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Browse published articles attributed to Francis Rosenfeld, with full-archive search.
The shade border rests at the end of summer, when it gets too warm and too dry for its taste. Since this summer was cool and rainy, the plants maintained the exuberant growth of early spring. The hostas are lush and full, the begonias are in full bloom and the toad lilies have doubled in size. What to grow in the shade? Flowers. White, if you would, they stand out in low light.
If you thought starting plants indoors worked for seed alone, think again. You can give your summer bulbs a good start by planting them inside in a pot four to six weeks before the last frost and transplanting them outdoors when weather permits. Tuberous begonias, callas and caladiums will especially benefit from this and they can be left in the pot outside too. Plant them in a good medium with peat moss and perlite in a warm and bright spot but not direct sunlight and keep them well watered until it's time to move them outdoors.
Black Cohosh has everything a shade gardener can dream of. It grows six to eight feet tall and produces these almost surreal wands of rosy white fuzzy flowers that smell like honey and bloom abundantly against the background of its strikingly dark foliage in full shade from mid-summer to the end of fall. If this is the miracle flower of them all, how come I didn’t plant it sooner? I tried and failed twice, I’m thinking third time’s a charm. It didn’t grow from seed and didn’t survive the winter as a small plant.
Cleome is a prolific self seeder. I gathered close to half a pound of seeds off of it last summer, and it still managed to populate the flower bed for the following year. It is beautiful, even though its flowers are a lot more subdued this year. Here’s the drawback: the original plants were hybrids. Most of the plant seeds that come in packets from growers are hybrids, and even though the plants they produce may be incredibly eager to propagate, their offspring will not come true from seed.
Every summer I plan to thin the violets and every summer I change my mind at the last minute, and this picture is the reason why. How can I pull these delicate flowers that cover the earth in spring in every shade of blue between aqua and indigo?r
I wasn’t sure if I should go out into the garden and attempt to take pictures, ‘cause what are you gonna find in this climate in the middle of winter, but then I remembered the hellebores. What glorious plants they are, evergreen and blooming in January as if weather is not one of their conce s! I had them in the back yard for a few years and still can’t adjust to the idea of winter bloom, especially since spring seems to make us wait longer and longer each year, or maybe it just feels like that to me, because I loathe the cold season.
Garden phlox makes a big impact in the garden, it grows over five foot tall and its clumps get larger as it becomes established. Even one or two of them can brighten up a garden, especially when nothing else is in bloom. This feature is particularly valuable towards the end of summer, when the other perennials tend to fade. Garden phlox starts blooming in early June and will stay in bloom until the first frost. Remember to remove the spent flowers to entice it into producing new ones.
I was walking through the garden trying to assess what is left to do before winter descends upon us for good and I ran into a lovely surprise. My miniature rose decided to brave two killing frosts and a freezing rain and bloom in the middle of November. Contrary to popular belief roses are very resilient plants. The only thing they really can't live without is sunshine, everything else they'll take in stride.
Rose geranium essential oil has been a staple ingredient for perfumery and skin care for a very long time. Just like its regular counterpart, the rose oil, it is very useful for mature skin, because it moisturizes it and helps restore its elasticity. There are many benefits associated with the use of geranium oil, from reducing wrinkles to improving complexion color and texture, but its therapeutic properties go further than skin deep, quite literally, to revitalize muscle tone, improve hormonal balance and stimulate cell growth.
The beginning of fall usually saddens me, but not this year, I don't know why, for some reason even the cold rain, the wispy fog and the chilly mornings feel soft, like an embrace. The garden doesn't look sad either, it doesn't don the scraggly, despair driven appearance that usually accompanies the end of summer, it rather looks mature, self reliant, a landscape that endures.
In the world of plants the word hybrid immediately brings forth a specific image: greenhouses filled with long tables covered in little potted plants, perfectly tended to by a diligent team of professional growers and fed a perfect blend of nutrients to optimize their development.
I have become very fond of vintage cottage garden flowers in the last few years, a sentiment which stemmed from the realization that my idea of a cottage garden is significantly different from my grandmother’s. Sure they share some staple plants, without which neither a modern nor a vintage cottage garden would be complete - roses, daisies, delphiniums, hollyhocks, but the list of similarities only goes so far. Eager to experience the gardens of old I did some research and found some gems, which are lovely and fit in the perennial border like they’ve always been there:
Tinctures preserve the active compounds of plants indefinitely, or at least long enough for one to feel that way. A good tincture should last for twenty years if stored in a cool dry place away from the sunlight. Tincture bottles are amber or dark blue on purpose, to keep out ultraviolet light and preserve the quality of the product.
Shade gardening grew on me, literally. I don’t know how fast trees grow, but it’s fast enough and those lovely giants of the vegetal world can cover a lot of territory, both above ground and below. That’s how I ended up with every flavor of shade known to horticulture. In this situation, if you care about flowers at all you become an expert in shade loving perennials really fast. Shade is tricky, you have to charm it.
I love watching bees swarm the stonecrops on nice sunny afte oons. If a garden is thriving, the bees will come to visit, but if you want to entice them further, here are a few pointers. Avoid using insecticides, pesticides or harsh fertilizers. Bees like tiny flowers that make it easier for them to collect pollen and nectar, so plant as many of the following as possible to attract them: sedums, catmints, beebalm, lemon balm, goldenrod, lavender, butterfly bush, mint, basil, thyme, rosemary and verbena. If you can, provide a source of fresh water.
Hellebores are woodland plants, perfect to grow under the canopy of deciduous trees. They prefer alkaline soils - keep them away from pine trees - are adapted to the colder climate zones and are the first flowers in the garden, blooming as early as January during mild winters. They keep their flowers for an amazing four months.
If you were wondering what happens to your perennials during their winter hibe ation, here goes. At the approach of winter they transform the sugars developed through photosynthesis into starch, which they can store inside their roots long term and use during the winter in the same way hibe ating animals use stored fat.
Most vegetables are annual, which makes the gardener’s work to prepare their beds significantly easier. There are no roots to disturb, no bulbs to accidentally dig up.
There is not much going on in the garden after mother nature rained and stormed and puffed the flower beds away. I spent the most part of yesterday cleaning up broken branches as thick as my arm that were strewn about the lawn, blocking access to my favorite spot in the back yard and crushing the vegetable garden. A scene worthy of the end of days, which is now, mercifully gone.
The blooming violets are such a wonderful surprise, especially after last week’s arctic blast. They are very resilient plants, violets, a feature that delights at the beginning of spring and exasperates in the middle of summer, when they greedily take over the flower beds. They have a lot of competition this year from the much larger plants I added last fall, but they still should have plenty of space to shine, since they fill every nook and crevice when left to their own devices. To this end, they started early.r
Have you ever had this sinking feeling, when you want to try a plant you’ve never grown before, and you look at the beautiful photos on the seed packet, that there is absolutely no way this botanical wonder will ever grow in your garden? I’m not one to dismiss instinct, it is usually based on a lot of fast logical reasoning and processing of already stored information that goes on in the back of your brain while you’re minding your daily routine, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right. Fortunately for me, it wasn’t this time, because they did sprout, and root, and grow big and strong.
I’ve been growing vegetables in my little garden for over ten years, and one may wonder what is the benefit of waiting four whole months to get an eggplant when there is a whole stand of them at the grocery store all the time, even in the middle of winter. What happens is that every year, sometimes in the middle of February I get these packets of seeds. There is nothing going on outside, nothing but bleak cold dreary, and me, indoors, with a little packet of seeds in my hand.
There is something about this flower that fascinates me, I don't know why. I don't seem to be able to grow the classic four petaled variety that inspired the plant's name either, just the five petal one.
Ok, I didn’t actually plant fleabane, but so what! It’s here, it’s blooming and it blends beautifully with the orange daylilies.
You would think that the white fleshy flowers that have a heavy, almost overbearing fragrance would be the easiest to extract perfume from, but it is the very opposite: lilies, gardenias, lily of the valley, tuberoses, honeysuckle, and jasmine are notoriously difficult to pin down scent wise, as their fragrances are almost universally altered by the extraction process. The old fashioned method of effleurage, which infuses deodorized animal fats with the scent of fresh picked flower petals, yields the best approximation of the actual fragrance.
Finding good companion planting is even more important when the plants are stuck together in a container. I watched the denizens of assorted pots fight for dominance many a time and more often than not one species brazenly asserts its rights over the sun, water and nutrients and ends up owning the planter by the end of the summer. If you don’t want to end up with a monoculture, here are a few compatible flower combinations.
A trip to the herb border in mid-summer is pure aromatherapy: the lemon verbena in the picture, for instance, smells so much like citrus it's used instead of lemons to flavor seafood dishes. During a sultry summer afte oon the herb garden is a symphony of scents: the lingering persistence of rosemary, the restorer of memories, the sharpness of mint, refreshing like a tall glass of water, the pungent smell of sage asserting itself from the middle of the border, the pious intensity of holy basil, inspiring wisdom and reverence, the clean scent of lavender.r
By the time sedum starts to bloom autumn is not too far behind, and since every year I have the same problem, which is that the fall landscape turns into a sea of mums in every color known to man, I made a list of other perennials to get a little variety during the cooler months. Between the obedient plant, the goldenrod, the Japanese anemones and the asters there should be plenty of flowers for the fall garden. Monkshood has spectacular purple-blue flowers and blooms in the fall, but it is very toxic, so be careful.
The old garden roses are a proud tradition among rosarians, because they have a long history. These are the roses cultivated before the creation of the first modern hybrids - the gallicas, the damasks, the albas and the centifolias and the mosses. They have been immortalized in the classic botanical prints of Pierre-Joseph Redouté. The most famous gallica, the Apothecary rose, had become the symbol of the guild, especially in France, where it has graced the signs of apothecary shops since medieval times.
Usually around this time of year I start to panic, look around and wonder where everything went? Where are the flowers, where is the order, how am I ever going to dig myself out of the mountain of debris that becomes the fall garden. This is when I find it useful to revisit pictures from seasons past and wax nostalgic over the dewy roses and the cheerful daffodils and the overabundance of violets. I hold on to the flowers of spring.
I woke up this morning to a wispy snow flurry, the thin and icy kind that comes about when temperatures drop too low. Eighteen degrees, to be precise. It settled, unsure, in a thin, powdery layer that still lets the ground show through. I almost hesitated to disturb the pristine cover when I went out into the back yard to put seed in the bird feeder. It doesn’t feel cold, though, I don’t know why, just eerily quiet and still, like it is in winter sometimes, as if the thin layer of snow absorbed all the sounds.
There is something very sweet and nostalgic about this plant, with which I got acquainted in literary works before we met in real life.
Legend has it that the Knights of Malta where so impressed with this plant, whose four petaled bright red flowers reminded them of their crest, that they brought it home when they returned from the crusades; it has been a cottage garden staple ever since. The plant has many names, some of which sound aristocratic, Jerusalem Cross, Maltese cross, burning love, dusky salmon, flower of Bristol, scarlet lighting, fireball, meadow campion, nonesuch, and if you're partial to red flowers, they don't get any redder than that.
How does one use freezing rain in a sentence without spoiling everyone's mood? I heard it, early in the morning, while it was still dark outside, the sound you can't mistake for anything else other than maybe sandblasting. Ice pellets. Nice! With that the last of the annuals abandoned the fight. The perennials are still trying to put a good face on the end of the season, even as they are, buried in dead foliage, but alas, the fall garden is a mess no matter how you're trying to look at it.
Once the rose enchants you you become a life time devotee. In all fai ess who can deny this blossom anything, I mean anything, really? For what other flower would you suffer through the scratches and the winter protection and the constant fending off of beetles and blackspot and the capricious blooming schedule, if any? I would like to take this opportunity to remind fellow gardeners that tree roses have to be buried and dug up every fall and spring. There are two types of roses: the easy ones and the difficult ones.
I have become very fond of vintage cottage garden flowers in the last few years, a sentiment which stemmed from the realization that my idea of a cottage garden is significantly different from my grandmother’s. Sure they share some staple plants, without which neither a modern nor a vintage cottage garden would be complete - roses, daisies, delphiniums, hollyhocks, but the list of similarities only goes so far. Eager to experience the gardens of old I did some research and found some gems, which are lovely and fit in the perennial border like they’ve always been there:
There is a time around the middle of July when the garden looks absolutely resplendent. It feels like every flower is in bloom, competing for attention. The late spring blooms haven’t faded yet and the some of the late summer ones decide to show up early, so there is a surreal mix of seasons that coexist in harmony before my very eyes: delphiniums, lilies, salvias, roses, daisies, bee balms, cone flowers, catmints, lavender, yarrow, spider flowers, black eyed Susans, day lilies, hostas, coral bells, and last, but not least, giant clumps of fragrant garden phlox.
The familiar jumble of the cottage garden has evolved from a strange mix of prairie and woodland natives. I say strange because dame’s rocket and cone flowers require very different conditions and yet they happily coexist in the sunny border like they were meant to grow together. Their care free blooms fit into the second tier of the sunny border since they are usually three to four foot in height, tall enough to raise their heads above the wild grasses or catch the precious sunshine dappled through rare tree foliage.
Gardening by the moon is a bit of a contentious subject among farmers and gardeners; some swear by it and find it very useful in their practice while others dismiss it as total hooey. I haven’t tried it yet, so I’m only talking about it in the abstract. The basic tenet behind the practice is that the moon’s gravitational pull helps draw sap upwards during the waxing phase and allows it to pool below ground during the waning phase.
If you ever drove by a flower meadow in the middle of summer, you must have realized that plants handle themselves very well without human assistance, as they’ve always done. The gardener is only there to cheer them along. A plant needs three things to thrive: sunlight, water and a proper balance of nutrients. From here on the details of what that means exactly for each species vary wildly.
The planters get a little tired and overgrown by the end of the summer, when the ideal combination of colors, heights and textures or their original design gives in to the whims of nature. There is beauty in that disarray, the beauty of the natural hierarchy that establishes itself outside of human intervention. The plant in the picture is a Canadian variety of tuberous begonia called “Illumination”. It put up a spectacular performance last summer but was a little shy this year, like all the other shade lovers. A few things about container care.
I felt kind of guilty to see that the grass had gone to seed on my lawn, but then I saw it ripen in a lot of other places and relaxed, it seems the combination of warmth and plentiful rain gave it the oomph to grow wild this year. Because we're used to seeing it in its domesticated form - the ubiquitous neatly manicured green carpet - we tend to forget what grass really looks like when left to its own devices. Its largest specimen, the bamboo, can grow over a hundred feet tall.
There must be a hive somewhere in the neighborhood, because bees visit my garden very often, to gather nectar from their favorite flowers. Sedums produce an abundance of it, and their small flowers make an insect's work a little easier. Did you know that a worker bee lives just forty days over the summer and during all this time of collecting nectar it only manages to gather a twelfth of a teaspoon's worth of honey? I feel guilty now, just thinking of all the times honey dripped off the bread.
If you love root division, you’ll be happy to know that it works for bulbs too, via scaling, slicing, scooping and scoring. Scaling is a propagation method that seems almost custom designed for lilies, whose bulbs “bloom” naturally, turning them into tiny clusters that look like artichokes. Scaling lily bulbs is the easiest propagation method available, you just dig them up, tease the scales gently apart and replant them in the desired location.
I’ve been growing vegetables in my little garden for over ten years, and one may wonder what is the benefit of waiting four whole months to get an eggplant when there is a whole stand of them at the grocery store all the time, even in the middle of winter. What happens is that every year, sometimes in the middle of February I get these packets of seeds. There is nothing going on outside, nothing but bleak cold dreary, and me, indoors, with a little packet of seeds in my hand.
Successful winter garden design relies on color and structure. Winter gardens are minimalist, they need good bones to make up for the missing greenery. Strong trees with well defined shapes and interesting bark, artful topiary, even tall pampas grasses or colorful seed heads can provide that structure. What nature doesn’t offer, garden design can. This is a time for its hard features to shine - beautiful flagstone pathways, statuary, stone benches, decorative planters, even an empty arbor gain prominence and impart sober elegance on an otherwise barren landscape.
Everything looked radiant in the glow of the golden hour, before the sunset dimmed it to violet and blue. This surreal light quality created halos around everything, lighting up the late daffodil blossoms from inside like so many tiny lante s. I stayed outside for as long as I could and took many pictures, I didn’t want to miss this little slice of heaven that opened fleetingly before my eyes. Every day there is a chance for the golden hour, but the actual occurrence of one is quite rare, especially so early in the year.
The air has been steadily humid for a month now, cool and humid, it reminds me of foggy mornings in the mountains or tropical places in winter, it’s almost too cool for August, not that I’m complaining, mind you. Every now and then I catch a break between raindrops and get out into the garden to breathe in the wet air that coats the lungs like a balm. Add in the green fragrance of flowers and foliage and you got yourself instant aromatherapy.
The day lilies came with the house and they were already established when we moved in, so I didn’t pay much attention to their care. It showed. I used to take day lilies for granted because they are so ubiquitous in public and commercial outdoor spaces people see them as care free.
If you ever watched a time lapse footage of a plant you can’t see the botanical world the same again. Nobody questions the fact that plants are living entities, but since their lives unfold at a speed so much slower than our own, one gets it intellectually, but rarely at gut level.