Carpinus

If ever there were a respectable, modest and seemly tree it is the Common Hornbeam, Carpinus betulus. It is composed, soigne, adaptable to city conditions and untroubled by disease, pests or outbursts of floral display. Like most things that are valued for their irreproachable decency, the hornbeam usually goes unnoticed, but Dirr judges it "one of the very finest landscape trees." Then, curiously, he says it possesses an "...air of aloofness unmatched by any plant." I'm not sure that I would describe its polish as "aloof," but once you start noticing, you fall into characterizations.

The Common Hornbeam is European. We have a nice native species that is less often seen in the city: Carpinus caroliniana. It's smooth sinewy grey bark is notable.

I was pleased to see saplings of a few other species at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Carpinus orientalis (right) is from southeast Europe and Asia Minor and might tolerate city heat better than C. betulus. The elegant long leaf of C. japonicus (center) attracted me, but Dirr, citing examples from Georgia commented that the leaves were bedraggled by late summer and "the literature has been kinder to the species that its performance warrants." C. coreana (left) has a splendid little leaf.

Of these less common forms, only C. coreana is widely available. Nurseries specializing in bonsai carry it.

Highline

All praise: I had high expectations and it was better than I hoped. There’s been tons of coverage on this, so I’ll just make a few comments I haven’t heard elsewhere.
1) New York has become a city of promenades. We’ve always had the streets, then the parks that were developed along the river fronts, and now, triumphantly, The Highline. Raised to give a new and privileged view of the surroundings, winding its unforced way along the path of the old rail line, sectionally interesting, and lively with incident: it absorbs people without seeming crowded. The pedestrian development along Broadway from Times to Madison Square is similarly promising.
2) The plantings are truly interesting. Some are native (not that many) and many are unfamiliar. A shrub with little whorls of white flowers in racemes: I guessed it was Cyrilla, but when I got home and Iooked it up, it was not. Can anyone identify it? I’ve emailed for a plant list.
3) It will be interesting to see if the management lets the plants compete and sort out their own communities and successions. I dearly hope that is their approach, but I fear the public’s demand for prettiness and grooming may make that difficult. This is an experiment in the public’s acceptance of a new taste in planting. We may be moving away from the artifice of mown lawns, color coordinated bedding plants, and cultivars selected for purple leaves. Other things are possible: Watteau’s satin partygoers, for instance, made love in overgrown parks.
4) The Highline’s palimpsest promotes kind of archeological inquisitiveness. Old infrastructure is exposed. Old building juxtapose new. This is how New York is. Memories arise, of the piers, the Roxy, the old office, the old trannies, watching ice tick seaward on the Hudson…
5) It closes at 10. Some day it will be open all night, and that will be something.

6) But most of all, it comes off and all seems plausible and unforced. That is the hardest thing to do.

spring and all

This is going to look a mess in a month, but now, it's heaven. These daffs, muscari and phlox are nicer in a grassy meadow than a tidy mulched bed.

English

I think of April, May and June as the English season in New York gardens. In the cool sunny days early flowers like violas, pansies, ranunculus, primrose and alyssum bloom in dizzy profusion. These, combined with flowering shrubs and roses, are our opportunity to have an "English garden" that will soften the heart of a minimalist -- if he admits it or not.

So go for it. Plant window boxes with violas and alyssum. (I took this picture last month in Pacific Grove, California, where they have English weather year round.) Time is short, only a couple of months before hot weather comes. Then the cool season flowers flag and it's on to tropicals that the English envy us for.

Besides, you can't plant impatiens yet. It's pansies or nothing.

gloves

Having finished a bit of yardwork on this warm, glorious day, I want to plug a product called Invisible Glove. It's an ointment of soap and glycerin that you rub on your hands and let it dry before you work. Dirt and grime then wash off easily. I originally got it for housepainting, but it's a great gardening product.

Even with Invisible Glove, you should wear work gloves too. But there are some jobs, like planting little violas from pony packs, that are easier without gloves.

I got my tube at the hardware store for $3.99. It's lasted for 2 years.

witchhazel

I saw witchhazel blooming in Gramercy Square today, right on schedule, but still a surprise. It's one of the nicest things about the end of winter. The way the petals curl back around the calyx reminds me snowdrops, which are also in bloom now.
The variety they grown there is deep yellow, 'Arnolds Promise,' I think. There are several esteemed varieties, ranging from pale yellow ('Pallida') through a nice deep rusty orange ('Jelena'). All of them are nice large shrubs with good foliage and fall color.
The only fault of the witchhazels is that they tend to hold onto their dead leaves, which spoils the display of winter flowers. It's a nuisance to have to pull dead leaves from a deciduous tree.
Witchhazels are fragrant, sometimes freely so. I can't help myself from picking a flower, inspecting it closely, and keeping it in my pocket. Warmth seems to bring out the scent.
The illustration is by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the great Scottish architect and decorator.

in like a lion

Yesterday I did the late winter cleanup: cut back the grasses, cut down the sedums, pruned and trained the roses. I cut the clematis down to a foot tall -- I just didn't feel like fiddling around with the brittle stems, and I don't mind if it blooms a little later.

And then I woke to a real snowstorm. Excellent. As I watched I thought how rare it is to see bright unadulterated white. In the same way that hardly anything is as purely blue as a blue sky hardly anything is as purely white as snow.

Palms

I liked this planting of palms on the steps of a courthouse in Vegas. The grove was unexpected and appreciated -- the steps would have been overexposed without them. I don't think the idea would work nearly as well with another kind of tree.

Vegas

I visited Las Vegas for the first time in 15 years, and it's really something. It was sometimes queesey going in this economy, but Vegas really succeeds at its own depraved game.

I was struck at the realism of the planting. Las Vegas seems ready to go to any length to realize the effects it seeks to convey; the imprudent expenditure of resources seems part of the ethos of the place. But they have conceeded to the Mojave. Everything is xeriscaped with drip irrigation systems. The exotics are saved for inside.

Everywhere I looked were responsible, interesting plantings. There was a nice pine I wasn't familiar with, the Eldarica Pine, from Afghanistan. And more palms that I remember.

Snow

We've had some awfully pretty snow lately. It animates the air, and always makes me happy.

Ailanthus

This little tenement garden in Chelsea is a jewel.

Those are ailanthus trees pushing up through the pavement. It’s hard to tell if they were growing in soil and someone cemented them in or if they got started in little cracks. In either case the trees are at war with the pavement. Slow, enormous pressure has buckled the earth.

And then someone whitewashed the trunks: a brilliant, touching gesture that includes the "weed" trees among the things that are seen, appreciated and cared for. And the life of the stoop goes on with garbage cans and hanging out, a place to sit, a window to lean out, a flag. Come summer there will impatiens.

Nothing here is imposed: not the plants, not the ideas, not the technique. An inspired soul reacted to what happened on 25th Street. This is what is meant by vernacular. There is inspiration for highfalutin artistic departures here, but it’s hard to imagine they would be more gratifying than the original.

Espalier

I was struck by the beauty of this espaliered pear at the Cloisters.

And I thought someone could really do something with these on rooftops and terraces, where there are ugly bulkheads and mechanical installations to hide. Most fruit trees do decently in containers provided they have an irrigation system; there is plenty of sun and moving air to keep down the leaf diseases; and since roof gardens are isolated from other plants, pests are less of a problem. So it's conceivable one could grow unblemished fruit without having to spray.

Of course, the trees would need to be knowledgeably pruned lest they lose their form, but one could learn. And the more difficult initial training could be handled by the esteemed Henry Leuthardt of Long Island.

http://www.henryleuthardtnurseries.com/

I notice they list apricots, which I've never seemed espaliered.

Apartment orchid

When I had 4 south facing windows and a fire escape I went nuts for orchids: I had around 50 plants. Then I had to move and found a place with a patio garden but fewer windows. My orchid frenzy had mostly run its course, so I gave most the collection away. Now I grow only a few, including this one: Oncidium x Twinkle 'White Caps'. (Onc. cheirophorum x Onc. ornithorhynchum) It blooms at Christmas with a froth of white flowers that smell of vanilla and spice when the sun shines on them.

The orchids that made the cut were varieties with a definite seasonal cycle. They go outside in May and make their growth, come in around Halloween, bloom in the dead of winter, then sit dormant till it's time to go out again. They are all small, nice looking (or at least interesting looking), tough plants. Laelia rubescens is on the verge of blooming, and I'll post her when she does.

I've also grown the Paphs and Phals that are often recommended for apartments. I've rebloomed them, swabbed rubbing alcohol on their scale infestations, stood by their gradual decline, and eventually said to hell with it.

Orchids are propogated in greenhouses, and it takes a couple of years to acclimate them to apartment living. Once they've settled in, they're easy.

Moss 2

Moss also grows on the surface of potting soil that has been undisturbed for a few years. I notice it especially on potted sedums that never get fertilized. The sedum takes over in the summer, then it dies back exposing the moss during it's active winter season.

One winter Gertrude Jekyll wrote that the north side of her tree trunks were a hazy gray green and that the green of ivy and yew had receded to near black. Only the moss, she noticed, was a "positive" green.

As a tribute to Miss Jekyll I've been cultivating some moss / sedum containers. Cultivate is the wrong word because enlightened neglect is the formula. Sun in summer, no fertilizer, no supplemental water, a couple years' patience.

Moss 1

You either have moss or you don't. It's hard to "grow" it, though people try. And other people who have it are often trying to get rid of it and grow lawns instead.

I've attached a photo of one of the great sights of Ainslie Street. It is an indoor-outdoor rug, sitting over a basement hatch on the north side of a house, that has been colonized by a luxurious moss.

Moss requires seasonal moisture and light. It cannot tolerate competition from other plants, foot traffic, disturbance at the roots or being covered with leaves in the winter. But virtually nothing in the way of soil nutrients is required, and it can take summer drought.

Trouble

Winter rain can kill container plants. When the potting soil is frozen solid the planter's drainage hole is frozen closed, so rain saturates the soil and collects in a puddle on top. Then the puddle freezes, and the plant's crown is frozen in a block of ice. Hardy plants can take dry cold, but this is something else.

Try to tip the puddle out of the pot.

Mt Ievers Court

While we're on dream houses there's Mount Ievers in Ireland. It was built in the 1730's by an architect named John Rothery of whom I know next to nothing.

Foursquare, intense and abstract, this house has fixed itself in my mind like an unforgettable dream. It looks exactly like my idea of a house, but it is as inscrutable as a mask.

In Sebald's The Rings of Saturn the narrator lodges for a few days with a family of impoverished gentry, the Ashburys, Three impractical old Irish spinsters occupy their house like refugees; they eat standing up, dry seed in paper bags hanging from clotheslines strung up around the library and work minute and intricate embroideries. I thought of Mt Ievers when I read about the Ashburys, but it took a few years for me to remember its name.

Wooton Lodge

I just had to post a photo of a favorite building, Wooton Lodge in England. Built around 1600 and probably designed by Robert Smythson though no documentary evidence exists.

It was very handsomely modified around 1740. The chimneys were rebuilt at that time, the stair to the front door added and the forecourt with it's eliptical drive and corner pavilions were laid out. Very sympathetic enhancements.

I love how this building rises with such poise on a promontory that projects out into a little valley.

Key West

These yuccas against a wood fence really do it for me.

I love the stiffness of the leaves. It is characteristic of yuccas from the tropics and deserts. Our native yucca flops a bit more than I like.