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Tag: Trellises

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

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

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  • Beyond the Meadows: An Inspiring New Book by the Homesteaders Behind Krautkopf

    Beyond the Meadows: An Inspiring New Book by the Homesteaders Behind Krautkopf

    When my friend and colleague Margot Guralnick and I set out to write The Low-Impact Home, we had many discussions with Remodelista founder Julie Carlson about whether our project would be a beautiful coffee table book or a nuts-and-bolts manual for eco-minded homeowners. What we realized was, we needn’t sacrifice one for the other. Our book would be equal parts inspiration and information.

    When I opened up Beyond the Meadows: Portrait of a Natural and Biodiverse Garden by Krautkopf, in bookstores now, I immediately recognized in it the same desire to both inspire and edify. That the book is brimming with gorgeous images isn’t all that surprising given its authors, German homesteaders Susann Probst and Yannic Schon, are professional photographers. What is unexpected, and delightful, is how much they’ve chosen to share about their experience as new homesteaders. The two really get into the weeds, if you will, of how they designed their landscape, cared for their plants, welcomed biodiversity, naturally enriched the soil, and, ultimately, became self-sufficient. Diagrams, before and after shots, and plant lists help tell their gardening journey. And they’re blessedly not shy about revealing their mistakes, either.

    Beyond the Meadows, by Susann Probst and Yannic Schon
    Beyond the Meadows, by Susann Probst and Yannic Schon
    Above: Susann and Yannic’s homesteading journey started in 2018, when they moved from Berlin to a small cottage with lots of land in a village in northeastern Germany. It was built as a “settler’s house,” one of many that cropped up post-WWII to encourage people to become more self-sufficient. Their new book, now available in English, documents their experience working the land as new gardeners.

    “To be honest, we held back from writing a gardening book for a long time,” Susann tells us. “We felt we were only at the very beginning of the learning process and therefore didn’t feel ready. However, at one point we realized that this gardening journey would never end and that we would constantly be learning new things that would be worth writing about. So there would never be the ‘right’ time to start.” The results are less guidebook and more garden memoir. “We wanted a book full of beauty and inspiration, which would nevertheless contain our knowledge and experiences from the past five years,” she says.

    Susann and Yannic’s garden appeared in The Low-Impact Home—Margot and I were enchanted by their property and their commitment to ecology-based gardening—so I read their book with great interest. But even if you don’t know a thing about them and don’t harbor any fantasies about growing your own food, Beyond the Meadows is a must-read. It’s for anyone curious about how to be a better gardener or adopt more planet-friendly approaches—and also for those who simply yearn to slow down and smell the earth.

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