Singing the praises of gardening

Flower & Garden Magazine, Feb-March, 1993 by Beverly Sills

LIKE MOST PEOPLE BORN AND raised amid the bricks and cement of a big city (in my case, Brooklyn), I knew as much about gardening as the proverbial housewife who can't boil water. When people spoke about drainage, I thought they were talking about something to do with pipes.

With my marriage to Peter Greenough, I started living for the first time in a house instead of an apartment and inherited not only a garden but, thank goodness, also my husband's gardener. I observed and, through trial and error, I learned.

One of the first lessons I was taught is to resist rushing out to the nearest nursery and loading up the car with pots of perennials and flats of annuals -- this must wait until the ground has first been properly prepared. Having worked the soil the year before is no excuse for not doing it again.

Over the years I've had three different gardens -- in Cleveland, outside Boston and now on Martha's Vineyard -- and not everything that comes into my head at this point pertains to just one particular garden.

If my pursuit of gardening has not always been according to Hoyle, it is because I've believed that nature, and not man, is the final judge as to what will grow best in a particular location and under what circumstances. You may call this kind of thinking "haphazard," and I would agree -- but I also call it "courageous." It takes courage to plant the regular impatiens in full sun, despite advice to the contrary, but it works, as long as one waters them sufficiently.

The idea of watering leads me automatically to mulching. This is essential not only for minimizing weeding chores but also to prevent the moisture in the ground from evaporating too quickly. Most of us detest weeding; however, there can be a positive aspect to weeds. What greater joy is there than when a plant has reseeded itself amid the weeds?

Over the years I've chosen not to mulch some garden beds or parts of large beds to let certain annuals or biennials reseed themselves. Among them have been forget-me-not, sweet rocket, mullein pink (Lychnis coronaria), gloriosa daisy, foxglove, lupine, cleome, cosmos, ageratum and hollyhock. Of course, there are hundreds that reseed themselves, not counting most wildflowers. One point I should mention regarding my list: climate can make a great difference. In the garden where forget-me-nots reseeded themselves, the ageratums would not; I guess they wanted a warmer climate.

The majority of us gardeners dislike staking. Still, a plant that is staked, even it if isn't absolutely necessary, will fare better than one that has to combat the wind. Not only does the plant grow taller and straighter, but also the flowers are more effulgent.

Most of us also neglect to pinch back certain plants like phlox, chrysanthemum, zinnia or snapdragon, a practice that induces them to branch out and create more flowers. The fun in pinching back plants is to do it only on certain stems; the ones left untouched will bloom earlier, thus prolonging the flowering season.

Years ago in my garden outside Boston, I planted according to color. Reds, pinks, purples, yellows, oranges and whites are fairly easy to come by. Blues, however, are rarer, especially in the late summer and fall.

Among the most satisfying of blue perennials I've had in different gardens and climates are false indigo, monkshood, various irises (the Japanese blooming later than the Siberian or bearded variety), 'Blue Butterfly' delphinium and the perennial 'Johnson's Blue' geranium. These plants bloom mostly in the spring. Later, in the summer, there are veronicas, the tall delphiniums, scabiosas, the blue hydrangeas (hortensias), balloon flowers, the various kinds of campanulas, sky-blue clematises and tradescantias, which bloom happily from spring to frost.

In late summer and fall, I've had luck with perennial salvia, Russian sage, hardy asters, fall-flowering monkshood (Acontium carmichaelii) and caryopteris. I've unsuccessfully tried blue butterfly bush (Buddleia).

Today I garden on Martha's Vineyard and my preoccupation is with herbs and the various kinds of flowering cacti and succulents I've collected in the Southwest. The real herb garden is at least 100 feet away from the house -- a location my lazy bones consider too remote when I'm cooking. Since I like to work with urns, window boxes and planters, we have them filled with herbs all around the house. There is an antique cream skimmer of copper, which I've "ruined" by drilling holes for drainage; it functions as the doorstep herb garden filled with coriander, dill and arugula.

The copper window boxes are filled with chives, oregano and mint, but in separate sections, so the mint doesn't choke the other plants. In the main herb garden there are many more herbs that are used whenever Peter (who is an excellent chef) cooks. We have fruit and ornamental flowering trees, tea roses, many irises, hundreds of daylilies (kept strong by regular division), monarda, liatris, tradescantia, hydrangeas and, around the pool area, a mass of hardy hibiscus in red, yellow and white. At the height of summer and the beginning of fall the view of these plants with their huge saucerlike flowers is spectacular.