The Urns of Darlington: Autumn

This is the final installment of The Urns of Darlington series, in which I show you, Dear Reader, the seasonal rotation of plantings in the large cast-iron urns at Darlington House.  I acknowledge that some of you may find it will be the least interesting installment of the series, since these are the urns upon which the least effort was expended.  And, on one level, you would be right.  But Reggie finds these urns to be the most satisfying of the series.  For these are the simplest.  Simplicity is a quality that Reggie greatly values, given how elusive he finds it to be in much of the man-made world, where the propensity is to not leave well enough alone.

A massive chrysanthemum in our largest urn

Reggie is proud to say that he adores chrysanthemums.  And he is happy to decorate his property during the autumn with ones from his local garden supply store, an Agway that sits but a little less than a mile from Darlington House.  Reggie says he is "proud" because there are certain circles that consider chrysanthemums beneath contempt, and horridly common.  MD's generation was taught to loathe chrysanthemums, vulgarly known as "mums."  That's because their mothers' generation adored them and, to be frank, over-used them in table arrangements.  Another strike against them was that florists over-relied on them (along with daisies and baby's breath) when creating those awful, long-lived FTD-type arrangements that uglified many a table in this country for far too long, and which Reggie understands are still to be seen in certain benighted households even to this day.

But Reggie adores chrysanthemums, and believes they are a worthy adornment to any household when chosen carefully and used contextually.  He doesn't care at all for the over-hybridized ones seen in many garden centers today, found in garish and unnatural colors such as fuchsia, mauve, or acid yellow.  Actually, he abhores those.  No, he approves only of ones in autumnal hues of rust, deep crimson, and gold.  Those, he believes, are the only appropriate colors for chrysanthemums, at least out of doors, and are the only colors you will ever find filling urns at Darlington House.

"Wait a minute, Reggie," you might cry in looking at the above photograph, "you haven't done anything to that urn in front of the door at Darlington House!  That's the same grass that was in it in your summer installment of the series!"  And you would be correct, Dear Reader, it is the same grass.  We haven't changed it out this year because we like the way the grass looks far too much to rip it out.  And, besides, it looks appropriately autumnal, in our view.

Rather than replant the urns in front of the door to the house, we decided to decorate the marble step at the door with these marvelous, generously scaled pumpkins grown at Holmquest Farms, in nearby Hudson, New York.  They are quite handsome, don't you think?

Just as we did at the door to Darlington House so we did at the base of the large urn that sits at the end of the walkway leading up to the house: we placed a large pumpkin next to it.  And yes, you are correct: that is the same handsome Mexican Lilly in the urn that we planted there this summer.  

Beauty is simplicity.

And so this draws to a close the four seasons of the Urns of Darlington House.  We are off today to Massachusetts to buy the evergreen shrubs that we will soon plant in the urns for winter, starting the cycle once again.

All photos by Boy Fenwick

The Urns of Darlington: Summer

As I have written in the past, we fill the metal urns at Darlington with new plantings every spring, summer, autumn, and winter.  And as I have also written, I plan on posting images of each of the seasons' plantings for your delectation, Dear Reader.  I've already published essays on our winter and spring urns.  Now I turn my attention to this summer's.

And it is a good thing that I do, since the summer is rapidly drawing to a close.  Even though we technically have more than two weeks to go before the autumnal equinox that marks the season's end, I, like many people, think of summer as drawing to a close at Labor Day.  Yes, the warm weather will linger for some time before the first heavy frost, but the rhythm of the school year beginning anew still lingers with me, even though it has been over three decades since I left the hallowed halls of academe.  And for me, the start of the new school year means that autumn has arrived.

Over time our gardening at Darlington has become more restrained than it was when we first acquired the property, and this summer we planted our urns with a more subdued palette than we have in years past.  As we usually do, we planted grasses in the two urns at the entry to the house.  But this summer we planted a type of grass that we haven't before.  Named Carex flagelliferra 'Toffee Twist', it is loopier and more subtle in its appearance than the grasses we've used previous summers, and reminiscent of the plumage of an exotic bird.  I'm mad for it.  In fact, I like it so much that I am reluctant to pull it out and replace it with something more autumnal in several weeks' time.  We just might leave it in the urns this fall.

Boy planted the larger urn on our terrace with a deep purple Coleus solenostemon 'Dark Star' and trailing Ipomoea batatas 'Sweet Caroline' vine for the summer.  It makes a handsome contrast to the green of the landscape surrounding it.  Fortunately the deer did not find their way to eating the vine this year, which they have done in summers past.

We planted a single Beschorneria yuccoides, commonly known as Mexican Lilly, in the large urn that stands at the front of the walkway to the house.  We generally choose to fill this urn for the summer with a hardy, heat-and-drought-tolerant plant, since it sits in full sun throughout the day, and its soil dries out easily.  This is a striking, noble plant, and I plan on repotting it to over-winter inside the house.  I've had good luck doing so in the past, and I hope this will flower during the winter, as several others have.

And with that, Dear Reader, you have Darlington's urns in all their summer finery.  Please stay tuned for the next installment in this series, the Urns of Darlington: Autumn.

The Urns of Darlington: Spring

As I wrote in my December essay on "The Urns of Darlington: Winter," I planned on posting pictures of our urns replanted with each season's flora.  Today I show the urns filled with their spring finery.  Gone are the evergreens that survived the cold weather, replaced with masses of deeply inky purple Viola.

To fill our urns we made a trip to Loomis Creek Nursery, a specialty retail nursery in Hudson, New York, owned and run by Andrew Beckman and Bob Hyland, plantsmen extraordinaire.  We are big fans of Loomis Creek, which grows and stocks unusual specimen plants not found in a typical garden center.  And that's not surprising, since Andrew is editorial director for gardening at Martha Stewart Living, and Bob is former vice president of horticulture at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.  We often find ourselves visiting Loomis Creek once or twice a weekend during planting season.

We bought three or four flats of Viola Sorbet Series 'Black Delight' from Loomis Creek to fill our urns.  As I wrote in my winter urn story, we plant our urns densely when we fill them with annuals, so that we have a profusion of flowers in the brief season before they are replaced with the next season's plants. 

Here is a photograph of one of our urns, just planted.  It has not yet come into flower.

Here are the urns that stand on either side of the kitchen entry to Darlington, in full flower.

Next is a closeup of the blossoms.  They are actually a deeper, darker purple than the photograph indicates.

This next photograph is of one of the urns leading up to our entry.  It is a more accurate representation of the flowers' color.

We have painted all of the metal garden furnishings at Darlington, including these urns, in Farrow & Ball's "Off-Black," No. 57.  I think they look particularly good in a high-gloss finish.

Here is the urn that stands at the base of the bluestone walkway to our house.  Boy photographed it in the late afternoon with the western sun raking through the Violas.

This concludes my tour of the spring planting of our urns at Darlington.  In only a few short weeks it will be time to replant them with their summer occupants . . . so please stay tuned!

All photographs by Boy Fenwick

The Urns of Darlington: Winter

A well-appointed property includes garden furnishings that help establish and augment the natural beauty and architecture of its grounds. At Darlington we have accumulated a collection of such furnishings that we place around the property with pleasing effect. This includes metal and wooden chairs and benches, sundials, and birdbaths. It also includes a number of large metal urns that we plant with a rotating display of seasonal flora.

The urns on our terrace planted for the winter

We bought our urns from dealers that specialize in selling interesting, large-scale outdoor furnishings and containers. Ours are not old, but rather are recent reproductions from China (or was it India?), made from scrap metal. They look convincing but require additional maintenance and care because they are prone to rusting quickly. That means regular painting.

A number of years ago we decided to paint all of the metal furnishings on our property in the same color paint, and selected Farrow & Ball’s "Off-Black” No. 57. The results are very satisfying but it was quite the task indeed as it included stripping, priming, and painting the seating, birdbath, and four urns and their stands.  It took Boy and me more than a month of weekends devoted to this project to complete it.


We change the contents of our urns every season to display plants that embody the season. In the spring we fill them with masses of violas; in summers we plant blowsy grasses, large succulents, or coleus; in the autumn we usually fill them with chrysanthemums, and one year we crowned the largest ones with enormous pumpkins; in the winter we plant them with evergreens. Every season is different, and we rarely repeat the same planting or color combinations from year to year.

Boy takes charge of selecting what the urns will feature each season, and does the actual planting. This year we bought the winter’s contents from a nursery that we like and that was having a 50%-off end-of-season sale of shrubs, perennials, and trees.

We planted the two large urns on our property with junipers, and the two urns leading up to the door with conical firs. Not exactly heirloom varieties, but handsome nonetheless. Boy was able to plant them ahead of the first of the winter's snow, and they look marvelous when crowned with white caps. 

Here is Reggie’s advice for successful planting of urns:

• Wait until the end-of-season sale at your local nursery to buy shrubs to plant in your urns for the winter, and be sure to plant them before the soil in the urns freezes for the duration; otherwise you'll find yourself chopping out frozen dirt to make way for the shrubs;
• When planting annuals in the spring or summer buy more than you think you’ll need and stuff them in. They’re only going to be in there for the season, so make the most of it;
• Regardless of season, limit the varieties you plant in each urn; plant no more than one or two types of plants in a limited color palette; keep it simple;

And that's how we do it at Darlington. 

What did you plant in your urns this winter?

Photos by Reggie Darling