Notes from Uptop Garden

August 23, 2024

A year ago today I wrote an essay I called “When is a Forest a Garden?” One year and four recent books later, I am more focused on the forest, not the garden. The forest…as the savior of the planet. “If every person on Earth planted one tree per year for the next six years, we would stop climate change in its tracks” proclaims Diana Beresford-Kroeger in her 2019 book, To Speak for the Trees. She continues: “Three hundred million years ago trees took an environment with a toxic load of carbon and turned it into something that could sustain human life. They can do it again.” With such warnings as “climate change is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced” the little concerns of my 1-acre visually delightful garden by the Connecticut seaside seem alarmingly insignificant. 

Why is it that August leads me to such thoughts? For one, I am “Up in Michigan“ (riffing on long-ago local summer resident Hemingway’s famous short story), as usual, and enjoying a break from a 4-month intense immersion in my garden earlier in the season. Ensconced for 6 weeks at Lakeside Camp, a family affair of my wife since 1876, we exist within the acreage of a virgin forest of white pine (Pinus strobus) and Norway pine (Pinus resinosa), augmented with stately oaks (what species, sadly, I am clueless) many of which are slowly succumbing to oak wilt. These stately giants were wisely left mostly uncut by her lumbermen forebearers. That is, we live beneath ancient 175-ft high behemoths which occasionally crash dangerously down in dramatic thunderstorms. This year there is a second reason for forest focus. In early June, I had the pleasure of joining others at a small dinner in Brooklyn with Suzanne Simard, on the evening before she received the Better Earth Award from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The following evening I marveled as she addressed the many hundreds gathered under a vast tent in the Garden for the annual gala. Normally, a noisy affair (after an hour and a half of an open bar), this year, as Dr. Simard spoke, you could hear a pin drop. Such is her rock-star status among naturalists and forest ecologists – but also the urgent message imbedded in her ground-breaking research and extraordinary life story, all interwoven in beautiful prose in Finding the Mother Tree, published in 2021.  In a nutshell, she discovered, using radioactive carbon isotopes, how trees communicate through vast networks of underground mycorrhizal fungi. They help each other rather than solely compete, as evolutionary biology – via Darwin – has taught us to believe. Furthermore, large old trees she coined as “mother trees” are the most important in the forest as their vast networks support the ongoing life – including the regenerative life – of the forest. 

Both Simard and Beresford-Kroeger plow similar ground: each book is part compelling personal life story/part science; each uses an older culture to draw on (indigenous Canadians and Celtic Irish, respectively); each speaks of “mother trees”; each was a source of inspiration for the fictional character of Patricia Westerford in Richard Powers’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of 2018, The Overstory; each confronted male-dominated, widely-held science supporting a capitalist economy and public forestry policy. Personally, I found Simard’s tone to be modest, while assertive, in her accomplishments while Beresford-Kroeger was occasionally boastful and arrogant. My fourth book, The Hidden Life of Trees published in 2015 by the German forester Peter Wohlleben, gives abundant credit to Simard, even including an essay by her at the end of his book. He doesn’t mention Beresford-Kroeger. I will admit to getting caught up in, for instance, who invented the concept – and term itself – of the “mother tree.” It seems from internet research, this invention is credited to Simard. If so, why does Beresford-Kroeger use it so freely without attribution? Why does she proclaim, in interviews, that she is the sole inspiration for the fictional heroine Patricia Westerford when Richard Powers makes it clear it is primarily Simard with a touch of Beresford-Kroeger? Although these issues made me momentarily suspicious, I came to realize each book – and each author – have made huge contributions to the science of the forest, and as a result of their increasing renown, have made the world understand the importance of the forest in our era of a fast-changing climate. 

Which now brings me to a more local concern, one which I wrote about in my essay of one year ago, the management of our own little remnant of the primeval Michigan forest. So dense it was in 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville, wanting to experience the American wilderness, was advised against forging ahead north of Saginaw for he would get hopelessly – and dangerously – lost in the great north woods of Michigan. This is the same forest that was clear cut, except in rare places like Lakeside Camp where I write today. In the 1870’s it seemed inexhaustible but was mostly gone by the 1890’s, in an oil-rush (or gold-rush)-like stampede of lumbermen whose only purpose was making money fast (although they did supply the post-Civil War population boom with lumber to build millions of houses all over the country). The forests here have mostly regenerated and a second-growth forest abounds. Parts of it are now being clear-cut (again!), leaving ugly swaths of land throughout the state. After reading the four books above, I believe that clear-cut is now considered generally wrong-headed by forest ecologists, although allowed, perhaps encouraged, by political authorities in the name of economic prosperity. But what should this policy be in our era of unprecedented climate change? Surely, some forests can continue to supply human needs. Suzanne Simard, from a long line of a lumbering family in British Columbia, implies this. 

I have now drifted far afield from the purpose of my blog and will bring it back home to gardening… and to Lakeside Camp which made a decision a couple of years ago to “enhance” our little forest by managing it, now mostly a 125-year-old second growth of pines, oaks, and oak (the virgin giants at the heart of the camp are, thankfully, sacrosanct). This enhancement – which came not only for no expense but yielded many thousands of dollars to pay for other camp capital needs – took out perhaps a quarter of the existing trees. Now, popping up wherever sunlight falls are thousands of American Burnweed (Erechtites hieraciifolius), almost as tall as I am which make the formerly dark forest understory look most unnatural. The benefit (other than making a buck) was said to allow more light into the forest, better for the growth of the remaining trees. Perhaps this is correct policy now that we suppress forests from catching fire and burning naturally as they once did? Are forests healthy only when manipulated like ours have been, clearly against what nature brought us, like that glorious Michigan forest de Tocqueville barely saw? These are complicated questions and, even with my newly acquired knowledge, I am quite beyond my depth to answer them. Reading “The Future is Old Growth” by Krista Langlois in the Summer 2024 issue of Sierra Magazine, I was somewhat reassured to read that foresters are divided between those like David Foster, an ecologist who spearheads Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities (a Highstead Foundation initiative) and former Director of Harvard Forest for thirty years, who espouses a “do nothing” policy, meaning nothing is cut or sprayed or planted or salvaged. On the other hand, other professionals such as Paul Catanzaro, U of Mass Amherst professor, advocate that while some forests be left alone to recover on their own, people can also hasten a forest’s recovery by actively replicating the conditions that make old growth so biologically rich and resilient. This might include thinning some trees to let others grow bigger faster, or mimicking natural disturbances by creating gaps in the canopy that allow younger saplings to sprout. So, I leave these questions simply as observations from a newly formed sceptic. I place Suzanne Simard and Diana Beresford-Kroeger with the likes of Rachel Carson who waged battle against the Big Chemicals with Silent Spring (1962) and Jane Jacobs who waged battle against Robert Moses in NYC with Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), exposing to the world that the perceived wisdom of the day (pesticides and urban renewal, respectively) was simply wrong. These two books were generally agreed to be among the ten most important books of the twentieth century. Perhaps Simard and Beresford-Kroeger will be so remembered for the twenty-first.

Is this gardening? This IS gardening writ big, as big as it gets….

Hard-pressed to decide which of the four seasons Uptop is most appealing – and in this garden, we have four equal seasons – I might prefer early winter. Before the occasional heavy snow covers almost all, this temporarily beautiful time comes with the accompanying worries about broken branches and damaged evergreen hedges. In late autumn or early winter, a light dusting of snow or heavy frost is sublime, tinting the assembled landscape with a greenish monochromatic painterly tableau, worthy of an Impressionist’s brush – but iPhone camera ready for me.Concerning the garden’s physical beauty, I could be content to live without the heavy snows, pretending my garden rests securely in Zone 8, and that I could be outside tending its needs throughout a green and rainy mild winter, exhibiting Seattle- or London-envy, I suppose. But I also know that a 6 or 8-week blanket of snow, mitigating continual freeze and thaw cycles in January and February, is the best insulator and makes for a happier spring with fewer winter casualties.

Following the final “fall clean-up” in the first week of December, I find the garden positively ravishing. The architect maker of this place can, once again, appreciate his creation as the pure lines they were long-ago drawn, on paper first, then followed by sticks and twine. Fallen leaves now removed and composted, the small turf lawns are Irish green, this ground plane is punctuated by evergreen shrubs, tawny grasses, and small trees. The bare branches (for finally all deciduous leaves have given up their summer perches), reaching 70-feet or more in the adjacent woodland, provide a pleasing juxtaposed backdrop to the emerald carpet. 

A brief word about “putting my garden to bed,” a frequent question even my best friends (non-gardener variety) put to me around Thanksgiving, with the casual comment “I suppose you have by now….” To state defiantly: I never “put to bed” the garden. The tempo changes, the chores – and delights – are different ones, but the garden is awake and alive, not slumbering. Its charms are available to anyone seeking to transcend the cliché of the sleeping winter garden.

An especially appealing combination of winter wheat-colored grasses and evergreen shrubs is reason enough – forgetting for a moment their attractions in summer – to plant the grasses and evergreens in the first place, as they so enhance the winter garden. Why is it so common, especially in public settings, that grasses are chopped to the ground in November? I guess it is part of the “putting the garden to bed” mania. But the loss of such a visual delight – not to mention their role in providing protective habitats for bird and beneficial insect life – is a shame. In fact, some of the large grasses, especially the Miscanthus varieties, should be sheared in half by early July (my “Chelsea Chop” is later than the Brits) to arrest the race toward their late summer flopdum, giving them new vigor and keeping their girth manageable. All the rage now, with a dizzying array of commercially available varieties, these grasses, regardless of their summer color variations, all end up in a light wheat tone for their winter attire. All are equally attractive to me, but perhaps none more than Hakonechloa macra ‘Albo striata,’ a so-called Japanese forest grass, with a slight reddish tint added to the underlying wheat. True to its name, this grass, unlike most others, does well in light shade but also will thrive in a sunny position.

But a monotone of green and wheat, appealing as it is to me, is not everyone’s idea of a winter garden. What about color? So readily achievable is color, even with a few flowers. And like an abstract expressionist, using a dash of red or orange or chartreuse is quite effective. The many cultivars of Ilex verticillata (winterberry), creating a little mountain (if you wisely plant these in groups, not as an individual specimen) of red or orange berries. They start to slyly appear, almost unnoticed, in late August among the still-lush deciduous foliage. They are aflame by late November when the leaves vanish. For a decade they stubbornly refused to berry for me, and my garden diary is filled with yearly reminders that this will be the year to remove them. Someone (why did I not know this?) whispered they naturally grow at the edge of ponds, as mine did not, so why not keep them well-watered during the summer? Bingo! Was this the trick or were they just taking their time to establish? Who will ever know, as in so many garden mysteries – but I will put my money on the watering. A grove of ‘Jolly Red’, located near the entrance terrace to Big House where I walk nearby daily, is now alive with flaming red berries until the end of February when they start to fade – or have been devoured by birds, loved by them, but strangely, poisonous to the gardeners who tend them. Nearby for additional winter color is a grouping of the redossier dogwood shrubs, Cornus sericea ‘Artic Fire,’ ‘Silver and Gold,’ and ‘Winter Gold,’ exhibiting shades of red, gold, and chartreuse. In front of them is a collection of colorful heather. Nearby is a group of wandering Helleborus foetidus (short-lived, they reseed around), bringing more bright chartreuse color to this appealing winter scene. Not far away – and smack on our little lane for all passersby to see – is a Camellia sasanqua (cultivar sadly misplaced) whose white blossoms cover the two-foot tall shrub from November through New Year’s Day. 

When the deciduous foliage retreats, the bark of trees beckon like never before. A few standouts: the tawny exfoliating folds of the giant 70-ft dawn redwood (Metasequoia glytostroboides), a small Magnolia brooklynensis ‘Black Beauty’ whose trunk and limbs are almost white, a mature Norway maple (which I did not plant) whose trunk and main branches are draped in variegated English ivy and Schizophragma hydrangeoides ‘Roseum’ (both planted by me), and a Stewartia pseudocamellia whose flaking and peeling bark reminds me of an animal’s hide. 

When the deciduous foliage retreats, the buds of next year’s flowers on the rhododendrons, magnolias, and camellias (I am growing about a dozen here), surprisingly prevalent as winter approaches, give clues that there will be new life not many months from now. 

When the deciduous foliage retreats, the evergreens shine like never before, as they were visually subsumed during the summer’s annual green proliferation. Their role is fundamental to the winter garden. When I see and read about the ubiquitous “matrix garden” craze (for which I have no beef, only admiration, with their focus on sustainability and pollinators), I imagine those gardens in winter, never with evergreens. The ravishing summer photos seldom show the winter scene, for it must be a desolate tableau, except for a few tan or brown seedheads. Are their owners unconcerned with the winter scene? Such observations over 30 years of making Uptop has changed my approach, especially to my double mixed border. If a traditional border is now passe, as many claim, I suggest a new approach. A few years ago, I replaced in the North Border many perennials and deciduous shrubs with evergreens (yew, box, and osmanthus, and hollies, for instance). I located the new evergreens in a vaguely serpentine fashion in the middle of the 13-ft deep borders. In front of them I placed pockets of lowish perennials, ground covers, and bulbs; behind them I placed taller deciduous shrubs and supertall perennials (Macleaya cordata, for example). Labor saving in the extreme – and a delight to look at all winter long – this new arrangement pleases me immensely, even when, during foul weather, I can view it only from behind huge glass windows. The mixed border, one of the most complex and satisfying of gardening’s inventions, is not dead! It simply needs to move beyond Gertrude Jeykyll (who used only perennials in drifts) and, even the great Christopher Lloyd (who added shrubs and small trees, as in his famous Long Border at Great Dixter). 

And when the deciduous leaves refuse to entirely retreat, as with the beech hedge (Fagus sylvatica), the hornbeam hedge (Carpinus betulus) or the spicebush (Lindera benzoin), their foliage, which hangs on until Spring, partner with the grasses in providing that tawny winter color I so admire.

In other locations, Sasa veitchii and Phyllostachys aureosulcata (each of these running bamboos contained within necessary concrete dams) and the lush evergreen of the clump-forming bamboo Fargesia rufa are appreciated more than ever in winter. As well, my collection of seven evergreen Illicium cultivars and two so-called Japanese laurels: Aucuba japonica ‘Natsu-no-kumo’ and ‘Petite Jade.’

And there is hardly a winter day when I do not enjoy being suffused by the many fragrances which emanate from my conservatory. I call this 9-ft x 13-ft x 18-ft high sanctuary “Little Logee,” after the famous Danielson, CT nursery from which so many of these plants were obtained. A sure cure for winter doldrums, if they should occur, is a trip to actual Logee’s, only a 75-minute drive from Uptop.

So…. Winter! What is there not to love? Does the garden ever look lovelier? 

It could be said that there are as many garden types as there are gardeners. I have friends who, with Master Gardener certificates in hand, view the purpose of a garden quite differently than my own. I view almost all of them as legitimate. 

For instance, I recently read a delightful book by Laura Simon entitled Dear Mr. Jefferson, Letters from a Nantucket Gardener. Dedicated to growing simply everything in her garden (mostly scores of vegetables) from seed, her “letters” (ie, little essays) dwell on her late 20^th century gardening techniques, comparing and contrasting with the third president, a renown gardener of the late 18^th and early 19^th century. My vegetable garden at Uptop, after a quarter century of increasing shade and a confessed ennui with vegetable growing (all those nearby farm stands… all that produce ready to harvest in August when we are in Michigan), is now called the Parterre Garden, for my only crop these days is a tiny amount of cut-and-come-again lettuces for fresh salads in May and June, the rest a variety of carpet flowers, a few evergreen clipped shrubs, two rambling roses, and lots of tropical elephant ears (Colocasia).

I have two neighbors only a block from me, each highly accomplished and skilled gardeners (one, having published a book on weeds) who have observed the making of Uptop from the beginning. Each seems duly impressed (I modestly assert) by the intensity of the enterprise and the density, breadth – and beauty! – of the collection. However, I think each, being friends, holds (mostly) in bay their horror at some of my resident plants. How could I allow such aggressive/invasive pests?

No gardener should ever sublimate far from their daily thoughts the staggering problems we humans have created for Mother Earth. If we enjoy pushing Hardiness Zones (I do!), there is an underlying and ominous reason it can often be successful. If we enjoy taking a walk in the woods (I do, right behind my house, in a beautiful second-growth New England woodland, punctuated by stone walls laid down by farmers who found greener – and flatter and less rocky – pastures in the Western Reserve of Connecticut, ie, Ohio, long ago), it is also alarming to be confronted, aggressively growing amongst the natives, by what I – and many others – grow in our ornamental gardens only hundreds of feet away. Why and how did they get there? These are unquestionably the invasive species (perhaps aggressive, too) and should not be planted here. 

During my time of creating the Uptop garden, the avant-garde of ornamental garden design has been focused on the use of native plants organized in the garden within a “matrix,” drifts being passe in this style. No debate here on this pioneering garden trend which I watch with increasing admiration. And, even as I introduce more natives – especially all the milkweeds to help the beleaguered monarch butterflies – Uptop garden is what it set out to be thirty years ago, perhaps a relic of the rear-garde: a collection of interesting plants from all over the world brought to us by the great plant explorers of the past 300 years, arranged in a way that is beautiful in all four seasons. In this last sentence of apologia, I will add that I tend this garden without fertilizers or chemicals, except a limited application of broad-leaf herbicides on the lawns and a very occasional shot of glyphosate to arrest weeds in the pebble driveway and a brick walkway. 

Now, we can move on to the principal topic of this essay, ie, why an aggressive plant can be an acceptable garden choice (as long as the gardener realizes the issues involved in its maintenance) whereas an invasive plant (one that escapes into the wild) is not.

A neophyte creating a garden de novo is highly susceptible, when reading about the dangers of aggressive plants – and, perhaps, ignorant altogether of plants that are invasive – to ignoring this advice. What could be better than covering quickly all that newly available soil? The creator of Uptop – this writer – fell victim and was himself delusional in this regard. Wanting a full and robust planting as soon as possible, I was convinced that such warnings – and there were plenty from friends and from the literature – were for different kinds of gardeners, the timid ones… the ones who sought labor-nonintensive gardens (ie, not me) and valued tidiness above all. A mature 1-acre garden with 1200 species of living plants, no longer needs, if it ever did, a host of aggressive plants. And no garden should host invasive species, period. Sometimes, the two are one and the same. An aggressive plant is the gardener’s choice; an invasive plant must be Mother Earth’s choice. I list here my top six invasive/aggressive species that should never have been allowed at Uptop – and four aggressives that I would not be without. A final word: my aggressives may not be yours, i.e., the vagaries of soil, hardiness zones, moisture, etc, may produce different results in different gardens. But, for the most part, I assume that my invasives will also by yours. My easy definition to distinguish between the two: aggressives spread by roots (which a gardener can control, somewhat) whereas invasives spread by seeds which the wind and birds disseminate.

Invasives/Aggressives, Six to Shun:

Eupatorium rugosum ‘Chocolate’ – An invasive, this beautiful plant has many virtues: thrives in dry shade, easy to grow, fashionable brown leaves with white flowers which in early Fall, brilliantly light up the woodland garden…. But this pest reseeds like no other in my garden (even myosotis); it is simply everywhere, tiny seeds blown hither and yon take root wherever it lands. I relentlessly pull it up everywhere and whenever I can, hauling away cartloads of it to be composted for weeks at a time – and all the while still knowing that I will have it in excess come Fall (when I secretly applaud it). The only other good news here: it is so very easy (like myosotis) to pull up, its roots separating easily from the soil holding it, thus making the innumerable trips to the compost pile light work. This plant was introduced by the illustrious Dr. Richard Lighty, so important in the establishment of Mt. Cuba as the epicenter for the study and display of Piedmont flora, and with every yank I wonder what he must think of it now. Perhaps it performs differently in other areas.

Hedera helix – A long winter of ice and snow takes a toll on this not-always-so-green-evergreen (some cultivars better than others) aggressive ground cover and climber. But the June-September lush new growth is intoxicatingly beautiful and within weeks covers the winter’s expressed weariness. Its leaves bring to mind the laurels worn by Greek and Roman athletic champions or decorations of painted murals in Victorian homes. I have admired it since my youth, remembering how it made a little green lake beneath the pin oak in the Houston home garden of my youth. It also brought a feeling of calm, a relief from the incessant heat, even suggesting a sense of luxe. Years later, now in Connecticut and ready to make Uptop, it was an early must-have for the new garden. The problem: I still have it and in all the wrong places. Naively, I once even decided to contrast the textures of Hedera helix (my old Houston friend) with Pachysandra terminalis (my new Connecticut friend), two aggressive evergreen ground covers. What a mistake, each in a continual war to invade the other’s territory until I ended the war by ripping out all the ivy.

I will not conceal my admiration for ivy-covered mature trees which I first saw used extensively in England in the 1980’s. In fact, Uptop had such a tree when I acquired the property from my English neighbor. I never asked her, unfortunately, before she died, whether the extraordinary ivy growth (the “trunks” of the lower stems are 6-inches in diameter) on this nearly century-old Norway maple were consciously planted to remind her of her native land – or whether, it just got the better of this widow struggling, against the odds of advancing age, to maintain her beloved grounds. I will never know. But the effect is simply magnificent and, as the tree sits near the lane at the front of the garden, it became a signature of Uptop. So much so, that an enlarged photograph of the massive hedera vines was featured on the cover of a garden magazine which included an article about Uptop. An ivy-covered deciduous tree is at its most glorious in winter when the tree almost looks evergreen with it mounds of lush green leaves replacing the fallen deciduous leaves. This scene is all the more spectacular because Hedera helix, once it is about 30 years old, morphs into a different form (the “adult stage”) whose leaf structure changes to a more ovate form and produces a whitish flower in early fall followed by beautiful blue-black berries. Therein lies the culprit: the birds gorge on this feast and their droppings infest the nearby woodlands with easy-to-geminate seeds. But I do not need a trip behind my fence through the dense woodland to see the effect: a common “weed” throughout Uptop’s gardens is the juvenile plant, a few inches high, competing very well against all comers, prized perennials and other weeds alike. Another disagreeable trait of this particular ivy-covered tree: it is located next to the bluestone entry terrace to the Big House and those seeds dropping on the terrace is a continuous maintenance headache. Like all evergreens, Hedera helix does shed it leaves – not all at once – and the Spring fall can be prodigious. Partly because of all this but more because of the massive tree’s age and declining health (and adjacency to our bedroom and the glass conservatory), I decided with heavy heart to cut it down in late 2016. But that is another story: see An Old Tree Dies Hard in a future blog.

Net conclusion: if you must send English ivy up a tree, make it a very sturdy tree far from human activity below – and never use it as a ground cover. Not wanting to abandon this vine forever, I now content myself with growing the many so-called tropical varieties, trained on small tuteurs in the Conservatory. A smart compromise. 

Chasmanthus latifolium – Wild-oats is its name and you should not sow them, especially in moist soil where self-sowing is exuberant, to put it mildly. It is overtaking areas that are far removed from the original sin of its planting. It is a handsome display in early-mid October, with its drooping “oats,” but I can no longer look at it with anything but disgust. Its tiny plantlets invade and successfully inhabit every small crack and crevice in the terraces and, of course, in and amongst wood-chip paths and stealthily hiding beneath the largest leaves in the woodland duff. 

Euonymus Alatus and Berberis thunbergii – I group these invasives together since both of these genera were existing on the property when I bought it – not knowing then what I was to learn later. The problem here, as in so many invasives (Hedera helix, described above), is the seed, beautiful but fleeting red berries that 1) fall to the ground and root, every single one of them (which is why I have such an inexpensive and beautiful 3-ft hedge of burning bush, or 2) attract the birds who seem to like them, if not love them like viburnum berries, fly off and leave their droppings where they will take root, mostly, it seems, in the nearby woodland. 

Houttuynia cordata – Where in the world did I ever get this aggressive (not invasive) plant? Was it sold to me from a Garden Center? Heavens, forbid. It is a horror to be avoided at all costs. In shade, with rich, damp soil, it will take over everything in its path. Improbably, it is actually – if one can adjust one’s knowledge of its invidious ways – a beautiful little unassuming plant with attractive heart-shaped foliage and a pert little white flower with four basal bracts with a terminal spike. Yet, as you rip at it trying to untangle its aggressive white roots from your garden beauties, you will begin to recognize its distinctive rank odor. Maybe there is a place for it in the garden. I would treat it like a bamboo, surrounding it with concrete or metal dams – or, perhaps better, isolated in a container. Be wary of any plant with fleshy white roots.

Lysimachia clethroides – An aggressive to shun, known as Gooseneck Loosestrife or Bishop’s Crook, with its arching crook of white flowers, it is a real beauty… and a beast to eradicate. I have tried for twenty-five years and the damned plant is practically everywhere. It spreads by very aggressive underground reddish roots which dramatically increase, even in winter! Uptop was started in 1993 when I relocated from my earlier garden around the corner, in the flood plain of Long Island Sound (down below) to my new fifteen-feet-above-sea level “mountaintop” (up top). Working carefully not to include any of those tell-tale red roots in any of my transplanted perennials, I obviously failed and within a year, the new garden started to exhibit this charming beast. Had I known what was to come, I could have easily eradicated it (as with Houttunia cordata) by painting on glyphosate. Again, it might be incorporated into a flower border if the roots could be completely restrained, accomplished with difficulty and, I suspect, limited success.

Four Aggressives to Love (Worth all the trouble, in spite of all the work):

 Ajuga reptans – Perhaps its common name (carpetweed or bugleweed), warns us away but I find this low ground cover very useful and, when in bloom in May, a quite colorful addition of glamorous blues. I use it prolifically at the front of the double border at Uptop and in the Ericacious Walk as a path for walking on. While its dense matting will not root out all weeds (what will?) it does a tolerable job at this. More important, I find the inches-high scale extremely helpful in setting off – even showcasing – the taller perennials behind. I prefer Burgundy Glow, the leaves of which emerge a dark purplish-green, become ratty after the two-week spring bloom, soon regain their vigor. It grows by sending out near-surface roots with profligacy, making it easily transplanted, but also it is those roots that must be edged back from territorializing too much border real estate or running right into the adjacent lawn.  

Pachysandra terminalis – Not only is this a non-native aggressive ground cover, it is also dreadfully common. Used by land-scrapers all over the northern hemisphere, serious gardeners shun it in favor of the Appalachian Mountain native Pachysandra procumens, which I find dull and a bit frightful in its winter dormancy. Once established, there is hardly a more beautiful ground cover than Japanese spurge – and it is evergreen even under snow! Few ground covers are more carefree under a large tree, so much more effective and beautiful than Hedera helix which breaks its ratty winter dormancy very late. Its use in large fields is particularly attractive and clipping those white aggressive underground roots at its borders is not really much work with an edger. The cultivar ‘Green Sheen’ is a real star. The commonness of this ground cover repels garden aficionados but not me.

Petasites japonicus ‘Variegata’– This huge-leafed water lover spreads like wildfire, but what a lovely “pest” it is. I rue the day when its spread invades its nearby neighbors but for now, it is an eye-catcher in the garden and I stay ahead of its stealth. My planting is not near water (for I have no water, sadly), and yet its aggressive behavior seems undiminished. I can only imagine if it were at the edge of my dreamed-for stream.Sasa veitchii – Beautiful in summer, extraordinary in winter when the leaves develop a bi-color arrangement with straw-white edges. This bamboo runs (and fast after it gets settled in) and I would be tempted to just let it run – it is that beautiful – if I had more space and better boundaries. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden does it right: large monoculture at the edge of the Japanese Pond, and bordered by concrete bulkheads, walks and curbs. At Uptop, I keep it in bounds, after 15 years of constant root clipping, with a concrete dam just under the surface of the 12-ft. diameter planting. So now it is restrained as has been from the start the Phyllostachys aurosulcata within a 2-ft deep x 1-ft wide concrete dam at the rear of the property. Meanwhile, my other bamboo, two cultivars of fargesia, are among my favorite plants in the garden, so effective as a border visual barrier and so green all winter long – and it clumps, not runs.

Contrary to many gardeners, I suppose, I find these two species both plebian and essential. Therefore, in my mind they are linked. Why? Not only because they have equally been the play toys of hybridizers for generations (they are easy to mutate). Hostas, in all their hundreds of variations, even with their indisputably beautiful and unique foliage, has a flower that detracts from the textural effect of a mass planting – or even, a single specimen – and therefore, I nip them in the bud. Visitors are surprised to see so many almost-flowers disappear from my scene but I find their visual messiness at odds with and a distraction from why we grow hostas (those amazing leaves!). Many are put in a vase, rather than the compost pile, as they make quite attractive indoor arrangements.  All, that is, except for the magnificent Hosta plantagenia, sending up their scented large white blossoms in the unlikely months of August and September. Their buds escape the secateur as I savor something this sweet so late in the summer season. On the other hand, the Hemerocallis, in all its hundreds (thousands?) of variations, has indisputably beautiful, if fleeting, individual blossoms (and beautiful buds before them) but a truly rank foliage that immediately after blooming turns a disabling brown, not unlike the poppy aftermath ruining its neighborhood in the border, so discouraging to Gertrude Jekyll herself that finding the right floppy neighbor to hide the mess was an imperative. So these two opposites, the hosta and the daylily, are often linked physically in my garden maintenance in late July/August: buds and flowers from hostas are removed a week or two before I mow (yes, with a rotary mower set at the highest level) my daylily bed, making a mess of it for two weeks (but nice compost in place) before fresh new green leaves appear as if it were spring again. Therefore, in my garden, both hostas and daylilys are unnaturally manipulated, to make them more garden-worthy, just as a garden itself is manipulated nature. 

Gardens (and gardeners) in the northeast might need a rest come August. I do, anyway. Much of the garden, especially the spring/early summer perennials, have lost their vigor, some having been cut back for a September rebloom. The ephemerals have altogether disappeared as they must, and the gardener is himself dissipated by heat and humidity. A few of the late summer perennials – those that are most at home on the prairie – are coming into their own but they are limited in my garden, decidedly not a prairie. Retreat is my solution: full abandonment. Wonderful Jenny Weber, my loyal and all-knowing assistant in the garden, takes over fully, freeing me from care or worry (unless a rare hurricane lurks or, as yesterday, an SOS text comes: the disgusting dogwood sawfly larvae, a caterpillar-like munching machine, by the hundreds are devouring the Cornus sericea…what to do?). The north woods of Michigan (upper part of lower peninsula) offer many opposites to the banana belt of the Connecticut shoreline: cool nights/warm days, less humidity, and… most compellingly, a forest of white pines, once the largest such stand in the world before mid-nineteenth century lumbermen discovered them, decimated them, and moved on to the Pacific northwest. During their generation-long reign, these lumbermen discovered a large crystal-clear spring-fed sandy-bottomed lake with adjacent acreage that was deemed too magnificent to cut. So, the next summer (1876), four of these men (one, my wife’s forbearer) from boomtown Saginaw brought their families to camp in the forest, swim in the lake, and enjoy the brief north Michigan summer. Thus, was formed Lakeside Camp. Their descendants, six generations later, do the same to this day, however, trading the original tents for commodious cottages and the communal dining tent for a century-old Dining Hall where three meals a day are served to us “campers.” Canoes and sailboats were gradually replaced by woody inboard speedboats (Chris-Crafts were made near Detroit) which are now gradually being replaced (sadly) by jet-skis and pontoon boats. “The Caribbean of the North” is how many describe Higgins Lake, whose azure waters are lined with pines, not palms. 

Enough. Back to our theme of forests vs. gardens, the subject of my musings these days as I take long walks in these woods. A garden, of course, is no more “natural” than a house, both being human-made contraptions.  Houses, made of inert materials, remain static (we hope) whereas gardens change daily and use natural, living elements. We manipulate nature to make gardens in all manner of ways and have since the Persians and Egytpians created the first ones. The forests are what we cleared (manipulated) to grow crops and eventually…to make gardens. Surely, that act of clearing was not proto-gardening. But what of the charming century-old path I use to navigate through the forest daily along the shoreline of Higgins Lake? A conscious manipulation of nature – but surely not an act of gardening, yes? The steps of railroad ties I laid down twenty-five years ago through the forest to the beach… a garden element? Maybe… Raking the daily forest debris from around the firepit, keeping nature at bay, and allowing the moss patch to proliferate…surely this is a nascent gardening impulse. This continuum can go on and on…until we have a bona fide, recognizable ornamental garden. These opposites – the well-tended garden and the virgin forest – are part of an interconnected whole that we gardeners (at least this one) may overlook. The implications are profound.

Our neighboring camp, Cottage Grove, founded only a few years after Lakeside and with many interlocking families, has decided to “manage” their significant forest acreage. Felling about 20% of all trees over nearly 500 acres, both coniferous and deciduous, the logs are left in place to rot among the bracken and lowboy blueberry undergrowth. It leaves a visual mess initially, but they are working with “Michigan’s top forestry expert” to create a healthier forest. With more light falling on the remaining trees, those saved will certainly continue to thrive. Recently, about 50 of us campers answered the alarm about a missing dog (still dangerously tethered to his leash, chasing a deer) and, as a result, we saw this managed forest “up close and personal” when, spread out in a long line on 50’ centers, we marched in a long parallel line through this thicket, hopping over the newly cut logs, as necessary. (The dog, by the way, was found safe but scared). However, is this human manipulation of the forest the right way to deal with this little bit of second growth forest? (Remember: the great majority of the majestic white pines – Pinus strobus – were cleared in the lumbering bonanza of the mid-late 19^th century.) Is this a better approach than simply allowing nature to take its own course and, over the centuries ahead, to grow back to the density of what Alexis de Tocqueville was so advised against attempting to penetrate in 1830 in his determination to see the American wilderness firsthand and reach Saginaw on horseback?

All this led me to ponder, as I walk through the forest (almost) primeval the stories within the novel The Overstory by Richard Powers and the interconnectedness of trees – and with us. It also made me think about a recent essay by Peter Dale in Hortus, the English quarterly literary garden journal, opining on sound in the garden: “It follows that different trees sing at different pitches and – broadly – that that pitch rises and falls according to how open or closed the texture of the tree may be. The denser the texture of the leaves and branches, the higher the pitch.” Count me as interested… but hard of hearing, at least so far. And all this brings me back to the riveting exhibition and series of programs, “Power of Trees,” currently at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, organized by Adrian Benepe and his enlightened team at BBG. From their website: “Trees are at the center of our ecosystem and help safeguard us from the effects of climate change, but those same effects put them at risk. What can people do to protect the trees that protect us?”

Forests and gardens occupy different positions on the same ecological spectrum, mediated only by the degree of our human interventions. 

Ladies don’t sweat, they perspire, said my grandmother. In the garden, I sweat. I suppose all the “lady” gardeners I know and respect for their consummate horticultural knowledge and artistic eye also sweat, at least while in the garden. How could it not be so? Those who dabble in the warming dirt in the spring and venture out again in the fall with a rake are hardly gardeners. The contagion known as obsessive gardening (my kind) has the gardener out in all weather, including those Double-H Dog Days, of summer when heat and humidity prevail. Pacing oneself (some water, a rest, a nap?) is essential in July and August but so is sweating. It takes 15 minutes of feeling disgusting in my case before the joy of medicinal sweating out the body’s bad stuff (last night’s martini?) becomes the focus. How good – no, how really great! – this is. I partake of this beneficial regimen without the mindless horrors of being in a gym, sweating indoors amongst all those other bored souls. This mental agility of being able to convince yourself that the difficult thing you are doing is not only good for you (no pain no gain, your puritan DNA) but also fun, has taken me years to develop. Bending down, squatting, kneeling, heavy lifting, extra walking to retrieve a lost tool back in the shed, yet another load of debris off to the far end of the garden…. These tiresome chores (wasn’t there someone else to do these loathsome duties?) for years tested my enduring interest in my passion for my garden. Somehow, a mental metamorphosis swept those thoughts away. If I dared to keep my iPhone in my pocket (I don’t, finding out the hard way it doesn’t happily mix with dirt), I would chart my daily “steps” with the certain-to-be-true news that I am clocking more miles gardening than my winter walks along city sidewalks. Perhaps this mental mind game is just rationalizing – but what a beneficial psychological state this is. I now find my days in the sweltering garden more than tolerable, even happily anticipated. And as I get older, inexplicably, I seem to have more energy than 20 years ago. A good sweat is part of it, I am convinced. Ever weigh yourself after a good day of sweaty gardening in August? The scales never seemed sweeter. After all, who was it who said “Creativity is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.”?