In the balance

My garden exists somewhere on the edge between a wild field and a cultivated garden. Knowing the nature of this place and the difficult conditions I was presented with when I first started the garden, I chose an experimental, naturalistic approach combining plants already on the site with new plants, many large enough to dominate, literally smother, competitors, some native, some not. The chief criterion was whether a plant could thrive in this place, not place of origin.

Mounding shapes like heaving waves, suggesting tumultuous motion, and evoking some anxiety perhaps?

But my intent was bedeviled by a tentativeness, by concern that this was contingent on a host of uncertainties, a risk, a bet, a gamble. It might not work. And I've worried about the wildness over the years, not knowing whether my garden would survive as garden, whether I could maintain that precarious balance between wild and cultivated.

Now I have enough years with it to know I can. Though I'm with the garden only a few days a week, and I don't particularly like standing in the pond pulling weeds or dripping with sweat in a pile of scratchy Miscanthus, I can from time to time intervene in the dynamic process of plant competition, make changes for the better. At times, rip out unsuccessful areas and make them anew. Now I feel much more at ease with the messiness, the lack of neat edges, the ungardened or partially gardened areas.

The long view - much more tranquil, especially with the strong verticals of the trees behind.

Many people, I realize, don't see a garden at Federal Twist. Some see a field of weeds and large, strange plants. Some become uneasy walking through it. Others "get it."

Since I don't really care for the labor of gardening, should I call this a garden an object of aesthetic or philosophical contemplation? One gardening acquaintance has called it a "creative mess." Is it?

The answer to both questions is "yes."

White candles of Sanguisorba canadensis light up the twilight.

It calls out to you to give it meaning.

You have to "find" the garden each time you look at it. I'm wary making comparison with paintings or photographs because they not at all the same, but it helps to look at the garden as an intentionally composed image. Simply taking a photograph does this, creating a frame that leads the eye to focus on individual details and find relationships within the framed image, and suggests the possibility of what lies outside the frame. It's a tool, so to speak, a way to learn how to look at the naturalistic garden.

Pattern and order ... in the first image you can see the mounding shapes of Miscanthus, Lespedeza, Oakleaf hydrangea, Joe Pye Weed, Filipendula and Golden rod, toward the back Miscanthus purpurescens in plumy flower. Added to this visual differentiation is the tumultuous emotional effect, a feeling almost of being tossed about by a sea of plants smashing together. A paradox, it seems, because all was quite still when I took that shot. Nothing is moving. The movement is only suggested by a seeming superabundance captured within that tight frame. The tumult and motion take place only in the mind of the observer, not in the garden.

With dense planting minor changes in position present new compositions.

A bit of dark water evokes dark thoughts.

Lespedeza thunbergii 'Gibraltar' veiled by Prairie cord grass, an alien and a native. Only the native is invasive!

The central garden, with a bronze sculpture almost hidden by the plants, a pleasant visual association, and vaguely evocative - but of what?

Raised planting of box extending back to the pond, joined to it by a mound of Oakleaf hydrangea, with irrepressible self-seeded Great Blue Lobelia and Eupatorium perfoliatum.

Swamp aster, Chelone 'Hot Lips', Conoclinum coelestinum.

The main path across the garden. Most of the verticals are Rudbeckia maxima.

Panicum 'Shenandoah' and Rudbeckia maxima.

Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) naturalizing in grass.

An area of naturalized planting in grass - the dry end of the garden.

Walnut log circle, intended as a reminder of native inhabitants of this area. But such symbols don't really work. You bring your own meaning to it.

In the photo this view looks rather chaotic, showing the garden teetering on the edge between order and chaos, but in three-dimensional reality you can move around. The sense of spatial definition brings the view back into balance.

Rudbeckia maxima, a major theme plant, with my best ground cover, Miscanthus.

The low house on the hill broods over the garden.

A seating area for disappearing into the plantings.

The bank going up to the house.

Sanguisorbas. They self-seed well. I want other varieties.

Plants for Wet Clay: Ludwigia alternifolia (Seedbox)

This little native plant isn't of particular interest until early fall. It does have small yellow flowers in mid-summer, but it's more inoffensive than pretty.

Now the foliage will quickly turn a fiery red. Seedbox does well for a few spots of early fall color. Below it's come up next to another self-seeder, Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica). Quite a blast, however brief.

But its seed cases are it's main claim to a place in the garden.

If it were more prolific, I might have to call it a weed.

Garden Diary: Two Views

Looking west across what's left of the winter garden near the end of January. The first view near sunset, the second in the morning. The house is on the raised area to the right.



Changing light is one of the delights of winter. Sunset light certainly adds a lot of drama to the scene, a depth and complexity like aged wine. I can almost hear the crackling fire and the murmuring voices of imaginary storytellers as dark comes on.

It looks ragged, doesn't it? I think I need to cut it all down before I let time get away from me. I'll probably burn some too, and certainly want to do that while the ground is still frozen. Don't want to harm any emergent seedlings.

I broadcast 1.5 ounces of Lobelia siphilitica (Great Blue Lobelia) seed last weekend. I know from past experience few of those seeds - several hundred thousand I would guess - will result in viable plants in my conditions. I won't see those plants until the summer of 2010 but, added to the colonies already in place, I'll have substantial groundcover in a couple of years. The photos below show some of the lobelia seeded three years ago. (This plant volunteered after we cut down the cedars to make the garden; it appears to be native to this area.)

Walking in the garden

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I took a walk in the garden, just looking around, making a weekend assessment. Well, really just looking around to see how my plant friends are doing. It was the 12th anniversary of my father's death, and I was repeating a pattern I became familiar with in his life. After retirement, my father continued to work - not hard work, he helped out in the pro shop of a local golf club - but enough work to take up most of his days. Early every summer evening he would come home. The first thing he did was go out to his garden and spend a few minutes just looking around. Sometimes he would do a little work, pick some okra or tomatoes or beans. He always had a vegetable garden, grown in poor draining red Mississippi clay, but it was one of the delights of his life. Now my garden is the delight of mine. It's a very different garden, but I feel I'm carrying on a tradition I learned long ago.

At the top, a familiar combination of Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum 'Purple Bush'), the foliage of Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula rubra 'Venusta') turning lovely golden color in the August sun, at the front, a small Iron Weed (Vernonia noveboracensis) planted from seed and in its first year, and at the far left Eupatorium perfoliatum, just coming into its own. Seeded vernonia is scattered all over the garden; I expect it to grow into large colonies that will dramatically alter the distribution of plant mass and open space in the next few years.

Next, more of the Eupatorium perfoliatum, with more Joe Pye Weed and Miscanthus 'Gracillimus' in the background, and a (now) small vernonia at front.


Below, the same combination, with addition of Sanguisorba canadensis in the foreground and a couple of flower stalks of Rudbeckia maxima out of focus in the background.


Also seeded widely throughout the garden, Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia syphilitica) is now in full boom. I'm thinking of ordering more seed and using the lobelia as a groundcover.


Last, Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) in its second summer, a gift of a friend, from her friend, who grew it from seed. This is in an area near the deer exclusion fence, where I will eventually plant shrubs to block the view of the wire fencing.


My father didn't use binomial Latin names for his plants, but considering the possibility, even probability of total confusion otherwise, I think he would agree with the concept.