There is always so much work to do on my Bedford, New York farm.
This time of year, all my large potted tropical plants are displayed outdoors in various locations around the property. Seven months out of the year, these specimens are kept inside temperature and humidity controlled greenhouses where they can be properly maintained, but it's nice to see them outdoors in beautiful ornamental urns during spring and summer. Yesterday, my gardeners and outdoor grounds crew potted up and arranged a collection of palms in the large courtyard outside my stable.
Enjoy these photos.
This is a king palm, Archontophoenix alexandrae, a tall, solitary palm that can grow up to 100-feet. The graceful crown has eight to 10 pinnate, feather-like fronds. It is also commonly known as Alexandra palm, northern Bangalow palm, or feather palm and is a palm endemic to Queensland, Australia. This is one of two I decided would look perfect in the square pots flanking my stable doors. The planter is from Birdsall & Co..
As with all pots, we always place a shard at the bottom to prevent any soil from clogging the drainage hole.
The bottom of the large container is filled with composted soil made right here at the farm.
Here, Ryan carefully goes around the root ball with a hori hori knife to loosen it from its plastic pot. A hori hori has a straight edge and a serrated edge, which makes it easy to saw through tough roots or cut off fronds and leaves. It also easily cuts into soil and has a depth on the side for measuring.
Next, it is carefully removed from the pot onto a tarp. It is always a good idea to work on a tarp to keep cleanup easy.
Ryan scarifies the root ball and trims it slightly to better accommodate the container.
The king palm is gently raised and placed into the square urn. It is quite heavy.
We use Scotts Miracle-Gro Cactus, Palm and Citrus Potting Soil to surround and top dress the potted king palm.
This potting soil contains a fast-draining formula that’s great for palms, citrus and succulents both indoors and out.
Once filled, Ryan tamps down on the soil, so there is good contact. This palm will remain here until the fall when it is removed from the pot and stored in its designated hoop house.
On the other side of the courtyard, Fernando and Pete pot up a Bismarkia palm, Bismarckia nobilis, which grows from a solitary trunk, gray to tan in color, and slightly bulging at the base.
And here’s Ryan potting up a sago palm. for some of these plants, it is easier to plant the actual pot within the urn – this saves time and soil. I have many, many cycads. The sago palm, Cycas revoluta, is a popular houseplant known for its feathery foliage and ease of care. Native to the southern islands of Japan, the sago palm goes by several common names, including Japanese palm, funeral palm, king sago or just plain sago palm.
My handsome Friesian Rinze looks on from his stall. He is the patriarch of my equine herd.
Our trusted Kubota M4-071 tractor – a vehicle that is used every day here at the farm to do a multitude of tasks – is used to deliver two more sago palms to the courtyard. These sago palms are already in pots.
I like to place a grouping of these plants in the center of the courtyard around the millstone.
Here is another sago next to my stable office building.
Notice the sago palm’s trunk. It is a rough, symmetrical trunk which becomes leafless as it ages and gives way to its evergreen crown of upward pointing fronds.
Sago palm fronds resemble those of palm trees. The glossy, pinnate leaves are typically about four to five feet long at maturity, and up to nine-inches wide.
This tall specimen is a Bird of Paradise, Strelitzia nicolai, a species of evergreen tropical herbaceous plant with gray-green leaves. These plants have actually evolved to create splits along their lateral leaf seams to allow the wind to pass by. In doing so, they eliminate the risk of being snapped in half by strong tropical gusts.
I love this view of the plants from inside the stable looking toward the Boxwood Allée. All the plants look great and will thrive through the warm months in this location.
The gardens are glistening with color at my Bedford, New York farm - so perfect for a spring day business meeting.
Last week, I hosted a breakfast at my home for a group of business colleagues and associates. The weather was perfect - sunny with temperatures in the 70s. We dined al fresco on my terrace parterre and enjoyed delicious croissants with apricot jam I made, and fresh fruit including strawberries just picked from my garden. Afterward, I showed them my blooming herbaceous peonies, the vegetables that are already growing so beautifully, and my living maze - so lush and green.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
This time of year is always so beautiful. All the trees and shrubs are so lush including the boxwood and the weeping katsura on the left just outside my Winter House kitchen.
Many of the ornamental urns are already planted for the season. This is an agave. Behind it is a golden barberry hedge.
Here is one of two hand-casted antique fountains. They provide such a refreshing stop for visiting birds.
Under the shade of the umbrellas, I put out our breakfast – croissants, fresh fruit, and homemade apricot jam.
Look at these gorgeous strawberries. They were just picked from my patch minutes before my guests arrived.
And of course, I cut fresh peonies from the garden to decorate our table.
After breakfast, I led a brief tour through the gardens. First, we walked past the peonies. Everyone admired the large boxwood surrounding the garden and the trees beyond.
Right now, there are still rows and rows of gorgeous peony blooms – it’s always a big treat for guests to see them.
When I first planted my peony garden, I focused on pink varieties, and planted 11-double rows of 22-peony types. I chose the varieties for their colors, their forms and their long blooming periods.
The garden features one crop of flowers for a couple of weeks only once a year, and then that’s it – until the next season when they bloom with splendor once again.
Then, I led the group to my half-acre large vegetable garden now in its second year. The brassicas are all growing so well already.
This is one of the many cabbages. To get the best health benefits from cabbage, it’s good to include all three varieties into the diet – Savoy, red, and green.
In this bed, I plant Chinese cabbage, or napa cabbage, which is slightly sweet and mild.
And look at the kale. Kale or leaf cabbage is a group of vegetable cultivars within the plant species Brassica oleracea. They have purple or green leaves, in which the central leaves do not form a head. I am so pleased with how well everything grows in this garden.
These are the leaves of our artichokes. Globe artichokes, Cynara scolymus, are popular in both Europe and the United States. Artichokes are actually the flower buds, which will emerge from the center of the plants. We grew so many artichokes last year – I am looking forward to this year’s bountiful crop.
Next, a quick visit with my peafowl. I keep all my birds in large, protected enclosures because of the predators that sometime wander through the property.
Adjacent to the peafowl pen is the goose pen. I’ve had Pomeranian guard geese for many years, but I also keep Sebastopol geese, Toulouse geese, African geese, and Chinese geese.
Here are some enjoying a little rest under the umbrellas.
The next stop was my maze. We walked from the bottom half of the paddock and between these London plane trees. The London plane tree, Platanus × acerifolia, is a cross between two sycamore species: Platanus occidentalis, the American sycamore, and Platanus orientalis, the Oriental plane. This very large tree with maple-like leaves grows to roughly 75 to 100 feet with a spread of 60 to 75 feet.
All our recent plantings are thriving. This is Gold Coast English Holly.
In this row, the white blooms of Lotus Moon™ Pearlbush – a profuse spring bloomer with dainty white flowers.
And then a walk past my long and winding pergola. It was the perfect morning for a business meeting and garden tour.
My large “iced terrace” at Skylands, my home overlooking Seal Harbor, is brimming with beautiful, green plant life once again.
Every year, I like to spend the Memorial Day weekend up in Maine planting all the large outdoor urns, pots, and planters. It is quite an undertaking, but it's become a fun tradition especially with the group that accompanies me. Many of the tropical specimens are stored in hoop houses at my Bedford, New York farm during winter, and then carefully loaded onto a trailer and delivered to Skylands for the summer months. As soon as I arrive there, I design the layout of where things will go, and we all get to work.
Enjoy these photos.
It’s always a busy, but fun weekend at Skylands when we fill the planters with beautiful specimens. Look at all the planters waiting to be filled. And this is not even all of them…
… There are more on the Western Terrace. These planters are new to Skylands. They were large terracotta planters we painted Bedford Gray and sent up here to Maine from my farm.
I decide where each plant will go before they are moved – staying organized saves lots of time and energy. This year, we brought alocasias, agaves, palms, and so many more.
We also had trays of smaller plants and ground covers to use as under plantings. Many of the succulent plants were grown in my greenhouse here in Maine. Propagating this way saves a lot of cost.
The plants are carefully placed around the terrace, in or close to where they will be displayed for the season. The stone trough I bought at Trade Secrets in 2013. It has worked perfectly here at Skylands.
Here I am adding nutrient-rich potting soil to the pot. This great mix is from Scotts Miracle-Gro.
And don’t forget to feed – I always say, if you eat, so should your plants. Here I am sprinkling Scotts Osmocote – an all-in-one plant solution containing essential nutrients and a unique resin that controls nutritional release.
Osmocote particles include a core of nutrients – nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
During the busy planting morning, we stopped for a good breakfast. Yogurt made by my niece, Sophie, with apricot jam I made along with French toast made from brioche bread I also made.
Peter Grub is one of our hard working gardeners and outdoor grounds crew here at Skylands.
And this is Amos Price ready to pot up this evergreen. To protect the rather porous and fragile pots, I like to line them with garbage bags, so the pots don’t soak up too much water. The garbage bags have drain holes at the bottom and are neatly tucked inside the pot, so they are not visible.
All these pots on the Western Terrace are done. These will fill in so nicely over the course of the season.
The Western Terrace is among my favorite summer meal spots. The pergola is covered with kiwi vines that are original to the home.
For lunch on this day, we had crab cakes and a fresh cucumber salad.
The next morning, I made everyone waffles and bacon.
Kevin always creates the most gorgeous flower arrangements. Another tradition is seeing what stunning creations he comes up with every time he is here. He made several arrangements of lilacs – the fragrance is intoxicating.
Here’s another trio of lilac arrangements in crisp white vases. The lilac, Syringa vulgaris, is a species of flowering plant in the olive family Oleaceae. Syringa is a genus of up to 30-cultivated species with more than one-thousand varieties.
For dinner, we had smashed potato with Roe caviar and sour cream.
The charming town of Northeast Harbor, near my home in Seal Harbor, Maine, hosts its own Memorial Day Parade every year – I always try to attend. It starts on Memorial Day morning at 10:30. It’s a great opportunity to get reacquainted with the year-round locals and many of the summer season residents.
This is the Main Street of Northeast Harbor. Northeast Harbor is a village on Mount Desert Island. Lots of visitors come out for this parade. It was nice to see all the marching bands and cars of people commemorating those who died while serving in the country’s armed forces.
On this last day, I made asparagus velouté, A velouté is the French term for a soup traditionally thickened with egg yolks, butter and cream. I used asparagus grown at my Bedford, farm. It was simply delicious. And a great way to end a fun and productive weekend. See you soon, Skylands…
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