Garden Diary: Small city garden

We're building a new room on the ground floor of our Brooklyn house and intend to move there when construction is complete (no, we're not leaving Federal Twist; this is an alternate abode). I've posted before about the opportunity this gives me to have a city garden for the first time in over ten years. Construction will probably last at least four months, so I have time for long winter deliberation.

Gledistia triacanthos 'Sunburst'

The garden must fit into a very constrained space:  approximately 20 by 40 feet. The survey below shows how the garden (the green rectangle) will fit into the narrow 20 by 100 foot lot.

I think it's important to keep the physical constraints of a 19th century Brooklyn house and lot in mind because the spatial layout affects the emotional "feel" of the garden space, and will influence the character and form the garden takes. Think linear. You enter the house at the front, walk down a hallway, and enter the small apartment entrance chamber at midpoint, with the bedroom to the left (at the front of the house) and a dining room then living room (the new room under construction) at the back, looking out onto what will be the garden. The open plan of the dining and living area (the existing back wall of the house will be removed) will eliminate any obstruction of the view. A 12-foot wide opening with sliding glass doors  to the garden will be almost like a beacon, immediately pulling the eyes to the back and into the garden. The walls will probably be in dark colors, further focusing attention on the garden.

First a dose of reality. Here is the garden as it presently exists--a construction site. I have to try to imagine the space wiped clean, new fencing all around, delivery of tons of gravel, stone and wood, which must be brought through the house during construction (too destructive after it's complete).

The remaining space will become the garden. This plan below is conceptual, but there are some absolutes. Privacy requires a complete fence layered with vines, a relatively high spreading tree canopy of fine foliage to allow light through, thus the Sunburst Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos 'Sunburst'), and perhaps some strategically placed bamboo. I want water to catch the sunlight and sky, and at grade level to allow a good view from inside the house. A very low deck, really just wooden paving, not so much for actually sitting in the garden, though I will do that if I find enough solitude and quite, but more for the conceptual possibility of sitting in the garden, that is, to see a sitting area and be able to imagine sitting there looking back from the garden and to create a sense of "felt" space. I'm also wedded to the idea of using blue stone paving in certain areas; it's the traditional Brooklyn brownstone paving material. And plenty of gravel through which I may plant some strategically placed specimens, perhaps Bergenia, a small grass or carex, equisetum ...

I'm pretty sure I must have a wavy box hedge in the shade of the south wall. As Peter Holt, a garden designer cyber friend has pointed out, its dark green will contrast nicely with the golden foliage of the Gleditsia. I also want fall color, so I'm considering a small, heavily fruiting crab apple tree, even though I'd prefer to have an uninterrupted Gleditsia canopy of delicate, light, airy foliage. If I could fit in a Magnolia delavayi, I would. Time will tell.

While I have a clear idea of what I want, I think I should also consider one or more options far outside my immediate preferences, so I'm thinking about a pared down, simpler, and more formal garden of regularly spaced Gleditsias, a simple rectangular pool, and an at-grade paved area, probably of concrete or blue stone squares. At back a major feature, perhaps a red masonry wall hiding a utility space. This would be more of a strolling garden, a place for a quick breath of fresh air.

This concept doesn't work well in plan view, so here is its inspiration as elevation--Paley Park in Manhattan--but without the multimillion dollar waterfall wall at the back! I'm intrigued by the linear patterns of the tree trunks against a contrasting background.

So what is my garden brief? I don't particularly care for cooking out or eating in the garden. I want it to be a visual ornament, a space for recreational aesthetics and contemplation. I want privacy from the many surrounding neighbors, at all levels. And I want a place for experiencing the life of plants throughout all four seasons.

And somewhere lurking in the background of these thoughts is Dan Pearson's Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City, not as a model to imitate, but as a way of being I'd like to find in this process of making a garden in Brooklyn.

Is that a lot to ask? Comments, new ideas, critiques welcome ...

Garden Diary: Growing older in the garden ... a little navel gazing

Ah, the changes that come with age...

It's a subject that should be of interest to everyone since we all will grow old some day. I admit it's a subject I'd rather not think about, but living in the country where a visit to the grocery means a 20-mile round trip in the car makes city living seem a prudent alternative. We're fortunate to have both, and to be able to adapt to future conditions as necessary, having both a country house on Federal Twist Road and a city house in Brooklyn.

We're also thinking we should maximize rental income on our Brooklyn house as we move into retirement, so have made plans to enlarge the garden apartment and move there (probably a wise option if the "Tea Party" types manage to wreck the American economy.)

What this introduces into my life is a new city garden.

The new room we're adding, shown on the left in the plan below, will have twelve feet of glass windows and doors looking out onto what is now a derelict back yard. Thus, the need for a new garden--something to look at, for a start, and a real garden where I can do what is done in gardens. It will certainly be very different from the country garden at Federal Twist.

This is the view out back today. The tree is a Mulberry that, fortunately, never fruits. An arborist we had look at it about ten years back speculated that it might be one of the largest Mulberries on the eastern coast of the US. It's probably 80 feet tall and I'm guessing it may have been growing here when our house was built over 140 years ago.

Someday it will have to be removed. Can you imagine the cost of cutting up this monster and moving it out through the house?

So we'll have a shade garden. I've sprayed the plant growth with a glyphosate herbicide in an attempt to clear the ground. I'm not too worried about that right now because building the new foundation and adding a room will be terribly destructive. We'll have to wait for construction to end, let the air clear, and see what we're left with.

We certainly will need an attractive, new fence. And a plan for the garden. I'm thinking about gravel paving with clustered bluestone. We have over 200 square feet of it, some of which you can see sinking into the ground below. Until recently, this was a tenant's garden. He kept it up rather well. but once he lost interest, it quickly became overgrown and reverted to the mess you see now.

The back of the house is not attractive, but imagine a 16-foot-deep room added at ground level, new surfaces, new colors. The addition will leave a 20- by 40-foot garden space. Small understory trees will be essential for privacy. And I'm thinking about using bamboo on the right side to screen a neighboring house with four stories of terraces  ... probably clumping bamboo ... but perhaps a beautiful, tall running bamboo, if I can bare the expense of a liner to contain it. (I need a bamboo expert. Know one?)

The back wall of the existing house and new extension will have to be painted in colors complementary to the garden to be. Something warm, not this cold, bluish-grey.

The neighbor on the right (the house with overlooking terraces) has many trees, casting our plot into shade. That, added to the high canopy of the massive Mulberry, makes it impossible to think about any but an all shade garden.

I've been mulling over what to do for the last few months. This is my initial sketch. It may, or may not, become a reality. I really have to evaluate the space remaining after the construction ends, probably in November. But here is food for thought. I'm also considering hiring a professional for some "coaching" and to do phased, finished plans.

I recently read Dan Pearson's Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City. Though I'm in no way trying to imitate Dan's former Peckham garden in London, his book has been present in my mind as I think about my own urban garden and what I want from it. On first thought, for example, I might have made a sitting area close to the house. But I remembered Dan's writing about how important it had been for him to make a decked area out in the garden, away from the house, to pull people out into the garden, and make a setting where they could enjoy being "in" the garden, not at its edge. So I've used a deck for a sitting out area, toward the back of the garden. It would be surrounded by large-leaved plants that give visual interest, interesting scale, and a sense of shelter.

Though it gets lost in the bus-y-ness of the sketch, the small rectangular pool will be the heart of the garden. I'm imagining a still, tranquil, reflective surface, at grade, with no fountain or flowing water. An edging of bluestone, the historically appropriate material for brownstone Brooklyn. Frogs, or perhaps goldfish, will control mosquitoes.

I'm also thinking about plants, just to get the juices flowing. Decisions will come later. Here is the rapidly morphing, rather random, list:

Acorus gramineus 'Ogon'
Ajuga
Asarum
Astilboides tabularis
Bamboo (clumping but upright)
Boxwood
Darmera peltata
Pulmonaria
Grasses: Chasmanthium latifolium, Hakonechloa macra,etc.
Galium odoratum
Hedera helex
Hydrangea arborescens
Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight'
Kirengeshoma palmata
Helleborus
Hosta
Ligularia japonica
Ligularia Othello
Parthenocisus henryana
Petasites
Schizophragma hydrangeoides
Tetrapanax paperyfera (if it survives in Brooklyn, which theoretically is in Zone 7)
Trycirtis, other tall spiky things for shade

Perhaps a shady spot for rocks and a small moss garden ...

(Just possibilities ... do you have others to suggest?)

It will be an intimate space. Nothing like this.