A Movable Garden: Saying Goodbye to a Brooklyn Backyard – Gardenista

All week, we’re republishing some of our favorite Garden Visits that have a personal connection to our writers. No public gardens here, no vast estates, no professionally designed landscapes—just the backyards, vegetable patches, and flower beds that remind our writers of home. This story by contributor Marie Viljoen is from August 2018.

Our 1,000-square-foot backyard garden in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Carroll Gardens is now in its third summer. But by the end of September we must move, and I must decide what plants come with us when we go. This will be our fourth move with a garden in tow. The nature of rental real estate is such that you can’t plan too far in advance, generally signing a lease within 30 days of the move date. So while we are actively looking, we do not yet know where we are going to live. Will the new garden space be sunny or shady? Big or tiny? In-ground or on a rooftop? I have plants to fit every scenario. Way too many plants. And no plant will be left behind.

To make lemonade out of this batch of lemons (actually, I like lemons), I am planning to throw an August plant adoption party for the pots and plants that don’t make the cut. There will be botanical cocktails, there will be fond farewells. I won’t cry.

Here’s a visit to the summer garden. It looks a lot different from when we moved in.

Photography by Marie Viljoen.

Beyond it, the side borders and vegetable garden are rambunctious. Quite apart from gardening for pleasure (and therapy), I grow some more unusual edible plants experimentally, for the first-hand experience I need when advising others to cultivate them. How does common milkweed behave? What about nettles? Are ramps impossible to cultivate? Can you grow your own fiddleheads? (You will find the answers in Forage, Harvest, Feast, my wild foods cookbook.)

It took me at least a year to figure it all out. These pots see about six hours of sun a day from late spring to late summer (none in fall and winter) and the mix that thrives right now includes pineapples lilies (Eucomis species), calamintha, dahlias, lilies, and flowering tobacco.

That’s a very good return on investment. Pollinators love them. In five hours of summer sun this collection of pots includes perilla, purple basil (which appreciates some relief from hot sun), and stalwart begonias. Last winter some of the potted pineapple lily bulbs rotted, despite being technically hardy here (USDA zone 7b). Pots are extreme environments and the freeze-thaw cycle in them is far more brutal than for the same plants in-ground, just a few yards away. The bulbs stored in the fridge’s crisper drawer were fine. Left in their pots, a chilly basement would be ideal.

Above: Lilium ‘White Butterflies’ is $15 per bulb at the Lily Garden.

Lilies have bloomed in all my New York gardens. They take well to containers, and different types offer a sequence of bloom from late spring to late summer.