Autumn

This first day of autumn the tall trees surrounding the garden cast deep shadows. A morning walk is a study in dark and light, a good time for looking about. It's virtually impossible to capture these extremes of lighting in photographs, but just sitting in the shade looking out into the sunlit garden can be quite pleasant, as can strolling through dappled shade.The contrast of dark and light is what makes the garden special at this time of day. So this is the compromise--slightly overexposed photos with bleached colors. You, dear reader, will have to use your imagination.

Here, the first picture shows the space and broad view of the garden. This is hard to do successfully, as you've probably noticed if you spend much time reading garden blogs. Most only give you small pictures of single plantings, or limited vignettes, rarely the big picture.So take a look at the dramatic contrast between light and dark. Yes, I'm striving for a kind of drama in the garden, a stage set with creative lighting (supplied by the sun alone) and theatrical scrims made of vegetable matter.

Landscape or garden? Both, really. These views show the lay of the land, or rather the undulations of the vegetative growth of this season, as the perennials have reached their peak and begun the time of slow decline, losing chlorophyll, just starting to show their flashes of color. We aren't there yet, but the fading greens and shift toward yellow, red and gold is beginning to be apparent.

It's a good time, too, to see how shapes work in the landscape. The spear-like foliage in the foreground below starts a rhythm echoed by the finer grasses behind, the Arborvitae, and in the distance the tall Junipers and a single Blue spruce. Next year I'll add more Japanese and Siberian irises, which hold their form well, and late, and give thought to ways to repeat these patterns across the garden.

As has been done here, in the offset line of Arborvitae ...

Hard to tell in the view below, but the bank rising to the house remains a problem, still unfinished after five years. The right end in almost full sun is planted mainly with Miscanthus gracillimus (some are the real thing; others seed-grown unknowns sold as gracillimus; caveat emptor!), which have done well and make a pleasing cloud-like picture. The opposite end, in the dry shade of three large sycamores immediately adjacent to the house, is less amenable to easy solutions. I want a mass of hydrangeas, and will continue to attempt that next year. A rainy spring and summer would help.Those I've put in are languishing.

For late color and longer interest, I've added several Lespedezas; these are in their first year, and I expect them to grow much larger and flower more profusely in years to come. I'll probably add one or two more, scattered among the Miscanthus, to get a bank of September color. I stole this plant idea from Bruce's garden at Paxson Hill Farm (thanks, Bruce) and from a magnificent specimen at Chanticleer.

Here they make a channel of color running up to the four Adirondack chairs on the terrace.

Details out in the garden--here, Sanguisorbas on the long path across the garden ... 

 ... Pycnanthemum muticum (Mountain mint) in its late summer silver with Arborvitae ...

Vernonia altissima 'Jonesboro Giant' in flower (though not as tall as last year because of drought), Rudbeckia maxima seed heads and foliage at its feet, and just a glimpse of Miscanthus purpurescens on the left ...

Here the Miscanthus purpurescens with species Veronicastrum  and increasingly  ubiquitous Rudbeckia maxima (it's become a theme plant) ...

Massed Miscanthus 'Silberfeder' and Pycnanthemum muticum in shade on the left, and on the right the new back area under development. The newly planted Hornbeam hedge will form a right angle behind the bench in the distance ...

... and that same planting of Miscanthus 'Silberfeder', Pycnanthemum muticum, and Petasites seen from the back of the garden, looking in the direction of the house (which is obscured by the plants) ...

After several tries, asters are establishing. I want more, and have several in a holding bed beside the house. If we have a break in the heat, I'll plant them out in the garden later in the fall ...

That same community of Miscanthus purpurescens shown above, here from the opposite side, where it adjoins the newly paved sitting area; this is one of my favorite grasses. I hope to find a way to darken the concrete pavers and gravel quickly, perhaps using a nutrient solution to encourage algae growth in the cooling days of fall. Or maybe I'll just smear them with mud over winter.

Another Miscanthus purpurescens surrounded by asters and Pycnanthemum muticum ...

... and a second view in the same direction, showing the circle of red walnut logs marking the eastern limit of the garden ...

... a fortuitous combination of Pycnanthemum and Siberian iris ...

... and Calico aster (Aster longifolius), a native, which grows everywhere I don't pull it out ...

... a view from the bench, which was shown above, toward the circle of logs ... more hydrangeas are going in here. So far 'Limelight' appears to be the most successful in this difficult area. The view of the unattractive fence in the back left will be blocked by Japanese Fantail willow (Salix sachalinensis 'Sekka') and Miscanthus giganteus.

Looking back into the garden from the easternmost path--asters, Miscanthus purpurescens again, Rudbeckia maxima, drying Joe Pye Weed, bracken ... from this direction, the plants are backlit, glowing with refracted light of the sun.

Marc Rosenquist's sculpture surrounded by various asters, Eupatorium coelestinum, Chelone 'Hot Lips' and big leaved Rudbeckia maxima, Silphium perfoliatum, and Inula 'Sonnenspeer' in the background, all backlit by sunlight in a striking way.

Here the colors of fall have really begun. Two bunches of Panicum 'Shenandoah', another of my favorites, showing streaks of red, to either side of a Viburnum plicatum (a small tree I cut down when we cleared the land; now I recognize its beauty and utility as it's coming back). The red plant at the front is Seedbox (Ludwigia alternatolia), a native I'm encouraging wherever it chooses to grow.

Behind in the darkening shadows are many Filipendula rubra 'Venusta' in their subtle autumn colors and spires of (you should have guessed it) Rudbeckia maxima.

So the decrescendo of summer, as the flowers lessen and colors fade, becomes a crescendo to an autumn to be closely watched, if I can judge from the past three years. I have to remember this was a summer of severe drought. I don't know what will happen. The uncertainty of the garden year remains, and that's not bad.

Garden Diary: Musings on memory, pleasure and structure

Going down into the garden at this time of year is like becoming small again, like a child. I've never been able to say why I admire large plants, why I delight in being surrounded by towering grasses and perennials, but I think this pleasure comes from childhood memories - memories of hiding in banks of blossoming vetch in the vacant lot next door, the privacy and solitude of a secret room inside a colony of wild plum bushes.

A Simple Love of Plants
The candelabra-like spent flower heads of Prairie Dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) rising to ten and twelve feet in the photos above and below add a sense of magic, suspended as they are, like vegetable jewels, on amazingly strong stems above the surrounding plantings, dancing entwined with tall black-beaked, seed-heavy rods of Rudbeckia maxima. (Click on the photos to see detail.)

This is the same pleasure most gardeners find in plants, a simple passion for plants, a sensuous response to THE PLANT. Period. It has little to do with aesthetics of the garden as a whole.

Private Meanings
On another level, appreciation of a planting can be a door to a personal world of private meaning. The plants in the next photo, delicately accented by flowering panicles of Molinia 'Transparent', can be seen as metaphor; they bring to my mind the quantum foam conceived by physicists, where matter and energy dance at some subatomic level, matter popping into and out of existence, changing into energy and back to matter eternally, a bubbling brew where we confront the hard edge of existence, being and non-being.

Analogy as a Way of Seeing and Understanding
Musical analogy is another pleasing way to see a garden - think variations on a theme - the infinite variety of plant shapes, textures, leaf forms, movements, rhythmic changes over time - revealing similarities and differences in form, bearing, or other attributes. Below, mounds of Miscanthus 'Silberfeder', their ribbon-like foliage echoed in altered form by the tall wavy arms of the Japanese Fantail Willows (Salix sachalinensis 'Sekka') behind them, contrast with the big, low leaves of the Petasites at their base (the bass viol in this musical analogy?) ... in late summer the dusty silver of Mountain Mint (Pycnantheum muticum) flowing through it all like the sparkling high notes of a piccolo.

What is Structure in a Naturalistic Garden?
Below, a simple garden path defines the edge of the open space and of the garden, the boundary - a reminder of the garden's structure, largely invisible at this time of peak growth. Naturalistic as the garden is, even approaching wildness, particularly to more traditional gardeners, this is a structured space. The structure takes its impetus from the river delta-like drainage flow across the garden, from the linear pond at the entrance into the open garden, from the native stone walls emulating ancient stone rows built here in previous centuries, and from the circular clearing in the woods that defines the space of the cultivated garden - and from the plants themselves, placed to reflect similarities in form and structure, planted to create drifts, to create a visual sense of movement, even to tell a story.

While it's possible to enjoy the plants alone, if the whole isn't more than the sum of its parts, a garden is little more than a private collection of perennials, shrubs and trees. Without structure, it could just as well be the plant growing-on part of a nursery. Structure holds it all, helps give it meaning, and evokes an intellectual pleasure - each part fitting into a perceived whole. Piet Oudolf's gardens, for example, use blocks of single species to create structure, strategically placed shrubs and topiary to manipulate the sense of depth, hedges to hold the looseness of the naturalistic structure.

Open space, the void that makes possible the view through and across the garden, given emphasis by the red circle of logs at the vanishing point in the photo below, is intrinsic to its structure - open space bounded by the wall of surrounding wood, but with occasional glimpses into corridor views opened by tree felling, or simply views into the interstices between the trees (an effect much more pronounced in winter when the leaves have fallen). And above it all the dome of sky opens the garden to the universe, yet is circumscribed by the circle of trees that enclose the space, too closely I think. Closed openness, like a nest.

Pleasure in Detail
As I walk through the garden, likeness and difference, similarity and contrast return my eye to the material aspects of the garden: a sanguisorba given by a fellow gardener, Mirjam Farkas, so different in structure from the flowering Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium purpureum) behind it, yet so similar in color, brings to mind another reason for gardening, many as they are - in this case the pleasure of differentiating between similar and dissimilar things, something we observe in small children playing with shaped objects ...

... or simply delighting in the detail of small things.

Or taking pleasure in durable, sturdy form as with this Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula rubra 'Venusta'), still giving a good show two months after its blossoming time in spite of a summer of heavy rain.

Distance, Space, Large Scale Structure
Thick as the garden is planted, the architecture of the space reveals itself only over distance. The vertical cedar trunks 300 feet across from the viewpoint below provide a reference point, making it possible to "see" the intervening space.

Moving to the left, the distant framework stays the same, while the foreground changes, showing different plant forms and plant combinations. Here panicums, irises, a lone cimicifuga (actea), Silphium perfoliatum, Arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), Miscanthus giganteus on the right.

Moving left, looking across the pond (hardly visible), petasites, cattails (typha), Sweet Bay Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana), river birch in the mid-distance, floppy flowering Miscanthus 'Silberfeder' at the far side.

Transient Structure of Plants
And last, a closer view, taken with a small aperture to gain maximum depth of field, bringing multiple layers of the scene into focus. This foreground, the plants themselves, are transient structure, changing from hour to hour, day to day, season to season - the abstract and concrete in interplay, visible and invisible structure making the garden.


More Questions
In the end, this post raises more questions than it answers. Plenty of room for exploration of the concept of structure, especially in naturalistic gardening, remains. The role of memory as a starting point and source of pleasure is clearer. What gives pleasure is, of course, a highly subjective thing. I know from personal experience that many people are uncomfortable, if not frightened, in my garden, in most cases I think because they are intimidated by plants larger than themselves. But I'm not trying to start a movement.

Groundcovers: lessons from Italy

In my never ending quest to find groundcover solutions to "hands-free" garden maintenance (I know, no such thing), I've been browsing through photos of groundcovering wildflowers and grasses I saw in Italy a few years ago. Looking forward to spring in western New Jersey, there may be lessons - certainly not ideas for specific plants - but observable growth habits, mixtures of forms and colors, that I can take from the Italian countryside.

I took these photos in late April of 2003 on a roadside just below Todi in Umbria. Previously we had always traveled to Italy in the fall, so this was my first experience of the Italian spring. I was amazed to find so many plants well adapted to the stressful environment of a busy roadside. Above and below is an unidentified Hawksbit (Leontodon). Notice the roadside gravel in the image below. This plant is growing only a foot or so from the traffic.


A striking carpet of grasses and a plant I can't identify (below). I can imagine this matrix of chaos and geometry in the foreground of a Renaissance tapestry or painting.


Italian bugloss (Anchusa azurea, I think), also right beside the road...


and a closeup showing more of the intense blue ...


Corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas) growing out in the field ...


and beside the road with short, early grasses ...


I'm guessing this is a sanguisorba, but you tell me ...


All of this was adjacent to Tiber River Park ...


We couldn't see the Tiber. This was the view.


I imagine these matrices of plants were transient. It would be revealing to see what plants - if any - were growing along this roadside after the hot, dry summer. Though climate change hasn't yet brought Mediterranean summers to western New Jersey, I'm sure I'll need to consider a succession of cool and hot weather plants to get a weed suppressing cover through the entire growing season.