Cold Climate Gardening

In 1878, Sherman Stowell sold to Elizabeth Brockett 30 acres of land which he had earlier purchased from George Jennings. I now live and garden with my family on some of that land, which Jennings or Stowell, or perhaps Ms. Brockett, had cleared of trees to make pasture. The forest is growing back, but it’s not the same forest. For one thing, several invasive plants are now growing here, everything from Rosa multiflora to Lonicera tartarica. And where are the trilliums?

Call me a romantic or call me ecologically correct, but I’d like to restore the native flora to my parcel of land, land that was sown to timothy and grazed by cows. How does one go about such a restoration? For starters, you have to know what plants were originally growing there. I’ve taken an informal survey of our property and catalogued all the natives I’ve found. I mention trilliums because they bloom along the roadside further down our country lane. What will it take to grow them here?

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Inspiring Ideas and Photos Take the Autumn Garden to the Next Level
I’d read several books by Piet Oudolf and by Wolfgang Oehme, but I never really “got” the fall garden until I read Fallscaping, by Nancy Ondra and Stephanie Cohen. Somehow those two American women made gardening in the fall accessible to me in a way that those two foreign-born men did not.

This doesn’t really surprise me, as I was impressed with how down-to-earth and practical The Perennial Gardener’s Design Primer, their first collaboration, was. They leave no class of plant behind in their quest to help you maximize the beauty from your fall garden, and provide you with dozens of design strategies. And if their words don’t convince you, the photographs by Rob Cardillo will totally wow you. Take a look at this combination of pink muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris) and Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii).

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I have long fantasized having a substantial arbor dripping with roses. Ignoring the fact that there aren’t too many repeat-blooming climbers hardy enough to take my climate, I realize with dismay that my most favored place to site an arbor turns out to be on a slope every time I leave my dream world and actually go take a look. Then there is the little matter of cost, and the issue of frost heaving, and with one thing and another I’ve never installed an arbor.

Over ten years ago, however, a winter storm bent a large branch of a large box elder tree in the Secret Garden. (Click on the photo at left to enlarge it.) You can see this box elder to the right in the background in my November entry for the Design Workshop. At the time, the path didn’t run this way. It made a direct beeline from the house to a location just in the foreground and then turned left down the path that you can see in this photo. I redirected the path as a result of this branch coming down, intending that it become a natural arch framing the path and drawing you in from the entrance.

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Perhaps it is a bit extreme to say “Paths make the garden,” but ever since I was a child paths have been an emotionally significant element to my enjoyment of a garden. I didn’t realize this until we moved to the rural 15 acres where we now live, when I struggled with how to turn acreage into a garden.

That a path exists gives a sense of safety. You know you won’t get lost or swallowed up as long as you can see the path. The fact that you can’t see where a path leads is what lends it the air of mystery, what gives you a little tingle of excitement.

Once I realized that paths were called for, the problem became one of creating and maintaining them. (I still feel abysmally ignorant about this subject, so if anyone knows of a book on trail maintenance, please let me know.)

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Long-time readers of my blog know that I have never shied away from being honest about the poor upkeep of my garden. Sometimes I find beauty in the weeds, and sometimes they depress me, but I’ve never pretended they didn’t exist. I agree with Colleen that fear of “not doing it right,” or “not being good enough,” can keep someone from starting to garden–it almost stopped me. So I am happy to make my contribution to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

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This looked spectacular earlier in May, but the narcissus were already done by the time Gardeners Bloom Day came around.

Those orange-cup daffodils were blooming at my neighbor’s, between her house and the brook, but too far away from the house to be noticed. I marked them and dug them up and got half for myself for the labor of digging and replanting her half. The hellebore came from Seneca …

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And what is retirement for, if not to make a few dreams come true? And what is a garden for, if not to satisfy the longings of your heart?

I have learned a lot from watching the garden of my best garden buddy, Bub, develop. The most satisfying garden, for the gardener and for others, is one that grows out of the desires of your heart. Bub’s garden is filled with hellebores, daylilies, and even trees that she grew from seed, musical instruments she can play, birds, chipmunks, and squirrels she can watch and feed, and a labyrinth through which she walks.

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