A Late Start

From time to time, most of us grind to a halt.  Sometimes with good reason, often with none.  In October I moved yet again, this time just up the street in Rhinebeck.  After a summer in a backyard shared with various tenants and dogs that precluded a garden, a rental house became available with its own deep garden and extra room for guests.

Moving sucks up all the air available for breathing and almost all the available time.  Eventually, everything settles in place and it’s possible to focus on work again.  Fortunately, I’m not too far from the Catskills garden and the season is not too far ahead of me. 

Perennial Border Before Thinning

That garden is now well established and we are doing more removal and resettling than planting.  The climbing hydrangea has taken over a frame outbuilding and will have to be relocated.  The perennial border has been thinned and rethought. The baptisia was taking more than its fair share of space and has been reduced from three to two. The Siberian iris in the Peony Walk will be divided once again.  As a result of tree removal, the porch garden, once a haven for shade plants, is now in the sun. 

The new Rhinebeck garden is a different story.  It is a clean slate:  a long, deep, neglected garden typical of 1850’s village houses. A. J. Dowling in Victorian Cottage Residences (1842) lays out in detail how these properties should be used, accompanied by planting plans and maintenance expectations of family members.  In its day, the ornamental part of the garden would lie in front of planted trellises, with the working garden discretely in the rear. The latter would include a kitchen garden, fruit trees, berries, grape vines.  Varieties to be planted were specified and duly noted, while more routine vegetables could be purchased in the village. 

Dowling, 1842 Edition

All traces of that early garden are gone and now it is a plateau of lawn – a few shrubs on the perimeter, the brick outline of beds long abandoned to the easiest of plants to grow, hostas and daylilies. Tall trees, black walnuts and maples, are located on the neighbors’ side of the perimeter fence and pruned high.  The dappled shade is ideal for sitting quietly, but not best for planting.  No roses, perennials or vegetables here, or anything susceptible to black walnut toxicity.

As for the house itself, the first time I walked in it was immediately familiar.  It is an 1856 side hall cottage, identical in layout to a house I owned years ago in Roslyn, NY.  Coincidentally, I have a dollhouse made from the original plans for the Roslyn house, now in the Livingston Street living room.

There is light from all four sides, something you don’t miss in a city apartment until you have it again somewhere else. This house felt right from the very beginning, which does not happen that often.  

We’ve started our planting with the front of the house – the editorial “we” being Natalka and I.  You will remember her from earlier posts as the critical success factor in the Catskills garden.  Natalka cleaned out the bed, emptying it of desiccated boxwood, ubiquitous green/white hosta and a few oddities.  After soil testing and amending, we planted this week. 

71 Livingston Street, before

I dithered, as usual.  I started with a bold idea, a strict yew hedge centered on a jazzy ornamental something – an urn, an armillary, giant canna, but settled on a more neighborhood-friendly configuration.  At the same time, Natalka tried to avoid repeating what we see all around us and yet remain harmonious.  We settled on Carolina rhododendron, dwarf ‘Bombshell” hydrangeas (the people responsible for naming hydrangeas is a another conversation), ferns (probably Christmas or Ghost), a cimicifuga or two tucked in for surprise, and clematis for a little color on the porch railing.

71 Livingston Street, after

I share a semi-sunny property line with a neighbor and plan to mirror her perennial plantings and perhaps expand the palette somewhat.  This is a very neighborly neighborhood.  When winter is finally over, everyone emerges from confinement and stands about outdoors chatting. Neighborhood news and garden tips are freely exchanged, invitations proffered and accepted.

I think you can tell I’m smitten. 

The Roses of West End Avenue

There are few gardening conditions more dispiriting than the scrap of earth that lies between a New York City building façade and the sidewalk.  Passersby toss in candy wrappers.  Local Laws 10 and 11 mandate scaffolding to inspect and repair stone work which can take a few weeks, a few months, or what feels like forever. Nonetheless, a few building owners officially take on the task of managing these strips, and in some cases a sole volunteer will make a small paradise out of an unpromising plot.

365 West End Avenue in June

Carol Morton is one of these intrepid gardeners.  365 West End Avenue is a grand old rental building where tenants who stayed put still meander through what seems like vast spaces to anyone looking for an apartment today.  The garden, however, was not a joy; on either side of the front entrance ubiquitous yews wrapped in dusty ivy were left to fend for themselves.  The mandated scaffolding, supposedly erected only every five years, has occurred at 365  three times in eight years.  Each time it blocks light and air, causing plants to struggle.

'Sombreuil' with Clematis

Carol planted impatiens for starters, and removed the old plants one at a time.  The owners of the building, the Mehlon family, were skeptical at first, but have become enthusiastic supporters.  “They love the garden now,” Carol reports.  

In the early years nobody helped, which was fine with Carol.  A quintessential West Sider, she says ”I don’t want anyone else’s opinion.  I’ll make my own mistakes.”

 I don’t know what those mistakes might have been at the beginning, but there don’t seem to be any now.  Carol specializes in roses, if specialization is a reflection of passion and knowledge.  She selects roses only a daring gardener would risk; eye-stopping orange and purple, leavened with yellow and white.  “I want only the greatest roses,” Carol says.  She selects from the ratings of the American Rose Society, the official arbiter of commercially available roses, and purchases new ones only if there has been a fatality.  All her roses are versatile, adaptable, continuously blooming, and disease and pest free.

Carol’s inspiration has been her cousin Richard Katz’s roof garden in Brooklyn.  It was his roses that convinced her to try them on West End Avenue, and now she is returning the favor.  “I gave Richard ‘Dortmund,’ a climbing red pillar rose he planted at ground level.  It is enormous, covering the entire gate to the garage.”

Now to the roses: starting at 365’s southern corner, ‘Sombreuil,’ popular since 1850, has flat, creamy, very large white flowers, is mildew-free and ideal for training on walls.  It blooms vigorously in June then again in unexpected, unpredictable flushes throughout the season.

Westerland

Next in line is ‘Westerland,’ a beautiful apricot-orange rose with big, three-inch orange flowers, semi-double and wonderfully fragrant.  It pales once the street trees leaf out, and it loses some of its orange cast.

‘Sally Holmes’ follows up the line northward.  The individual flowers are modest, but the cumulative massing on a plant is memorable.  Close up, the flattened form changes color with the season: white in early spring, apricot in later spring and early summer, and rosy pink with the cooler nights of fall.

The startling ‘Night Owl’ is next, sporting dark, reddish-purple blooms with prominent yellow stamens.  “I am not pleased with it;” Carol complains, “there is not enough light for it to flourish.”  She has only herself to blame.  When new street trees were planted Carol, a good New Yorker, took on the watering task.  The trees flourished, and now the roses that used to be in full sun are shaded most of the day.  Some gardeners are architects of their own demise.

Night Owl

Carol’s season doesn’t end with the fading of the roses.  In the summer the garden glows with the double white flowers of Rose of Sharon, which climb to the second floor.  Hydrangea ‘Endless Summer’ accompanies summer phlox.  “I’m crazy about tuberous begonias, and I planted eight this year.“

Spring Columbine at Ground Level

Like most generously spirited New Yorkers, Carol has a demanding day job; she manages money for individuals.  “I work in the garden on weekends, about three hours a day, and the building staff waters. Carol has been doing this now for ten or more years, and there are no hard and fast rules. “Gardens are very idiosyncratic,” Carol observes. “In this building heat leaches from the limestone façade and creates a microclimate that encourages even Cannas to winter over.”

As if the frequent scaffolding and the robust street trees were not trouble enough, passersby allow their dogs to pee in the garden, attracted by the Please Curb Your Dog signs. “If dog pee smells so good,” Carol reasons, “why don’t they let them pee in the house?”

Carol Morton in the Garden

However, there are many more appreciative passersby than abusers.  Recently, one woman walking with her ailing son said “ I can’t tell  you how much this means to us. We just can’t get to the park anymore.”

The roses alone are worth a visit in June.  If you are in the neighborhood, stop by, take a look, and please leave a thank you note.

  

An Editor Edits Her Garden

A chance encounter on an Amtrak train led me to a small village and Carrie Tuhy’s enchanted cottage and garden.  The conversation was of nothing more consequential than the proximity of rail service from Manhattan to the Hudson River Valley, where Carrie spends whatever time she can carve out away from the city. “Do you think it’s possible,” I asked, “to find a modest house in a small village on a street with sidewalks and neighbors?”  “I just did that,” she replied,“ and invited me to tea that afternoon.

Carrie is a former magazine editor (Real Simple, Instyle) who is now the co-founder of Second Lives Club, a blog for women who are jumpstarting the next phase of their lives, which she did with a retreat from the corporate world and the purchase of her house.  It is a picture-perfect, 1940’s Cape with three rooms down, two rooms up and a bath-and-a-half.  On a corner lot, it has a front yard, a side yard, a back yard, a picket fence, and a very ambitious, aging garden.

The Cottage in Spring

Carrie bought the house from a couple in their eighties who were reluctantly leaving to mover closer to their children.  The wife was a passionate gardener, and left all her tools behind with Carrie.  “I had never had a garden, and I didn’t drive when I first came here,” Carrie said.  “It didn’t matter, because the house was in walking distance to everything. “  For someone used to Tribeca this was a calm transition, and a car didn’t appear until later.  Probably when she realized you can’t garden without one.

Viburnum Anchoring the Front Door

The house is located at the improbably-named corner of Mulberry and Chestnut Streets.  I walk by often, since as a result of that chance encounter I am now renting a small apartment nearby.  It’s allowed me to take photographs in the garden’s moment of tidiness in early spring, to the fullness of late spring, through the over-blown summer, and into the fall and winter. 

The Side Yard

“The garden is the work of the three women who lived here over a long period of time – 60 years -- and it’s taken me five years to begin to understand it,” Carrie reports. A tidy picket fence surrounds the house, with a few ornamental trees planted inside the fence.  They are almost crowded out now by the trees outside the fence, installed by a zealous village street tree planting program. 

The long border lining the walk to the front door is a fine example of why such borders should always be perpendicular to the house rather than parallel.  While looking down the length of the border from the house to the street you see none of the empty spaces that are inevitable in a mixed border.  Only when you are parallel to the border do you have an opportunity to examine all your mistakes.

The Long Border

Carrie’s long border covers the seasons from early spring bulbs, through peonies and iris in late spring, to phlox and its companions in the summer.  The hefty viburnum anchoring the corner of the front steps is replicated in the long border by baptisia and a few sub-shrubs that serve the same purpose.

Alongside the house is a crowded group of spirea ready for division, leading to a trellised alcove, the first of a number of garden “rooms.”  Directly off the sunroom, the trellis is graced by an apple tree, espaliered by Carrie.  About 9 x12, this small room is perfect for a morning coffee, or afternoon tea and a nap.

The Sunroom Terrace

The Shed's Interior

The aforementioned sunroom is ideal for a writer, but it is a shed in the garden that has captured the writer’s heart in Carrie.  “I thought I would be able to write there, like Virginia Wolfe did at her writing lodge at Monk House in East Sussex.   It has become instead a theatre of memory, filled with souvenirs of travel and sentimental objects considered too personal for the more public rooms.  

The Shed's Exterior

The shed is added onto periodically, but still remains unused. Two windows were given as a birthday gift from an admirer long and sadly gone.  A daughter’s desk occupies one end of the shed; a bench sits outside the door for contemplating the garden and the passage of time, which is unavoidable while sitting on a garden bench.

And so the editor steps in.  Gardens are not static, and for every gardener there is a moment when just enough becomes too much.  The small ornamental trees are battling with the street trees.  Perhaps the formal herb garden in the middle of the rear garden should be replaced with a calm lawn.  Perhaps the vines, if thinned, would let a little air in.  Isn’t the once-sheltering clematis now a shroud?  Have the roses on the trellis stopped blooming?

The editor begins to edit, but it requires learning a new vocabulary and a new language.  Plants are not as orderly as words and sentences, but that is what second lives are all about, isn’t it?

Carrie in the Garden

August Calendar

              The past two months have been virtually bone-dry.  The last week in July had a few old-fashioned gray and rainy days, but not often enough to mitigate the damage.  The most drought-resistant strongest flowers in our perennial border are my least favorite  -- Monarda and Filipendula. 

Monarda and Filipendula: Evicted

We’ve removed them all, I hope, and now I’m stepping back to look at how the garden is planned, and the lessons to be learned from bad times:

 1.    Group your plants according to their moisture needs.  Don’t mix drought-resistant plants with those happy to have their feet wet, no matter how artistic the combination.

2.    Keep plants that require watering close to the house where it is easier to give them what they need.  Plants further towards the perimeters and slightly out of sight can be left on their own with hope for the best.

3.    Be careful of knee-jerk reactions to a drought.  If you plant only dry-soil plants, chances are next year will bring steady rains.

Pumpkin Patch on Chestnut Street, Village of Rhinebeck

We are making some changes, moving our ever-thirsty hydrangeas, the temperamental Nikko Blues, to a cluster close to the house.  This way a single sprinkler will cover them, rather than the laborious coiling and uncoiling of multiple hoses and their connectors.  The picture below is a hot weather whimsy, a pumpkin patch happily sprawing along the front yard of an elegant Victorian village house.

Week One

August is a peak month for garden lilies, but they will need staking if they are to look their best. Now is the time to select yours for fall planting.

Examine your borders and pay the price for the penalty for not thinning early in the season. Phlox in particular suffered from mildew this summer.

Cut off the browned foliage of bleeding hearts.

Ferns will also begin to brown out abou tnow. You can leave them alone, or if the aesthetics bother you, trim off the dieback.

Rudbeckia and Helenium: Survivors Make note of which plants survived the drought and add them to your plans next year.

Replenish mulch. It will decompose in the heat of August.

Keep a watchful eye on containers. By now they will have filled up with roots and will require a more frequent watering schedule than when the roots were surrounded by an ample amount of moist soil.

Evaluate the shade in your borders. Branches may have grown and are now shading beds that used to be in full sun. The reverse is also true. If you have taken down tress your formerly shaded plants may now by frying.

Week Two

Bearded Iris. Order Now. Order iris, poppies, and peonies for late summer planting.

This is the last moment to fertilize perennials, lawns and woody plants. If you do this any later, new growth won't survive the autumn chill ahead.

Week Three

Garden sales should be underway by now. Take advantage of the opportunity to buy container-grown plants, as they will continue to drop in price.

If you are gardening on a rooftop, think about installing a simple irrigation system. One or two days away will result in the loss of almost everything.

Sweet Autumn Clematis Running Riot  Agressive vines will have made a spectacle of themselves by now. Thin excessive growth on autumn clematis, trumpet vines and wisteria.

Week Four

Begin harvesting raspberries. Cut back old canes after blooming, but leave the new. Next year's crop will come from this year's new canes. Mine are so out-of-control it would take concrete posts and suspension cables to hold them in place.

Every group of plants will present some candidates with damaged foliage this summer. Try and sort out insect damage from fungus, scorching, or mildew and treat accordingly.

Lantana on a NYC Terrace Terrace and roof gardens will need some fillers now as summer annuals begin to peter out. Look for annual asters and mums in garden centers. Add new geraniums as the old will likely suffer in the August heat. Lantana will hold up nicely until first frost.

Once again, note which plants have performed poorly and ruthlessly eliminate them. Life is short.