In Roman times, the seeds, considered a digestive, were chewed; the stems (which are curiously hollow) were candied; and the leaves widely used in Roman cooking. Its medicinal attributes abounded as well – lovage was a principal ingredient in cures for rheumatism, jaundice and sore throats, and its leaves and stalks made into a tea for use as a diuretic and to treat minor stomach ailments. (Lovage does indeed contain various diuretic and antimicrobial compounds.) A preparation made from its roots, added to bath water or made into a salve, also was thought to help clear up skin problems. Lovage leaves were even placed in travelers’ shoes to soothe weary feet. So valued was lovage that when at the beginning of the 9th century Charlemagne promulgated the edict Capitulare de villis vel curtis Imperii Caroli Magni mandating the herbs to be grown in each of his imperial domains, lovage was prominent among them. A popular edible throughout the Midde Ages, lovage crossed to America with the first colonists, considered an indispensable part to the early spring diet when other types of vegetables were still many months away, and continued to be widely grown well into the 1800s. But then, as with many other ancient plants, the cultivation of lovage fell into desuetude, pushed aside by the rise of modern pharmaceuticals and the advent of petro-farming, which made the once rare and expensive celery common year round.

Today it’s a rare herb garden that contains lovage, and that’s a real shame.

Why grow this historical horticultural curiosity, you ask? Two very good reasons: not only is lovage an extremely handsome addition to your garden (4-6’ tall with finely cut, dark green leaves), but it’s an extremely tasty one too: with a flavor akin to celery but stronger, almost salty, lovage is the perfect adjunct to late summer veggies. Sprinkled on fresh garden tomatoes (my absolute favorite) the mouth comes alive; mixed with new potatoes, wow! (For more on that, see the recipe below.) In fact, lovage is a wonderful adjunct to soups, stews, or meat dishes, anywhere in fact that the flavor of celery might be wanted without the concomitant crunch.

Best of all, unlike celery, lovage is completely easy to grow, either from seed or root divisions. (The real only difficulty may be finding seed: Johnny’s has it HERE.)  In a sunny fertile spot, it will soon tower over its neighbors, providing you with an ample supply of greens all season long. (Lovage can also be quickly blanched then frozen, or dried, for winter use.) Annual composting in the fall is recommended, as is pruning off flowers and old stems after blooming to promote fresh, young growth. Pests are rare: leaf minors are the only major problem I’ve noticed and can generally be easily controlled by organic means.

Oh, and remember that part about the hollow stems? Here’s a sure way to delight your Bloody Mary imbibing guests: lovage “straws” that suffuse the booze with a delightful herbal twang as you sip.

Gotta love it.

Here are four of my favorite lovage recipes:

Warm Potato Salad with Lovage
1 1/2 pounds new potatoes, red and white, unpeeled
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup cup chopped fresh lovage
About 3 to 4 tablespoons white wine vinegar
About 1/4 cup good quality olive oil

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes and let cook, over moderate heat, for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until tender; they should feel tender throughout when pierced with a small, sharp knife. Drain and let cool slightly. In a serving bowl or salad bowl, mix the mustard, salt, pepper and lovage. Cut the warm potatoes into chunks and place in the serving bowl. Add the vinegar and oil while the potatoes are still hot and toss well. Taste for seasoning adding more vinegar, oil, salt or pepper as needed. Serves 4 to 6

Lobster and Potato Salad with Lovage
2 1/2 pounds live lobsters, cooked and meat removed, or 8 ounces cooked lobster meat, cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1 pound red bliss potatoes, cooked and cut into 1/2-inch dice
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 tablespoons chopped shallots
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup chopped lovage leaves
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
red leaf lettuce for garnish
chopped fresh chives for garnish

In a large bowl, combine the lobster and potatoes. Toss gently, to keep the potatoes from breaking up.

In a small bowl, combine the mayonnaise, sour cream, lemon juice, shallots, parsley, and lovage leaves. Combine well. Add the mayonnaise mixture to the lobster and potato mixture and toss gently until combined. Season with salt and pepper.

Line 4 salad plates with the lettuce and mound the salad on top. Sprinkle with chives. Serves 4 as a main course.

Corn Chowder with Lovage
1/2 cup bacon, diced
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup chopped onion
6 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 pounds red potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1/2-inch dice
3 cups fresh corn kernels, cut from the cob
2 cups half and half
1/3 cup chopped lovage leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the bacon in a large soup pot over medium heat until crisp. Add butter and melt. Add the onions to the pot and saute until wilted, about 7 minutes. Add the broth, and the potatoes. Bring the broth to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Add the corn, the lovage, and the half and half and continue to cook for an additional 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Serves 6. NOTE: Do not allow the chowder to boil after adding the half and half or the soup will curdle.

Marinated Cherry Tomatoes with Lovage
1 pint red cherry tomatoes
1 pint yellow pear cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup finely chopped lovage leaves
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

In a small bowl, combine the tomatoes, lovage, oil vinegar, and salt and pepper. Cover and let marinate at room temperature for at least an hour. Serve at room temperature. Serves 4.

So comforting, yet so cruel: the modern American lawn.

Sometimes I feel as if the lawn is the one calling the shots in my yard, not the other way round. That’s particularly true when I am pushing a mower in 95º heat, or paying an exorbitant electricity bill after a season of lawn irrigation. (Electricity, as I pump irrigation water from our old, 1852 shallow well; if I paid for the water directly, the price would be astronomical.)  Now don’t get me wrong. As a landscape designer, I can assure you that there is nothing more attractive in the garden than a well-tended, well-proportioned lawn. No other feature of the landscape is as effective at linking together disparate elements of the yard than a flourishing piece of greensward. The problem lies in the “well-tended” and “well-proportioned” part. In terms of maintenance, despite the fact that we Americans spend billions of hours and dollars each year on lawn care, much of our effort is wasted.  Many, and in some areas, most of the lawns you see are brown, patchy, bumpy stretches of weeds, especially after the searing heat and extended drought of the last few years. As for proportion and scale, it’s a common sight all over America to see the lawn dominating the landscape, instead of complementing it. A landscape that is all grass (especially bad grass), and very little else, is not really landscape at all, merely bad lawn. How did we get into this fix, anyway?

This plan for a typical colonial-era garden clearly shows how limited grass was before the invention of the mower; here, lawn is restricted to two plats immediately around the foundation. The rest of the landscape is ornamental or productive garden space.

The history of the American lawn’s rise to preeminence in our landscapes is a fascinating one, especially considering the fact that two hundred years ago, there were almost no lawns in American gardens. While our forebears did enjoy extremely ornate and elaborate landscapes, they were almost entirely without what we would nowadays call a lawn. Why? Because mown grass was expensive and difficult to maintain. To get the flat, green look we so prize today, two centuries ago you either needed a small flock of sheep and someone to tend them (and to their compost contributions to the lawn surface) or a full time gardener with a scythe. Closely scything a lawn, I can assure you from personal experience (having foolishly attempted it once, almost cutting off my leg in the process) is an extremely difficult and time-consuming affair. Thus, only the richest of the rich had lawns, and then, only tiny areas of close-cropped grass suitable for outdoor games like boules (a form of bowling) which were then all the rage.

This grass-less landscape changed forever in 1830, when two enterprising (or fiendish, depending on your opinion of mowing grass) British gentlemen by the names of Edwin Budding and James Ferrabee came into the picture. Having seen the large-bladed machines used in mills to remove excess nap from woolen cloth, they decided that the same process could be adapted for cutting grass. Their invention instantly removed the main impediment to having a lawn – the lack of an easy, cost-efficient means of mowing it.  Suddenly, everyone from maid to minister could have their own perfect, green carpet with minimal labor, and lawns sprang up everywhere as the ultimate status symbol in the Victorian garden. Strangely enough, this sine qua non has remained the case every since, despite the fact any status associated with having a large lawn has long since disappeared. For better or for worse, the modern lawn has become an intractable part of the American landscape, and I doubt that anything short of a second American revolution would remove “a good lawn” from the wish list of most gardeners.

Since lawns do indeed seem have become a permanent feature in our gardens, at least we should do what we can to enhance them, especially when there are a number of ways we can make a considerable improvements to our grass, without making a commensurate dent to our pocket books.

1)    Assess the Amount of Lawn You Now Have, vs. How Much You REALLY Need. Take a look around your property. Unless you are hosting team soccer games or otherwise need extremely large play areas, if any one section of your yard (such as front, back or side) consists of 60% or more grass, consider re-landscaping to convert the lawn areas to other types of plantings. Let’s face it. Lawns, especially good lawns, require a lot of work, and today’s busy gardener needs to make every moment count. Huge expanses of grass are not only dull, but also time-consuming to maintain, and in many hot, dry areas of the country where water is an issue, environmentally unsound. Why not convert some of these areas to alternative groundcovers, shelter plantings or ornamental landscaping? In very large yards (of several acres or more) letting the grass revert to natural or woodland areas may be the way to go. Here in my garden over the last few years we have eliminated almost 2 acres of lawn along the property borders, allowing meadow to grow up in its place, which only has to be mown once a year. Not only are these naturalized areas far less work to maintain, but the return of many native species of birds, animals and butterflies has been a tremendous side-benefit. Plus, not having to tend these marginal sections has allowed me to concentrate my time and resources on the remaining lawn, with the result that I now have far better grass in the areas where it counts most

2)    Sharpen Your Mower Blades. Sounds simple enough, but when was the last time you actually sharpened those blades? A survey by the International Turf Producers Foundation shows that only 38% of gardeners do so. Dull blades not only consume much more energy than sharp to cut the same grass, but the dullness also causes ragged cuts and gashes to the grass stems, which can lead to disease and stress. Turf professionals recommend sharpening the blades several times during the season. Simply take the mower to your local dealer or repair shop. (If you are mechanically handy, and know what you are doing, you can also sharpen them yourself.) The process takes minutes and costs only a few dollars, and will lead to a far healthier, better-looking lawn.

3)    Raise the Cutting Height of Your Mower as Summer Heat Increases. As the summer heat wears on, move up the cutting height on your lawn mower by several notches. By increasing the height, you increase the length of the grass blades. The more blade surface the grass has, the better it can produce its own energy from the sun, with the need for augmented alimentation.

4)    Don’t Fertilize or Use Pesticides During a Drought. Again, according to the International Turf Producers Foundation, many people try to fertilize their way out of brown summer lawns. During a drought, your grass is not growing vigorously, and will not absorb fertilizers. Pesticides can actually place stress on already weakened grass. Wait until normal rainfall and cooler weather returns to make any lawn treatments truly effective, both in terms of cost and benefit.

5)    Check Your Lawn for Thatch. Thatch is a deposit of dead grass that over time can accumulate on lawns. Not only is it unsightly, but a layer of thatch more than 1/2 thick effectively acts as a barrier to the soil, preventing the absorption of much-needed nutrients and water. Contrary to popular belief, excessive thatch is not caused by leaving normal amount of clippings on lawns from mulching mowers and the like. Instead, thatch is primarily composed of the tougher parts of the grass, stems, stolons and roots that have failed to decompose properly. Excessive thatch is a sign that something is wrong with your lawn care: excessive chemical treatments, cutting the grass too short, or over-watering are all potential causes. Remove excess thatch with a rake or a de-thatching tool, and amend your lawn care practices to prevent its return.

Father Rooster (adopted from a friend) and one of the newly hatched, almost feathered young hens in my coop this morning. My 35 chickens happily roam over an enclosure of nearly 400 square feet.

I was watching the national news last night, and saw that the egg recall due to salmonella has been expanded to half a billion eggs. Think about it: half a billion. And the insidious thing this time is that the disease is contained inside the egg, transmitted directly to the yoke from the infected ovaries of the chicken.

Is this any wonder when you see how most chickens are confined? (Click here for a disturbing article from the New York Times.)

While I don’t agree with a recent statement by Michael Pollan that it’s alright for organic free range eggs to cost $8 a dozen. (“Pay more, eat less,” he advocates in the Wall Street Journal) it’s certainly true that we should all think very hard about the kind of food industry we are supporting. Let’s face it: keeping hens confined to 8 square inches in a cage is not only inhuman, it’s foolish, as this recent outbreak has shown yet again. We simply can’t medicate our way out of bad animal husbandry. Food animals are just that: food animals, not pets, but even so, they deserve to live in conditions that have at least some semblance of their natural habitat, if only for our own sake. Time and again, this unnatural confinement of cows, poultry, pigs, and other livestock has lead to massive outbreaks of disease, which then leads to massive application of antibiotics on the part of producers, creating new vectors for the disease, more drugs, and progressively down the retrograde.

There’s one easy way to opt out of this awful spiral, and I’ll say it again: get yourself a few hens, and revel in the way that these amazing animals compost all your table scraps and leftovers into pure, delicious, uncontaminated eggs.

It’s nature’s way, and to the extent possible, it should be yours as well.

This simplified Victorian carpet bedding scheme makes a colorful summer addition to a brownstone in Boston.

Few people realize that gardening is as much driven by current fashion as are most other aspects of popular culture. Take annuals for instance. You can hardly move about the nursery these days without bumping into some newly discovered or hybridized cultivar (often to the detriment of older varieties – just try for instance, finding a flat of  tall blue ageratum) each one reportedly better than the next for this or that use in the landscape. But when I started gardening 40 years ago, this wasn’t at all the case; annuals were definitely out, elbowed aside by fatigue from generations of blaring orange marigolds and red geraniums. Mention coleus to a serious gardener and you were more likely to get a laugh; salvia produced outright derision. Today the exact opposite is the case. Interestingly, this sea change has happened several times before: in the 1840s, the 1920s and again in the 50s. The most dramatic occurrence, however, was the first, and led to an entirely new style of gardening called “bedding out.”

First a bit of history: previous to 1840, gardeners had to content themselves with a fairly narrow list of flowering plants, many of which had descended directly from the gardens of the Middle Ages. Most were perennial, or biennial (today, an almost forgotten class of plants.) Then, two seemingly unrelated events conspired to tip the gardening world on its head: an onerous English tax on glass, which had made large panes a great luxury, was repealed,  suddenly making the greenhouse or conservatory affordable to the middle classes. Second, the increased ease of travel and commerce in the early part of the 1800s had brought a large number of previously unknown, non-hardy plants to the market, which breeders soon hybridized into a wide array of never-before-seen colors and sizes. Today with our nurseries literally stuffed to the rooftops with tender plants from all over the globe, it’s hard to realize what an impact these novelties made on the gardening world at the time. Gardeners were simply agog at these new plants, and rushed to find ways to grow them. Of course a place had to be created for these beauties in the garden, and thus a whole new landscape movement was born—annual bedding out. This trend reached our shores after the Civil War, and our gardening habits changed forever. In fact, when you scurry out to the nursery each spring to buy the latest petunia, you follow in the footsteps of your Victorian garden predecessors.

Carpet bed schemes from the 1870s

To keep these Victorian carpet beds (so called because the patterns resembled a decorative carpet) always at their best, the plants were often changed 3 or 4 times a season. Commonly, the show started with a large display of spring bulbs, which were removed immediately after flowering and replaced with early spring annuals like pansies. The Victorians adored pansies, but when these velvety flowers faded in the summer heat, the plants were ruthlessly removed and replaced with heat-loving summer annuals, which in turn were replaced in the late fall with a final show cold tolerant plants.

The placement and shape of these Victorian flower gardens were also unique. Cut out of the turf and edged with beautifully worked iron surrounds or clay tiles, these beds were created in a wide assortment of shapes—circles, squares, diamonds, crosses, tear drops and other variations—all intricately subdivided into masses of annual flowers.

Though they appeared in plan view as if they were flat and everything was of uniform height, in reality these beds were three dimensional. They were almost always raised in the center, either by mounding the ground, or by using the tallest material in the center and gradually lowering the plant height toward the outer edges.

Hardly subtle, this annual garden at Hampton Court accurately reflects the Victorians' penchant for bright colors, and also neatly summarizes the reasons behind the movement's demise. Done with a more subtle palette however, these kinds of annuals gardens still have a place in the modern landscape.

The only difficulty with carpet beds (aside from the cost of all the plants, which is considerable) is in their maintenance. Any spent flowers and dead leaves must be rigorously removed in order to keep the beds looking presentable, which in the heat of summer can amount to quite a lot of work. Also, depending on what material you choose, you may need to replant sections as the plants fall out of flower. (You can avoid this chore by choosing ever-blooming flower varieties). When well done, the effect of the Victorian annual bed is truly something to behold. You can understand why these opulent beds could be found, at one level skill or another, in most American landscapes between 1865 and 1900.

Like most fads, however, carpet bedding eventually passed out of fashion after the turn of the century, killed off partly by the number of bad examples of the form. (Carpet bedding is easy to do badly, given the loud and often glaring color combinations possible with annuals.) But another factor was at work: in a further fashion twist, the cottage gardening style had been “rediscovered” and suddenly became the latest thing…

That, however, is a fascinating tale for another day.

The garlic harvest just in...

One of the things I find odd about garden writing is that while there is generally more than ample advice about sowing and planting food crops, there is comparatively little information about harvesting, which, after all, is the entire point of the exercise. And often times, proper technique is critical. Take garlic for instance. Garlic is harvested in a very short window, just as the spring growth has yellowed and begins to wither, but before it completely dries. (While the stems retain some resiliency, you can easily pull the bulb out of the ground by the leaves. Wait too long, and you’ll have to dig each bulb by hand.) Once harvested, place the bulbs, unwashed (washing encourages rot) with stems attached, in a warm, dry place for two to three weeks, or until the stems are completely dessicated. Do NOT however, leave them in direct sunlight; the bulbs will then begin to green, greatly shortening their storage life. When you can easily snap the stems from the bulbs, do so, dust off any remaining soil, and transfer the harvest to a (cool 40-60º) dark dry location. Garlic bulbs can be stored this way for up to eight months. Just don’t forget to set aside a portion of your harvest for replanting this fall – the time to do that is October/November after the first frost.

An embarrassment of riches: oriental lilies in July

One of my favorite times of year has arrived again: oriental lily season. Other than perhaps German iris, there is really no other flower in the entire gardening palette that makes such a spectacular cut flower, and without exception, none more fragrant. I’ll never forget the first time I smelled these flowers indoors: I was touring the mansions in Newport, RI, and at one, Chateau Sur Mer, they had placed a large bouquet of lilies in the entry hall that filled the entire place with the richest of scents. Since then, I have never been without them in my garden, though since I first saw these lilies nearly twenty years ago, growing them has become far more difficult.

Enter the red lily beetle: imported from Europe in the 1980s, this nasty pest first appeared here in Boston, and quickly spread throughout the Northeast. Every part of the beetle life cycle munches the lily, and there are no natural predators here in North America. Left unchecked, the bugs will filigree the entire plant in mere days. (The larvae are particularly appealing: they coat themselves in their own feces.) Your only option is to pick or spray. I spray: a systemic, once a year just after the bulbs emerge in the spring, with a hand-held bottle sprayer to hit each individual stem, and only each individual stem, with pesticide. This system isn’t perfect, and the careful appication takes a while, but that way the spraying is contained precisely where it needs to be. Of course I would prefer not to spray, but to date there seems no other viable alternative, which brings up a very good question: how to garden organically when we are continually importing pests from other countries that lack any type of natural counterbalance in their new environment.

For the moment, I have no answer to that one, so for now, I think I’ll just enjoy my lilies.

Oriental lilies by the way, make excellent subjects for pots, and if you want a continual display of color and fragrance all summer long, you can do what I often do: buy your lilies in spring, then store them in the vegetable drawer, planting them every several weeks until early summer. Once the pots bloom, cut off the tops of the flower stalks, and let the stems die back. Transfer the bulbs into the garden in fall just after the first light frost.

My newly arrived chicks – 37 strong – in their shipping box. Just before hatching the young birds reabsorb the remaining yolk, allowing them to survive without food or water for up to two days. In nature, this would allow the first born to wait for the last (the hen won't lead the chicks to food until all the viable chicks have emerged.) But for our purposes, this provides an ideal window for shipping from the hatchery.

This morning I stepped with no small trepidation back into the world of chickens. I’ve had chicks here before, many times in fact, over the last 20 years, but the last two occasions proved disastrous: weasels got into the chicken enclosure, and murdered each and every hen over a single night. The first time this happened, I was mystified, as I couldn’t imagine what could have caused such an awful slaughter. Then an old chicken hand (my father) delivered the bad news: weasels, which had been long eradicated in these parts, were undoubtedly the culprit. (They were ID’ed by their method of killing: they bite the throats of the chickens and suck their blood, leaving the lifeless carcasses lying about like diseased corpses in a some bad sci-fi flick.) With the decline of local farming and varmint eradicating farmers, weasels, like many other of their fellow predators – coyotes, foxes, fishercats – have returned to their former haunts in droves, and have found much more sympathetic quarters in the backyards of suburbia.

Death in a small package: the weasel

Thinking I would outfox the weasels (yes, I know, I couldn’t resist) I decided to fortify the coop itself. This indeed worked, until one night I forgot to close the coop, and the weasels squirmed under the 6 foot fence that encloses the chicken area, and again murdered each and every hen. (Chickens, truth be told, are stupid, much like the proverbial dumb blond at the beach. Unlike the ducks and geese that at least put up a semblance of self-defense, chickens prefer the “If I just sit here silently, nothing will hurt me ” mode. While this may have worked for the chicken’s ancestor in some wild copse eons ago, the strategy is distinctly less successful in the confines of a small coop. Short story: no more chickens

For two years now, I have been chickenless, but to tell the truth, I have missed them. No more crowing from the coop (which I love), no more crazy antics in the yard, and worst of all, no more eggs – I’ve been buying mine from my friend and local police chief Jane Moran, who did a far better job of patrolling her coop than I did, as she still has several hens from the last batch we ordered together. But this spring I had a change of heart. Rather than being beaten by some carnivorous rodent (well not technically a rodent, but definitely a rat), I decided to fortify the entire 75′ x 50′ enclosure. I bought enough hardware cloth to go beneath the 6′ fence surrounding the coop, and sealed up every chink and cranny I could find. (Weasels, I’m told, can fit through a hole the size of the quarter.) I also plan to install lights and motion sensors around the coop itself, and I’m tempted to purchase the latest chicken coop security measure: an automatic coop door closer.

Soon, I will have a chicken Fort Knox. Or so I hope.

But will all this techno-gadgetry deter the ancient foe? That remains to be seen.

For those of you, who before reading this article, might have been predisposed to try a few hens and are now reconsidering after reading this tale of avian terror, rest assured that normally raising chickens isn’t this much work. I just seem to be located in a predator-filled zone. All you really need is some intruder proof housing, and the ability (and memory) to close your chickens up at night. One caution though: if you value your beds and borders, you can’t let your chickens roam about the yard, as I recently saw advocated in a local newspaper. Chickens, in the normal course of things, scratch and claw the ground in search of bugs and other tasty bits. While this is a handy habit when you want to clear falls from an orchard, or rid a field of ticks, it can be distinctly unpleasant in a more cultivated environment. Here’s Helena Rutherford Ely, in her typical understated witty style, from her classic 1903 guide, A Woman’s Hardy Garden:

Living on a farm, of course there have always been hens and chickens. These creatures were provided with houses and yards and fences, and given every inducement to remain where they belonged; yet with diabolical ingenuity they would escape from their quarters, dig under the fence, fly over it, or some one would leave a door or a gate open, and then, with one accord, all the flock would make for the gardens and scratch and roll in the borders. This sort of thing happened repeatedly, until I felt there must be a league between the farmer’s wife and the hens. But the limit of endurance was reached when, one afternoon, coming out to look at a bed of several dozen Chrysanthemums set out in the morning, I found the poor plants all scratched out of the ground, broken and wilted. Then in wrath the fiat went forth, “No more hens on this farm, those on hand to be eaten at once.” For days a patient family had hen soup, hen croquettes, hen salad and hen fricassee, until the last culprit came to her end.

While this may sound a little severe, I can attest to the sentiment: one morning a few years back the hens got loose just before filming an episode of the Victory Garden here at the house. The entire newly planted annual garden, the subject of the day’s program and lovingly planted just the night before by Kip, was unearthed in an hour’s scratching. If I hadn’t restrained my dear hatch-bearing friend, I too would have been eating roast hen for weeks on end.

Suffice it to say, chickens and gardens don’t mix. But John Brooks is right: There IS something very satisfying about having some hens about the place.

So, today the adventure begins anew:

Stay tuned.

The hardest task in gardening is to make the artificial look natural. As the Roman poet once said: ars est celare artem: "True art is to conceal art." Here stone, foliage, and blossom come together in happy combination.

One of the great things about working in design is that you get a chance to experience a wide range of mediums, far greater than you would ever have in even the most ample single garden. Recently I was called out to redesign a pool deck in nearby Sudbury, Massachusetts. The setting was spectacular – a 10′ raised deck overlooking fields and pasture – but the large crescent surrounding the pool had been planted with a boring line of perennials with little seasonal interest other than midsummer. This was the view in May:

Taking my theme from the many Colonial era stone walls on the property, I decided that this would be the ideal setting for a rock garden: the stones would add year round interest and three dimensionality to the flat deck, and combined with plantings, would merge into the perfect foil for the greens and blues of field and sky beyond.

Great idea, but rock gardens are tricky: well designed they look like they have been there forever the second after they’ve been installed. Badly done, they look tacky  think the brown lava rocks, clorinated stream and musak from speakers hidden in ficus, courtesy your average 70s shopping mall. The key to making rock gardens look good is threefold: you need interesting stones; you need stones of varying masses; and you need to use plant material that’s looks natural.

In this case, the first part was well in hand: behind the clients’ barn was a huge pile of stone that once formed a sheep ramp into the structure, full of hugely interesting rocks – glacial erratics deposited by the retreating ice mass 12,000 years ago. The hard part was going to be getting pieces of a sufficient size up onto the deck without damage or injury. Enter mason Glenn Kresco and his masterful crew, and one very large, very cautiously driven backhoe:

After the old perennials were removed,  Glenn and his guys created several groupings of multi-ton stones to provide sufficient massing on the deck. The largest ones were chained, and ever so gingerly lifted over the railing. The “smaller” stones came by bucket:

Bit by bit a garden begins to appear:

From the above you can see how I am organizing the stones based around outcroppings of large boulders.

The the smaller stones are then positioned around the bigger pieces to form natural looking clusters. Many, if not most, are also buried 1/3 to 2/3 of their mass, to make them appear as if arising from the soil. This is terrifically important, though very rigorous work. Too many small pieces and the rocks look like popcorn scattered on the deck. Too many large boulders and you get a traffic barrier, not a garden. The stones must look right individually for the ensemble to look good as a whole and to enhance our theme of “tumbled farm wall.”

Finally, sufficient soil is brought in to mound around the stones, and the spaces are planted.

Proper plant selection is hugely important. You need species that will appreciate the quick drainage and high temperatures such a garden provides, and most importantly, won’t outgrow their welcome. Dwarf conifers (like the miniature hinoki cypress (left) stonecrop, and  sedums are ideal planted in masses.

So are heathers: their softly colored foliage in shades of chartreuse, gold, gray and green blend beautifully with the stones, and will slowly spread to form mats of color that changes over the seasons. (In fact, by next year, you shouldn’t see much of the mulch at all.)

Their bloom time – August through September – is also well suited for up close appreciation from the pool. One big caveat though: once established, heathers are quite drought resistant, and in fact this planting will require little additional watering after the first year. But until then, this garden needs to be carefully watched to make sure it doesn’t dry to a crisp: it’s hot on that deck, as I can well vouchsafe after having spent a full 90º day planting the material you see above. But I think you’ll agree it was worth it. Properly done, rock gardens are truly a thing of beauty.

Happy, protected plants...

This year for the first time in a long time I was able to get a good germination from notoriously hard to germinate carrots, and the key to my success was using floating row cover. Tacked directly onto the soil, the cover provided just enough moisture to allow the carrots to sprout without drying out between waterings.

If you don’t know about row cover and its multiple uses in the garden, you should. Essentially spun polyester, floating row cover is both translucent (85% of the light) and water permeable. Which means you can, with aide of flexible lengths of bendable PVC water pipe, create mini quonset huts for your plants that exclude insect pests.  Your beets stripped every year by miners? Your squash wilted and bored? Your Swiss chard munched to the core? No more, no more, no more! The only caveat here: if the crop you’re covering requires pollination, you need to remove the covers when the plants begin to blossom. Generally by that time the plants will be established enough to provide a decent harvest without spraying. Otherwise, keep covered until harvest.

Row cover is available in rolls of varying width and length from many garden suppliers, and there’s even a new version out from Veggiecare that is supposed to last 8 years, though I rarely have much problem reusing my cover from season to season – I simply toss it in the old basement washer with a little detergent and bleach, and it returns almost magically to its original snow white.

One last tip to keep in mind: row cover provides about 4 degrees of thermal protection, so on those marginal early and late season nights where temperatures dip to 30º, row cover provides just enough mitigation to get plants though a light frost.

See? Truly a gardener’s best friend!

A month or so back I wrote about lilacs, and the uncanny ability their scent possesses of being able to transport you out of time and place to sunny moments of your past.  But for me, there’s another plant with similar abilities – though through a very different manner of delivery – that’s just now at its height: rhubarb. I can’t look at a clump without thinking of my mother, and how each June she transformed the sour stalks into a wonderfully piquant compote—a special treat to be poured over fruit in the morning before school.  Whenever that delicious crimson-colored sauce appeared on the table, I knew the end of classes couldn’t be far behind.

Looking back, I realize that our family was never without rhubarb. Its bright crimson stalks and huge green leaves appeared each spring in every one of the gardens I knew as a boy, heralding the warm weather to come. And each of the three times we moved, a portion of the original plant would accompany us into our next garden. Once, having forgotten to take the rhubarb with us, we even made a special trip to our former house to beg a division from the new owners— such was the displacement each of us felt without its familiar presence.

Commonly mistaken for a fruit, rhubarb is actually a vegetable – a member of the buckwheat family of all things – and closely related to garden sorrel (another favorite of mine). Though many species are grown throughout the world, it is the common garden-variety rhubarb, Rheum rhabarbarum, also known as Rheum rhaponticum with which we are most familiar here in the US.

Like many plants, rhubarb’s origins date back to ancient China, where its roots (rhizomes) and stalks (petioles) were prized for their purgative and other medicinal qualities. While several species are native to parts of Siberia, northern India  and Nepal (some found as high as 14,000 feet!), it is the Chinese variety —Rheum palmatum—that first made it to Europe. One of rhubarb’s earliest proponents was Marco Polo, who traveled throughout China in the 15th century wrote extensively about it in his journals. By the mid 1500s, rhubarb’s use as an intestinal cleaner was already widely known throughout Europe. And it to these laxative properties that Shakespeare’s Macbeth clearly refers when he cries out “What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug would scour these English hence?”

In fact, the plant’s history is so long that even its etymology is somewhat obscured. In the English language, the word ‘rhubarb’ made its first appearance around the mid 1400s. According to Lindley’s Treasury of Botany, the genus Rheum derives from  Rha— the ancient name for the Volga river in Russia, on whose banks the plant was said to grow. Others called it rha barbarum, or “of the bearded peoples”, referring to all those rhubarb-eating, “bearded” (Lat:barbarus) tribes in northern Europe.

For all its medicinal and ornamental attributes, in America rhubarb has been grown primarily for its taste. Introduced into the New England colonies between 1790-1800, the hardy plant endeared itself to the early colonists and by 1822 was widely available in Massachusetts produce markets. Its thick, fibrous stalks were stewed and sweetened to make everything from preserves and compotes to wine to that great American culinary icon: the rhubarb pie.

With its large, attractive leaves,  bright red or crimson-colored stalks, and the tall, spiky flowers of ornamental varieties such as Rheum officinale and Rheum emodi, it is no wonder that in England rhubarb has long been a favorite of the perennial border. And though still somewhat hard to find, ornamental varieties have been cropping up in American gardens as well  in recent years. (The only source I know of in the US is Heronswood Nursery based in Washington State.  One of the founders, Dan Hinkley, is positively mad about rhubarb, having traveled as far as Tibet, weathering high altitude, monsoon rains, and even hungry yaks, to seek out ever new varieties. The descriptions themselves are worth the read. Describing Rheum alexandrae, for example:  “…[a] resplendent species with spikes of flowers rising to 3′ completely shielded by large, translucent white bracts, and I scanned the entire shore of Tianchi Lake in Yunnan for remaining seed of this common species at 12,000 ft., and finally found a few remaining from the ravages of summer-grazing yaks, though totally soaked my shoes in the process of retrieval.”) For you heirloom fans, one of the most common varieties found in nurseries today is ‘Victoria’, dating back to 1863.

In terms of culture, very few plants could be easier to grow, or give so much for so little effort, than the rhubarb. A cool season perennial crop, rhubarbs send out stalks from April through September and require temperatures below 40 F in the winter to stimulate bud break and below 90 F in the summer to sustain active growth. Once established, rhubarb is generally untroubled by pests, and  extremely long- lived (plants are productive indefinitely if given a heavy top dressing of manure or compost each fall.)

Rhubarb is produced from crowns consisting of rhizomes and buds. It can also be grown from seed, though this method is not recommended as the seedlings don’t retain the characteristics of the parent plant. For maximum crop production, set root divisions about three feet apart in well-drained soil that is heavily composted with manure or peat. The crown bud should be set about two inches below the surface. Good drainage is essential to help ensure against rotting, and planting in raised beds is ideal. Harvesting occurs throughout the spring into early summer, though you should cease by mid July to let the plant regenerate for the next year. Ideally, You should forgo harvesting the plant until the second year to allow it to establish itself.  Just be sure to trim the leaves off before cooking – unlike the stalks, the foliage contains highly poisonous oxalic acid, and can even kill if consumed in large quantities.

Recipe: Rhubarb Crumble

This is one of my favorite recipes from my Cultivated Gardener radio days. The sourness of the rhubarb is perfectly paired with the sweetness of the crumble, creating a delicious balance. The whole thing can be made in very little time, although try to leave at least half an hour to “marinate” the rhubarb slices in sugar to soften. Mix in a few sliced spring strawberries for a real treat and serve topped with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, a drizzle of heavy cream or a dollop of creme fraiche.

4 cups fresh rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 cup granola, preferably with nuts
1 stick unsalted butter, cut into cubes

Toppings: vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, heavy cream or a dollop of creme fraiche

Place the rhubarb in a bowl and sprinkle with the half cup sugar. Add half teaspoon of the ginger and a quarter teaspoon cinnamon. Let “marinate” for at least thirty minutes, and up to two hours.

Meanwhile, mix the flour and sugar in a bowl. Add the granola and the remaining ginger and cinnamon. Add the butter and, using your hands or a pastry knife, break the butter into the mixture until it is the size of peas.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter the bottom of a pie plate or medium-size gratin dish. Add the rhubarb chunks. Spoon the crumble topping on it and press down to form a crust. Make sure the butter isn’t all in one clump, but distributed through the crust. Bake on the middle shelf for about 20 to 35 minutes, or until the rhubarb is soft and the fruit is beginning to bubble under the crust; the crust should be golden brown. Remove from the oven and serve hot or at room temperature with any of the toppings. Serves 4.