Northeast Gardening: The Long View 2009 - 2, 0 by bbrookrd

bbrookrd wrote:
Noreaster, Wow, I must have seen your pictures after you found your wonderful rock ledge. I remember you posting it. I think it is worth trying to move that evergreen if you can move your husband to that opinion too. Or just trim it way back to be a dwarf so it doesn't compete with the birch. But what a transformation.

SongsofJoy, yeah sure. You have a stunning yard, plus you did the building too!

gabagoo, I am so happy to see the start of your wonderful container collection again this year. I love following it's progression. Mine have been planted, but are looking kind of sparse at the moment. Not fit for photographing yet.

Thanks all. A Third floor is not an option, as I am too old to climb more stairs. Rocks are not much in the future either on this pile of sand. We have one good rock, but hardly the size of Doane Rock in Eastham on the Cape or Noreaster's fine one.

DH and I and one helper started clearing the property very gradually in the early spring of 1981 with machetes, before we started the house in the late fall of that year. I wanted to save and build around as much of what was on the property as we could before siting the house. We moved a couple of big cedars with a bulldozer and lost only a couple of pitch pines by winding the drive through the existing trees. We hired a local gal who worked with natural plantings to do the initial landscaping. She and I went to Sylvans nursery and picked out the stock, but she did the drawings and all the work. I had a toddler and a business to run, plus no knowledge of trees and shrubs, and very little knowledge of anything but a veggie garden and that was even sketchy.

The initially planting consisted of a big bed of sweet fern, another bed of rugosa, one with High bush blueberries with sweet fern and mugo pines, And the north bed that had a small scrub oak that I found in the middle of the future drive that I wanted as feature someday that she dug and planted for me along with more rugosa, mugo and inkberry, as well as with illex convexa & crenata. She planted climbing hydrangea on the retaining wall. Those were the bones around the house on the east, west and north sides. We planted a stand of Nyssa sylvatica and a group of clethera and some more high bush blueberries, the beach plum trees and a couple of crab apples, plus a now dead red swamp maple out in the yard. We had her plant a nice collection of heath and heather, but I never could keep them happy, so they are long gone too. She planted some stands of scotch broom that I just replaced this spring, as the original ones got too woody, so I pulled them out a couple of years ago. We had her plant some viburnums, a Quercus robur Fastigiata and a Liquidambar, and a Platanus x acerifolia when our son was a bit older, about 6. He helped push the hand cart that they were on and then helped to dig the holes, so they were small.

The rest has been added mostly by us over the years. We dug and planted all the flower beds and the shade garden and endless stream. We have added to all those initial beds, but in moderation, things like rug juniper, hypericum, a couple of Japanese maples, some spirea and spring bulbs. I like the them rather simple and wedded to the natural parts on the property, so I almost regret adding the iris over the last couple of years, but not too much as I like the early color. If I find it not right in a year or two, I will move them. I am glad Ge1836 agrees! Since 2002 when we sold our second bookstore, we have been able to do a great deal more work. Raining still or I would be out doing some.

Here are some shots of those beds in a collage. Clearing, so out to plant some glads. Patti