The Notions

This is what a beginning garden looks like. A few old farm implements, an older garden overcome by the shade of growing trees, a tub of transplants waiting for human inspiration, a lawn overrun by creeping charlie, and a trio of notions about how things will come together in the future. The notions: grandma's tea, seaside goldenrod, and Heuchera of Brooklyn.

Change

Or not? That is today's question.

Does anybody care whether or not this blog maintains a URL which matches its masthead? If I should change it, I will lose all the traffic google, links, and other good-hearted bloggers have sent to me over the years. Most newcomers find their way here via search hits on older posts. Keeping that in mind, things have changed considerably and this blog no longer reflects my gardening or other activities in NYC and further, the masthead might confuse people who think they have gone to NYCGARDEN and what they see is MOUND. Hmm. What to do, what to do.

What are the chances folks who come to NYCGARDEN, and see my final post (which links to a new URL), would actually click through to see where it goes? How about a poll: over there, on the upper right.

_______________________

Change is the constant. Fifteen years in NYC was unusual. I'm a transplanted person, in NYC four separate times, in Oregon, Maine, the Hudson Valley, and New Mexico. We really cannot say how long we will stay in Minnesota. What it comes down to is work, where is it, who will have us? Today I dropped my wife at the airport. She has decided to commute to NYC after no adjunct positions opened up for her here and one of her previous employers got themselves into a little teacher shortage during the first week of the semester. Flying every week will eat up most of the paycheck, but at least there won't be a blank spot on the resume, and I am here, after all, to look after the house.

What we know is that we'll be here until, at the least, June, maybe longer. Both of us are applying for academic positions in other states. That is the reality as things are very uncertain. In the meantime, I will continue to journal my experiences here, for myself, and hopefully for you. And if you have a second, take the poll (on the upper right).

Two Kinds Of Night

In the dim and deep grey-blue of early morning I saw the beast ambling along the tree line and thought myself silly for thinking two people could be running out there. Six points, eight? I flicked on the light, startling the animal then twisting its neck backward and up to come to terms with the sudden contrast. We stood absolutely still for a minute, then I turned out the light. He trotted across the creaking snow and I laid back in bed to wait out the last half hour before the four-thirty alarm.

Arriving home after two hours of airport, three hours of airplane, two hours of subway, and nine-point-five hours of work, under the red-yellow street lamps, a temperature fixed above fifty, a coat unnecessarily heavy for coastal, Mid-Atlantic December, I surveyed the garden. A rescue had taken place; a reader, a Hudson Clove customer, Toby, had come at some point to do the digging, the bagging, the carrying, and replanting in a new garden and I thought, good, one less thing.

I have since extracted the climber rose, climbing hydrangea, and my grandmother's tea, all hastily spaded and ripped from the earth, delivered to their temporary garden in Williamsburg, but not without acknowledging the irony of saving on the purchase of new plants by driving 2500 miles to attempt their relocation.

There are still several plants in the garden and they are free for the taking. Email me: nycgarden@gmail.com.

Have Garden, Will Travel

What is one to do with a garden full of plants when moving in the dead of winter? Certain plants can be given away, but one gets attached to others. My large-ish Hydrangea petiolaris, Grandma's tea rose, the iris, Dicentra eximia? I can dig out almost any plant in my garden at almost any time for transplant here, but they need to travel. Far. To a frozen earth zone. It will already be below freezing in a week's time there, it may never freeze here.

Some cuttings will fly in Betsy's suitcase on this Tuesday's trip, although it may well be too late for them. Mulch will be applied. Others will need to be nurseried until they can be collected, driven, and replanted. This may very well be in the heat of summer. Not ideal, but I've been lucky before.

It would seem, at the moment, that moving plants should be of the least concern for anyone leaving their position of ten years, moving twelve hundred miles away from friends, family, a network of colleagues, packing an apartment and two art studios, and going about shutting down one's life infrastructure (bank accounts, utility accounts, mail, and all else). The plants, then? Really?

Yes. Consider it a way to carry forward a piece of myself, something familiar, all component to an identity built over a decade in one place. I will not see the neighbors from the garden as they pass, but the plants will remind me of them. I will not be able to smell the sea or listen to the cacophony of the fall migration, but the plants will suggest it. The plants become a memory bank, or rather a trigger to it. They help establish myself in a new place. This is nothing new to me. I have perennial sunflowers from my garden in New Mexico, and fifty year old iris and roses from my Grandmother's house, and asters and primrose from a field in Maine. If this summer's herbicide spraying didn't kill them, I will move Mayapple saves, transplanted from Van Cortlandt Park, and Seaside Goldenrod from a pier in Red Hook.

When we move there are always things we are eager to leave behind. These things go without saying, all the better to help the forgetting. Carrying forward and leaving behind is inventive, recombinative action. We aim to change, so we change something.

Chrysanthemum (your choice, could be Dendranthemum) 'Sheffield Pink' is the jazz hands of the autumn garden. A few stolons of these will travel, but might not survive Zone 4b.

I have many asters, I cannot even recall which is which any more. Rooted cuttings will travel. New York Asters are good within Zone 4-8.

'Alma Potschke' will travel, although it has not done well for me here (NE Asters suffer disease), Zone 4-8.

Gaura blooms long, is graceful, but I have a hard time believing it will travel well. Maybe. Unlikely to survive zone 4b.

Clever aphids, so well-matching the colors of the lily stem, won't travel. The lilies will, however, be shipping out with Betsy on Tuesday.

The autumn red leaves of primrose will travel. Zone 4-8.

Heuchera, or Coral Bells as above, will travel. Zone 3-9.

Well, no, not these. Although we can bag up the begonia for winter storage.

Hmm. The 'New Dawn' climber is a beast. It's blooming again and can tolerate some shade, in this case, underneath the Zelkova. It will get pruned hard, and will travel, but when? May need to be nurseried until warmer weather returns.

The shrub rose? Sure, it blooms forever, but I've never gotten attached to it, so it won't travel.

Today I will head out to inventory the garden. Some plants will be missed, it is mid autumn after all. And soon, very soon, a plant giveaway will be necessary. Interested? Email me: nycgarden@gmail.com

A Sunday For Gardens

As it was, last Sunday. And as I've mostly been tucked away in an office building for finals, or at the studio during my last days of tenancy, I have not been outside, but I can see -it's been gorgeous for gardening. The struggles of agriculture have allotted me a renewed appreciation for the flower garden. Vigor and tenacity are its hallmarks -mostly. I'll always grumble about the cat shit and trash (napkins!) in the garden, but I've come to see that as part of city gardening, not its better part, but part nonetheless.

The old brass lamp lady has found a new place to call us to the garden.

Angelique.

The shrub rose got out of hand, huge before its time. I cut it, no mercy. This is usually done in March.

Its thorny remains. No no need to have a rose bush shading out the perennials. In fact, under this rose is the only place weeds reliably grow in the front yard garden -nothing else gets established.

As it is the sunlight conditions are changing rapidly with the growth of the Zelkovas; three years since their arrival, they have changed everything on the sidewalk and garden where most plants were picked for full, hot sun. (Photo from a less sunny day)

I never liked the placement of several lilies I bought four years back. I've also never dug up and moved a lily while it was actively growing. Now I have. Three lilies moved to sunnier locales, away from pickers who don't climb short fences, and more visible to all. Check out those adventitious roots extending from the stem.

Since I was concerned about the lily's tolerance for transplant I made sure to dig far and wide, transplanting the soil as well as the plant. Did you know that garlic is a lily?

Angelique, the second.

Then we went to Greenwood, for lunch, dogwoods, cherries, and others.

Trans Plant

Finally I have found a new home for my climbing hydrangea (I have two). This vine, a favorite, was pulled out of a garden I planted in 2003. When I found out that the lot was being razed for a building I pulled out everything I could fit into our little side yard (which got me into gardening there). What was missed: two 5 foot tall quinces, a twenty foot tall white birch, a 16 foot tall ornamental spruce, and peonies, and perennials, and a whole lot else. Many of our plants, including the 'New Dawn' rose, monkshood, clematis, and more are from that razed lot.

This was its old spot in the side yard. I raked, cleaned out the garbage and will now leave it to the Norway maple seedlings that love this spot under the yew tree. The hydrangea moved to an oak/laurel forested yard in Stony Brook, LI. It's a perfect fit, and I hope it survives its second major transplant in 8 years. Also, I hope it flowers in its new home because, although it flowered profusely in its first home, these two transplants have never flowered for me. Everyone suspects the soil, although everything else flowers just fine.

Do save plants from the bulldozer, if for nothing else than the satisfaction of getting an enormous, well-established specimen for only your labor. This vine/shrub, Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris, would probably sell for over one hundred dollars retail at this size.

April Heat

This is tulip Angelique. It's been droughty and over warm and it shows. Other years, Angelique came up in late April, this year, the first week of April. This is also the time I do some transplanting. Cool days and nights and generous rains make for good survival rates with little to think about. But this year, not so much. I transplanted quite a few things over to the side yard. The heat-induced super growth has led them to transpire much quicker.

The squirrels, of course, are digging around these new transplants, and I've already lost a few phlox to this. If it were cool or rainy, the uprooted phlox would hang on until I noticed it; just replant and protect. Instead, fallen over, they wilt in the hot sun. Much harder to revive after that day in the sun. Same goes for the St. John's Wort shrub -although not because of squirrels, but my own transplanting. It's made it, but lost most of its new leaves, and looks terrible -like a sick person at a party.

I should be watering, I suppose. But I'm not that kind of gardener in this place. Don't get me wrong, I've spent countless hours watering, usually in the evening (tisk tisk) with a hose. It's meditative, or something. But I have not chosen that path in this garden. I have a watering can and 100 foot march to and fro the spigot on the other side of the building. I've chosen not to walk that walk, simply depending on rains and some coolness in early spring. I'm no zealot however, I will water again, in another garden, or in a prolonged summer drought right here.

Welcome Ramblings

I was out today dusting the sidewalk. It was that kind of a day, when the high clouds semi-obscure the sun’s rays. It’s a gardening day and in New York City, that means sweeping the sidewalk. I do have a garden though, small but productive, in my Brooklyn neighborhood. It’s in the front yard, if you will. It’s not much of a yard, roughly 30 inches by 30 feet, running 1/2 the length of my apartment building. Between the soil and the sidewalk stands an iron fence, about 30 inches tall.

I water my garden about three times a year, outside of mandatory soakings after transplants. I do this with a white 5-gallon pail, filled at the spigot around the house corner, near where my landlord parks his pole setting truck. He's a telephone pole setter, not many like him.

At this time of the year I take stock of the growing season. You can, as many neighbors scratching their heads in wonder do, find me standing at the fence staring into my little plot. What I am doing here is re-organizing the plants, rethinking their placement. I do like to move the plants around. A fascination from the very first moment I had actually moved a plant. I was young; I dug up a sedum (yellow-green flowers, tiny leaves) growing in random placement around our foundation and moved it. I don't remember why. I also did this with clumps of grass in our backyard (not known for its lawn). I reclaimed sandy areas for play while agglomerating grassy ones. A gardener was born. I learned the magic of transplant, that I could also not kill something.

I killed a lot along the way. I also learned not to care. You can't let death get in the way of your learning. I do not know how many plants I have lost. But I remember why, when specific plants are in question, and do not make those errors twice. In the service of learning, do things. This year I cut back my asters one time too many. Oh, they're okay -just budding out later than normal. But I wanted to push it, because these asters so often get out of control. Now I know and nothing was lost.

Every gardener has a specific set of circumstances. It is these that ultimately tie one to the land, specific knowledge meeting general knowledge. Me, well I have a garden where the soil may never actually freeze due to its proximity to the concrete sidewalk and foundation and its southern exposure. Last winter it was so warm, the clematis I recently transplanted from another garden leafed out in January! And we so often plant given our circumstances. I've been away for summers over the last several years, so I planted for spring and fall. This summer the garden was rather barren because I was here to see it for the first time in years. Given my microclimate, now I'm thinking about upzoning my planting. I've always been a fan of pineapple sage (salvia elegans) and other mildly hardy sages. They grow as annuals here, but you know I think I might be able to get it to survive over winter.

The fact that I've been away every summer caused me to consider watering. I knew that I wanted a careless garden, a group of plants that essentially took care of themselves. So I chose based on my interests in color, form and so on, but also on whether or not they could support themselves with no water, all year. So here is a list of plants in my front yard:

Russian Sage -Perovskia atriplicifolia
Maximilian's Sunflower -Helianthus maximilianii
Yarrow -Achillea millefolium
Stonecrop -Sedum spp.
Primrose -Oenothera spp.
Hardy Ageratum -Eupatorium coelestinum
Aster spp.
Chrysanthemum "Sheffield Pink" -Dendranthema x rubellum
Spiraea
Lavender -Lavandula angustifolia
Garden Phlox -Phlox paniculata
Climbing Rose "New Dawn"
Geranium spp.
Tickseed -Coreopsis lanceolata
Cosmos sulphureus
Easy, everblooming shrub rose
Sidalcea spp.
Onion -Allium sphaerocephalon

They have all done exceptionally well, and I only water if it doesn't rain for weeks on end. This year, not at all. I do have a propensity for spreading plants. But this is a topic for another day.