The notoriety of Papaver somniferum, the “sleep-inducing poppy,” is only partly to do with its outlaw family.
Opium poppies are grown for their edible seeds and for pharmaceutical uses. The type that you see in gardens—whether your own or in the medicinal section of a botanic garden—is the legal relation, not toxic enough to be useful to anyone. The subversive beauty of P. somniferum is firmly rooted in its fabulous color and texture, and the way it can turn a vegetable patch into a Dutch painting.
Above: Self-seeded opium poppy that has not been weeded out of a fennel, in my garden.
More correctly but prosaically called “breadseed poppy,” Papaver somniferum is an unknown quantity when in bud. A couple of nearby seeds may result in shades of profound magenta and desirable pink, like the wild opium poppies in our vegetable garden, at the top of this page. On the other hand, they could germinate into the tawdriest hues of clapped-out mauve, in which case you are perfectly within your rights to pull them out.
Above: Double varieties of black opium poppy include Papaver somniferum ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘Black Peony’.
This is the great thing about self-seeding plants: If you edit them, they look purposeful. If you don’t, then they are weeds, run amok. Opium poppies grow well with other poppies, seen here, above, at the Oxford Botanic Garden, in the medicinal plant beds. But it’s more fun to allow them to pop up wherever they like. In soil that is rich, like a vegetable garden, they will grow stout and tall, with handsome glaucous foliage and green-gray seed heads on strong stalks.
Above: Single deep black opium poppies at Oxford Botanic Garden.
I love this plant for its unique flower and even more unique seed heads that look fantastic added to dried flower arrangements. In mild climates, direct-sow the minuscule black seeds onto well-drained soil in a sunny or mostly sunny spot, and then keep the soil consistently moist. Love-in-a-mist seeds require light to germinate, so be careful not to cover them up when planting. Bonus: these seeds readily re-seed in my garden every year.
Nasturtium (Self-Seeding Annual)
Above: Photograph by Marie Viljoen.
Another easy-to-grow favorite. I adore how nasturtiums effortlessly scramble about the garden and pump out colorful flowers and lily pad-like leaves. These hardy annuals prefer a sunny spot, tolerate poor soil, and grow well in containers or trailing from raised beds. Some gardeners recommend soaking and scarifying these hard seeds for better germination, but I’ve never done that and have had total success. I encourage my nasturtium family to come back year after year by re-scattering the seeds upon pruning them back.
Above: Photograph by Britt Willoughby Dyer for Gardenista.
Every year I grow some hollyhocks from seeds saved from last year or acquired from generous friends and family. Not to be blasé, but I generally just throw theses flat seeds about at the end of fall, all willy nilly. But I suppose the “proper” way is to sow them a week before last frost at just ¼ inch deep and about 2 feet apart. I find that hollyhocks thrive in a sunny to partly sunny spot. Too much shade and they bloom way less and lean too much. Also know that most hollyhocks are biennials, meaning the first year the plant just puts out leaves and then flowers the next year.
Iceland Poppy (Annual in Warm Climates; Perennial in Cool Climates)
Differing from California poppies due to native origin, use, and flower type, Iceland poppies thrive in cool temperatures, appreciate regular water, and their papery translucent flowers are great for adding to arrangements. You can get a head start on your cutting garden by planting these seeds about four to six weeks before your average first fall frost, or in early to mid-fall in milder climates. Plant the tiny seeds in a sunny spot in well-draining soil and remember not to cover the seeds as they need light to germinate. Theses poppies can be slow to germinate, so be patient. I especially like the Champagne Bubbles mix.
By now I’m sure you know how critical milkweed is to the survival of the monarch butterfly as it is the only plant the caterpillars will eat. Help our winged friends and put these seeds on your late fall planting list. After the first frost, scatter seeds directly on the soil surface in a sunny, well-drained location, and then press them lightly into the soil. If the ground gets dry, lightly water the seeds. Just be sure to choose a milkweed that’s native to your area. Why? Planting non-native types of milkweed risks the health of the butterfly.
When we asked Christin Geall for “the real reason she gardens,” the floral designer, writer, photographer, and educator responded with a literary quote: “I’m borrowing from Joan Didion who said the following about writing, but you can switch up the verb: ‘I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.’ ” To Christin, gardening isn’t just about growing plants; it provides a lens through which to understand the world.
A trained horticulturalist (via the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), committed environmentalist (double major in Environmental Studies and Anthropology), and thoughtful writer (MFA in Creative Nonfiction), Christin now travels widely to teach, speak, and write. Below, she shares the reasons she’s conflicted about modern-day gardening, the sure-fire method of extending the vase life of cut flowers, and the garden she calls “humbling, inspiring, and if you read his poetry as a part of your visit, transformational.”
Above: Christin’s next book, A Cultivated Manifesto, will be published by Rizzoli in 2025.
Your first garden memory:
I loved bugs as a child and made circuses for caterpillars from twigs, leaves and flowers. When I was very young, I discovered ants on peony buds. I suspect they were at my height and I remember watching them, not knowing why they were there or why they seemed so busy. Today I know it is a kind of mutualism—the ants eat sugars from nectaries and protect the flowers from other insects.
Garden-related book you return to time and again:
The Phaidon books FLOWER: Exploring the World in Bloom and PLANT: Exploring the Botanical World. They’re art history books predominantly, but packed with botanical, political, and historical insights. This isn’t really a plug, but I often return to my first book [Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style] when I’m feeling flat about my writing. If I can appreciate decent sentences about plants, it helps me write more of them. It’s the same with gardening to some degree—if I look at pictures of past successes, it fuels my hope for the future.
Above: Christin’s cutting garden in Victoria, Canada, where she lives. (She also has a home in Chilmark, Martha’s Vineyard.)
Productive. Collected. Confused.
Plant that makes you want to run the other way:
Amaranth: I love it as a cooked vegetable and know it is fabulous as a cut flower, but just looking at those seeds makes me itch. Tied for first place in the cringey cultivated category is Chinese Forget-Me-Not (Cynoglossum amiable), which has seeds capable of sticking in your socks (through multiple washes) and is the bane of pet owners. It’s one to be careful with, given its pioneering+settler instincts.
Plant that makes you swoon:
Above: A carpet of Romulea hirsuta with a member of the Aizoaceae or Ice Plant family, of which there are approximately 100 types in South Africa. You can read about Christin’s trip to South Africa in Have Flowers, Will Travel: South Africa’s Superblooms.
I went to South Africa last year and swooned over so many plants, it felt like a rapture. (I’ve still not recovered).
Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:
This is a tough one to write: gardening today isn’t very ecologically-friendly. Or at least not the type of contemporary gardening that demands raised beds, hardscaping, irrigation, fencing, greenhouses, soil amendments, bedding plants, lawn care, plastic, netting, pumps, lighting, etc., etc. As gardeners, I think we all should consider what our hobby or work demands of the earth. Western culture gave us the idea that we could or should have our own little Eden and, more recently, that gardening or floral design is a form of “self-care.” It would behoove us to challenge these individualistic notions and consider less consumptive ways of engaging with nature. Basketry and forest bathing hold promise.
The name The Wild Yards Project tells you a little about its founder David Newsom’s journey over the last seven years: It started out as a project. A Los Angeles-based film professional and photographer, Newsom had recently become a parent when he discovered gardening. “I immediately began to worry about my kids’ baseline interaction with the wild world,” he says. “I had no background in botany. I wasn’t into horticulture. I just knew that I found solace in being around plants and animals, and I wanted to give my kids that.” Newsom decided to rewild his backyard, so his kids could have nature right outside their door.
Above: Newsom’s own yard reveals how land can come back to life. “Before I began this work, the state of our home’s dead, baked lot [at left] was overwhelming and depressing,” he says.
As Newsom transformed his yard, he documented his work. “I made so many mistakes, but I wrote about it,” he remembers. “And because I had worked in documentary television, if I saw someone who had written an article or someone who was doing really great work, I would just call them.” As Newsom learned more and shared his journey on social media, he says, “I quickly realized that a lot of people were hungry for the idea.” In 2018, he decided to make his project official, naming it The Wild Yards Project—note that it was yards plural–not just his own.
Above: Newsom’s own wild yard looking particularly lush after California’s atmospheric rivers this past spring.
“At first, I thought I would just go around and film and share stories about what people did,” says Newsom. “But I pretty quickly felt compelled to get my own hands dirty and to build these gardens.” Soon Newsom was consulting with other homeowners who wanted to rewild their yards. “I would go over to their house and help them spin a story about what their land could be—that’s how it started.” His work led to deep research into hyperlocal plants in his Mediterranean chaparral biome and ecological gardening practices. “There’s a series of benefits, so many stacked functions to these gardens beyond amplifying biodiversity,” he says. “We’re amplifying physical and mental health, water infiltration, and carbon sequestration.”
Above: This hillside garden is an example of a full design and install project that Newsom executed for a client.
Casual advice gradually morphed into more formal garden coaching and eventually design and installation services. However, Newsom’s landscape work is different from traditional garden designers. For one, he wants his clients to get their hands dirty. “I tell them: I promise you’ll know more about your land in a year than I do,” he says. “When people move away from traditional gardens, they become authors in the natural and cultural history of their land—and that land is its own educator.” For any project, Newsom visits the property, tests the soil, and explores nearby nature with a similar disposition. Then he creates a plant list and offers a design plan whose execution can range from homeowner DIY to full design and install. Gardeners who want to do it themselves can book Newsom hourly for future coaching. “You don’t need to spend $50,000 to $150,000 on high-priced landscapers,” he says.
On March 18th, 2020, we closed our Brooklyn Heights shops, Salter House and Picture Room, along with just about every other business in New York City as the Covid pandemic swept through the city. We packed as much of the inventory as we could into our Volvo and settled in to quarantine at Meadowburn for an unknown length of time. [N.B.: See Sandeep’s Brooklyn apartment here.]
Like millions of others this past spring, we struggled to keep our businesses afloat, all while frantically navigating Zoom school and an unfathomable amount of anxiety. It was around this time that the Gerards asked us if we would like to join them in reviving one of the vegetable plots in the upper garden. I was thrilled.
Above: Me and my green bean joy! Photograph by Sita Bhuller.
Our first crop, sweet peas, failed. But after that, it was pretty smooth sailing! We fumbled our way through seedings, divided up watering and weeding duties, and formed friendships along the way. Soon enough, this Londoner, who has killed every house plant ever fostered and has not successfully grown a single sprout from seed since primary school Daffodil Days (and even then, her daffodils were always the weakest looking in the class), was sprouting everything she could get her hands on: tomatoes, spinach, lettuce, Brussel sprouts, watermelons, cucumbers, sage, and much much more.
I quickly learned choreography to seed the dirt and relished the hours spent in the garden. It was my time. The kids usually got bored after five minutes of following me around, and so would leave me in peace.
Above: A sampling of the crops we grew this summer.
As more of our crops came to maturity, we began to buy less and less at the grocery store. I became obsessed with preparing full meals solely from crops we had grown and felt immense satisfaction when I was able to achieve it. Gardening was fully nourishing, meditative—and absolutely practical. Any problems that arose could be literally weeded out, tossed onto the compost heap, or simply devoured and attempted again. As dilettante gardeners, there was nothing necessary, but something wholly precious, and certainly privileged about the whole endeavor.
New Yorkers who discover Rockaway Beach, the sandy peninsula at the end of the A train, tend to fall in love. Alexandria Donati and Jonathan Chesley, the husband and wife duo behind Ktisma Studio, were among those who appreciated the charms of the beach-meets-urban setting. The couple first visited Rockaway Beach more than a decade ago when their friends began buying up houses on a block where 1920s bungalows had survived development. In 2017, Donati and Chesley finally got a chance to buy their own bungalow in the community, and perhaps equally important to Donati, who is a landscape architect, the tiny yard that came along with it.
Over time Rockaway’s original wooden boardwalks have been replaced with concrete, and Donati and Chesley’s yard was no exception. “When we moved in there was an old privet shrub growing on a fence line, a pile of debris, and a lot of concrete,” says Donati. So, the first order of business was to remove concrete to make way for planting beds and to replace and repair fences. (Donati had already been on a years-long campaign to convince friends to rip up their concrete. “I told them I would help them plant it if they just jack-hammered it out,” she says.)
Since buying the property, Donati has experimented with the planting and carved out distinct gardens within the petite lot. In front, the west-facing garden has a warm palette inspired by the sunsets; there’s a rambling berry patch along the side of the house; and the back garden, which is all about scent, even includes an area rug-sized stretch of lawn. Pots of herbs and flowers are scattered everywhere.
Above: No irrigation here—Donati hand-waters her bungalow garden because she prefers to encourage stronger roots. “I definitely stress the garden out, but I do it on purpose,” she says. “I feel like gardens get over-irrigated, in general.”
Donati has been strategic about using plants to both conceal and reveal views from their small yard. Espaliered fruit trees, for example, soften the border between neighboring yards and an elderberry hides an unattractive deck. String lights and a shade sail that they hang in the summer help to enhance the feeling of enclosure, while matchstick blinds add privacy (and shade) to the front porch. “There’s a giant apartment building that says ‘luxury condos’ nearby, but that’s New York City life,” says Donati. “Even in a Brooklyn brownstone, you could have the nicest house and garden, but you can’t change what surrounds you.”
“You have to be a tough to be allowed in.” Lindsey Taylor is explaining how she decides which plants to grow in her cinderblock garden, which is located in an old mechanic’s lot that she’s transformed into a thriving urban garden in Newburgh, NY. “I don’t have a lot of time to care for it, so it’s a bit of a survival of the bullies,” she continues. “Drought-tolerant is important—no heavy drinkers. And I have a thing for tall plants and umbels. If you’re an umbel, you get a free pass!”
Ornamental grasses and deep-rooted prairie plants like rattlesnake master make appearances, as do seasonal blooms: bulbs in early spring, poppies and valerian and lots of self-sowers like Ammi majus, Orlaya, Nigella, Scabiosa, Clary sage, Verbascums, and Asters for the fall. They’re all contained (barely) in raised cinderblock beds, a nod to the squat cinderblock garage on the property. On the other side of the garden is a a three-story brick factory that’s now home to Atlas Studios, a compound for creative professionals co-owned by Lindsey’s husband. (See Industrial Revival: Atlas Repurposes a 1920s Abandoned Factory into a Creative Hub.)
“Aesthetically it made sense to use the cinderblocks to create raised beds, and the cost was right. We already had a lot of cinderblocks in the yard,” she notes. ” And the raised beds are very functional as they help to keep dogs out of the planted areas.”
The beds keep the rowdy plantings in check, too. “I like a bit of madcap-ness in my garden. Plants are allowed to mingle but the clean edges of the cinderblocks and the groomed gravel paths (I try to keep them tidy) help hold it all together, like a wonderful huge crazy wild arrangement.”
Above: The cinderblock garden abuts the parking lot for Atlas Studios. Lindsey purposely chose higher-than-normal raised beds and tall plants so that the garden can be admired from inside the building.
Above: Lindsey working in the garden. In these beds are Valerian, Russian sage, Mexican feather grass, Guara, Verbascum, and plum poppies. “I weed selectively—after a rain is easiest. I let certain plants like Orlaya, bronze fennel, and Nigella stay, but I consider how much I leave. You don’t want to leave it all or you’d just have a mess.”
Sauvie Island, one of the largest river islands in the country, is just a quick drive from Portland, OR. Known for its mix of farmland and wildlife refuge, the island offers a wealth of adventure for birders, kayakers, beachgoers, and folks wanting to visit farms. One particularly nurturing and multi-faceted farm is the 5-acre Island Farm Studio. Led and founded by talented farmer, photographer, art director, and mother Christine James, this creative and florific property is completely women-run. The farm grows a variety of herbs, grasses, annuals, and perennials for cut flowers and natural dyes; it also boasts a refined culinary garden from which the freshest produce is picked for farm-to-table events. With a focus on sustainability, land restoration, and regenerative farming, Island Farm Studio hosts workshops and conservation-based classes as well.
Above: The farm at golden hour.
Christine grows all her plants from seed, and while this can be challenging and unpredictable, this method is not only cost-effective but also offers her a wider variety of options, which is essential for large-scale cut flower production. She and her team prioritize organic practices by avoiding toxic chemicals for weed and pest control. “Our methods include manual weeding, planting trap and companion crops, and hand-picking pests.” Bees also play a crucial role as pollinators in the farm’s ecosystem.
Above: Christine loves poppies for photographing and dahlias for flower bouquets.
While choosing a favorite cut flower is always a delightful challenge, Christine says, “As both a commercial farmer and an artist, my favorites vary depending on their purpose. For commercial flower farming, I prioritize ease of harvesting, vase life, and freshness at market.” Her top choices for market flowers include ball-shaped dahlias, apricot peony asters, lisianthus, snapdragons, and marigolds for their beauty and sturdiness. “For botanical portraiture, I adore working with English roses, delicate poppies, lacy sweet peas, peonies, and feathered tulips, each possessing its own romantic charm.” For making natural dyes, Christine cultivates a variety of flowers, including indigo, marigolds, coreopsis, tango cosmos, and black knight scabiosa.
Above: Christine has made it a priority to create an inclusive environment at the farm.
Farming and photography have been transformative for Christine. “My journey with flowers began as a means of creating a sanctuary for myself and my children after surviving domestic violence. Flowers have been integral to my healing, artistic expression, and agricultural journey,” she shares. “Through photography and farming, I’ve found language for my experiences. (You can view her latest exhibit, “Flowers Pressed,” on her web gallery.) The farm gifts her with ample blooms to photograph and create bouquets from, but it has also taught her invaluable lessons. “Balancing fiscal responsibility, year-round work demands, and preventing burnout are constant challenges here,” she says. Wisely, she makes it a priority to carve out spaces solely for personal joy. Christine adds, “Humility in recognizing the boundless mysteries of the natural world and the importance of respecting and listening to Mama Earth are ongoing lessons.”
Above: This season, Island Farm Studio is focusing on fostering accessibility. “We aim to create a safe space for community members and artists to connect with nature through events like outdoor gallery evenings showcasing local artwork inspired by the land.”
