Moving to a new garden (or new house with a new garden as non-gardeners might say) is wrenching, exciting, daunting. It is wrenching because you leave behind your leafy friends, your garden pests (that fat woodchuck, the turkeys, and the deer), your dreams of what you'd like to do next and after that, and the memories of all you have done over the years. And wrenching because you are leaving the rhythm of your garden, its’ emergence in late winter, its spring blooms, the passing of its summer flowers, the beauty of fall, the surprises of the winter garden, and the passing of birds for whom you have planted nutritious attractions. The excitement comes when you look at your new garden, provided you have one, and consider all you can do. You feel daunted by the prospect of creating something new in a space you do not yet know.
I have just left a two acre garden of over 17 years (in Connecticut, zone 6) for a tiny, walled, urban garden in Washington DC (at least zone 7). It was part woodland, part formal, part crazy (the part I could never tame), with three terraces, a winter garden, a long mixed border, a small orchard, and more lawn than I ever cared for. There was a time when I could manage it myself, but as the years passed, the garden developed, and I became ever busier with my non-gardening life, it became too much to manage well. This is an anxiety gardeners understand -- when the untended garden means you can't relax in the space you have lovingly (okay, obsessively) created.
Before I can think about the new garden, I must grieve for the old. I didn't think I would, but now there are many old friends I miss. For example, I'd love to see how Jelena looks this year, for she'd grown quite a bit in the five years since I've planted her. Jelena, or Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena' (Zone 5-8), is a bronze winter blooming witch hazel that has exceeded my Arnold's Promise in reliability. Jelena was planted beside the driveway, beneath a Redbud (Cercis canadensis) that sported our Christmas lights. About the time the lights came down each year, Jelena was already in bloom.
Jelena was an impulse buy for me. What I really wanted was Hamamelis x intermedia 'Pallida", both for its color and fragrance. Both shrubs belong to the “x intermedia hybrids”, which are an easy to grow group of witch hazel crosses between H. japonica and H. mollis.
I fell for witch hazels the first time I’d seen them during a plant class at the U. S. Botanic Garden, and had coaxed a garden buddy to buy Pallida when I didn’t have room, delighting in it’s fragrance on warm winter afternoon visits. I developed “Pallida Envy”, but I was impatient at the nursery when I couldn't find it. I’d seen Jelena in a garden planted at the direction of Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd, and it was beautiful in winter along the narrow woodland walk next to which she’d been planted, so I rashly bought Jelena and brought her home.
As a designer, I should have been more disciplined about impulse buys, and I gradually have gotten much better, but this was before I had begun to break this bad habit. Like so many of her predecessors, Jelena sat in the driveway, unplanted for several weeks before I finally figured I could tuck her in under a Redbud. The rationale was that her fall color would be pleasing under the surrounding oaks and sugar maples, and I would be able to see her bloom, the first shrub in my garden to do so in the new year, when I walked to get the paper on cold winter mornings (and in Connecticut, there were many mornings that required additional incentives to walk out in the freezing cold). Unfortunately, she doesn't show up well against the diverse background in this particular setting (it's better to plant her where she's close by and against a solid green background), she isn't very fragrant, and her growth habit (upright, with the potential of a 12 foot spread and 8 foot height) meant she soon exceeded the space I'd allotted, a problem that solved itself when part of the Redbud died.
I know Jelena is blooming now, above a sheet of snow and I wonder if anyone will notice. As I think about my new garden, I toy with the thought of adding a witch hazel, but unless I espalier it, it will be too large…..but an espalier is possible. When I get to the designing stage, I will consider one – and if I decide to go for it, will hold out for “Pallida”.
New Year’s Resolution. No more impulse buys.
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