Browse published articles attributed to Francis Rosenfeld, with full-archive search.
Ajuga reptans, bugleweed, is a fail proof groundcover for any sun exposure or soil type. I started with its Latin name because I always thought it sounded more patrician and better suited to this plants' sophistication. I love bugleweed, it is a versatile plant which helped me bring back to life several locations with dry shade where few other plants thrive. It tends to get invasive in full sun exposure and rich soils.
Have you noticed how many beautiful ground covers fall into the creepy category: creeping phlox, creeping veronicas, creeping Jenny? These plants usually spread by runners, hence their name, and once adjusted to their location they will keep running indefinitely, growing more substantial with the passing of time. They are the ultimate tough spot savers, thriving in areas usually lost for hope, they are the unbroken, the untamed, the survivors. Let's talk about creepy crawlies.
Because they are so old, irises have become quite heavy with symbolism and legend, so much so that I almost got drowned in the downpour of information that carried me from the gods and goddesses of Antiquity to the budding medicine of the Middle Ages, to the royal house of France, and then back to perfumers and ancient chemists, bouncing about betwee Christianity and magic. Several hours later I abandoned the search that almost gave me a headache.r
Isn't this beautiful? Few annuals are easier to grow than marigolds, a quality that makes them so ubiquitous one tends to overlook their genuine charm. All a marigold needs is sunshine, everything else it will do for itself. Of course, because I planted mine in the vegetable patch, they were blessed with an extra helping of fertilizer and water and that made them extra enthusiastic.
I could never resist a hyacinth. I always plant some in the fall, of course, and am sure the squirrels and rabbits really appreciate my efforts, so every year I end up replenishing the fall bulb supply with full grown winter plants, which spend a few weeks of pampered bloom indoors and are then planted in the back yard as soon as the weather allows. A few considerations about growing bulbs, and hyacinths in particular.
Creating themes with annuals is almost like painting, you can create infinite variations of color, contrasting and analogous harmonies, focal points and diffusion hues. The rules are the same as those of basic color theory, with the difference that the components of your art piece are alive. If you plan the garden well at the beginning of the year you will be able to carry the color theme successfully through the seasons, the flowers will change but the harmony will remain the same. There are three fundamental color palettes: monochrome, analogous and contrasting.
Just in case you got bored adding hot peppers to chili and stew I found some delightful dessert recipes to brighten your palate. We're all familiar with hot pepper jelly but have you heard of strawberry jalapeno poppers? They are not as you'd expect, jalapeno peppers stuffed with strawberry jam, but hollowed strawberries filled with cream cheese and hot pepper paste. Check out this recipe if you like trying new things.
Bulbs are to gardening what frozen puff pastry is to baking: a versatile ingredient that can be planned into the menu or used as a quick fix for large still undefined settings. You set a mass planting of layered bulbs in the fall and get a work free garden the next year. People usually associate them with spring and miss the wealth of summer and fall flowers they can yield. Here is a list of summer and fall bulbs that shouldn't be missing from any garden:rn- irises that brighten up the flower beds in June with clumps that grow bigger every year.r
Did you know that betony was thought to chase away vengeful ghosts, evil enchantments and bad dreams? I'm not acquainted with its alleged magical properties or even the real medicinal ones (apparently it was a prized healing herb in the ancient herbal medicine collection, supposed to provide relief for headaches and gastrointestinal upset), I just love its graceful purple flowers that float above a thick rosette of oblong leaves whose edges look like they have been decorated with a paper crafts crimper.
When a cottage garden is well designed it makes you forget the planning that went into creating it and takes over by establishing new hierarchies, thriving on apparent randomness and developing a personality of its own. Roses are very good companions in this environment and blend in flawlessly to add a romantic touch to the eager spikes of veronicas, tall stalks of delphiniums and fresh energy of daisies.
Gardens have personalities, just like people. You can plant your garden, but it will decide what stays and what goes. Mine decided it likes blue flowers. Maybe it is the clay soil that gives the plants the alkaline mix they need, maybe it's the dappled shade that promotes the growth of woodland bulbs, I don't know, but my plants tend to shift to the blue-violet end of the spectrum. Spring is the bluest season of all, covered in violets, grape hyacinths, irises, blue eyed Mary, forget-me-nots, creeping veronicas and bugleweed.
If I knew how much I would enjoy purple beans, I would only have planted those to begin with. Besides being an attractive feature in the garden, they taste better and are not stringy at all, which is a blessing. Of course the purple color turns green in the pot, but that's beside the point.
Between the apple green of the unripe flowers and the velvety chocolate brown of the dried seed heads sedum touches every shade of from blush pink to burgundy. Somewhere mid-way it reaches this hue intensity and contributes a significant portion of the fall garden color. Like with many standard landscaping plants the excessive use of sedum in public spaces and the no-man's lands along freeways and between parking lots tends to undermine its great qualities, so I'm going to do it justice and reiterate them here.
Aah, the queen of fragrance, Polianthes tuberosa, a joy to gardeners and perfumers alike, probably the most fragrant flower ever. Its heady perfume is sultry and intense, a single flower stem can saturate a room with fragrance. Tuberosa is a hot climate bulb, and much like show chrysanthemums and long stem roses it is easier to get it as a cut flower than to enjoy it in your garden. Growing these in a pot on the balcony is an extra special indulgence for a northern gardener.
My Triumphator lilies bloom for only a few days at the height of summer, and I often miss their splendid flowers altogether, busy with other things, but some days the morning garden is blessed with a light that looks simply surreal. That being said, the most common lily varieties are almost as different among themselves as they are from the day lilies and Belladona lilies, and it is important to evaluate your expectations before planting a particular breed.
I sometimes forget how much I love summer rain, even the subdued kind, like the one right now, the kind that lasts for days. The light shifts to green from bouncing off lush wet foliage under a murky sky. There is harmony in the dance of raindrops tapping on the roof, life itself feels softer, more fluid, like its very essence dissolves in the rain. I walked around the garden for a bit, just to watch it delight in the abundance of water pouring from the sky. If the plants were overgrown before, they sure doubled in size now. The squashes took over the walkway again.r
I will continue with the love and romance theme, since it’s Valentine’s Day and all, a day when the meanings of cut flowers suddenly rise to prominence, fact made evident by the dire scarcity of red roses around this blessed date. On this day it is impossible to escape the knowledge that the flower of love represents, well, love and passion, but did you know that tree blossoms have symbolism associated with them too?
Guess which were the first flowers to bloom this year? Spring finally made up its mind, not before one last fluffy snow. Despite this desperate attempt, winter lost its power and the wet blanket swiftly melted to provide the plants with welcome moisture.r
Having healthy roses is more about prevention than it is about cure. Give the shrubs plenty of space to prevent moisture from sticking to their leaves, make sure they have at least six, preferably eight hours of full sun a day, plant them in well draining soil with plenty of organic matter and try to water only their roots without touching their leaves. That being said, even after the best of efforts, diseases and pests sometimes get the better of them.
The temperatures heated up, the tomatoes started performing. Tomato plants don’t mind hot weather and will keep their composure even when more heat sensitive vegetables wilt pitifully, but they will not set fruit if the temperatures are above 85 to 90 degrees during the day or 75 at night. Considering the climate we live in, that’s most of the summer. It also explains why the extra leafy vines suddenly decide to become fruitful mid-September, when their fruit doesn’t really have enough time left to ripen.r
If only a little late in the season, here are a few things for the fall gardener’s schedule. I haven’t even started most of mine yet, sadly. Mid-fall is the best time to move, divide or plant spring and summer blooming perennials. Fall perennials can be moved and divided at this time too, if you really feel like you must, but as a rule, this is an activity best left for spring.
I worried when I added valerian to the herb wheel that it wasn't going to last very long in my garden. Cats are supposed to be so attracted to this plant they can't rest its scent and chew it into oblivion. Either we don't have enough free roaming cats in the neigborhood or its reputation of being irresistible is exaggerated: other than a slight wilt, due to the latest dry streak, it seems to be fine for now. It bloomed too, and its flower umbrellas are delightfully fragrant.r
Coniferous and citrus scents are refreshing, restoring and revitalizing. Their smell shakes the doldrums of drab days and brings a little sunshine to your outlook on life. Coniferous scents like pine, cypress and especially balsam fir, are healing and restorative, both for physical ailments, like chest colds and congestion and for emotional ones, like exhaustion, anxiety and feeling worn out. The smell of pine reminds people of the holidays and it is an instant pick me up.
On a list of gardening mistakes that expands as I advance in experience and wisdom I have to place my lack of knowledge about the behavior of the cyclamen plants. After I threw away perfectly good tubers more times tha I care to recount I found out that cyclamens only grow leaves in the fall, bloom in winter and then go dormant. The only reason this beautiful flower made it is because my daughter gave it to me as a gift and I went to great lengths to keep it "alive" which basically means I forced it out of its hibe ation during the spring and summer.
Everyone is familiar with this weird characteristic of mushrooms: they spring out of the ground ove ight, fully grown, whenever they get a good rain and enough warmth to trigger their development. You go to sleep with a lawn and wake up to a mushroom hatchery.r
Growing a thriving garden is as much a result of the things you do as it is of the things you don’t do. Here is a list of what NOT to do in order to have a thriving garden. These are all things I learned from personal experience, and they set me back a few years: 1. Planting roses in the shade. 2. Hard pruning roses that should not be pruned. 3. Forgetting that the dirt will be impoverished if the nutrients are not replenished with natural fertilizers. Feed, rotate crops or both.
I plant morning glory every year. Always in the same spot, always the same variety – Heavenly Blue. I forget about it after I plant it, it is slow to start in spring and its foliage gets lost in the jumble when the mid-summer growth takes over the flower beds. Come August, its growth accelerates enthusiastically, especially if summer rains have been plentiful, and it swallows up its supports, clambering eagerly to the highest point it can find, and only there it starts to bloom.
The bulbs I plant in the fall sometimes don’t make it through the winter, but the potted bulbs I get from the grocery store in January always do. I finally figured out that happens because bulbs with fully grown foliage usually get planted at the required depth.
As if the garden was aware of the colors that flatter it most, it chose white for its shade blooms, a color that creates drama when set against the darkness of its shadows. Many gardeners, weary of more unsuccessful attempts that they can palate, usually resign themselves to a shade garden without blooms, happy to see at least something alive cover that patch of dried up dirt they couldn’t prevail over.
It turns out flower gardening meets the criteria in the definition of art: it is a human activity dedicated to the creation of a physical item principally meant to be appreciated for its beauty and emotional impact.r
The day lilies came with the house and they were already established when we moved in, so I didn’t pay much attention to their care. It showed. I used to take day lilies for granted because they are so ubiquitous in public and commercial outdoor spaces people see them as care free.
I am absolutely fascinated by this plant. I don't know what it is about it, its name, its relative scarcity, the unusual way the blossoms are aligned along the stems, unlike any flower I've ever seen. I waited a long time to get it, hesitating over mail-in orders and proper planting times, not knowing how it behaves in larger plantings, daydreaming about what it would look like in my garden.
Long before the dawn of synthetic dyes, the world of textiles was enchanting us with warm brick reds, stunning fuchsias, royal purples, electric blues, moss greens and bright yellows. The art of fiber, yarn and fabric dyeing has hundreds of years of history, much of which was abandoned since chemical processing provided a much easier way to mass produce textile coloring and patterns. Plant based dyeing is a cross between cooking and painting: there are hundreds of recipes and plant combinations that will allow one to obtain virtually any color and at any intensity.
I can't figure out the precise point when a fast spreading plant becomes a ground cover. Some, like ivy, periwinkle and the beautiful blue flowering plumbago, are quite obvious, others, like lily of the valley and sweet violets, take you by surprise, starting with a shy little clump in spring and filling the garden with their prolific progeny in one season. I guess if we define as perennial ground cover any plant that fills up all the space it occupies, we can expand the list to include daylilies, beebalms, tickseed, irises, raspberry thickets and strawberry patches.
Crop rotation requires a lot more space than is usually available in a backyard, but I can discuss it in concept. It is a natural gardening method that allows the soil to maintain its balance, so it doesn’t get depleted over time due to the repeated cultivation of a crop that makes heavy use of a specific nutrient. Growing crops this way also maintains the general hygiene of the growing medium by controlling weeds, keeping the soil light and airy and discouraging pests and diseases.
There is a whole list of plants I feel like I know well because I encountered them in literary works, but most of which I haven't actually seen until recently: hyssop, heliotrope, verbena, wallflower, camellia, primrose, jasmine, heather, wolfsbane. The list is actually much longer, but I'll stop here. After years of gardening curiosity got the better of me and I started searching for these plants so that I could plant them in my back yard if the climate allows. That's how valerian ended up gracing the herb border.
If I knew how much I would enjoy purple beans, I would only have planted those to begin with. Besides being an attractive feature in the garden, they taste better and are not stringy at all, which is a blessing. Of course the purple color turns green in the pot, but that's beside the point.r
What is good weather? That is a very good question for a gardener. Some places are blessed with conditions that make plants thrive despite complete lack of interest or effort. People who for years tried unsuccessfully to grow a garden watch with incredulous envy out of their car windows the never ending wild meadows just exploding with colorful fragrant blooms.
The temperatures heated up, the tomatoes started performing. Tomato plants don’t mind hot weather and will keep their composure even when more heat sensitive vegetables wilt pitifully, but they will not set fruit if the temperatures are above 85 to 90 degrees during the day or 75 at night. Considering the climate we live in, that’s most of the summer. It also explains why the extra leafy vines suddenly decide to become fruitful mid-September, when their fruit doesn’t really have enough time left to ripen.
Harvesting the rain doesn’t stop at installing rain barrels, it involves the entire garden and its principal goal is to keep the water from running off the plot onto paved areas, only to eventually end up in the storm drains.r
Squashes must be the most imaginative outcome of vegetable production. They start out a modest, vaguely round fruit and end up a mannerist commentary on surface topology. Fruits elongate and bubble at the end like hot glass, expanding curvilinear folds and dimples painted every shade of green, yellow, gold, crimson and purple, alone or in harmony.
I felt kind of guilty to see that the grass had gone to seed on my lawn, but then I saw it ripen in a lot of other places and relaxed, it seems the combination of warmth and plentiful rain gave it the oomph to grow wild this year. Because we're used to seeing it in its domesticated form - the ubiquitous neatly manicured green carpet - we tend to forget what grass really looks like when left to its own devices. Its largest specimen, the bamboo, can grow over a hundred feet tall.
I must start with a confession: I'm not really fond of daylilies. They are ever present in generic plantings, in places that don't really belong to anybody but still need to look presentable. They owe this dubious reputation to the fact that once planted they really require no care. I grew up with daylilies because they were the go to plant for difficult shady spots in my grandfather's garden. Lately I began to realize they are really beautiful plants, they look spectacular in mass plantings and they are happy to fill areas where no other plants would thrive.
What an exciting find! I’ve heard about this phenomenon, but it is the first time I got to see it in person. It’s called a fairy circle, or ring, and there is a very simple scientific explanation for why it occurs. The spores of a mushroom extend radially around it and even though the center eventually dies, the offspring propagates, forming a circle, or an arch. That is not to say that the sight of a fairy ring is for the faint of heart, especially since, like most fungi, they have the tendency to pop out of the ground over night after the rain, fully grown and with no warning.
It is amazing what special status roses have in gardens! A gardener will move a tree, completely restructure a flower bed and change the location of a patio before they decide to touch an established rose. New homeowners who inherit roses plan their entire gardens in ways that feature and complement them.
I always plant tulips. I’ve had beautiful ruffled pink ones, and fringed parrot ones, standard, double, lily flowering, you name it, I’ve tried them. I rarely see any in my garden. They don’t like the soil or the light levels, or something, or maybe they get eaten over the winter, who knows? Fact is I don’t normally see tulips in spring. There are two exceptions to this rule: a beautiful West Point variety, bright yellow, with splendid lily flowering tulips on long, slender stems, and a basic variety with short stems and egg shaped red flowers.
Although I am an enthusiastic advocate of natural gardening, I wasn’t much of a fan of composting until I procrastinated one fall and left a sizable pile of leaves and stems out on a concrete slab, thinking that I would clean it up in spring. When spring arrived, to my surprise, everything but the very top layer had turned to humus. It even smelled like woodland soil and was crawling with earthworms. It is one thing to know things in theory, and another to see them happen under your very eyes.
Herbs are not demanding plants, but some rules must be followed when growing them in order to ensure their success. There are two kinds of herbs: those that adapted to the wind swept, sunny and dry cliffs of the Mediterranean shores, like rosemary, basil, thyme, sage, lavender, calendula and savory, which thrive in full sun and dry, limey soils, and those that enjoy shade, like parsley, mint, lemon balm, chives, dill and tarragon, which like a consistently moist soil and not too much sun exposure.r
Have you ever had this sinking feeling, when you want to try a plant you’ve never grown before, and you look at the beautiful photos on the seed packet, that there is absolutely no way this botanical wonder will ever grow in your garden? I’m not one to dismiss instinct, it is usually based on a lot of fast logical reasoning and processing of already stored information that goes on in the back of your brain while you’re minding your daily routine, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right. Fortunately for me, it wasn’t this time, because they did sprout, and root, and grow big and strong.
Since plant foliage usually doesn't come in this hue, even for the namesake plant itself, and this is the first time lavender came out of winter looking alive, I didn't know if it was old growth I should prune or evergreen growth I should leave alone, so I looked up lavender care online. There are conflicting opinions about the correct way to prune a lavender shrub, some say you should prune it after it blooms, to keep the plant bushy and compact, others that it is slow to put out new growth and trimming leafless branches sets it back and doesn't allow it to thrive.