The plants and trees continue to show off their fall colors.
This time of year, because of the changes in temperature and length of daylight, the leaves stop their food-making process. When this happens, the chlorophyll breaks down and the green color disappears, making way for all the shades of autumn. Here at my Bedford, New York farm, we're still waiting for a hard frost, but the colors across the landscape are beautiful - various shades of orange, yellow, brown, red, and evergreen.
Enjoy these photos - they were taken using a Google Pixel 5G.
There is always something new to see around the farm this time of year. The colors change daily. Here’s a view looking up at a sugar maple above my tree peony garden bed. These trees display gorgeous colors in fall – the leaves turn vibrant shades of yellow, burnt orange, and red.
Along one side of my carriage road across from the long pergola is a stand of bald cypress trees, Taxodium distichum. This section is always the first to turn in autumn. Bald cypress trees are deciduous conifers that shed their needlelike leaves in the fall. In fact, they get the name “bald” cypress because they drop their leaves so early in the season. Their fall colors are tan, cinnamon, and fiery orange.
Outside my Winter House kitchen is this beautiful Nyssa sylvatica, or black tupelo. Its summer leaves are a dark green, but in the fall its foliage turns yellow, orange, bright red, purple or scarlet – all colors that may appear on the same branch.
In the fall, linden tree leaves turn a spectacular bright yellow color. Lindens, Tilia, are also known as basswoods, and have sturdy, straight trunks and profuse foliage. This allee runs from the old corn crib to my allée of boxwood.
I loved the linden allee so much, I extended it to the chicken coops. Here is the newer section – planted about four years ago. I am so pleased with how well the trees are growing.
Over the years, I’ve planted many different types of trees in hopes that they would shade, provide climate control, and change color at different times, in different ways. Here is some of the autumn color seen across one of my paddocks.
This is one side of my allee of pin oaks, Quercus palustris. They are turning a gorgeous russet brown. These trees have done so well on my farm. They have such an interesting growth habit – pendulous lower branches, horizontal middle branches, and upright upper branches. Pin oaks normally reach 60 to 70 feet tall but can reach heights of 100-feet.
This is my grove of American beech trees, Fagus grandifolia. These American beech trees offer a beautiful autumn show every year. American beech is native to the eastern United States and Canada. It is a deciduous tree with smooth gray bark.
Not far from the American beech tree grove is the winding road leading to my hayfields and woodlands. This is always a popular viewpoint – in every season.
For fall color, the sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, is hard to beat. Its glossy green, star-shaped leaves turn fiery shades of red, orange, yellow and purple this time of year.
The foliage of American sycamore trees is a vast crown of large leaves. In autumn, sycamore tree leaves turn shades of yellow and brown.
These are the large, glossy leaves of the tulip tree – changing from green to gold. My tulip trees are the tallest at the farm – these trees can grow more than 120-feet. In the late spring bright yellowish-green and orange flowers bloom. They resemble tulips in shape. The silhouette of the tree’s leaves is also tulip-shaped – look closely at these leaves. Together, these features give the tulip tree its name. The tulip tree is also known as tulip poplar, yellow poplar, whitewood, and tulip magnolia. Some of these names can be deceiving, as the tree is not a true poplar. Instead, it belongs to the magnolia family.
This is a Norway spruce – an evergreen. Although these lose some needles every year, their closely spaced branches make the loss less noticeable than on pines.
This is a mature Japanese Stewartia, Stewartia pseudocamellia, just outside my Summer House garden. Native to Japan, this tree is known not only for its brilliant shades of orange that emerge in fall, but also for its interesting exfoliating bark and delicate blooms. I love Stewartia trees – do you know why? Here’s a hint: it’s in the name.
These are the leaves and seed pods of the Styrax japonicus ‘Marley’s Pink Parasol’ trees that line both sides of the carriage road to my tennis court. The leaves transform to a bright and cheery lemon yellow in fall.
Not far from the Styrax are the Osage orange trees, which in the fall turn bright yellow before the leaves drop. The Osage orange, Macular pomifera, is more commonly known as a hedge apple, bow wood, or bodark.
The bright yellow-gold trees are both American larch, Larix laricina, standing out in the pinetum. This tree is commonly called tamarack, eastern larch, American larch or hackmatack. This deciduous conifer will drop all these showy needles just as winter approaches.
Ginkgo biloba, one of the world’s oldest tree species, turns an amazing yellow this time of year and then all at once drops its leaves – it’s another complex phenomenon of nature.
Oak trees have some of the most vibrant fall foliage – the leaves often turn a reddish-brown color.
I love how the smaller Japanese maples look under the canopy of taller maples and tulip trees in the Japanese maple tree woodland. I planted so many Japanese maples here – hundreds of cultivars with countless forms, leaf types, and sizes.
The perimeter around my paddocks displays such wonderful shades of amber, brown, orange and green. Rinze, Bond, and Banchunch are surrounded in fall splendor. What does autumn look like where you live? Share your autumn descriptions with me in the comments section below. Happy fall!
This season's tree-planting project continues at my Bedford, New York farm with a group of young, healthy Japanese maples.
Every year, I try to add a few interesting and rare trees to my Japanese Maple Grove. I love this area of the farm and my gardeners, outdoor grounds crew, and I have been working hard to keep it looking its best. Recently, I purchased 27 more of these remarkable trees to add to my collection. All the new specimens came from Summer Hill Nursery in Madison, Connecticut. With so many cultivated Japanese maple varieties available, one can find suitable specimens to grow beautifully in sun, shade, containers, and even bonsai. These trees provide countless variations in size, leaf shape, and color - I am looking so forward to watching them develop in this shady woodland.
Enjoy these photos.
These 27 young Japanese Maples were just picked up and brought back to my farm. Many of my Japanese maples are varieties of Acer palmatum – trees that have been cultivated in Japanese gardens for centuries. These will be great additions to this garden.
Over the years, I’ve planted hundreds of Japanese maples in this area. Japanese maples prefer dappled sun or part shade. I purposely planted them beneath larger trees such as tulip trees and other maples. The varying heights add a nice texture to the grove.
Some of the varieties in this group include Acer palmatum ‘Beni Shichihenge’ – a pink variegated Japanese maple. New growth emerges as a show stopping collage of red, pink, orange, cream and green and then changing to this nice cream and green. Later this fall, the color is a distinctive shade of orange. ‘Beni shichihenge’ grows as a beautiful vase shaped tree when young turning more round topped with age.
Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Garnet’ is a deciduous, graceful, small tree with lacy, deeply cut dark red leaves that retain their color into fall. This variety is very durable and vigorous with a pendulous, spreading growth habit.
Acer palmatum ‘Roseo Marginatum’ is a slow-growing, dome-shaped tree with blue-green leaves with deeply cut, often curved lobes, margined with shades of white and pink. Later this season, the foliage turns deep scarlet red.
‘Green Threadleaf’ maples have smooth branches and feather-soft green foliage that cascade to the ground.
Acer palmatum ‘Ever Red’ is a charming dwarf tree with a delicate weeping form. The foliage holds beautiful deep red color throughout summer before dropping in fall.
Acer palmatum ‘Sumi Nagashi’ is an upright, bright mauve red maple. It is a hardy and vigorous grower with a bold crimson red in fall. Here one can already see the changing color.
This is Acer palmatum ‘Orange Dream’. In spring this tree is stunning with leaves of orange-yellow, edged in red. In summer it is a cool combination of green and red tips. And, in fall it explodes into a fire-ball of orange and umber.
This is ‘Emerald Lace’ Japanese maple – a fast-growing, deciduous small tree with deep emerald green, lacy foliage. ‘Emerald Lace’ features finely dissected leaves that emerge bright green in spring with red petioles that remain red throughout the season. Summer color lightens to light green with red highlights. ‘Emerald Lace’ has great fall colors that run yellow to orange and finish up with fiery red.
This is Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Waterfall’. It displays beautifully cascading branches with large, finely cut green leaves and golden fall color.
Acer palmatum ‘Shishigashira’, commonly called the lion’s head maple, is a very popular and striking cultivar. It is a slow upright grower with dense tufts of crinkled deep green foliage on each branch, looking somewhat like the mane of a lion. It also tends to be one of the latest Japanese maples to color in the fall.
This gorgeous specimen is Acer japonicum ‘Branford Beauty’. It shows off rich green, rounded leaves in spring and summer with seven to 11 pointed lobes sharply and irregularly toothed. This fall color is gorgeous mix of yellow and crimson.
Acer palmatum ‘Butterfly’ is a slow growing shrub-like variety. It features silvery white margined green leaves on densely held branches. These leaves become scarlet magenta in late fall.
Acer palmatum ‘Volker’s Cream’ has such interesting foliage – creamy white reticulated variegation in spring and yellow to orange color in fall. The dark veining contrasts so beautifully with the lighter leaf color.
Once the new trees arrive at my farm, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, positions them where they will be planted.
Ryan strategically places each specimen – keeping in mind the tree’s color, mature height, and spread.
After the trees are positioned, Domi begins digging the holes. A crucial step in growing healthy trees is to plant them at the proper depth. Planting a tree too deep can kill it. Plant it only at its flare – the bulge just above the root system where the roots begin to branch away from the trunk.
Once the depth of the hole is correct, the hole is amended with fertilizer. We use Roots with mycorrhizal fungi, which helps transplant survival and increases water and nutrient absorption.
As with all the plants and trees we plant, we always scarify the root ball. Scarifying stimulates root growth. Essentially, Pasang breaks up small portions of the root ball to loosen the roots a bit and create some beneficial injuries. This helps the plant become established more quickly in its new environment.
The tree is placed into the hole to gauge the necessary depth. A good rule of thumb is to plant it to the same height as it was in the pot. And then, Pasang adds a little more fertilizer to the top of the root ball.
Pasang then backfills, adding a little more new soil where needed. After putting a new tree into the ground, be sure to keep it slightly moist for the first year as it takes root.
We’re expecting a good soaking rain this weekend, so these trees will get a nice drink.
This grove grows more beautifully every year. Few trees are as stunning as the Japanese maple. With more than a thousand varieties and cultivars including hybrids, the iconic Japanese maple tree is among the most versatile small trees.
Here at my Bedford, New York farm, I have several horse paddocks - enclosed spaces where my Friesians, Fell pony, and donkeys are turned out to exercise and graze. The gateways to these paddocks can sometimes get muddy. Muddy high-traffic areas are not suitable for horses - they can cause poor footing, which can lead to leg injuries, strain, and stress to their joints, muscles, and ligaments. To help, we installed special mud management systems from RAMM Horse Fencing & Stalls, a 30-year old family-owned business located in Swanton, Ohio. The flexible, high density, three-inch deep polyethylene mats help to contain gravel and improve drainage where it is needed most. It's an easy way to make my paddocks safer for my dear equines.
Enjoy these photos.
Pete secures twine at the entrance to one of my paddocks, so he can dig out a neat, straight space for the mud management mat.
I wanted the mat to be placed on the inside of the paddock, right at the gate where it tends to get muddy.
Pete rakes the area clean of any old sod and debris. Doing this levels the area and removes any pre-existing ruts which could hinder proper drainage.
The space is now ready for the mud management system installation.
Pete dug the area about four inches deep.
We’re using the innovative environmentally-safe mud control panels from RAMM – a company that also makes the hay feeders we use here at the farm.
Pete and Fernando open the mat and stake it to the ground so it could stretch out under the sun. Allowing time for the panel to soak in the heat helps to maintain its form for installation.
After an hour or so, Pete and Fernando remove the stakes and move the mat into place.
They lay it over a weed cloth that was put down and secured to the ground with sod staples.
Here, Pete secures the panel with wooden stakes once again until the gravel is in place. This mat is 85 square feet when fully opened. The cells are each three-inches deep.
Next, Pete starts to fill the cells with a 60-40 mix of crushed gravel and stone dust. Because the interconnecting cells have a double-welded seam and are not made of hard plastic, they conform to the area easily.
Here is a closer look at the angular gravel and stone dust. This mix is available at any local sand and stone supplier.
Fernando works from the other side to fill all the cells.
It doesn’t take long to fill the mat plus a two inch layer of fill above it.
The gravel and stone dust are spread evenly over the mat. It can also be mounded up slightly in the center to allow for better drainage. Pete and Fernando make sure none of the mat is exposed.
By early afternoon, my stable manager Helen Peparo and Bond, come over to take a look at the new paddock entrance and path.
What do you think, Bond? I think he approves.
Fernando wets the gravel, so it packs down into the cells as much as possible. This is a crucial part of the process to ensure there is enough of the stone mix fill.
Pete uses a stone tamper to pack the fill tightly.
It looks so much better – and the water is already draining away from the surface. If preferred, a layer of top soil can also be placed on the gravel.
Minutes later, it looks completely dry and mud-free
And here’s my Fell pony, Banchunch, about to get turned out with his Friesian friends. Banchunch is inspecting the entrance to his paddock.
But he doesn’t make much of the new gravel entrance – a good thing when it comes to horses. He goes straight to the nearby grass. This is actually a good sign – the new surface does not phase him one bit.
In fact, it doesn’t phase any of them. Banchuch, Rinze, and Bond simply keep on going – the grass seems more appealing. I am glad these mud management mats will help keep the mud away and my horses hoofs safe and dry.
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