{"id":103,"date":"2008-07-14T12:16:35","date_gmt":"2008-07-14T20:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=103"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:02","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:02","slug":"beach-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/beach-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Beach Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEACH<\/strong> GARDEN<\/strong>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At home I garden in clay soil.\u00a0 It’s thick, heavy and moisture retentive.\u00a0 I amend it all the time and worry about drainage.\u00a0 While I may sometimes curse it, I am used to it.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My summer garden has a completely different character because it is located on what is known in central New York State as a shale beach.\u00a0 Instead of sand, the lakefront is covered with a mixture of shale, pebbles and small rocks.\u00a0 Walking barefoot on it is painful.\u00a0 Back in the 1930’s, the owners of our property built two long concrete-topped docks that jutted out into the cold waters of Cayuga Lake.\u00a0 One of them eventually fell into disrepair and Nature has long since filled in much of the fifteen foot space between the docks, forming a new section of beach.\u00a0 My little garden sits on this piece of new land, hard by the crumbling remnants of the old dock.\u00a0 It is far enough back from the water’s edge so that it is unlikely to be swamped in storms or times of high water.\u00a0 It has turned out to be a very satisfying little garden.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To say that the beach has good drainage is an understatement.\u00a0 If you dig a hole and pour in a cup of water, it seeps out immediately.\u00a0 It seems incredible that plants can adapt to that situation, but they do.\u00a0 Virginia creeper has surged over vast areas of beach.\u00a0 Thistles thrive, as does milkweed, which smells intoxicating when it is in bloom in late June or early July.\u00a0 Common tawny daylilies adapt with ease and the ubiquitous purple loosestrife has no trouble at all.\u00a0 Inspired by those plants, I decided to experiment and see whether I could grow garden plants in the same space.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I thought about Derek Jarman, the late English artist and filmmaker, who died of AIDS in 1994.\u00a0 Eight years before his death, Jarman moved to a fisherman’s cottage located on a stretch of shingle or rocky beach by the sea.\u00a0 Though his eyesight was gradually diminished by the ravages of the disease, Jarman created a singular beach garden, which he accented with art created from found objects like driftwood and old farm implements.\u00a0 Some day I would like to visit Derek Jarman’s garden.\u00a0 In the meantime, I decided to follow his example and try to grow plants in a somewhat similar environment.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On a rocky or sandy beach, where drainage is extremely quick, it’s important for plants to get enough moisture when they are in the process of establishing themselves.\u00a0 The easiest way to do this is to slow drainage.\u00a0 At our summer cottage the cheapest and most accessible material for this purpose is newspaper.\u00a0 When I began the little garden, I dug individual planting holes, lined them with two layers of newsprint, filled them halfway with water and installed the young plants.\u00a0 I figured that it would take a season or two for the newspaper to degrade completely and in the intervening time, the plants would establish the long, strong roots that would sustain them in the future.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I decided to pick familiar plants that require excellent drainage and flourish in drought conditions.\u00a0 I love lavender, but the only way that it will thrive at home is when it is planted in raised beds that have been amended with compost.\u00a0 I picked three stalwart Munstead lavenders for the beach garden.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To anchor the plot and provide contrast with the lavender, I appropriated a common tawny daylily from elsewhere on the property.\u00a0 I knew that it would do so well that in a few years’ time I would have to divide it and remove two thirds of its children to another location.\u00a0 This year I took that step.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have always wanted Rosa xanthina f. hugonis, a yellow Chinese rose that is sometimes known as “Father Hugo’s rose.”\u009d\u00a0 It has fine, almost fern-like foliage and single, pale yellow blossoms.\u00a0 I obtained one from an antique rose nursery and put it in the beach garden.\u00a0 It has not only survived the challenging central New York winter weather, but has grown into a handsome, bushy plant.\u00a0 I have missed its bloom time now for two year’s running, but hope to see the yellow flowers next year.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The little garden is also home to several different varieties of sedum, including a new one with nearly black foliage.\u00a0 These plants adapted almost immediately and, like the lavender, draw butterflies when they blossom.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I wasn’t sure about coreopsis, but put in one plant to see how it would grow.\u00a0 This year it bloomed at the same time as the lavender and produced scores of flowers.\u00a0 Like many organisms–animal and vegetable–it is more adaptable than it appears. <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Since I am not at our summer place for all that long, the garden gets minimal upkeep.\u00a0 If the Virginia creeper begins to creep in, I hack it back.\u00a0 I also mulch the plants with the “seaweed”\u009d that washes up on the beach.\u00a0 I figure that if nothing else, all the zebra mussel shells provide the plants with some calcium.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My beach garden was not born out of the same kind of adversity as Derek Jarman’s was, but I take pride in figuring out how to make the best of a challenging situation.\u00a0 It provides inspiration when other challenges pop up<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BEACH GARDEN \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At home I garden in clay soil.\u00a0 It’s thick, heavy and moisture retentive.\u00a0 I amend it all the time and worry about drainage.\u00a0 While I may sometimes curse it, I am used to it. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My summer garden has a completely different character because it is located on what is known in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1679,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/1679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}