The Garden After Another Tour

I had a garden tour from Albany, NY visit my garden and the Peterborough public gardens on Wednesday. We are having a severe drought here in New Hampshire but the garden has held up reasonably well. Here are some photos of the garden and some plant IDs for the visitors.

The Lower Garden from the terrace

Lower Garden head-on from the opposite direction

From another angle in the Lower Garden

The granite, yew and boxwoods in the Hall with Balls illustrates how strong structure in the garden can be very useful during a drought as well as in winter.

'Peterborough' Adirondack chairs in the Woodland Garden

Dahlia 'Happy Single Juliet' is turning out to be one of the few dahlias that I can rely on in southern New Hampshire. It is sturdy and produces many single bright pink flowers that pop visually in the garden against the dark foliage. There are other colors of single anemone-type dahlias in the 'Happy' series that I am thinking of trying next year.

I got this gomphrena called 'All Around Purple' from Helen O'Donnell at Bunker Farm in Dummerston, VT. Helen propagates an exciting list of plants each year. You can find her plant list for 2016 here. She specializes in unusual plants, many of which she learned about at her time gardening for Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter.

I let this tuberous begonia called 'Sparks Will Fly' go dormant in my basement last year and it came back beautifully. I love the tangerine-colored flowers against the lightly-veined dark foliage.

This is Clematis tangutica 'Bill MacKenzie' in the crabapple tree in the Upper Garden. I have noticed several seedlings of this clematis in the garden which I will let grow to see what the progeny look like.

I never tire of the fresh foliage of Amicia zygomeris. I may attempt taking cuttings this year. I found some excellent instructions, again from Great Dixter,  on how to do it here.

This annual red-leafed hibiscus called 'Mahogany Splendor' is also from Helen at Bunker Farm. By the end of the season, it turns into a robust shrub which looks a dwarf Japanese maple.

Here is another Helen O'Donnell plant, a variegated kiss-me-over-the garden-gate called  Persicaria orientalis "Shiro gane Nishiki'. It is just beginning to flower but the foliage has been an eye-catching feature throughout the season. I will be getting this plant again next year!

Melanthus major is my all-time favorite annual for the garden. The pleated glaucous foliage smells like peanut butter when it is rubbed but its best attribute is that it gets bigger and better throughout the season and survives the first wave of light frosts in autumn.

Cuphea llavea 'Bat Face' is a useful front-of-the-border plant that looks great for an extended season with little effort and no dead-heading.

Mina lobata 'Exotic Love', aka the firecracker vine, again from Helen

Finally, a volunteer seedling of Nicotiana sylverstris. This fragrant tobacco plant lands exactly where I need it every year. This time, it emerged from the brickwork at a corner of the Lower Garden that wasn't quite living up to expectations. Nicotiana sylverstris always exceeds expectations wherever it pops up. The huge, and oddly sticky, foliage is a dramatic feature that quickly identifies this plant as being from the tobacco tribe. I am a big fan of self-seeding nicotianas in the garden. I probably have 7 or 8 different species and/or cultivars, many of them are also intoxicatingly fragrant.

The Garden in Late July

The Upper Garden

 The Hall with Balls

The Blue Bench Terrace

The Aftereffects of Subtraction in The Hall With Balls

The Hall with Balls was particularly serene this past week. I always love the round boxwoods dusted with snow. The Cornus officinalis tree can be seen off center in this view and to the far left below.

Several posts ago, I made a decision to remove two upright Junipers. In the process, a granite wall, which can be seen to the left of the steps, was revealed. I am very pleased with the simplicity that resulted.

The  granite post in the Woodland Garden can be seen through the two archways looking particularly beautiful as a focal point calling the eye and the visitor forward.

Subtraction in a Maturing Garden

Over a decade ago, I planted a pair of small Juniperus scopulorum 'Skyrocket' trees to add a vertical accent on the slope connecting the Upper garden with Lower Garden. Later, I added granite steps and planted it with boxwoods which gave the impression of balls rolling down the hill. The junipers flourished and became quite handsome but in the last several years they have grown out of scale for the space and suffered snow damage. In the mean time, the yew hedge that encloses the area has finally become a wall and the Cornus officinialis in the center of the space is large enough to become a focal point in the space.

After our snow this Thanksgiving, it became clear that the junipers were more of a detriment than a virtue in the garden. I removed them today and I don't regret my decision.

The pair of Juniperus scopulorum 'Skyrocket' trees in the Hall with Balls.

Now that the junipers are gone, the granite retaining wall can be seen once more.

The "before view" from the Upper Garden

and the "after view" with Cornus officinialis to the left.

A pleasant surprise was the view from the Master Bedroom. The boxwoods that seem to be rolling down the hill are exposed as well as the Cornus officinialis in the center of the Hall with Balls. The round boxwoods have been used as a unifying element in the garden. I like the idea that the boxwoods give the impression that they have rolled from the Upper Garden down through the Hall with Balls into the Lower gardena and down into the Woodland Garden below. I did a series of posts earlier this year experimenting with ideas about how to place boxwoods in the rest of garden; its time to think about it once more.

Allowing a Shrub to Become a Small Tree

The Cornus officinalis in the Hall with Balls is the focal point as you cross the Upper Garden to the granite steps leading to the Lower Garden. It has had a full shrubby appearance that worked well as the hedge behind it grew and the boxwoods became larger. This tree, in many years, will become 20 feet tall and up to 30 feet wide.  As the flowers were just about to fade away, it was an excellent time to see what I was doing as I pruned the tree. The idea is to remove the lower limbs to allow more light for the box woods, to make the space seem less cluttered, and allow a large shrub transform into the elegant small tree it is destined to become.  

Playing Ball

 

I have been playing with the idea of moving some of the round boxwoods, which are getting larger (too large, in fact), from the Hall with Balls to other parts of the garden. I have been thinking about how symmetrical and predictable the Lower Garden is and I have been contemplating shaking it up a bit. Because my garden is on a slope, the boxwoods could be thought of as balls rolling from the Upper Garden, down the Hall with Balls, through the Lower Garden (seen here) all the way down the hill to the Woodland Garden. When I saw how the snow and the hardscape the garden were apparent this morning, I thought I could mock up different combinations of rounds that would feel as if they were rolled into the garden from above. My intention is to break up the perfect symmetry of the Lower Garden, add some whimsy, but still keep a continuity of rounds throughout my small garden. Here are 7 different ways to arrange the boxwood balls:

 

For some reason, all these balls rolling through the garden reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright's landmark design, Fallingwater. Maybe my garden could be named 'Rollingballs'. Let me know if you have a favorite combination of boxwood balls.

Groundcovers Die

July 2011

November 2013

I was getting awfully proud of my planting of native Pachysandra procumbens (Allegheny spurge) in the Hall with Balls. I had gotten my original plants from Charles Cresson's Swarthmore garden over a decade ago. Year after year, I divided the plant until it created a carpet underplanting the boxwood rounds in the Hall with Balls. Just as the carpet had nearly filled in, it began to falter and gradually, then more rapidly, it disappeared. This summer it was entirely gone.

My post-mortem evaluation revealed vole activity, but more importantly, mushy roots. I knew this part of the garden was too sunny for Pachysandra procumbens but I thought as the enclosing yew hedges grew and the central Cornus officinalis matured, the garden would become progressively more shady making the Pachysandra procumbens increasingly more happy. My hypothesis is that the pachysandra had succumbed to Volutella blight, caused by the fungus Volutella pachysandricola, because it was stressed from being in too hot and dry of a situation. I will watching this part of the garden carefully because pachysandra may also be a host for boxwood blight and the Cylindrocladium pseudonaviculatum fungus. Apparently, plant species within the genera Buxus, Pachysandra and Sarcococca have been reported as hosts to this fungus.  Fortunately the boxwoods appear to be healthy so far.

I have replaced the pachysandra with Carex flacca 'Blue Zinger', a sedge from Europe and North Africa which has fine narrow glaucous leaves. The whispy texure of 'Blue Zinger' will contrast well against the dark green foliage of the boxwoods in the Hall with Balls and should form a clumping groundcover in about five years.

The Boys are Back in Town

The ten yards of the compost was ripe on Thursday and delivered on Friday. It was just in the nick of time because in a few weeks, maybe days, the temperatures will make it impossible to move the giant  pile of black gold that could instantly turn into a frozen chocolate-colored iceberg. Time was of the essence.The most difficult part about having a small garden on a steep slope is getting anything--mulch, compost, clippings-- from point A to point B.  This time, I was in luck because my son, Teddy, and his roommate, Micky, came home from their apartment outside Boston looking for some extra cash--ready, willing and able to help.

The ramp in the Hall with Balls to the Lower Garden

Micky wheelbarrowing compost to the Woodland Garden

Teddy's turn

Teddy mulching the entrance to the Woodland Garden

Micky adding compost to the boxwoods in the Hall with Balls

We used a hose to create a pleasing curve in the path in the Woodland Garden

Fresh compost mulch in the Woodland Garden

Another curve in the Woodland Garden edged with compost

All done-- in less than half the time it would have taken me to complete the job