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“Now begins the moment in earnest when all things withered come into their own.
During the long months of winter they make a stubborn, utterly distinctive garden comprising the worn, the slow, the spent, and the broken.”  -- Robert Dash in "Notes from Madoo: Making a Garden in the Hamptons" |
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|  clear: south breeze: 36ºI ought to put away thoughts of blooming things at least until the first snowdrops appear. I can't. I keep looking deep inside shrubs of quinces and clumps of hellebores hoping to find a single protected flower. I check the winter jasmine and the fragrant honeysuckle searching for buds. This is the season of browns and swaying plumes. But I want to see shades of green and the symmetry of flowers.  Clumps of Golden Sage (Salvia officinalis 'Aurea') are scattered in the display beds around the west entrance to the Linnean House. They can't rival the intense summer colors of the Crotans they replaced, but they hold up well to this season. To visitors who are able and inclined to stoop for a closer look, each roughly textured oblong leaf offers an outline of an oak-leaf shape bordered by a color that would have been a brighter lemon in a warmer season. December ends and petunias still survive. The Surfina 'Pink Vein' Petunias that I saw in flower a month ago have stopped blooming, but their foliage is still vibrant. I picked up a leaf that had fallen from one of the plants. It was smooth and hairless with none of the stickiness that old-fashioned petunias have. As the leaf absorbed the warmth of my fingers it began to dissolve into green mush. Within a minute it was gone. The petunias I saw today soon will be discarded as spring bulbs are planted. But if left alone, I can't help but wonder if they might have flowered again in early spring. All of the clay pots planted with warm season flowers have been stored. The all-weather urns remain in place though. They now are filled with arrangement made of cuttings from the Garden. The most elaborate of these arrangements is in the urn in the foyer of the boxwood garden. The tall center of the arrangement uses plumes of miscanthus and other grasses interspersed with golden and burgundy twigs of dogwood. Supporting the center are cuttings of blue cypress or juniper and sprigs of very red winterberries and shoots of a silver plant that could be lavender. I envy the person who was allowed to wander the Garden freely choosing, clipping, and gathering whatever will suit. Just beyond the grove of holly trees west of the Mausoleum is a very old Osage Orange tree. Likely it was one that founder Henry Shaw saw as his carriage passed this way 150 years ago. Layers of trunk have twisted in upon themselves forming shapes that can be seen only by stepping back and then looking long and imaging freely. I wonder what others may see as I look at a sleeping baby wrapped in a blanket while sucking her thumb and a sleeping bunny curled in a ball.Near the Osage Orange tree is a huge trident-shaped female ginkgo tree. Beneath it the ground is completely covered with rotting fruit. Surprisingly, the branches are still laden with fruits that refuse to fall. Robins perch on the tall branches and walk around the nearby holly trees, but they seem uninterested in the ginkgo fruit in the tree or on the ground. I give the tree a wide berth as I walk around it trying not to sniff what's left of the odor that would have taken my breath away had I been anywhere near this place a couple of months ago. Even in this late December air, there is more than a hint of sourness.  snow: northwest breeze: 29ºSnow is falling as pellets. Without flakes to add bulk, this first snowfall will be picturesque, rather than a hazard or nuisance.  The birds have discovered the crabapples, now dull-red globes of soft mush after so many days of freezing and thawing. Why flocks of birds of different species should all descend upon a single tree leaving nearby ones deserted I wonder about. Why one particular tree? Why strip it bare before moving to another? A couple of years ago I went to a u-pick-it blueberry farm. I was taken to a row to pick. The grower stood nearby insisting that each plant be picked clean before I moved to the next. Had he not been watching I'm sure I would have picked just the big plump blueberries before moving on. Could there be an overseer bird that selects a tree du jour and then keeps the flock in place to eat sweet and the sour alike until the tree is stripped? But, even though the birds stayed in one tree, they rarely would eat a whole crabapple before moving on to taste another. As we walked though the English Woodland Garden, we spotted at least a half-dozen piles of juniper cuttings meant to protect whatever was beneath from winter. The new labels beside the mounds surprised us. After seeing the first, we thought the placement was a mistake so we looked for another. They were all the same. The juniper fronds were covering Mayapples. Now, Mayapples are pretty adept at looking after themselves, so why the special effort here to shelter a common sight of spring? I copied the botanical name on the sign and did some looking on the web. The Mayapples beneath the branches are Podophyllum difforme. They come from the forests of Hupei, a province in the east-central part of China. They bristle with unusual features. When young, the leaves are nearly rectangular and marked with white veins edged with burgundy. The picture I saw of the plant made me think "Rex Begonia." As the leaves mature, they become sharply angular. Then instead of a single white flower beneath each leaf, these Mayapples of China form a cluster of up to five deep-red flowers beneath the largest leaf.It turns out that the Podophyllum difforme is the least spectacular of a number of "hot new Podophyllum" from China being sold by rare plant nurseries. Terra Nova Nurseries says, "you need to know the hot new Chinese species. They are awesome, weird, strange, and beautiful. They sport amazing foliage with fabulous color patterns, colors and shapes. People go ga ga when they see them!! They have been paying $30 to $60 for a 4" plant." The nursery's website has a picture of the North American variety next to pictures and descriptions of four of the Chinese varieties. Spring will never be the same here in the staid English Woodland Garden if the Chinese Mayapples sheltered under the Junipers survive to form colonies.  This is one of those evergreen pictures. I haven't checked my archive, but I feel sure I must have taken a similar picture each winter. The pattern, the snow, the slate color, and the smooth roundness of river stones that surface the walk over the stream near the cascade in the Japanese Garden is one of my perennial favorites. Another on my list of favorites are the spunky flowers on a inconspicuous shrub called Spirea thunbergii. Masses of tiny white flowers cover the shrub in springtime. But the shrub never stops flowering completely. At any time of year I can lean over to spot a flower in bloom. This morning, after days of temperatures in the teens, a flower no more than a quarter-inch across blooms.Yet another favorite: The Japanese flowering apricot Prunus mume 'Peggy Clarke.' I've watched it flower each February and worried about its poor health in September. Sometime this week it was pronounced dead and removed. Except for an open hole where it once grew, not a trace is left. I hope the hole was left open to welcome another "Peggy Clarke.' February needs it. So do I. |