Finally, I'm posting pictures!

Oh my goodness, Pam! What a fabulous job you've done at taming and revitalizing your gorgeous property! You should feel so great about the work you've done and the beautiful results your work has produced! I so enjoyed taking your pictorial tour! I even spotted some red Adirondack chairs just like ours, and your property has some of the same qualities and challenges ours does. It sounds like many of us have been tearing old gardens apart and re-doing them. There is so much satisfaction as they begin to shape up, isn't there? You have really done an amazing job! If you include our meadow and wildlife "theater" with the paths that Hank has just been out there mowing, our "yard" part of our property is also 9 acres, so we have to just let some of it grow up into field in the meadow or forest surrounding us on 3 sides. There's no possible way to keep it all up or as gardens. So, Hank mows paths for the deer and turkeys, etc. to move around through where we can watch them, and I just keep at the gardens that are down around the house. Thanks for sharing your lovely property with us. Your gardens are wonderful!
Louise

love what you have done Pam... great job!!

Louise, Thank you so much! You're right, it's impossible to keep it all up. Sometimes I look around and dream of having the kind of budget that would allow more areas to be maintained...behind the garden is a wooded area backed by a stream that only flows in the spring. It has been used as a dumping ground for garden debris for decades and is full of all kinds of invasive volunteers, but I imagine cleaning it up and having a woodland walk...If I were a much younger person I would have it on my to-do list, and it may get there eventually, but for now that list is quite long enough!
But the fun is in trying to imagine what might have been there, and either re-creating it or improving on it with modern cultivars and methods. For instance, I'm sure there was a white garden in the Falling Down Wall...
I'll be posting new pictures after this weekend, when I see what's coming in...

Pam


This message was edited Jun 17, 2011 6:31 AM

Pam, I, too, dream of having a budget that would allow me to hire some people to help me get my place in shape and keep it that way. There's only so much I can do on my own. I have many gardens I want to renovate that my late mother had put in, but just don't have the time to get to them. Most of them have so many invasive plants that need digging out, and even then they would continue to come back and plague me. There's no way to get every tiny bit of root out.

Karen

I think the secret to large properties is to just set aside a certain area - maybe one acre - for a fully tended garden, and leave the rest wild or as a meadow or mini forest. I would love to have room for many trees.

that was my plan here with the 2 acres - i am now expanding into the second acre - hard to stop

Not too bad if you stick to trees and shrubs. Anything else is too much work. Have to think about years to come. Even for selling, many potential buyers just don't want a labor-intensive garden.

That is exactly what I was thinking. With a good sized veggie garden how can I take care of a ton more? I cant.

Sigh... I know... I've made a valiant effort by digging everything up and waiting a year in the long iris bed and I haven't won yet. Wasn't it Penelope Hobhouse that did that in a major garden in England? Tintinhull? ... I just googled her and it was Habspen, her first garden, before Tintinhull.
There's a whole year I didn't take any garden pictures at all. I guess I was looking at too much dead brown stuff. But now I'm planting like mad in those sections, which is a lot more fun than killing everything. The day lilies are done, the Falling Down Wall is taking shape, the long borders are filling in finally. The Top Lawn needs a little tweaking but isn't bad...
But then there's the Bowl, and the Tall Grass garden and the rest of the border along the Lower Lawn...and I haven't even started the Bottom Lawn! I still have regular Round-up tours, taking control of a little more all the time. Bye-bye raspberries, tradescantia, goldenrod, jewelweed, globe-thistle (this year I must remember to deadhead!) and all the rest of the junk!

Pam

do not plan to sell - will not be my problem - shrubs and trees are what i use

You all make a good point about high-maintenance. Except for the long border, which is my playground, I'm trying to use 'work-horse' perennials and shrubs planted closely so that they won't need much care once the beds grow in. I'm amazed at a couple of sections that still look great after so many years. The only thing that's gone wrong in a few places is that over time the mowers missed a strip that then grew up in weeds, then the mowers pulled back again and again until there is a huge mess in front of something that would be very nice if you could see it. Round-up to the rescue!
As time goes on after some of my earliest plantings, I'm seeing what holds up nearly on its own and what still needs help to become independent. That's the goal, anyway.

Pam

You have great plans, Pam, & I know you're enjoying your gardening...that's what life is all about.....I complain about all the stuff I have to do, but it gives me a purpose for being here....and hopefully, I'll be instilling some of that in my grandkids......HayHay could recognize a Christmas Fern at age 2, she needs to know the names of everything now that she's 6......

We have , I think, 4 types of golden rod. I am trying to keep it where it can be useful, not letting it invade other spaces.

Our place is heavy on trees naturally since we live in a sugar bush and have more trees than we want to begin with. There isn't much sun area, even up in the meadow since the humongous trees surround the meadow and cast a very long shadow by 2:00 p.m.. My actual "flower gardens" wouldn't take up an acre total, and several do a good job of taking care of themselves for the most part, but I do have 3 significant gardens that I have overhauled last summer and this year: My Friendship Garden, the Stone Wall garden and the garden along the front porch of the house. I've finished doing what I want to those, so it's time to just enjoy them as they begin blooming. Mulch and Organic Preen are my saviors. :) A lot of our yard is natural stuff like ancient fern beds and grapevine- covered boulders and lots of understory growth around the edge of the woods. We try to minimize the amount of mowing Hank has to do, but when he adds in the paths up through the meadow wild-growth, it's still a lot. He won't use a rider mower because of all the boulders that rise up into the meadow.

Pam, I love what you are doing and admire your energy. I will enjoy watching your garden as you continue to discover it. When we looked for property I would have paid twice as much for a place with a garden, but instead got a "bargain" fixer upper, meaning our half acre started with every invasive weed, and terrible soil. Some years i work on the "big picture" exclusively and other years, i can't stand that, and choose a section the way they say you're supposed to do. My childhood memories of expanses of neat orchards and gardens drives me. I'm sure your garden will inspire many others for a long time to come.

I sometimes wonder if I'm creating a beast that I won't be able to maintain eventually, but I do enjoy the maintenance part. I think once that's all I have to do (maintain), it will be manageable but we'll see how I feel about that when I get older.

I think the degree of commitment to maintenance to a garden evolves over time. I'm getting to an age now where I want less and less involvement. That's why I was reluctant - upset even- when I first saw this garden because of the incredible effort it would take just to reverse the downward track it was on. I'm doing big intervention to change that trend ASAP. But, having said that, creative activity is enormously gratifying, and the more extreme the challenge, the more exciting and rewarding the results.

The harder it is, the more fun-- don't you think?!

Pam

The harder it is, the more fun-- don't you think?! No 10 years ago I wouldnt care. Today I feel what I did yesterday.

Pam, you may have mentioned having plans for this before, I just don't remember if you did. You could consider putting in a wildflower meadow, either in an area where you've successfully taken over the invasives, or in an area where they haven't taken over. Once it's established it's very low maintenance.

You sound like you love a challenge. I do, too, to a point. There are some areas here that are so daunting to even think about, so full of invasives that I wonder if I'll ever get it to where it's managable. I just take a big sigh and do what I can. I'm thrilled with all I've been able to manage.

Karen

Pam, Christina and Karen, I like your attitude! You really have to love the challenge, and you have all done a smashing job with each of your challenges. It has been fun to see photos of all of your accomplishments in this thread or others. Kudos!
Louise

pam i agree - the reward of a nice garden is greater with knowing your own effort that went into it.

True, but I could get used to watching twenty-something year old vixen gardeners do it for me.

LOL! Victor, you would. Might be nice to have some buff young men working in my gardens getting them ship-shape.

Louise, thanks for the wonderful compliment. It means a lot to me.

Karen

Pam, there was a letter to the editor in today's paper from Warren....the woman was writing about the mountain lions seen right on Rt 45....if you garden early or late, be careful!

Robin, did I tell you that we - and three others on our road - all saw a mountain lion here two years ago? We also saw one several years ago on our property in Conn. Our next door neighbor actually got it on tape. I think it is baloney that they aren't acknowledging them officially in the northeast. Why would they NOT be here?

Eastern mountain lion is also known as a catamount. It must have taken years of having cubs before they could be seen.

exactly, Lucy! I was a camp counselor during college summers in the NC mountains, and the catamounts were prolific in the woods. Their screech is something you never ever forget, and when I heard it at our house in Conn., I said to Hank, "That's a mountain lion. He laughed at me and within 5 minutes our next door neighbor called and said, "You won't believe this, but I just caught a mountain lion on my video camera." Nanananana! lol

I know they are here.....of course, the DEP says the one killed was probably a South American pet....well, who cares! I'm not interested in their genetics! They're here & there have been many, many sightings.....

Wow! I just googled and there seems to be quite a difference of opinion between the DEP and everyone else. Hmmm mm...

The turtle is gone. Only one daylily actually uprooted. The dread vine is popping up in many places, and I pulled out 2 flowering tradescantias in an area I could have sworn they were gone from.

On the Plant ID forum I found out that the vine has edible tubers. Ugh!
Apios americana http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/53834/

Someone has emailed me asking for some. One man's poison...

Pam

Do they know how invasive it is? Has a pretty flower, though!

Have yet to see any mountain lions here, but plenty of coyotes.

Karen

Oh, yeah...here, too.....

Here's a little tour, ending with the next project:

This is the middle lawn as of last weekend. The daylilies are blooming, a little sparse after the upheaval and divisions of late fall and early spring, and I can already see where a little editing would be a good idea. The early pale yellow should be grouped in front- they're shorter than the orange ones, and the foliage is much finer. I couldn't tell that last fall...in fact there was so much junk in that bed I started off by cutting everything way back. But since they are the first and a little daintier, I think they'd look better all together. Then the others can do whatever they want in their own good time.

The long border runs above and below the stone wall that separates the middle lawn from the top lawn. There are alternating peonies and daylilies on top in the foreground, ending at the big box. Past that is the Siberian Iris bed, still only partly re-planted because of the dread vine. Below is a mix of roses and perennials, all new in my time. The fat part at the far end is the Cut Garden, also recent. It's beginning to take shape. This year I realized that to 'ground' the wonderful old smoke bush, I need to plant dark-leaved foliage below and have lots of purple mixed in toward the back. Bright colors farther forward will pop, and the tree won't look like a giant dark blob. The big barrel is all white, J's request, with Asiatic and Casablanca Lilies, snaps and Nicotiana Sylvestris this year. So far, underwhelming, but we'll see...

that is looking better - good job pam

On the other side of the middle lawn, the Falling Down Wall leads to the lower lawn (there are 4 lawns in all). The first section has a high wall, planted with box and other shrubs on top, with a low hedge in front. Then comes what we call River of White, a cascade of small stones that may once have been a stairway. In this picture taken in May, between the Rhodies Dame's Rocket is blooming near the top, along with Cerastium tomentosum, Arabis and Iberis. There is also lots of white salvia, white alliums and lavender. I just put in some Veronicastrum at the bottom, mixed with Boneset, ferns, Gooseneck loosestrife, and cimicifuga, leading into the 'falling down' part. Several huge clumps of hosta must have volunteered, and there is a wonderfully enormous white baptisia. Next to it was a large clump of white Physostegia that I wiped out inadvertently in my battle against tradescantia, raspberries, rampant ferns and all the rest.

I think this must have been a white garden. He would have been planting it starting in the med-to-late 30's, and Sissinghurst was new and exciting then. I'm not sure yet how slavishly I want to re-create the all-white thing, but I replanted P Miss Manners last fall, and keep adding white and silver wherever I can, both foliage and flowers. So far it's hard to tell how it will all come together, still too spotty.

J said there used to be lupines at the bottom but one year they didn't come back. So this year I started a new patch. So far they're growing...

very pretty!!

Thanks, wha...

The whole thing is in the view from the Garden room...

great view!!

Thanks onewish...Lots of cross-posting...I've been too windy!