“I don’t do frilly,” say Diane Schaub, director of gardens at Central Park Conservancy. We are standing under the shade of an old magnolia in the English garden, one of three smaller gardens within Central Park’s six-acre Conservatory Garden near the northeast corner of the park. Schaub, who earned a diploma from the New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture, has been curating the Conservatory Garden for more than 30 years. And while she does not do frilly, she does do color and texture, breathtakingly well. She has a painter’s eye for composition and an architect’s instinct for structural detail.
Below, we share her best color combinations for fall garden beds:
Above: “This is as frilly as I go,” she clarifies, indicating a velvet-leafed plant with burgundy leaves, beside the bluestone path. The plant in question is a Solenostemon (formerly classified as Coleus) and the cultivar is ‘Lancelot.’ Above: Solenostemon ‘Lancelot’ (paired with Salvia ‘Paul’) belongs to a crew of leafy annuals whose impact is felt dramatically in this garden, where the seasonal spectacle owes a great deal to plants whose interest lies in their foliage.
Purple + Yellow + Blue
Above: If you thought leaves were boring, think again. Solenostemon ‘Purple Prince’, black-leafed Dahlia ‘Mystic Illusion’, and Salvia farinacea ‘Victoria Blue.’
Above: A bed of Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’, Salvia x ‘Indigo Spires’, the leafy and lilac-striped Strobilanthes dyeranus, and elephant-eared Colocasia esculenta ‘Blue Hawaii’. The latter “makes the whole composition work,” says Schaub. Dark purple Pennisetum ‘Vertigo’ is in the background. Above: The English Garden is arranged in beds radiating from a central pond overhung by the largest crabapple tree in Central Park, leaves now turning yellow. Designed by Betty Sprout and opened in 1937, this part of the park was by the 1970s considered one of the most dangerous places in New York City. In 1980, the Central Park Conservancy was formed in response to the neglect the park had suffered in the previous two decades. Its founding director, Elizabeth Rogers, earmarked the Conservatory Gardens for renovation.
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.
Above: I began growing airy, annual Nicotiana mutabilis—one of the ornamental tobaccos—in our Harlem garden, using it for seasonal height and also in the hopes of luring hummingbirds (it worked).
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.)
Above: The potted area of the garden enjoys (suffers?) an extreme combination of intense sun and deep shade.
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.
Above: Pineapple lilies have won my heart. While they are slow to start, by high summer they are in bloom, and their juicy flower spikes stay attractive through fall.
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.
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.
Above: In winter these pots look barren (even if a perennial is lurking beneath their topping of mulch). But by summer they resemble the hedgerow I intended, a place rich with foliage, flowers and the bustling lives of beneficial insects, as well as their prey.
