are a little dizzying, but people do pay a premium for them.  Wouldn’t you think they would be filled with furniture and plants and actually used by their owners? If not planted by the owners, what about the developers or the landlords?  They could give some competition to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon by nailing a few boxes to the railings and filling them with plants.  Think how beautiful streets would be if buildings had vines cascading down their facades.

A surprising basement entry

September Calendar

      Hurricane Irene has damaged – if not leveled – most of our gardens and the September work ahead is not pleasant to contemplate.  Our corner of the Catskills was devastated, and the YouTube videos are painful to watch.  Our house was relatively unscathed but our friends and neighbors in low-lying areas near the furious creeks and riversides suffered terribly. 

It seems frivolous to write about ordinary garden work in such extraordinary times, but on some sunny day we will drag ourselves out of our armchairs and head back outdoors.  Gardens look to the future, and the fall cleanup and planting help us deal with the often difficult present and the loss that comes with it. 

Print the calendar, post it on your refrigerator and as the mood strikes you, head out.  September can be the most restful month in the garden, or the best month for some hard work.  It’s your call. 

Growing for the Table

         I can describe my visit to Gail Witter-Laird’s garden briefly as follows:  I trailed after her while she and her son Maxwell dug potatoes, harvested onions, garlic, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, and rosemary.  We came indoors and Gail prepared a lunch from the morning’s harvest: Ratatouille, potatoes sautéed with rosemary, a green salad, cheese from a local farmer, bread from a re-located pastry chef, and two beautiful wines. 

Gail and Maxwell

Garden Sheds

There are few outbuildings as appealing as the garden shed.  Small, eminently affordable, totally functional, lacking in frivolity -- a purchase one could easily justify.  All gardeners know that the accumulation of tools grows faster than the growth rate of plants.  Just this year alone I’ve ordered a fine left-handed knife, a hand rake, a potato hook, a kneeling cushion/bench combination, several pairs of heavy-duty gloves, an extra trowel or two, and a new clippers.

I don’t lack storage space, but that has not kept me from wanting a small outbuilding, just for the garden.  I’ve looked at shed kits in every conceivable style, from configurations for cozy cabins with window boxes, to Zen retreats, to cabanas with Palladian gables.  There are hip-roofed styles recommended for California vineyards, austere slant-roofed sheds for tool minimalists, sheds with faux-Tudor rooflines, and five-sided numbers with French doors.

Visiting Gardens

      Gardens rarely outlive their owner. If Monet were to walk into Giverny today, despite the best of intentions of his successors, he would be lost. A garden, if left unattended or looked after marginally after the death of the gardener, will maintain its character for a brief time, but soon nature or new owners take over and it will be lost. Or a garden is opened to the public and increasingly more attractions must be offered to appease repeat visitors.