Author: Henry Homeyer

Put some thought into creating a gorgeous garden

Let’s say you have recently purchased a house and want to create beautiful gardens. How should you begin? I recently visited Gordon and Mary Hayward, both garden designers, at their home in Westminster West, Vermont. Their gardens are as nice as any private gardens I have seen, and I wanted to understand their thought process.

The Haywards bought a 1790s farmhouse 36 years ago that needed a lot of work. The landscape was full of brush and abandoned cars. But they were undaunted. They explained that they wanted a house in a garden, not a house with gardens you walk by. They wanted to be surrounded by gorgeous flowers and trees, with sculpture and walkways. They wanted gardens all around them.

The first thing they did was establish the central axis of the gardens. They did this by tying a string to the front door plate and running it straight out to the trunk of a mature apple tree, thereby creating a focal point. All the main beds are either parallel or perpendicular to that string. I’d estimate that the pathway along the central axis extends from the house for a couple of hundred feet.

At the end of that central path is a magnificent old apple tree, surrounded by an 80-foot circle of lawn, because the drip line of the apple tree is circular. Flowers in curved beds surround the lawn. As Mary Hayward said, “Curves need to make sense.” Most of the paths and lines in their garden beds are straight, only occasionally curving or meandering to go around a fixed feature.

“Pay attention to views from the doors and windows because they’ll suggest garden placement,” said Gordon. Look at them, make sure what you see pleases you. Not only that, he said you gain confidence in your design if you pay attention to the house. There needs to be a relationship between the house and the garden spaces. “The garden is an extension of the house and the people in it,” he said.

What else should one consider? The north-south orientation is important, Gordon said. You can grow roses on the south side of a barn, for example, but not on the north side, as there is much less sun. Where is sunset? Most of us like to rest at the end of a day in the garden to watch the sun go down. You can design that — and maybe steal a view of distant hills owned by others. You may need a chainsaw to accomplish that.

Mary Hayward grew up near Hidcote Manor Garden, one of England’s finest old gardens, and visited often when growing up. Those visits shaped her view of how a garden should look: a series of connected rooms. Gordon Hayward grew up on an apple orchard, and so he wanted apple trees on his landscape as an adult. It makes sense to have elements of a garden that resonate with each person, based on personal history.

“Every decorative element in a garden should have a story, a reason,” Gordon said. “Don’t go buy a cute elephant. Consider what your grandmother or grandfather had.” In the long run, that will resonate with you better.

When Gordon designs a garden for someone, he always asks what their parents or grandparents had for gardens. Are there special plants that bring back memories of simpler times? So, for example, I have a piece of a peony my grandmother (who passed away in 1952) grew called “Festiva Maxima,” and I would hate to be without it. It’s my favorite flower.

Mary and Gordon spent time researching the farm they bought, learning about how it operated and where long-gone outbuildings were located. They have three old milk cans where the milking parlor once stood, and other features that remind them of the farm’s history. They unearthed granite fence posts and old bricks, and put them all to good use.

There is an old tobacco-drying shed in the gardens, and they used the proportions of that to determine the size of beds near it. The door of the shed is eight feet tall, so they used multiples or fractions of 8 for beds around it. The barn itself is 16 feet long — the same measure as the dirt road in front of the property, an old unit of measurement called a rod.

Gordon pointed out that for five months of the year there are no perennials visible in their garden. It is thus very important to have stone walls, trees, sculpture, pottery and outbuildings that are handsome and clearly visible from key windows of the house all year long. Designed properly, a garden can be as beautiful in winter as it is in summer. And since trees and shrubs take time to reach maturity, they are a logical early step when designing your garden.

I bought my house 50 years ago this August. It’s an old creamery, a butter factory built in 1888. It came with an acre of land, though I have since added more land. It had no perennials or shrubs, just a big native cherry tree, a few sugar maples and two huge elms, now long gone. Lawn surrounded the house.

If I were starting all over again, I would begin by designing a garden layout. To help me in that endeavor, I would study good gardens in glossy books and by visiting as many fine gardens as I could. I would take classes and go to arboretums to learn about trees and shrubs that might be used to improve the landscape. I would join a garden club and go on garden tours. And I would certainly want to read all of Gordon Hayward’s wonderful gardening books.

Henry is the author of four gardening books. He is now offering Zoom presentations to garden clubs and library groups. Email him at [email protected] for more information.

Featured Photo:Sculpture adds beauty and interest to a garden. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

How to make your flowers happy

It is mid-summer now, and my garden is full of gorgeous flowers, some finishing up their display, others just beginning. Here are some I love, and what I do to make them happy.

The first flowers I see when I walk out my front door are annual poppies. I didn’t plant most of them, or not this year. Each year I let them bloom and drop seeds after they’re done. They reward me with dozens of blossoms the following year. Sometimes I pick the pods and save them to sprinkle seeds on the snow, an easy way to plant them in the dead of winter.

My poppies are in full sun and soil that is not particularly rich. I like these poppies because they ask nothing of me and each year the palette is a little different as they hybridize, offering some new colors and sizes. I have a nice deep red double annual poppy that blooms every year in one row of my vegetable garden. This year it is with the tomatoes.

Another favorite of mine is pink mallow. This is a big, often floppy perennial with lots of pink blossoms that resemble those of a hollyhock. In my garden it pops up anywhere and everywhere. I have to treat it a bit like a weed to keep it in control. It does best in full sun and rich soil that stays lightly moist.

Pink mallow has a tap root and does not transplant easily, unless you do so when small. I often stake mine to keep them upright — it can grow to be 2 to 5 feet tall. It’s not often seen in garden centers, so get a seedling from a fellow gardener, and let it go to seed so you’ll get more plants.

Another flower that moves around the garden, appearing by whim, is feverfew. Feverfew has white daisy-like flowers with a yellow center, blossoms just three-quarters of an inch across but appearing in vast numbers. It is a short-lived perennial that sows seeds freely, so if you don’t want more plants cut off the flowers before the seeds are dropped.

Feverfew will grow in average soil but prefers moist, rich soil. It’s blooming for me now and will continue for the rest of the summer, or nearly. The flowers do well in a vase.

My bee balm is just coming into full bloom now and is deliciously fragrant. It is in the mint family, with a square stem that is relatively fragile. But they make great cut flowers, in part because of their fragrance. Bees love them (hence the name), but hummingbirds do too. Mine grow to 5 feet tall.

Many books claim bee balm is a full-sun plant, but I disagree. It does best in morning sun or partial shade in rich, moist soil. It goes by quickly in hot, dry areas. The best blossom colors are red and purple, though cultivars in white and bluish are sold. Recently short varieties have appeared in the marketplace, but I have not found that they are very hardy. Bee balm spreads by root but pulls easily if it gets too rambunctious.

Daylilies are in bloom now, too. The common orange daylily is the friend of anyone who thinks they can’t grow flowers. You cannot kill a common orange daylily. I have dug them out, placed them on the lawn without any soil preparation, and they have thrived where placed.

Each blossom of a daylily blooms for just one day, but each scape, or flower stalk, has several buds that bloom in succession. The buds will open in a vase, too, so don’t be afraid to use them in flower arrangements. Unlike true lilies these beauties are not eaten by lily-leaf beetles. They come in many colors from deep red to light yellow. I have tiny daylilies, and one variety that blooms on scapes as tall as me.

Great masterwort is an awkward name, so I prefer the scientific epithet, Astrantia major. This is a medium-height flower in the carrot family, along with Queen Anne’s lace, a wildflower or weed I love too. The flowers range from white to purple-white and bloom in great profusion. It is a good cut flower, too. Each blossom is just an inch across and resembles scabiosa.

Astrantia does well in part shade but will grow in full sun if adequate moisture is present. The foliage is attractive even when the plant is not in bloom, and it is very well-behaved — it stays as a nice clump and does not take over the garden.

I love knautia both for the smallish (3/4-inch) purple-red domed blossoms and for its willingness to keep on blooming from now until fall. Most perennials have much shorter bloom periods, but knautia is a real trooper.

It has thin stems and delicate leaves, so is hard to display in a vase, but it is worth mixing with daisies or something else that will hold the blossoms up in a vase. I grow it in full sun with average soil, and it does well and will occasionally provide volunteers from seed.

Each garden has its own winners and losers. Good gardeners try a lot of plants to find those that do best for them. So go buy some or trade with a friend.

Featured Photo: Feverfew. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

What your plants, trees and lawn need

June, for most of us, was a very dry time. When weeds and established perennials started to droop, I knew it was time to water, and I did. But watering done well takes time and, done poorly, wastes a lot of water — or doesn’t do the job. I have no crystal ball to know what the rest of the summer will be like — July started well with plenty of rain — but it’s good to plan ahead.

First, how much rain do we need each week to be able to avoid watering? About an inch. If you have sandy soil, water runs right through it, so you need more. Clay soil has tiny soil particles and holds onto moisture nicely. But if clay goes bone dry, it can turn into something like cement that will let water run off the surface and downhill instead of soaking in.

In either case, you can make watering easier and your plants more vigorous by adding compost to your soil. That is easiest to do before planting, of course, but you can top-dress the soil with compost and let earthworms, roots and rain work it into the soil over time. Half an inch of compost on the lawn each spring and fall will help a lot. And mulching with compost, an inch or so, will help your flowers and veggies considerably.

In general, I don’t like overhead watering systems. Yes, they do mimic a rain storm, but they waste a lot of water, and water the walkways and weeds as well as the plants. So long as the soil is not parched, I like to water plants using a watering wand.

My watering wand is a 30-inch-long aluminum tube with a watering rose on the end and a shutoff valve that allows me to increase or decrease the flow of water. I like those made by Dramm, a company that specializes in watering devices and has figured out how to deliver lots of water while not disturbing young plants.

In the vegetable garden, I walk up the rows directing the water around my tomatoes or irrigating the lettuce. The wand allows me to spray water close to the ground level — it’s not falling from waist high, the way a nozzle on the end of a hose would. I place hardwood grade stakes at the end of each row to guide the hose and keep it from damaging plants

But during an extended period of hot and dry weather, I know I need to water each bed entirely, from side to side, but not the walkways. If you just water right around the tomatoes, for example, the surrounding soil will wick away the moisture that you gave to your plants. So you need to soak the soil around your plants, not just at the stem.

When watering newly planted trees, or those planted last year, water in a circle around the tree or shrub that extends at least to the drip line. Later on, when a tree is mature, the roots can go far beyond that. If the soil is dry, you might be surprised how long you need to water around a tree in order to get water to get down 6 or 12 inches — which is where the roots are.

Another way to keep your plants happy in dry times is to mulch them well. This will keep the soil moisture from evaporating and will minimize those thirsty, greedy weeds.

In the vegetable garden I put down four to six layers of newspapers or a single layer of cardboard or large brown paper bags, and then cover that with straw. To make sure a light rain gets to my plants, I don’t mulch right up to the plants. Or I’ll mulch with chopped fall leaves or grass clippings right next to the plants. Leaves or grass let rain pass through more easily than paper and straw but keep down weeds.

Why use straw instead of hay? Straw generally costs more — $10 a bale or more versus $5 or less. Mulch hay has seeds, that’s why. Straw is not supposed to have seeds, though occasionally it does. I was told that even if you see seeds in straw, they are immature and won’t germinate.

I don’t like to use black plastic in the garden. It does keep down weeds and holds in moisture, but it ends up in the landfill a year later. And it may interfere with the beneficial microorganisms in the soil — it gets pretty hot under the plastic. It can also create pools of water, a good breeding place for mosquitoes. So I avoid it.

In flower beds I prefer to grow plants so close together that few weeds grow there. But in new beds I use finely ground bark mulch. Never the colored kind, orange or black, as they have chemicals I don’t want.

For big areas of new plants or lawn, a sprinkler of some kind is good. I like a Melnor brand flip-flop sprinkler, model XT360 M. It is easy to use and comes with a lifetime warranty. For small areas, I like a fixed sprinkler like my brass frog that waters calmly in a 20-foot circle.

Plants will usually recover from getting dehydrated, but it takes a week or more, so you lose valuable growing time. I want my tomatoes sooner, not later. So I make sure they don’t dry out too badly in dry times.

If you pay attention to your plants, if you really look at them, you will see when they start to wilt. That’s the time to water. So get a good watering device, and be ready!

Featured photo: A watering wand directs a soft spray just where you want it. Photo by Henry Homeyer.