Hollow Garden

The Bluebird of Happiness just visited. He pecked on the window and retreated to the witch-hazel outside my office window, framed perfectly by the grey bark and dusky red flowers of Hamamelis x ‘Diane’ . He sat still for me to take his picture. Pecking on the back window now.

One thinks of Chuck Bukowski’s poem ~ There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out. . . . Just like I feel after this long winter.

Trees in the hollow are still bare, but Forsythia has been in bloom for several weeks now, the bright gold wands just beginning to fade, and the daffodils are peaking. Scorned by native plant lovers and sustainability soldiers, Forsythia will always be a welcome icon of Spring to me and performs at least the humble environmental service of sheltering myriad birds and generations of rabbits.

We are having a lovely long daffodil season, started off last month with the miniature cheery ‘Tete-a-Tete’, a bright yellow ideal for marking pathways and edges, through mid-season King Alfred types with their iconic screaming yellow trumpets, nicely toned down with ‘Ice Follies’, a white and pale yellow large-cup variety with a similar bold substance, excellent for cutting.

‘Ice Follies’

Fragrant Triandrus types like ‘Thalia’ and the Tazetta ‘Geranium’ fill a room with their perfume. The season winds down with a variety of late-bloomers: ‘Segovia’, ‘Hawera’, ‘Sun Disc’ and the latest of all, old “Twin Sisters” (N. x biflorus, a wild hybrid of N. poeticus var. recurvus and N. tazetta.)

I bring out Brent and Becky Heath’s indispensable Daffodils for American Gardens each Spring and refresh my memory.

Now is also the time for fresh flower salads with the violets and dandelions beginning to bloom (tender young leaves are great sources of Vitamin C and calcium); redbud blossoms, like little pink and white peas, are also good. Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s Gather Ye Wild Things is a great inspiration.

Common Violet

Spring keeps pecking at our hearts until we let it in.

It’s an ill wind that does no good and the storms of January along with the demise of our beetle-doomed Ash have opened up the east meadow. Our new horizon will make for a sunnier microclimate and serves as a welcome symbol of a new beginning after this dreadful winter.

Back-to-back snowstorms ripped branches from the old walnuts and downed the Sassafrass grove at the end of the meadow walk. We lost power for a week and learned how fragile the grid really is. County roads are lined with debris that rivals the damage of the Derecho ten years ago and I know I’m not the only one who wants to put the winter of ’22 behind me.

The old Lenten Roses (Helleborus orientalis) from the University bravely endured being smothered in ice and have burst forth with luscious mauve blooms. Other seedlings have greenish-white blossoms. Unlike many of the newer hybrids, these old ones sport large handsome foliage that serves as an evergreen groundcover when not in bloom. They seed prolifically and make a charming cut flower.

It’s heartening to know that one can still learn new plants. I discovered the Japanese Cornel Dogwood (Cornus offcianalis) growing along steps at the International Student Center at the University. Its bright red drupes were striking during winter. It’s very similar to the Corneliancherry (C. mas) and indeed has the same dirty gold colored flowers in spring, but the bark is attractively mottled much like that of the Kousa Dogwood. It has made a nice specimen on the bureau below our beloved Peter Boyers still life.

Got back to the hollow from NYC a week ago. We hopped the train right up ~ AmTrack out of Charlottesville ~  because we were drawn like a magnet to the “Companions in Solitude” exhibit at the Met that included a 12th century series of Chinese paintings called “The Garden of the Inept Administrator” which was meant to illustrate “a safe haven for the pursuit of spiritual cultivation alone or elegant conversation together.”

Sounds like the hollow to me.

Poet’s Laurel and Lenten Rose

Our little patch of Poet’s Laurel/Danaae racemosa continues to inhabit the  eastern corner by the chimney but does not seem to spread. It gets no special care. Makes a nice evergreen groundcover with the Lenten Rose/Helleborus orientalis. There are many modern hybrids of the Hellebore like the ubiquitous ‘Pine Knot Strain’, but this UVA seedling is quite vigorous and handsome. Both plants are of Asian origin and would make a nice combo with Pieris japonica. In the dead of winter one longs for green.

Seed-heads on High Line

Sycamores saw us up to the city and back. Such a lovely tree.

In the city, pollarded on the streets

and gracefully reaching for light in parks and courtyards.

In the hollow, framing the sky of home.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

Turk’s Cap gourd and lichen beard on hollow bear

The hollow continues to be a paradise of woodland, meadows, fields and garden and our luck is still holding, but the world and time intrude with the continuing pandemic in the outside world (which variant are we on now?). Still we are thankful.

November through December is prime time for bulbs. Many people rush to get them in the ground in October, but by now the earth is nicely chilled – first frost date wasn’t until November 2 – and it’s a lovely task for sunny afternoons. I always tell my clients, get them in the ground before the new year and you’ll be okay and if there are still any left over after that, get them in the ground anyway!

This fall we’re planting the lovely white Narcissus ‘Thalia’, a Triandus type (several pendant flowers per stem, faintly fragrant) , and the Summer Snowflake, Leucojum, both of which we divided in late spring.

Narcissus ‘Thalia’

If you want to extend bulb plantings you already have, dig up a patch next year when the foliage has yellowed (indicating all nutrients have been absorbed), knock off as much soil as you can and let them dry over  summer in a shady place. Ours sit on a shelf  in the potting shed spread out in a single layer in a plastic nursery flat.

When planting, discard any bulbs that are soft or mildewed. Aim for 6″ deep, but I’ve found over the years bulbs will work their way downward to their proper depth if given half a chance (as will we all). Don’t worry about watering.

Leucojum aestivum/Giant Snowflake

Late fall is also the time when our native witchhazel, Hamamelis virginiana, lights up the woodland edges with her pale gold, scenting the air with a faint astringency. Asian witchhazels bloom in spring (showy yellow ‘Arnold’s Promise’ and cherry pink ‘Diane’ are favorites), but the surprise of autumn bloom, not afraid of winter, always cheers me.

Hamamelis virginiana/Virginia witchhazel

Can’t end without mentioning two books that have stood me in good stead over the past year:

I keep The Cloudspotter’s Guide, by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, ready to hand as I continue to learn about the clouds. You will never look at the sky the same way again. https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/shop/the-cloudspotters-guide/

Passalong Plants, by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing, is a marvelous compendium of old-fashioned garden staples with great photos and wonderful stories by the authors of the people they’ve met who pass them along. https://felderrushing.blog/category/passalong-plants/

We spent the autumn equinox at the Outer Banks and when we returned, the hollow had tilted into fall, always our favorite time of year. This year makes 36 since I came here as a bride.

The woodland trees haven’t really begun to turn yet except for the dogwoods but color abounds in berries and late flowers. Japanese beautyberry, Callicarpa dichotoma, sprays waterfalls of purple through the mixed border. I confess I prefer it to the native C. americana, variously known as French mulberry or Indian poke, because of the former’s more refined habit. The latter has larger berries, but with much coarser leaves and a heavier blotchier form. Both feed the birds, especially in late winter when I see mockingbirds eating the shriveled raisin-like fruits. Earlier in the season, catbirds visit.

Up until last week the delightful Sternbergia lutea (aka winter daffodil, fall crocus, yellow amaryllis) bloomed for over a month under our poor doomed ash which we will have removed this spring before it totally succumbs to the dreaded emerald ash borer. Elizabeth Lawrence in her classic The Little Bulbs describes them as “like crocuses in form, and like buttercups in color and substance” and you can’t say better than that.

Cooler nights bring out the best in the nasturtiums. This year I grew “Empress of India” and “Old-fashioned Tawny” from John Scheepers along with the usual “Double Gleam Mix”. Empress is quite lovely with dark green leaves and deep red flowers and the Tawny made a nice combination with the orange Zinnia angustifolia.

Nasturtium ‘Old Fashioned Tawny’

Nasturtium ‘Empress of India’

Finally, “the last rose of summer”, which really turns out to be first of autumn, is a welcome souvenir. ‘Don Juan’, a fragrant red climbing or pillar type, has offered enough blooms to make small fragrant bouquets or bud vases and the climbing tea ‘Sombreuil’ , also fragrant, made a poignant vignette with a stray jackmanii clematis bloom.

I remember when our first day of frost was October 15, but those days are long gone. I’m glad the longer warmth of our current climate doesn’t seem to inhibit the rich colors we love so much this time of year. It only seems to prolong the beauty and richness as we ripen with the years.

When the Verbesina blooms in August I feel like the denizens of Cold Comfort Farm when the infamous “sukevine” strew its lush flowers over that fraught landscape.

Verbesina alternifolila, a native to wooded slopes, open woodlands and riverbanks, is also called yellow ironweed and indeed is very similar in size and habit, but the former wields  a piercing lemon yellow cluster of rayed flowers rather than Vernonia’s dark purple-blue tufts. When yellow swallowtails fall upon the Verbesina, they disappear up to their black lace.

Here in the hollow we continue our surreal existence in Paradise. Somehow in our little fold of the hills, we have so far been sheltered from extreme weather and the ills that seem to beset the outside world.

During the day butterflies and hummingbirds waft through the garden in a Disneyesque fashion and bunnies nibble the green grass in the evening light after the old devil sun has gone down. Creeks and rivers remain low even after copious thunderstorms that accompany day after day of 90 plus degrees. The Earth wafts out her scent in humid breaths on the still air.

An unexpected success has been my random front cottage garden bed which has somehow morphed into a successful white garden – bright in the night with moths. It’s proved low-maintenance and, with a bit of extra care in the beginning, relatively drought resistant.

The star is an old sun-resistant Hosta ‘Royal Standard’ which I faithfully protect with organic deer repellent. It takes up a good 4-5 feet with pale yellowish green leaves and nine graceful wands of lavender-tinged white bells that bees, butterflies and hummingbirds disappear into on sunny afternoons. Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ (which also needs deer repellent) gives a silvery green substance, its broccoli-like florets turning hints of pink and burgundy into fall.

But it’s the annuals that really light up the bed and fortunately they’re both proving to be reliable re-seeders. White Cleome ‘Helen Campbell’  – 3-4’ pure white spider whiskers – and Nicotiana alata ‘Fragrant Cloud’ and N. sylvestris give a cool glow starting in early morning and into the late afternoon through evening. The old-fashioned flowering tobaccos have the added attraction of their heavy sweet scent.

Although not white, 4 O’Clocks, reseed readily into the classic magenta, spotted lavender and yellow hues, releasing their perfume only after sunset or on cloudy days. Perfect skirt for a porch.

I failed this year – I can’t bear to go into the details – at having a good swath of tall zinnias like Cut and Come Again, State Fair and the giant Dahlia types, but was able to manage the narrow leaved bushy Zinnia angustifolia ‘White Star’ which I have seen the butterflies visit. Its small daisy-like flowers give a clear bright white with yellow centers to the border edge.

The pollinators love the white garden and from morning into the soft dark night, bees, moths, butterflies, wasps, hummingbirds, flies, gold finches (they love the seed cones of the Black-eyed-Susans), dragonflies and myriad others make their way into the many-fashioned flowers. A deep purple blue Salvia has proved a hit with her tubular inflorescences.

To sit on the old glider, it’s cool white paint flaking on my arms, and watch the busy creatures zooming through the canyons of flowerscape is the high point of many a day and a blessing for which I am truly grateful.

Drumstick allium (A. sphaerocephalon) shoots off like a firework from a bed of Black-eyed-Susans for the Fourth of July weekend.

Despite a few beneficent showers we are still within the dusty embrace of the drought that has settled over most of the country. The soil is bone dry and any errant moisture is quickly sucked away. Thankfully, here in Virginia we are not in extremis like so much of the west, but the time for supplemental water has come.

Anything planted last spring or later needs regular watering during the months ahead. Don’t even think about planting anything until we get steady rains that replenish our water table. Young trees and shrubs as well as established specimens need good soakings every 10 days or so in the absence of an inch of rain. Small annuals or perennials from quart or pint pots need it every day until they establish new roots. Water at first signs of wilting, preferably before.

I’m often asked how long to water and the best answer is to time yourself watering each plant until its rootball is saturated and see how long that takes. Water slowly (do not blast with a sprayer like you’re washing a driveway) with a hose until the water pools at the base of the plant. Then let it sink in while you water another plant or two, then go back and keep watering until the pool takes longer and longer to soak in.

I prefer hand-watering by a sentient human being, but well-maintained soaker hoses will do especially if it’s a bed of all the same sized plants like a bank of shrubs or groundcover. It’s difficult to water a mixed planting – annuals, perennials with shrubs and trees together in the same bed – with automatic irritation (oops!) systems since small root systems can get too much while larger ones don’t get enough.

Random reports from the garden:

The rabbit has stopped grazing the gravel path larkspur; it’s quite bushy now.

I’m finding brushing off Japanese Beetles into soapy water much more efficient than crushing them with my fingernails. Get them fast before they fly away. They come in waves on the old single-flowered scarlet geraniums from Monticello that we have in the aqua pots at the front walk. They will also attack Zinnias, but if you check every day, you can stay ahead of them.

Malabar spinach seeds, soaked overnight and sowed directly into the soil, have sprouted in the heat after a week. This tropical annual vine will twine up an old tomato cage and produce succulent deep green leaves the perfect size for sandwiches and salads.

This has been a busy summer for home consults with my clients old and new. Aside from inept watering, one of the most common problems seems to be paying people to weed ornamental beds only to find they’ve uprooted all the Hellebores or merely pulled the tops off dandelions and dock. To these trusting souls I say NEVER LET ANYONE WEED UNSUPERVISED IN THE GARDEN. Paying someone does not absolve you from making sure they know what they’re doing as well as knowing what you want.

Take the time to walk through the area to be weeded and point out what you want gone and what you want kept. Have a pointing stick and don’t be afraid to use it. Explain the difference between shallow rooted chickweed that can be pulled by hand and tap rooted dandelions that need specialized tools to dig them out – asparagus knives, soil knives, trowels, narrow-bladed shovels. Make sure they have the proper tools. Do a final walk-through before you pay them.

As we celebrate the birth of our Republic, the garden reminds us of the virtues of persistence, faith and hope, not to mention the old Roman idea of the wheel of fortune to which everyone is strapped. For all our failings we are still trying to govern ourselves. We haven’t given up yet, just as we go on with the garden.

The hollow is in high clover.

Rabbits come out to graze in the late afternoons, sunlight setting through their satin ears. Zsa-Zsa has put a small dent in the population but without dogs for so many years now, a  colony has established itself in the old forsythia patch by the front walk as well as another clan across the creek.

I’ve only seen one inside the vegetable garden and the damage – so far – is so minimal I assume it’s only the one that makes its way through the make-shift rabbit wire along the base of the deer fence. It’s nibbled a bit of zinnia foliage that’s since grown back and lopped off the flowers from  a patch of larkspur growing at the edge of the gravel path and the raised bed, but nothing further than I can see except an initial tasting of nasturtium. Asparagus, tomatoes, peas and arugula, parsley, cilantro are untouched.

So far these have served as decoy plants to divert from the major zinnia rows and the line of larkspur I sowed along the base of the peas which are doing extremely well this season. Time will tell. Perhaps it’s working it’s way methodically through the garden.

Many homeowners and institutions still routinely kill clover in lawns (I won’t even get into dandelions!). I am appalled that the the deluded and toxic image of a perfect green chemlawn persists in peoples’ minds. Let’s all acquaint ourselves with the concept of “greenwashing” and the people and institutions who profit from it. Routine use of herbicide is a big money-maker. It’s actually a staple of many “restoration” projects.

Closer to home, in a landscape I do my best to steward faithfully, a quick clean-up does wonders. Dead-heading the peonies lets the handsome foliage of the classic ‘Festiva Maxima’ shine with the look of an evergreen hedge. ‘Sarah Bernhardt’, ‘Gardenia’ and ‘Shirley Temple’ followed, giving us nice mid-season bouquets. When the stalks turn tatty at the end of summer, cut to the ground and mulch with compost and other organics, always limiting depth to no more than an inch or so to allow spring buds to poke up.

Regale lilies and phlox follow the peonies.

Dead-heading the climbing rose ‘Sombrouille’, and shrubs ‘Don Juan’ and ‘Penny Lane’ is a pleasant task (I always think of Vita Sackville-West with her secateurs) and keeps them healthy and blooming. Cut to an outside leaflet of five. All I ever learned about roses was from Steven Scanniello (Climbing Roses, Anyone Can Grow Roses) during a magical season at Albemarle House in the old days.

The little dogwood at the end of the meadow has set fruit for the fall. It saw me through the pandemic winter into spring with a lovely veil of white and lures me into autumn with ripeness.

Late fall blew the hillsides bare and early winter sees the contours of the land etch themselves against the horizon as they did in spring.

I remember looking out my bedroom window last March at the stark woods, trying to absorb the idea of a pandemic encroaching upon the earth and reaching all the way down here to what has always been my refuge from the world.

I yearned to see life begin again. And it did. Spring, summer, fall and now winter have come to the hollow, bringing the world ever closer.

As I tramp through the broomsedge and deer tongue with the reassuring progression of the seasons, I see more closely the Christmas fern, witchhazel and alder that adorn the  edges of the hollow.

I have become inured to Chinese stilt grass and consider it part of the naturalized landscape, though I know this will appall the nativists.

The older I get, it’s all one to me.

Even lichens open up new galaxies. This is the slate seat of the bench at the end of the meadow path. A little dogwood has set bud for spring out there and reassures me each time I visit. I long to see it bloom.

Sometimes I feel like a princess in a fairy tale, a privileged, mythical creature, walking the boundaries of her gardens, sequestered from reality as in Tennyson’s lines:

On either side the river lie/Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky. . . .

Four gray walls, and four gray towers/Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle embowers/The Lady of Shallot.

Yet the work of the garden intrudes and thankfully keeps me from going completely round the bend.

Putting things to bed at the start of winter – burning last year’s brush pile, cutting the asparagus bed, the old dried marigolds and Thithonia – is satisfying work for one who does not care for the sustained patience and thoroughness required for weeding. I also love to burn it all up at the end.

But the birds are still eating the Tithonia seeds, so I’ll wait til late February and early March to burn them when we cut the meadows, leaving seeds and brush to nurture and shelter the birds and other wildlife over winter.

Though the woods are bare, the days are lengthening and we are set for spring.

                                                                Welcome, 2021!

The Verbesina is beginning to bloom, marking the beginning of the end of summer. Commonly called wingstem or yellow ironweed, Verbesina alternifolia is an aggressive native perennial fond of moist open woodlands, fields and riverbanks. It invaded the hollow some years ago, chasing the milkweed out of the east meadow and even encroaching on the house up against the foundation. It lurked outside the windows and stained the stucco where its leaves rubbed up against it.

When I first became aware of its ubiquitous presence, I mistakenly assumed that anything  capable of taking over existing plantings so quickly was non-native, an “alien invader” that I needed to battle. I made the fatal mistakes of not identifying the plant I was dealing with and assuming I could control the poison I was applying to my soil.

I began a campaign of eradication, being careful, I thought, by not spraying, but making individual cuts instead and swiping the stalks with a dab of Round-Up.

Somehow I managed to kill my only Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium maculatum), the one I used to look up through to see the swallowtails supping on the mauve globes of its flowers. I did not know I had only one and that it would never come back. No other patches along the creek or in the meadow have come to replace it. It was the 0nly one I had and I eradicated it through my ignorance.

Like a many-flowered sunflower, 6-8′ tall, the Verbesina towers over me now as I walk down the meadow path, spangling the creekside and giving a golden burnish to everything. It makes me think of the Sukevine, that pernicious fecund plant that cast its pall over Cold Comfort Farm. I have learned to love it. It taught me a hard lesson.

Our tendency toward regarding unwanted plants as the enemy and using whatever means necessary to remove them increasingly disturbs me. Many “good” gardeners I know think it’s okay to unleash their hatred and desire to destroy upon plants, that it’s a good outlet for those feelings. But I believe the urge to kill everything that doesn’t suit us to be a serpent in the garden and we should be careful before we start killing things we don’t understand.