CHAPTER IV: ABUNDANCE

ABUNDANCE

They are the ones that remain handsome even after their peak bloom period. 

They are my best exhibitionists.  They gloat in their magnificence. 

They are the real treasures in the High Falls Garden.  They define the image



There are plants in the High Falls Garden that stand out as exceptional  performers and are statuesque par excellence throughout the year.  They are the ones that remain handsome even after their peak bloom period.  They are my best exhibitionists.  They take pride in their magnificence.  They are the real treasures in the High Falls Garden and define its image.  

Over the years, groupings of my favorites have surreptitiously multiplied over the land for two distinct reasons.  I wanted to have them wherever I could and they divide very easily.

There are many areas in my garden where the strongest of my favorite plants have found new quarters.  To name some, Macleaya cordata [Plume Poppy], Cimicifuga racemosa [bugbane, its smell apparently so unpleasant it even keeps bugs away] and Achilea filipendula.  They are the easiest to lift out of the ground, divide by the roots and plant them in their new locus.

The practice of division is a simple one.  Water the soil thoroughly to minimize resistance.  Determine the size of the roots you want to lift out and separate it from the parent plant with  a shovel, a pick axe, or what I have done with some reluctant grasses, an electric saw.  Lift the root clump gently out of the ground with a pitchfork, or jiggle it out of the dirt by rocking it with your hands.  Gently.  Keep as many roots intact as possible.

In real life terms, it feels like untangling a knot of twine, except that a knot of roots is far less complex.  By gently pulling and wringing, the roots will let go of each other.  By pulling the stems apart, the roots will follow.  If there is only one stem, often you will still be able to distinguish some side shoot.   Distinctly visible, if your eye is trained.

Go ahead.  Create a separate life.  Give it its own place and in no time it will establish itself as an independent entity.  Tiny as the new units may be, they are by no means any smaller than the potted perennials I buy at nurseries or through catalogues.  But viable they are.  You can see it yourself.  Enough root, stick it in the ground.

Main point to remember: Minimize exposure of the roots to air. Whenever I am not actually separating the plant or working on it otherwise, I make certain the roots are covered and not exposed to air and light. A moist newspaper or a wet cloth will do. You see, the root hairs, at the tip of the root, are easily injured. If you injure too many at the same time, if you are too rough, the plant may not be able to replace the root hairs quickly enough to accommodate the plant's needs after you have put it back in the soil. Plants eat food through these root hairs. Plants absorb food through water, liquefied food like an IV. The absorption of the food takes place by way of osmosis . That is, the concentration of minerals and gases in the root is higher than in the soil surrounding the root. The root attracts the lower concentrates in the soil and thus the plant absorbs food.

When you divide a plant or transport it, think of the root hairs. They are the thinnest parts of the roots, the most fragile and should be treated as such.

Plants eat food through these root hairs. Plants absorb food through water, liquefied food like an IV. The absorption of the food takes place by way of osmosis . That is, the concentration of minerals and gases in the root is higher than in the soil surrounding the root. The root attracts the lower concentrates in the soil and thus the plant absorbs food.

When you divide a plant or transport it, think of the root hairs. They are the thinnest parts of the roots, the most fragile and should be treated as such.

 

I find there are few things that rival the satisfaction I get from separating the intricate root system of a handsome perennial.

When I squat down in front of the parent plants, I sense I am multiplying my wealth.  Spreading beauty where I want it.  Creating multitudes of blooms and . I am getting a high Return On Investment and improve the economies of scale of my garden.

When is the best time to divide perennials?  Late summer or autumn.

What plants divide well?

Most plants lend themselves very well to division. I find that all plants in the gray leaf family, such as all Artemisias, Lambs' Ears, Achilleas and Veronicas lend themselves very well to such separation. But then there is hardly a limit. And you needn't limit yourself to perennials. Some shrubs are very division friendly. Such as heaths, heather, Buddleias, Berberry Bush. The roots of Dahlias, which you should take out of the ground after the first blackening frost come apart very easily in your hands. Try and experiment with any of your favorites.

Some plants beg to be divided every so many years. My experience with Eucheras [Coral Bells] is that they require an occasional move.  If they stay in one space too long, they will reduce flower output.  They tell me they want a move.  So I do it.  My Eucheras want a move every third year.  Eucheras are some of the easiest to separate. They untangle themselves.

Others don't give quite that easy. You'll notice that the roots will not always auto-separate. If you go about it manually and try to separate the roots by hand, I often end up ripping the plant apart.  If I put both hands on the clump and wring the sections I hold apart, a lot of the roots may break off.  It really may appear very cruel and crude to go about it this way.  Don't worry, though. There is enough of it to go about.  Any broken off roots will serve a purpose in the compost heap.

A cleaner way, of course, is to use a sharp knife and cut right through the root clump, leaving nice square clumps to be replanted.

Remain aware that once those mutilated roots are put back in the ground they will thrive, provided they have water and food.

The mutilation itself is something else altogether. It may revitalize the plant, set off added growth.  It happens to people too.  Maybe you have experienced it yourself.

Sometimes people get ripped out of a trusted, familiar environment. It may be an office environment or any other place they have grown accustomed to, a marriage or family relationship. No matter what. You know how important routine can become in a person's life.  Interrupting the routine is going to have some effect, one way or another.  Very often it will unleash hidden creativity.  If lightning strikes a tree and brings down a number of big, adult branches, there will be increased growth activity in the years after the hit.  Far more than anywhere else in the tree.

After a plant has been subdivided in the fall, it will have plenty of time to grow new roots. The new roots wills strengthen and fully charge the plants for spring.  In upstate New York, growth will continue till mid December.

If you choose to subdivide them in spring, the perennials will likely put the bulk of their energy in reestablishing themselves, rather than applying their energies to bloom, to being pretty.

In my garden, there is this big batch of Yellow Yarrow Achillea. I planted it last year.  Or rather, I filled the patch with offshoots from the main Achillea patch, somewhere else in the garden.  All I had planted were little individual strands of the root of the plant.  Now each little strand has evolved into the size of a hand. The soil wasn't even that good. Do they grow!

Divide How Often?

The recommended practice is to divide every three or four years, not sooner. Most perennials require that amount of time to anchor themselves into the ground, to become the mature cultivar the catalog touted it to be.  Moving it about every year may result in disappointing bloom.  Hosta is a good example. The Hostas I have not disturbed for five years or more, now have developed enormous leaves.  The ones that have recently been moved, are much smaller.

However, for many plants, I see no need for such limitation.

If the plant is thriving where it is and you'd like to have more of them, why wait 3 or 4 years.  My experience is that if I have dug up a plant, divided it and split it up into 8 new plants, next year, the year after that each of those eight pieces is again ready for division into 64 or 48 new pieces. Why Not?

When you plant the divided roots, think in terms of abundance.

Think in swaths.  How many do you want.  Where.  All over the place.  What area do you want to colorize?  There is no limit.  By all means, you're rich. Flaunt it.   

Lilies

Lilies  are bulbs.    They are like an onion, a tulip, daffodil or hyacinth.  Bulbs have various and very distinct ways of division or multiplication.  Each quite different from root based plants. 

Offsets:  They are like little baby offspring, growing at the base of the parent bulb, shooting off miniature stalks.    The offsets will grow in size every year until they are big enough to start a life of their own.

The offsets will grow in size every year until they are big enough to start a life of their own.  They are viable immediately but will take a number of years to produce their own flowers.  If you want to relocate them, do it in the fall.  I usually wait until there is a good supply of Lilies. For the first couple of years I will be content with one single stalk and flower bunch.  Within a five year period or so I do expect an increase of stalks.  

I will not pick off the Offsets until there is a solid group of young off shoots.  I must admit that doesn't happen all the time.  Sometime, there are no small bulbs with offsets at all and the lily remains that lonely stalk year after year.  And that's OK too.

Scales:  If you have ever cut an onion, you know what Scales are.  Every layer of the onion is a Scale.  In Lilies they are a little more distinct than in onions, but the idea is the same.  They grow from the base of the bulb.  If you break them off gently you have new growth in your hands.   Bring them inside in moist, warm soil and they will root and grow bulbs themselves.  They carry flower in give or take, three years.  Worth waiting for?  Yes.  Try it.

Bulbils: are the shiny black, pea sized bulblets growing in the leaf pits of the stalk.  Not all Lilies grow Bulbils.  Tiger Lilies do. 

The bulbils will fall off the stem after bloom and self seed or you can catch them before they drop and scatter them where you would like to see them perform in about three years. 

Remember that black and white photograph of Marlene Dietrich, all made up, with her hair flowing in all directions. Beautiful picture. Very done and rehearsed.  In the foreground  imitating the wild flows of hair, a flower.  An orchid.   That photograph has been discussed over and over.  Whoever looks at the image will agree that the flower reflects the in your face sensuality,  the sexuality of Marlene. The similarities are blunt and obvious.

The photo is intended to stir up the fantasies of a sensual, sexual and naked Marlene.  It does work.  But, the flower should have been a Lily.  After all, we're talking Lily Marlene and Shanghai Lily.   Lily represents the ultimate in sensuality and sexuality in the garden.

There are several reasons why I feel this way.

The first is the vaguest but probably the most important one.  It is the overall impression. It is the lushness, the voluptuousness, sumptuousness of its form, the strength of its stalk rising from the soil, the fervor of its smell, the glory of its colors, the weight of its texture. The overall performance is of such power as to leave one awed..

There are very fine ways to describe the lily. Even its little sibling, the daylily has been given similar reviews. Says garden designer and writer Sydney Eddison: "There is nothing coy about [it]. In fact, part of its beauty lies in the elegance of its reproductive apparatus which it parades before appreciative insects and eager hybridizers."   And indeed, Epicurus holds that the world is a series of fortuitous combinations of atoms and that the highest good is pleasure, interpreted as freedom from disturbance or pain.  Hedonism.

The three exhibitionist elements are fascinatingly prominent elements of the Lily flower......  

Follows the thought process an average lily goes through..  You think flowers cannot  really think?  Well  listen......

"Dark in here. Hardly any air. Getting chilly.  Nothing to do here. Face down.  Ass up.  No one else here.  All by myself. 

Getting real cold now.  Am I tired!  Frigid. Ice cold. Nothing happening.  Freezing. What? No nothing. Bored.   Stiff.    What? Was that?  Something stirring?

Couldn't be. Yeah, I feel something. Can't be. Yeah, I do. Something's going on. I can feel it. Something's moving. Something's moving inside. It's moving now! Ohh. It's moving up. It's going up. It's coming out of me. I can feel it. Ohh. There goes. Going up, out the ground. Nice out there. So bright. All these things there. Keep on moving. I keep on going up now. Unfolding these pretty green leaves. Getting taller. Taller than the little things below. Getting real big now.

Now feel this. It's getting warm at the top. It's soft, it's delicate and getting big. It's swelling. Ohh. It's coming loose. It's tearing open. Gently though. Gentle. Softly. It's warm here. I'm opening. I'm opening up. Here is my pistil, my stigma oozing; here are my stamens, here are my anthers, here's my pollen. Come......."



So, when you get back into the garden and you see a strong young lily stalk emerging from the soil, you now know exactly what it is going through....  Don't step on it. 

TULIPS:

The blooming year starts off with things blunt and bold. It's a reward for having survived the cold of the past winter.  What comes out of the ground now is simple and bold.     

Daffodils are intensely yellow except for recent attempts at muting the 'in-your- face' yellow by introducing pinks and other pastel colors.  Tulips, the reds and yellows are blunt and piercing.  Mass plantings stand out in any place they are planted.....

Tulips thrive best in cool climates. Originally from the area between Turkey, Pakistan and Kazakhstan, imported into Northwest Europe in the 16th century, they still reflect their origins.   They like it cold and cool.  Notwithstanding all bio engineering efforts, tulips do not thrive naturally in California or Florida where there are no extended periods of cold weather.  Tulips require cool dormancy to bloom, but then, 6 weeks in the back of a Florida fridge will do the trick..

From an aesthetic perspective, I see two shapes of tulip:  The tulip in a cool environment and the one in a warm place, like your living room.  The classic tulip is the one in a cool space, the outdoor garden.   The very thin elegant stem rises straight up.  It broadens suddenly into extravagant exorbitant color, yellow, red, orange or parrot.   But unlike most other flowers, the tulip at its prettiest stays closed.  It does not open.  This is the sweetest angle to look at a tulip:  from its side.  So different from most other flowers like a rose or a dahlia which you look at from above.  When  you bring the tulip into a warm environment, the tight closed petals of the flower open up and the classic image changes.... 17th century Dutch still life paintings excelled at creating this magnificence.  

How to work the tulip:  Buy your bulbs in the fall and plant them in the ground before the ground is frozen solid.  That means, in the Northeast you have time till mid December.   

After they have bloomed, take them out of the ground, store them for the summer,  [this is their dormancy] and then put them back into the ground in the fall.  When you take them out in spring you will notice small accompanying bulbs;   separate them if they are big enough to be viable.

Replant all of them back in the ground in autumn for next year.  Doing it like this is correct, the way commercial growers do it;  doing it like this is an enormous amount of work and of course no one does it.   

What I have been doing, though, is just leave the bulbs in the ground and watch them becoming smaller and fewer as the years pass, because bulbs are not perennials.....  And then they disappear completely.....

But not all the time.   There are several in the garden, where I planted tulips over twenty (20!) years ago and where a single tulip has now spread to show a gorgeous bouquet every year.  These lucky ones are pretty close to becoming a perennial.

Tulips:  a good investment?

It really doesn't take much time to dig a hole, plant the bulbs with the tip up, cover the ground, wait out the winter and sit back and watch beauty evolve...... the effect of a good patch of tulip is enormous.  It announces the beauty of spring and ..   You have colorized a whole area.  

What a great return on investment.

CHAPTER III : THE OVAL

THE OVAL

When I moved onto the land there was no Oval Garden. 

What was there was unappealing and not much to look at.  From the house, what i could see was a tall 8 foot high fence with behind it a dilapidated trailer.   In it lived an older couple who had been given the right to live there for the rest of their lives.  The couple had moved there in 1968, the closing days of the Camp.   Rip van Winkle Camp for Catholic Boys was started here on the land in 1919 and went out of business, deep in debt, in 1968.  It was the era of hippies and flower power.  Kids didn't want to go to summer camp any longer and the Camp died.

This lovely elderly couple had been hired as the groundskeepers but there was very little for them to do.  After bankruptcy, the main house became home first to groups of local hippies from Woodstock, 15 miles away and then to three couples from the City with heaps of children.  When I arrived in High Falls in 1982, the main house was in deplorable state, caused more by lack of interest and investment than structural weakness.  

When the caretaker couple died unexpectedly, the plot became available to me as a blank canvas.  I had been mixing paints on my imaginary palette for many years before that.  The place where the trailer stood was very central part of the land and I had been making great plans for it for many years.

Here was the chance to start a complete and new garden from scratch.  The borders I had been putting together and laying out before were more like small plots that somehow got linked because I needed space for the 'new' plants I had bought.  

The dimensions of the space that became available were roughly 25 by 35 meters (75 by 105 feet).  By any standard that is impressive for a plot you want to cultivate by yourself, but size has never intimidated me.  The house that came with the land had 22 rooms in it and I loved the idea to tackle all of those too. 

It was not only the plot itself that became available but also the area behind it up until the edge of the woods that was to be part of the new garden lay-out.

 

Where the stone wall is now at the far end of the Oval, the land came down in a slope.  A bulldozer cut away the slope in the shape of a crescent.  From the small blue stone quarry 500 meters from the house, a friend and i gathered enough stone to build the retaining dry wall. The stones from this little quarry are very flat not bulky, which makes it easy to stack them on top of each other.  We picked up each stone and puzzled it into place.  

The stones are stacked on top of each other without cement.  Hence the name dry wall. It is built leaning back into the earth so as to push back the pressures of the soil behind it.  The back of the stone wall is filled with rubble to make it one with the earth.  All walls in upstate New York are built that way.  Even the foundations of houses.  Along many narrow country roads here there are miles and miles of drywall stone hedges gathered and built by farmers hundreds of years ago to prepare the grounds for cultivation.

The final phase of the wall structure were the stone steps themselves.  They are thick cut slabs of blue stone and are very heavy.  With some leverage and my trusted pick axe I managed to put them into place and when I was finished I was awed by the majesty of it.  A structure made out of unwieldy rough stone poured and puzzled into a curved, almost moving, form.

With the outer edge of the new garden drawn, making and building a new garden was next.  I first had to finish the final shape of the garden.  It did not have a final shape yet, only the outer semi-circular edge.  Principles of design often suggest to mirror an existing shape and that is what we did.  We flipped the crescent over to make an Oval.  Question was how big to make it because I knew I was not going to hire garden staff to do the real work.   I decided to make it big.  I like big.

In the woods surrounding the garden, barberry bushes grow far and wide.  They are indigenous and the waxy red berries of autumn make them easy to propagate anywhere.  The bushes have short sharp thorns on wiry branches and once established form an impenetrable shield.  A good defense against invasive deer and when clipped tightly a sharply drawn frame for the garden to shine in.

The transplanted barberry established themselves within a year and formed a dense magnificent hedge within three. 

Of course the Oval started out as a very young garden, with nothing growing in it.  Because it was so big to begin with and to make it manageable,  it was essential to divide it into parts, each part separated by a path.   Seven paths in total, and each part given a name, from Primus through Septimus.  

When  a garden is young it has no soul because nothing of substance is there other than good intentions and great plans.  It has no character or personality yet.   It may have its architectural elements which is nice when seen from the sky, but its population, the plants, have not developed enough to make a statement.

The enormity of the project requires patience.   Time is what makes a garden.  If I plant a 3 year old purple beech 6 feet tall, it will not establish its persona until about 15 years later when it becomes a strong but still young silhouette in its environment.

A young garden has no story, no history.  Nothing has grown or bloomed here before.   The locus has no past.  A locus is essential in a garden to identify the location.  "I'm by the weeping peach.  I need to pull the weeds by the roses behind the stone bench in the Alpha Garden."  The spot becomes the identifier, essential to the garden.

I prefer to spend my time where the trees are old,  the plantings established, sculpted into the environment, old piles, weathered things.

The Oval had none of that in the early years.  It is new, young and inexperienced. There have been no major disasters or victories here. Yet.

As with the planting of a tree, the Location of the Oval itself was the result of a visual inspection. 

What I did is what I do whenever I introduce a new plant or tree into the High Falls Garden.   I look up and imagine myself to be the newly introduced plant in our home and determine whether I can be happy in this spot.  Will I have all the rain I need?  Will I have all the sun I need?  Will I get enough shade?

I'll look around and see where the sun is at what time of day.  If there is an area exposed to the rosy fingered dawn, then that will be a good spot for roses, evaporating the morning dew moist and prevent mildew.  If there is a spot that gets the focus of the 3 o'clock sun, that will be a good spot for a gray and drought resistant garden.

As the years progress, each site will develop its own character and distinctiveness.  These will become local traits, the uniqueness of a certain corner in the garden.  The plants in that nook will get to know each other, learn to appreciate their neighbors and coexist with them.  Respect the Invasive Ones, give them the room they claim or wait till I pull them out. Overshadow the weaker ones.  Until they perish.

PATHS, SHAPES, EDGES & FRAMES

It is easy to have a good-looking border in June, but not so easy in March or October.

When I created the borders in the Oval, I did not want to give all prominence to the flowers themselves but rather emphasize the architectural structure they grow in.

Flowers do not last so long.  Two weeks, sometimes three. 

But, the foliage of the plants, the shapes of the leaves and the outline of the plant itself is what lingers year round and these can maintain should.

You can play with bold foliage contrasts or similarities.  Juxtapose the pointed leaves of Siberian Iris with the soft Euchera ones or the refined Astilbe leaves, with Catnip Nepeta or Aquilegia Columbine foliage.  One thing I will do next year, is move a bleeding heart next to a tree peony.  The shape and soft matte bluish green coloring of the leaves of both is striking.  Their flowers are all beautiful but ephemeral.  Their foliage long lived. 

When a painter finishes his 'work', he will put it in a frame because the frame will focus attention on what is contained inside.  In a garden, it is the same with flowers.  A strong architectural framework will draw attention to what is inside the edges or the hedges. 

Once the outside lines are drawn, once you have completed the design, it doesn't really matter what you put inside the frame, within the lines, within the architecture.  The most important aspect has been completed.  The shape of the border or the shape of the entire garden is there.  Anything you put inside will look good.

Most frames in the Oval's interior and also in the Garage Garden are boxwood.  They have a long history here in High Falls.  When many years ago a friend and I returned home from a Four Freedom Awards lunch in Hyde Park, NY, we were given two centerpieces whose base consisted mainly of boxwood sprigs.  I stuck each stem in the ground without ceremony or assistance and found that they all took vigorous root.  Whenever I clipped the young hedges into shape the following years, I'd pick up the cuttings and stick them in the ground.  They have come to characterize large sections of the garden.   

And in a snow covered garden, they are the only living thing visible.  An excellent return on investment.  

Working in the Oval is special.
It is the aesthetic center of the garden but also the ''high maintenance area'.
The place where I love to spend time, work, sweat and come up with sweet ideas.
There is no better place on the globe than here.
This really is heaven.
And I'm in charge of maintenance.......