Caring for the Pergola Garden in March
It's five days before the official start of spring. The trees are budding, the crocuses are blooming, and perennials are pushing through the soil with energy and color.
This is always a busy and exciting time at my farm. My outdoor grounds crew and gardeners are working hard to get everything ready for the season. This week, my foreman, Chhiring Sherpa, is adding nutrient-rich compost to the beds beneath my long and winding pergola. These beds are already exploding with new growth - alliums, camassia, muscari, and more. Soon, these beds will be filled with a spring palette of blue, lavender, and purple.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
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- New spring growth is visible in every garden here at the farm despite nighttime temperatures still dropping into the 30s Fahrenheit.
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- My long pergola is still surrounded by the burlap-covered boxwood, but not for long – like clockwork, we remove all the fabric in time for Easter.
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- Early March is the best time to start tending the beds – weeding, and pulling last year’s growth and fallen leaves and applying a new coat of compost around the plants.
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- This is organic compost. I like to top dress my beds with this in the spring to add nutrients, such as nitrogen, into the soil. Compost is an efficient and practical fertilizer. Adding compost also improves the soil’s ability to absorb and store water, aerate, and increase the activity of organisms.
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- With good, consistent maintenance, look what’s already blooming so gloriously – here is a stretch of crocus.
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- Emerging from bulb-like structures called corms, crocuses are low-growing perennial flowering plants from the iris family. Crocus are among the first to bloom in spring and come back year after year.
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- Growing along the back border are small bunches of these purple and white striped croci. This striped flower produces several upright, cup-like, purple and white striped blooms on stems rising to four to six inches above basal, grass-like leaves.
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- Planted at the base of every post is clematis. The uprights for this pergola are antique granite posts from China – originally used as grape supports in a valley that was going to be dammed and flooded to create a reservoir.
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- New growth is visible on every clematis plant. Clematis bloom times can vary, but by planting a range of cultivars, one can have flowers from early spring to late fall.
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- Four years ago, we lined the center footpath of the pergola with these black bricks I originally bought for a terrace project years ago and never used. Each black granite brick measures eight inches long by about two inches wide and two inches thick.
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- Here’s Chhiring weeding and cleaning the bed before laying down a layer of compost. It doesn’t need a lot – just an inch or two is sufficient.
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- These are the leaves of Camassia. Camassia forms clusters of linear strappy foliage. By early May, these leaves will surround upright racemes. Camassia is a genus of plants in the asparagus family native to Canada and the United States. It is best grown in moist, fertile soil, and full sun.
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- Muscari, or grape hyacinth, has long, linear, floppy, green leaves. The foliage emerges from the ground in early spring followed by the flowers. The foliage dies back after flowering in early summer, but then starts growing actively once again in mid-autumn.
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- Rosettes of allium leaves also dot the garden. Alliums are often overlooked as one of the best bulbs for constant color throughout the seasons. The flowers come in oval, spherical, or globular shapes, blooming in magnificent colors atop tall stems.
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- Here, one can see the red shading on the tips of the allium leaves when they first emerge. Unfortunately, by the time these alliums bloom in late May or early June, the leaves will have withered away.
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- These are the woody stems of catnip. On established plants, the shoots begin to come up in early spring.
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- In the center and at the ends of this winding pergola are wisteria standards. Right now they are bare, but the fragrant plant blooms start to appear in mid-to-late spring, in May or June.
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- Behind the pergola and across the “soccer field,” where my grandson, Truman, loves to play whenever he visits, are six matched standard weeping hornbeams, Carpinus betulus ‘Pendula’. Weeping hornbeams can grow to be about 50-feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 40-feet. These are very rare and precious trees and I am so happy they continue to grow well here.
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- Looking closely, one can see all the buds that have formed.
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- Here is one side of the pergola now covered in a light layer of compost. The long beds are looking so beautiful already. I can’t wait to see this area transform into a spring garden of colorful flowers.
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- Here’s a view from the other side. It’s enough to inspire any gardener to get out there and start working – happy gardening.
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