Planting Brooklyn - an Exercise in Layering

Plants for shade on the left, plants for sun on the right. Trying to keep the two different communities in balance visually is the challenge. In such a small space, the idea is to plant with enough variety to give interest through all seasons while maintaining a unified, cohesive design--an impression of simplicity, a feeling of tranquility. One key to planting in such a garden is layering--planting at low, medium, and higher levels to completely cover the ground, and create interest in limited space.

Too many evergreen balls? Those yews at back will eventually form a linear hedge, and the ball effect should disappear.

The shade side is much more fully planted, though a close look shows plenty of room for more use of layering. That requires careful selection of plants with similar cultural requirements, and with complementary shapes, colors, and textures. I think I'm well along on the road to success, but I won't really know until next year when I can see how the vegetation is spreading and knitting together. Editing and changes in placement will be inevitable.

I've been gathering plants for the sunny side for a couple of weeks. The sun is intense on this side, so I'm using plants that I know can endure the stress, mainly grasses and sedums, with a mixture of other durable perennials I like--Pycnantheum muticum (mountain mint), bronze fennel, sedum 'Autumn Joy' (for color and texture, but mostly great structure through winter) and Vera Jamison, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides (blue flowers, red autumn color, and a creeping, drooping habit), the Japanese rice paper plant Tetrapanax 'Steroidal giant' (to give height and big, bold foliage, should it survive our winters), and under it Rodgersia podophylla 'Braunlab', one of the rodgersias with a wider, more geometric leaf shape. This combination will only work if the Tetrapanax grows tall and the Rodgersia mounds below it and, even then, the two strong foliage forms may clash.

I've also used some small grasses--Sporobolis heterolepis and Pennisetum 'Hameln' as well as one tall grass that's proven of great value in the Federal Twist garden, Panicum 'Cloud Nine', which develops a delicate, airy cloud of flowers in late fall that belies its strength and durability. It also colors a beautiful yellow.



Many of these plants also act as ground covers, thus obviating need for layering, but you can see from the open ground there's lots of opportunity for layering  in other areas and I need to find compatible plants for that. One I've used is a dark, almost black, Ajuga 'Black Scallop'. I'll continue my regular visits to local nurseries to find others.

My major reservation about this planting is its bluish cast, especially compared to the intense greens on the shade side, which are dramatic and sculptural against the dark wall of fencing, and its whispy, insubstantial forms. But I'll live with this for a while before making a final decision on possible changes.

Below, the view from the back. Excuse the clutter, but this is a garden-in-progress. That small stone this side of the pool has been removed, and I'm considering using larger stones at the far end of the pool. These shapes are almost ideal to my eye but I think bigger might be better. I've also speculated whether I could add a couple of Darmera peltata on the sunny side (left) as a "linking" plant. Can it take the heat?

The planting of sedum and hens and chicks. Other great plants for layering, though used alone here.

To finish, some examples of layering, up close ...

Because space is tight, small plants dominate. I'm a lover of giant plants, so this new garden requires a major shift in design approach for me. I've been surprised how easy it's been.

The prize for small plants without a doubt goes to Cornus canadensis in the middle of the photo below.

This plant, known for being difficult to establish, languished in small pots for weeks in my garden, drying out several times, but sprang to life as soon as I put it in soil. I find its leaf veining and tiered structure delightful ...

... so I'm off to Paxson Hill Farm this weekend to see if they have any left.

Garden Diary: Closing the ground

An open scar in the woodland garden marks the spot where I stored piles of cedar chips, now gone, left from clearing  the land in the spring of 2005. Behind those piles is the utility and composting area. This place is one of the first you see on entering the woodland so I'm starting a restoration program to hide the composting area and close up this blot on the landscape. The soil is compacted, full of tree roots and stone. I have no idea what years of stored cedar chips may have done to the soil chemically and biologically.

On walking through the garden gate, the first thing the eye goes to is the scene below. The light and open space naturally draws the view there. So far, so good.

The early spring meadow area in the center between the paths is well along now; at least it's green, so I can turn my attention to the right side of the main path, which presents the major problem.

Ground covers are my first concern. On the right side (below), where the neglect is most evident, Hosta 'Francis Williams', Ajuga 'Caitlan's Giant', Spodiopogon sibiricus (hidden by the hostas), and Sweet woodruff are successfully negotiating the thin, heavy, wet soil.

And just past the "scar," another colony of Sweet woodruff is doing its thing. But looking slightly back to the right ...

... is the scar itself. Perhaps "scar" is too harsh a word. This is not an unacceptable floor for a woodland, but my preference is for a tapestry like groundcover of carex, pulmonaria, fern, epimedium, and hellebore. A few plants of Aster divaricatus (Eurybia divaricata) have seeded in from across the path, indicating this may also become a successful addition to the tapestry. I've planted some clump bamboos and hydrangeas in the background to get enough height to hide the composting area, but don't yet know whether they will do well in the conditions offered.

In other parts of the woodland garden I'm trialing other potential ground cover plants. Here Leucothoe auxliaris seems to be making a successful plant life.

And here Mattuecia struthiopteris is spreading into a colony--not as large as this fern usually gets, probably due to the packed clay it's growing in, but it is successfully spreading.

I could go on at length about groundcover plants in other parts of my "impossible" garden, but I don't want to frighten you. More on that later.

Groundcovers: lessons from Italy

In my never ending quest to find groundcover solutions to "hands-free" garden maintenance (I know, no such thing), I've been browsing through photos of groundcovering wildflowers and grasses I saw in Italy a few years ago. Looking forward to spring in western New Jersey, there may be lessons - certainly not ideas for specific plants - but observable growth habits, mixtures of forms and colors, that I can take from the Italian countryside.

I took these photos in late April of 2003 on a roadside just below Todi in Umbria. Previously we had always traveled to Italy in the fall, so this was my first experience of the Italian spring. I was amazed to find so many plants well adapted to the stressful environment of a busy roadside. Above and below is an unidentified Hawksbit (Leontodon). Notice the roadside gravel in the image below. This plant is growing only a foot or so from the traffic.


A striking carpet of grasses and a plant I can't identify (below). I can imagine this matrix of chaos and geometry in the foreground of a Renaissance tapestry or painting.


Italian bugloss (Anchusa azurea, I think), also right beside the road...


and a closeup showing more of the intense blue ...


Corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas) growing out in the field ...


and beside the road with short, early grasses ...


I'm guessing this is a sanguisorba, but you tell me ...


All of this was adjacent to Tiber River Park ...


We couldn't see the Tiber. This was the view.


I imagine these matrices of plants were transient. It would be revealing to see what plants - if any - were growing along this roadside after the hot, dry summer. Though climate change hasn't yet brought Mediterranean summers to western New Jersey, I'm sure I'll need to consider a succession of cool and hot weather plants to get a weed suppressing cover through the entire growing season.

Garden Diary: Speaking of Groundcovers

The experiment continues in the main garden - the wet prairie behind the house. Now that our cedar forest has become an open clearing, the light and air is changing the habitat that existed before. Though it makes for a rather messy look in spring and early summer, I'm leaving the established plant colonies such as bracken, sensitive fern, cinquefoil, violets, and equisetum to do their thing. In the newly opened spaces, ruderals (pioneer plants) have seeded in, and I'm leaving them too. I expect many of them to be here for several years until the more competitive species take over. With the passing years, and some judicious weeding to control such undesirable behavior as seeding into the crowns of established plants, I hope the natural process of plant succession and competition will result in the groundcover layer simplifying itself over time.

Here are some pictures of what's happening right now. First, a blanket of equisetum punctuated by a native Scirpus.


Though the equisetum is highly invasive, I like its soft, fuzzy effect seen from a distance, and its primitive character close up. I may as well; I couldn't get rid of it without some highly destructive intervention. And the Scirpus grows so large, and so profusely, it also behaves as a groundcover though on a much larger scale.

In wetter areas, sensitive fern, another "legacy" plant, slowly spreads. I guess it would be classified as a stress tolerator. It lives in very wet places where most other plants would languish. You can even see some pooled water here from a recent rain. Not an example of well drained soil!


Bracken and cinquefoil have covered this corner with two levels.


I know bracken has a reputation for being a real thug, but in my garden environment it is rather well behaved. And it's such an attractive structural plant I'd be happy to have more. In front of it is a carpet of cinquefoil in bloom. Not a beautiful plant, unless closely examined, but useful for covering large areas quickly.

Plants I want to suppress are multiflora rose and poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans). They have no desirable qualities, in my view, and seem able to compete with just about anything in the plant kingdom, so I'm driven to digging and using Roundup in my struggle with these invaders.

Most of the large prairie-type plants I've inserted into the groundcover matrix - Eupatorium purpureum, Filipendula rubra 'Venusta', Liatris pycnostachya, Rudbeckia maxima, various Silphiums, and large grasses - have no trouble penetrating this dense cover. By midsummer, they'll begin to dominate the landscape and the less attractive lower level will disappear into the background.

Garden Diary: Two Exotic Groundcovers

Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) and myrtle (Vinca minor) make a striking carpet at this time of the year. The myrtle has been in bloom for about a month. Only in the past week have the colonies of Sweet woodruff popped into bloom. Both are considered invasive exotics, but at Federal Twist they coexist happily, seemingly without affecting the native carexes, the numerous seedling trees, or the highly invasive, but native, poison ivy.

I know the myrtle was introduced over 40 years ago because William Hunt's architectural plans called for extensive plantings to control erosion on the steep banks surrounding the house, which was built in 1965. I welcome its periwinkle blue flowers every spring, especially in the wilder woods in front of the house. I have no idea when the Sweet woodruff was introduced; it has formed several distinct colonies that, I admit, seem to grow a little larger each year.

The thick mats of mixed myrtle and Sweet woodruff remind me of William Martin's "layering" planting technique, as he described it in his Vista lecture recently in London (see post below). At his well known garden, Wigandia, in Australia, he gardens on the side of a volcano, in soil and environmental conditions vastly different from mine. His technique does not involve horizontal, visual layering of plants as in a border, but rather vertical layering. He covers the ground thickly with a low, even "thuggish" (to use his word) kind of planting, then grows the larger, more structural plants through the layer covering the ground. I was happy to hear his description because I'm trying to use a similar technique in my garden on Federal Twist Road.

The mat of Sweet woodruff and myrtle is one preexisting example of this "layering" technique given to me by Edith Howeth, the first and previous gardener at Federal Twist. I'm experimenting with other combinations in the main garden at back, where conditions are different - more open, very wet, and sunny.

Woodland groundcover

Helleborus foetidus (see previous post) brings to mind a highly imaginative groundcover I photographed on the New Hope garden tour three years ago. The day was rainy, but mostly of the gentle kind that reflects light from the sky and highlights color and detail. On a wooded hillside, almost hidden from view behind a screen of evergreens, this striking combination of Helleborus foetidus, Japanese painted fern (Athyrium nipponicum 'Pictum') and Epimedium had merged into a subtly mixed carpet of shapes and textures.



I've wanted to duplicate this planting since I first saw it, but time passes and there are just too many things to do in a garden. And, to be true, I'd need several hundred dollars to get this kind of effect quickly.