Chrysanthemums and Miscanthus in the White Garden

In my gardening life before I started caring for the Estate at MacKenzie-Childs, I designed gardens primarily for individuals. My business was small, I specialized in classic English style gardens, and I had most of my business within a 15 square mile radius. Most often I was asked to design, install, and maintain flower gardens for individuals who wanted beautiful gardens like they see in the magazines but had neither the knowledge nor the time required to bring that about. Occasionally, the home owner would want me to create and install the garden but would feel up to the task of maintenance. These walk away jobs were, for me, the scariest. A successful garden is a living thing that evolves; plants do not always behave as planned, conditions change; my best gardens are always tweaked so when I had to plant and hope for the best, I never really felt like it was my best.  I would cringe when, during the initial interview, the homeowner would ask for a low, or no, maintenance garden and then consistently be drawn to the higher maintenance plants. Almost all gardens require more maintenance than the uninitiated are aware; just as Fishing is not called Catching, Gardening is not called Planting.

Delphiniums in the Production Garden Sweeps

Now that I am able to concentrate on the gardens here everyday, I rarely, if ever, take a plant’s maintenance needs into consideration when I make my plant selections. It is now early August, my staff and I are very busy going through the beds deadheading and cutting back after the bloom- your- heads-off crazy days of June and July. We are in the gardens every day but it still seems there comes a point in August when many plants just need cutting back so they can reboot and make themselves presentable for the long, beautiful autumn.

Carrots, Cabbage, and Kale in the Production Strips

A beautiful selection of basils from the Herb Squares

I began the week in the Production Gardens pulling bolted spinach and escarole and cutting back cilantro to see if it will last a little longer-trying to get it to coordinate with the tomatoes and peppers for some fresh salsa. I cut out the broccoli crowns that have gone on to flower knowing that that will encourage side shoot development. We should have our first ripe tomatoes later this week (I was late getting them planted) and the eggplant bed is loaded with promising little eggplants. I cut out the growing tips from the basil bed and took it home to make about ten cups of pesto base. When I checked this morning the plants look like they never got trimmed. As I work at my desk at the end of the day I often see studio employees coming to the Production Garden as they leave work to harvest a little here and there- I like that. I am hoping to re-seed spinach and beets in my blank spaces next week.

Hemerocallis 'Pretty in Pink' A long blooming tetraploid with lovely foliage

The rest of the week has been devoted to cutting back perennials in the borders. Most of the hemerocallis have bloomed and need to have their flower stalks and some forlorn leaves trimmed out. The newer hybrids seem to do a better job of staying fresh looking after blooming; older daylilies benefit from having most of their leaves removed- they send up new leaves that look fresh in the fall. We cut the salvias back again. I try to “manage” the salvias for longest bloom; I cut the back half(the part away from the front of the border) before they even bloom in May that way when the first bloom is through, I can cut them away, the part that I cut in May will then be ready to bloom. I have found it an effective way to have Salvias like ‘Cardonna’ and ‘Evaline’ blooming a solid two months in the summer. By now they are just tired- if I cut them back now, I usually have blooms in late September through November. In the White Garden the Chrysanthemums ‘Highland Dream’, ‘Alaska’, and ‘Becky’ have bloomed, been deadheaded back to secondary buds, and are ready to be cut back to the crown; I kind of love doing that, it is such a relief to just cut them down. The same is true of Monarda ‘Raspberry Wine’ in the Long Border and some of the Phlox paniculata. Cutting them back creates a fairly large hole but I have some dahlias in the greenhouse that can be counted on to fill the space. I would like to say I planned it that way but in reality we have been so flat out I never did get them placed in the borders!

Monarda 'Raspberry Wine' is a big part of our summer display in the Long Border

All of the window boxes have gotten extra water and fertilizer in the past ten days. They were suffering from mid-summer doldrums. I need to give the petunias in the Thanksgiving Square boxes a hard cutting back to rejuvenate them. The boxes on the south wall of the restaurant pout at me whenever I look out of my office window- they call to me and my scissors. I have always marveled at the resiliency of annuals, genetically all they really want to do is set seed so if you keep cutting off the seed heads they will just keep flowering.

The Grass border showing Pennisetum 'Karley Rose', Salvia 'Black and Blue' and Sedum 'Matrona'

One bed that has received less of our attention this year is the Grass Border. I am so happy with it! We planted it with the intent of having one garden that would not need much attention to look at its best. Because it was just planted it this spring, we anticipated that we would need to devote time to keeping it weeded and watered this summer but fully expect to pretty much ignore it next year.   It has performed beyond my expectations, everything has grown in beautifully and I am so pleased with the plants I chose to compliment the grasses. Going forward I feel very happy that the plants in the Grass Border will call to me with deadheading , staking , and cutting back needs far less than many of the plants in our other gardens. Right now the grasses are just starting to flower, some are definitely still thin and leggy but some have filled out nicely.To compliment the garsses, I chose Sedum ‘Matrona’ both because I have it in another garden and love it and because Margaret Roach raves about it in her excellent blog, A Way to Garden. The colors of the leaves pick up the rosy tones of its neighbor Pennisetum orientale ‘Karley Rose’. Perovskia atriplicifolia had yet to find a place in the other gardens because I knew it would not appreciate my close planting style, it likes its own space; the Grass Border is the perfect place for it. Finally, I am very pleased with our decision to use Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blue’ as a marker for the narcissi clumps. Like Salvia farinacia, S. guaranitica does not really come into its own until mid to late summer.  I have a few holes that I can get more plants to fill in next spring, at this point I am unsure if I will choose a grass or add more sedum.

The graceful cascade of Pennisetum 'Karley Rose' is a perfect foil for Salvia 'Black and Blue' with a haze of Perovskia in the background

In all, the Grass Border has been such a success as a low demands garden that I am assessing some of the other areas on the property that could use sprucing up but are fairly low traffic areas. We certainly do not have the staff and the time to add more garden areas but maybe we could kill all the weeds this fall and plant grasses in the spring…