This, across the top of the garage, is the flowerless wisteria after its August haircut. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
MY PRINCE is getting testy about the wisteria. Not only is it out of control, he says, but he figures he’ll soon be too old to deal with the necessarily frequent summertime haircuts it requires.
That he’s been announcing he’s getting too old for the last 30 years is neither here nor there—the Fat Lady has yet to sing. That was an aside.
The never-blooming wisteria he considers a pestilence and a complete waste of time. The intent was that the vine cross the trellis atop the garage roof, providing screening of the townhouses behind ours, while providing a cascade of fabulously scented purple blossoms each spring and perhaps an occasional flower popping up through fall.
Sounds divine, right?
As it happens, this wisteria has had no more than a dozen flowers in its 40-some years. Despite the advice of this expert and that, and numerous theories, including root pruning, fertilizing, not fertilizing, and so forth, this vine—usually so ridiculously prolific that many consider it a weed—refuses to perform.
The other day The Prince was cursing away as he thwacked at this summer’s monstrous growth. Vines like steel cables had tangled in the branches of the cherry tree and the rose of sharon, and wriggled through the ivy growing up the garden walls.
While it still performs its main purpose—its billowing greenery raise the garage roof, yielding four feet of additional privacy—I do agree it has many levels of irritation.
We should have known.
We should also have matching hairshirts saying We Should Have Known, as it is the leitmotif of our lives in the garden.
Had I not read (and read) that the wisteria is highly invasive—before we’d planted one? But I figured it would be someone else’s problem in time, and we’d be propped up at a bar in Key West, margaritas in hand, celebrating the sunset at the southernmost point.
But what do we replace it with? What other vine grows so quickly, luxuriantly, and, let me say this again, quickly. Damn time marches on.
Wait! I have a thought. The orange trumpet vine we planted on the north wall (could be the south wall, I’m directionally challenged) might be trained . . .
It’s said to be invasive too, but it’s better behaved, more inclined to grow where it’s trained. So, perhaps we can pull it down from the neighbor’s wall, where it has grown three stories and lay it along the fence top and over to the garage roof to dance along the trellis. The orange flowers will look right jolly above the turquoise door.
Brilliant thinking, I’m thinking.
To the ladder, my boy! I’ll direct.
Next week. Our parakeets, Cooper (the mama) and Goldie (the papa), had a blessed event last weekend. We won’t know the sex for at least six months, but we’re winging it and naming the budgie Kamala.
The refrigerator of dreams. / Photo on front from iStock.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
I MUST SAY, the interior of the fridge is lovely. I must also say, this is not my fridge.
Front and center on a shelf, radishes share a wooden bowl with curly-leaf lettuce. Blueberries nestle in a crystal goblet. A silvery basket holds near-black cherries—you can see the sweetness. Behind them, the tops of scallions, in a raffia-wrapped vase, tickle the underside of the shelf above, the greens perfectly clipped so they’re precisely the same height. In the far back are bowls of apples and limes.
That shelf above has bowls of cherry tomatoes and peppers and glass jars of what looks like milk, maybe cream, maybe both. Anchoring this tableau is a small vase of orange and yellow zinnias poked with purple veronica (I think).
That little vase gave me the excuse for writing about fridgescaping in a gardening column.
The refrigerator of reality, at least mine. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Ma! says Baby. This has been a thing for years, it’s all over Instagram and TikTok. Indeed. At The List, they say: #FridgeTour has more than 50 million views on TikTok, #FridgeOrganization has almost 2 billion views, and #FridgeDecor has more than 280,000 views, as social media users show off their unique fridge aesthetics.
Fridgescaping, I laugh. Where have I been? Maybe it’s a Trad Wife thing I’ve conveniently overlooked . . .
Artist Julianne Brown spent four hours creating her frosty masterpiece. Fridgescaping, said Picard, made the fridge—and especially the produce within it—more accessible to her three young children.
Three young children. Let us pause for a moment to consider . . . Where were they when Mummy was trimming the scallions?
With an empty nest, I have no excuse for not creating posies to set beside the cottage cheese, decanting the French Onion Philly Cream Cheese (brand new in supermarkets and a ringer for Boursin) into a more suitable container, repurposing one of my one-of crystal goblets for radishes, or decanting the orange juice into a silvery jug.
Some people add framed photos of loved ones, or pets, Picard noted. Ah, yes, let’s add a photo of my grand-dog, Tallulah, on a pile of carrots, her favorite.
This is not my fridge.
Yesterday, returning from the market, I was smooshing the celery, broccoli, and zucchini into the already overloaded vegetable bin, pushing leftovers and such to the rear, where they’ll no doubt molder, to make way for chicken and ribs. A hunk of watermelon just made it into the bottom drawer. Oops, that was supposed to be for last night’s dinner.
Today, I placed a cluster of alstroemeria lilies onto a shelf, just to see. Standing back, I noticed it gave the assemblage a certain air . . . as if the complete disorganization were deliberate, even fanciful. Look at all of that color! Do I get a little taste, a hint, of Caravaggio in the overripe bananas?
The Cavanaugh manse from below. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird Stephanie had a surprise grandchild arrive two days ago (a surprise because her daughter’s baby was four weeks early). So we’re rerunning the 2016 column in which she introduced us to her husband, The Prince.
The Prince, taking the antiquing and foraging thing very seriously. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
INTRODUCING THE PRINCE: Never marry a man whose job it is to fix things. You’ll always be last on the list and even then uncertain that the work will ever be completed. Thank God, My Prince, love of my life for 30-plus years, is not a plastic surgeon. He’d yank up one of my jowls and wander off, announcing he’s busy and telling me to just turn the other damn cheek.
We generally maintain more or less traditional roles in this house, me doing the cooking and cleaning and him doing the hammering and cursing. This is because I’m a writer and he’s a contractor—not the type that swoops over in the Jag and gestures eloquently at the pitiful condition of your home and then leaves you to the guys he picks up in the Home Depot parking lot. He is the sort that forever sports a bloody bald spot, sweats through his cell phone and cleans the daily grit from under his nails with my tweezers.
I cannot blame him for not wanting to work on the house when he’s been demolishing and rebuilding things all day, but dammit! As soon as I have the house marginally tidied he finds something in urgent need of fixing. And instead of finishing a project—reinstalling the kitchen ceiling molding that I have been whining about for a year and a half, for instance—he starts another.
Last year I was fluffing the window boxes, which inspired him to paint the outside of the front door, a project that actually deteriorated as the days passed. For some reason the normally welcoming lantern was now hanging mournfully from its wires, drooping over the rather handsome pot of camellias.
Figuring he was safely occupied with that project, and anticipating weekend guests, I tackled the front hallway—polishing the bookcase and dusting the pictures, bathing the gargoyle, then Swiffering, then vacuuming, and finally scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees. How clean it all was!
Then I set about rearranging the hall table, a bombé chest of some age topped by an even older mahogany mirror. I set a fine spray of mock orange branches amid greens stolen from the neighbor’s yard in a Chinese pot of various bold colors and stuffed the unopened junk mail that accumulates, as these things do, into the top drawer.
Then I decked myself out and went off to a cocktail party, to which only I was invited, and left a note about being home for dinner and the oven is set to go on automatically so Do Not Panic if you hear the whoosh of it starting and yank the plug from the wall as you are prone to doing since you do not know how to turn it off.
And I got home, as promised at 7:30 or near enough, and not at all ploughed since the hosts were abstemious with the tequila in the margaritas, and there my boy was, on a ladder, framed in the glass door panel, making Do Not Open the Door signals, and my mind plummeted.
With good reason.
“Wow,” he said as he let me in, indicating the door frame, which was no longer trimmed out. “You could stick your fingers right through the wall!” This said as if the hole had not been there for probably the hundred years since the house was built.
He was waving about a can of this foam that billows like an episode of I Love Lucy to insulate your crevasses with vile yellow humps. Theoretically, once pumped into your holes and gaps, it is to be covered (or recovered) with molding. Sadly—remember that kitchen molding?—in this house it tends to sit for years wherever it is pumped, flibbering at one (me) like an egregious attack of hemorrhoids.
I had handled this situation wrongly, which I should have anticipated—adding the hole to my list of things to do, because if you (meaning me) say you want something done around here it will never happen. Or worse, it will take place in parts—with the next part dangled in space like teasing a horse with a carrot, always an inch too far away to chomp.
Ideas must be inserted very casually, as if you really do not want whatever it is at all, and then pay no attention to him, because if you watch it will never take place.
Or one suggests a plan so offensive to his sensibilities, and just possible for one (again meaning me) to do (badly), that he is frightened into action.
My conservatory, a triumph of subtle misdirection, happened in this fashion. One fall day a few years back I off-handedly said, “Hmmm . . . maybe we could put up some plastic around the porch for my tropical plants?” And then pretended to forget about it. Next thing I knew, I had a little greenhouse off my office, a second-floor porch the size of a walk-in closet that was suddenly and wonderfully glassed in, becoming a tropical garden from November through March.
Alternatively, to keep things as they are you must always say, “I want that changed.” And the more insistent you are, the more assured you’ll be that he’ll leave it alone.
Take the near catastrophe involving the screen door that separates my office from the greenhouse. A beautiful Victorian piece with scallops and circles and cut-outs that resemble dunce caps or ice cream cones laid sideways, it was something The Prince found and fitted to the doorway when the porch was still open—but with it enclosed, is now purely decorative.
But I love to see the plants through it. Particularly in the morning, when I walk into the office with my coffee and there’s this perfect green world floating there, sunny like no other place in the house, flower-filled and sweetly scented with jasmine and Meyer lemons.
Mine! Mine! Mine! I think. And I open the door and go out to sniff this and that and pinch off a yellowed leaf and note that the gerbera is returning from a near-death experience and has three fat buds coiled near its base and ready to burst. And I sit in a white wicker chair and drink my coffee . . .
The richness of this experience, of course, depends on the door. Like opening one of those gold Godiva boxes, what do they call them . . . ah yes, a ballotin.
And yet, last fall this delight of my days was nearly destroyed. How? I turned my back for a minute (one must never do this around him) and the door was gone.
“Why the hell do you need a screen door inside the house,” he said.
Clearly, I should have beaten him to it, told him to take it down when the porch was first enclosed, I hate that fool door, it has to go. Why the hell would we hang a screen door inside the house?
But I didn’t, and so he took it down. And now we had to have an argument about putting it back up, which . . . oh crap, I don’t feel like relating it.
I’ll just tell you this story instead:
It was a miserable, cold, wet September afternoon and I’d just had a really hot bath for the first time in a week. My bones were warm and I wouldn’t need a second pair of socks until the steam died off my feet.
The bath was hot because I had finally braved the basement, which is another story, and turned the water heater up from where it was set, at medium. Again.
This is a perpetual battle when the air turns cool. I turn the water heater up, My Prince turns it down.
“Why does it have to be so high?” He says.
“Because I want a hot bath.”
“But I get a hot bath without turning up the heat. It’s a waste of money.”
“But, my sweet” (I don’t actually say that, but you need to think I’m nicer than I am), “I don’t displace water the way you do. You fill the tub halfway, get in, and the water goes up to your chin. If I do the same, all sorts of parts that need to be submerged are floating like icebergs on the surface.”
This is an argument he distrusts.
We have similar arguments that go around and around to nowhere. Like this recent one, in the garden.
I’m contemplating the sickly red caladium, which is right next to a healthy, bushy greenish-white caladium with red splotches, when Prince Mishkin wanders past on his way to the garage.
“What’s that thing?” He says.
“It’s a caladium.”
He scratches his bald spot and says, “So what’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know. It’s just . . . not doing well.”
“What’s that nice thing next to it?”
“It’s a caladium.”
“One’s green and one’s red?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So why is this one dying when it’s right next to the other?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did it get too much water?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you overfeed it?”
Shrug.
“Well, what’s wrong with it?”
“I DON’T KNOW.”
He wanders over to the pond.
“There’s a dead fish. ”
“Oh. ”
“Why did it die?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, there has to be a reason. Was it old? Did it get sick?”
Shrug.
“The others are fine.”
“Uh-huh. ”
“So why did it die?”
“OY! GO AWAY AND REPAIR SOMETHING. ”
But first make sure you check my list of things I absolutely do not want fixed.
In the beginning (left) and in the now (right), LittleBird Stephanie’s garden has grown but has never been what you might call “finished.” But then what garden ever is? Notice the clothesline in the adjacent yard on the left; it seemed to be sagging constantly under the weight of those blue jeans. / Photos courtesy Stephanie Cavanaugh.
While LittleBird Stephanie vacations in California, we’re rerunning an early Green Acre column tracing the beginnings of her rear garden.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
THAT THE GARDEN is never finished is as fine a realization as I’ve ever had, if I could just keep it firmly in mind.
Right now, I am wallowing in a slough of despond. Facebook has reminded me, with one of those cheery little reposted photos of years past, that I once thought the garden was done. That I had years ahead when I could happily flit about beneath the cherry blossoms in a billowing caftan, glass of white Bordeaux in hand, Piaf on the speakers, considering whether or not to pull the single weed that might mar my border.
This did not come to pass.
There on Facebook was a photo of my tiny garden (before it knew it was a garden) alongside the garden as it had grown over 30-ish years (as have I—I think those jeans I’m wearing were a size 2, which might be an exaggeration).
On June 11th of whatever year past, the garden shown in the righthand photo was flush with flowers.
At the head of the path is Margot, the blue hydrangea on the right. She’s waving at Phyllis, the pink hydrangea across the way. I see there are already purple blossoms on the rose of Sharon, which tickle the top of the photo over there in the right corner. How beautiful it was, which is why I cared to take a picture.
What a long way it had grown from the miserable dirt patch in the picture on the left, with the clothesline that seemed always to be sagging under wet blue jeans just visible over the wall. A older friend, who was then probably about the age I am now, had come to Capitol Hill from the Cleveland Park neighborhood. Standing on the back porch, dripping mink and diamonds, she glanced over the wall and cooed, “Darling, how charming.”
The only good thing to be said about the original straight path of cracked concrete that led from house to the garage is that it provided a fairly private, and blessedly short, track (okay, you don’t have to believe this but it’s true) where, after Baby was born, I ran laps like a rat in a trap, hoping to get back into the size 2s. This also did not come to pass.
After some years the path was replaced, becoming curved and pebbled, not comfortable on bare feet, but lovely—like a dry streambed. Vines covered the walls, the garage roof: ivy, wisteria, trumpet, honeysuckle, clematis. A small fish pond burbled then and burbles today, just beyond Phyllis. There may have been koi that year; when the raccoons discovered that gourmet dinner we switched to those goldfish that go for 10 cents each at the pet shop, the ones considered feeder fish for your boa constrictor or anaconda. These survive unmolested. Raccoons have such rarefied taste.
The garage door My Prince found on Massachusetts Avenue. A fine old house was being demolished on the west side of the Capitol; the door, with its gothic arch, was leaning against a dumpster. He sanded, and fitted, and painted it turquoise, in an ode to Key West (where I’d always prefer to be).
As I glare out at the garden this morning, perched as usual at the top of the back steps with coffee cup in hand and newspapers strewn about the floor, I note that Margot is limp and Phyllis has no blossoms, the rose of Sharon is gasping for air rights. The lilies are kaput. Even the elephant ears, which should be huge by now, are dragging their feet (if elephant ears can be said to have feet), and the flower seeds I’ve strewn and strewn are nowhere to be seen.
For the first time in years I notice patches of dirt where something is supposed to be in full bloom.
This after all my blather a few months back about the upside of global warming.
The Prince hauled himself to the roof the other day (I’m getting to the point, bear with me), and while I planned what I would wear to his funeral he called down that the cherry had topped the roofline, which, if you count the above-grade basement, makes it three stories up. It’s about as wide.
Planting a Kwanzan cherry in a small yard is insane. If I tried to retake the early photo today, you would see nothing but leaves.
We knew this day was coming, having looked up the variety right after we bought it—a perilous habit, that—and realized that in not too much time the garden would be smothered. The tree was purchased in a fit of pique—a perilous habit that too—to obscure the townhouses that were built behind us, four-story monsters grown in what was a school parking lot, meaning we once had a clear view of the sky, which is a precious thing in a city.
Certainly, I thought, we’ll move before . . . But no, we never do. We stay and molder.
Of course, a Kwanzan cherry is a spectacular sight when it’s in bloom, and if we ever do decide to pack it in and head for the Keys, we should time selling this place for the two days when that takes place.
At night this San Francisco garden dazzles, with the red-leaf maple, in the center, the star. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
I’M WEARING socks.
I’m also wearing a cashmere sweater and yoga pants.
San Francisco is having a heat wave. It’s 60 degrees outside.
We’re here visiting friends, the Prince and I. Next week we’ll be in LA, visiting more friends, and family.
Then we’ll be home again, in DC, relieving Anouk, our beloved neighbor, who volunteered to take care of our garden while we’re away. Oh, poor Anouk.
I read in the Washington Post that there’s a heat advisory for tomorrow, which would be Tuesday, meaning two days ago. STAY INSIDE in front of the air conditioner if you can. If not, you can climb into one of the cooling buses parked in convenient locations around the city. Take a long book. Something by Stephen King should do it.
Our friends Stuart and Joyce, both architects, live atop a hill and around the corner from the guy who writes the Lemony Snicket books. Gavin Newsom used to live a few doors away. Splendid digs.
The entire glass back wall of the house glides away so there’s no division between in and out. There are no screens. They don’t have mosquitos here. No mosquitos. Fancy that.
There’s a deck outside that steps down to the garden. A center square of grass surrounded by plants I have no names for. My handy plant finder tells me that the orange flowers are painted Indian mallow, the scribble of white drifting over the retaining wall is small-leaf spiderwort, the one with luminescent purple flowers is a Tibouchina urvilleana, or princess flower. I recognize the bougainvillea, sigh. Theirs is hot pink. We can’t grow any of these without a greenhouse, just saying.
Stuart says, If we didn’t have an automatic soaker/sprinkler set up this would all be dead.
Why, I say to myself, don’t we have such a thing? An automatic sprinkler, fancy that. If we did, Anouk wouldn’t be moving the sprinkler from front yard to rear, as I hope she’s doing, fidgeting and fidgeting to make sure the water goes to the plants, not the walkways. This is a challenge, as the borders are fairly narrow.
She could, instead, turn on the hose and be done—well, almost, there are still the window boxes and plants on the porches to fusspot about with—but much of the labor would be handled.
How modern!
One automatic thing we do offer is that when the window boxes go dry, the sweet-potato vines will go alarmingly limp, as if saying . . .
In all this heat things still flourish at this Capitol Hill house because the plants were chosen, by garden designer Gary Hallewell, to be self-sustaining and heat-resistant. He also designed the lanai. The renowned landscape firm of Oehme, Van Sweden designed the pool and patio. / Photo above and on the front by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
IT’S HOT OUT. Perhaps you’ve noticed. It’s never been so hot, they say. And dry. While the actual temperatures are merely 96, 97, 98, the “feels like” temperature in Washington DC hit 108 yesterday. It will be so again today, and tomorrow.
Though every day the weather people say it’s going to rain, heavily, stormily, so be prepared . . . nothing happens. The middle of the country may be awash in violent storms, but here it’s hard to think. To breathe.
I’m standing in a garden a few blocks from the US Capitol. There’s an extremely dead tree in a large pot on the terrace. Smaller pots have limp and shriveled flowers. The owners moved to Colorado weeks ago to be closer to family, and no one has been here to do the watering.
Yet, everything that’s not in a pot is flourishing. A fountain of lavender waves scented stems over the edge of the swimming pool, as does a bed of catnip beside it. Crape myrtles are tossing off flowers, shading a dining table, hydrangeas are blooming their heads off, and waterlilies are flowering in the currently koi-less koi pond. They seem to be, somehow, thriving on a little neglect.
It takes a few moments to reattach my jaw.
Phyllis Jane Young, the Realtor who’s handling the property—built in 1837 and one of the oldest houses on Capitol Hill—is here to size things up. I’m here to take photos of the garden for ads, which is one of the other things I do when not writing. In a few weeks, when the rooms have been painted and the furnishings fluffed, I’ll shoot the interior.
“What did I tell you, honey,” she says, with a laugh. “It’s Shangri-La!”
No kidding.
I creep around the sides of the pool, attempting to stay off the plantings, which border the sides from walls to water’s edge, looking for the perfect angle for my shot, hoping to fall in.
Please let me trip. Not that anyone but us would see. There are only a few neighboring homes that could offer a peep, and the inhabitants are probably off doing something Vital for the National Well-Being.
The pools and patio, with dining area and outdoor shower, were designed 30-some years ago by landscape architects Oehme, Van Sweden, famed for their use of self-sustaining grasses and perennials for private homes and clients like theChicago Botanic Garde and the New York Botanical Garden.
Garden designer Gary Hallewell took over the job when the pools and hardscape were completed, installing the plantings and constructing a lanai, with automatic screens from Clear View in McLean, Va., that are so fine they’re scarcely visible, offering views of the pools and patio. “It’s nice to be rid of mosquitos at the press of a button,” he told me.
Born in Yorkshire, England, Hallewell is a civil and structural engineer who got into garden design after a move to the States, falling in love with Capitol Hill, if not our gardens. Now retired, he’s still passionate about plants and design.
“No one here buys a plant that’s not in bud or flower,” he chided in a lengthy phone call that bounced in subject from building bridges in Cameroon, to the first indoor tennis court in Qatar, to the Korean Spice viburnum and the daphne, both splendidly fragrant in late winter, and too rarely planted here—if you can even find them in garden centers.
“I was staggered by the bursts of color here that begin in May . . . and then nothing,” he said. “In October, plants move out, pumpkins come in and then there’s Christmas, when 90% of plants do best being planted in October and November.
“People think [that schedule] normal. Where I was from, there are flowers throughout the year.”
Though he says nurseries have become slightly better, most still cater to homeowners hungry for spring color and builders needing to quickly fill a lot with greenery, so the selection is often meager, with little variety and a sad lack of scent.
No meager variety here. In addition to the lavender and catnip bordering the pool are drifts of purple coneflower, toad lily, hosta, daylilies, hydrangeas, ferns and crape myrtle. Edging the patio are heavenly bamboo, ivy-leaved cyclamen, pink muhly grass, toad lily, dogwood, and Russian sage.
“I treat every garden as if it’s my own,” he said. “Creating a “tranquil, fragrant, peaceful area, with something in flower every day of the year.
Colorful caladium provide some pizzazz in a mid-season garden.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
MOST GARDENERS, when starting out, and perhaps a decade or two beyond, pack their gardens with spring bloomers, focusing on the flash of tulips, the soft sweetness of peonies, the dazzling scent of roses, the stately iris, and so forth—leaving little space for flowers that will continue performing until it’s time for pumpkins and pansies.
And all of those springtime beauties appeared in a rush starting in early April and are frequently kaput by late June.
Summer has barely started and the show’s over.
Yet! There are a host of annuals, some perennials, and bulbs that can still be planted in late June and July, providing plenty of summer color.
Though many of the plants you’ll find at garden centers this late in the season will be sad and bedraggled, they’ll no doubt be on deep sale—so nice for the parsimonious—and, like foundling puppies, will perk up quickly when fed and watered and cooed over.
While you can’t expect a late crop of tulips, which need months of cold to flower, dahlias and gladiolus bulbs will emerge in about a month. If you like a jungle feel to go with your frozen margaritas, then cannas and caladium will put on a strikingly colorful performance, particularly when planted along with elephant ears, which are green (though sometimes black) and can grow to fabulous size, providing distraction from the shrivels of spring, which is a good book title, I think.
Forget trying to plant seeds; there isn’t time for them to reach flowering size this season. Really, I know this, though that has never stopped me from trying.
Go ahead and plant moonflower seeds, though; they don’t come up until late in the season anyway, and what a treat is their scent. Morning glories are often planted along with the moonflowers so you get flowers day and evening. They might do well for you if planted now. Follow directions to nick and soak the morning-glory seeds, soak the moonflower ones, to get them off to a fast start.
Watering frequently and deeply is key to late-season planting. If you can dig up a cool, rainy, miserable morning, that would be best for planting. Second best is evening, when the air is less brutal, settling them with a hefty drink. You want the plants to feel less shocked in the move, and the moisture will allow their little rootsies to wriggle about, nestle in, and grow.
Let us not discuss vacation getting in the way of caring for your patch: Surely there’s a teen around the neighborhood who can be bribed to keep things watered.
Potato update! Last week I said the chunk of aged and gnarly russet potato I’d planted in mid-June had become a shapely green plant. A week later, and feeling too lazy to bother cutting, I stuck a whole potato, encrusted with eyes, into a pot of any old soil. This morning it was up and flourishing.
Maybe I’ll try this with some old carrots.
Hat tip! My Panama hat, essential for messing about in the garden sun, had been bashed about so much that the brim developed a cockeyed droop that was less than fetching. I gave the brim a good dampening, top and bottom, with spray starch, and set it on a flat surface to dry. Back to perfect in like 10 minutes.
Those weird nubbins at the top of the “stick” are the efflorescence that presages frangipani / plumeria blooms. I hope. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
MY FINGERS quiver.
We brought a couple of healthy cuttings of plumeria (frangipani) back from Florida this winter and, for once, I did what I was told: let the bottom of each 10-inch branch harden off (dry out) before popping the cuttings in pots, indoors at first, then moving them to the garden after last frost date.
If you’re not familiar with frangipani/plumeria, it’s the plant that bears perhaps the Earth’s most gloriously scented and beautiful, orchid-like flowers—flowers that Hawaiians weave into leis to welcome tourists at airports and drape the breasts of hula dancers.
This is the plumeria on the porch, putting out greenery but not a single blossom. It started out as a 12-inch stick. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Lusting after the scent, I ordered a branch—which looks much like a stick—for $20, from a grower in Florida. This branch has come back every year for four years, ever bigger and leafier, but with no sign of flowers—or efflorescence, as the flower head is called—despite my setting it in the sunniest spot on the front porch for the summer, talking to it each morning, and staring at the emerging leaves, wondering what the F an efflorescence looks like. All I knew was that one was needed to flower.
The two branches I brought back this year, snipped from a willing small tree, were planted in late April in a large coffin-shaped box The Prince built many years ago for an unplantable area near the curb where we have had a remarkable lack of success getting anything other than ivy to grow.
Amazingly, one stick is about to flower. (The other is just throwing off leaves, like the old one on the porch.) Once you see an efflorescence, it’s pretty obvious. A rather ugly burble of plant material emerges, like a cluster of pustules, bubbling up at the top of the stick.
This is where the trembling fingers come in. I really need to move it. Those flowers are going to prove irresistible to street bandits: I know this because I would have a hard time keeping my own grubby paws off something so splendid, scented, and easy to make off with.
But it’s nearly 100 degrees out, with no sign of rain for the foreseeable future. Dare I risk that precious efflorescence? Risk no flowers AGAIN?
But needs must! I shall go forth and fill a terracotta pot, turban-shaped like something a djinn would wear, with soil, replant my stick, move it to safety, water it well, shut my eyes, rub the pot’s belly, and wish for success.
Thrilling potato note! Several weeks ago, I mentioned planting russet potatoes that had been around too long, that had become pimpled with nasty-looking wormy white bits that are called tubers or sprouts, which (upon semi-thorough) investigation, I understood would grow into flowering plants, if planted.
I’ve grown sweet-potato vines for years, but never thought of planting russets, or seen the plants for sale. Chopping one of my potatoes into bits, with the wormy things facing up, I stuck them in a pot on the front porch that had a bit of room for experiments, and lo! This past weekend an adorable little plant emerged, all leafy and green. Maybe this fall I’ll have . . . a potato?
Next week: Is it too late to plant anything new this summer? Short answer, nope.
This burst of greenery is what came of the russet potato pieces I planted in the ground a few weeks ago. Next, a potato? / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
These begonias help fill in a bare space in a border. They’ll spread as they grow, covering more space until the bulbs planted deeper in the ground decide to make an appearance. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
TAKING MY OWN advice is always an exciting activity. One just never knows.
Last week I discussed filler plants, meaning you have a spot that’s doing nothing but there are theoretically bulbs under there making up their minds about appearing.
In my good time, missy. Bug off.
But tomorrow I have guests, and there’s that dirt patch front and center in one border, which may or may not look gorgeous in another few weeks. So, I’m overplanting. That does not mean planting too much, rather planting on top of what might be there. (Do note the may or may not and the might. Because that’s the way it goes.)
If those bulbs do appear, and the border looks messy and overcrowded, annuals are easy to move to a pot or another needy patch of garden—there’s always one.
In this case, I picked up a couple of magnificent begonias at Ginkgo’s, the delightful little garden boutique a few blocks from my home in Washington DC’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. One is a sweet pink, pale and dancerly, the other a pinky orange, a more tropical hue and a bit brighter, though not LOUD. Soft tones best suit my shady garden.
They’re particularly well grown, with two large plants per pot, and plenty of stems to make more. Taking them apart gives me four begonias, which will be just right for this situation.
Elephant ears are starting to emerge (the giant leaves in center rear), but other bulbs and corms are still underground, leaving room for the new begonias. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
If you’re new to gardening, it might not occur to you that big pots and hanging baskets often contain multiple plants. That’s easy enough to see if the pot sports a variety of blossoms. But if you look closely at, say, a big basket of impatiens, you’ll see numerous clumps, all of which can be planted individually.
At the risk of upsetting someone who’s bound to complain that I’m somehow cheating the poor vendors, there are lots of flowering annuals that can immediately and easily be divided.
At Ginkgo’s, which is excellent but pricy, small pots of begonias run about $5 and big ones, like the ones I bought, were $14. The plants themselves were also much larger and leafier, promising not only twice as many plants for the garden, but plenty of material for propagation by cuttings. At this time of year, those cuttings will be little plants in a matter of weeks.
You can start begonia cuttings directly in the garden by snipping a few branches, dipping the cut ends in rooting hormone, and sticking them right in the ground—I suggest one of my favorite tools, the chopstick, for this. It makes perfectly sized stem holes. Then water thoroughly—and make sure the cuttings don’t dry out.
Cuttings can also be put in water to root. I have a collection of little vases and usually make a floral display of them on the living room mantel. There are no further instructions beyond “stick them in water.” In a few days, or maybe a week, roots will appear. You can now grab your chopstick and plant the stem.
The water method for cuttings can, by the way, be applied to many plants, flowering and not. The gardening website Mod + Mint has a list of 35—though they don’t mention geraniums, which is surprising since they’re such happy summer plants, so I’m adding it for you.
Colorful flowers in Prague park in summertime. / iStock photo.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
IT’S THE BEGINNING of the end.
This first week in June, plus one or two more depending on the weather, are the last weeks to fidget about with planting with anything resembling ease.
Behold your mistakes, already apparent. While I’ve heard it said that there are no bad colors in nature, there certainly is bad placement of colors. Sometimes this is not apparent until the flowers open. You’ll have, say, an eye-popping pink where the vision was the soft fluff of a tutu or a swirl of cotton candy. A traffic-cone orange when you had ripe peaches in mind.
With the new plantings settled in, the errors glare. Ya know what? Yank them out. Give the offenders to a neighbor, stick them in the alley, dump them in the compost.
Poor little plant never meant any harm, only wanted to live, petals up to the sunshine.
Go ahead, kill it.
In the early days tending my own patch, The Prince and I had numerous arguments about keeping plants that were already growing. The previous owner had made a few stabs at horticulture, very few, but uniformly hideous. An example: the aptly named yucca, with its unpleasantly cactus-like leaves out of which grew longlasting stalks of bulbus white flowers that were instantly covered with ants. This was planted right next to the spot where we wanted a dining table. Not a tasty combo.
But it’s so healthy! said the Prince.
So what! said I.
There followed some back-and-forth. I won.
With the garden centers still filled with pretty bloomers, take a survey of what’s working and what’s not. Move what you can, ditch what you can’t.
Caution 1. If you’ve planted seeds or bulbs, have patience. I say this as a reminder to me as well as you. That bare patch planted with summer bulbs might yet be showing little action, but don’t go assuming nothing is happening underground. Another week or so and up they’ll come. That’s what I’m telling myself.
If everything around said patch is already in bloom, and you can’t stand looking at dirt one more minute, get yourself a flat of impatiens or begonias—cheap, colorful, easy to transplant—and top off the bulbs, which will just shove their way up and through when they’ve a mind to. Then you can thin out the impatiens and whatnots, moving them to another needy spot—you know you have one. This is also something I’m telling myself.
Caution 2. The closer we get to summer, the hotter the days. Those plants that went in early have had time to wriggle their roots around and get acclimated. The longer you wait to move, plant, or transplant, the more care you need to take with watering, particularly if there’s no rain in the forecast.
Um, leave potatoes out too long and they start to look . . . interesting. But might they be as decorative in the garden as the beloved sweet-potato vine? / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
GO AHEAD and clutch your pearls.
I opened a bag of russet potatoes a couple of months ago and left it on the kitchen counter, the one I heap things on, not the one I use for cooking. I was thinking about finding a place to store it, but the thought kept slipping down the list, and then!
Hidden behind the this and that and opened to the air and grease, the potatoes sprouted. Covered with gnarly white bits, like larva, they’re quite disgusting.
I could knock the growths off and eat them, I suppose, which is not a tasty thought. I could also toss them out, which is what will probably happen to them, or most of them, because I had a bit of a Eureka! moment. What if I planted them?
We do know the luxurious growth of the sweet-potato vine, the drifts of voluptuous curls that unfurl and drift like vegetal Rapunzels from baskets and boxes from spring through frost.
I bought my usual five for the window boxes, for a particularly galling $30, a few weeks ago, justified by the immediate satisfaction of hefty healthy plants—and the promise of increasing and effortless beauty in months to come.
Would russets do the same? I’ve never seen them for sale. But then, I am not a farmer. This is born out by my late-in-life realization that a veal is not an animal. As a born and raised city person, why wouldn’t I think that?
Well, after a semi-exhaustive Internet search, I find that russets will grow into plants. And they even flower! Rather pretty little flowers too, in pink and blue and white. They don’t appear to have the same drifting habit as the sweet-potato vine, but they look to be pleasantly bushy, good filler for bare spots, and you might even get some potatoes for the larder this winter.
There are several techniques, including sticking the sprouted spud in the ground and letting it grow, or a more complicated plan where you cut the potato up into chunks, each with a gnarly white bit (I should look those up, shouldn’t I? I imagine they have a name). Let them dry for a day or so, then stick them in the ground.
An alarming warning accompanied the instructions on several sites, that supermarket potatoes are treated with chemicals that might cause unspecified illness if planted. To avoid this, you’re advised to buy prepared potato starters at the garden center.
Yet the spuds we buy at Safeway are safe to eat?
In the interests of gardening journalism, I shall try both techniques. Handing my samples of potatoes, along with a spade, to My Prince and showing him where to plant them.
My nails are wet, again. Funny how that always interferes with my gardening.
The old hawthorns on the boundary between the Torc Garden and Inner Garden tell a story of time, and contribute to the sense of place. / From “Grounded in the Garden.” Photo by TJ Maher.
Iris x hollandica ‘Lion King’ in the borders in June with Calendula and Linaria maroccana ‘Licilia Peach.’ / From “Grounded in the Garden.” Photo by TJ Maher.
The slightly raised elevation denotes a different space and function: In here we have an area with seating to catch the evening sun. Acer japonicum ‘Aconitifolium’ has taken on its autumn coloring in the background. Iresine herbstii, coleus (Solenostemon), Diascia personata and Fuchsia ‘Delta’s Sarah’ occupy a raised bed in front. / From “Grounded in the Garden.” Photo by TJ Maher.
Light and airy pale pink Linaria ‘Dial Park’ rises above the planting. Geum ‘Coral Tempest’ mingles with chives to the front of the border. Red chard, with its larger leaves stripped off, is visible at back right. / From “Grounded in the Garden.” Photo by TJ Maher.
In the front of this border, the silver leaves of Stachys byzantina ‘Silver Carpet’ are a perfect partner for the pastel tints of Anthemis tinctoria ‘E. C. Buxton’ and the lighter blues of Geranium ‘Azure Rush’. Silver-leaved Plectranthus argentatus on the left adds height. / From “Grounded in the Garden.” Photo by TJ Maher.
The yellow stamens of Anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’ are picked up in the flowers of Kirengeshoma palmata, while the pastel creamy yellow flowers of Aconitum lamarckii combine effortlessly with the flower heads of Hydrangea paniculata ‘Phantom.’ / From “Grounded in the Garden.” Photo by TJ Maher.
“Grounded in the Garden: An artist’s guide to creating a beautiful garden in harmony with nature” is published by Pimpernel Press (www.pimpernelpress.com). It’s by Irish artist TJ Maher.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
THIS IS HOW I imagine Ireland: a land of constant mist, and green, so very green.
That is how my garden looks this morning, and has looked for days and will look for days yet to come, they say. Cool and misty, when it’s not raining, with an occasional rare patch of sun.
It puts one in the perfect mood for wandering the pages of Grounded in the Garden, the first book by Irish artist TJ Maher, who transfers his skill at painting to the garden he grows in Wicklow, about an hour and a half southwest of Dublin.
He popped up on my Facebook feed about a year ago, with photos of his garden so stunning I fell into them, enchanted. The pictures were brimming with color and texture, from the stones that edge the paths and form steps, to massings of flowers and plants so dense they seem to form their own supports (staking is nearly invisible).
Maher and his partner have been growing their wonderland for more than 25 years. Originally a third of an acre, including the house, it recently expanded to just over an acre with the purchase of an adjacent lot. Patthana, as the garden is called, is open to the public two days a week.
Patthana is a Buddhist word, says Maher, who follows the philosophy; it means to place attention in the now, bringing awareness to this moment. The plants and animals that inhabit the space free him from the worries of my mind as they drew me into their world . . . ”
That the book is a feast for the eyes is an understatement. The color comes in stunning waves, the same plant might be repeated, which he finds restful, but interspersed are flowers that echo the color while offering the eye an entrancing variety of textures, heights, and shadings. Harmony with nature is a repeated theme—a place where bugs and birds and butterflies are invited to share the space with the humans who view and tend the landscape.
There are numerous levels and walkways, such as the moss-covered stone steps that curve upward through climbers and ferns and flowers to the inner garden, a more formal area, with a lawn, mounds of shaped boxwood, small trees, and borders with seasonal displays. There’s a pond, alive with frogs, and a meadow in the making in that new acre.
While there is an extraordinary variety of plantings, chosen for interest throughout the year, even in winter when little but the bones can be seen, the gardens are intricately orchestrated, with colors carefully chosen to create a mood, set a stage. There are spots to daydream, to dine, a place for morning, another for evening . . .
Some areas are mostly pots, which allows a continuous show of flowers. Tulips might give way to geraniums, coleus, fuchsia, or tropicals such as citrus and jasmine. If these plants wither or fade, they’re easily replaced and easy to move.
Maher sometimes borders on the heretical (for some—not me), yanking a plant he doesn’t like, or lopping off flower heads when a color is disagreeable, tossing potted tulips after bloom—the show’s over!—and on to the next thing.
It’s wonderfully freeing to have permission to say: That thing may be healthy but it’s hideous, off with its heads!
That the inspiration is painterly is not surprising. Maher is an artist, working in oils, and a color wheel is his key tool, a circle of colors that show the relationship of one to the next, variations on the primary shades of red, blue, and yellow. Choose a color on the wheel and you can see the colors on either side are in harmony. With a palette selected, you can direct the eye to what you wish to enhance, or minimize.
Take it from a master.
Some masterly tips:
A small garden can be made to feel larger by keeping strong color near the house, gradually fading out toward the rear.
Use hot colors where they can pull the focus away from eyesores like compost bins, trash cans, and air-conditioner apparatus, which you should try to screen or hide.
Strong colors can be uncomfortable in shady gardens, which lend themselves to soft hues and pastels.
Soft colors in sunny spots can appear washed out.
If you lack a focal point, borrow one from a neighbor, and frame it with plantings. In Maher’s case, a church steeple provides a lofty backdrop.
Or, create a focal point if you lack one. An old gate, a door, a bench, a mirror, these elements can create divisions in space, gardens within gardens—and more color if wanted or needed.
Don’t use a hodgepodge of pots; keep shapes the same, and colors unified. Maher prefers terracotta and keeps an eye out for old pots, “which age to a beautiful patina over time.”
The materials you choose should coordinate with your home’s exterior, and keep it simple. Less is more.
Don’t be “fiddly” in a small garden. Small plants will make it look smaller, while large ones can break up the space and keep the eye from moving too quickly.
Break up the garden into “rooms.” You should never see it all at a glance.
Most important: What do you want the garden to feel like? Is it a place to relax or a place to feel stimulated, recharged? Answer that, and you have your guide.
Grounded in the Garden is published by UK-based Pimpernel Press and is available at fine US booksellers for about $45.
Each showstopping gold-plated orchid earring by Alexander McQueen costs $1,584–but Mom probably needs only one.
Summer? Straw bag! Mango offers the handsome leather-trimmed bag at left, while Sézane presents the Paloma, a shoulder bag with two small outside pockets.
Dinner al fresco is always better when you can see the food, no? A pair of these foot-tall rechargeable table lamps is $69.99, from Jonemo.
For the garden (or a lunch party) Banana Republic’s Rocky Straw Hat has an extra-wide brim. Also in black.
An Ikebana set, a collaboration between Ulla Johnson and Japanese artisans at Niwaki, may offer Mom a new focus.
When the pruning gets tough, the tough opt for sweat-wicking, sun-blocking Farmers Defense sleeves and gloves.
County Wicklow in Ireland is home to artist and gardener TJ Maher. His garden is celebrated in his “Grounded in the Garden,” a garden the likes of which Mom has probably never seen. All the more reason to give her this book.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
MOTHER’S DAY is fast approaching and you’re frantically foraging for a gift for your garden-loving mom, grandma, or daughter—a gift that’s not another bunch of flowers?
Behold! A clutch of garden-adjacent notions for the mother in your life . . .
There’s little more delightful than an early summer table set in the garden, when mosquito season is not yet in full bloom but the flowers are. I’m wary of suggesting a pair of table lamps from Jonemo: I’m afraid they’ll become so popular that I won’t want to use them anymore. (I hate being trendy.) And yet!
These 12-inch-tall rechargeable lamps are perfect when a breeze will gutter candles and you want elegance, not the look of Girl Scout camp (though you can take them glamping). Trot out the china, ask Alexa for Piaf, and tap the little brass knob atop the shade for the perfect soft lighting—no cords necessary. Oof! You’re on the Orient Express. There are three light settings: daylight, white light, and warm light. Yes, you can use them for reading. A two-pack, in a number of color combos, is a mere $69.99 on Amazon (and I don’t see them sold anywhere else, so).
Granted, Mom might not get much wear from it, “Oh, that thing again,” people will whisper after the fourth or fifth time out. If you’re lucky, in the long run, she’ll bequeath it to you.
With all that table razzmatazz, a simple (but stunning) centerpiece is in order. Perhaps Ma’s been doing her Ikebana thing with a cereal bowl, kitchen scissors, and a frog for holding the stems? Time for an upgrade! New York–based designer Ulla Johnson, in collaboration with Japanese artisans at Niwaki, has put together an Ikebana set that includes a bowl, little frogs (froglets?), and gorgeous carbon-steel secateurs, with handles wrapped in wisteria-rattan and a neat holster for storage, or hanging from your belt, garden-slinger style. $349.
Speaking of slinging. A straw bag is just the thing for gathering the celery and delphinium at the farmer’s market—or from the garden. Italian design shop Sézane has a beauty in the Paloma, a raffiashoulder-bagcarryall with, I suppose you’d call them, paniers on the sides for holding the phone and credit card. Handwoven in Madagascar, if it matters to Mom, she won’t see this one coming and going. (Sézane, by the way, has a pop-up shop in Georgetown this spring). $250. Mango has a more traditional boat-shaped offering, but with handles secured with decisive, dark brown leather knots, which really ups the style quotient. $159.99.
A mother with style requires a hat to match, and Banana Republic has some beauties, including a straw fedora with an oversized brim to chicly shield the schnoz. The Rocky Straw Hat comes in cool vanilla or black, and is suitable for laboring or lunching. $80.
There is absolutely nothing elegant or chic or fetching about arms covered in scratches and bites and rashes, which is where Farmers Defense sleeves come in very handy, covering arms to the shoulders in sweat-wicking, sun-blocking fabric in a variety of colors and patterns including camo, leopard, sunflowers, and skulls (to help Mumsy recall her Hell’s Angels days). $22.95.
No matter the skill of the gardener, when words and pictures matter as much as flowers, a brilliant book sends the fertile brain into a creative revery. Such is Grounded in the Garden by Irish artist and brilliant gardener T J Maher, whose painterly eye has created a dazzling wonderland at his home in County Wicklow. Patthana, as it’s known, is unlike any garden you’ve ever seen, spilling with life and color, a fantasy you (or Mom) can only hope to re-create. Next week we’ll dig deeper into his style and techniques. Available now at Barnes and Noble and other bookstores, $45.
The stately Dumbarton Oaks mansion in Washington DC, owned by Harvard University. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh. The photo-illustration on the front features Stephanie Cavanaugh’s “Baby.” / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The Ellipse at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The pool at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC and the wisteria cascading over the nearby pergola. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Closeup of the wisteria at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Blooming dogwoods are part of the spring appeal of Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The pebble garden at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The Dumbarton Oaks rose garden in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
ALERT! Saturday is World Naked Gardening Day!
Founded in 2007 by a pair of (male) nudists, as a celebration of the body and a way to weed, it has become an international event held the first Saturday in May (or October in Australia and New Zealand, which are topsy-turvy seasonwise).
The celebration has grown like a weed, without any formal attempt at PR. In 2021, the Orlando Weekly celebrated the town’s inclusion on the top 10 list of places to celebrate, a group that included Austin, Seattle, Atlanta, and Portland.
A Google search will lead you down many verdant paths.
Keep it classy, stresses the copy at youshouldgrow.com, though they fail to demonstrate how. More practically, they urge caution around cacti and roses, sharp tools and power tools. Also, being careful about where you choose to squat, being liberal with the sunscreen and, I might add, wearing shoes—particularly if you have naked dogs about. All tips are illustrated with gleeful photos. Enjoy.
It goes unsaid that naked frolics are verboten at Washington DC’s Dumbarton Oaks, though who knows what goes on after hours. Visions of Gatsby will dance in your head.
Built in 1799 , the Federal-style residence was purchased in 1920 by diplomat Robert Bliss and his wife, arts patron Mildred Bliss, bringing in renowned landscape designer Beatrix Farrand to create the sensational gardens. In 1940, the entire property was gifted to Harvard University for use as a museum and research center.
Rambling over 40-some acres, there are terraces and pools, arches, arbors and outbuildings, formal borders, and areas of wilderness.
It’s an enchanting way to spend an afternoon.
If you move swiftly, you might still catch the deliciously sweet-smelling wisteria frothing up and over walls and trellises; that alone is worth a visit. Azaleas and dogwood are also abundant along with the last of the tulips and the first of the peonies; these with giant flowers I suspect are Itohs, a fabulous cross between herbaceous peonies and tree peonies with faces the size of luncheon plates.
There are 27 gardens and areas of special interest to explore, including the orangery with a ficus pumila that covers the walls, the intricate mosaic of the pebble garden, and a fabulous swimming pool that begs for a midnight dip and a coupe de Champagne.
In a week or two the flower beds will be abloom with roses, peonies, allium, lilies, and foxgloves. The citrus plants, jasmine and gardenias that winter in the orangery will move out to the terraces.
Dumbarton is just enough off the beaten path that you can find a spot to loll about in near total, if fully clothed, privacy. The gardens are open Tuesday through Sunday 2-6pm, with timed admission for crowd control—though I’ve never seen the place overrun. Day passes are $11. Season passes start at $75.
Dumbarton Oaks, 1703 32nd Street NW, Washington DC 20009; phone 202-339-6400. Entrance to the gardens is actually around the corner from the official address, on R Street NW.
Green Acre #472: Of Fungi, Moss, and . . . Other Things
A California garden designed by Inner Gardens, as seen in the May-June 2024 issue of Veranda magazine.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
I WAS HAVING my coffee on the back porch this morning with Goldie and Cooper, my budgies, while leafing through the latest issue of Veranda magazine and a special feature on the world’s most beautiful gardens, when my eye fell on a giant purple-capped toadstool, a virtual umbrella over a pair of artsy (meaning dreadfully uncomfortable-looking) chairs, which were set near the swimming pool, surrounded by a tamed jungle of palms and jasmine, wisteria, wild orchids, philodendron, schefflera, monstera, 15-foot tree ferns, and something called Evansii* that I will have to look up.
Underneath the giant purple-capped toadstool, which may or may not be “folk art,” the text is unclear, are two more slightly smaller toadstools, with bright orange caps, that I think, for certain, are real. I don’t know why I think this, so don’t bother to ask. But they called them all “giant Belgian toadstools” in the caption.
The garden is in southern California, where everything grows to fabulous size, so I don’t question the ridiculous scale, nor am I tempted to replicate any of it. For one thing, there’s my tragic lack of a pool. Obviously, I’d need a pool . . .
Ginkgo Gardens, in Washington DC’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, has a lot of strange and wonderful plants. If anyone would know about giant Belgian toadstools, it would be they.
Have you ever heard of a giant Belgian toadstool? I asked the lovely, and most helpful, young lady behind the counter.
Is that a plant? she asked, whipping around to her computer to check. It’s a fungus! she said, then cheerfully announced, as if she’d dodged a bullet: We don’t carry fungi.
Oh. Okay, I said, figuring I’d take this up elsewhere.
Now don’t get whiplash, but as I was already in the shop, I moved on to another of my top questions. How do you grow moss on a pot?
(See, the other day I saw a magnificent flower arrangement set in a moss-covered urn. Damned if I know where I saw it—sometimes things just fly by, never to be seen again. Have you noticed that?)
The helpful young lady reached behind her and proudly swung forth a bag of Mossify, Growable Moss for Sun. Amazing, I’m thinking, it’s right there. They had quite a stock of it too. I hadn’t known that mossifying was such a hot trend.
This bag is for sun; there are bags below the counter for shady spots, she said. But, she added, leaning conspiratorially on the counter, You can just go foraging for moss, break it up, and toss it in a blender with buttermilk or yogurt and paint it wherever you want to cultivate moss.
I stepped back, looked down at the bags and, I have to say, yelled, $47? Some customer hilarity ensued, like I’d provided the afternoon’s entertainment.
I did suggest foraging, she said with a grin.
Thank you, I said. I will. Checking the stuff out on line I found that Terrain sells Mossify for $58, so $47 is a relative bargain.
Now to find a patch of forageable moss and some buttermilk.
Speaking of ridiculous prices—I’m so happy to have found a way to wedge this in— the Financial Times publishes a home section, which is quite enjoyable for its over-the-topness. To wit:
The House of Today, a nonprofit organization based in Lebanon, says it is committed to cultivating a sustainable design ecosystem . . . that transcends international borders. In this case, candles designed by artists and created by patients with disabilities to support Beit Chabob Hospital, which teaches them craft skills.
The candles are both strange-looking and double-take costly.
The “Flaws” candle, by Sayar & Garibeh, from House of Today in Lebanon.
Flaws, for instance, consists of four balls of turquoise-colored wax, set one atop the other, diminishing in size. It weighs 3.3 pounds, is covered with plague-like pustules, and will set you back $400. It’s the least expensive candle in the collection.
The “Nothing Is Forever” candle by Flavie Audi, from House of Today in Lebanon.
At the top end, Nothing Is Forever looks like a commingled swirl of vanilla and strawberry soft ice cream, weighs 8.8 pounds, and costs $610.
Prices do not include shipping from Lebanon or customs.
Said one of the artists, A candle, once lit, enhances the visual as well as the emotional experience.
I can just imagine my eyes and emotions if someone took a match to my $610 candle.
*Says Wikipedia: Cladonia evansii, known as Evans’ deer moss or Evans’ reindeer moss, is a lichen in the family Cladoniaceae. I wonder if it likes buttermilk.
I’M ON THE back porch drinking in the Kwanzan cherry blossoms, which have just passed their peak. The tree is still dense with flowers, but the petals are starting to fall, like pink snow, along the garden path. There are masses of overblown tulips as well, mainly pale yellow. I don’t know how that happened. I would never deliberately plant yellow flowers. But they are pretty. Like shot glasses of lemonade. I drink them in too.
This moment in spring is a love-hate thing. So brief is the splendid mass of color—the tree an umbrella over the entire garden and up to the second-story roof line, the tulips tucked into the greenery that covers the twin garden beds. In a few days it will be gone and all that will be left is shade. Though the ferns and hydrangeas are promising a big show, they don’t have the jelly-bean sweetness of the early flowers.
That was then. Now she’s 40. / Family photo.
Baby turned 40 yesterday, which also makes me happy and sad. I’ve loved every minute of her, from the moment after her (excruciating) emergence, when they popped her in the bin beside my bed and she stared at me with her big blue eyes. Hello, baby! Hello, Mama. She was that calm.
In the middle of the night, when all of the other infants were brought to their mothers for feeding, I was alone. Waddling to the nursery window in a bit of a panic, I said, Where is my baby?
The nurse said, Shhh, she’s sleeping.
I say and say, if I could have one of her every year—pain be damned—there wasn’t a one that was less than a joy. She’s beautiful, smart, talented in so many ways, and most of all: loyal and kind. I don’t know where she got the kind part. Oh, she’s still a sleeper, too.
She’s also a flower child. I’m not going to call her a gardener, because her gardening, like mine, is a lot of waving the arms around and having someone else do the planting. My Prince, usually, even though she has a fine prince of her own. Daddy will always help.
Ask her what she wants for her birthday and she says, plants. Luckily, her garden in Virginia is large and features both sun and shade, so she can have whatever she fancies. Peonies, begonias, lilies, hosta, roses, jasmine, hibiscus, dogwood, cherry trees. I do envy that. She picks flowers for me.
Speaking of My Prince. He has just bought me some astilbes. I used to buy a few each year, pink and purple plumes, like exotic feathers, perking up the shady spots in the early spring garden. When the plumes turned brown (too soon! too soon!), I’d take out the spray paint and color them up, which took them through fall. Try it. I swear you’ll forget that it’s paint, and no one will notice anything but happy flowers.
Unlike Baby, when you have a little patch of garden and no space to waste, you make do, and spray paint can be a blessing. A plug here for Design Master’s Colortool Spray, which will not harm plants—and is great for fading and dead flowers (like hydrangea) that retain their shapes and can stay on plants for months, and grasses that turn brown in fall but don’t need to be lopped to the ground until early spring.
Beyond the price, the number of bedrooms—the basics, you know.
It’s often something that makes you catch your breath. Romances you.
Some years ago I wrote a story about this. One man told me he saw the backyard of a house and the beautiful trees that lined a path to the back alley. He envisioned a Japanese garden, a path of white marble chips wending its way through. Unfortunately, and after the fact, he found out that the trees were black walnut. The marble path looked like a chewing-tobacco spitting contest.
A woman moving from city to suburbs saw the deer wandering through the backyard and had visions of them roaming through the flower garden she was determined to plant, nuzzling the daisies perhaps. Ha! on her.
There were several magical things that outweighed the practical when we bought this house in Washington DC’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. In 1983, it was a babe of 70 years, and beyond its original layout and woodwork, it had its original wiring and boiler—which the home inspector said was on its last legs.
But there were double back porches, chestnut woodwork, and a set of French doors in the basement, which had once been an apartment, that set off the space like a curio cabinet, promising Narnia, I suppose, but which turned out to be just leaning against the ceiling beam. There were also gardens front and rear. Or, at any rate, dirt that I could turn into gardens.
And there was the American elm tree in front of the house, planted when the house was built. It was, and is, one of two rows of elms that line this block. Some of the oldest and largest in the city, I’m told. Ours is now about 100 feet tall, with limbs that tangle with those of the tree across the road. It’s a grand sight throughout the year: bewitchingly bare in winter, then wonderfully shady from mid-April (it’s just now leafing out) through frost.
I read up on it. American elms, it seems, were once a common sight in the US. Not only do they grow fast—30, 40 feet in 30 years—but they have a dense canopy that filters the air. Then Dutch Elm disease, a lethal fungus spread by bark beetles, struck. First identified in the 1930s, when North America had about 77 million elms, by 1989, the disease had killed 75% of them.
Oy. So now along with the boiler exploding, the house going down (or is it up?) in flames from a frayed wire, I’m thinking we have to worry about the tree? That tree makes the house special.
The only thing to be thankful for is that if and when it dies the city will be responsible for removing its corpse and supplying a new tree—perhaps another American Elm, one of the strains that have been developed to be disease-resistant.
In the meantime, it carries on—as does the hundred-year-old boiler, by the way. We were told by our appliance guy that as long as someone is alive who knows how to repair it, there’s no reason to ever replace it.
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If you’re in DC and curious about your street trees, there’s a terrific map put out by the city detailing the placement, variety, and size of every one of the 165,000 elms and oaks and cherries that beautify the city, including 9,000 trees on the Mall alone. Quite the effort. Bravo.
Hibiscus syriacus “Aphrodite” from FastGrowingTrees.com. On the front: a closeup of “Aphrodite.”
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
SEVERAL DECADES ago, Baby and The Prince bought me a Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) for Mother’s Day.* I gritted my teeth, smiled, and thanked them. Though it was jolly enough with its white flowers and a splotch of red at the center, it brought to mind old ladies, aprons, fuzzy scuffs, and kitchen wallpaper with tea kettles and cats.
We planted it alongside the back porch.
Eventually, I began to like it. I can be slow, so it took some years for me to notice that the flowers were related to and resemble the tropical hibiscus, which should have been apparent given my plant’s Latin name. I’m a tropical sort of person, so of course it should suit me. What was I thinking?
It didn’t take long for it to become a tree, topping the porch fence, a good 15 feet above the ground. It’s now visible from the second floor, a froth of red and white that sets a jaunty mood for outdoor dining.
If it weren’t for these plants, I’d have virtually no color in the back garden.
As it grew, the tree threw off seedlings that somehow populated turf many yards away. We yanked some and planted others: one in another backyard border, several in the alley behind the garage, a few in the front beds alongside the sidewalk. Baby snagged some for her garden. Most of the seedlings came up purple, a mutation that just happens.
All grew tall and branched out, flowering in full sun or part shade, with virtually no water besides the rain from early summer through fall and virtually disease free. Perfect plants for the lazy and the sun-challenged.
We viewed the plants as free filler.
A “Starblast Chiffon” Rose of Sharon from Hirt’s Gardens’ website.
Unfortunately, and this must be said, since if I don’t some plant person will give me a lecture: Most varieties of Hibiscus syriacus are considered invasive, a particular nuisance in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia. The plants can escape whatever confines you’ve confined them to, and crowd out more desirable plants while they’re at it. This led to the Rose of Sharon being named as the Weed of the Week by the USDA Forest Service in July 2005. Not sure which week—sorry, July was the best I could do.
BUT! There are several varieties that have been cultivated not to mount invasions. The National Arboretum introduced several varieties that are considered sterile: Diana (white), Aphrodite (pink), Minerva (pale lavender), and Helena (white with a red eye). And there’s Sugar Tip, another pink that produces no seed.
Then there’s Pink Chiffon and Starburst Chiffon, which sound like dueling RuPaul contestants or Eddie Murphy characters. But the first is a divine light pink and the second is white with red and pink centers—both are big and fluffy and as ruffled as a Galliano ball gown. They’re also said to have a longer season, leafing out and flowering in early spring and lasting well into the fall.
No matter the variety, the branches of the Rose of Sharon are laden with flowers throughout the season, attracting bees and butterflies. Come those sweaty dog days of August, only the crape myrtle can compete with such color and bounty.
*As Mother’s Day approaches, one (that would be me) hopes someone is reading this.
