Goodbye To All That...

The first post in an eternity, and for many reasons…
While not the main reason for my lapse, this was in general a very bad year for gardening – overall the worst since I began eight years ago. What started off as an incredibly mild and kind winter came to a close with temperatures nose-diving after many plants broke dormancy. And the warmth never really returned until May. Plants cut back by the late winter freeze languished for weeks in a suspended state, with many tropicals and sages that previously sailed through colder winters still struggling to push up new growth well into April.
Then, just as everything was making a comeback and starting to thrive, came the drought. Summer sun and no moisture turned the soil into dull terracotta and continuous watering from the tap just couldn’t supplement summer thunderstorms or a drenching from a tropical depression.
And at the end of summer came the possibility that we would be moving and I would have to bid farewell to my first real garden. The growth of the family could no longer be contained in a single story, two-bedroom cottage and we started searching for a larger house. My gardening stalled, or, more honestly, came to a complete stop. Divide and rearrange plants, or start to dig them out of the ground in preparation for a move? And there wasn’t any sense in investing in new plants to fill out or complete beds.
Instead of getting my hands into the soil, I walked around the beds and debated which plants should and could take a move. And when to start digging them up? If we ended up not moving, plants would be left in pots to survive the unpredictable winter for no reason at all.
Well, the move is happening, in just two weeks at the start of December. And a fair number of plants have been yanked from the ground and put into pots where they will have to survive against the long winter. But many of my most favorite plants will stay behind – the established sub-tropicals that have thrived in my garden, such as the pomegranate, “State Fair,” the Eucalyptus neglecta, and my beloved needle palm, Rhapidophyllum histrix Rhapidophyllum hystrix – plants with roots that need to be well established in the soil to get them through the winter. All of these plants would probably perish with a late autumn relocation.
And then there are all of the plants that are now too large to dig up. I will feel lost with no brightly blossomed witch hazel to keep hope alive in the late winter snows, no intoxicatingly scented daphne to announce that winter’s worst is in the past and wonderful spring days of warmth and lushness are just ahead.
And what now is ahead? Well, for starters, the plot of land we are moving to is over double the size we are now on. That will give me a chance to spread out and breath a bit more. There is also a stream with a simple arced bridge crossing it, leading to a grove of mature bamboo on the other side. Yes, a defiant, greedy bamboo wearing boxing gloves and steel tipped boots…but I do love the look of it, and with the bridge it inspires visions of a marvelous Asian garden.
For the front, I want to develop a backdrop of native shrubs – especially some oak-leaved hydrangeas with another witch hazel. And I need to have another Magnolia grandiflora, my most favored tree of all. And I’ll have to etch out a sun bed from the prevalent shade for my sages.
So it’s time to start from scratch. Perhaps exercise a little more discipline this time around and create a cohesive whole. With sadness I say good-bye and with excitement look forward to breaking my back breaking in new soil.

Spring's Promise & Winter's Victims

Such an odd spring. Just when you think you are high and safe on a wave of warmth, another northern front rolls in that plunges nights into the forties with some days barely climbing out of the fifties. Everything got off to such a slow start, but at last some lushness is starting to fill the yard.
And amid the lushness of late spring, a final tally of the casualties of winter. Now barren spots in the greenery make it clear which plants did not survive this past winter, which, ironically enough, was for the most part a warmer than normal one. But that warmth, which caused hellebores, witch hazels, quince and camellias to bloom in early January, must have also fooled other less stout garden members into breaking dormancy early in the year. And then came the bitter, colder than average late February that cut them down to death. Particularly affected were many fleshy bulbs of tropical descent that previously had no trouble surviving the past seven years in my garden – the Hedychium ginger, Sauromatum venosum voodoo lilies, and Eucomis pineapple lilies are all gone. Even the Musa basjoo banana tree, which previously had been growing and spreading like a weed and would have been a four feet high by four feet wide shrub by now, seems like it barley pulled through; it is just now sending some thin sickly shoots up from the earth.
All of these fatalities correspond with a report from Sherwood Gardens, an expanse of azaleas and spring bulbs in the otherwise sterile north Baltimore Gucci neighborhood of Guilford, that about 30% of the planted tulip bulbs did not flower. When the failed beds were dug up, mushy rotted bulbs were found – victims of a warm winter with a freezing finale.
I even had to say farewell to some work horse salvias that for many years had been staples of the garden, particularly Greggii “Watermelon” and “Royal Raspberry,” which revealed green signs of life when their bare branches were scraped with a finger nail, but failed to sprout any new growing points from the old wood.
But there was virtually no damage with the larger shrubs and trees. The pomegranate, Punica granatum “State Fair,” had insignificant die back and has jumped to vigorous life and is larger than ever this year. The brown turkey fig, which usually needs its tips pruned back to green wood in the spring, had no die back this year.
But at last the warmth is here and on we go. Just too bad that we’re ultimately headed back to winter in a mere five months…

Glorious

It has broken – the cold, the ice, the snow, the dreadful winter. Sure, it’ll try one or two final attacks, but it is defeated with nowhere to go but retreat. I stepped out onto a black asphalt parking lot this morning and felt the heat rising from the macadam, the warmth enhancing the scents of diesel exhaust, gas stains, and dumped coffee – stifling in mid-summer but now oh-so preferable to the odorless dead cold of winter.
Even though winter didn’t truly begin until February, it was still more than I could bear. The short days were enjoyable up until that point – hellebores, quince, camellias, and witch hazels in full vibrant bloom. But then the evil freeze came and cut down all of the brave blooms, leaving the bright red quince flowers an unrevivable brown mush on the stems, scorching new leaves and blooms of hellebores, making it very difficult to prune around the damage for a salvageable display. The only thing that has been able to start from where it left off is the witch hazel.
But now joining the first wave of blooms come crocus, pulmonaias, and the unbelievably intoxicating Daphne odora, whose scent lies heavy along the front and side of the house. I could just pull up a chair and sit and smell that sucker for hours on end – it transports me to heaven. And so far it has proven to be contrary to its reputation and is a most easy-going shrub, stuck on the west side of the house on a thin strip of ground under an over-flowing rain gutter, delivering seven years of glorious spring perfume.
I would mark this past Saturday, March 10th, as the official start of the 2007 garden season. I started to clean up all that was left to stand through winter and to take inventory of what has survived and what has perished. So far it looks as though most of my “mid-Atlantic tropicals” have survived.
The needle palm, Rhapidophyllum hystrix, has gone through its 5th or 6th winter, unprotected on the south side of our house with no apparent damage and evidence of strong new palms about to unfurl. This is a simple and beautiful native of our south that seems to have no problem adapting to northern Baltimore when sited well.
And the desert plants seem to have all pulled through – Dasylirion texanum is another easy care native of our west that doesn’t seem to mind a mid-Atlantic relocation. After three years it has yet to show any sign of winter damage. It is sited on a well-draining hill enhanced with course sand and pebbles, but otherwise no protection. It becomes more beautiful and full each year against a backdrop of mixed salvia greggii.
The agaves – neomexicana and lophantha – have showed small signs of scorching but nothing serious. Even the lophantha baby side shoot seems to have pulled through and is ready for separation and transplanting to another sharp drainage hill.
And how did other zone defiant specimens fair? Gardenia “Chuck Hayes” sustained a few burned leaves, but it hasn’t been cut to the ground. I’m hoping it will do a repeat of last year’s display of delicious blooms.
I coppiced the Eucalyptus neglecta to the ground – it stood untouched until the mid-February deep freeze, after which its leaves became scorched and brittle, but the braches remained green. I wish I had left it untouched to see if it would generate new leaves straight from old, green wood, but I also fear that if left unchecked it would become a monster.
Also showing good green wood is the Punica granatum “State Fair,” a nice dwarf pomegranate. And the Camellia japonica “Greensborough” is lush and unblemished, heavily laden with buds waiting to burst open. I’ll have to wait to see about the Musa basjoo banana tree and Hedychium gingers, but they’ve been around for more than 5 years now and are almost invasive in their plot against our southern wall. So the endless digging, cutting, pruning, weeding, mulching – it begins. Gloriously. At last.

Frozen

January was a time of relative warmth and greenery – frequently days climbed into the sixties and the grass was verdant as early spring. After the blooms of last season faded, a procession of new blooms had begun without a pause. But all of that sits frozen now, the new blooms robbed of color and the green fields drained of color by northern winds and buried under inches of ice. Everything has shriveled – the hellebores, quince, witch hazels and even winter jasmine – and retreated into deep winter. The only solace is in the fact that at this point there can only be weeks of winter to endure and not months.
At year’s end the gardening spark remained strong and I was appreciating the winter’s gardens as much as the summer’s; now I’ve retreated indoors and buried myself beneath blankets and books, such as Beth Chatto’s Gardening Notebook, written in a style incorporating horticultural facts with joyful gardening anecdotes and personal reflections. A very good read.
And although we are preparing for an onslaught of this area’s winter staple – the “wintry mix” of sleet, freezing rain, and, if we’re lucky, snow – in three weeks’ time the family and I will be making our right of spring passage to the conservatories of Longwood Gardens.
A great winter escape, the United States Botanical Gardens and Conservatory in D.C., has grown with the installation of the outdoor National Garden. On a recent visit I marveled at how the Mall at the foot of the Capitol has been transformed from a barren expanse of uninspired lots to a diverse and welcoming landscape. Though newly planted and sparse in its infancy, the Botanic Gardens beautifully frame the Capital and make the graceful architecture of the Capitol’s dome and columns shine – previously I thought the building was blah.. The mall is now a top horticultural destination – from Bartholdi Park, the Botanic Gardens, the wild woodland ponds in front of the Museum of the American Indian, and down to the the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden and those surrounding the Smithsonian Castle. Finally, the Capitol is improved on the inside and out.

Bloomin' Hope

It’s not cold. It’s not winter. It’s not anything. Disjointed days of 70 degree warmth and sunshine book-ended by cool, damp nondescript days of rain with the threat of a very real and tangible winter descending from the north. In winter warmth and sun you can rise on dreamlike waves of irrelevant happiness. On the rainy, dark days every debt, empty work hour or other tokens of loneliness weigh down like a hundred wet, woolen blankets.
But there is green in the fields instead of the usual mid-winter grey and optimistic blooms of hellebores, mahonias, witch hazels, quince, and winter honeysuckle explode in anticipation and unshakable belief in genuine spring.