Spring Ahead

The scene exactly one year ago.  We
had run out of places to put snow.

What a difference a year makes.  In early March of 2015 we were desperately looking for places to put snow around our house and driveway.  Our roof groaned under more than three feet of solidly packed snow (our skylights would reap our failure to take action).  Meanwhile, alongside the Convention Center in South Boston, a snow mountain 70 feet tall had taken up residence. Its lease would not expire until the middle of July. 

This year the ground
is bare and we are
days away from
having crocuses.

On the last days of February 2016, Betty and I created a stupendous pile of broken pine and oak branches from the month’s twin storms – rain- and wind-driven rather than snow – while treading carefully to avoid sinking into mud on the paths around our home.  In picking one branch I uncovered the dark green of crocus foliage; with flowers to follow by mid-month.  Snow?   Yes, we remember it snowing this winter.  Vaguely. 

This El Niño winter is giving us a much-needed head start on completing the landscaping we began last summer.  Then, the later-than-expected completion of our home and unplanned requirement for replacing a quarry’s worth of loose rock with usable topsoil meant that, by the time we were ready to start landscaping, the “good” trees we wanted were out of stock.  Rather than put in second-choice saplings, we left empty spaces.

You can still see the carnage caused
by a mid-February storm.  This is
our neighbor's property.

Now the problem, naturally, is that the nurseries we favor won’t have in their stock of trees and shrubs until mid-March.  We have a shopping list.  (Boy, do we have a shopping list.)  Betty spent the winter reading up on recent introductions of native plant cultivars.  As a result, what was once a quest for the perfect forest pansy redbud (cercis canadensis) has broadened into wanting to inspect a gold-leafed variation on that hardy native tree before settling on the one that will occupy a place of honor in front of our house.  Multiply that example by four trees, 40 shrubs, and an army of perennials, and you get a sense of what is our future by way of choices – and work once the choices are made.

Our "lawn" is a parfait of
chopped leaves and mulch.

There is also a “small” question about what surrounds those trees and shrubs.  The default choice at most homes is, of course, a grass lawn.  We’re holding fast to our principled decision regarding a lawn-free property.  Last summer we spread a thick covering of bark mulch over our topsoil, with packed-soil pathways separating beds.  At the end of autumn, we begged fifty bags of leaves from our neighbors and mowed those leaves into a fine mulch.  This spring, we’ll rototill those two mulches into the top few inches of soil, then top that parfait with leaf mold.  This is what comes from adhering to principles.

But early spring is also for dreaming.  If you're reading this and you live in New England, your best way of kick-starting those dreams is to head for the Boston Flower & Garden Show.  If I’ve learned one thing over the years, it is that no two editions of the Flower Show are alike.  Each one brings new ideas, new gadgets, new things to gawk at.  You'll come away with some new vision of how to make your garden a more interesting place.

Oh, and if you're at the show on Friday, March 18th, I'll be speaking at 11:30 a.m. on the lecture stage with 'Gardening Will Kill You'.  Betty follows at 1:30 p.m. with her 'Dirt on Your Hands, Soil in Your Garden' talk.

Just Add Plants

Our new home respects the
wetlands that make up
two-thirds of the property

The evening before the beginning of The Great Replacement, Betty and I walked our property with Scott Dolan, a Medfield-based landscaper.  Using orange paint we marked the placement of a patio, sidewalk and stone wall. We discussed grade levels and ideal pitch; and how to ensure that we did not injure the wetlands behind our home.

We also marked where crushed rock drains would obviate the need for gutters in front of the house, and where a berm would be created to provide a measure of privacy from the street.  At the end of an hour, we all understood the exact scope of the work ahead of us.

Below the builder's crud
on the surface was more
of the same

Then, on Wednesday, May 20, a convoy of trucks, bulldozers and backhoes descended on 26 Pine Street and began The Great Replacement.  The goal: make a little over 20,000 square feet of land suitable for creating a garden.

Our new garden is being created from a blank slate.  The house that previously stood on the site was beyond repair; we had it torn down.  There was no garden.  The lot was densely wooded with end-of-life white pines.  Underneath those pines were a morass of invasive burning bush.  Surrounding the burning bush were sweeps of horrific black swallowwort. 

We excavated down 18 inches,
removing more than 900 cubic yards
of detritus...

More than forty pines became board lumber and mulch; the invasive detritus was stripped away.  A barrier was erected between the buildable portion of the property and an acre-plus of wetlands behind it.  A home rose on the site. 

Material from the digging of the basement, coupled with other fill, was used to form the open area around the house.  But the already rocky fill was continually compressed by trucks and cranes.  Over the winter, it hardened into something with the consistency of concrete. Our attempts to dig even small holes were exercises in frustration.  What was needed was a major-league do-over.  Hence Scott Dolan and his armada of yellow Caterpillar equipment. 

... replacing it with screened loam. 
Note the laser depth measurement tool

It takes a very good landscaper to accept a project like ours, much less to do it with enthusiasm.  For somebody in the business, the real money in landscaping is in creating extravagant ‘hardscapes’ that dazzle visitors and homeowners alike and, after that, in the continuing maintenance of lawns and shrubs.  Our project, on the other hand, was a one-time, low-margin deal.  But it was a monumental undertaking:  scrape out the top eighteen inches of crud on those 20,000 square feet, haul it away, and replace it with a like amount of screened loam. 

* * * * *

At the same time, we prepped for
the installation of a sidewalk...

Though the work was being done by Scott’s crew, I was on hand that first morning to rescue large rocks for the to-be-built stone wall, darting in between each scoop to pick up ones of a usable size and shape.  Each scoop revealed what we already suspected: beneath the ‘builder’s crud’ on the surface of our new home’s land was more crud.  The mix was more than 50% rock to soil.

What was interesting, though, was that further down – below the original grade – was a mixture of soil and river gravel.  At one time, our property had likely been part of a river bed.  Once the crud was gone, we would have great drainage.

We also created
a drainage network

Using laser-guided measuring tools, backhoes removed those useless top eighteen inches.  A lineup of trucks hauled it away to a construction project in another town that needed fill (just as much of our ‘crud’ had its origins from another excavation).

Even as the digging-out process continued in the front of the property, trucks began bringing in screened loam to the back.  Our loam came from a farm in a nearby town that has been sold and will soon begin to sprout homes.  We spot checked the loam as it came in:  it was rock-free and rich in organics.  This was the beginning of a great garden.

We topped the newly installed loam
with several inches of dark brown mulch

It took three days to replace those top eighteen inches.  A portion of that third day was devoted to making the property ready for a sidewalk, a patio, and a proper porous stone driveway (there will be no asphalt on the site).  A re-processed concrete material forms the base of the patio and sidewalk.  It was tamped into a hard-pack surface.  At dusk on Friday, Scott’s part of the job was done.

Now, all we have to do is
add several thousand plants...

Betty’s and my part of the job was just beginning.  On Saturday morning, a massive truck delivered twenty cubic yards of dark brown mulch.  As this is written we are still spreading it over the new loam.  The purpose is to prevent the soil from blowing and to retain the soil's moisture.  Twenty yards will not be sufficient to cover all the areas.

Also on Saturday, we went window shopping (or its open-air equivalent) for stone for the sidewalk and patio.  I had gone into the process with a fairly narrow view of what would be acceptable for those two elements of our hardscape.  My eyes were opened to a world of possibilities, including cleft Pennsylvania fieldstone, Sekonnet round stone, and a host of names that overwhelmed me with new choices.  All I can say is that ‘bluestone’ has a lot of competition.

On Sunday, we started shopping for trees and shrubs.  But that’s another story. 

Deconstructing a Vision

What took three and a half days and two dozen people to build was dismantled in a few hours this morning. Paul Miskovsky’s exhibit at the Rhode Island Flower Show (and, for that matter, each the other entries) was reduced to a gigantic pile of dark brown mulch by a small crew and some large pieces of equipment.
A flower show exhibit is a transitory dream. It is intended to exist for a few days, then to disappear, leaving only a pleasant memory of what was. If it is executed properly, a landscape exhibit will please almost everyone who passes by it. Many will pick up the brochure outlining the exhibitor’s credentials. Some will linger, hoping to speak with the garden’s creator. And a few will be sufficiently moved by the landscaper’s vision to say, ‘let’s talk…’.

Landscaping is Paul Miskovsky’s livelihood. Shows such as the just-concluded Rhode Island Flower Show and the upcoming Boston Flower & Garden Show are an important facet of his business. No one wakes up one morning and decides that they ‘need’ to scrape their property bare, re-contour the land and install a series of garden rooms. Instead, they visit friends’ homes and see things they like or they go to shows and get stopped in their tracks by a stunning exhibit. Miskovsky’s vision was indeed capable of causing jaded flower show-goers to backtrack, circle the exhibit and begin talking excitedly to one another. (It took the blue ribbon for best large landscape at the show.)

When Betty and I arrived at the show late Sunday afternoon, we found Paul in discussion with a couple whose appearance and demeanor intimated that, if they elected to start a landscape renovation, it would be a serious undertaking. We gave Paul a wide berth until his conversation with the couple ended with a smile and a firm handshake. It was, I hope and expect, a ritual that occurred many times over the show’s four-day run.

When I arrived this morning at 9 a.m., the garden still looked as it had the day before. But in less than an hour we had stripped the exhibit of more than a hundred campanula, twelve dozen painted ferns, and ten dozen tulips. The campanula, still in glorious full bloom of blue and white bells, were unceremoniously sheared of their tops and placed in boxes. They and the ferns will go into greenhouses either for clients or for the Boston Flower & Garden Show in March.

Also in that hour the stunning tropicals that had enlivened the two patio scenes were placed into climate-controlled trucks to return to the greenhouses where they have wintered.

Next came the grasses, ground covers and small shrubs. It had taken nearly a day to install them. It took less than an hour to remove them and load them in racks on one of Paul’s large trucks. Before noon, the exhibit looked like the accompanying photo - stripped of everything but its trees and hardscape. We took a break for pizza, then tackled the task of tying up the branches of trees so that they could lay flat in enclosed trucks. Paul’s full-time crew were handed the assignment of pulling out the stone wall that encircled one patio and the dozens of bluestone slabs that comprised the two seating areas.

The first section of kickboard came down around 1 p.m. Paul, manning one of his beloved Bobcats, rode over hills of mulch to begin retrieving more than a dozen trees located around the 900 square foot garden. Before 2 p.m., it was all done. The garden sprang from a pile of mulch last Sunday; eight days later, it returned to that same mulch, now enriched with some fifty bags of compost used to top-dress the exhibit.

Larry LeCain, a fellow volunteer, told me as we moved rocks that it seemed sad to see the garden come to an end. I respectfully disagreed. Paul’s exhibit was a kind of Brigadoon experience; an ephemeral event that was made all the more special because it was so deliberately transient. It was created to provide enjoyment for 35,000 people in the middle of a bleak season. For a few hours, those people could shed their winter coats and smell spring. Even tough New Englanders deserve that kind of a break. It was a pleasure to be a small part of helping to provide it.

Flower Show Fever

It was about noon yesterday afternoon that I realized I’m getting too old for this stuff. But then Paul yelled over to me and asked if I could give a hand pulling out a birch tree by its root ball. Of course I helped. And then I pulled out two more birches. After that, I moved rocks for an hour.

At least I got a neat tee shirt and some great pizza for my efforts. Oh, and a top-drawer horticultural design seminar.

The Boston Flower & Garden Show you’ll see walking through the Seaport World Trade Center next month will be the product of a lot of very talented people channeling their knowledge of horticulture and landscape design into a few hundred square feet of eye-pleasing color and form. Assisting that talent are the efforts of several hundred people who, over the course of three or four days, physically assemble those exhibits under the watchful eye of the designer.

For the past four years, I’ve been part of crews that help build exhibits. My aching back and I are here to tell you that what looks so effortless when you admire a flower show from the aisles is anything but. It starts with a literal mountain of mulch and a stone or wooden frame (called a kickboard) that holds the mulch in place. Then, in go trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, rocks, water and whatever else the exhibit’s designer chooses to throw in.

Some exhibits are carefully designed months in advance with every tulip pre-positioned. But the best exhibits, in my opinion, are just ideas in the mind of the designer until he or she arrives at the flower show site with truckloads of plants. Designers start in December or January with a greenhouse full of material to be forced into leaf or bloom. In the week or so before the material is to be moved, the exhibitor goes through the greenhouse, looking to see which plants performed best. Those plants get loaded onto a heated truck and become the focal points of the exhibit. They’re augmented by hundreds of annuals and perennials supplied by professional growers.

Landscaper Paul Miskovsky has exhibits this year at both the Rhode Island Flower Show, where I worked this week, and at the Boston Flower & Garden Show in March. He invites in friends, Master Gardeners, landscape students and even customers to help with the ‘build’, as the crash three- or four-day construction event is called. Along the way, he provides, in addition to the tee shirts and pizza, a horticultural education.

Paul also reserves the right to change his mind about things as the build progresses. When they were in the greenhouse, those three clump birches looked like they’d be in full leaf by the time the show opened. They were installed on the first day on the forks of a Bobcat. As things went in around them, their scant leaf coverage began to annoy Paul. Yesterday, the annoyance level reached full boil and the birches were yanked out by their two-hundred-pound root balls… by hand in order not to disturb completed parts of the exhibit In their place went in six huge pots of bamboo. The graceful bamboo in turn caused a dozen leucothoe to be rearranged which meant half a dozen hosta were left homeless awaiting reassignment.

At 900 square feet, Paul’s ‘palette’ in Rhode Island show is large by that show’s standard. For the Boston Flower and Garden Show, he expands to 1,080 square feet - 20% more space. He’ll also oversee the building of a 600 square foot exhibit for the Heritage Museum and Gardens and a 240 square foot parcel for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

If I can find a few free hours, I’ll pitch in building the Boston exhibit. Most of my time, however, is already spoken for. But more about that later.

The Rule of Three

Over the decade we have lived in our current home, we have transformed what was once two acres of woods with a too-large lawn into what we think is an attractive series of interconnected gardens: shrub beds, perennial borders, xeric beds and specimen trees – and a lot less lawn. I have willingly contributed the labor while my wife, the Master Gardener, provided the intelligence and design prowess.

But there comes a point in a garden’s evolution when the place is, well, full. For a period of time after that, new plants can be introduced by filling in gaps. Inevitably, however, you run out of space and, short of cutting down more trees to open up new territory, you have to learn to live within your garden footprint.

We reached the saturation point about three years ago. But nothing has diminished my wife’s interest in adding new specimens. A trip to a nursery ‘just to look around’ inevitably results in something up coming home with us. When those new shrubs or trees or perennials arrive at out home, there begins a game of musical chairs that I have come to think of as ‘the Rule of Three’.

The Rule of Three works like this: my wife falls in love with a new cultivar of Itea virginica ‘Little Henry’. ‘Little Henry’ is swaddled in burlap and comes home with us. My wife notes that ‘Little Henry’ is an ideal candidate for the shrub bed out in front of our property because it wants lots of sun, can tolerate a fairly dry area, and has colorful fall foliage that just might serve as an inspiration to our neighbors to get rid of their invasive burning bush.

Unfortunately, there’s a problem. Our shrub bed already contains more than twenty specimens. She begins walking the bed. She views the bed from multiple angles. Finally, she makes a determination: the Baptisia (false indigo to the rest of us) has to go. It never looked good there and it didn’t bloom this year until late July and then only for a few weeks.

Thus, we have the first hole. Out goes the Baptisia and in goes ‘Little Henry’.

But that’s too easy a solution. There’s nothing wrong with the Baptisia, it just wasn’t up to snuff for such a prominent locale. A home needs to be found for this misplaced plant. Once again, the entire garden is paced and viewed from multiple angles. Like ‘Little Henry’, the Baptisia also wants lots of sun and is tolerant of a dry spot. There are a limited number of such locales on our property.

It just so happens there is such an area in our xeric garden, created two years ago from what was once the strip of grass between the sidewalk and street. There is even a lovely spot for it just by the mailbox. The Baptisia would look perfect there. Unfortunately, that spot is currently occupied by a square foot or so of Hypericum calycinum, a ground cover with an attractive yellow flower that is, alas, effectively invisible from the street.

And so we have the second hole. Out goes Hypericum, to be replaced by the displaced Baptisia.

By now, you’re wondering if this plant version of musical chairs is going to go on infinitely. It could, but it turns out that Hypericum (sometimes called ‘Aaron’s Beard’) was a sort of failed experiment. My wife planted it (it was a gift from a fellow gardener) but never grew to love it.

But in our garden, things never get thrown away (except Rudbeckia, which goes straight into the mulch pile). And so a third hole is dug. This one is in the transplant bed, an area where sick plants go to get healthy and unwanted plants go to be potted up for the annual plant sale held by our local garden club. Hypericum will rest there until early May, when it goes to a new, more appreciative home.

That’s the ‘Rule of Three’: the introduction of any one, new plant requires the digging of three holes.

There is a corollary to the ‘Rule of Three’. I call it the ‘Rule of the Rock’ and it states that any perennial, tree or shrub put into a previously unplanted area will require the removal of a rock. Usually a big one. There is a handsome stone wall out in front of our property that wasn’t there when we moved in. Some of the biggest rocks in that wall were the result of putting in tiny hostas that ‘had’ to go in a certain area.

Now, you can only imagine what happens half a dozen new plants are brought in at once…