In Gardens

New plant (for my brain): Eucryphia x nymansensis

Kenwood Cherries - almost there

The cherry trees in the Kenwood neighborhood of Bethesda, Maryland give a feeling like being in a magical fairy land. Yoshino cherries dominate the canopy and line the streets. I visited yesterday for the first time since I was a child and had a greater appreciation for these old weathered specimens. Some are just a shell of themselves, while others have been newly planted to replace those now gone. They’re in bud and only just beginning to open, so maybe a week or two away from full glory. But how quiet and peaceful it was to walk through their gray canopies and see them for more than their petals. While my dad noticed their decay and dead parts, I pointed out their new growth and new roots through the veil of the old. He asked why not prune that off? To which I said, admire their age.

In looking for more information about these cherries - were they part of the gift from Japan at the Tidal Basin? - I found this article which explains them better: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/10/AR2010041002612.html

Gravetye Manor

Mottisfont: Clematis

Savill Garden: Summer Wood

Peckerwood Garden - Hempstead, TX

I went to Texas, and thus made the pilgrimage to Peckerwood. The drive from Austin did me good - along highways strewn with bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush. Through the “lost pines” of Bastrop, where stands of loblolly pines pop up in the middle of post oak country, isolated from the main body of East Texas pines by 100 miles. Past ranches and contented cows. Almost to Houston, but thankfully not quite. Peckerwood is a destination for plant lovers and open to the public on select days through the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program. I went last Saturday, and an incredible tour guide graciously led our small, random group of plant lovers around the garden for well over our allotted time.

The collection has over 3,000 plants from Mexico, Asia, and the US. And of those plants, some began from seed or cutting from one of the 100 or so collection trips founder John Fairey made to Mexico. We saw more oak species than I’d seen in my entire life. There were oaks with smooth, mottled bark that more resembled magnolias or musclewood. Oaks with smooth, waxy leaves and rough, leathery leaves like ficus, and soft, woolly leaves like lamb’s ear. 

We looked at specimen hackberries like the weeping one pictured, pines that repel mistletoe (Pinus pseudostrobus), maples that seem to fare better in Texas than Philadelphia (Acer oliverianum). There were the most floriferous fringetrees (Chionanthus retusus) I’d ever seen with beautiful forms. And from the depths of shade, cycads and saw palmettos seemed like they were coming to swallow you whole.

Weaving our way carefully through a spiky (and shade-free) forest of Nolina, Agave, and Dasylirion, we reached the Mazari Palm (Nannorrhps ritchieana) that was readying its bloom and already well over our heads. New young arrivals lingered under shade cloths (for a few years we learned) before joining their sun-loving elders. 

Bamboo-zled

What do you do on a tropical stormy day? Bamboozle the interns. Well, not really. But get them busy with bamboo. 

There’s a good supply of bamboo growing happily in the riparian area of the Morris Arboretum along the Wissahickon Creek. And with fencing on my mind and Hurricane Joaquin a brewing, we got busy. Yesterday I cut the size pieces I needed (about 2-inch diameters), and today we holed up in the garage and split bamboo while it rained.

That’s our Horticulture intern Paige Ida working her magic with the bamboo splitter. Now, you might wonder where to procure such a tool. Well, I recently ordered a couple from Hida Tool in Berkeley, CA. I couldn’t decide on just one from the seven options, so I went with a 3-way and a 5-way splitter. A selection of splitters and other bamboo tools is laid out below for a workshop organized by the North American Japanese Garden Association (NAJGA) that I attended in Minneapolis in August.

I also ordered a bamboo hatchet and fine-toothed bamboo saw, both of which cut the woody grass like buttah. I learned the hard way how sharp the hatchet truly is. (No stitches required)

With the bamboo we have, the 5-way splitter works best. The 3-way tool split the pieces unevenly, making some too weak and others too rigid for their intended purpose as simple hoop fencing. The bamboo pictured below demonstrates to visitors where the path ends and the bed begins, keeping visitors out of the hakone grass at the Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden at Como Park Zoo & Conservatory in Saint Paul, MN.

Tis the Season…..for air spading!

Pictured here is the Morris Arboretum arborist intern Josh Best using an air spade on a group of flowering cherry trees in our collection. These trees are integral to the Arboretum’s Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival held every spring. The trees pictured above are in various stages of vigor and decline, some showing more stress than others. The stress factors this year have included drought, defoliation from Japanese beetles, age, root structure, and human activity. Garden visitors and staff contribute to soil compaction around the tree roots through foot traffic, lawn mowers, and staff vehicles. What we’re left with at the end of a busy season is a ground so hard it feels less like walking on living, breathing organisms (trees, grass, soil) and more like pounding concrete. As a result, rain water slips right off the surface and down into the stream below while the trees don’t get the moisture, oxygen, and nutrients they deserve.

The plan that our arborist Andrew Hawkes and I came up with was to air spade the root zones of the trees in this area in radial trenches. He and his intern Josh incorporated compost into the soil during the process as a way to add extra nutrients and organisms to the stressed soil. We’re then closing off the area to visitors for the remainder of the year, giving the tree roots a chance to breath and the turf grass time to grow back.

I first saw this approach during a visit to Brooklyn Botanic Garden a few years ago and it was striking to see the artistic aftermath. A google search turned up the following pics on Flickr from a late fall treatment. Their air spading operation is much larger than ours, because of the number of trees in their collection and the extent of their visitorship - their annual festival brings in over 60,000 visitors in one weekend. They have a real need to address the compaction of those trees from that weekend and the rest of the season.

The benefits of air spading trees are many. Unlike digging, which can damage tree roots and leave them exposed to potential pathogens, an air spade uses the force of air to remove and break up compacted soil. The process can reveal information, like the root flare of a tree planted too deep. It can reveal a tree’s root structure, any girdling roots, and trunk decay.

As an intern at Chanticleer Garden in 2011, I used an air spade to “dig up” a couple different patches of bamboo (Pleiobastus variegatus and Sasa veitchii) from under mature trees where they had become too aggressive (go figure). The air spade was a great tool in those situations because it exposed the bamboo rhizomes, which we could then pull away and disentangle from the larger tree roots. 

Goodbye Pennisetum. Hello opportunity.

This donor wall at the Morris Arboretum has been home to a combination of a two grasses for some time - little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and black fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Moudry'). The fountain grass variety ‘Moudry’ prolifically self-seeds and has been identified as a potential or emerging threat to natural areas in the mid-Atlantic region. We definitely see its aggressive and seedy tendencies here, where we find it popping up in the turf and in areas far removed from its original location. Maintenance wise, it’s also a pain in the ass to cut back in the fall or spring. Not only is it super tough to cut through, but the seedheads stick to every article of clothing and are painful. 

Plus, I always thought it looked strange and coarse in combination with its more refined and well behaved neighbor little bluestem. 

So, enough was enough. With the help of my boss Vince and coworker Tom, we ripped them out today. I never thought I’d say this, but it’s mesmerizing to watch someone use a backhoe for hours. In between bouts of nearly breaking our backs lifting the huge root masses, we just stood around and watched the backhoe arm rip, tug, yank, and knock the grasses around. 

The bed is stripped down now, and It’s going to be a great opportunity to try something new and more eye catching. I’ll keep the blue/silver theme, but stay tuned for the next additions.

I’m starting to think a lot about grasses these days as I plan for my class Gardening with Ornamental Grasses at the Morris Arboretum. It’s not until November 7th, but now is the time to start seeing grasses in all their glory. (For the class description, check here and scroll to the bottom of the page.)

Some of my favorite places to see grasses at the Morris are in the meadows along the entrance drive. Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) rings the meadow beds in a cool ripple of blue foliage, above which feathery yellow flowers sway. And here and there plumes of big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) punctuate the meadow’s skyline. 

Wandering through the Arboretum, a planting of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) creates a cool juxtaposition to the bold painted aluminum Sugarman sculptures in the Azalea Meadow. The particular cultivar ‘Standing Ovation’ grows tall above the Haha Wall, and the blues are set off by the dark green backdrop of hollies.

This is the time of year when purpletop (Tridens flavus) delights in fields and along roadsides. The dainty flowers create a reddish-purple haze atop a sea of green. Yesterday, I saw acres of it in a field in Paoli, and it was breathtaking. 

Chanticleer: a few of my favorite spring flowering woodies

Washington DC...it’s the greatest place to be….it’s not the cherries everywhere in bloom….no no no...

Wait a minute - yes it is!

What a load of willow!

Nymans Garden

Visiting Nymans was a respite from the overwhelming beauty I experienced earlier that day in the lush and boisterous gardens of Gravetye Manor (which I'll post about soon). Not to discount the beauty of Nymans' beds, borders, and impressive collection, but here I'm just expressing my gratitude for its greenery.

Upon entering, I followed the main path through the Pinetum, a collection of conifers in all hues of greens and yellows with an occasional red or burgundy. Ah, simplicity. No flowers - just foliage. I could catch my breath. I could also catch glimpses of a meadow, which opened up when I rounded a curve. With the meadow at my back I had views of rolling hills and woods of the Sussex High Weald. What beauty.

How could I know that the gardens would get increasingly more complex and more colorful as I continued my journey? I made my way through bamboo groves and around topiary boxwoods and yews, where all around me children ran and hid from those seeking them. I passed through a long corridor of laurel hedge, crunching the stone path underfoot and forgetting about the families and noisy ones beyond. Within those green walls I was alone and at peace. 

But all paths come to an end, and that one opened up to the famous gardens that surrounded the ruins of a Gothic mansion. The building's ruins were indeed impressive, both as a support for a number of clambering plants and as a backdrop to some exotic species and ever more topiary. But competing for greatness was an equally architectural feature: the Cedar of Lebanon. It was central to the gardens surrounding it and integral to the built environment, framed by doorways and archways and crenellations in the yew hedges. 

Sissinghurst, or am I dreaming?

I’ve never felt so captivated by the history of a garden as I did at Sissinghurst. There’s romance in the intricate dance and mingling among plants in the garden. And there's the romance in the writings of poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West to husband Harold Nicolson- their letters to one another embodied their passion for the place, from the early planning phases through its growth and development. The garden was their lovechild, and the place where they found inspiration and entertained friends and lovers. 

Vita and Harold created the garden out of a centuries old ruin. Once a medieval manor house, they acquired the estate in 1930 and immediately set about transforming it. Harold planned the long views and classic hedges; Vita planted profusely, spilling over Harold’s austere lines. Her method was to cram every nook and cranny and create an effect of exaggeration within the confines of his framed spaces. 

The gardens in August were somewhere between wild and restrained. Old garden roses had long since bloomed, but here and there were repeat roses like rugosas and hybrid perpetuals to remind you of the garden’s earlier glory. Fall-blooming asters and goldenrods were just budding up on still-erect stems. There was hardly a spare space in the garden with all the agapanthus, beebalm, buddleia, Japanese anemones, phlox, joe pye weed, tawny grasses, and the starry spent seedheads of alliums. Clematis rambled around rustic birch teepees and along walls. 

One of my favorite features of the whole place was in the Cottage Garden: four overlarge English yews stood wobbly like tired whirling dervishes in the center of the garden. Around these tightly clipped figures was a garden ablaze in hot reds, yellows, and oranges: rusty heleniums, crimson snapdragons, buttery verbascums, chartreuse euphorbias, and burnt orange horned poppies.