The roses in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden demanded a lot of patience this year, but it was well worth the reward. The harsh winter resulted in severe die back for many of the hybrid teas and floribundas, so we cut them back hard in the spring and gave them a jolt of nitrogen-rich fertilizer to get them going.
The cool spring had the roses growing at a slow and steady pace and they sat in bud throughout the month of May, waiting for warmth. Generally, our roses start to open around the third week in May and peak bloom spans from the end of May into the first few weeks of June. This year the old-fashion garden roses were pretty much on schedule but our repeat-bloomers were a good two to three weeks behind.
The warm weather finally arrived, and it was certainly worth the wait. To call the roses resplendent would be an understatement. I drove by late last week and my view from the top of the hill was a mosaic of colors as vibrant as an Andean textile.
When you come to visit the Garden, more often than not you’re getting a view of the final product. Only seldom do our guests have the unexpected privilege of seeing all of our work in progress.
You may have come for a visit in the spring or the fall and seen us ripping out beds of bulbs or annuals, replacing them with other seasonal displays. We’re busy making what I call a “tidy mess”—or sometimes, depending on the personalities at play, “controlled chaos.” Everything gets ripped out. Perennials are given a new home, spent annuals dumped in the back of a Toro (our little, red, environmentally-friendly electric carts) and taken away to the compost heap. The bed is then raked smooth, fertilized, and its edges tidied in preparation for the new planting.
Carts of annuals and tender perennials are brought down to the work area, looking like nursery on wheels. A discussion then ensues on the placement and the number of plants available for each area. The bed is measured and divided into quadrants, the annuals are spaced, and each plant placed in the bed.
The Enid A. Haupt Conservatory’s moon gate, part of NYBG’s evocation of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden
For the opening weekend of Groundbreakers: Great American Gardens and The Women Who Designed Them (May 17–September 7), curator Sam Watters led his audience back in time with a lecture entitled “Picturing a Beautiful America.” The show celebrates the work of some of America’s most influential women in early 20th century landscape architecture, design, and garden photography, and Watters’ talk set about laying the historical foundation on which these women and their works were established.
The name oregano is derived from the Greek oros (meaning mountain) and ganos (meaning joy). The literal translation means “mountain of happiness,” since it covers hillsides in the Mediterranean and smothers them with beautiful fragrance and flowers. For our purposes, that translation still applies, as oregano is a fundamental herb that provides as much flavorful happiness as it does beauty or aroma.
Greek and Roman brides and grooms used to be crowned with laurels made of oregano. It is a popular herb in Mediterranean countries and widely grown in the south of France, where it finds a prominent place in various regional cuisines.
On a more practical level, oregano is an herb that retains its flavor well when dried. For a quick primer on drying herbs, it is important to harvest your herbs mid-morning, once the dew has a chance to dry off, but before they are wilted by the hot afternoon sun. Inspect the herbs and remove any damaged or diseased foliage.
When I was a kid, I used to collect buckeyes or horse chestnuts, shine them and keep them in my pocket for good luck. The large, shiny nuts were a perfect treasure for a kid, and there is a centuries-old tradition that a buckeye in your pocket is a sign that good luck is on its way. The nickname “buckeye” comes from the Native Americans who thought the nut resembled a deer’s eye. My mother went to college in Ohio and my grandparents were from western Pennsylvania, so the common name buckeye was used in my household instead of horse chestnut.
Horse chestnuts are delightful in autumn, when the large nuts litter the ground beneath the trees after the prickly, globe-like husks split open to reveal the treasure inside. Equally intoxicating are the statuesque flowers of the horse chestnut in spring. These great spires of red, pink, or white flowers appear in late spring and liven up the landscape.
Spring gallops at such a steady pace, I barely have a chance to pause and soak in the sights before the vernal onslaught has passed me by. I often like to capture these colorful, ephemeral moments in writing.
This year, one of my favorite fleeting moments was the eastern redbud ‘Pauline Lily’. The redbuds stay in bloom for several weeks from April into May, lighting up the woodland understory with their cheerful color.
While the majority of the eastern redbuds produce an abundance of pea-like flowers that are either the characteristic purple-pink color or the occasional pure white variety, ‘Pauline Lily’ has demure ballerina-pink blooms. The buds start off as salmon-pink and open to a divine pale cream. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the flowers are edible and they can be plucked off of the tree (your own tree, of course) and tossed into a salad or frozen in an ice cube tray to add a festive touch to your drinks.
I always think of herbs in terms of their flavor blast—they transform even the most mundane dinners into gourmet meals. Last summer while our Wild Medicine exhibition was taking place, I took a step further and began exploring their curative properties. I spent that summer investigating eclectic herbal shops in NYC, perusing collections of neatly alphabetized glass jars filled with every dried herb and spice imaginable. My primary tools of investigation were my nose and taste buds, and most of the herbs became teas once I got them home.
I learned that thyme settles the stomach and is a good remedy for coughs; marjoram can aid against sinking moods and benefit a good night’s sleep; peppermint will aid digestion and fight headaches and stuffy noses; sage helps against sore throats and gums; and tarragon is good for toothaches. Some say the ever-popular basil can even bring relief to arthritis sufferers.
This year I delved a little deeper into herbal health benefits. I began my investigation with thyme, since I was familiar with its active ingredient—thymol—not in a medicinal context, but as an effective ingredient in most pest repellants (deer and rabbits).
If you would like to introduce some razzle-dazzle into your container displays this summer, I would suggest hunting down an unusual South African member of the mint family called Hemizygia ‘Candy Kisses’ (zone 9-11).
In the wild, Hemizygia (syn. Syncolostemon) needs to contend with drought and fire. It does this by producing a woody swollen root crown called a lignotuber. This tuberous crown holds starches to get the plant through times of deprivation and fire while keeping dormant buds intact and ready to grow.
You would never know that this lovely sagebush (Hemizygia) was so embattled by looking at it. It grows to 2 feet tall in this area; has fleshy, variegated foliage with a creamy edge; gaudy dark purple stems; and tall, upright, pinkish-purple blooms.
In flower, ‘Candy Kisses’ is not shy. For the earlier part of the summer you will be enjoying the variegated foliage and it will look akin to a variegated mint. The flowers will appear in late summer. If you grow it in a container, take it inside once the weather cools and it will continue to grow through the winter.
When I feel like going on a culinary adventure, I’ll often travel to the Polish markets in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint. It’s one of the few places that I can find one of my favorite items, a drink or syrup made from chokeberries (Aronia melanocarpa). You simply dilute the syrup with mineral water to create a refreshing beverage with a robust berry flavor reminiscent of black currants—minus the bitter edge.
European markets tend to offer a wealth of products like this, many of them made from herbs and berries that you won’t often find in the mainstream North American marketplace. They herald back to a time when people lived off the land and were more intimately connected with their natural environment.
We often assess native plants in terms of their ornamental value, but rarely view them in terms of their culinary value, even though there is a long and colorful history of foraging and using native species in our kitchens. For the most part, these traditions have since been isolated to local communities and small groups of enthusiasts.
Whether or not you realize it, you have been eating native plants for most of your life. Most of us have enjoyed blueberry muffins or pancakes from a very young age, partaking in one of the northeast’s most commercially successful homegrown natives. But that’s only the most well-known of our local edibles.
If you’re the adventurous type, you may have tried some of the more unusual natives to be found at local farmers markets or high-end grocery stores. The more advanced among you may even have foraged some of your own, though this activity comes with an all-important disclaimer: only do so if you are an expert in plant identification or happen to be accompanied by one. As you will soon see, many of the tastiest native plants have relatives or lookalikes that can be highly poisonous. Having proper identification of these plants in hand will not only help you avoid danger, but keep you from damaging wild populations of protected or threatened plant populations. Further, you should never harvest wild plants unless it’s on your own property or you have explicit permission.
The roses in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden demanded a lot of patience this year, but it was well worth the reward. The harsh winter resulted in severe die back for many of the hybrid teas and floribundas, so we cut them back hard in the spring and gave them a jolt of nitrogen-rich fertilizer to get them going.
