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This is a picture of me taking a picture of the Sweet Autumn Clematis that was happily climbing up the side of my garden shed last fall. This spring, not so much. The woody vines are totally bare without a green shoot anywhere. Sigh. I've had this plant for years and years, and it's sad to have it disappear without a trace, or even any hint of what the problem was.
This is Part 2 of my tour through the Art Goes Wild exhibit at Garden in the Woods, designed by W. Gary Smith. (Part 1 is here.)
Floating Gardens
In this display, floating islands of native wetland plants are arrayed like stepping stones among the lily pads. I'm really looking forward to seeing how these look later in the season when the plants are in bloom.
The islands are made of a porous recycled plastic and filled with soil. The plants' roots will grow through the plastic and down into the water, helping to clean the pond by absorbing excess nutrients. Gary was thrilled to see the wildlife enjoying the islands. In fact, a duck has already built a nest and laid her eggs on the third island, so we will be looking forward to having ducklings in the pond.
Yin-Yang
This piece is intended to evoke the form of yin-yang, a form which symbolizes opposing forces in nature. On one side of the path, a dark circle of pine branches is imposed on a light green field of hayscented fern, and on the other side of the path, a light circle of fern is imposed on a dark background of pine branches and mulch. (This one will look much better when the ferns completely fill in the light areas.)
Flying Saucers
This is another example of the use of repetition to unify spaces. These raised container gardens weave through the western garden and on through the meadow to bring the areas together. The plants are xeric plants which are adapted to dry environments. Again, I'm looking forward to seeing these in late summer, when the meadow will be in bloom and reaching up to touch the bottoms of the saucers.
The "saucers" are actually fire pit liners with drainage holes drilled into the bottom.
Hidden Valley
After walking through the landscaped areas of the garden, the trail curves back through a natural woodland area. People usually walk through this area without paying much attention to their surroundings, so it's fun to watch them come upon Hidden Valley, with its very understated serpentine arrangement of fallen logs. The line of logs actually goes up the valley quite a ways past what is shown here, so it's a continuing discovery as you walk back along the path. (Gary has carefully positioned the information sign well after you first come upon the piece, so visitors are able to discover it on their own.) On the other side of the path, they can see the natural dispersal of fallen logs on the forest floor, and hear the babbling sound of Hop Brook as it runs in a similar serpentine course through another valley.
This arrangement was made by 6 people working for 3 hours and uses only logs and branches that were found within the valley.
Gathering of Grass
These upright bundles, made from several different native grasses, are arranged in serpentine and natural drift patterns. These bundles are easy to make and can be used as accents in a home garden. They are long lasting and will provide food and shelter for birds and animals.
Gary was still making last minute adjustments to the display as we continued our tour.
So that's Art Goes Wild. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll be returning to the exhibit later in the season to see how it changes as the plants mature and bloom.
Art Goes Wild, a new exhibit at the Garden in the Woods, celebrates the 75th anniversary of the garden. Landscape Architect W. Gary Smith has designed a series of installations that use native plants in new and different ways. The exhibits will be in place until the garden closes at the end of October, and many of them will grow and change as the season progresses.
Last week, Gary was kind enough to conduct a tour for the volunteer guides to explain his thoughts about the exhibit and answer some of the questions we thought visitors might have. Here is Gary with marketing director Debra Strick and volunteer coordinator Bonnie Drexler.
Gary has done a lot of design work with native plants, most notably Pierces Woods at Longwood Gardens. He explained that in his work he tries to go beyond the traditional naturalistic design and create artistic works that are creative, abstract, or formal. He likes to play off the basic shapes of nature, such as radial, spiral, serpentine, scatter, mosaic, and natural drift. One goal of the exhibit is to show people that they can use native plants in innovative ways while still maintaining the ecological benefits of native plants.
He explained that many of the ideas had started with rough sketches, which were brought to life by the collaborative work of the garden staff and volunteers. In some cases, the final form of the piece changed as it was implemented.
This quote from Gary is on the opening sign: "Looking at the native landscape as inspiration for art and design, I like to find the intrinsic shapes, patterns, and forms created by basic natural processes - the dispersal of seeds by wind and birds, the deposition and erosion of soils in a streambed, the push and pull of different plants finding space where they can coexist."
The exhibit has some really great signage. On each sign, there are pictures of the plants which inspired the design concept, along with pictures taken during the construction. There's a quote from Gary Smith and a reproduction of his original concept sketch, a list of the plant materials, an ecological note, and a variety of other information. There's also an accompanying take-home plant list, listing all the plants used in each segment.
So let's walk through the exhibit now. (Click on any picture for a larger view.)
Beech Colonnade
The Beech Colonnade is a strong architectural form that frames the entry to the garden. It is in contrast with a natural beech grove just off to the right of this picture. The colonnade uses repetition and forced perspective to frame the views of the natural woodland beds of spring ephemerals on each side.
The original concept was to have more formal upright columns. But when assembling the bundles, it seemed better to leave some of the upper branches that now form a sort of archway over the path.
Idea Garden
The Idea Garden is an illustration of how native plants can be used in the home garden. This section will become a permanent part of the Garden in the Woods in future years. The centerpiece is a sedge lawn of Carex pensylvania, which is recommended as a low maintenance feature where shade makes it difficult to grow a traditional grass lawn. The sedge lawn is enclosed by belgian blocks and a low woven fence made of red- and yellow-twig dogwood branches. This illustrates another theme of Art Goes Wild, which is the reuse of natural garden materials to make garden features.
The patio shows the use of native plants in clustered containers (hanging plants will also be added soon), and behind the sedge lawn is a mixed border of white- and blue-flowering native plants within an enclosing curve of birch trees. It really shows that you can have an amazing native plant garden, even if you only have a very small area.
At the back left in the last picture, you can catch a glimpse of a creative serpentine privacy wall made from fallen leaves stacked within wire-mesh cylinders.
Fiddlehead Labyrinth
The Fiddlehead Labyrinth evokes the spiral form of the fiddlehead fern. The sides of the labyrinth are made from woven dogwood and beech branches, meant to copy the natural forms of tree branches. When you reach the center of the labyrinth, a sign will tell you to look up, where you will see this:
Woodland Parterre
Best to quote Gary on this one: "My vision here is to call attention to the organic mosaic of woodland wildflowers by inserting a simple square frame". In this case, the frame is a hedge of American holly (Ilex opaca) lined with horizontal garland of beech twigs. The square form of the hedge is carried across the path by inlaid stone blocks.
(This was a little hard to capture in a photograph because it is newly planted and the hedge is not yet densely filled in. The square shape is much more obvious when you see it in person.)
This piece is not completed yet. The idea is to form a garden room, a simple circular space, within the grove of rhododendrons. A circular bench will be installed.
End of Part 1. See Part 2 for more, including Floating Gardens, Yin-Yang, Flying Saucers, Hidden Valley, and Gathering of Grass.
I couldn't escape opening day of Art Goes Wild at Garden in the Woods without coming home with a selection of new plants.
The shrub at the middle back is Silver-leaf Hydrangea (Hydrangea radiata 'Samantha'). This is intended for a difficult location in dry shade. I'd previously tried oak-leaf hydrangea there, but it hadn't made it. I was going to get another oak-leaf, but then I noticed this plant, which I was not previously familiar with, was described as being very tough, and thought I'd give it a try. It has white flowers, grows 3-4 feet tall, and gets its name from the leaves, which are very pale underneath.
Going clockwise, the tall perennial is Anise Hyssop 'Blue Fortune' (Agastache). I got this to add some summer color to the erstwhile shade bed which is now in the sun. The card says it grows 3-4' fall and is a prairie wildflower with attractive heart-shaped leaves and blue-purple flower spikes from July to September.
In the lower right, we have Sedum nevii, covered with white flowers. I just thought it made a nice combo with the next plant, Heucherella 'Day Glow Pink'. I'm not exactly sure where they'll be going, but I plan to keep them together
Next comes a pale yellow hybrid Coneflower (Echinacea) 'Sunrise'. I thought that might go well with the Hyssop.
Last plant, on the back left, is Sweetfern (Comptonia peregrina). Not actually a fern, but not much for flowers either. The foliage is a nice bright green and has a lovely scent, and it's a very tough plant. I'm going to see if it will make it in the small patch I'm trying to grow near the road. So far nearly everything I've planted there has died, probably due to the excess of salt it gets in the winter. But I keep trying things - eventually something will stick.
Mid-May in the garden reveals some issues, but also a fine assortment of beautiful sights. Let's start with the problems first.
I mentioned earlier that my Carolina Silverbell was toast. Here's a very sad picture of one tiny branch blooming exuberantly with the rest of the tree totally bare.
We had a really rough winter this year. It was really warm up until January (you may remember this picture that I published of my autumn-flowering cherry blooming in January). Then it very suddenly got extremely cold. Plants normally prepare for cold weather by building up the level of sugars in their cells. The high sugar levels raise the freezing point of the water inside the cells, enabling the plant to withstand colder temperatures without destruction. But when the weather turns cold abruptly, some plants may not be prepared for the cold weather. So the above-ground parts may die back while the roots are still alive.
This tree has had a sad history. Several years ago, the top broke off in a wind storm. The tree sent up several suckers from the roots and I'd trained a couple of them to form a new tree. This year I was going to select the best-shaped one and cut back the rest. Now it looks like I'll have to start the process all over again. Luckily, there are a number of new green shoots coming up from the stump.
Or, perhaps I should just give up on this tree entirely. Silverbells should be hardy in my area, but I don't know the source of the tree I originally planted. If it was the product of a southern nursery, it may come from less-hardy stock, which may help to explain why it died back this winter. Perhaps I would do better to replace it with a new tree propagated at a northern nursery.
This border used to be a shade border under a birch tree. But I lost the tree last year to bronze birch borer. So now these plants that prefer shade are exposed to full sun. From left to right, there's green and gold (Chrysogonum virginianum), white bleeding heart, daffodils, ferns, hostas, bluebells, wild blue phlox, and daylilies. I've planted a small sugar maple, which you can see it in front of the birch stump. This is a fairly fast-growing tree, but it will take several years before it gets to a size to provide any amount of reasonable shade. So it will be interesting to see how these plants do in the meantime.
But enough of the bad stuff - here's some things that are really looking good. I love lilacs and dogwood. Very old-fashioned - they remind me of my grandmother's garden and just make me feel good. And then there is a graceful stem of white bleeding heart, the delicate woodland foamflower (Tiarella), and the unfurling green leaves of hosta.
Tower Hill
On Mother's Day, some friends and I roamed around the Tower Hill Botanical Garden in Boylston MA. I let Alex take the pictures because he had the better camera, so I'm still waiting to get my hands on them. Stay tuned. This is the only picture I took, as we sat near the hillside orchard to enjoy the last bit of the day before we had to leave.
Art Goes Wild at Garden in the Woods
Art Goes Wild: Innovation in the Garden is a new exhibit at Garden in the Woods that will be opening this weekend. Landscape Architect W. Gary Smith has designed a series of installations using native plants and natural materials. I'll be going to the guide training on this and leading a tour on opening day (May 19), so there'll be more pictures to come. But when I was there on Monday, I got this picture of one piece that had already been installed - A Gathering of Grass.
Anyone who has a mature garden probably spends more time keeping existing plants under control than they spend planting new things. You spend a lot of time digging up and dividing overgrown perennials and pruning trees and shrubs. The pruning produces yard waste, and unless you have a chipper/shredder (a topic for another day), if you live in an urban area you will have to bundle all these prunings for collection. I have a system for bundling that works well for me, and I'd like to share it with you, using some pictures I took last year when I finally got around to pruning my forsythia.
Forsythias are fast-growing shrubs, and the proper way to prune them is not to shear them into tight little balls like this:
The right thing to do is to let them develop their natural vase-shaped form by removing about one-third of the oldest, thickest stems right at the base, every year after flowering. Like this:
But that will leave you with a big pile of branches that need to be bundled and tied. So here's my method.
Start with two pieces of twine, each about 5 feet long. Make a loop at one end of each piece and lay them out parallel to each other about 2 feet apart. (Sometimes, as here, the twine won't lay straight because it retains the kinks from the spool. Just do the best you can.)
Okay, now start laying the pruned branches crosswise across the twine. In my town, the rule is that they should not be over 4 feet in length (in practice you can get away with a bit more), so any longer pieces should be folded over (if flexible enough) or cut in half.
When you've got a good-sized pile, you can wrap the twine around it, feeding each straight end through the loop at the corresponding other end. Now the trick is, wrap the twine through the loop then pull it back the other way so you've got some leverage when you pull on it. I hope you can see from these pictures. You pull on the two ends, while at the same time, stomping down on the pile with your foot and rolling it toward you as the twine pulls through the loop. This can compress the pile a great deal from where you started.
When you've got it reasonably compressed, you need to fasten each end with a double half-hitch knot. (Pretend that the loop the twine is going through is the post in the example I've linked to.)
Finally, tie the two loose ends together to form a sort of carrying loop. Here's the finished bundle.
Spring is finally here in New England. It came so late that I'm afraid it will be over before I have a chance to really enjoy it. (It didn't help that I spent a week in Florida at the end of April, and then promptly came down with a cold the minute I got back.) But today I took a tour of the yard and have a few pictures of some of my treasures.
This is Twinleaf (Jeffersonia diphylla), an elusive native wildflower. I say elusive because the flowers bloom only for a very short time. When I first noticed the plant was in bloom, several of the flowers had already dropped their petals; by the time I ran in and got my camera, another blossom had bitten the dust. (And sorry for the slightly blurry photo, but it was breezy out and I couldn't seem to get a good shot.) The flowers aren't it's only nice feature; it has lovely double leaves that remind me of butterfly wings, and the flower is followed by an interesting little seedpod that looks like a miniature pepper pot. And yes, it is named after Thomas Jefferson.
Another native wildflower that lasts a bit longer is the Double Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis forma multiplex). The double form actually last a bit longer than the single form because it has no sexual parts. I bought this plant three seasons ago. The first year it had 3 flowers, the second year it had 8, and this year it's just loaded with flowers. I guess I planted it in a spot where it's very happy. It's in a slightly elevated bed, on the northeast side of a shed in open shade.
The last of the native flowers in today's post is a modest little gem called Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica) I just planted this last year under an azalea bush, and I'm hoping it will spread and fill in the area. Spring Beauty is very ephemeral; its foliage will die back in early summer.
My yellow magnolia 'Butterflies' is really coming into its own these days. Look at these wonderful flowers. I just love it! It's developing a really nice pyramidal shape.
The best blue of all is a non-native plant called Blue Lungwort (Pulmonaria angustifolia). This is growing under the magnolia. What a combination!
I don't mind a little messiness in my yard. These bulbs are Glory of the Snow (Chionodoxa) and they're growing scattered about in my front lawn. They've lasted for years and years and spread a bit more each year. I just hold off on a bit on mowing the lawn to give the foliage a chance to mature.
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