Central Park...my favorite restaurant

Ok, it's not really my favorite restaurant, but I think it's pretty cool to take a walk in the Park and pick up a few wild ingredients for a delicious batch of cookies or a special yogurt treat.

Sophia Brittan and Emma Piper-Burket are the brains (and beauty) behind Kitchen Caravan, an internet cooking show (and so much more!). We bonded last summer over a foraged meal and weekend of foodie indulgence at my home in PA, and this spring I contributed to their series of videos on edible flowers.

Sophia and I took a wet walk in Central Park, then headed back to her apartment to cook and eat.
The dandelion cookies are sneakily addictive. I took only two with me and they were gone by the time I walked home (a mere 3 blocks). They're not super sweet, but they ARE delicious. Thanks to Peter Gail for the recipe.

Our second edible floral was lilac flowers in yogurt. Think of it as a healthier, more sophisticated version of a DQ Blizzard (...mmm...DQ Blizzard...). Of course my favorite lilac flower recipe is lilac flower wine, but since that takes about 2 years from start to finish it doesn't make for great television. Sure makes for good drinking, though.

N.B. I didn't actually pick the lilacs for this project in Central Park. While I have no problem foraging in public places for things most people consider weeds, picking flowers just doesn't feel right. After all, people go to parks to see pretty flowers and if I harvested them, that might decrease someone else's enjoyment of the park. And that would be bad.

And please don't judge my hair. It was raining!

VOLUNTEERING IN THE GARDENS OF NEW YORK

Above, volunteer bachelor buttons with the David Austin rose 'Crown Princess Margareta'
I’m a casual gardener, always delighted to observe as nature has its way with my rooftop garden. Eighty plus containers to choose, but portulaca from last year have sown themselves among the paver cracks some 20 feet down wind of their former site in a stoneware bowl.

Goldenrod, once dropped by a bird or brought in with purchased plants, runs rampant in one planter. It will look lovely blooming in August and September when I need a pop of late color. Why purchase quart pots of Solidago when I got it free.

Cilantro has reseeded itself in one of the herb containers near where it grew two years ago. Today there are four plants, as many as I need for my pinch-an-inch herb garden.

And all over the roof,
bachelor buttons vol-
unteer year after year.
I started with one pack
of Centaurea cyanus
‘Blue Boy’ and now have
the original bright blue
as well as pink and even
a few white flowers.
Right,Baptisia 'Midnight Prarie-
blues' and volunteer 'Blue Boy'.

My biggest surprise was
cherry tomato plants
growing with my zinnias
last summer. Hard press-
ed to figure it out, I
finally realized that the
seeds came from my
worm compost. Early in
the spring I had treated
those pots to a hearty meal of the precious stuff, product of my indoor
worm bin. By late summer, kids on the roof were plucking the tomatoes
as fast as they ripened up.

Taking a tip from
my plant volun-
teers, Ben & I
went to Central
Park on Mother’s
Day and volun-
teered to pick up
trash. Wouldn’t
you go if you
knew that the
Central Park
Conservancy was
offering official badges, bags
and GRABBERS,
not to mention
letting you
choose your own
territory? We opted for the Turtle Pond near Belvedere Castle. Don’t miss out on trash grabber fun. Visit the Central Park Conservancy or the park nearest you.

street hort...it tastes good

I give props to anyone who tries to brighten up our city streets with a little horticulture. But seriously folks, no hort is better than bad hort:


What does it take to keep a few evergreens alive? A little water, 6 hours of sunlight/day, and decent drainage in the container, that's what. If that's more than you can manage, be a mensch and admit it. In horticulture (as in everything else) it's wise to know your limitations. I'm not saying you shouldn't try to learn and grow as a gardener, but when you abdicate responsibility for the plants in your care, we ALL suffer. On the other hand, a single tree underplanted with a few shade loving begonias make a lovely, simple corner planting.

Street plants put up with a lot more abuse than plants on rooftops and in window boxes. Not all New Yorkers appreciate horticulture and those that don't can be brutal. I wear gloves when working with street plants, and not just because of the dog pee. You find all sorts of things in tree pits and curbside gardens: used kleenex, half eaten food, prophylactics (that's right, you heard me). Believe it or not, people actually steal plants from street plantings; it's not unusual to find a gaping hole in your tree pit, where once there was a glorious Caladium. (Ask Other Ellen, she knows what I'm talking about.)

This time of year, lots of restaurants add outdoor cafes, often surrounded by planter boxes. Do you suppose there's a correlation between the care given to a planter on the sidewalk and the care given to the food in the kitchen? Where would you rather eat?

Perhaps I'll experiment. Except I'm NOT eating at the last place...that Hibiscus looks pathetic with no flowers and all its bare branch ends. It doesn't bode well for the food inside.

HAY THERE!

My goal was to create an inexpensive garden play space for children where I could also try hay-bale gardening. Actually straw bales meant for animal bedding are better than hay; straw is all stem and with no grain seed, at least in theory, and straw bales are cheaper.
What I got was an architecture competition. Using 20 bales, my son, son-in-law, daughter, step-grandson-in-law and I vied for designing the best space. The three little girls didn’t care about the form, they climbed, scrambled, chased and hid no matter what the features, but they were particularly intrigued by the designs that included windows.When the party
disbanded for
the day, I re-
formed bales
into my own
favorite, then
planted the
top with low-
growing sedums
and semper-
vivums. First I
added about an inch of good garden soil to the tops of the bales, inserted the roots in the soil and watered them in. The plants were left to their own devices from then on, making it through the cold New Hampshire winter in Zone 4.This spring the plants are still growing strong and the girls now older and wiser will be coming back to play. The idea is that as the hay disintegrates, it turns into compost that will feed the plants. When the whole thing falls apart, the bales will be used for mulch between the rows of Jen’s fabulous veggie/cutting garden.

Note: If you’re
the kind who
worries that
the child might
fall off, don’t
try this at
home and
don’t try it
with toddlers
who might not
be able to
withstand the
slippage of a hay-bale. Above, the house last winter.

On the right, the house this spring: sedums and semps still viable.

a busy week

It was a very busy week. No surprise there, since it's May and I'm a gardener. But between plant deliveries, runs to the Long Island nurseries, and planting, planting, planting, I haven't had time to think of a boffo blog post. So instead, I thought I'd walk you through a day in the life of a city gardener. (Warning, they're all cell phone photos; can't carry a big camera on these heavy work days.)

8 am: This brownstone backyard garden is just 12 blocks from home, so I often make it my first call of the day. Since it's an office I like getting it done early, before everyone comes in to work. Bulb foliage is still dying back here so I haven't planted the summer annuals yet. Right now I'm tidying up foliage, feeding, and planting window boxes. The annuals go in next week.

10:30 am: I walk between clients as much as possible. Since I wasn't carrying plants this morning, I walked through the park to the west side and admired the Aquilegia canadensis in the Ramble.

2:30 pm: Forgot to put on sunblock. Stupid, stupid, stupid! It was the first hot/sunny day in a while and I just wasn't thinking. After 4 hours I'm exhausted (and a little sunburned), but the garden looks good. There are two large terraces here: the north side (approximately 500 square feet) includes only white flowers and is where my clients often eat dinner. I use lots of silver, gray, and white foliage here too; it shows up nicely in the gloaming. The south terrace (approximately 600 square feet) is chock full of color. This year I've focused on pinks and yellows with a few purple accents thrown in. I started the annuals here on Monday and finished today.

3:00 pm: I walk back to the east side along the reservoir path. A moment of relaxation. I need to take this route more often. It's cooler by the water and the view can't be beat.


Whenever possible I pass this building on 79th, between 5th and Madison. Other Ellen has written about it before and it never fails to make me smile, even when I'm hot, sweaty, and utterly exhausted. It's a reminder of how much can be done with very little space; a real gardener can make magic with a few containers and some imagination. Now all I need is a cool shower and an even cooler drink.

THE WISTERIA ATE MY HOMEWORK

(Japanese wisteria (Wisteria floribunda) at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden)

The Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) that I once planted near my kitchen door and trained to form an archway over the back steps, reached the roofline of the house, scrambled across the eaves, escaped up the cedar shake roof to the chimney. It ran so far that I could no longer prune it. The sensual flower panicles diminished and ultimately stopped. We sold the house.

OK, the two events were
not related but twenty
years later I craved an-
other wisteria, one that
I swore I would keep
under control and force
into continuous bloom.
For my New York City
rooftop, I chose a selec-
tion of the native Amer-
ican variety W. frutes-
cens ‘Amethyst Falls’.
It grows only 15-20’ high
rather than 28-50’ as do
the Japanese and
Chinese imports, but
the flower racemes are
somewhat shorter and
the scent less intense.
Three-year old American
wisteria (photo on right)
blooms about two weeks after the non-natives and is still mostly in bud. This plant gives my garden vertical appeal and helps to soften the steely look of the fence. Husband Ben, aka String Boy, tied it to the bars where it can twine happily. The container is 22" in diameter and includes a few lilies that bloom in summer and many October onions (Allium thunbergii) that are the last flowers to burst forth in late fall and will continue until December.

When I want to admire the
imported species I can
go to the north end of
the rose garden at the
BBG, the Conservatory
Garden in Central Park,
or the terrace of the
Cooper-Hewitt Museum
and revel in the arches
of wisteria or go to any
neighborhood of brown-
stones and see the
twisted vines climbing
four stories or more.
Most grow in containers
at street level but some
are in-ground.

Wisteria grows in full
sun or part shade and
is useful for privacy in
some backyards pro-
vided your fence, trellis
or post is seriously strong. Notice in the lead photo, the pillars are made of CONCRETE. For an excellent discussion of pruning techniques see Cass Turnbull for PlantAmnesty.org.
The fresh vines pruned from any wisteria are easy to weave into fabulous wreath bases, but that’s another story.

The four story vine on
the right grows in a
2' x 6' planter at street
level.

Who needs to join a gym?

There are times when gardening makes me feel artistic and creative. There are times when gardening makes me feel serene. But this week I was a macho, macho gardener and it felt really good.

Many people think of container gardening as small scale gardening: a pot of annuals on a front stoop, a windowbox on a terrace parapet. But the next time you walk down a New York City street, look up. Those trees you see showing over the tops of buildings are growing in containers, and they didn't get there by themselves.

For the last three years I've been working on a transplant project in a large rooftop garden. The old boxes are wood with stainless steel corners; we've gradually been replacing those with stainless steel boxes. They look sleek, modern, and elegant, and they should last much longer than the wood. (Even with liners, cedar boxes only last about 5 years.) They're also expensive, which is why we've stretched the project out over several years.

Moving trees isn't a one-woman job. I LOVE to get in there and lift with the guys (and I also have a thing for power tools) but the truth is I couldn't manage this without my crew. Remember, these are 10 foot Arborvitae we're moving around! First we clear the table and chairs out of our work area and start pulling out the old boxes. (Casey Clark puts his back into it, above.)

Some of the old boxes have rotted through. We (and by we I mean Mark Ianello) cut these up into pieces small enough to fit into large garbage bags, and the salvageable boxes are set aside. We also bag any old soil we can work off the rootballs. Note: most building won't allow you to leave your garbage behind; contractors (gardeners are contractors) are expected to remove their own debris. I call an independent garbage hauler at the end of a heavy work day like this. We take the garbage to the street and load the truck ourselves.

The new boxes are lined with landscape cloth to prevent soil from falling out the drainage holes, and we add fresh soil to the bottom of the containers.

Notice the bag of Fafard Complete Planting mix? It's the best bagged mix I've found and my first choice for container gardening. It's only sold at independent garden centers, so you may have to look a little harder to find it, but the results speak for themselves. I wouldn't use anything else.

We often do some root pruning before we lift the trees and shrubs into their new containers. This gives us more room for nutritious new soil, and opens up root space in the containers.

We decide how each tree should be oriented, then lift it into place. Each box is filled with more soil and the taller trees are wired to the iron railing that surrounds the terrace.

Clean-up is the most tedious part of the day. Despite working on a tarp, soil falls into the cracks between roof tiles. I spend an hour with a shop vac and a crevice tool, then water in the new transplants and hose down the tiles. I think the clean-up is harder on my back than the lifting!

Step one is complete. The new boxes look great (fortunately my client agrees) and there's now plenty of room to add herbaceous plants among the woodies. This has been an issue lately; the old boxes were so chock full of roots that I could barely squeeze in a handful of pansies.


At the end of a day like this I'm exhausted but satisfied. My walk home through the park is considerably slower than usual, but I remind myself that I got a pretty good workout and earned my living doing it. Who needs to join a gym?