Category Archives: Gardening

Rosa rugosa is the beach rose that so brilliantly survives the harshest of conditions (hello salty sea spray) to reward with these simple but fragrant blooms. They are on the thornier side of the rose family, without a single space on the stem that isn’t populated by prickles, but that kind of toughness is needed when you’re in a daily battle with the harsh elements that their preferred seaside locations demand. 

Happily, this specimen only has to contend with the sun and heat and winds and rains of an upstate New York summer, and the occasional splash of pool water if someone is making extra efforts to cannonball. While a little rough around the edges for a formal garden, I’ve maintained its size and shape with some heavy pruning in the spring, and it’s stayed within its prescribed boundaries rather well for the past five years. It seems to enjoy a heavy pruning, and I love a plant that’s not afraid to lose its limbs in the hopes of growing greater ones. 

I also love its fragrance, which brings me back to Ogunquit and Cape Cod in the best possible ways. 

After decades of trying to bend the will and shade of these hydrangeas I have finally accepted their refusal to be anything other than light pink, and more than that I am embracing such a choice because that’s what they were born to be. Amending the soil with acidifiers and coffee grounds and rusted nails would momentarily yield a more bluish tone, but invariably they returned to purple and then pink, and appreciating a plant for its natural state in its home soil is another valuable lesson that the garden has imparted.

Forcing things, aside from bulbs in the midst of winter, rarely turns out well, and nature will always work around it. A river bends but rarely breaks. These hydrangeas yearn to be pink, and being pink is part of their basic make-up, their interior soul that always finds expression at one point or another. 

It’s so much simpler to enjoy a blooming hydrangea when you embrace whatever shade it deigns to appear as. And who could ever find fault with pink and cream and green? 

Favoring strong and vibrant and super-saturated colors, I’ve always enjoyed the bright and powerful, as found in fuchsia or chartreuse or neon orange, yet as I get older, and seek out calm in atmosphere and all sorts of interiors, I’ve come to appreciate and enjoy a more subdued and monotonous color palette, particularly place and scenes that employ just one or two colors – like ivory and green. 

That combination has been in full effect these past couple of weeks, as the Chinese dogwood and the climbing hydrangea combine to create this magical effect or creams and ivories against bright green – all of it backed by the varying blues of the sky. 

The bouquets I’ve made of late employ similar monochromatic themes, lending an elegance and simplicity that is easy on the eyes, and calm on the soul. 

Nature knows what she is doing. Trust in her. Follow her examples. She will never lead you astray. 

Last year Andy and I returned to the world of summer tomato gardening with a couple of potted plants on the patio. They did not all do well, with the larger varieties teasing but failing to complete their fruiting responsibilities. It was the cherry tomatoes that gave us the most substantial bang for the buck, producing buckets of fruit from just one plant trained on a pretty trellis. This summer I vowed to do mostly cherry tomato pants, as the others did not produce as much. 

This week they began their blooming, so we may be back in the tomato business sooner than expected. There really is nothing quite as delicious as a simple tomato and mayo sandwich on a sunny afternoon, especially when the tomatoes come from your own garden.

This purple clematis is one of those plants I forgot I even planted, until it climbed up and out of the foliage and branches of a climbing hydrangea and sported this big beautiful bloom. To be honest, I’m not even sure where it is located in the ground exactly – I only become aware of it at this time of the year when it blooms, and despite such neglect it still throws out such beauty sporadically throughout the summer. It’s due a little extra care now, and I’ll try to trace its stems and deliver some pampering to its roots. 

One of my favorite flowers – the peony – has been in bloom for the past week, right on Memorial Day weekend schedule. Last year, after almost two decades of leaving them undisturbed, it was finally time to divide the plants in our front garden, which was more of an arduous undertaking that I anticipated. Part of me is still slow to realize just how long we’ve been at our home, and all those plants I put in those first few years are now almost twenty years old. For some, it’s a glorious sight to behold – such as the 30-foot tall climbing hydrangea. For others, they are but a memory – such as the failed lady’s slipper orchid that I purchased at a criminally-high price-point, and which died after two seasons, despite my care and coddling in watering it with de-chlorinated water. 

The peonies in the front yard proved stalwart and reliable performers, blooming just as we were usually in Ogunquit for Memorial Day weekend. The past few years, we’ve been home to watch them burst open, peppering the space with their gloriously spicy perfume. Lately, however, I’ve noticed a decline in their blooms, a tell-tale sign that they were ready to be divided and reinvigorated. 

The best time to do this is late summer – around August, when it’s still warm and there is time for them to settle in and fortify their tubers. I chose a hot sunny day for this, to allow the tubers to air out and dry a bit, helping to prevent rot. It was more difficult than I expected – after 20 years their tubers had grown into substantial mounds, more akin to sweet potatoes than thin roots – and they were wound inextricably into each other, making for a tough process of separating and thinning them. 

Eventually, I managed to carefully whack my way through (if one can be careful in one’s whacking), turning three unruly bushes into six smaller specimens. I generously amended the soil with loads of well-aged manure, mulched the surrounding area, and watered them in well. As summer lingered, I made sure they were well-watered through September – I tend to forget about the importance of watering into fall, but to give them the best possible chance for surviving the winter, greater care was exerted, and the results are paying off. 

While a few are taking this year off as far as blooms go (which often happens when you divide or move a peony) most are sending up buds, starting with these old-fashioned beauties. Peony season has returned, and with it a sense of hope and happiness pervades from their sweet perfume. 

Behold! The glory and the mesmerizing beauty of the Itoh peony. I’ve been looking for a specimen to put on display here, as the tree peony we currently have is one of those heavy-headed varieties which gets so top heavy each bloom requires staking, and I’m not into that kind of maintenance. 

The exquisite form of the tree peony has long charmed me, and I’m not sure why it’s taken so long to come around to trying my hand at them again. Their reputation of being finicky an difficult to transplant has already been upended here – the one we have was moved twice and still flowers. The foliage also tends to stay perfectly intact and unmarred by mildew, unlike their herbaceous cousins, which don’t fare that well in the humid summers we usually have. 

The Itoh peony is actually a hybrid of an herbaceous peony and a tree peony, and reportedly combines the best qualities of both. I’m working on finding the perfect placement for such a beauty… 

It’s just the very beginning of the Chinese dogwood’s blooming journey, and while I usually wait until these have turned a whiter shade of pale, we need the glimpse of cheer now. This is one of my favorite trees, providing all the beauty of the American dogwood, but only once all the leaves have emerged. It also extends the season for another few weeks, making it ideal for the entry of summer. 

The actual flowers are still in tight bud – what we are seeing as the ‘petals’ are technically bracts. The real flowers are small and insignificant, but they’re the ones who will produce the raspberry-like fruit later in the season. (Sadly, they’re raspberry-like only in appearance, not taste or texture.) For now, the show has just begun… 

When we first move into our home, there was an enormous rhododendron that took up most of the front garden. It was over-sized and had grown unchecked for what must have a been a decade or two. It dwarfed the little plot in which it was then crammed, and blocked much of the light to the largest window of the house. It’s flowering was alternately magnificent and unimpressive, depending on the year, and as it was ruining the scale and proportions of our little home, eventually it had to go. 

Replacing it with a wedding cake viburnum, I failed to realize the importance of the evergreen aspect of the rhododendron, and so the winters felt bare and sparse, even if the light was welcome. After a few years, that too outgrew its space, and I transplanted a small Japanese umbrella pine to the location – a good choice for its slow-growing nature and evergreen beauty. 

Every once in a while, I’ll miss that original rhody, such as when I saw these beauties at my parents’ home. In full bloom, they are spectacular, and have filled in their front yard garden plot, brilliantly painting their hot pink glory against the white brick. We always seem to come back to the classics, and it may be time to put one of these into our side-yard, where they seem to enjoy the shade and the soil, and can stretch out beyond the confines of a formal garden. (I’ve softened the stance of this original post, much like the way I’ve softened other rigidities that were once seemingly cast in stone.)

While Andy may better know his way around automobiles and kitchen stuff, I’m the master in the garden. Sometimes, the master has much to learn, and that was the case when I happened upon Andy’s weigela at his old house. It bloomed prolifically at this time of the year, beginning a cavalcade of pink that lasted a solid week or two, especially if nights stayed cool and there was enough moisture in the air. I asked him what it was and he said he thought it was a Weigela. It was the first and only time he knew the name of a plant before I did. 

When we moved into our current home, and the first spring began to reveal which plants were in the backyard, I watched as a rather plain-leaved bush sprouted. It’s form was somewhat fountain-like, similar to a forsythia. Nearby, a Japanese maple unfurled its fine maroon leaves. Carpets of pachysandra extended well beyond where we would eat them. The shrub I couldn’t identity slowly revealed more of itself as the warm weather arrived. Buds appeared, and I recalled the Weigela. A few days later they bloomed pink as seen here – a standard variety that made its way around the upstate New York landscaping. It felt like a link to the past, blooming in our future backyard. 

A fox would not be entirely unwelcome in our yard at any time, especially considering the abundance of rodents the last few years have brought into our neighborhood. Foxgloves have long been a magical plant, one that I’ve mostly ignored growing for their unreliable growing pattern. Mostly biennial, they depend on spreading their second-year seed, leading to unpredictable clumps of future foxgloves, assuming they safely germinate. Too much chance in a world where chance is never a safe friend. 

That said, I’ve been embracing such unpredictability, so maybe this is a good time to sow a few of these and give them their first year of leaves for a floriferous show next year. Slowly, we begin to plan ahead. Slowly, we feel the way to a future. In the speckled loveliness of a fox’s glove… 

These violets are a menace to the perfectly manicured lawn, but they form a magical part of my childhood memories, as they grew freely in the little forest behind our home. Back then they were simply woodland joys that rarely encroached upon the lawn, content to inhabit the secret recesses of that shaded area behind the pool’s pump house. 

Today, they are taking over our lawn, and as such must be eradicated, which is easier said than done. I’ll let Andy do that difficult job, and snap these photos to show off their pretty side before we bid them adieu. 

Some plants begin looking very much as they will look for the duration of an entire season. Others, change immensely. This is one of the latter – and this is the beginning of the Maidenhair fern. Also known as the five-finger fern, it’s digits haven’t quite begun to uncurl and extend themselves, holding still like little knuckles. if they seem tense, it may be due to the cool weather we’ve had. Cold nights don’t make for pleasant conditions for maidens or men or all sorts of the beautiful in-between and outside. 

Despite its delicate appearance, this is one of the hardier ferns. Its elegant leaves are so light and airy, they allow the coldest winds to pass right through them. It’s an ingenious hat trick for a plant, and the lesson is a very good one. 

The unfurling of the Ostrich ferns is one of the magical moments of May. This ever-expanding patch of them has intruded into the new lawn I seeded last year, so they will be whittled down, but it’s fun to watch them unfurl first. I’ll transplant them into the side yard where they can run rampant through the pachysandra beneath a giant oak tree. It’s a shaded and secret space, perfect for the delicate appearance and underlying hardiness of these ferns. 

They will also do quite well in relatively strong sun, which is where this grouping stands, provided you deliver a regular source of water. The more the better, and they will rise in the bright sunlight to over four feet if given enough consistent moisture. Be wary though – if you can’t supply water on the regular they will rust and turn brown and brittle by the end of July. That still happens in the warmest of summers. 

For now, their freshness is indicative of this early stretch of May – all chartreuse and architectural glory in the form of these wondrous fronds.