May 31–June 13, 2021
MOUNT WASHINGTON — This spring, many biennial and perennial plants in my gardens and environs are returning with exceptional vigor, so much so that they are creating new design features independent of any effort on my part. I attribute their success to the lasting snow cover enjoyed for the first time in many winters. Most beautiful of all, a wild wetland landscape has spontaneously evolved at the edge of cultivated gardens and grounds.
In the breathtaking wetland image above, we find native North American and self-seeded, worldly plants. Native foam-flowers (Tiarella cordifolia), sensitive ferns (Onoclea sensibilis), and common strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) grow with what is most likely (not positively identified) spotted-leaf, pink-to-blue flowering Bethlehem lungwort (Pulmonaria saccharata) of European descent.
From the beginning, when I ripped up a lawn to establish a polyculture environment to nourish humans, insects, and birds alike, I was determined to protect bordering wetlands and woodlands from the introduction of domestic plants. While I busied myself with cultivating the gardens that included two varieties of lungwort (Pulmonaria saccharata and rubra) that were gifts to me, the pulmonaria were jumping the fence and making themselves at home in the wetland border. I yielded to their presence there, confident they are not invasive. Both the saccharata and rubra are the first plants to flower in my garden, first to provide nectar for hummingbirds.
Wetlands are conventionally synonymous with worse than worthless land, the butt of jokes, marginal in location and value. The prevailing attitude toward wetlands, at best, is to ignore them. Think what a change in perspective is required to see the painter Henri Rousseau’s glorious jungle images in these thriving nurseries.
When the lawn was tossed into the compost heap and a 2,500-square-foot clearing of heavy clay soil was revealed — most likely fill — I began the process of double digging beds.
Mixing tons of local soil amendments, including rotted cow manure and sand with the clay, I produced fertile soil, one bed at a time. Enter pale or pink corydalis (Capnoides sempervirens), a native wildflower. New to me and not detected locally, pink corydalis simply appeared and settled in the new garden plot. A biennial, its summer plants overwinter and flower the second year, seeding itself liberally. Before lungwort arrived, pink corydalis attracted the first hummingbirds.
As soon as the snow melted this year, many large capnoides appeared all over the garden. In the photograph, pink corydalis has created a delightful, spontaneous design feature in front of perennial eastern bluestar (Amsonia tabernaemontana). The bluestar is native to the American South and up to Illinois. As the education director at Berkshire Botanical Garden in the ’90s, I had the pleasure of working with plantsman Duke Douillet. On the day of a plant sale, Duke pointed out an Amsonia, “That’s a wonderful plant. Take it home!” The bluestar lives in my garden and Duke continues to garden at BBG.
I leave you with the most formal spontaneous arrangement yet to be discovered in my spring gardens. The spotted crane’s-bill geranium is geranium maculatum L., Camas Camassia leichtlinii. Crimson clover is an excellent cover crop and lovage a robust, popular herb.
