Garden Diary: Adapting to reality

I'm pleased with the off-center symmetry of the evolving garden, and the interplay of the rectangles, quite pleased, actually. The axis runs off the center of the glass doors (that gold hardware has to go!), and will terminate at the back of the garden, in some way I have yet to determine--though I'm still haunted by Ross Hamilton's Italian ruin idea. (That piece of fence in front of the pool is construction detritus.)

I wish the pool were only 18 inches deep, as well as a foot shorter and two feet narrower, but I have to adapt to this oversized 4- by 9-foot monster (maybe I could make a hot tub ... just kidding). This pool poses a tripping hazard and could be dangerous, so I'll need to give attention to perimeter protection. I'm not sure how I'll do that, but part of the solution will be to add bluestone coping all around as a visual cue. Possibly some planting, pots on the coping, lighting at night ...

First change dictated by the unexpected spatial relationships? I'll have four trees, not six, in the graveled area, near the four corners. The long narrow pool I had planned would have allowed space for a third set of trees in the middle of the garden. But trees around this pool, as built, might narrow the passage sufficiently to cause visitors to walk unconsciously toward the pool, and possible injury. I also left 10 feet of open garden planting area in the back, substantially shortening the paved length of the garden. Best keep this area as open as possible, and direct foot traffic with square stepping stones or judiciously placed planting. Think boxwood and bergenia for starters.

I'm not displeased with this. I can work with it. And should I want koi (I don't), I can have them.

The next image demonstrates why I need a tree canopy, and fast. This is a very exposed site now that the 80-foot mulberry is gone (thanks to hurricane Irene).

I will need screening on both the left and right of the extension to break up the mass of the structure and to provide some privacy to anyone sitting in the bluestone area just outside the glass doors.

I think you can see here that multistemmed trunks, roughly in the four corners of the gravel rectangle, would be almost perfect, so I'm taking Michael's and Les' suggestions for Stewartia or Chionanthus retusus seriously. I'm also open to Billy Martin's Medlars, which I think would be a truly unique solution. Of course, my old favorite Sunburst honey locust (Peter Holt likes them too) remains if all else fails.

You can make out the view into the garden through the doors below even though they remain covered in protective plastic wrapping.

The buildings beyond, again, give you ample evidence of the need for quick cover (instant tree canopy). While this is a historic district, and the fronts of most houses are beautifully maintained with their original brownstone detail from the latter half of the nineteenth century, no one pays much attention to the backs!

And here an even better view of the back facades to be obscured across the block ...

A view from above, though much of the garden is cut off by the parapet of the extension roof ... Useful visual information for those not familiar with the structure of Brooklyn back yards (this is where the privy was when most of these houses were built; plumbing was a rarity in the early days). By the way, Spike Lee grew up in one of the houses off to the right.

The bluestone and gravel look quite blue late in the afternoon shadows, but the actual color is gray. I'm paying attention to these details in selecting the color to stain the fence.

A more true impression of the color of the gravel ... at least until we get a heavy rain.

The budget for all of this? Maddeningly, less than the cost of removing the fallen 80-foot mulberry!

Garden Diary: Growing older in the garden ... a little navel gazing

Ah, the changes that come with age...

It's a subject that should be of interest to everyone since we all will grow old some day. I admit it's a subject I'd rather not think about, but living in the country where a visit to the grocery means a 20-mile round trip in the car makes city living seem a prudent alternative. We're fortunate to have both, and to be able to adapt to future conditions as necessary, having both a country house on Federal Twist Road and a city house in Brooklyn.

We're also thinking we should maximize rental income on our Brooklyn house as we move into retirement, so have made plans to enlarge the garden apartment and move there (probably a wise option if the "Tea Party" types manage to wreck the American economy.)

What this introduces into my life is a new city garden.

The new room we're adding, shown on the left in the plan below, will have twelve feet of glass windows and doors looking out onto what is now a derelict back yard. Thus, the need for a new garden--something to look at, for a start, and a real garden where I can do what is done in gardens. It will certainly be very different from the country garden at Federal Twist.

This is the view out back today. The tree is a Mulberry that, fortunately, never fruits. An arborist we had look at it about ten years back speculated that it might be one of the largest Mulberries on the eastern coast of the US. It's probably 80 feet tall and I'm guessing it may have been growing here when our house was built over 140 years ago.

Someday it will have to be removed. Can you imagine the cost of cutting up this monster and moving it out through the house?

So we'll have a shade garden. I've sprayed the plant growth with a glyphosate herbicide in an attempt to clear the ground. I'm not too worried about that right now because building the new foundation and adding a room will be terribly destructive. We'll have to wait for construction to end, let the air clear, and see what we're left with.

We certainly will need an attractive, new fence. And a plan for the garden. I'm thinking about gravel paving with clustered bluestone. We have over 200 square feet of it, some of which you can see sinking into the ground below. Until recently, this was a tenant's garden. He kept it up rather well. but once he lost interest, it quickly became overgrown and reverted to the mess you see now.

The back of the house is not attractive, but imagine a 16-foot-deep room added at ground level, new surfaces, new colors. The addition will leave a 20- by 40-foot garden space. Small understory trees will be essential for privacy. And I'm thinking about using bamboo on the right side to screen a neighboring house with four stories of terraces  ... probably clumping bamboo ... but perhaps a beautiful, tall running bamboo, if I can bare the expense of a liner to contain it. (I need a bamboo expert. Know one?)

The back wall of the existing house and new extension will have to be painted in colors complementary to the garden to be. Something warm, not this cold, bluish-grey.

The neighbor on the right (the house with overlooking terraces) has many trees, casting our plot into shade. That, added to the high canopy of the massive Mulberry, makes it impossible to think about any but an all shade garden.

I've been mulling over what to do for the last few months. This is my initial sketch. It may, or may not, become a reality. I really have to evaluate the space remaining after the construction ends, probably in November. But here is food for thought. I'm also considering hiring a professional for some "coaching" and to do phased, finished plans.

I recently read Dan Pearson's Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City. Though I'm in no way trying to imitate Dan's former Peckham garden in London, his book has been present in my mind as I think about my own urban garden and what I want from it. On first thought, for example, I might have made a sitting area close to the house. But I remembered Dan's writing about how important it had been for him to make a decked area out in the garden, away from the house, to pull people out into the garden, and make a setting where they could enjoy being "in" the garden, not at its edge. So I've used a deck for a sitting out area, toward the back of the garden. It would be surrounded by large-leaved plants that give visual interest, interesting scale, and a sense of shelter.

Though it gets lost in the bus-y-ness of the sketch, the small rectangular pool will be the heart of the garden. I'm imagining a still, tranquil, reflective surface, at grade, with no fountain or flowing water. An edging of bluestone, the historically appropriate material for brownstone Brooklyn. Frogs, or perhaps goldfish, will control mosquitoes.

I'm also thinking about plants, just to get the juices flowing. Decisions will come later. Here is the rapidly morphing, rather random, list:

Acorus gramineus 'Ogon'
Ajuga
Asarum
Astilboides tabularis
Bamboo (clumping but upright)
Boxwood
Darmera peltata
Pulmonaria
Grasses: Chasmanthium latifolium, Hakonechloa macra,etc.
Galium odoratum
Hedera helex
Hydrangea arborescens
Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight'
Kirengeshoma palmata
Helleborus
Hosta
Ligularia japonica
Ligularia Othello
Parthenocisus henryana
Petasites
Schizophragma hydrangeoides
Tetrapanax paperyfera (if it survives in Brooklyn, which theoretically is in Zone 7)
Trycirtis, other tall spiky things for shade

Perhaps a shady spot for rocks and a small moss garden ...

(Just possibilities ... do you have others to suggest?)

It will be an intimate space. Nothing like this.

Solstice Greetings from Fort Greene

A weekend in the city, where my garden isn't.

Here is the Prison Ship Martyr's Monument, designed by McKim, Meade and White, and constructed in 1908 at the top of Fort Greene Park. The monument marks the remains of over 12,000 who died aboard British prison ships anchored below this hill, in Wallabout Bay, during the American Revolution.

At the time of the Revolution, General Nathaniel Greene took charge of the building Fort Putnam here to defend George Washington's retreat after the Battle of Long Island. The name was changed to Fort Greene at the time of the War of 1812.


As editor of The Brooklyn Eagle, Walt Whitman long supported the building of the park for the rapidly growing new city of Brooklyn. Washington Park was opened in 1847 as Brooklyn's first public park. Olmsted and Vaux were retained in 1864 to redesign the park as we see it today.

What is a Garden?

Entrance Garden at Newswalk in Brooklyn - an Urban Garden at a Former Newspaper Printing Plant



Sitting in a conference room at work yesterday, I was taken by surprise. I had been discussing upcoming proposals with three engineers. In a moment of whimsy, I said I'd rather be gardening. One of the engineers knows about my interest, and asked me what kind of gardening I do - vegetable gardening or flower gardening?

I had no answer. I don't think about my gardening in these categories. True, what I do might be called ornamental gardening, but I'm not particularly interested in flowers - color, yes; form, yes; texture, yes; plants in meaningful, stimulating groupings, yes. In my reading and thinking about my garden, I've moved far from what others view as "gardening." I hadn't realized that until I bumped up against another person's preconceptions.

I need to have a ready answer to "What kind of gardening do you do"? It's time for me to define this for myself. What drives this passion?

I'll try this.

I want to create a beautiful garden, but "beautiful" can mean many different things; it isn't a useful word.

A natural garden? That's a contradiction. A totally natural garden "in the state of nature" requires only natural processes. Human intervention, even to set things going, isn't possible.

So, a naturalistic garden? Yes, but what exactly is that? A naturalistic look or naturalistic practice? Piet Oudolf, for example, usually designs naturalistic looking plantings, but he gives careful attention to soil preparation and intends for the plantings to be maintained so plants remain where they are designed to be. His gardens require a formal process of maintenance, and consequently more regular labor. Others design gardens intended to let the plants find their most appropriate positions over time through natural processes of growth and succession, gardens that require only intermittent attention when plantings start to diverge too far from the garden's or the owner's vision.

I certainly want a visually appealing garden, one I can sit in and enjoy looking at, in different seasons, in different lighting conditions, at different times of the day. A garden with variety, yet an aesthetically coherent variety with perceptible order, rhythm, a kind of visual or kinaesthetic music. And underlying it all, a garden of plant communities in tune with place, almost perfectly suited to my soil, ecological, and site conditions and, on another level, with the history and culture of this place.

One of my guiding principles is to design the plantings, then intervene minimally. My conditions are difficult - heavy, wet clay - but I'm committed to planting without any soil "improvement" and to no use of fertilizers beyond occasional application of compost and recycled organic matter. (I will use an herbicide like Roundup for weed control, but only when necessary, and very carefully.) The existing conditions dictate what plants I can grow; I will not try to improve drainage to grow roses in what is essentially a wetland.

Which is more important to me: beauty or principle? Probably principle - it gives me enough "beauty" for satisfaction.