The Spring of 2024 at 26 Pine Street

The winter of 2023-2024 was fairly well non-existent in eastern Massachusetts. There was rain - lots of rain - but not a single plowable snowfall in Medfield, the town Betty and I have called home for the past quarter century. There were  nor'easters that brought near-hurricane-force winds to the region, but the ponds never froze. As a result, we lost no trees or shrubs; the perennials did not get heaved out of the ground. In this, the first full week of May, the garden is a sea of new green with bursts of color from all the usual suspects. Please double-click on any photo to get a full-screen slideshow of the garden.

Sometimes, though, words get in the way of things. Rather than wax poetic, I'd like to let the garden speak for itself.  Let me start with the first tree to bloom. This is Amelanchier 'Autumn Brilliance'. It was, if memory serves correctly, the first tree to be planted on the property in June 2015. It wasn't so much an honor bestowed as a practical reality: Betty and I were still driving from nursery to nursery looking for 'the right' specimens. Weston Nurseries had exactly the Amelanchier in stock we wanted and so we brought it home and dug a hole in what we hoped would be the right place.

Our Amelanchier's bloom is brief. This photo shows it at its peak on April 23.  Two weeks later, the leaves have eclipsed the blooms.

Magnolia 'Elizabeth' bloomed right behind the Amelanchier. It us a glorious shade of yellow and it fairly glows.  This photo is from April 30 and shows the tree at or near its peak. 'Elizabeth' is supposed to get to roughly 25 feet in height and then stop.  By my estimate, it has reached its mature status.  The tree is still in bloom, but much of its earliest flowers have dropped to the ground. In another week it will be all green - though still a lovely tree.

New England wouldn't be New England without azaleas and rhododendron (the latter is technically a subset of the former). We have multiple specimens, but it is Azalea 'Weston's Aglo' that beats all the others to display the first color. This pair are readily visible from our library. In the photo at left, Magnolia 'Elizabeth' stands at peak glory in the background. There are other azaleas and rhododendron dotted around the property. They'll bloom as late as mid-June.

Fothergilla is largely overlooked in garden design. Part of their lack of broad appeal is that their leaves are a dull green. The exception is 'Blue Shadow', which offers a much more attractive leaf color. But, for a few weeks in May, all Fothergilla have a stunning white brush-like flower. Some are round balls; F Blue Shadow's bloom looks like a bottle brush straight out of a Williams Sonoma catalog. We have three groups of three on the property; one of which is shown in the left third of the adjacent photo.

Which brings us to Cornus florida, the American dogwood. It was only today, May 7, that ours burst out in its full glory.  Cornus florida has a bad rap: that it is disease prone, specifically anthracnose which can kill the tree. Cornus kousa, the Korean  variant, is considered immune to the disease.  The solution, though, isn't to abandon the native version. Rather, it is to give Cornus florida an open space to ensure adequate air flow. 

Why does it matter? Because our native birds can eat the small, thin-skilled fruit of the native tree. The large, rubbery-skinned Korean fruit falls to the ground and rots.

There are other, less grand  blooms around the property. For example, the Tiarellas are in bloom.  Betty acquired 120 Tiarellas and Heucheras in a sharp deal at the 2015 Boston Flower & Garden Show; taking them off the hands of an exhibitor for the price of the plugs - one dollar each.  Three months later, having pampered the plants with daily excursions into the sun, we placed them all over the property.  What you see at the right, blooming white, are maybe ten of those Tiarella, interspersed with ginger as a foundation planting for our garage.

Finally, we are endeavoring to use as many native groundcovers as possible to eliminate the need for grass. At the front of our property there's a growing expanse of Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, otherwise known as bearberry. It's a terrific groundcover, but its bloom is what is called 'insignificant'... a flower you need a magnifying glass to see. Not so Phlox stolonifera, shown at left. For about three weeks, it puts up a glorious blue flower spike. Then, the flower fades and the spike browns. We're left with a green mat of phlox that takes light foot traffic. What you see here started as three plugs back in 2015.  It's now about nine square feet and expanding at a rate of about two square feet a year.

That's how the garden looks this spring. Hope you enjoyed the visit!

Year 7 Begins

 

Our dream retirement home, April 20, 2021

On April 8, 2015, Betty and I moved into our ‘dream retirement home’; the abode we have every expectation of being our residence until we’re dragged out by our feet after our demise. The house was our own design: built to allow two adults to ‘age in place’.

We began in 2015 with a blank slate

Like the house, the garden began as a tabula rasa – a blank slate upon which to create ‘one last great garden’; built from the knowledge gained from predecessors dating back four decades. Betty is the architect of the garden; I am the guy who digs holes and moves rocks.

This final garden is designed to fulfill two purposes. The first is that it should be low-maintenance. For too many years, we had gardens that, in season, required upwards to 20 hours each week for maintenance. Betty’s goal was to have a property that required most of its care at the beginning and end of the season, and would both show well and need minimal care through the balance of the gardening year. In short, a garden that could be managed by a retired couple with lots of outside interests.

A flicker at our suet cage

The second – and perhaps more important – purpose, is that the garden should be pollinator and bird friendly. It should, to the greatest extent possible, use native plants and should be an extension of the conservation land we abut. Trees, shrubs, and perennials have been chosen for how well they fit the ‘pollinator-friendly’ requirement. There’s no grass – not a blade – nor are there any of the garden-center staples like Bradford pears (from China), Norway maples (from the Carpathians), or Kousa dogwood (from Asia). If it doesn’t host native birds, bees, or butterflies, it has no place in the garden.

Which doesn’t mean the garden is dull. Our trees put on spectacular shows, and our shrubs and perennials become blankets of durable bloom. You’ll see those photos over the next several months.

Our amelanchier about to bloom

The garden has grown organically.  In our first year we planted the specimen trees and a few dozen shrubs. The second year saw many shrubs and lots of perennials. Everything wasn't perfect: shrubs changed locations as we got to know where we had the best shade and sun. Some perennials simply didn't like the location. Others became too aggressive. It has been a learning experience.

This, the garden’s sixth season, should be the one when the vision becomes reality. We went to Garden in the Woods last week and came home with a single Ceoanthus americanus (New Jersey tea). In Aprils past, we would return with a car stuffed with shrubs and perennials. My goal this year is to document the garden as it reaches its mature status.

Our hyacinth border

I begin with bulbs. We have planted more that 4000 of them. We readily recognize they’re the most ‘foreign’ aspects of the garden (most spring bulbs originated in western Asia) but, if they are aliens, they’re friendly ones and, better still, they’re ephemeral. We are also cultivating our share of natives, like Mertensia virginica (Virginia bluebells), which have established themselves in the shadier spots of the back of the property, along with Jeffersonia diphylla (Twinleaf) and Trillium.

Twinleaf (white flower)
and bluebells

Our bulbs provide the first color of the season, and are placeholders until our flowering trees and shrubs begin putting on their displays.  Today (April 20), we have an Amalanchier ‘Autumn Brilliance’ just a day or two away from being a blizzard of white flowers.  The maples, in turn, all are showing their proto-leaves. Our native Dicentra (bleeding hearts) are doubling in size every few days and will be flowering before the end of the month.

So, sit back, enjoy the photos, and check back regularly.