Adding Plants to My Gardens
It takes a lot of time and patience to develop a garden. Here at my Bedford, New York farm, I pay close attention to all the beds - how the plants grow, what varieties work best, and what areas need filling. And then, every spring I add a few more colorful and interesting specimens.
Over the holiday weekend in Maine, I visited several nurseries - Surry Gardens, Frost Farms, Plants Unlimited, and Dublin Gardens. I was able to bring back a nice collection of beautiful plants including physocarpus, peonies, irises, baptisia, and some stonecrop sedums to add to the wall below my terrace parterre. Yesterday, Ryan, Brian, and Phurba got them all planted before today's expected rain.
Enjoy these photos. And tomorrow, I'll start sharing images from my Memorial Day weekend at Skylands.
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- The pool is surrounded by two developing hedges. On the inside of the fence, about 170 purple columnar beech trees, Fagus sylvatica ‘Dawyck Purple’ which will grow to 40 to 50 feet in height and only 10-feet wide which makes them perfect for tight spaces. Here, on the outside – an interesting combination of alternating shrubs – one phsyocarpus and then one cotinus, etc. We added a few more physocarpus to this area to replace specimens that were not growing as robustly or were needed elsewhere.
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- Physocarpus, commonly called ninebark, is an upright, spreading, somewhat coarse, deciduous, Missouri-native shrub which is closely related to the genus Spiraea. It boasts deep burgundy foliage with ovate to rounded, usually three to five-lobed leaves that are dull green in summer changing to an undistinguished yellow in fall and bronzy red by the time the leaves fall in late November. Physocarpus blooms now in early June with these white button-like flowers.
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- I also added a few more tree peonies to this border planted in semi-shade under a stand of giant sugar maples across from my Summer House. Many of the specimens were transplanted from my Turkey Hill garden, while others I’ve added over the years.
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- Some of the tree peonies are still blooming, but unfortunately the tree peony season is very short – only seven to 10 days. These unimaginably large, and often fragrant yellow, white, pink, and burgundy flowers are some of my favorites – I look forward to seeing them every year.
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- The pink varieties are more fragrant than the darker maroon flowers. This one has slightly wavy petals with a gold center.
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- In my flower cutting garden, Brian plants another iris. There are about 300 species in the genus Iris. This large group includes plants that grow from bulbs such as Dutch irises, as well as traditional perennial types of iris, such as the bearded irises, and Siberian irises.
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- These distinctive, six-petaled flowers have three outer hanging petals called “falls” and three inner upright petals called “standards”.
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- Irises bloom best in full sun, and they unfurl their stunning flowers from spring to early summer.
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- I’ve been working on this flower cutting garden for several years and it has developed more and more every year. I wanted the plants to be mixed, so every bed in this garden would be interesting and colorful.
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- This is stonecrop sedum ‘Chocolate Ball’ – I planned these for the wall and steps surrounding the terrace outside my Winter House kitchen. Sedums really work well in rock gardens. Sedum is a large genus of flowering plants, also known as stonecrops. Sedums are members of the succulent family. They have fleshy, water-storing leaves and are drought tolerant.
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- Ryan divides the plants from the tray into smaller sections to fit some of the crevices in the wall and between the stone steps.
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- Traditionally, creeping sedums are grown for their colorful foliage – blue, yellow, copper, maroon and more – or for their draping form which softens the edge of containers and rock walls. Sedum, like other succulents, retain water in their leaves and can thrive in dry climates. They need little soil and water to survive, which makes them excellent for planting here. Ryan is wearing my Martha Stewart MTS-GLVNP2-SL-M All-Purpose Non-Slip Garden Gloves – available at my shop on Amazon.
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- Once sedums become established, they require very little supplemental water to thrive.
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- Here, Ryan tucks the sedum in a corner, where the steps meet.
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- Once he finds a suitable hole, he presses some potting soil into the crack.
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- And then places the sedum securely into the same crevice. To provide interest, Ryan tries to plant the sedum next to different types along the wall.
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- Most sedum has a trailing nature and will begin cascading down the side of the wall as it grows.
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- Once the roots take hold, the plant will wedge itself in and begin to spread.
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- Here is an already established sedum that has spread across these stones.
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- Sedums thrive nearly anywhere as long as they get good drainage.
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- We first planted sedums here in 2012. And every so often, we add more and more – it is growing so nicely on this wall. A rock garden is an easy, low maintenance way to add beauty around any home.
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