Daffodil Weekend

The garden will open on April 27 for the season. We will be open each Friday and Saturday until October. Our first two open days, April 27 &28, will showcase the Daffodil Meadow.  We hope you will all join us.  The garden will open at 10:00 both days and remain open until 4:00. Signs will direct you to our new entrance and parking area. New this year also is our shop offering books, plants, pots, and produce.

Because our house is small, that leaves only one aspect, out the upstairs bathroom window, and it is dominated by one of our most treasured small trees, important enough to share a place in our affections even with the Stewartia or the magnolia.  The tree is Sorbus alnifolia, the Alder-leaved or Korean Mountain Ash, and we see it every hour of the day, every day of the year.  Best of all, we look into its crown, close to its leaves and flowers and fruit and somber winter bark, not as if the tree stood out in the garden but is almost part of the room we are in.

We were in pursuit of Sorbus alnifolia from our  first year here.  We had read Donald Wyman’s enthusiastic description of it in his Trees for American Gardens.  In  those  days, we had room to plant trees and we intended to plant a great many. We then found a living specimen at The Arnold Arboretum in Boston, and our enthusiasm was fixed.  Sorbus alnifolia was definitely on our list.

But despite Wyman’s praise, the tree was little known then and rare in nurseries.  Even Weston Nurseries in Hopkinton, Mass., which supplied us so many wonderful trees and shrubs in the beginning, did not list it.  That seemed odd, for there was little question of its hardiness (as, for example, there was about Stewartia pseudocamelia, on which we took a chance anyway.)  Sorbus alnifolia originates in a very cold part of Korea, and is rated as hardy all the way to Zone 3.  Eventually, however,  we found the tree offered by Wayside Gardens in South Carolina, which made a specialty of the rare and unusual, always at a hefty price.  We bought the tree from them, of course, though years would pass before the wisdom of that purchase came clear.  What arrived that spring at the post office was just a little sapling barely two feet tall and as thin as a pencil.  However, its very smallness was a piece of luck, because of where we intended to plant it.

Our garden was taking shape in the shadow of an old New England hardwood forest.  Many of the trees, mostly ash, beech, yellow birch and maple, were perhaps a hundred years old or more, but because they had grown close together for all their lives, they rose straight and tall, with no lower branches anywhere closer to ground than thirty or forty feet.  The woods  needed to be brought to ground, needed the understory that is often lacking in old woods this far north.  But their interlacing root zones made it  impossible to establish well-grown small trees with large root masses of their own.  A sapling, however, could be tucked in easily among those roots, and so we planted our sorbus almost at the foot of a great sugar maple that towered above the ash’s  puny self.  We really do not remember giving it any special care those first years, either because memory has failed us or – more likely – because it didn’t need much, and grew quickly.  Now, and for a long time, it seems always to have been a stately tree perhaps thirty feet tall, with a trunk measuring thirteen inches in diameter and  a wide-spreading crown still comfortably below its much older companion.

The two have existed in perfect harmony, but they never seem so suited to each other as in October, when both are dressed in autumnal blaze.  Against the scarlet orange of the maple the ash’s simple, toothed leaves turn from darkest green to butter yellow and then to orange, then a tawny brown.  A spectacular display of fruit accompanies this steady change of foliage as October advances.  Each of  thousands of flowers pretty white flowers arranged in puffs that covered the tree in May will have formed into corymbs of coral fruit shadowed red beneath a powdery, dusty bloom.  In most years, the fruit is not with us for long, since a host of birds – jays, robins, cardinals and chickadees – descend on it, making its crown even more alive with color.  If the path flight of the robins lies directly over us, they can strip it bare in a week.  But if not, the much less voracious birds find something for themselves all winter long, even in the shriveled, dark brown raisins of fruit that may cling almost until spring.  And even in winter the tree is beautiful, and somehow noble, its thick trunk supporting a crown of secondary branches.  Both the trunk and older branches are smooth and gray but dotted over with straw-colored lenticils, forming a pattern like the skin of a snake.

Over the years, so much in a garden happens by accident, or with a vague hope that somehow things will fill the expectation formed only in the mind.   But in any older garden, there may be successes so striking that the gardener himself cannot imagine having foreseen them, and can take no credit for what seems essentially an unexpected gift, a happy accident that occurred beyond his best-laid plans and wishes.  Our Sorbus alnifolia seems that to us now.

We find it puzzling that colchicum are unfamiliar to so many gardeners, for  the genus is rich in virtues.  First of all, most  thrive under a wide range of cultural conditions, from the severe winter cold of Zone 4 to the torrid summer heat of Zone 9.  Possessing natural repellents, they are  free of  diseases, insect pests and predators, including deer and rabbits.   Though single bulbs can be breathtakingly costly, up to $12.00 apiece,  colchicum are ecceptionally easy to divide.  We began with 25, and now perhaps there are 2,000 along the front of the conifer border, all from divisions in  early spring, just as the green snouts appear above ground, or in mid-summer when the leaves die down. It is easy and satisfiying work, and our initial investment has paid huge dividends.

The genus Colchicum includes approximately 45 species native principally to stony hillsides around the Mediterranean, but extending well into northern India and even western China.  (The genus name is classical,   from Colchis, the ancient Roman name for the Black Sea region of Georgia.) In their native habitats , one species or another will be  in flower from August to April.  Still, the bulk of the genus flowers  from mid-September to early October.  They are all a play on shades of lilac mauve, some deepening almost to magenta, others washing out to pinkish gray.   There are a few doubles and a sprinkling of precious albino whites.    All are beautiful in their subtly different ways, and all are gifts, for the time in which they bloom

The first  colchicum to appear here  is C. agrippinum , showing its  flowers  just as   the August drought gives way to  September rains.    Each flower is checkered over, the deeper mauve ground hashed with lighter lines.  Botanists call this pattern “tessellation,” and it is most familiar to gardeners  on the petals of the snake’s head fritillary, Fritillaria meleagris.  Do not, however, expect too much precision in this design.  For if dishevelment is part of the charm of autumn, it is certainly part of the charm of colchicum, and C. agrippinum possesses that to a rather large degree   Its 6 or so pointed petals stand about 4” tall, when they don’t flop over, and the pattern is often blurred to dots.  Still, it is beautiful.  And the first.

On the heels of C. aggripinum is Colchicum byzantinum.  A much more vigorous  species, it  can produce as many as two dozen blooms from a single bulb, each standing five or so inches tall, and each making way for the next by falling over on its side, a habit that irritates tidy gardeners.    The petals are rather watery, and so  the effect  of a bulb in bloom  is of a puddle of soft pinkish lilac,  or when several bulbs are grown together, a pond.  A very fine white form  exists (C. byzantinum ‘Album)  that is equally vigorous, and manages somehow to be a little more upstanding.    We have planted both in adjacent drifts,  for the white is very clear and pure, and the lilac very moody and autumnal, and each seems prettiest when allowed to create its own effect.

Some time in early October,  just  as the woods that surround our garden turns to its full autumn splendor, Colchicum speciosum comes into bloom.  To say that it is the most commonly cultivated  species is not to detract from its great beauty, for it is perhaps the jewel of the genus.  It bears the largest flowers of all, chalices  up  to seven inches tall, with oval, rounded, overlapping petals clasping yellow anthers.  Buds emerge  pale ivory, but quickly color up to a rich, pinkish purple.  And though flowers are not born in the profusion  of C. byzantinum, , their size and the intensity of their color more than make up the difference.  Surprisingly, this colchicum is fragrant, though the great early 20th century gardener E.A. Bowles found in its scent an underlying  smell  “like that of a stable.”  No flower is perfect.

But as close to perfection as one can get is the white form of C. speciosum,  C. s. ‘Album,’  which is the pearl of the genus.  It is pristine white,  a beautiful cup of six petals held perfectly upright, no matter what insults autumn storms may deal.  It is odd anywhere in gardening to find the albino  form of a flower with more substance than its colored counterpart.  Here, however, it is so, and this might be the colchicum above all others to plant, were they not all so wonderful in different ways.  We have no idea whether it also smells of stables, but if it did, it would hardly matter.

The last of the commonly cultivated colchicum to bloom is C. autumnale.   Actually, however,  though it usually brings up the end of the parade just as autumn leaves  begin to fall here in mid-October, it sometimes gets out of step and overlaps its cousins.  It is a neat  plant, producing  six or so blossoms about five inches tall,  all at once from each bulb, a tight little bouquet.  Though other colchicum show off best on bare ground in bays of shrubbery or the sunny edges of woodland verges, C. autumnale always looks best in rough grass, as its popular name, “meadow saffron,” indicates. It is an effect we would love to have here, but as we have no rough grass except the high, rank growth of the meadow which gets brsh cut at just about that time, all our C. autumnale mingle with our other colchicum in one great sweep.    There is a very fine white form of C. autumnale also,  ‘Album’ , which again, is best kept  adjacent to, but not mingled with,  the  rose magenta of the typical form.

We have somewhat ambiguous feelings about the three double forms of colchicum, “Waterlily,’ ‘Plenifolium’ and ‘Alboplenum.’ All three emerge quite late,  as if their  quadrupling of petals required more energy  to push above ground.  Because the essential form of a colchicum flower is so elegant, they can all look rather odd, like pen wipers, and it must be said that their numerous petals seem to attract the splashed mud of autumn rains.  For this reason, we grow all three of them  far away from their slim relatives.  ‘Waterlily’ is planted in an open  bay  of the rhododendron garden, where its many pointed petals of lilac pink bunch tight against mulched ground.  ‘Alboplenum’ is similar in form, but snow white, and its flowers rise higher and tumble over quickly from their own weight.  It grows in an open patch of one of our woodland walks, where, if we forget to visit it, we find no great loss.  ‘Plenifolium’ grows in the rock garden, surrounded by gravel mulch, where its pale lilac blossoms are actually quite beautiful.

There are gardeners -  and we are unabashedly among them -  for whom the knowledge of a genus of mostly hardy plants of easy cultivation and aristocratic demeanor, with subtle permutations from species to species, creates an insatiable appetite.  Give us two species within any such genus, and we must have them all.  Rarer species and hybrids begin to appear each year  on the more adventurous  bulb lists.  There are dainty colchicum like C. baytopioruom, whose flowers are half the size of those of C, autumnale, and would be wonderfully suitable,  hovering against a granite stepping stone.  There are even colchicum that flower in spring, Colchicum hungaricum being perhaps the easiest, producing up to eight goblet-shaped pale, pinkish mauve, 3” tall blooms per bulb.  A  rare white form of it also exists..

But perhaps the rarest  of the spring colchicums is the only yellow-flowered species the genus.  Colchicum luteum is native to northern India into Tibet.  Though said to be abundant there, and hardy to Zone 4, it is  perhaps the rarest in the trade. We are certain to run it down, sooner or later.

After the Flowers Bloom: The Late Summer Garden

Roses, peonies, geraniums, peas are all already a distant memory. So what is left? Have we still a garden at all or had we best go to the shore?  This is an intensive two hour workshop in the garden meant to answer this question. Led by Joe Eck.

Cost: Free to members – $50 to general public

Please let us know if you are coming.

For some years when the great pea harvest was finished the garden entered a quiet season.  There was still plenty to eat of course, salads and carrots, and beets and beans, but the next great celebration waited on the ripening of tomatoes and even more, on the corn harvest.  That should not have been.  We grew what we thought were good American bean varieties, largely bush type, Burpee’s Tender Pick and Purple Queen, Vermont Bean and Seeds Provider, Vesey’s Maxipel, Pine Trees Bountiful.  And we grew pole beans as well, especially Kentucky Wonder, generally thought the best of all.  Yet to us they seemed all to possess a bland sameness never ascending to the status of something you really look forward to eating.  Well, we thought, beans just aren’t as good as peas.

Some years later, while in Rome, we stumbled upon a small shop that sold gardening things – pots and fertilizer and seeds.  The seeds were irresistible, packaged in great large packs with brilliant photographs on their covers.  Their names were all in Italian so we knew not what we were buying.  But buy we did, all manner of things – chicory and lettuce and artichokes and more than anything else, beans.  The combination of name and photograph made them irresistible.   Fagiolo Rampicanta, Meraviglia small di Venezia, for example, a great vigorous climbing bean with broad flat yellow pods of extraordinary flavor.  And Fagiolo rampicanta Supermarconi, also vigorously climbing and equally flavorful if more green than yellow.

A dish of Pasta con Fagioli eaten in an outdoor café with family caused us to seek out shelling beans.  We are particularly fond of Borlotto Lamon a climbing bean with beautiful red and white mottled shells with small brown speckled beans, considered the finest of all the shelling beans.  We usually grow six or eight different varieties of pole bean, trained up on an 8’ arch of bamboo which covers the center part of the central path.  It is high enough that one can walk under it, always a pleasure in any garden.

Of course we grow bush beans too, both because they mature earlier but also because they occupy much less space.  Like pole beans, they come in a great variety of forms.  Slender Green Baby Bianca matures as early as fifty five days whereas most pole beans take 70 days at least to reach picking size.  Brittle Wax is golden yellow, slender, also early but it bears all it’s crop at once so you must sow small numbers every ten days or so for a longer harvest.  Marconi is a flat green Roman type, good  but not as flavorful as Super Marconi.  In fact none of the bush beans equal the pole beans in flavor what ever advantage they offer in compactness and earliness.

But our fondness for beans bought from Seeds of Italy, the American Supplier for Sementi Franchi, should not prejudice you away from the bounty of bean varieties available from American sources.  The Seeds Savors Exchange lists over 4,000 cultivars for all sorts of beans green, wax, purple, pole, and bush and everything in between.  These are all genetically the same species, Phaseolus vulgeris and all forms readily cross with each other.  Hence there are probably more bean varieties than any other vegetable we eat.  There is a Dutch variety named Dragon Lingerie whose pods are mottled purple and cream.  The flavor is called remarkably good by Pine Tree Seeds in Maine.  It is a bush bean so we are sure we can find a place for it.

But cultivars of the North American Phaseolus vulguras are not the only legume we consume.  Long before beans were discovered in the new world, Europeans ate Fava Beans or broad beans.  A recipe for Favas called fabacia virides et Baianae appears in the Roman cookbook by Apicius.  But the ancients ate a small poded bean where as the modern Fava dates only from about the year 800 ad and originated in Spain.  Though originally dried and ground for flour it is only in modern times that the bean is harvested in its green state.  The best Italian variety for northern gardens is Cascicum which ripens in 75-80 days.  This is important for heat carries Favas off so they must be early maturing.  Luckily, they are largely impervious to cold and so can be sown with our earliest crops, peas and radishes and lettuce.  For many years we let ours grow any which way and as they tend to be tall, they would flop all over the ground and into the paths, making picking them rather a chore.  But last year we saw a beautiful illustration in a British magazine of Favas grown through a Cats Cradle of twine and we mean to copy the effect ourselves this season.  In our climate the harvest is brief, not more than two weeks before the heat takes them off, but like so much in the garden, cherries and magnolias and many alpines, their very brevity makes them the more treasured.

There are two other beans we cherish, both of which are relatively new to us.  We have long enjoyed Japanese food  and  certainly enjoyed edamame.  But only when Johnny’s Seeds began to offer a form called Butter Bean did we attempt it in our own garden.  It is tremendously prolific but produces all its crop at once.  So we sow it at ten day intervals for a month or so, for one serving would hardly sate our pleasure in it.  You but briefly boil it and then dress it with copious amounts of salt.  You drag the pod through your teeth extracting the bean and of course the salt which is half the delight of eating them.

And the last bean on our long list of beans are Indian Long Beans.  We first encountered them at the Indian markets in Jackson Heights Queens and then found that Territorial seeds offered a wonderful variety called Red Noodle.  Though they are often called Yard Long Beans, in fact they are about 18 inches in length and this variety Territorial describes as garnet colored which is precisely accurate.  But they require heat to set fruit and so in Vermont the only place suitable for them is in the torrid temperatures reached in the lower greenhouse in mid summer.  Grown in an enormous pot in the very center, they are so strikingly beautiful it is often hard to pick them.  But growing vegetables for their beauty alone is a valid endeavor and keeping that in mind is the Royal Road to a vegetable garden one really wants to visit.

Workshops will be held here at the garden twice a month throughout the summer.  The first is our daffodil work shop on April 29 at 10:00am. We have also scheduled a Magnolia Workshop on May 20th. All workshops run from 10:00-12:00. Advance registration is required. Admission is free to members and $50.00 to the general public.

OPENING DAYS AT THE GARDEN

Beginning on April the 29 and continuing until October 8 the garden will be open each Friday and Saturday afternoon from 1:00 until 4:00.  Admission will be free to Friends and $12.00 to the public. Parking will be on our side of the road. Books and pots will be on sale and of course the North Hill Gardeners will be on hand to answer questions. We hope to see you here.

Admission is free to Friends of North Hill and at a cost of     $50 to those who are not members of the Friends.

Information on the Friends of North Hill can be found on this website.

Reservations should be sent to P.O. Box 178, Readsboro Vermont 05350.

Open Days

The first open days of the 2011 season will occur on Friday, April 29 and Saturday April 30.

Admission is free to members of the Friends and $12 per person to those who are not.

Parking will be along the garden side of the road and should offer no difficulties. Visitors will be welcome to stay in the garden during all its open hours which will be from 1:00 until 4:00.