Our Life in Gardens Read online

  per watercooler cup. We experienced a lapse in morality and took some of it.

  We wonder, though, whether another plant could have so quickly lured us into crime. Probably. And especially if it was the right season to take cuttings and we knew they would root easily. We certainly recall the dubious origins of several boxwoods in the garden, though we swear not one of them was taken from either Mount Vernon or Monticello. In our early years as gardeners we committed worse crimes too, with assorted groundcovers and even greenhouse plants. The morals of young people are often a little loose, and we suspect—actually we know—that the morals of young gardeners are the loosest of all.

  Arborvitaes have been special to our garden from its very beginning. In as cold a garden as this, various cultivars of Thuja occidentalis are the only dense and narrow evergreen we can count on. The species (hardy from Zones 2 to 8) is native all along the eastern seaboard, but it favors the colder states. If you drive up I-89 through Vermont, at a certain point you will see it growing out of rock outcroppings and forming dense thickets near the edges of ponds. And that is another of its values. For though naturally occurring specimens in thin, rocky soil or with their roots almost in water are never very attractive, they still survive, indicating tolerance to an unusually wide range of cultural conditions. The native eastern arborvitae is a very rugged plant.

  This innate toughness also seems to have earned the whole species scorn from people who think of themselves as discerning gardeners, for the rarest forms of eastern arborvitae are as easy to root and grow as the straight species. They all transplant readily, with relatively small burlapped root balls, and unless they are really abused, they settle easily into place—almost any place—and do what they were bought to do. These characteristics have made them both bread-and-butter plants for nurserymen and the darlings of developers, who can instantly dress up a raw new house with a pair at each corner and another pair flanking the front steps. Anyone who buys such a house should immediately move those arborvitae to a place where their innate nobility can freely develop. And any gardener who considers them common is just simply a fool.

  There are more wonderful cultivars of T. occidentalis than we know, but a handful (sometimes, alas, literally speaking) have been very important in the development of our garden. A loose folded hedge of ten T. occidentalis ‘Nigra’ was planted along the roadside edge of our perennial garden to screen it from view, and over the years they have grown to towering, thirty-foot-high trees, though still branched to the ground. They have eaten the telephone wires along the road that were such an affliction when we started to make our garden. An equally monumental trio forms the defining barrier between the lower lawn and the rock garden, hiding it from view so it seems a complete surprise, as should any special part of any garden. And though we do not think thirty years is such a very long time, all these specimens of T. occidentalis ‘Nigra’ give the garden a sense of permanence and settled age. They are not really black, as the cultivar name seems to indicate, but they do remain a handsome, healthy grass green all winter, avoiding the rusty, yellowish pigmentation that disfigures wild roadside plants.

  Early in the garden’s history, Eleanor Clarke gave us a rooted cutting of ‘Holmstrup’, still unaccountably rare in trade though it is perhaps the handsomest of all cultivars of eastern arborvitae, looking—when it is old and well grown—very like the Italian cypresses in early Renaissance paintings. Over twenty-five years, our original plant has become an elegant twenty-foot-tall spire behind the thyme terrace, where we sit most times in summer when we sit at all. We took cuttings of it when it was about as tall as we are, and they taught us a strange thing. Cuttings taken near the top have grown into equally imposing spires throughout the garden, serving as markers and transition points. But those we took from lower down on our original plant have produced only fat little blobs, cute in their way and very useful, but still blobs. So, unless that is what you want, harvest cuttings from upright growth high on any plant so that the columnar or pyramidal shape for which arborvitaes are mostly valued will occur.

  Our love of Wagner’s operas first commended ‘Rheingold’ to us when it was a smug yellow pyramid sitting in a black plastic nursery can. We also treasured its golden foliage—scales really—which kept their clear color summer and winter alike. It is still precious for that, since gold in any form is valuable to a northern garden, always bringing in sunlight, even on days drizzly with rain. What we didn’t know was that ‘Rhein-gold’, as it develops, forms secondary spires of varying heights, making little landscapes all by itself. That characteristic gave us a clue to the use of other evergreens. We frequently plant single specimens in clumps to form not one spire of growth, but many, in a thicket. It is always a magical effect, like mountains piled in front of one another. And we are not the first to admire it, for Gertrude Jekyll noted in her book Wood and Garden that junipers tipped to the ground by storms made similar beautiful thickets, as if many trees had sprouted from one place.

  We were very slow to discover T. plicata, the western arborvitae. But when we look at it now we wonder what took us so long. You’d of course know it for an arborvitae, from its conical growth and its branches, cinnamon-colored with age and covered with deep green scales when young. Its twigs have the fingered look it shares with its eastern cousin. But it is potentially a much bigger tree than any eastern arborvitae, growing to two hundred feet in the Pacific Northwest where it is native, but closer to thirty feet in the other places it is willing to grow. It also has the miraculous capacity of being deerproof, though the near famine conditions of the eastern American deer herd make us doubt that anything will be that, eventually. We have found it invaluable for its stately, dark presence, which can harmonize outbuildings, mask offensive views, provide logical turnings for paths or terminus points in the garden. Standing as a single specimen on a lawn or against a woodland edge, it is perhaps the most splendid evergreen tree that gardeners in Zones 4 and 5 can grow.

  There are other arborvitae throughout the garden. Comfortable, two-foot-tall pillows of T. occidentalis‘Woodwardii’ are scattered about, and there is a stately single specimen of ‘Elegantissima’ that provides a full stop to the rose path before the stones turn and become the back woodland walk. It is a broad pyramid about twenty feet tall, and though it is chiefly prized for its delicate pale gold growth in spring, that quickly turns to green with summer’s warmth. But the sweet-smelling autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora) has threaded its way through to the very top, and in September flows downward in a lacy fragrant cloud. That arborvitae, at least, was bought from Weston Nurseries, and came on the very first truck of plants to arrive here, in 1977. The clematis, on the other hand, was a gift from nature.

  We should blush, we suppose, in confessing how many arborvitae came here as pilfered cuttings—dwarf, gold, thread-needled, variegated, or weeping. But we know that all gardeners live in sin. Who among us is free from the Seven Deadly Sins of Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Sloth, Anger, Envy, or Glut-tony? It is that last and worst sin, for gardeners, that caused us to pilfer more cuttings of that arborvitae on the New Jersey Turnpike than we really needed. We actually took ten. But if they all root, we can share our excess with other gardeners, thus easing some of the burden on our guilty conscience.

  ARTICHOKES

  REALLY FRESH FOOD IS BETTER than any other food. Like most people who live and garden in the country, we long ago accepted the strict rule that a large pot of water should be at a rolling boil before you even go out the screen door to pick the corn. It is an absolute truth that the shorter the interval between harvest and cooking, the better the corn will taste. We have found that’s just as true for other things—for beans and carrots, spinach, and certainly for peas. And, usually, the difference between vegetables harvested straight from the garden just before they are cooked and those bought from markets is revelatory. Why should that not be true of artichokes as well?

  For many years, we didn’t have an opportunity to judge. The arti
chokes in supermarkets grow principally in California and are tender perennials. Their immature flower buds are harvested in winter, after the plants have spent a long, mild growing season bathed by fog off the Pacific Ocean. None of that promised much success to the home gardener in Vermont. But one September noon we were standing in the kitchen of Great Dixter (Northiam, Rye, East Sussex), the home of our friend Christopher Lloyd, when he entered with a trug of freshly picked artichokes. We were astonished he could grow them at all in England, but he answered our surprise with the promise of a greater one when we ate them. “Far better than the store-bought thing. You will see.” On food, Christo was never wrong. The artichokes he served us, twenty minutes after picking them, were sweeter, more tender, and more succu-lent than any we had ever had before.

  When you eat something really good—especially a vegetable—you become determined to grow it yourself. Or at least we do. So we did a lot of research and discovered that artichokes could in fact be grown in “northern gardens” (whether that meant Vermont we were not sure) and would flower if one resorted to a few tricks. So we started seed of standard perennial sorts such as ‘Green Globe’ and ‘Violetto’ on or around New Year’s day, and grew the seedlings under halogen lights in the basement until March, when they were set out in cold frames for six nervous weeks. The idea was to keep them as chilly as possible without freezing them outright, so we were constantly opening and closing the frames, sometimes shading them on warm sunny days and, on really cold nights, bustling them into the greenhouse. The whole point of this drill was to convince the little plants they were experiencing a California winter, so that when we set them out in garden rows in June they would believe they were a year older than they actually were, and would decide to set bud. We wouldn’t have minded all this bother if the system had worked. It didn’t. Artichokes are no fools.

  Though botanically artichokes are miles away from broccoli and cauliflower, it is the immature flower buds of them all that you eat. But artichokes are true perennials, which means they really need a full year of vegetative growth before they flower. But then, luckily, some clever breeder developed ‘Imperial Star’, a variety that somehow bypasses an artichoke’s genetic code, to flower in its first season. That season must still be a long one, however, so the seed should be sown quite early—in late February at the latest—and the young plants grown under cool greenhouse conditions until the end of May, when the weather settles and it is safe to plant them outside. Bud set is not abundant, but there will always be one large artichoke on a single central stem, and frequently two or three much smaller ones will form from side buds, candelabra fashion. Those are delightful to harvest young and eat whole, boiled until tender and then marinated in oil and vinegar or, for a brighter taste, lemon juice, as Greek cooks do. Memories of one’s first thrilling experience with anything can of course be deceiving, but still we’d have to say that the flavor of our ‘Imperial Star’ is not so fine as a fresh-picked ‘Gros Camus de Bretagne’ at Great Dixter. Still, the ‘Imperial Star’ is as fine an artichoke as can be eaten straight out of the garden in Vermont, which is to say, finer than any supermarket specimen. A finer one may someday come along, and we will be alert for it.

  Artichokes are great fun to eat, since they must be deconstructed leaf by leaf in pursuit of the best bits, which lie hidden in the heart. If the artichoke is not aged and wisened, a good length of the stem is also edible, and one begins there, in a sort of prelude. Then each leaf is torn away and pulled through the teeth to extract the tender flesh at its base. The closer to the center, the more of what is tender clings. That is satisfaction enough, though you can also do something artful with the spent leaves, arranging them in swirls and full-blown roses and other patterns, rather than just tossing them into a heap in a bowl. This can be done separately by each person at the table, in a kind of competition, or it can be a group activity. Either way, the whole process of eating an artichoke is about as refined as finger painting—a sort of play—and that makes artichokes delightful to children who may scorn spinach or broccoli because they are green. The intensifying sensation is quite wonderful as you work along, especially when you are able to pull the most hidden petals out in a clump and eat them together, and then separate the hairy “choke,” the heart of the flower, from the cup-shaped base, which is pure delight.

  There is great controversy about what to serve with an artichoke by way of sauce, since something is always needed. At Great Dixter, a bowl of warm melted butter was offered, into which each petal was dipped before the meat was extracted. There’s much to say for this, especially if the artichoke itself comes to the table quite warm. And as eating artichokes is, after all, an indulgence, why not go all the way? However, at our table we favor a light vinaigrette, made simply of good condiment-quality olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar, the dark, smoky taste of which seems to compliment the metallic richness of the artichoke itself. One thing is certain: wine is not to be served in any form, for the interaction between it and an artichoke will make you think you are eating a tenderized tin can. A glass of pure, clear water is all you should have, and maybe a little bread.

  Artichokes are members of the vast Asteraceae, or daisy, family, the second largest on earth (Orchidaceae is the largest), so vast that its more than twenty thousand species are divided into “tribes,” twelve of which are acknowledged, though some botanists insist on a thirteenth. Artichokes, botanically speaking Cynara scolymus, belong to the Carduus tribe—the thistles—which includes at least one other edible plant, the cardoon (C. cardunculus), and a great many noxious weeds. All thistles, looked at carefully, are beautifully crafted plants, and artichokes are certainly no exception. Whether one gets an edible bud or not, the leaves are still wonderful, formed into a silvery-gray fountain that lacks only a smooth marble shaft to look like the stylized capitals on Corinthian columns. Though many vegetables are beautiful plants, to us, despite the persuasive arguments of our good friend Rosalind Creasy (Cooking from the Garden), a cabbage or a lettuce, however beautiful it may be, looks a little startling in a perennial border. Artichokes, however, seem perfectly at home there, their large, dramatic leaves providing striking accents to the finer, more fiddly growth of most perennials.

  If you grow them there, and they form buds, you face a difficult choice. Those buds either can be thrown into the pot and boiled until just tender for succulent delight, or they can be left to develop as an ornament to the garden. If you restrain your culinary hand, the completely recognizable artichoke bud will eventually open into a rich violet thistle, perhaps six inches across, surrounded at its base by a ruff of the pointed green “petals” you could have eaten. It is quite pretty, and flower arrangers seek it at that point to use fresh in large arrangements and because it dries perfectly into a fine russet-and-ivory flower. We have seen beautiful wreaths of them, in California, where they are plentiful enough for that extravagance.

  It is a difficult choice. Make up your mind about it early on, because if you waver, the choice will be made for you, and you will get either a very tough artichoke or a very pretty flower. We ourselves would fill a large pot with liberally salted water, bring it to a brisk rolling boil, and then go out with our secateurs.

  BANANAS

  IMPROBABILITY IS NOT A QUALITY we value in landscapes. Ponds on top of hills with little waterfalls gushing into them, however well constructed, simply look odd and out-of-place. Those tumped-over whiskey barrels spilling forth stunted marigolds shout just the opposite of their intent, painful contrivance rather than accidental abundance. Nothing can be said in defense of red bark mulch, which surely is as poisonous to the touch as it is to the eye. And flower beds made inside old iron bedsteads are simply a joke told too often.

  No garden is a natural thing, of course, and people who garden as a way of getting in touch with Nature are actually only getting in touch with fantasy. Gardens are, by definition, contrived. Still, contrivance is one thing, and improbability is quite another. Improbability occurs
when a plant or an effect is so alien to its surroundings that a willing suspension of dis-belief still doesn’t make us feel it fits. If the most precious of all garden qualities is harmony, improbability is bound to fracture it. And one knows what it is when one mutters, “What the hell is that thing doing there!”

  So, though we love them hugely, we have to wonder what two banana trees are doing in our garden. The garden is after all in southern Vermont, many hundreds of miles from any place where a banana would actually be comfortable. Or rather, comfortable all the year, for our two trees certainly present a thriving appearance during the period they inhabit the garden, roughly from the first week of June until the last week of September. For the rest of the year, they miserably inhabit a rented plastic tube house as truncated logs, occasionally throwing a single, wan banner of leaf.

  Bananas are a miracle of construction. Their most beautiful feature, their great sails of leaf, produce a wide-spreading palm that collects rainfall and funnels it into the heart of the plant, so the root zone need not quest very far in search of moisture. Each leaf actually originates at ground level, creating a pseudostem, which seems like a tree trunk—and is as sturdy as one—but is made up of many stem layers that produce tremendous tensile strength. Further, if you cut into one of the stems, you will find that it is not solid, but constructed of honeycombed tissue, offering even further strength. That is a necessary attribute in the places bananas are native, which is chiefly Southeast Asia, where they are often lashed by intense tropical storms. In such conditions, the great leaves will shred, reducing vulnerability to toppling wind, though in most American gardens the leaves stay intact, as two down-sweeping, ribbed wings originating from a central spine.