My Name is Don Statham and this is my garden blog.
I am mad about plants, some might say obsessive! One of the points of this blog is to connect with other passionate gardeners who also like to talk about plants, garden design, garden writing and all things horticultural.
At the annual Plantorama at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens this week the guest speaker was Michael Dirr who has written many important garden books including, Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs which is the bible for American gardeners. He is a very funny man and an excellent speaker.
The Dirr talk provoked an interesting follow up discussion about the nursery business and the change of small garden centers being replaced by superstores. I was more than a little surprised to hear that Dirr was so involved with the trend of breeding plants for color and continuous blooms that the superstores want, but when I also learned that the money raised by these patents is keeping the horticultural department going at the University of Georgia it gave me pause. The sad thing is that many horticultural programs are being terminated or changed to Plant Science or Environmental Studies, because there is not enough money to keep pure horticultural departments alive. Without these traditional horticultural departments will lose the very necessary skills of plant breeding and propagating, and people like Michael Dirr who specifically studies and categorizes plant life will become rarer and rarer.
It was a 60 degree day as we strolled around the Botanical Gardens and stumbled upon these large sculptural forms made by Patrick Dougherty from twisting tree/ shrub branches. There has been a vogue of building these stick forms in England. I am going to have to make one of these.
To read more about it: click here
stick structures at a distance
wonderful winter forms- great for kids
Woven branches & willow
nice shadows
The fast pace of golf course and swimming pool construction in the 1970s dramatically altered the American landscape. The biomorphic sand trap and the suburban kidney-shaped swimming pool set precedence for new forms in an ever-changing landscape. Rectangular planting beds and straight lines were discarded for the curve. Simple flat green lawns were dug up and in their place architects mimicked the putting greens of miniature golf courses with raised mounds of soil and snaky contours. Formalism was tossed out and the swinging curve was in. The residue of this period can still be seen in the garden choices for many homeowners. I guess it was an inevitable part of the evolution of a culture that is wild about change.
I don’t think the forced curve works except in a large landscape, and even then it’s difficult to implement. Many suburban neighborhoods were laid out in a grid with boxy houses. Winding roads leading to cul-de-sacs were thrown into the mix like spice into leftovers. Overnight the planting beds surrounding a house looked more like a plate of spaghetti than a home for plants. By making the planting beds curvy, the homeowner competed with the natural shapes of the trees and shrubs and thus robbed the plants of their special qualities. Over time plants naturally take on a similar form. The undulating lines of trees and shrubs contrasted against a formal geometry are pleasing to the eye. My favorite gardens have that element of combining the controlled and the wild.
Entry Garden room: plants spill, creep, and soften the straight lines of paths, walls and boarders.
The biggest problem with planting is when there is a lack of unity, repetition of plants, or consistency. Gardens are successful when plants are repeated, or a palette of plants is repeated. When there is no cohesive element tying the garden together, plantings look disjointed, much like fast-food restaurants dotted along a strip mall.
In East Hampton on Long Island tall privet hedges are planted everywhere for privacy, but they also act to unify the coastal suburban landscape. The dark green hedges make a perfect backdrop for plants. In most natural settings a small selection of plants predominate the landscape. Here in the northeast the maple has been the tree of choice. Whether lining city streets or country roads to the town square, this tree has withstood, in Yankee tradition, many horticultural trends. On New York City’s Fifth Avenue the classical building foundations are dressed in boxwood, yews, hollies and rhododendrons, all evergreens, which presents a unity from building to building.
Rhamnus Fineline hedge creates formal backdrop to planting, paths contrast straight lines to loose planting.
I travel all over New York State to see gardens and while driving recently on the Long Island Expressway, I noticed the new plantings alongside this highway. In the median of the freeway is a bizarre construction of cement bollards which contain butterfly bush, and on the sides enormous prefabricated walls were erected to protect suburban neighborhoods from the noise and visual assault of the highway. Planted at the base of these towering seagull-mural-walls are hundreds of shrubs of forsythia, which crash against the hillside like an enormous yellow wave. I am sure many accidents have occurred by drivers being blinded by the yellow flower overkill. I wonder who made the aesthetic choices for one of the busiest roads in America?
In Freeways (1966) Lawerance Halpin wrote, “Freeways out in the countryside, with their graceful, sinuous, curvilinear patterns, are like great free-flowing paintings in which, through participation, the sensations of motions through space are experienced.” Interstate 87 and 88 which are heavily traveled roads through the Catskills achieve this. When plantings are added to these two interstates they seem to incorporate existing species of plants. Though these highways do not have encroaching communities butted up against them, I think there is a lesson to be learned by landscape architects in going back and looking to these more natural plantings. I love looking at the working farms, and orchards along these highways. There is tranquility in driving these roads.
Don’t get me wrong; curving lines can work well in a garden. I prefer a driveway that has some curve to it rather than a straight road. A mown path that weaves through high grass adds interest and mystery to the garden. Curves are an important garden element when used sparingly. Begin with formal shaped beds, especially near buildings and structures. Once planted, the very same rectangular planting beds over time will loose the formal shape and take on their own natural form. For hundreds of years designers have used the concept of a house having rooms and extended this concept outside into the garden so that the transition from structure to landscape feels less abrupt. As we move away from the house there is less need for formality. The middle ground between structures and the existing landscape need to meet seamlessly.
It’s important to let plants spill, creep, and break the lines of border boundaries. One of the biggest mistakes I see people committing is placing a flower border in the middle of their lawn. It looks so odd to see the bed floating in a lawn unrelated to any other structures. If you are at a loss to why your garden is not working, here’s what to do. First consider where you live and what trees or plants predominate the landscape. Then approach your garden to see if the plantings can be simplified. Could you choose three to five plants for the bones of the planting and repeat them? Or could you select a few complementary colors that repeat through the garden? Next, look at the shape of the borders that surround your house. Do they follow the lines of the house or do they curve? Consider the work involved if you decide to change the layout. Remember, perhaps, what the poet W. H. Auden said, in talking about the new craze for free verse: “One needs boundaries in order to play.”
Plants spill softing formal lines of borders.
The generic name Amaryllis applies to bulbs from South Africa, usually grown outdoors. Each year with the loss of daylight and so much time spent inside the house I find myself picking up a few amaryllis kits usually found in grocery or large discount stores. The choice in the stores where I live is generally limited to red, pink or white, which are lovely, but this year for something a little different, I ordered some unusual varieties from a bulb company. I like to plant three of the same bulb variety in a large terra cotta pot, that way you can have flowering going on for weeks and weeks as the bulbs tend not to bloom simultaneously. They take about 8-10 weeks to flower once you pot them up. So far the pot of Amaryllis Faro has been going on for 5 weeks with a lot of flowers still to come.
Single Amaryllis Faro
The Cybister Amaryllis Evergreen has more of a daylily- shaped flower and the delicate greenish white petals really glow and brighten up the darkest room. I have kept these in a room that stays quite cool and these flowers have also lasted for weeks. They often need to be supported with sticks and string once they start flowering as they get quite leggy. Next year I am going to stagger planting the pots of bulbs so I have a pot in bloom throughout winter.
Cybister Amaryllis Evergreen
Cybister Amaryllis Emerald
It was early April when we left our house and the garden was under several inches of snow. Down the valley, just a few miles away, there was no snow at all. It’s very upsetting to find out that you not only have worse weather than anyone else in your region, but that even within spitting distance others are enjoying an early spring that has yet to reach your door. After driving two hours west we arrived outside Ithaca on a beautiful spring day, at the garden of Hitch Lyman, snowdrop collector extraordinaire. The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program was featuring Hitch’s garden that contains 400 varieties of snowdrops. A passionate Galanthus-snowdrop collector, Hitch has the largest snowdrop collection in the U.S., which is no small feat. He began Temple Nursery 20 years ago, which boasts five acres covered in a variety of plants including his extensive snowdrops collection and, needless to say, a classic Greek temple. Hitch also collects lilacs, Saunder’s hybrid peonies, species peonies, colchicums, Anemone nemerosas, Ranunculas fiscaria, horse chestnuts and fritillary species, and unusual perennials.
Mixed snowdrops.
We were there to see the snowdrops and boy did we see snowdrops. Planted at the base of many shrubs and trees, along a garden path winding through a wooded area, there were hundreds of clumps of them coming up through decaying leaves. Hitch took a group of us around his garden and in no time at all we were on our hands and knees looking up at a multitude of patterns of green, white, and yellow markings that distinguish one of these drooping beauties from another. Galanthus has 19 species and about 500 cultivars. Each group was marked with plastic labels because in a few weeks they would be dug up, divided and sold “in the green,” as the British refer to it. “Selling in the green” is considered by many to be a better way of establishing the plants than from planting them from bulbs. When I asked Hitch what his favorite snowdrop was, he replied, “the one in front of me!”
When Hitch got his Greek Revival farmhouse it was sitting on a flat piece of land. He built a pond and after finding four Doric columns in a salvage yard, he proceeded to make a temple. A true Classicist, Hitch needed a temple and, in this climate, one with a roaring fire in it to sit next to while taking a break from gardening. On the temple’s interior walls surrounding the fireplace Hitch had sketched murals of landscape scenes in charcoal. Outside at the back of the temple and concealed behind two large wooden doors we were shown a small room stuffed to the ceiling with garden tools. Hitch quickly closed the door for fear of a garden missile falling on one of us! Beyond the temple we walked into a garden surrounded by mature yew hedges, tall lilacs, fruit trees and many other plants still dormant. Barely out of winter nothing was showing any signs of life except for the snowdrops and snowflakes (Leucojum vernum). At first glance snowflakes- look similar to snowdrops but are, in fact, a different genus.
Hitch began his horticultural journey at Cornell in landscape architecture, part of the Horticulture Department, and then switched to fine arts in the college of architecture. After completing his studies he moved to New York City. He had been helping on the side to make gardens, and when the gallery that showed his work closed this became his primary way of earning his living. He had gardened as a boy and along the way picked up plant knowledge working in nurseries.
He became specifically interested in snowdrops when in 1975 he read My Garden in Spring by E.A. Bowles. On a visit to London in 1988 and at one of the monthly Royal Horticulture Society shows he saw Foxgrove Plants’ snowdrops display. Behind the booth was Audrey Vockins who would later become his friend and snowdrop mentor. Hitch admitted to her that he thought all the snowdrops looked alike. She showed him the intricate patterns on each of the groups of snowdrops on display and from that time on he was hooked.
Interior of temple- murals by Hitch.
Hitch explained that when he began a study of snowdrops there was still a lot of confusion in the literature due in part to F.C. Stern’s Snowdrops and Snowflakes (1956). Over the last 15 years there has been very good work taxonomically and horticulturally done on the genus. The confusion spurred the likes of Richard Nutt, who Hitch was pleased to know, to write a great survey for the Alpine Garden Society’s Encyclopedia of Alpines in 1993. Also Aaron David published in 1999 The Genus Galanthus and cleared up much of the taxonomic confusion. Matt Bishop in 2001 published Snowdrops, a Monograph of Cultivated Galanthus, which is known in circles as “The Bible.” He has begun working on a second volume aptly named “The New Testament.”
In his 2011 catalogue, Hitch offered 31 varieties of snowdrops and he aims to increase that number. He has sold about 120 types to American gardens. He sends out his catalogue in January and is sold out by March. He digs the orders in April, washes the plants clean, and sends them in flower or just after by fast mail. When replanted immediately and watered in, they seem to do well. I ordered several and planted them under an avenue of birch trees in a new woodland walk area of my garden. I was very impressed with the plants I received. Each plant was wrapped in bubble wrap for protection, and the roots were still moist when they arrived.
Hitch showing us snowdrops.
I went online and ordered the book Snowdrops by Matt Bishop, which showed me how limited my previous snowdrop purchases had been. Most bulb catalogs cannot offer the interesting selection being grown by Hitch, and in my experience the bulbs do not always do very well. Planting “in the green” is the way most Galanthus collectors sell their plants. The prices range from $5 to $75. It might seem a little expensive but in no time the plant will clump up and can be divided for years to come.
The generic name Galanthus, from the Greek gala (milk) and anthos (flower), was given to the genus by Carl Linnaeus. He described Galanthus nivalis in his Species Plantarum published in 1753, which is the most common and widespread snowdrop in Europe. The epithet nivalis means “of the snow,” referring either to the snow-like flower or the plant’s early flowering.Britain has many Galanthus collectors. It is believed G. nivalis, the first snowdrop to arrive to Britain, was introduced by the Romans. In the Middle Ages white flowers were associated with purity, and more snowdrops were brought to Britain where they were planted in places of pilgrimage in honor of the Virgin Mary. In the 1880’s G. elwesii was discovered in Turkey and later imported in large numbers. The Victorians considered snowdrops a symbol of purity and created Snowdrop Leagues for young ladies. They were often planted on graves because of their ability to thrive. Nowadays churchyards are a prime place for galanthophiles searching out new varieties.
Their popularity seems to be growing which was made clear to me when I met some of the people who had driven from as far away as Potsdam, NY (near the Canadian border), to see Hitch’s collection. Another man who had driven some three and a half hours had clearly got the collecting bug. He knew a great many of the names of the snowdrops we were looking at and had come back to the garden to see more.
Hitch ships snowdrops to a wide area of the northern U.S. He said they fail south of North Carolina, flourish in the Pacific Northwest, New England, Philadelphia and Baltimore areas, and upstate New York. They want a cold winter and a cool summer. I love plants that flourish in our arctic conditions and for once I can feel a little smug about having plants that southerners and people in warmer climates can’t have. When thinking of a planting site, good drainage and good light are top priorities. Snowdrops will not survive in stagnant wet soil. Planting them below evergreens will be a bonus because the plants will stand out against the dark green background. It’s fine to plant under deciduous trees because when the plants come into flower the trees have yet to leaf out, and they will get the sunlight they need to thrive. Steep banks are a good place to plant, because of the good drainage a bank offers. Do not use wood or bark chip mulches as they can lead to a depletion of the soil. Bone meal is a good slow release fertilizer to use when the plant is dormant.
Mighty Atom Snowdrop
When I lived in Scotland, which is a much milder climate, the snowdrops flowered in January and February and there were acres and acres of them flowering in the woods. I don’t believe they were ever divided, but naturalize over the years. With our harsh climate, it makes sense to divide them to increase their numbers. By planting a few snowdrops you will be greeting spring as early as possible. I think of this plant as one that joins the two seasons. Its name implies winter, but the small green flecks of pattern suggest what’s coming. donstathamblog.com
To order a catalogue send $3.00 to Hitch Lyman, Temple Nursery, P.O. Box 591, Trumansburg, NY 14886.
Previous generations have portrayed the gardener as an earnest, earthy person, full of wisdom. When I was growing up in the seventies that person was personified on television by Mr. Green Jeans, Captain Kangaroo’s sidekick. He was the calm, reasonable one of the duo. Always clad in green overalls, he taught us about plants and animals. In my family the gardener was my great-grandmother, Jane Asher, who grew up in a sod house on the Kansas plains. A woman of few words, she was always nose to the ground, tending her vegetables. Before I started gardening I always thought of a gardener as someone who was old for their years and who seemed more comfortable with plants than people. I have come to learn that my childhood image of the gardener is a myth and that reality is something quite different. As it turns out, gardening is a competitive sport.
When I first began to garden I was overwhelmed with all the plant names I needed to learn, and also clueless about which plants were woody, perennial or annual. Once I got a firm footing with all the different varieties and started to grow them, I began to notice competitive feelings that snuck up on me during conversations with my gardening friends. I couldn’t admit that I was jealous of their rare plants or their knowledge in an area in which I still felt insecure. I found myself trying to top that person with examples of my favorite plants. I never felt good doing this, it felt like I had lost something because of their knowledge or experience. It was hideous.
Not all encounters were like this. Many more of the exchanges were about learning something and this required that I open myself up and that it was okay not knowing. At these moments I felt an intimacy that I never felt when I was showing off. During those early years I collected friends who I perceived were more knowledgeable than myself. There was an imbalance in the relationships and I was always the one who was being taught something. In a healthy relationship there is a mutual exchange of knowing and not knowing, although in my experience there is never a complete balance.
The irony of all this is that part of my attraction to gardening was that I perceived gardeners as being less competitive people than were those in the art world I had left. Even though I still want to believe this I don’t think it is true. People mask their aggression and feelings of competition. Certain professions encourage competition and it’s worn on the sleeve; other professions pretend it doesn’t exist.
Although gardeners’ displays of competition may not appear blatant — unlike that of pro tennis players, for example — I have witnessed one-upmanship behavior that is hardly subtle. When I complimented a gardening friend on her wild meadow of oxeye daisy she replied, “Yes, the Chrysantheum leucanthemum are quite wonderful.” And so I praised her Rhus cotinus, and she responded, “Yes, I love the smoketree too.” As if it isn’t hard enough trying to succeed in spite of all the obstacles put in our way then we have to get into these little power struggles. Don’t be fooled by false modesty, or when the gardener uses common names instead of Latin ones. Gardeners are very good at appearing humble. Their appearance can fool you because they often look more like tumbleweeds than like people.
Gardeners are complicated. Look at Martha Stewart: she may not appear like someone who has spread muck or weeded, but she has served time. Long gone is the reliable head gardener of the manor house who was the embodiment of goodness. He knew his position and kept it all under wraps. Today’s gardeners openly display envy, jealously and greed, just like everyone else. We gardeners also like to speculate. I want plants that my friends have never heard of or seen. I search rare plant catalogues every winter, desiring the latest plant introductions, and I’m willing to pay three times the price when I know that in another season every nursery will have the same plant at a fraction of the price.
A few years ago I attended a garden tour in upstate New York. One woman’s garden featured, in a sea of mowed lawn, several large, oval planting beds surrounded by an 8-foot deer-proof fence. She had us gather round to peer inside the fence at her flowering perennials while she made a little speech about her garden. She explained that her garden was inspired by Sissinghurst, but I thought it looked more like a state penitentiary for plants than a world-renowned English garden. Her moment of grandiosity was probably to cover up her loss of control; there were, after all, over 50 people in her garden. How frightening. I have observed similar moments of grandiosity in myself and I always hate myself later. If only I could admit its okay to feel overwhelmed, anxious and insecure, and that these feeling will pass. But, instead, I make pathetic attempts at elevating my damaged self.
I wonder what Freud would have said about how gardeners spend their time? We are a strange breed, flipping as we do between our sadistic and our masochistic tendencies. What other profession spends so much time on its knees, weeding, pinching back, tying up, tying down, deadheading, digging, splitting, pruning, raking, staking, and lopping off. We sound more like groupies of the Marquis de Sade. We know it is for the betterment of the plant that we cut, control and shape, but isn’t it also that we desire order and control over the living organisms that are so dependent on us? Doesn’t this same need to shape and control spill over into our relationships?
The other side of the coin of sadism is masochism. The downside is that the object of our love — our gardens — gives us so much pain. We are up against so many obstacles: woodchucks, moles, deer, pests, the family pet, storms, and drought, to name a few. The jackmanni clematis that overtook the shed and produced heavy blossom gave joy for three carefree summers and then suddenly succumbed to wilt. After the shock and disappointment subsides, a real gardener will find pruning shears and cut the plant down to the ground. The more the gardener confronts these disasters head on, the more decisive he/she becomes at the inevitable task of handling so much heartache.
Having taken the gardener off the pedestal and brushing away the false veneer of modesty, its time we see the gardener as the complicated neurotic that he is. The gardener is not satisfied by the world as it is. Like the artist, he desires to be a creator. The deep need to create paradise is paramount. With such high expectations it’s no wonder failure is close at hand. In the end it’s the mistakes that inform and make our gardens. Perhaps the unmasking of our competitive feelings can tell us more about who we really are and set us free from our ideas of perfection. And in the end we may find some joy from all of our labor.
Scotch Pine & white Pine
Each year when winter passes and the long awaited spring arrives I quickly forget how beautiful winter was. I have noticed that the only things I remember about the longest season are the things I dislike and, apparently, I am not alone in this sentiment. Writers of every kind often look down on winter in order to reflect upon hope and eternal spring! Let’s face it, this time of year brings up a slew of unpleasant memories one would sooner like to forget. The first big shocker for me each year occurs when I discover the car windshield covered in a thick layer of ice and I realize that I have five more months of this. Or the many times the driveway is covered in a sheet of black ice and it takes everything in my muscular skeletal system to remain upright. These unpleasant things are definitely part of the season, but they are not the whole story and some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen and experienced are only possible during winter’s cold encasement.
There is nothing subtle about the other three seasons; they seem to scream out “look at me, look at me,” like a five-year-old proud of his/her accomplishment. But winter, a minimalist, requires a little more from us; the visual palette is stripped to its core, and with the white backdrop of the season the once insignificant details now come to the forefront. We have to shake out of our cozy interiors and force ourselves outside where the bitter wind is slicing down the valley. If we can find the courage to go outside we will see what was lying underneath all that summer lushness.
Frozen Pond
The many details of plants, such as the colored bark, seed heads, textured stems, and branching habits, are all now exposed, and although they can be encapsulated in layer upon layer of ice or snow, their beauty is not only undeniable it is enhanced. The dried peony seed is more magical when magnified through this icy cold lens. I hardly noticed the seed head in late summer or fall: it is just an unfortunate brown mark on an otherwise perfect green world. But in winter the deep mahogany star steps to the front of nature’s stage. Likewise, the coral bark of the willow, whose neon color is obscured the rest of the year, now glows in the winter light.
By December the tiny seeds of the climbing hydrangea (H. anomala petiolaris) have turned a wine color and a few creamy flowers formed in June now cling to the vine, the consistency of tissue paper. Frozen in an ice storm, the glassy seed clusters hang like Russian jewels all over the vine. The honeysuckle vine, which held on to its green leaves through wind, snow and icy rain, now cascade their translucent emerald pride decorating the entire vine.
Dried Limelight hydrangea encased in snow
What strikes me about the season is how even the minutest details are brought into focus. A tree full of birds against the flat grey winter sky makes the most beautiful silhouette. It reminds me of the Japanese and Chinese paintings on screens or ceramics. Winter is like a drawing where the other seasons are like paintings. I love drawing because the forms are reduced to the simplicity of line.
If I can make it into the woods there is much to see. I am reminded of the quote from William Sharp, professor of English: “There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance. “
White pine
Plants are not the only things that become a canvas for winter. The old stone walls reveal a beautiful pattern of snow. My dogs love winter and I am amazed at the way snow and icicles form on their coats. Ruby, our female dog, is often annoyed by Otto, the larger alpha male of the “pack.” The tougher of the two and a hunter, she will stay outside for hours in a snowstorm watching squirrels without moving a hair. Her snow-covered coat is a perfect camouflage, better than any hunter’s fatigues and, as a bonus, she gets away from her nemesis.
Ruby hunting
My most favorite quote about winter is by garden author Ruth Stout: “There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you….In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.”
Apple Tree
Detail Scotch pine
Stream
Rock and blade of grass
Lichen on rock
Fence post
