Indholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2023 i Horticulture

Breaking news: After 23 years of listening to me go on about plants, my husband, John, is becoming a gardener. All because of a bag of bulbs. And possibly a power tool. Last October I visited Peggy Anne Montgomery and Dan Benarcik at their Delaware home to document them planting a bulb lawn. (You’ll find the resulting story on page 26.) They kindly sent me home with 200 bulbs and a spare Power Planter, an auger bit for gardeners. A few weeks later I set about creating a mini bulb lawn to one side of our front-yard dogwood, and John offered to help. I think the Power Planter piqued his interest. He drilled holes; I dropped in bulbs. Here—north of Boston—our bulb lawn first bloomed in late March with Iris…

GROWING GREENER THOMAS CHRISTOPHER is a garden designer and writer based in Connecticut. His Growing Greener podcast, which informs this column, features leaders in ecological gardening. Listen at http://www.thomaschristophergardens.com. A DEAD MULCH or a live one? For Larry Weaner, founder of the much soughtafter ecological landscape design and installation firm Larry Weaner Landscape Associates, the choice is clear. During a recent conversation on my Growing Greener podcast, he told me that surrounding shrubs and trees with low-growing native perennials provides all the benefits of tucking them in with a blanket of organic non-living mulch, and a number of others besides. Plus, he added, the living mulch, after establishment, is free of the annual labor required by a conventional one. The secret to success in creating a living mulch lies in…

In only a few hours one cool autumn morning, horticulturists Peggy Anne Montgomery and Dan Benarcik transformed their Delaware home’s front lawn from “just grass” to a bee’s spring paradise. How? They planted a bulb lawn, installing low-growing, winter- and spring-blooming species within the turfgrass that slopes toward their street. From late February into May, pollinators and pedestrians alike enjoyed a shifting, colorful show of crocus, dwarf iris and daffodils, squill, species tulips and more. Bulb lawns trace their beginnings to the Netherlands; known there as stinzenplanten, they were used as early as the 1500s to decorate the area around the wealthy’s brick homes. Today they can be seen in spring at many botanical gardens, including Pennsylvania’s Chanticleer, where Dan works. Typically the bulbs are low-growing, early-blooming types, which allow…

Since time immemorial, people have dreamed of and collected beautiful fragrances in the garden. The nose, well, knows! Fragrant garden classics like gardenia, potted tuberose, roses or lilac bushes need little introduction, but there are many other scented plants perfect for today’s borders. Here are some of the best shrubs, bulbs and annuals to combine for a nonstop succession of fragrant dreams day and night. Fothergilla A genus in the witch hazel family, Fothergilla comprises a handful of species native to the southeast United States. These deciduous shrubs lend fragrance to borders in spring, and unlike many spring-blooming shrubs they provide continued interest all the way until frost. Both large fothergilla (F. major) and dwarf fothergilla (F. gardenii) resemble shrubby, multi-stemmed witch hazels (Hamamelis), with scalloped leaves that drop in…

When I began my professional gardening career over 25 years ago, ideas of sustainability in gardening and garden design were relatively unknown. Home gardeners were more familiar with the magic of Miracle-Gro and the Scotts Turf Builder program than they were with the importance of compost and promoting pollinators. Nonetheless, my degree in Environmental Design made me aware of the impending movement toward ecological approaches to landscape gardening years before sustainability became popular. Since those days I have witnessed a tremendous shift in gardening trends, most notably the transition from primarily traditional to increasingly sustainable gardening practices by both casual and professional gardeners. My first stint as a head gardener on a private estate taught me traditional methods, adopted from the English gardening style of bending the garden to the…

When Stacy Ling and her family moved homes in late 2021, she left behind carefully crafted gardens but gained a landscape ripe for intervention. Their new property in central New Jersey offered many garden rooms made distinct by a hillside setting, mature trees and shrubs and defining hardscape elements. The gardens within each space needed editing and input, and Stacy, author of The Bricks n’ Blooms Guide to a Beautiful & Easy Care Flower Garden, was eager to exercise her creativity. There was a lot to do—but the seasoned gardener knew she needed to watch the existing plants, see what might emerge and take her time developing ideas. Happily one area proved suitable for immediate attention so she could start a bit of gardening in spring. By the next fall,…

I HAVE ALWAYS harbored an inexplicable desire (perhaps a minor obsession?) to grow “zone-denying plants.” I seek them out and tend to them until there are too many of them, or they grow too big for the house, or they display an unforeseen and sometimes unacceptable trait for me or a family member, or I just get bored with them. That sometimes happens! Interestingly, in my later years I have increasingly gravitated to spending pleasant winters and vacations where my zone deniers naturally grow. I feel very comfortable in these areas and it is nice to enjoy viewing my familiar green friends without being responsible for them. For those who cannot, do not wish to or are not yet ready to spend time in those flora-rich subtropical or tropical locales,…