full fathom five

Old trees

My husband and I went to Philadelphia last weekend and toured two gardens that we've been to many times: Longwood Gardens and Winterthur, both established by the DuPonts.  This was the prettiest we had ever seen them: dogwood laced the woods, wisteria dripped from old brick and stone buildings, and azalea made great orange, red, purple, and white drifts across green lawns. 

But I realized how my tastes have changed, even since the last time I was there, which was only a year ago.  This visit, my eye was drawn to the two and three-hundred year old trees that make the original bones of the gardens.  Huge tulip poplar, oak, sycamore, and sequoia trees have exquisitely straight trunks that dwarf everything else.  They also create wonderful vertical lines that accentuate the horizontal drifts of azalea, rhododendron, and lilac underneath them. 

I realized that the reason I was so drawn to these trees is that we never see them in any other landscape.  All the trees I'm used to are much thinner-trunked and have branches interrupting the vertical run.  But these trees have no branches until you raise your head to the canopies high above; the tulip-poplar and oak have arrow-straight, deeply-grooved trunks that shoot up, making beautifully stark, simple shapes that contrast with the lacy and colorful foliage and flowers below.  They are magnificent, and I don't know how I overlooked them in the past. 

weeding frenzy

I haven't been able to get to gardening 'till late this summer. I started in August, and - with all the rain on top of my neglect - the weeds are rampant. What little dents I make are quickly filled again after two or three days of rain.

So I got the idea of placeholders. I weed an area about three square feet, then lay open newspaper about ten layers thick on the newly bare ground. I then spread all the new weeds I've just pulled over top of it to hold it down, roots up. As I weed adjoining spots, I fling the weeds onto the newspapered placeholders to give extra weight. The results don't look pretty, but at least I don't have to reweed again and again. And I have a new sense of progress toward the whole garden weeded by Fall.

I reward myself by stopping at nurseries when I go out, seeing which ones have end-of-season sales. So far, I've brought home a dozen new perennials (for $48.00) to put in the new spaces I've opened up by weeding. It's particularly satisfying to put them in places I haven't yet newspapered, thereby saving placeholder-material for other spots.

These little satisfactions are what keep gardeners going. They have immediacy (you can see the results within an hour); innovation (you've jerry-rigged a solution); and revenge (you're flinging weeds on funeral pyres that also stifle their descendants) - a winning combination. And there's the long-term promise of a replenished and weed-free garden next spring.

I told a couple of gardening friends about this method, as an alternative to expensive bark mulches that you have to lay on six inches thick to do any good. P., one of the friends, said, "Oh yeah," approving the economy and efficiency of using what's closest to hand. "I'm trying cardboard," she said.

Cardboard. What a brainstorm! This is another reward of gardening, finding a sudden solution while you're standing around admiring a friend's garden (and P's is a stunner!). It's the most joyful way of learning I know. Cardboard seems to have everything: it takes longer to biodegrade, doesn't have as much potentially toxic colored print on it, and is overflowing our recycling bins at Town Hall. It all adds up to longer-lasting, cheaper, and even better-looking placeholders (there aren't any white-edges curling and showing through the weeds).

Anyone out there who's tried this, is there anything wrong with this picture?