A River Runs Through It

When we making the final plans for our ‘retirement dream home’ three years ago, we put a fair amount of thought into water management and our environmental responsibilities.  Our overriding goals were to a) keep water from our property out of the sewer system, b) preserve water for an extensive in-ground garden, and c) put as much water as possible into the wetlands we adjoined. 

The new stone culvert.
Double-click for a
full-screen slideshow

To that end, four rain barrels would capture roof runoff from the rear of the house before diverting the leftover water to underground pipes that let to the wetlands that form the back two-thirds of our property.  We did our best to make all ‘hard’ surfaces permeable: our driveway was crushed stone rather than asphalt; even our patio was designed with open spaces for water to soak in.  We agreed that gutters would spoil the look of a house and so we avoided them in front; opting instead for a two-foot-deep, rock-filled catch basin the stretched the length of the roof line.

We were left with one unaddressed problem area: a downspout from a gutter servicing the roof over our garage.  For the first year we allowed water from the downspout to splash unmolested out into our stone driveway.  It wasn’t a problem: rainwater easily perked through the rock and helped recharge our ground water.  The problem was that it did nothing for the nearby garden plantings.  We tried diverting the downspout to empty directly into a perennial bed.  The force of the water promptly washed away the surrounding mulch.  Houston, we have a problem.

That's Magnolia 'Elizabeth' in front

Fortunately, there is a civil engineer that resides deep with Betty’s soul.  There is a stonemason that lives within mine.  Betty yearns to harness Mother Nature’s energy.  I love to move rocks.

And so was born the Great Culvert Project.  On a crisp early October day, I dug a winding trench: 25 feet long, a foot deep, and a foot wide.  A masterpiece of design, it skirts the root systems of three clethras, a peony, and large amsonia ‘Blue Star’.  It terminates at the root line of a yellow-blooming magnolia ‘Elizabeth’ and the opening stretch of a ‘river’ of geraniums. Next spring, everything in its course will bloom like a New England Eden. 

Oh, and some rocks would be a nice idea.  simple math from the above description says I removed 25 cubic feet of soil.  All that was left to do was to direct the drain pipe into the culvert and add some rocks to keep the walls of the culvert from gradually caving in.  Allowing that the goal was to have water flowing through the culvert, we likely needed a total of maybe 20 cubic feet of rock.  

The culvert connects into
a river of geraniums

Where to get rock?  Normal people go to places where various sizes of rock is sold.  There is even one such place right here in Medfield.  You drive up and someone loads up your car or truck.  You take it home, get the job done in a day, and retire to the back porch for a gin and tonic.  We are not normal people (except for the gin and tonic). Buying rocks is abhorrent to our nature.  Rock, like music, wants to be free. 

Instead, we began scrounging rock from around our property, then from the Community Garden where we have a plot, and finally from (what we think is) a town-owned area where piles of rock mysteriously get deposited on a regular basis.  Over two weekends we filled tubs with large rough rocks for the bottom of the culvert, small smooth rocks to top the culvert, and flat stones to form the riverbank.

Our problem was that after filling six, five-cubic-foot tubs, we were less than half finished with the project.  Why would it take more rocks to fill the culvert than the volume of soil we removed?  OK, the ‘riverbank’ might account for some of the overage, but this was getting ridiculous.  In the end it took twelve tubs and five trips.  Why, I haven’t the faintest idea.

We finished the project over the weekend.  A lot of Advil was consumed in the process.  Was it all worth it?  Of course.  How often do you have the opportunity to build your own river?

A Gardener's Work Is Never Done

Yesterday morning I was awakened at 5:35 a.m. when our cat walked into our bedroom and let out a single, very loud ‘meow’.  The cat then went downstairs where it emitted multiple noises that sounded for all the world like a cement mixer missing one or more ball bearings.

Our cat is not normally so talkative, so we put on our robes and went downstairs to see what had upset our normally (except at mealtime) placid pet.  The answer was immediately obvious: outside our front door, two deer were sizing up our holly bushes as a breakfast entrée.

Welcome to the gardener’s world, where the end of summer and the growing season are just pencil marks on a continuum of chores that span the year.  I categorize those chore into four baskets:  things we don’t know we have to do until reality slaps us upside the head and tells us we better do them ‘now’; things we put off doing during the summer because it was too damned hot; things that you can’t hurry; and things that need to get done, and autumn just seems like the right time of year to do them.

You do not want to see these on
your doorstep.

For example, yesterday’s meowing cat begat an hour of spraying every evergreen in our garden with a nasty commercial concoction of putrefied eggs and garlic and a red-circled reminder on our calendar to repeat the process in six weeks.  That’s a prime example of a chore that kind of sneaks up on you.  Spraying is second nature while the garden is in its full flower.  It takes a couple of tick-bearing ruminants on your doorstep to drive home the reminder than deer repellent needs to be applied even after the tastiest morsels are history.

This rock border project was
saved for cooler weather.

The late autumn is also when projects that were put in abeyance because of the summer’s heat come home to roost.  We had a portion of our driveway repaved in July.  Now that the weather is cooler, we are re-installing a rock drainage border around the driveway.  It sounds like a simple task until you consider that the contractor performing the repaving work made no effort to preserve our earlier border.  As a result, new drainage channels must be created, shaped and filled with rocks that have sat in crates for several months.  Is it a gardening project?  Absolutely.  The drainage borders protect the gardens that surround the driveway from rainwater that would otherwise wash those gardens away.

Taking down the gardens in the autumn is a gradual process that requires respect of both nature and reality, and so stretches well beyond the end of Daylight Savings Time.  A large bed of daylilies was cut down in late September when the foliage yellowed.  Honeybees, however, still feasted on the asters that were interspersed among the daylilies. And so that part of the cleanup was put off.  Now that the asters have passed, I am going around dutifully completing that part of the project.

These grasses are in their glory
right now.  Why cut them down?

We also have tall grasses that come into their glory in October and November.  They wave in the breeze at the front of our property and are impervious to frost.  Cutting them down early would be senseless.  But the first snow of the season will leave them looking disheveled and forlorn. As soon as that first snow of the season has fallen and melted, those grasses will need to come down.

Finally, late autumn is also the time for those projects on the ‘long term’ list.  Several years ago, I insisted that a part of the back of our property be cultivated as ‘Seedeaters’ Heaven’, a stand of tall rudbeckia, hellenium and other plants that would provide a wealth of seeds for the avians that keep down the insect population of our garden. 

It was a great and noble idea in theory.  In practice, it never looked good and quickly became an overgrown mess filled with weeds and unwanted interlopers.  Now that the days are cool, my responsibility is to grub out the area so that it can be replanted more sensibly.

In undertaking these projects, we race against the calendar. Sometime in November or December, it will be too cold to work outside and the days will be too short to get work done.  When that happens, we throw in the towel and retreat indoors to contemplate seed catalogs for the 2014 season.

But not, of course, until I’ve split enough wood to get through the New Year.

The Principal Undergardener's Time to Shine

There are two competing explanations for where the idea of ‘the gates’ came from.  Mine is that we saw one at a Yellow Book garden in Kent seven or eight years ago.  Betty believes, just as firmly, that we saw one on a garden tour in a neighboring town.  Either way, I came home determined to build some gates of my own.

Each gate begins with two to three
times the material needed

‘The gates’ – they have no other, more formal name – are at once exceedingly simple and complex structures.  They are ornamental and decorative; functional only in the loosest sense of the word.  I build them from limbs of trees that have been cut down.  More than anything, I suppose, they are artistic.

I have built roughly ten in the intervening years.  Because the wood (typically oak and maple) is not seasoned and the trees or branches are cut when relatively small, a gate’s life span is two to three years.

I have just completed a new one for the pathway between the Manhattan and Long Island beds at the front of the property and the ‘wildflower walk’ garden room.  Readers of this blog know that there is a long stone wall behind the Manhattan and Long Island beds, a byproduct of the rototilling that produced those two planting areas a dozen years ago.  A break was left between the two segments of the wall to allow cart traffic from the east side of the property.  The newest gate is the third generation to grace that site.

The gate is laid out before assembly

Building a gate starts with scouting for material.  There are always tree branches that have encroached into places they are not welcome and saplings growing where they have become annoying.  These are the raw materials.  I’ve learned from experience that softwoods (and especially pine) disintegrate within a year and are to be avoided.

Two straight pieces are required for the fence posts.  They’re usually at least three inches in diameter and are secured in concrete.  Properly chosen, posts can last a long time; the ones to which the new gate is attached have been in place for six years.

The finished gate; the Manhattan bed
is on the left, Long Island on the right

For the gate, four straight and sturdy pieces are needed.  These form the perimeter or frame of the gate and are secured with three-inch wood screws. The interior pieces are selected for their interesting forms: a nifty ‘Y’ or even a ‘W’; a graceful arch or a good knot.  As the photo above shows, these are laid out once the perimeter is built.  I cut the pieces to size and secure them to the frame using narrower-gauge three-inch wood screws.  For the smallest interior pieces, I still use at least two-inch screws.

If you compare the preliminary layout to the finished gate below, you’ll see that compromises need to be made along the way.  A piece of wood may bend the wrong way or just look wrong as the gate nears completion. The goal is to have a finished piece that looks like it was meant to be there; not to meet a deadline.

Detail of the completed gate

I do not use hinges or latches.  Apart from the fact that they’d likely pull out in a matter of months, the goal is to look rustic.  Accordingly, I use hemp rope to secure the gate to its posts.

My tools are simple: a sharp saw and an antiquated power drill.  I suppose that, with a multi-speed reversible drill I could build a gate in a day.  As it is, the one shown here took about 15 hours of work to get right. 

The gates are the one creative element of our garden to which I can lay unquestioned ownership.  Betty is the superb designer with an excellent eye for color and texture.  In those matters – which comprise 99% of the garden, my role is to lift, carry and dig.  But on the subject of gates, I am the guy.  It’s the Principal Undergardener’s time to shine.