Spring Comes to Dumbarton

When I left my two-acre Connecticut garden for a postage stamp in Georgetown, friends and acquaintances alike asked me in sympathetic tones “how can you leave your garden?”  I smugly rejoined that I was moving to a place where I would “have” several gardens, like the one designed by Beatrix Ferrand at Dumbarton Oaks, where I can meander at will without having to fuss about ground hogs, weeds, pruning, etc.  I imagine it’s a bit like being a grandparent:  You get to enjoy your grandchildren and then hand them back to their parents when they need changing or hit puberty.

With this in mind, to escape the Capitol’s preoccupation with a threatened government shutdown and enticed by an e-mail announcing that the “gift shop is in Bloom” I headed to Dumbarton for a stroll. Arriving in late afternoon, I bought a reasonably priced season pass and found that it is not only the shop that is in bloom.  The gardens are at that glorious mid-spring moment when nearly naked trees and shrubs stand side by side with others heavily endowed with breathtaking blossoms and spring green leaves – quite literally breathtaking, as my allergies suggested.

Dumbarton's ancient katsura

I love Dumbarton not just for its rich panoply of plants, but also for it’s stunning layout.  It has good bones so it is just as beautiful in mid-winter, bereft of leaves and flowers, as it is in peak spring, a test of good garden design.  While it is full of Italian, French, and British influences, and its plants hail from the four corners, I like to think of it as truly American, a melting pot of influences yielding a unique and inspiring result still evident though Farrand’s original design has been altered over time. 

While you can walk straight up to the gardens along the gravel drive from the R Street entrance, I prefer to enter along the shaded, shrub enclosed walk on the south side of the East Lawn to pay homage to the ancient Katsura (cercidiphyllum japonicum) featured there.  The leaves on this Asian native, which turn a gentle yellow-orange in fall, are heart shaped, which is what “cercidiphyllum” refers to, but they are not yet out.  As a result, this specimen’s magnificent structure, from root to twig and stark against the fresh greenness of the spring lawn, is completely captivating.  Whether upright or weeping, Katsuras are hardy in zones 4-8, require consistently moist soil, and are a superb choice for large spaces. 

Yellow epimediums

Dark pink epimediums

Deep in the heart of the gardens, I stumbled into the Prunus Walk where the flowering plums (Prunus x blireana) were peaking.  I know I should have been more excited about these trees, replacements for the original yew hedge, but I was utterly mesmerized by the groundcover beneath them.  There, blooming above a dusting of fallen plum petals is deep pink and pale yellow Bishop’s Mitre (epimediums).  There are over 60 species of epimediums, some of which are purported aphrodesiacs, hence another common name: “Horny Goat Weed”.   They are low growing hardy perennials, mostly from China and central Asia.  Charming enough for their heart shaped leaves and drought tolerance, their delicate blooms are to die for – tiny flowers resembling a miniature cross between daffodils and columbines and ranging in color from yellow to white to lavender and this delicious dark pink.  My epimediums in Connecticut, unmolested by deer and groundhogs, were too far from the house to be enjoyed.  Now I will include them along my front walk where they will revel in part shade and I can easily see them.

Pink crabapple just breaking bud

Crabapple Hill is just starting to peak as well.  It’s worth the hike up from the lower gardens to see these trees breaking bud.  I love crabapples (Malus) because many varieties are nearly as beautiful in fall and winter as they are in spring when they bear beautiful small persistent red, orange, or yellow fruits. The trick when choosing crabapples is to be sure you have one of the fruiting varieties that are disease resistant because, as members of the rose family, they are susceptible to nasty blights that can leave them looking perfectly horrible in mid-summer.

Icy blue Ipheon -- the darker ones
are gorgeous, too

In front of the house I came across one of my favorite bulbs in full stunning bloom.  Spring Starflower (Ipheon uniflorum), from southern South America, is a fantastic shade of icy blue (it also comes in white, dark violet and pink) and is perfectly sited in slightly shady spot beneath a blooming pink and white viburnum.  Its slightly garlicky smell is off-putting to squirrels, which otherwise flagrantly dine on tulip and crocus bulbs, and it naturalizes beautifully.  It needs to be tucked where its fall grass-like leaves are not annoying, just like the Armenian grape hyacinth (muscari armeniacum) that blooms near Dumbarton’s main gate.  Indeed, I recommend planting them together because they are an eye-catching combination.

Swathes of muscari

The guards at the gate are very polite, but I took the hint the third time they asked me if I’d enjoyed the gardens.  It was closing time, so I thanked them for their patience, and reluctantly walked through the graceful gates.   With my season pass snug in my wallet, and Dumbarton’s excellent gardeners on duty, though, I know I can come back any day between 2-6pm, except on Mondays, to enjoy “my garden” again.

Northern Exposure

Northern Exposure

March 28, 2011

Last week, when I thought it was spring, I yanked the straggly hydrangeas and ailing boxwoods from my front walk, leaving a lovely blank space, just begging for new plants.  My front walk is on the north side of the house.  This northern exposure means I’m going to have to find things that will thrive in deep shade.  As I often do when in need of inspiration (or just feeling nosy), I walked around the neighborhood to check out what is “going on” in other north side gardens.  It is admittedly a little early for most perennials, but this didn’t deter me. 

 Spiky Mahonia aquifolium

Determined to hunt down “plants of interest” (sniff), I walked several blocks before being stopped in my tracks by a plant that reminds me of my childhood in Seattle.   Oregon grape, (Mahonia aquifolium -- don’t you love Latin?) has been in bloom for weeks now, displaying clusters of yellow flowers in 2-3 inch racemes (flowers that bloom along a stem).  Mahonia is not for the faint-of-heart because of its off-putting spiky dark green leaves that turn purplish in winter.  I rather like its fierceness, and delight in memories of smearing its dark bluish purple berries on my little brother’s t-shirt as a child.  It is often used as a foundation plant and does best when protected from winter winds because as tough as those leathery leaves look, they are susceptible to desiccation. 

Chaenomeles flouting the cold

Encouraged, I soldiered on along the cold shady sidewalk when I was distracted by a glorious quince (Chaenomeles speciosa), in full bloom across the street.  By this time I was chilled and digressing to photograph this gorgeous Chinese native in full sun was irresistible.  Like many deciduous early bloomers, it begins blooming on bare, spiny twigs before its’ leaves appear.  Quince’s emergent leaves are tinged with a complimentary reddish-bronze color that softens into a dark green in summer but drop in autumn without changing color.  While it blooms best in full sun, I have seen it growing in dry light shade where it still blooms well.  Quince is used as a specimen, as espaliers, in mass plantings where fall and winter interest are unimportant, and mixed in borders where colors ranging from white to pink to salmon colors are wanted.  Its fruits are not remarkable but can be used in preserves, and its salt tolerance makes it an attractive alternative where road salt is problematic.

Surprise scilla tubergeniana

Back to the shady side of the street.   Tucking my collar up as the cold breeze reminded me that snow was due (honestly!), I trudged on and was delighted to discover bulbs blooming that I didn’t recognize.  It’s scilla tubergeniana or s. mischtschenkoana (why have one difficult Latin name when you can have two?), a sweet white six-petalled flower with the odd common name “White Squill”.  This Iranian native was introduced to the Netherlands (of course) in 1931 and like other scillas, tolerates shade. There’s a gorgeous photo on-line of white squill planted with snowdrops and white crocus so I will order lots when I get to the bulb planting stage in my new garden.   Yum.

A perfect daphne

Around the corner a fragrant winter daphne (daphne odora aureomarginata) was in full bloom in a very shady spot.  Its dark green leaves, edged in cream reminded me how dramatic variegated plants are in shade.  The great thing about variegated leaves is that they lend the verisimilitude of dappling light in dark areas just as they set off adjacent flowers or dark green leaves.  This species of daphne bears charming clusters of tiny pink flowers, which are as fragrant as any jasmine, especially in warmish sun.  I was pleased to see it in such good shape because although it is hardy to Zone 6, we have had some nasty cold spells this winter that might have damaged it.  I have always adored daphnes in spite of their temperamental disposition.  They are reputedly short-lived so, as Michael Dirr says, “Once planted, do not move, prune, or abuse in anyway”.   Sounds like some people I know!

Elegent Andromeda

Andromeda (pieris japonica) is also blooming around Georgetown.  I found several white-blooming shrubs in various sizes looking fresh and beautiful.  I grew them in Connecticut because of their deer resistance and early flowers, though I am not crazy about the varieties with bright red new growth.  That works best for me at a distance in a large garden, but depending on your preferences, it could also work in a smaller garden where red is appreciated.  There are pink cultivars that are absolutely delicious but perhaps more delicate than the rough and ready whites.  Andromeda’s susceptibility to lace bug requires them to be planted in shadier areas, and in small gardens, compact cultivars are better than larger ones which tend to become leggy. 

Straight from the Himalayas

I also came upon an old Himalayan friend, which works very well in borders or mass plantings.  Sweetbox (Sarcococca hookerana) is a low glossy leaved shrub with tiny cream-colored flowers in March and April that can be amazingly fragrant on a warm day.  I was introduced to it at Tudor Place where I remember its fragrance wafting up the back of the garden making me feel as though I’d walked into the tropics, a welcome rebuke to winter.  It did poorly for me in Connecticut but I may just try it again here for it’s glossy, pointed leaves and low dense structure.   

I could go on – there are epimediums, skimmias, euphorbias, even rosemary, and other wonderful plants starting to bloom around town – but will stop here.   I’m off to the nursery, now the snow is past.

Go to Hellebores!

Last Saturday, shocked and dispirited after reading the newspaper and watching the morning news, I found myself stumbling out the door for a walk in hopes of lifting my spirits.  Having spent the better part of the previous four weeks shuttling from a gray New York to a cold, rainy Chicago and back, I was so glad to be back in Georgetown, gladder still for the vernal sunshine, relatively warm temperatures, and promise of early spring flowers.

Helleborus orientalis

I was bound for the Old Stone House to see if the hellebores were blooming.   I was introduced to hellebores at Tudor Place back in the early 1990’s, and grew them in Connecticut for their beauty and deer resistance.   Hellebores can bloom as early as December, depending on the species.  They had yet to stir in January, however, the last time I’d gone to look and discovered them winter-battered and flattened from snow and ice.  The Lenten Roses, (helleborus orientalis) at the Old Stone House, dead leaves removed, are blooming in white and various shades of mauve now with remarkable beauty and are worth a trip for any flower-starved gardener.   

Another species grows beside them, helleborus foetidus, which is my favorite.  It was also in bloom, but there was only a single plant.  I love it’s greenish-blue leaves all year around, and its fabulous long lasting chartreuse flowers which look amazing when planted with spring bulbs of any color, and I like them best planted in masses.  They can be prolific self-sowers, which is good because they occasionally die out leaving their seedlings to soldier on.  I have never found them odiferous, like their name suggests (one of its common names, I hate to say, is dungwort – not kidding), but have heard that they can smell down right nasty if they are cut and brought indoors.  Hellebores of all kinds are perfect for an urban garden, especially planted near doors or windows so they can be easily seen in late winter.

Magnolia x soulangeana

The hellebores are planted near the M Street entrance of the Old Stone House, beneath a saucer magnolia, possibly Magnolia x soulangeana, a cross between magnolia denudata and magnolia lilliflora.  It is named after a former cavalry officer (Etienne Soulange-Bodin) who survived his military service in Napoleon’s army, and went on, in 1820, to create this cross, one of the more popular spring blooming hybrid trees in cultivation. I adore magnolias, and this one, like several others around town, was just about to burst open in a gaudy pink and white display, complementing the colors of the hellebores beneath it. 

Cornus mas

Spirits buoyed, (I am a simple soul), I walked back home, with a lighter heart noting with pleasure the various blooming bulbs (scillas, snowdrops, and crocus, etc.).  The real surprise, though, is on 33^rd  Street, where a dazzling Cornelian Cherry (cornus mas), stands in full yellow glorious bloom.  I don’t know whether it’s just more gorgeous in Zone 7 or works better as a specimen in a small garden, but this small shrubby tree just stands out screaming “Spring is upon us” like nothing else.  I have seen the Cornelian Cherry, which is a native of Central and Southern Europe and parts of Western Asia, in mass plantings in larger gardens in zones 5 and 6, and though lovely, this particular specimen beats them all.  They can grow up to 20 feet tall and have a fairly round shape, usually branching quite low if not pruned, with nice dark green foliage in summer, yawn-ish fall color, and somewhat interesting bark for winter interest.  It’s moment, though, is now, followed by good sized, but discrete red berries favored by birds and intrepid makers of jelly.

Witch-hazel (hamamelis)

A little further along the street is a small witch-hazel that is blooming on the north side of a house in pretty convincing shade.  It has been blooming for several weeks and I was delighted to see it blooming still, it’s delicate strappy petals looking crisp against their brick background.  Like the Cornelian Cherry, forsythia, and winter jasmine, winter-blooming witch hazels bloom before their leaves emerge.  I love this because the yellows of these plants stand out against the colors of the stems on which they bloom, dark in the case of the Cornelian Cherry and witch hazels, and greenish in the case of winter jasmine and forsythia, all of which are also blooming now.  Incidentally, if you are a rose gardener, you already know that it’s time to cut your roses back when the forsythia bursts into bloom.

I am on the road again now, and hate to miss this moment when spring ousts winter and the magnolias, cherry trees, dog woods (did I mention that the Cornelian Cherry is actually a dogwood?  I should have), and crab apples burst forth.  Who knows what will be out when I return?

The discipline of a small urban garden……

British gardeners at the recent RHS Spring Garden Show 

There are many endearing and unique aspects of British culture (the propensity to eat kidneys and black pudding for breakfast not among them), but to me nothing is more so than British gardeners at a spring garden show. 

The rooms at the Royal Horticultural Society’s spring show last month were awash with tweedy, rubber-booted Brits, ferociously focused on expertly and beautifully arranged spring flower displays and green walls, and vendors selling everything from potted bulbs and seed potatoes to tubular garden furniture and artificial grass.  (The artificial grass vendor had to be the owner of the Smart car  parked outside, entirely covered in faux-turf, right?).

I was there to meet my friend and former colleague, garden designer John Brookes, (www.denmans-garden.co.uk/jb-design.asp), who was giving thirty minute garden design consultations along with several other British designers.   When I caught up with him (after lusting over hepatica x schlteri,  primroses, iris reticulata,  and all kinds of delicious hellebores) he was busily helping a client sort out a garden design for a small townhouse garden. 

As I hovered discreetly nearby, John listened to his client’s description of his garden and what he wanted before drawing a design based on the man’s preferences.  Typical John, it was bold and clear without fuss, and he took pains to explain the importance of keeping things simple, a rule to which every owner of a small urban garden should adhere.   


And there I stood, the proud new owner of a small urban Georgetown garden that is in serious need of a complete makeover.


Remember that my last garden was in Connecticut, two acres of sun and shade, lawn and orchard, woods and terrace, perennials and shrubs (and the occasional herd of deer eating everything in sight, but you can’t have it all).   While I eventually became better disciplined (that word again) at designing first and planting second, I could still indulge my plant impulses and did.  Often.


The trick with a small garden is that you really can’t have everything.   There is no room for indulging plant impulses.  You have to pick and choose what you include in your garden based on site orientation, circumstances, needs, etc.   You learn that in Design 101.  Then you design the garden.  Only then, when all of that preparation and thinking and planning is finished, you get to pick the plants.  To me, this is like having to plan out, buy for, cook, eat dinner and then clean it all up, all before you eat dessert.   


The discipline, the discipline ….!


As spring lurks around the corner and we have these amazingly warm days, it’s time to start thinking about the garden makeover.  I am determined to be disciplined and live up to my training and years working with John, who is a committed designer first and plantsman second (this was, sometimes, a point of friction in our many years of working together!).  In coming installments I will share this journey on this blog.  I wonder where I put the 100-foot measuring tape?

Galanthus Redux: "in the green"

A prize-winning display.

At last week’s Royal Horticultural Society Spring Show in London, galanthus featured large, perhaps larger than all the other lovely spring flowers on exhibit.  Even I was nearly sated by the faux landscape displays dominated by snowdrops, but the many bulbs that were for sale “in the green” fascinated me most.  How delicious it would be to buy a few and take them home….

Of especial interest was the manner in which the bulbs were sold.  Some were potted up – one or more to a pot.  No surprise there.   Others, however, were sold in plastic bags with no evident potting medium.  Presumably it had been washed away in the interest of selling many bulbs in conveniently portable packages, suitable for taking home on the Tube (or in my suitcase, I wondered?). 

A portable bargain at $24 per bag.

These puppies are merely $20 each.

Also interesting was the variety of prices galanthus bulbs commanded.  I had been prepared for this earlier in the day by an article I had read shortly after landing in some publication I was too bleary to note.  The article’s focus was on a Galanthus called “Grumpy”, for the green blotches on its central petal clearly depicting a sad face.  “Grumpy” is covertly grown in a secret location by a gardener named Joe Sharman, who collected it from the garden of the man who made the first surface crossing of the Antarctic over fifty years ago.  Sharman, a nurseryman, claims that there are snowdrop thieves running rampant this time of year, so has hired security guards to protect his lucrative project.  He claims to have sold a single bulb on eBay recently for 347 pounds (a cool $555).  The average going price for this gem, however, is one hundred pounds per bulb.  This, loyal reader, is $160 on the barrel for a cultivar that reputedly does not naturalize readily.  While I didn’t see any of these on sale at the RHC (they were probably under lock and key), there were single potted bulbs for sale, ranging from $4.80 to over $32 a piece. 

Wildly enthusiastic about galanthus as I am, these prices are too rich for my pocketbook.  The basic garden variety snowdrop blooming bravely in winter “does it” for me.  I suppressed my wicked thoughts about buying the plastic bags full of bulbs “in the green” and taking them home, customs being what it is.  Instead, I’ll order lots next fall and pot them up to be planted “in the green” when my garden is finished next spring.  That way I will have snow drops exactly where I want them. Can’t wait for the catalogues!

Priced from $4.80 to $40 per bulb.

Winter Jasmine

Winter Jasmine

Espaliered Jasminum nudiflorum at
Dumbarton Oaks, January 2011

On my perambulations through Georgetown, in search of winter blossoms, I discovered Winter Jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) espaliered against the exterior brick walls at Dumbarton Oaks.  A native of Western China, its long evergreen willowy stems are supported against the wall with nails and wire, ensuring that its small, delicate funnel shaped flowers will be easily observed by passers-by on some warmish winter day, yet to come.

In spite of the recent and prolonged cold, its buds, elongated tubes tipped with red, have appeared in profusion and some have even opened into their sunny yellowness in defiance of winter.  They are just waiting for temperatures of 50 degrees or more to pop into a cascade of small yellow flowers heralding the onset of early spring. 

I have always adored winter jasmine, (winter blooms of any kind are essential to my surviving winter).   When I moved to Connecticut and survived my first endless New England winter, I started planting winter and early spring flowering bulbs, perennials, and shrubs with abandon, and not necessarily with good design in mind, I am sorry to say.  Though winter jasmine is hardy in zones 6-9 it is a sporadic bloomer at best in zone 6, so I decided to give it a try.

Red tipped buds awaiting a warm winter day.

The most logical place (and a good design choice, fortunately) for the jasmine in my Connecticut garden was by the back door where it was protected from the cold winter wind, where I would see it every day from my kitchen, and where it could spill over a low fieldstone wall.  It’s a notorious “trash catcher”, so I have never liked to see it planted on flat ground where leaves and other litter is easily caught by the long arching branches and not easily cleaned.  I also think winter jasmine looks awkward espaliered, as it is at Dumbarton.  It’s too contrived.  Hanging over a wall or planted on a slope, however, is ideal.

Over the years, the jasmine thrived and I found its evergreen branches just as lovely in winter as the flowers themselves.  Like Kerria japonica, another green-branched shrub, the branches turn brown as they age but a little judicious pruning annually quickly takes care of this and helps rejuvenate the shrub at the same time.  My wall was too low at 18 inches, and I think it would have looked better at 3 feet or more, but a little pruning took care of this problem, too.  I was delighted to discover that the jasmine seemed quite deer proof. It suckered a little, but that ended up giving me the opportunity to dig up the new plants and share them with friends.  While it didn’t bloom well every winter, when it did, the yellow flowers, preceding both forsythia and kerria, was a source of joy.  It was especially wonderful when it bloomed simultaneously with crocus, scilla, and galanthus. 

Winter Jasmine blossom
braving the cold.

Another planting of winter jasmine near my house, much larger than mine and planted on a slope, did not bloom more than once or twice in the 17 years I lived in Connecticut, even though it was in a much sunnier location.  My conclusion was that it was much too exposed to the west winter wind and it was also never, in all those years, rejuvenated.  Lesson to those in zone 6:  Plant winter jasmine in protected places for more blossoms and prune regularly!

In my new garden here in Georgetown, a previous owner must have shared my enthusiasm for he or she planted a winter jasmine with the intent of espaliering it up a brick wall.  Unfortunately, the wall faces north and is never in sunlight.  Moreover, it is out of reach of the rudimentary sprinkler system so it’s often very dry.  While winter jasmine is tolerant of poor soils, is moderately drought tolerant, and can take some shade, this is little guy is struggling.  There’s not a bud to be seen on this poor thing.

I will have to decide whether it has a place in the new garden, both in terms of design and conditions, or if it will have to be given away to someone with a more ideal location.  Meanwhile, I will go to Dumbarton if and when the temperatures ever rise to get a mid-winter fix.

Thank god for snowdrops.

I don’t remember when I saw snowdrops for the first time but it must have been during the winter of 1992-1993 when I was working as a volunteer at Georgetown’s historic Tudor Place.  It was there, during my first garden volunteer experience, that I fell in love with so many plants, and snowdrops (Galanthus), a member of the Amaryllis family, are among those crowded at the top of the list.

When I moved to Connecticut, I discovered to my complete delight, that I had several pockets of snowdrops in my new garden.  The biggest group was in my untamed side garden where a small but dense tumult of white flowers began blooming vigorously just after the snows receded.  The winter of ’93-94 was, as I recall, distinguished by 17 snowstorms and bitter cold.  It was the first time I’d experienced  perpetual ice encrusted  snow lasting on the ground for months and, as a Seattelite, I found myself craving green and anything that bloomed.  It was a winter that made me understand the importance of a winter garden, and the appearance of the snowdrops that kept me sane.

I cautiously moved a few of the clusters  (Galanthus are easily transplanted but best moved in spring, after they’ve finished blooming – just don’t let them dry out) to places in the garden where I knew I’d see them more frequently, and left the seed heads to ripen on the rest, hoping they’d continued to naturalize, which they did.  The little sprouts look like thick grass blades and come up with the leaves of the mature bulbs.  Every fall, I’d order more galanthus (typically a G. nivalis or G. elswesii cultivar), and each spring I’d divide the larger clumps and move them to other parts of the garden.  Each spring, as I eagerly awaited the first snowdrops to open, I wished I’d planted twice as many.

I also tried to include them in every garden I designed.  When I was working with John Brookes, the international garden designer and a friend, on an estate in New York, we ordered thousands of bulbs, galanthus among them.  He urged us to pot the snowdrops up in the fall so we could plant them in the spring as we found places that were crying out for a clear winter white bloom.  In the UK, he tells me, you can buy them at nurseries in the springtime, just about to bloom, just for this purpose. 

Snowdrops, which are deer and squirrel resistant, emerge as early as late December or early January and, depending on the weather, can last months.  In the early 2000’s, when we had a few warm winters back to back, and were convinced we’d be growing palm trees in zone 5 gardens by the end of the decade (clearly a mistake, as this has been one of the coldest winters on record here in our Nation’s Capitol), my snowdrops bloomed from Christmas until March.  By this time I’d planted them along side hellebores, white forsythia (Abeliophyllum distichum), daffodils, and scilla, and through liriope and other grasses, which I’d cut back in early spring before the snowdrops appeared.  They were gorgeous in their ever-abundant colonies along the fence, in perennial gardens, under the beech tree, and anywhere else I could tuck them and where I would see them from the house or the driveway.   I also planted them on top of daffodil bulbs, figuring that as long as I was going to dig a hole, it seemed sensible to pack it with as much as I could and I did, to great effect.

I miss my old snowdrops so Sunday, as I was walking through Georgetown, I was delighted to see a tiny clump growing by someone’s front door, beside residual variegated vinca and dried leaves from a Japanese maple.  Note to self:  Order plenty of snowdrops for the new garden next fall.  I think I will plant them in planters so I can put them exactly where I want them after they’ve bloomed.