gardeninacity

Returning from another work trip on late Friday afternoon, the first thing I did was to inspect the garden. Then I spent a couple of hours staking, clipping, weeding and generally puttering around. At one point, I asked myself: why am I doing this after being absent from home all week? More generally, why do I spend so much time as well as physical and mental effort on the garden?

I can think of a few reasons. There is a sense of contentment and tranquility that comes from observing either a single flower – or patchworks of color and texture that seem just right. The same feeling comes from watching a bumblebee climb in and out of the tubular flowers of smooth penstemon, or a monarch butterfly nectaring on purple coneflower, or goldfinches feeding on the ripe seeds of an anise hyssop.

Gardening is an assertion of influence on a small piece of the environment. That’s influence, not control. A wise gardener seeks to channel the elements of the garden’s environment – soil, plants, critters, weather – to produce a small community of beauty and abundance. Trying too hard to rigidly control the garden generally leads to results that are sterile – literally and figuratively – and dull.

Achieving the effect you want with the right mix of effort and letting things take their own course is tremendously satisfying. A wall covered with rich purple clematis, a flower bed that gradually rises from sprawling blue geranium to towering yellow cup plants, makes me feel that the world can be handled to create beautiful results.

Personally, I like a style of gardening that maximizes the quantity and variety of creatures in the garden. This world is full of malice, indifference, and selfishness, but a garden can be a small-scale exercise in altruism and benevolence that I find comforting. A healthy garden, of course, is full of carnage and predation mostly invisible to people, so you can easily overstate the benevolence aspect. But at least a garden can welcome many forms of life by providing easy access to those things which are necessary to survival.

The tactile quality of gardening is also very attractive. Like so many people, my work involves dealing with concepts, personalities, varying degrees of truthfulness, and, it must be said, a whole lot of bullshit. So it is a relief to leave that world and literally get my hands in the soil. This may be one reason I prefer not to wear gloves when I garden, though Judy complains I make a mess of the bathroom sink. Of course, in addition to touching things that are  real, the senses of sight and smell are also gratified.

Finally, gardening helps me be more connected to my human community. I’ve gotten to know a number of neighbors (especially the dog walkers and those with small children) while gardening in the front yard. Without gardening, I’m sure that community connection would be greatly diminished. Some of the neighbors think my obsession is a little odd, but more often I hear expressions of admiration. At one point a neighbor waved at my front yard, bursting with the colors of mid-summer, and told me: “This is a joy!” Yes, that about sums it up.

 One of the unfortunate things about my job is that I have to be out of town a great deal during May, a crucial gardening month. This past week I left on Tuesday morning and returned Saturday afternoon, just a few hours ago. I have to leave again on Monday morning (yes, Memorial Day), and won’t return until Friday.

During these periods I long for my garden. Judy helps by emailing me photos occasionally, but I still  do a great deal of worrying. (Oh, and I miss Judy, too.) Is anything drying out? Are there plants flopping over and in need of staking? Am I missing the fleeting blooms of some particularly choice flower? My plants are  used to fairly constant attention while I’m at home, will they be resentful or alienated by my long absences?

The upside of being away from home is that when I return, seeing the new blooms has a greater emotional impact. For instance, my rose ‘Cassie’ was covered with unopened buds when I left, but with lovely semi-double white flowers when I returned.

Actually, many of my roses took great leaps forward during my absence. ‘Sally Holmes’, now entering its third summer in my backyard, is just starting to hit its stride.

And the roses I planted on the backyard arbor are doing well. ‘Westerland’ has bloomed for the first time (this is its second summer), and ‘Darlow’s Enigma’ is coming into its own.

 I also grow two wild roses, Carolina Rose (Rosa carolina) and Illinois Rose (Rosa setigira). These bloom later in the summer. All the roses I grow are tough shrub roses or ramblers and require little pampering. 

Aside from the roses, I was very glad to see that the baptisia and salvia were now in full bloom.

By the end of this coming week I’ll get to be a homebody again and spend more time in the garden, at least for a while. I can’t wait.

• This weekend it was 90 degrees, 2o above normal. A few weeks ago in April it was 20 degrees below normal. Plants were enticed to leap ahead in March, then flash frozen in April – now they are wilting under a hot sun.
• The heat brought on a need for mulching. First I used the leaves from last fall. It amazes me that you can accumulate what seems to be a huge pile of leaves, but when you use them for mulch the following spring they don’t seem to go very far, even if you’ve begged or stolen many bags from the neighbors. So I had to supplement my leaves with bagged mulch. For the first time, I tried cocoa shells. I like the look, and they are supposed to be ecologically correct. The smell of chocolate is a little disconcerting,  but it’s supposed to fade with time.
• I spent some time today trying to get ahead of the staking curve. I staked the blue false indigo, a bunch of smooth penstemon, and a couple other things. I’m trying what is supposed to be the technique used at Monet’s garden at Giverney. Basically, you stake roughly every third stem with a thin bamboo pole, and the stems are supposed to hold each other up.  This is supposed to give you a more natural look. Not sure how this applies to taller grasses that tend to flop, like silky wild rye.

• The flowering dogwood is definitely dead, but I won’t give up. I’m ordering another.
• I like common bluestar. It has unusual star-shaped flowers in spring that are, well, blue. However, this is one of those plants where you have to be careful about placement. Once it matures, it shall not, it shall not be moved. It doesn’t grow fast, but it grows big. I planted one of mine too close to the sidewalk and now I must struggle every year to keep it from getting in the way of the neighborood pedestrians.

 I was out of town on the 15th on a business trip. (Work was absolutely brutal, but that’s another subject.) Therefore, I am granting myself a four day extension on the bloom day due date. Here goes, in no particular order:

Peony ‘America’

 Brunnera macrophyla

Heuchera

Lonicera sempervivens

Lonicera ‘John Clayton’

Polemonium carneum

Polemonium reptans

Geranium ‘Johnson’s Blue’

Geranium maculatum

Rosa  ‘Sally Holmes’, many buds almost ready to open

Rosa ‘Cassie’

Rosa ‘Darlow’s Enigma’

A rambler, we are training Darlow’s Enigma on an arbor. This should be a good year for roses, all of ours are covered in buds.

Allium ‘Globemaster’

Allium ‘Purple Sensation;

 Corydalis lutea grows well in dry shade. The funny little tubular flowers bloom for months.

Achillea millefoliumm ‘paprika’

Nepeta ‘kitkat’

 Geum triflorum

 Amsonia tabernamontana 

Various annuals – cleome, cosmos, pansies, sweet alyssum, lobelia …

 Though it’s not blooming, an honorable mention for my ostrich ferns, Matteuccia struthiopteris. I’ve told the neighbor kids that when the ferns get big enough they will attract dinosaurs.

• The Baltimore orioles – one of my favorite birds – have arrived! Also, for the first time, we have attracted indigo buntings to our yard. To entice them, I’ve been spreading millet on the ground for about two weeks. The buntings look like someone took a goldfinch and painted it an intense, electric blue. Unfortunately, Judy couldn’t get a good picture of one.  Her good camera is still in the shop being fixed.

• I got to Anton’s and Gethsemane to buy some plants Friday, then got them in the ground today. For my front yard island bed, a moist and sunny spot, I got three monarda “bluestockings,” two phlox “David,” and one obedient plant.
• It’s too early for cleome, I know, but I couldn’t stop myself from buying a couple. I intend to fill in all the empty spots in the front yard flower beds with cleome and cosmos this year. No bare ground!
• I also got my little front yard vegetable garden started. I installed the wooden tomato trellises I started using last year, then planted four tomato plants: Black Krim, Black Cherry, Black Prince, and Green Zebra. This will be the Year of the Black Tomato! I know it’s a little early for tomatoes, but what the hey.  Also planted bush pickle cukes, dill, and parsley. Oregano and thyme lived through the winter.

• The amsonia, the columbine, the starry solomon seal, and the cranberry bush viburnum have just started blooming. Plus, I have to say this has been a banner year for trumpet honeysuckle and Nepeta “kitkat” – in terms of both very early and profuse blooming.

• AAARRRGH. That is my mature and thoughtful response to the fact that my new  “Appalachian Blush” flowering dogwood, which I planted with such high hopes on April 1, appears to be dead. The stems are green, but all the leaf buds are clearly kaput. The April cold must have done it in. I have to decide whether I want a replacement from Forest Farm, or just buy something locally. But I REALLY wanted a flowering dogwood, and you can’t find one in garden centers around here.

To celebrate her birthday and our anniversary, Judy and I went to Paris for the second week in April. It was great! Neither of us had been there before. The food,the architecture, the street life, the parks, the museums … just a wonderful experience.

I’m planning three posts about the gardens. Judy took over 1,500 pictures, and I’ll write my posts as she sorts through her photos. First, I want to write about one of the most beautiful gardens we’ve ever seen anywhere: Claude Monet’s garden in Giverney, about 50 miles from Paris.

What struck me about the main garden was the combination of relaxed exuberance and the formality of straight-lined rectangular beds. Like a combination of cottage garden and parterre. I was also inspired by the mixing of perennials and annuals, and am determined to do the same in my own garden this year. There is just a richness and abundance of color that is hard to describe.

The second part of the garden is built around a pond that Monet created by damming a small tributary of the Seine.

Anyone who loves gardens should see this place if they get the chance. It is a joy.

• It was cool and cloudy Saturday, cool and mostly sunny today. This should be remembered as “The Spring of Hurry Up and Wait,” for its excessive early warmth followed by downright chilly weather.
• Dug out six Early Sunflower (Heliopsis) from my front bed along the sidewalk. While these are nice plants, they’re just too big and bushy, even when I cut them back, to fit into a flower border along a sidewalk. Also, they were shading the Salvia. These were three years old, and had grown some enormous root masses. Fibrous, I grunted as I worked,  these are supposed to be fibrous roots.
• In place of some of the Early Sunflower, planted some Smooth Penstemon that just arrived from Bluestone Perennials. I wanted to replace the remainder with “Sunfire” Coreopsis, or one of the other varieties that has a dark eye. However, none such have yet to show at the local nursery.
• Looked in vain for signs of my Joe Pye Weed “Gateway” and “Little Joe” emerging from the soil. Fantasized about what I might replace them with if they died over the winter. In a similar vein, looked for my red milkweed plants to finish breaking dormancy. A couple have, but several have not.
• Wondered why my flowering dogwood “Appalachian Spring” has yet to leaf out. Just planted it at the beginning of the month. I can tell it’s alive from the color of the stems.  Leaf out, damn you!
• Put an edging of pavers between garage bed and the stone path to the backyard. The path is too low and dirt keeps washing onto it. I could dig and reset the path, but figured it would be easier to use the pavers as a dam to keep back the soil. Did about one third of the bed.
• Bought lots of sweet alyssum and blue lobelia as filler for my containers. A big improvement, reminding me of the fact that containers look much better when you cram in the plants. I planted pansies earlier, but they’ve been slow to spread.
• Gave the neighbors some columbine and wild geranium volunteers, along with some hunks of oregano from the herb/vegetable garden.

All in all, a fairly satisfying weekend.