I write these words from a virgin white pine (Pinus strobus) forest in the north woods of Michigan, escaping as we do every late July thru early September the seemingly tropical jungle that overtakes Uptop Garden, nestled as it is on the shores of long Island Sound in Connecticut. I use “escape” advisedly for I have been immersed in the near-manic care of my one-acre garden with, perhaps, thirteen hundred taxa thriving amongst a few significant trees, stone walls, and hedges of all variety. After 5 months of obsessive activity in the garden, I need a break, and my 6-week sojourn in the vaccinium and bracken-ladened ground under a pine and oak canopy is the perfect tonic…ie, no gardening! The sunny days and cool nights – with occasional thunderous downpours – offer a welcome change from the increasingly torrid heat and humidity that now typifies shoreline Connecticut summers in this climate-altered era. The discomfort of some June and nearly-all July days at Uptop is beginning to rival my childhood memories of growing up in Houston.

So, let’s describe my life as a gardener at Uptop during July. Of course, any form of new planting has ceased and is done with. The only plant typology to actually lose vigor seems to be the turf lawns (limited as they are) which grew amazingly fast and brilliantly green from mid-April until the middle of June, requiring a mowing every three or four days. This is a task I relish using my battery-powered mower to create just the stripes on the lawn that my geometry-focused architect brain desires – and changing that geometry from week to week. The job now that the heat and humidity blanket of July has settled in – really, the only job now – is hacking (one could use the less dramatic “editing,” I suppose). “Hacking” the weeds which have sprouted with vigor from every place imaginable, even ironically from the weed-suppressing composted mulch which adorns many of the beds. At its opposite, scale-wise, is pruning large limbs from trees. Yes, I know the books all say to tend to this chore in March. But I prune year-round, whenever an errant limb offends my sense of balance or scale – or, more ominously, when a not-so-uncommon thunderstorm crashes thru the garden. Other forms of hacking include deadheading, removing no-longer-appealing seeded-in umbellifers, and the second seasonal “Chelsea Chop” which at Uptop occurs by July 14 (I call this second chop the “Bastille Chop”) where asters, solidagos, and all grasses are hacked back to one-half. These plantings are simply too large by mid-July, throw the garden out of scale, and without the double chop, tend to flop badly by September when they should be in their prime. Even the thyme in the Dry Garden needs hacking back so it will not take over completely its more reserved neighbors.

During these Dog Days of summer, I awake usually before 5am as the “rosy fingers of dawn” (thank you, Odysseus) bring on dawn’s early light. After my de rigueur cup of black coffee and now restless, I venture out without even a change of clothes. In so doing, I have perfected “pajama gardening” during the cool of the morning when no one yet seems to be up. Rarely do I have a plan – I simply venture out, often cup still in hand, where some unplanned project awaits my gaze. These morning adventures in the garden usually start small…perhaps down on my knees (the only way to ultimately understand one’s garden) to pull a few weeds. Suddenly the horizon of problems widens and – shockingly – I see a whole section of the garden needing near-emergency attention, as occurred in the Upper Woodland section recently. It was engulfed with a dozen or more pokeweed, some taller than I. How did I not see this earlier? How fast they grow! And how deep their taproots! Hacking back this jungle of unwantables, I further realize that the Fargesia nitida, divided and transplanted a few years ago to shield the view of an unattractive neighbor, has matured in size enough to make the path adjacent to it impassable. A bit more hacking (loppers, Felcos, a small Japanese saw, and a rake are my accompanists) and I realized that a needed new path could be hacked out, winding among the three nearby huge Japanese azaleas. Of course, this led to massive pruning of the formerly inaccessible azaleas, many with long-dead (but not heretofore observable) interior limbs. Practicing my form of “composting in place,” and wanting no carbon to leave this property, I find hidden places to deposit the significant amounts of resultant debris from my little “pajama gardening” project, now 3 hours long. The sun is high in the morning sky now and it is hot and my sweat-soaked pajamas and I head to the shower.  A corollary of this project was the discovery – once the poke weed jungle had been hacked and cleared – that a significant army of hellebores had invaded another pathway. Aha…a thought emerges!

Indeed, once transplanted, I have an idea these thirty or so mature hellebores could be the solution to a problem I had been wrestling with for some time. A part of the East Boundary section, my Daff Day bed (daffodils in the Spring, daylilies in July) has always been a continual fight with weeds of every variety known to Uptop. I have daffodils other places in the garden and, in truth, I don’t really admire daylilies in groups, favoring a few choice individuals integrated within a boarder. In other words, the reward was never worth the effort with the Daff Day bed. With a new plan forming quickly in my mind, I was not slow to describe it to Paul (my essential helper for large projects as is Jenny for smaller ones) while he was pruning large shade-causing limbs from the nearby Blue Atlas cedar and the twin crabapples. Saying he had a rototiller in his truck at that very moment, I struck while that iron was blazing and authorized an on-the-spot weed-whacker guillotining of the just-coming-into-bloom fifty daylilies (none particularly special) and their rototilling into oblivion. This prepared a new bed for the to-be transplanted hellebores, among my favorite perennials which, happily, are more prolific than rabbits. So prolific are these plants, I need to purchase no new plants and see no need to spend the outrageous prices garden centers command for specialty colors which, for me, are not so special, anyway. This activity, another example of hacking back the jungle in July, will prepare for the transplanting of the newly discovered hellebores, lying unseen under that shocking invasion of towering pokeweeds, in cooler September. By then, Hacking July will have retreated, planting can again resume, and all New England gardeners can return to the climate we once enjoyed.

I write these words from a virgin white pine (Pinus strobus) forest in the north woods of Michigan, escaping as we do every late July thru early September the seemingly tropical jungle that overtakes Uptop Garden, nestled as it is on the shores of long Island Sound in Connecticut. I use “escape” advisedly for I have been immersed in the near-manic care of my one-acre garden with, perhaps, thirteen hundred taxa thriving amongst a few significant trees, stone walls, and hedges of all variety. After 5 months of obsessive activity in the garden, I need a break, and my 6-week sojourn in the vaccinium and bracken-ladened ground under a pine and oak canopy is the perfect tonic…ie, no gardening! The sunny days and cool nights – with occasional thunderous downpours – offer a welcome change from the increasingly torrid heat and humidity that now typifies shoreline Connecticut summers in this climate-altered era. The discomfort of some June and nearly-all July days at Uptop is beginning to rival my childhood memories of growing up in Houston.

So, let’s describe my life as a gardener at Uptop during July. Of course, any form of new planting has ceased and is done with. The only plant typology to actually lose vigor seems to be the turf lawns (limited as they are) which grew amazingly fast and brilliantly green from mid-April until the middle of June, requiring a mowing every three or four days. This is a task I relish using my battery-powered mower to create just the stripes on the lawn that my geometry-focused architect brain desires – and changing that geometry from week to week. The job now that the heat and humidity blanket of July has settled in – really, the only job now – is hacking (one could use the less dramatic “editing,” I suppose). “Hacking” the weeds which have sprouted with vigor from every place imaginable, even ironically from the weed-suppressing composted mulch which adorns many of the beds. At its opposite, scale-wise, is pruning large limbs from trees. Yes, I know the books all say to tend to this chore in March. But I prune year-round, whenever an errant limb offends my sense of balance or scale – or, more ominously, when a not-so-uncommon thunderstorm crashes thru the garden. Other forms of hacking include deadheading, removing no-longer-appealing seeded-in umbellifers, and the second seasonal “Chelsea Chop” which at Uptop occurs by July 14 (I call this second chop the “Bastille Chop”) where asters, solidagos, and all grasses are hacked back to one-half. These plantings are simply too large by mid-July, throw the garden out of scale, and without the double chop, tend to flop badly by September when they should be in their prime. Even the thyme in the Dry Garden needs hacking back so it will not take over completely its more reserved neighbors.

During these Dog Days of summer, I awake usually before 5am as the “rosy fingers of dawn” (thank you, Odysseus) bring on dawn’s early light. After my de rigueur cup of black coffee and now restless, I venture out without even a change of clothes. In so doing, I have perfected “pajama gardening” during the cool of the morning when no one yet seems to be up. Rarely do I have a plan – I simply venture out, often cup still in hand, where some unplanned project awaits my gaze. These morning adventures in the garden usually start small…perhaps down on my knees (the only way to ultimately understand one’s garden) to pull a few weeds. Suddenly the horizon of problems widens and – shockingly – I see a whole section of the garden needing near-emergency attention, as occurred in the Upper Woodland section recently. It was engulfed with a dozen or more pokeweed, some taller than I. How did I not see this earlier? How fast they grow! And how deep their taproots! Hacking back this jungle of unwantables, I further realize that the Fargesia nitida, divided and transplanted a few years ago to shield the view of an unattractive neighbor, has matured in size enough to make the path adjacent to it impassable. A bit more hacking (loppers, Felcos, a small Japanese saw, and a rake are my accompanists) and I realized that a needed new path could be hacked out, winding among the three nearby huge Japanese azaleas. Of course, this led to massive pruning of the formerly inaccessible azaleas, many with long-dead (but not heretofore observable) interior limbs. Practicing my form of “composting in place,” and wanting no carbon to leave this property, I find hidden places to deposit the significant amounts of resultant debris from my little “pajama gardening” project, now 3 hours long. The sun is high in the morning sky now and it is hot and my sweat-soaked pajamas and I head to the shower.  A corollary of this project was the discovery – once the poke weed jungle had been hacked and cleared – that a significant army of hellebores had invaded another pathway. Aha…a thought emerges!

Indeed, once transplanted, I have an idea these thirty or so mature hellebores could be the solution to a problem I had been wrestling with for some time. A part of the East Boundary section, my Daff Day bed (daffodils in the Spring, daylilies in July) has always been a continual fight with weeds of every variety known to Uptop. I have daffodils other places in the garden and, in truth, I don’t really admire daylilies in groups, favoring a few choice individuals integrated within a boarder. In other words, the reward was never worth the effort with the Daff Day bed. With a new plan forming quickly in my mind, I was not slow to describe it to Paul (my essential helper for large projects as is Jenny for smaller ones) while he was pruning large shade-causing limbs from the nearby Blue Atlas cedar and the twin crabapples. Saying he had a rototiller in his truck at that very moment, I struck while that iron was blazing and authorized an on-the-spot weed-whacker guillotining of the just-coming-into-bloom fifty daylilies (none particularly special) and their rototilling into oblivion. This prepared a new bed for the to-be transplanted hellebores, among my favorite perennials which, happily, are more prolific than rabbits. So prolific are these plants, I need to purchase no new plants and see no need to spend the outrageous prices garden centers command for specialty colors which, for me, are not so special, anyway. This activity, another example of hacking back the jungle in July, will prepare for the transplanting of the newly discovered hellebores, lying unseen under that shocking invasion of towering pokeweeds, in cooler September. By then, Hacking July will have retreated, planting can again resume, and all New England gardeners can return to the climate we once enjoyed.