What do gardeners do on vacation? Visit gardens, of course, or, if we have places to do so, garden in our vacation spaces.
Ever the horticultural glutton, I do both. My sister and I own a summer cottage on nine acres of land in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. My maternal grandfather bought it almost seventy-five years ago because the area reminded him of his home in England’s Lake District. The soil is clay mixed with an abundant amount of rock, so plants that succeed tend to sink deep roots. Most of our property, a former farm, is in a natural state, supporting black walnut and cottonwood trees and staghorn sumac. We also grow copious amounts of goldenrod, ironweed and poison ivy. I would make a botanical garden out of the whole place if I only had more than three weeks a year to do so. As Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics famously wrote and sang, “Sweet dreams are made of these.”
I walk the country roads every vacation day, watching the birds and butterflies and taking note of the naturally occurring plant combinations. It is too soon yet for most goldenrods and asters, but other flowers abound. This summer has been relatively cool and wet, perfect conditions for orange jewelweed—Impatiens capensis—and the roadside ditches are full of it. Related to garden and New Guinea impatiens, these native plants have relatively thick, hollow stems and feature small orange tubular flowers. Pollinators and hummingbirds love them. The soothing sap also comes in handy for on-the-spot relief of itchy bug bites.
Orange jewelweed often sits cheek by jowl with the sky-blue flowers of common chicory or Cichorium intybus. In New Orleans and elsewhere, coffee lovers grind up the roots of the sativum variety of chicory and add it to ground coffee beans to take the bitter edge off the coffee flavor.
The jewelweed/chicory color combination could be duplicated in hot sunny garden spots with orange flowered varieties of common nasturtium—Tropaeolum group—and pots of blue-flowered rosemary or Rosmarinus officinalis. Butterfly weed—Aesclepias tuberosa—might also supply the orange component and provide a dynamic complement to the blue-purple hardy geranium ‘Rozanne.’ In shade, pots of orange tuberous begonias would work well with late-blooming monkshood or aconitum. Use monkshood with caution around children and pets, as all plant parts are poisonous.
I also love the frothy white flowers of Queen Anne’s lace, or Daucus carota, a plant that arrived in Colonial times and naturalized itself with wild abandon. It goes with everything, but would quickly outcompete everything else in a domestic situation. Duplicate the look without the thuggishness, by using its Apiaceae family relative, Ammi majus, sometimes known as false Queen Anne’s lace or bishop’s flower. Tall colewort or Crambe cordifolia can also serve a similar purpose, especially at the back of the border. Colewort has the added bonus of sweet scent.
When not out walking the country roads, I tend my cottage garden, a collection of four beds on the shale/shingle beach and around the cottage. The climate is USDA Zone 5 and the winters can be harsh, so anything I plant has to be very tough and thrive on large amounts of neglect. Lavender lives large in the sunny beach bed, reveling in the excellent drainage. Russian sage, coreopsis and delphiniums fill the upper bed that backs up to a concrete retaining wall.
The area is home to a handful of fine, independent garden centers, but many of my plants were purchased from a small roadside stand that sits in front of a dilapidated barn about a mile from the cottage. The display there consists of a table with a well-secured honor box and a changing selection of seed grown perennials, all labeled with botanical and varietal names. I have never met the gardener who supplies this enterprise, but I sometimes leave her a note along with my payment. The price is right—three quart-pots of perennials for five dollars. A laminated sign by the cashbox says that the flower proceeds help fund treatments for the stand owner’s cancer-stricken son-in-law. I would buy the plants even without the sad note, but the story makes the investment seem even better.
A long garden thread connects the property to the past. A couple of straggly lilacs and some poeticus daffodils are probably remnants of the farm that existed here until the early nineteen twenties. Traces of an old privet hedge remain from the farmer’s successor, a rich man who used the property as a weekend retreat. My green-thumbed aunt gardened here as a teenager in the 1940’s and reputedly cultivated the largest Victory Garden in the county. My father planted trees. Now my daughter, starting on her own professional life, helps with the garden beds, putting her own stamp on this piece of ground. Even in the face of changing times, distances and the challenges of climate and soil, each of us has found a way to sink roots.