The Gardens Around My Tenant House
Many of the flowering plants around my Bedford, New York farm have past their prime, but there's still a lot of beautiful and interesting foliage to enjoy.
Some of the most beautiful growth is behind and around my Tenant House, where my daughter and grandchildren stay when they visit. In these areas we planted Epimediums, ferns, Syneilesis, wild ginger, hostas, lady's mantle, and other shade-loving specimens. They're surrounded by a variety of some of my favorite trees - Stewartia, Cotinus, and Japanese maple. And at one side of the garden bed is my stand of tall and stately bald cypress.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
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- If you didn’t already guess, I named this garden behind my Tenant House the Stewartia garden because I planted several Stewartia trees in this space. Stewartia is a species of flowering plant in the family Theaceae, native to Japan and Korea. All varieties are slow-growing, all-season performers that show off fresh bright green leaves in spring, white flowers resembling single camellias in summer, and colorful foliage in autumn. Some of the varieties in this garden include: Stewartia gemmata, Stewartia x. henryae, Stewartia pseudocamellia ‘Ballet’, Stewartia monadelpha, Stewartia rostrata, and Stewartia henry ‘Skyrocket’. And do you know why I love Stewartia trees? Well, Stewart is my last name after all. However, there is no relation. “Stewartia” is named for Scottish nobleman and botanist, John Stuart, who had imported the plant to his personal London garden. He later served as British prime minister from 1762 to 1763.
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- This garden is located to one side of these towering bald cypress trees, Taxodium distichum – a deciduous conifer. Though the bald cypress is native to swampy areas, it is also able to withstand dry, sunny weather and is hardy in USDA climate zones 5 through 10.
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- The leaves are compound and feathery, made up of many small leaflets that are thin and lance-shaped. Each leaflet is less than two inches long, alternating along either side of a central stem. They are a medium green now and turn russet brown in fall. Like trees with leaves, bald cypress trees drop their needles in the fall leaving the tree – well, bald.
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- Down below, we planted Cotoneaster in one corner of the garden. Cotoneaster is a vigorous, dense, evergreen shrub with soft arching stems studded with leathery, glossy, rounded, dark green leaves. These plants work well for a low hedge – I only wish I had planted more.
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- Its leaves are spreading, arching to horizontal, alternate, simple, and willow-like in appearance.
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- This area also includes Japanese painted ferns – beautiful mounds of dramatic foliage with luminescent blue-green fronds and dark central ribs that fade to silver at the edges.
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- In contrast are the ostrich ferns – a light green clump-forming, upright to arching, rhizomatous, deciduous fern which typically grows up to six feet tall. I grow these in large masses throughout the garden.
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- Pasang weeded and groomed this entire garden. As he works, he neatly piles any cut debris and takes it to the edge of the carriage road, so it can easily be loaded onto one of our vehicles and taken to the compost yard.
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- Asarum europaeum, or European Wild Ginger, is a slowly spreading ground cover that is primarily grown for its glossy, leathery, heart-shaped, dark green leaves.
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- These are the shiny green leaves of Solomon’s Seal – a hardy perennial native to the eastern United States and southern Canada.
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- These plants produce dangling white flowers, which turn to dark-blue berries later in the summer.
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- This is lady’s mantle, Alchemilla mollis. It’s a clumping perennial which typically forms a basal foliage mound of long-stalked, circular, scallop-edged, toothed, pleated, soft-hairy, light green leaves.
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- Epimediums are long-lived and easy to grow and have such attractive and varying foliage. Epimedium, also known as barrenwort, bishop’s hat, and horny goat weed, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Berberidaceae.
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- Astilboides is an interesting plant with huge, bright green leaves that are round and flat and measure up to 24-inches across. The effect is dramatic, and beautiful among other hardy perennials.
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- I always look for the most interesting plants to add to my gardens. This is Syneilesis – a tough, drought-tolerant, easy-to-grow woodland garden perennial that prefers moist, well-drained, slightly acid soils. If in the proper environment, syneilesis will slowly spread to form an attractive colony.
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- Syneilesis is commonly called the shredded umbrella plant and describes the narrow, dissected leaves that cascade downward like an umbrella.
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- This plant is another great one for mass planting, which is essentially a method of filling in garden area with flower groupings of one or more kinds of plants. This helps to minimize weed growth and to add texture and interest to the space.
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- These are the dainty leaves of thalictrum. Plants in this genus are native to stream banks, shaded mountains, and moist meadows. It grows best in moist, humus-rich soil in partial shade. Thalictrum has some of the most beautifully textured foliage. The name Thalictrum means “to flourish,” and it does, with elegant, finely cut and rounded compound leaves.
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- The hostas are so lush with their varying leaf shape, size, and textures. Hostas have easy care requirements which make them ideal for many areas. I have them all around the farm. Hosta is a genus of plants commonly known as hostas, plantain lilies and occasionally by the Japanese name, giboshi. They are native to northeast Asia and include hundreds of different cultivars.
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- Here is another hosta variety with its darker, more defined leaves.
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- This heuchera was planted earlier this summer. It has lively peach and orange tones on large leaves. The plant grows into a full mound that is exceptionally heat tolerant. Dainty flowers appear on spikes above the foliage in spring. Heuchera is a genus of largely evergreen perennial plants in the family Saxifragaceae, all native to North America. Common names include alumroot and coral bells.
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- Here, Pasang trims the foliage of a smoke bush. I have several Cotinus in this bed. Cotinus, the smoketree, or smoke bush, is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, closely related to the sumacs.
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- Their smooth, rounded leaves come in exceptional shades of deep purple, clear pinkish-bronze, yellow, and green.
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- This garden bed continues to be a work in progress, but I love how it looks. Every year, more and more plants cover the space and create a lush, green carpet of beautiful foliage.
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