My Thriving Stewartia Garden
My Stewartia Garden continues to thrive at my Bedford, New York farm.
My Stewartia Garden is located across from my long clematis pergola. The space used to be planted with rows and rows of ferns and lilies. Now the garden is filled with beautiful Stewartia trees and lush, green shade-loving specimens including Epimediums, Syneilesis, Polygonatum, and Astilboides. I am so pleased with how well it’s matured over the last few years.
Enjoy these photos.
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- All the gardens around my Tenant House are developing so nicely. Here, I designed a lovely garden of shade-loving plants that are thriving despite the removal of six giant trees early last year. Beautiful views of this garden and the Stewartia Garden can be seen from the large windows.
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- Just below the shade garden is my Stewartia Garden, a large rectangular space, also filled with many shade-loving perennials. The Stewartia Garden is among the first guests see when driving along the carriage road to my Winter House.
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- This is how it looked in 2018. It has developed quite a bit since we first created it in the spring of 2016. Every year, we add more and more plants to this space.
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- Of course, this garden includes several Stewartia trees. Stewartias are native to Japan, Korea, and the southeastern United States. All 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. The varieties I chose for the area include: Stewartia gemmata, Stewartia x. henryae, Stewartia pseudocamellia ‘Ballet’, Stewartia monadelpha, Stewartia rostrata, and Stewartia henry ‘Skyrocket’. Do you know why I have Stewartia trees? My name is “Stewart” after all…
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- The garden is also bordered on one side by a stand of distinguished bald cypress trees.
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- At one corner, tucked under the shade of the bald cypress, is my quaint basket house, a small structure I built when I moved to the farm to store my expansive basket collection.
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- The bark of the bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, is brown to gray and forms long scaly, fibrous ridges on the trunk. Over time, these ridges tend to peel off the in strips. The name “bald” cypress is likely related to this peeling habit.
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- The branches are just now starting to show some growth. The leaves of the bald cypress are compound and feathery, made up of many small leaflets that are thin and lance-shaped. Once leafed out, these trees will show off a beautiful medium green color.
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- One characteristic of the bald cypress is its knees. These are specialized root structures that grow vertically above the moist soil near the tree. It is believed that these structures aid the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange in the roots.
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- Among the many plants in the Stewartia Garden is Solomon’s Seal – a hardy perennial native to the eastern United States and southern Canada. These plants produce dangling white flowers, which turn to dark-blue berries later in the summer.
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- Solomon’s Seal looks great planted in clumps. These plants like dappled shade, rich and organic soils, and plenty of moisture. Once they are established, they can survive short droughts fairly well.
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- Also in this garden – fothergilla – a slow-growing, deciduous ornamental shrub that is native to moist lowland coastal plain bogs and savannahs in the southeastern United States from North Carolina to the Florida panhandle and Alabama. It grows two to three feet tall and as wide. The whimsical flowers are bottlebrush-like spikes that bloom in spring.
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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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- We also have more muscari in this area. These cobalt blue flowers grow to about six to eight inches tall. Muscari is better known as grape hyacinths, which have tight clusters of fat little bells with a grape juice fragrance. Muscari bloom in mid-spring, at the same time as tulips. Deer and rodents rarely bother them, and the bulbs multiply readily, returning to bloom again year after year.
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- This is Pulmonaria, or lungwort – a beautiful, versatile, hardy plant. Lungworts are evergreen or herbaceous perennials that form clumps or rosettes. They are covered in hairs of varied length and stiffness. The spotted oval leaves were thought to symbolize diseased, ulcerated lungs, and so were once used to treat pulmonary infections.
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- Jeffersonia, which is also known as twinleaf or rheumatism root, is a small genus of herbaceous perennial plants in the family Berberidaceae. They are uncommon spring wildflowers, which grow in limestone soils of rich deciduous forests. Twinleaf is a clump-forming plant that typically grows to eight-inches tall when in flower in early spring but continues to grow thereafter eventually reaching about 18-inches tall.
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- Leucojum vernum, or the spring snowflake, is a perennial plant that produces green, linear leaves and white, bell-shaped flowers with a green edge and green dots. The plant grows between six to 10 inches in height and blooms in early spring. Leucojum is a genus of only two species in the family Amaryllidaceae – both native to Eurasia. These bulbous perennials have grass-like foliage and are quite fragrant.
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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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- Podophyllum peltatum is commonly known as mayapple, American mandrake, wild mandrake, and ground lemon. Mayapples are woodland plants, typically growing in colonies from a single root.
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- I have lots of mayapple growing in the gardens – this large area of mayapple is growing outside my main greenhouse. The palmately lobed umbrella-like leaves grow up to 16-inches in diameter with three to nine shallowly to deeply cut lobes. The plants produce several stems from a creeping underground rhizome.
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- The columbine plant, Aquilegia, is an easy-to-grow perennial that offers seasonal interest throughout the year. Its flowers come in a variety of colors, which emerge from dark green foliage that turns maroon in fall. The bell-shaped flowers are also a favorite to hummingbirds and may be used in cut-flower arrangements as well.
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- This garden bed continues to be a work in progress, but so far, I love how it looks. Every year, more and more plants will grow, cover the space, and create a lush, green carpet of beautiful foliage.
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