Aye, There's the Rub

There’s a drawback to having a two-acre garden, as well as to having 62 containers arrayed around that garden in eye-pleasing groupings: come October, it all has to be cleaned up.

After the frost:  two containers that
need a lot of tender loving care

Eastern Massachusetts had its first frost last Friday evening.  Temperatures dipped into the upper twenties for about seven hours overnight.  They recovered to the mid-60s by Sunday, but the damage was done.  The frost was the ‘period’ to the growing season that began in April, peaked in June and July, and lingered through a warmer-than-usual September.

When we awakened Saturday morning, the damage was everywhere.  I firmly believe that annuals are nothing but water held in interesting shapes by a thin coating of chlorophyll.  When the air temperature hits 32 degrees, annuals collapse with a speed and finality that is stunning.  Forty of our 62 containers were filled with annuals.  On Saturday morning, we had 40 pots of mush.

This container...

Each pot needed to be emptied but, in our garden, that is not an easy thing to do.  First of all, some pots also held perennials.  Each container was inspected and salvageable perennials were taken out separately, re-potted into plastic containers, and sunk into the transplant bed.  If they survive the winter, they’ll be re-used next year. 

...yielded these two perennials that
will be over-wintered for 2013

Each container also holds ‘ballast’.  We use large pots: some with 20-inch-plus diameters and heights of up to two feet.  Many weigh more than 20 pounds.  If they were filled entirely with potting mix, the combined weight could be half again as much as the container alone.  To keep the containers ‘portable’, Betty fills their bottoms with plastic water bottles, chunks of Styrofoam, packing ‘peanuts’ in plastic bags, and even corks.  Come October, all of this ballast is removed, cleaned and stored.

The overflowing compost bins

Even the potting mix gets recycled, after a fashion. The truism in gardening is that container mix should never be re-used because it potentially carries diseases.  But there’s no prohibition against combining container mix with garden soil, mixing it well, then using it for planting in future years.  We have a special raised bed just for our ‘used’ container mix.

Finally, each pot is scrubbed clean and then rubbed with a bleach solution, allowed to dry, and stored in the basement for use in 2013. 

So, for containers, the litany is a) put the annuals in the compost pile, b) pot up the perennials and place in the transplant bed, c) remove and clean the ‘ballast’, d) place the used container mix in a special bed, e) clean and bleach the container, f) carry to the basement, and g) repeat steps ‘a’ through ‘f’ 40 times.  Because a container filled with dead annuals is something of an eyesore, we try to get through that process in three or four days.

Same bed, after cleanup

The wisteria bed after the
frost.  That's "Kossa Regal"
collapsed in a heap

The frost also did in the hostas, which were already starting to yellow.  With the hostas lying in a heap on the ground, it was clear that all the other perennials were ready to be cut down.  We have 15 principal ‘gardens’ within our property.  While all are maintained throughout the season, the October clean-up means all perennials are cut to the ground, though not all at the same time.  As they are cut, seed heads are removed and anything that looks as though it may have either disease (usually mildew) or insect damage is bagged separately and taken to our town’s transfer station. Everything else goes into the compost bins which, by now, are filled to overflowing.  We also take out several hundred feet of drip-watering hoses each autumn so that they don't go through a long series of freeze-thaw cycles that will shorten their useful lives.

In the bottom of each container:
reusable 'ballast' that makes the
container lighter

There are also relatively minor tasks: three rain barrels are emptied, cleaned and stored in the basement; and 25 water jugs are emptied and sorted to see which are worth saving over the winter (new containers are constantly being ‘created’ because they hold our cat’s litter).  Garden ornaments are located, cleaned, and stored away. 

It is a very physical time of year; a lot of stooping and hunching over.  But the weather outside is nigh on perfect.  A brisk wind, pleasant temperatures and low humidity.  And, all around us is the color: the reds and yellows and rusts of autumn in New England.

We take it one bed at a time.  The process will take about two weeks but, once it is done, it is done for the season. 

October Surprise

(Note:  I sat down this morning to write about the gorgeous Helianthis angustofolius at the end of my driveway.  Halfway through the process, I realized that what I was writing seemed hauntingly familiar.  I went back through the archives and found that I had covered the subject exactly two years ago today.  Re-reading that 2010 post, it says precisely what I wanted to say today.  I have never repeated a post, but this one is worth doing so.)

I walked out to the end of the driveway this morning to collect our newspapers (yes, we’re dinosaurs who actually subscribe to the print editions of multiple newspapers), and was greeted by our stand of Helianthus angustifolius. It’s part of the ‘Manhattan’ bed and is the penultimate bloomer in that three-season site.


Helianthus angustofolius in October bloom

This is one remarkable perennial: it blooms after the first frost. Very tall (six-feet plus) on bamboo-like canes, it lies in wait at the back of the bed, waiting for its moment. It is hidden by a tall rudbeckia that blooms from August into mid-September, after which the birds have reduced the rudbeckia to stalks. Meanwhile, low-growing asters at the front of the bed started blooming in early September and are still in evidence.

But the Helianthus takes you completely by surprise. Until it blooms, it is truly part of the tall greenery at the back of the bed. Once it opens up, there’s no overlooking it. There are multiple – up to half a dozen – blooms on each stalk and their weight bends those stalks to a confounding series of graceful arches.

I would like to take credit for first planting this specimen, but honesty forces me to acknowledge that there was a small clump of it growing in the original Old Stone bed. We divided it, moving half out to the Butterfly bed where it would get better late summer sun. It took off (it spreads by rhizomes) and the clump is now about ten feet wide and two feet deep, fully intermingled with the aforementioned rudbeckia. Some years ago, we potted up a single plant, took it to a nursery, and asked for a further identification. Many books and websites were consulted but the nursery was unable to come up with a specific cultivar.

Chelone lyonii

Bees love it, of course. It, along with the asters, is one of the last sources of nectar on the property. Betty spent part of yesterday cutting back daylily foliage and the bees were everywhere.

A handful of other perennials are still in bloom. The pink turtlehead (Chelone lyonii) is holding its own in our lower shade bed even as the rest of the bed turns an inexorable yellow. The two sidewalk beds closest to the house are still a pleasure to look at. In the ‘inner’ bed, a white David’s phlox is in its second month of bloom and a Persicaria ‘Painter’s Palette’ has both the beautiful, multi-colored foliage it has displayed all season plus, now, an abundance of pink spikes.

Persicaria 'Painter's Palette'

In the ‘outer’ sidewalk bed, a clump of balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) eaten down by deer earlier in the season is making up for lost time by flowering long past its usual date. Because we’ve not yet had a hard frost, the cleomes are still in bloom, and probably prolifically self-seeding next year’s crop. Also, there’s a clump of pinkish-white Japanese anemone that, left to its own devices, would take over the garden. We allow this one clump to remain because of its reliable September flowering. To keep it in check, we spend much of the spring and summer pulling out its never-ending runners.

The outer sidewalk bed, with
Daphne Atlantica in the
foreground

The single most striking perennial in the outer sidewalk bed is a Eupatorium ‘chocolate’. Joe Pye weed never was more elegant than this. The foliage is indeed a purple-chocolate brown, but the bloom – huge puffy heads of tiny white flowers – is remarkable. We’ll have those floral clusters until early November.

Finally, although a shrub rather than a perennial, our Daphne ‘Atlantica’ is putting on an autumn show. We nearly gave it up for dead after last winter and it spent much of the spring and summer staked in hopes of strengthening its trunk. Whatever we did worked: the plant roughly tripled in size over the course of the summer and then began putting out fragrant white flowers. It is still going strong.

Why You Should Never Let a Plant Go to Waste

The container garden of the year was never supposed to be one.

Start with the container itself.  For six years, it held a series of evergreens.  I say ‘series’ because there would come a point when either the evergreen grew too large for the pot or the evergreen needed to be pressed into service because a deer had ravaged an in-ground one and a replacement was needed.

Last year, the
container held an
arborvitae.  Note
the patina.

That was the case this past spring.  Scant snow coverage allowed deer to forage in our outer sidewalk bed, leaving one side of an arborvitae badly mauled.  When we pulled its replacement from out of the container, we found that the terra cotta had cracked in several places.  If not for a metal band around the top and the container mix and tree roots pushing outward, the container would be in several pieces on the ground.  We put the container aside to be disposed of.

April turned to May and container gardens were assembled – more than 60 in all.  At the end of May there were some leftover plants, including three torenia ‘Purple Moon’.  Here’s how Andrew’s Greenhouse describes the annual:

NEW! TORENIA fournieri. The Wishbone Flower is a leafy plant with small, dark green leaves and a plethora of lipped blooms, each with a wishbone-shaped marking. Flowers remind me of snapdragon florets. Low maintenance plants that are self cleaning; that's right, no deadheading! Does best in consistently moist, well-drained soil and partial to full shade.  'Purple moon' This fast-growing, long blooming trailer bears loads of large dark violet flowers. 6-10".

The container in late July.  Note
the change in patina.

Betty had purchased the torenia at Andrew’s thinking she would use them in a container program.  The day before she was to give the program, she noted that the plants had only a few insignificant blooms.  She set them aside in favor of a different plant.

At the end of May, nearly all other containers were filled and Betty was ready to call it a wrap.  As usual, I thought that every plant ought to find a home.  The torenia were now flowering nicely and starting to trail.  There were also several caladium bulbs that were beginning to sprout leaves.  I hauled out the broken container, put the pieces in place and gave Betty an expectant look. 

In return, Betty gave me one of her ‘why are you doing this to me?’ looks, but gamely filled the container.  She placed the caladium in the center and the torenia at the corners – as simple an arrangement as you’ll ever see.  We placed the container under an oak tree, principally because of the shade requirements of the caladium.

By mid-September, the torenia had
trailed down the side of the
container.  The flowers are prolific,
the plant self-cleaning.

What happened next was a joy to see.  The torenia quickly grew into a dense mat and began trailing down the sides of the container.  The caladium began putting up dozens of leaves.  Although the purple of the torenia did not play off of anything in the caladium, the overall effect was quite pleasing.  In the meantime, the green patina on the terra cotta container became vivid and multicolored, and the trailing flowers accented the effect.

Through July and August, the container continued to astound.  We kept the container well-watered and the torenia kept growing, producing large numbers of flowers.  Best of all (from my point) the flowers are ‘self cleaning’ – when they’re spent, they drop off rather than needing to be dead-headed.  The caladium’s leaves became ever more numerous and the height-to-container-size ratio was just right.

Chilly weather had taken its toll in the past week or so, but Betty and I agree that, hands down, this was the best container she created this season.  Which proves the adage, never let a plant go to waste.

Fair Weather

The finest use for Macoun apples

We picked our second half-bushel of apples at Doe Orchards in Harvard this past weekend.  The Macouns were large, perfectly ripe, and will be turned into Molly O’Neill Apple Walnut Upside Down cakes as well as sundry other treats.  Two weeks ago we picked the last of our sweet corn, gorged on two ears apiece, and froze the balance.  The lettuce in our garden is brilliant green and growing like gangbusters.

For gardeners in eastern Massachusetts, it has been a very good year.  Total rainfall was almost exactly normal (and slightly above normal for September), there were no Irene-type weather events to upend the season.  The last frost was in early May and, as this writing, there has yet to be a ‘first frost’ inside I-495.  It was never oppressively hot for extended periods.  In short, it was an excellent year for plants, whether in the vegetable garden or the flower beds.

As gardeners, we tend to remember the bad years; the ones where it rained for weeks on end or it didn’t rain at all.  We remember the year that our perennials and annuals shriveled under relentless heat or our trees were ravaged by winter moth caterpillars.  The mind retains the heartaches.

This morning (October 1), this
container of annuals on our front
porch was still in full bloom

We seem to forget years like these - the good years - and that’s a shame.  It’s the beginning of October and my container-bound annuals are still in bloom.  The coleus has grown large and lush.  There is still phlox and the eupatorium and asters are ablaze with a profusion of white and purple flowers.  Though the temperature barely touched 60 degrees this weekend, there is still a touch of summer in the garden.  The lawn is an emerald green.

I’m all too aware of the disastrous drought that continues to grip the Midwest.  We have no contract with nature that assures us five months of pleasant weather between the beginning of May and the end of September.  So, when nature delivers New England a spring and summer like the one we’ve had, we ought to celebrate it.

Perfect tomatoes at the
Topsfield Fair

In essence, that was the thought behind the end-of-season town and county fairs that were once a regional staple around the country.  We are fortunate that a handful live on in New England – especially in places like Topsfield and Fryeburg.  In another era, they were the tangible evidence of a good harvest.  Remarkably, they still highlight horticulture (even if the newspaper headlines are given over Ron Wallace’s 2009-pound pumpkin, a world record).

A display of chrysanthemums
grown by backyard gardeners...

You can walk though those two fairs this week and see perfect tomatoes, chrysanthemums, carrots and dahlias; all grown by backyard gardeners.  They were picked on Thursday and entered in a narrow, four-hour window that evening.  They were judged Friday morning and are on display all week.  To me, they put to shame anything on display in a supermarket or florist’s shop. 

... and perfect ears of Indian corn

Horticulturally speaking, fortune smiled on us this year.  You could see it earlier this year in the displays at the Barnstable Fair (July) and the Marshfield Fair (August).  The season will end, of course.  We are already under twelve of daylight and shrinking at a rate of five to six minutes each day. I recognize that those final tomatoes and zucchini aren’t likely to ripen.  But the winter squash are losing those tell-tale green veins that separate the pickable from those that need more time, and the leeks are still growing.  Eventually, though, a cold-air mass coming down from Canada or Minnesota will put a ‘closed’ stamp on the season.

If you want to remember this year, I encourage you to make the trip to Topsfield before next Sunday.  If you’re more adventurous and have a full day, it’s a spectacular drive through fall foliage into southwestern Maine and the Fryeburg Fair, which also closes October 7.  Both are glorious throwbacks to another time.  Both are end-of-the-season bacchanals, yet perfectly suitable for all ages.  Go for the pumpkins, go for the Midway.  Enjoy the sight of a basket of perfect Indian corn.  But go.

The Return of the Blues

The blues are back in our garden. 

The outer sidewalk bed on
September 21.  Double-click
on any image for a full-
screen view.

During the heat of July and August, perennials with yellow and white flowers dominate our garden.  Except for some heavily watered and regularly fertilized annuals in containers, blue is almost absent from the color spectrum.  Now, with cooler weather, the blues are back.

The convention wisdom says that September gardens in New England are ready to be cut to the ground; the season is effectively over.  As the attached photos attest, that’s not the case.  Late September brings out a different side of our garden.  The most noticeable change is that blue flowers are out in abundance for the first time since mid-Spring.  For another, plants are allowed to play out their natural tendencies, sometimes with stunning results.

These three containers have merged
into one glorious mass of color
and texture

Yes, the first frost will put an end to the annuals.  The coleus that is growing with abandon right now – there are more than a dozen varieties in containers right now - will be the first to go: even a night with temperatures in the mid-30s will cause them to wilt.  But for the present, they are taking over the containers that were once dominated by plants that succumbed to the relentless heat of July and August.

Blue asters running amok.  They've
been hiding in plain sight all summer

The asters have been biding their time, effectively hiding in plain sight.  Now, they are in full bloom, creating carpets of blue and white all over the garden.  Hydrangea are heavy with blooms that are getting preposterously large; their branches drag the ground.  We have three caryopteris at the front of the property.  Each is blooming with delicate blue flowers.  In the rock gardens behind out home, a large patch of plumbago displays a carpet of mid-blue blooms.

The hydrangea are heavy with
preposterously large flower heads

Foliage plants are also in their glory.  We have three varieties of persicaria: Painters Palette, Lance Corporal and Red Dragon.  These are garden thugs that require constant attention to not take over the beds in which they are located.  Now, as their season ends, they are throwing up airy stalks containing red seed pods.  Our goal is to enjoy the foliage as long as possible, then cut the plant back to the ground before its seeds mature.  It’s a delicate balancing act.

In the Manhattan bed, an ipomea
(sweep potato) vine has been allowed
to dominate its container for the
final weeks of its season

Betty is also allowing her containers to ‘naturalize’ for this, their final month.  Throughout the spring and summer, she has carefully trimmed back individual plants in mixed containers to maintain a desired shape or color balance.  Now, the ipomea are trailing six-foot-long chartreuse vines.  Three containers have grown into a single, glorious quilt of color and texture.  Off in a corner of the property, a ‘Big Red Judy’ coleus has ballooned to a height of four feet and a girth of equal size.

This caryopteris is one of three on the
property, each with blue flowers
for September

From mid-September on, New England gardens live on borrowed time.  Each evening weather report brings reports of possible frost or freezes a little closer.  For the present, it is the Worcester Hills – some 40 miles distant – that are the target of nighttime temperatures in the mid-30s.  One unexpected drop in the jet stream could bring that weather to our front doorstep.

And so we are relishing the return of the blues.

The Zen of Edging

There are those who knit and those who paint.  When it comes time to put the world on hold and find an inner peace, you’ll find me edging.

Edging is an art.  There is a line or a contour either to be created or to be held.  On one side of the line is grass, on the other side may be soil or mulch or anything else that is not grass.  My goal is to establish and maintain the boundary between the grass and what lies beyond it.

For me, going out and
edging provides a Zen
experience - an hour
passes, 50 feet of border
is done, and I have
no idea where the
time went.

Our garden is a sinuous sweep of shrub and perennial beds that swirl and curve across the property.  Grass is simply what separates the various beds.  We have less than half the grass on our property than we did a decade ago and, each year, the grass shrinks further as the borders grow.

My tools are as old as the Stone Age and no more modern than the first decades of the last century.  I use a sturdy, flat shovel for most work.  I decide where the border should be and the shovel, pushed four inches into the earth, defines the boundary.  On my hands and knees I pull out the unwanted grass and separate it from the soil.  The grass (and weeds) go into a basket.  What is left behind is a cliff of grass-topped soil beyond which no stolon can push.  At the bottom of the cliff begins a rise that may be soil or may be mulch and, soon thereafter, the green of an annual, perennial, shrub or tree.

My driveway edging tool.  I first saw
this in use at Hidcote Manor. 
Queen Victoria likely approved.

I also edge our long driveway and, for this, I have a remarkable tool that I first saw in use at Hidcote Manor.  It is something of which Queen Victoria would have known and approved: a muscle-powered, six-inch-wide toothed wheel that, properly used, creates a perfect, inch-wide ravine between pavement and grass.  It is to the gas-powered string trimmer what a Vermeer is to painting by numbers.

The joy of edging is in the execution.  I will go out to edge, start at a point that needs obvious attention, and begin working.  An hour later, fifty feet of border will be completed and perfect yet, to me, no time will have passed.  I don’t listen to music or to baseball while I edge, I just think and concentrate on the task at hand.  When I am done, I can look back and see exactly what I have accomplished.  Seldom is life so completely satisfying.

There are few straight
borders, but only a few...

It is hardly a decision-free process.  To the contrary, borders continually change.  Pinus strobus ‘Hillside Creeper’, true to its name, demands a few extra inches of former lawn every time I edge the bed in which it resides.  Two viburnum have nearly doubled in size in the past two years and their berries feed the birds in winter.  The grass will give way to their growth and the only question is whether there will be a double curve in the grass or a single one.

There is an adage in the gardening world that goes something like this:  if company is coming in six months, replant.  If company is coming in six days, mulch.  If company is coming in six hours, edge.

There’s no company expected today, but nevertheless I will go out and edge.  In a world where happiness is achieved by meditation or drugs, buying or consuming, I find satisfaction in creating a clean line manages to complement nature.

Writing - and Speaking - About Gardening

This blog entry is going to be a bit different from my usual menu of gardening observations.  It’s going to be about, well, me.

September 2012 is turning out to be something of a watershed month for me.  First, I’m celebrating the publication of my fifth mystery.  Murder for a Worthy Cause is my second entry in the evolving story of Detective John Flynn, Garden Club President Liz Phillips, and the town of Hardington, Massachusetts.

Most people think they’ve got a book in them.  As it turns out, I apparently have lots of them.  I’m able to draw ideas from things I’ve observed over my lifetime, and to weave those ideas into a coherent, enjoyable story line. 

Three of those mysteries have horticultural themes.  No, it isn’t that someone gets strangled with a dahlia; rather, it is that plants figure into the story (and sometimes into its solution).  In The Garden Club Gang, four ‘women of a certain age’ decide to do something very un-ladylike: they steal the gate from a large New England fair.  Being astute horticulturalists, they devise a very clever way of incapacitating guards.  And, being garden club members, they use their position as docents at the fair’s flower show as both their observation post and staging area for the crime. 

In A Murder in the Garden Club, one of the two protagonists is a garden club president whose close friend and fellow club member is found dead.  The dead woman managed a wayside garden program for the club and took care of one of its most prominent sites.  Her death may well be linked to that program.

Murder for a Worthy Cause opens with Liz Phillips, the garden club president, in a rage because a Texas-based home center is sending a California-based TV production company a tractor-trailer load of plants that are doomed to die in a New England climate where they’re to be installed at the new home of a family in need.  Other horticultural subplots populate the book.

I’m currently working on A Murder at the Flower Show, in which horticulture comes front and center in the plot.  To solve a murder, the detectives investigating the case will have to learn a great deal about plants.

I do more than just write horticultural mysteries.  I also talk about them.  Book clubs read my titles and I’m pleased to be a guest at their meetings.  This month for the first time, a garden club will be reading The Garden Club Gang as its change-of-pace event, and I’ll speak at their monthly meeting. 

On September 18, I’ll speak at the Pembroke (MA) Public Library.  I’ve spoken at lots of libraries but, this time, I’ll be there as the guest of a garden club and, rather than talking about my books, I’ll give a talk drawn from my Principal Undergardener essays.  I’ll discuss The Rule of Three, The Cascade Effect, the internet’s fascination with dumb horticultural ideas, and my war with squirrels over a composter, among other topics.  It’s all woven together into an illustrated fun, half-hour narrative.  "Gardening Is Murder" has also been a hit in Topsfield and is booked in Uxbridge, Peabody and Marblehead.

I tell you all this because, well, I hope to do more of it.  Are you a member of a book club?  A garden club?  Please invite me to speak to your group.  My books make terrific discussion topics.  Do you need a horticultural speaker who isn’t going to show an endless succession of pictures of moss?  I can be your guy.  Because book clubs buy my books, I appear without charge.  For other groups, my fee is exceptionally modest: my goal is to get people to buy and read my books, not become wealthy through speaking fees.

To reach me, you can comment to this blog or email me at n_h_sanders (at) yahoo.com.

2013 update:  I seem to have struck a respondent chord.  If you're a book club, library or garden club; please give me a call at 508-359-9453 and I'll mail or email you a brochure.  Needless to say, it is still a ton of fun giving these talks!

The Deerfield River, a Year After Irene

Occasionally, the Principal Undergardener needs to get out of the garden.  But, even when he does, horticulture is never far from his mind.  So it was yesterday, when Betty and I took a day trip to kayak the Deerfield River in western Massachusetts.

The Principal Undergardener and
the Master Gardener

The Deerfield River is usually a broad, placid rock-strewn stream coming down from the Berkshires.  Rising in southern Vermont, it parallels the very scenic Route 2 for much of its 76-mile route toward the Connecticut River.  Part of its tranquil nature is man-made:  nine hydroelectric dams, some of them more than a century old, dot the river. 

Several times a week, one or more of these dams releases excess water and, for a few hours, the Deerfield River bears a passable resemblance to one of those wild western rivers where it’s Man Against Nature.  Several commercial outfits have sprung up to take advantage of those man-made rapids.  We went with CrabApple Whitewater, which offered us a four-hour ‘self-guided’ tour in an inflatable kayak through eight miles of river including Class I and II rapids.

It was supposed to be fun and it definitely was, but along the way, I saw a reminder that when it’s Man Against Nature, nature is invariably the winner.

This is Route 2 in Charlemont. 
Portions of the roadway were
washed away

A year ago this week, a weak, slow-moving storm named Hurricane Irene plowed into New England.  It was barely a hurricane when it made landfall and was quickly downgraded to a tropical storm and then a depression.  The track of the storm was also considerably west of the predicted track.  Once expected to hit Eastern Massachusetts, it missed Boston (I wrote about it here and here) and, for several hours, The Weather Channel wrote off the storm as a ‘near-miss’ and its blue-jacketed reporters headed off for the next meteorological calamity.

The Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne
Falls.  See the video link below.

What happened next was almost unthinkable.  The great, soggy tropical mass headed up the Connecticut River Valley and stalled for hours.  Western Massachusetts and southern Vermont received ten-plus inches of rain - 100 trillion gallons (15 trillion cubic feet) in the Deerfield River watershed alone.  Already saturated from much higher-than-normal rainfall in July and August, the rain from Irene flowed down mountainsides and into valley and rivers. 

The result was a catastrophe. On the weekend of August 27 and 28, rivers in southern Vermont and western Massachusetts (and, most spectacularly, the Deerfield River) turned into monsters, creating the worst flooding in recorded history in the region.  You can see video footage from the height of the flooding here.

Most of the subsequent news coverage focused on rebuilding roads, but the damage to the river was also substantial.  When the flood waters receded, farm fields adjoining the river were buried under six inches of silt.  Debris dams consisting of trees ripped out by their roots and large boulders blocked the river at multiple points.  Where there were no debris dams, there was ‘stream reaming’ where fast-flowing water created a newly gouged riverbed that made the river unusable for recreation.

The Deefield River on Monday. 
The trip was spectacular.

A year later, there is still lingering damage evident, and navigating the river came with some warnings.  On our eight-mile kayak journey down the Deerfield in Charlemont, we saw the damage up close.  Jen Mooney, who runs CrabApple’s operations in Massachusetts, warned us before we set off of silt deposits and tree debris that, even after a year’s work, made respecting the river all the more important.  “Keep to the left at an island in the river channel; avoid silt and rock buildup just a few inches below the water’s surface,” she told us.  We saw areas where the riverbank was pocked with small ravines and gullies.

Me on the river

But the river’s restoration is also remarkable.  In most areas, it is as though there was never a storm.  The restoration has been a joint effort by the state and volunteer organizations.  What they have accomplished is to be commended.

We had a wonderful trip.  It was a reminder that our ‘near miss’ was western Massachusetts’ horror.  A year ago, I wrote, “The next person who calls Irene a dud will get nothing but a cold stare from me.” 

Exactly.

Green Mountain Gem

Roughly seven years ago, Betty went to a lecture at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.  I was still deeply engrossed in something called “the corporate world” and so merely raised my hands in a helpless gesture when Betty asked if I’d like to accompany her.  She came back from the talk raving about the speaker and his topic, which was “how to tour a garden”.

The speaker that evening was Gordon Hayward, and his thesis was that visiting a garden ought to be considered a treat because it can help us see our own garden more clearly.  His simple premise: keep an open mind.  Too often, he told his audience, we walk into a garden just to see what we like and we don’t like.  Our prejudices get in the way of learning anything, be it a different principle of garden design, color choice or ornamentation. 

On Saturday, we visited Gordon and Mary Hayward’s garden in Putney, Vermont, which was open as part of the Garden Conservancy Open Days program.  Their garden is an acre and a half of inspiration, and humbling inspiration at that.  In addition to lecturing and writing on horticultural topics, Gordon Hayward also designs gardens, and his catalog of projects is nothing short of stunning.  If a ‘great’ garden is one from which you can take away inspiration, then this one is truly superb.



Here is the garden plan. 
Double-click to get a
slightly larger image.



The garden contains eight distinct areas (the diagram at left is, unfortunately, a very low resolution image).  The Haywards have incorporated a woodland garden, an outdoor dining area, a spring garden, a pair of mixed borders as well as long borders, dry and moist shade gardens, and a formal herb garden.  Parts of it are very formal, much of it is highly informal, and all of it is designed to encourage wandering as an aid to discovery.  Paths are everywhere; they become visible only when you come upon them, then promptly disappear from view a few steps further on.  (Here are some photos of the garden in other seasons.)

Frogs play musical instruments

Whimsical elements are pervasive.  There’s a Druidic image of the Green Man, carved into the stump of a butternut tree, representing the meeting place of the worlds of man and plants.  Frogs play musical instruments on birdbaths.  Wire-frame sheep ‘graze’ on the lawn.

Clipped boxwoods lend structure
to the garden

But everywhere is also a keen eye for design and the creators’ knack for visually leading the visitor from one garden space to another.  Gravel around a tree base sends a subliminal command to pause – “this is important”.  Paths lead to vistas of the surrounding fields and mountains.

Paths lead everywhere

The garden has been nearly thirty years in the making but is still growing.  Fifteen years ago, the Haywards uncovered a cracked concrete floor behind their barn where perhaps a half dozen cows would have stood in their stanchions. Less innovative minds (certainly including my own) would have ripped out the  concrete and started fresh.  The Haywards filled the cracks in the concrete with drought-tolerant, ground-hugging perennials.  Today, the area is a tapestry of succulents and flowering perennials, with the gray concrete reduced to a few small areas that bespeak its original purpose.

Betty with Mary
Hayward

It is a garden that encourages the taking away of ideas and, in turn, this garden was inspired by others.  Mary Hayward grew up across the fields from the Hidcote Manor Gardens in the Cotswolds; Gordon grew up in Connecticut farm country.  The Haywards’ garden incorporates the concept of ‘rooms’ that are one of Hidcote’s principal features.  It also includes apple trees that were part of Gordon’s boyhood.

It was, in short, an enchanting day in a gem of a garden.