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Green Spotlight: Annual Stunners

Marie Viljoen — 2011-09-11T10:00:00 00:00

A combination of purple and white blooms that are irresistibly alluring.

Verbena bonariensis and Cleome. Photo: Marie Viljoen

When thinking of plant combinations I tend to steer clear of annuals and biennials, choosing instead perennials that will return year after year in waves of seasonal color. But it is very hard to resist the charm of this graceful combination. Cleome (also known as spider flower) and Verbena bonariensis both grow over four feet tall. While slender, the Cleome still manages to give the impression of luscious fullness and draws the eye while the skinny Verbena effortlessly insinuates itself above and between the sturdier stalks. The white and purple color pairing is arresting from a distance and invites closer inspection. Verbena self-seeds very freely so be sure to dead head religiously (it's therapeutic!) before it sets seed in order to save yourself some serious weeding the following spring.

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Plant of the week: Nicotiana mutabilis

Marie Viljoen — 2011-09-07T10:15:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Each week, bring a new bloom into your home and garden with our gardener's favorite floral find.

Nicotiana mutabilis growing in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Fragrance Garden. Photo: Marie Viljoen

The flowering tobaccos are easily the annual stars of September. Slow to start earlier in the year, they put on a growth spurt in late summer, raising their delicate flowers up to six feet above the garden. I like N. mutabilis for its namesake color-changing flowers, from white to pink, which are highly attractive to butterflies and humming birds. Plant it with its cousins, N. sylvestris (tall, white and scented) and N. alata (shorter with bright lime green flowers) for a spectacular floral display that lasts till frost.

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Growing Curiosity: Maureen Viljoen

Marie Viljoen — 2011-09-04T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Maureen Viljoen's Cape Town garden in mid summer. Photo: Marie Viljoen

Maureen Viljoen gardens in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a member and 2013 chairperson of The Constantia Valley Garden Club, which raises funds biennially via an Open Gardens Weekend for Abalimi bezekhaya and Soil for Life, two non-profits providing financial and practical support to enable underprivileged South Africans to grow their own food. The club's 2010 Open Gardens Weekend raised over $12,000 for these organizations.

She is also my mother, the woman who taught me to garden and to love plants almost as much as she does.

1. Why do you garden?
I garden because I absolutely have to. There is nothing I enjoy more, nothing more fulfilling, more pleasurable...It makes my life good.

2. What inspired you to garden?
When we built our first home in Bloemfontein in 1957 I was presented with an empty piece of ground. We'd had a lot of rain that year and it was a morass. My mother had always had a garden, and my sister had a garden. And as my garden grew, so did my interest.

Chartreuse and orange. Photo: Helen Garrett, Walking the Cape.

3. What was the first plant you grew?
My first garden was in Pinelands, Cape Town, where I was a little girl. I constructed a small house of bricks and made a tiny garden. Most of the plants were weeds pulled out of my mother's garden.

4. How often do you garden?
Every day! The garden has a lot going on in it and is not low maintenance.

5. What is your garden's climate?
Mediterranean [winter rainfall]. But in Cape Town we have this chunk of rock - Table Mountain - in the middle of the city, which dictates the climate, so my garden has its own microclimate.

6. What size is your garden?
A little less than half an acre.

7. What plant has most disappointed you?
I'm tempted to say roses, but they looked gorgeous last year because I fed them a lot. Broad [fava] beans. They haven't grown well here in Cape Town. In Bloemfontein where I had a big, sunny vegetable garden I had wonderful broad beans. And the tomatoes here get blight.

Agapanthus in Maureen Viljoen's garden. Photo: Marie Viljoen

8. What plant has made you happiest?
There are so many...I'm looking at the garden as I speak. Maybe the Agapanthus. I have so many different kinds, now, all sorts of hybrids and cultivars.

9. What do you love about your garden right now?
It's green, it's peaceful, spring is springing. The sky in the evening is faintly pink as the sun goes down behind the mountain. And there are lots of arum lilies in bloom which just came up by themselves; I didn't plant them.

10. What do you feed your garden?
Lots of compost, lots of organic stuff. I use Bounce Back - made from chicken manure, in pellet form. I have 80 bags of compost delivered three times a year. I use the compost I make in my own bins as a mulch - they are not in a warm enough spot in the garden so the compost breaks down slowly.

11. What would you like to grow that you can't?
Vegetables. But I would have to knock out a whole flower bed. I do have cabbages and baby marrows growing in pots.

12. Food, flowers, native or ornamental?
Flowers. With a little bit of food.

13. Most inspiring garden writer, thinker, blogger, personality?
My daughter! You often plant things and then I think, I must do that, too. And Christopher Lloyd, because of his flowers. He put the most amazing colors together. Great Dixter - I saw a photo of his patio there: He had everything crammed in there - those big aeoniums, like beacons, they were beautiful!

The garden in early summer. Photo: Helen Garrett, Walking the Cape

14. What plants do you dislike?
Oh! Jasmine. Not the Trachelospermum jasminoides, but the other one [Jasminum officinale], because here it is so invasive. Once you plant it, you just can't get rid of it. It goes everywhere. It smells nice, but it gives me hayfever, too. When it flowers I have terrible sinus trouble.

15. Would you like more sun or more shade?
More sun. If I chopped down a lot of shrubs and trees I would get it, but that is not going to happen. Trees become very important.

16. Where is your favorite public garden?
Wisley, in England - the headquarters of The Royal Horticultural Society. In Cape Town, Kirstenbosch, of course, and the garden at The Cellars-Hohenhort Hotel. Jean Almon created the sort of garden there that I aspire to. Fabulous roses with interesting groundcovers beneath them. It's a garden that has been put together with love.

To read more of my interview with my mom and to see a slideshow of her garden, visit 66 Square Feet.

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Plant of the Week: Fall Anemone

Marie Viljoen — 2011-08-31T11:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Flowers

Each week, bring a new bloom into your home and garden with our gardener's favorite floral find.

Fall anemones are starting to bloom now. Photo: Marie Viljoen

As August eases into September we need something in the garden--or on the fire escape--to remind us that cool weather is still far away.

Fall anemones are one of the most delightful plants to grace a late season garden. Happy in dappled shade or even full sun if they have enough water, their long slender stems support cup-shaped flowers that dance in the slightest breeze. Plant them in groups of five or more for the best results. But if space is limited, play them off against lime-green liriope or lavender-blue plectranthus to make them pop.

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Green Spotlight: Nutley, NJ

Marie Viljoen — 2011-08-28T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Garden Tours

Clipped hornbeams and Japanese forest grass in Silas Mountsier's garden. Photo: Marie Viljoen

Silas Mountsier's garden in Nutley, New Jersey is designed on a grand scale. It is revealed in increments, a partition here, a patio and pond there, before you are led to a wide circle of of lawn open to the sky and surrounded by towering oaks twice as old as Mr. Mountsier, who was born in the house 83 years ago.

In the gateway to the lawn (seen above), the clipped hornbeams are a stark and disciplined counterpoint to the soft golden grasses which hint at a soft, circular mass of Japanese forest grass that lies just beyond the entrance. The box of hornbeam in the background conceals a raised platform where you can sit and hide-a grown up tree house. Mr. Mountsier never lost the sense of exploration and curiosity that sends children to explore in the branches of trees.

If you'd like to see the garden for yourself, you're in luck: This garden and another across the road from it (wildly different in tone), both designed by Seattle-based landscape designer Richard Hartlage, will be open to the public on September 10th. The opening day is in honor of the 90th birthday of Elizabeth Scholtz, the director emeritus of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Proceeds from the ticket sales will benefit the BBG.

For directions and additional info about the garden tour, check out the invitation.

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Plant of the Week: Purple Loosestrife

Marie Viljoen — 2011-08-24T14:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Each week, our gardener examines a unique floral find.

Purple loosestrife at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, New York. Photo: Marie Viljoen

This week's plant-pick is about one that we should avoid or remove.

Before I knew how invasive Lythrum salicaria is, I incorporated it into a garden design. It was beautiful: Tall, pink, wild. But purple loosestrife has marched from Eurasia into our waterways and wet areas, clogged rivers, pushed out native plants, upset the habitat of insects, birds and small mammals and is here to stay. It is very hard to eradicate and there is only one thing you can do to help: Do not buy it, do not plant it. If you see it on offer, complain. Its sale has been banned in many states.

Here is some ammunition for your rant at your local nursery.

Want an alternative? Try gay feather, Lyatris spicata, or native winged loosestrife, Lythrum alatum.

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Growing Curiosity: Mimi Jorling

Marie Viljoen — 2011-08-21T10:05:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Getting to know the faces and stories behind our favorite gardens. Today: Horticulturist Mimi Jorling.

Horticulturist, Mimi Jorling. Photo: Marie Viljoen

Mimi Jorling has been a horticulturist for over 15 years, working in residential gardens, botanical gardens, and public parks. She is currently responsible for the plantings in Chelsea Cove, Segment 5 of the Hudson River Park in New York City, designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh and Associates. We chatted in the entry garden designed by Lynden B. Miller which opened to the public in 2010. Mimi holds a certificate in horticulture from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

1. Why do you garden?
I garden for therapy. I grew up in rural areas. In New York City being in - literal - contact with the earth and sky is important. I get comments from people every day, who thank me for the plantings. When they are in a garden they realize what a restorative effect it has. Making that space for other people is very rewarding. And being able to control your surroundings in a chaotic world feels good. I was freaked out about something once when I lived in Denver, so I went out and bought some marigolds and then planted them in this very strict arc! Afterwards I felt better: "OK, everything's in control..."

2. Who or what inspired you to garden?
My dad had a vegetable garden and my mom a flower garden. They did not think of themselves as gardeners but were really excited about their garden projects: "Look! The zucchini worked!"

3. What was the first plant you grew?
A peanut. We had this peanut growing kit: A plastic cup, some red yarn, and we grew a peanut plant. They sprout really easily.

4. How often do you garden?
Monday to Friday, 7am till 3.30pm. Weather has no effect on my schedule. In winter it might be 10'F out with 30 mile-per-hour winds off the Hudson, and I'm out here.

5. What is your garden's USDA zone?
New York City is in USDA Zone 6b, but this is a microclimate. It is exposed and the wind in winter off the water is very cold.

6. What size is the garden and park you take care of?
Segment 5 runs from West 22nd Street to West 28th Street and is part of the five-and-a-half mile long waterfront park between the Hudson River and the eight-lane West Side highway.

Chelsea Cove's entry garden. Photo Marie Viljoen

7. What plant has most disappointed you?
I don't think I've ever been disappointed by a plant!

8. What plant has made you happiest?
In this garden, the crepe myrtle. Its bark, flowers and form. It's been blooming now for six weeks. My favorite plant is echinops. I love how it glows, as though illuminated, and it's just so spiky and alive-looking.

9. What do you love about your garden right now?
The river. People forget that it is a garden element. I worked beside the river in Battery Park for seven years and I would have a hard time working in Central Park or Prospect Park. The river adds so much. You can breathe, there is movement and openness.

10. What do you feed your garden?
I use compost, but unfortunately we don't make our own. A garbage service hauls away our woody and herbaceous debris. I don't know what the difficulty is in having the truck haul it to a composting site rather than the landfill but I have met with much resistance when repeatedly suggesting that. Our compost is ordered and I apply a lot in the spring and in fall. The soil here is very sandy and water just runs straight through. I mix mulch with compost, too, to help improve the soil.

11. What would you like to grow, that you can't?
The first thing that comes to mind is a lime tree so I could make fresh limeade on demand - inspired by Haitians who make delicious limeade and also use limes in a lot of their cooking. Through the Haitian dance I began studying about 15 years ago, I have learned about Haitian culture. After the earthquake last year, I felt I had to go to Haiti and try to help the people, in whatever way I could, who have added such richness to my life through dance and music. I am currently working with a Haitian friend to build a Haitian-run school there. My contribution to the curriculum will be establishing a food garden and hopefully an ornamental garden as well. Or an ornamental food garden!

12. Food, flowers, native or ornamental?
Hm. I think that because of my experience gardening in Colorado, and two very hot summers here (I moved back to NYC last June), I'd say anything drought resistant. The more drought resistant the better. In Colorado people have lawns but the front yard of the house I still have there is amazing and is all perennials. People stop and look. It is very low maintenance and drought tolerant. I have a renter in the house and told him to at least keep the shrubs alive. I haven't seen the garden since June 2010.

13. Most inspiring garden writer, thinker, blogger, personality?
[British conceptual landscape artist] Andy Goldsworthy spends time within a natural landscape before creating anything, in order to understand it. I think that is how gardens should be designed. I love the movie about his work, Rivers and Tides.

14. What plants do you dislike?
Euonymous. At the moment a creeping form (Euonymous fortunei) is affecting the crabapples - I think - and we can't access the soil to pick up diseased crabapple leaves or to fertilize the trees. It's not the euonymous' fault but I do hate euonymous

Spirea, catmint, barberry and fall anemones in Chelsea Cove's entry garden. Photo Marie Viljoen

15. Would you like more sun or more shade?
I don't mind sun but this garden is very hot with very little shade. Some of the plants used in the design are for shade: hostas, heuchera, bergenia. Because the soil is also sandy it does not retain water and they suffer and burn. I am researching drought tolerant plants, like a blue penstemon, and many are only available out West. The flower colors in the entry garden here are primary - red, yellow and blue. When I wondered why, Lynden Miller explained that she hated the huge [Chelsea Piers] building south of us, which has these colors in it, and that she used them in the design to try and disguise it!

16. Where is your favorite public garden?
It's not a garden but I love the woody area of Prospect Park, Brooklyn. It sounds corny, I know, but it is nature's garden. Being in the city, it is very refreshing. There are some big trees! There are big trees in Central Park but not within woodland. I love it.

Read more about the entry garden and the rest of my conversation with Mimi at 66 Square Feet.

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Plant of the Week: Dwarf Joe Pye Weed

Marie Viljoen — 2011-08-17T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Each week, bring a new bloom into your home and garden with our gardener's favorite floral find.

Eupatorium dubeum "Little Joe". Photo: Marie Viljoen

Beautiful Eupatorium dubium "Little Joe" is not diminutive by many standards: It reaches 3'-4'. But compared to Eupatorium fistulosum, which teeters on 10' stems, "Little Joe" is a more manageable choice for most gardens as it flourishes in moist conditions, with either full sun or partial shade. In Northern America, Eupatorium dubium usually grows naturally within 100 miles of the Atlantic coast near streams and wetlands. A late summer bloomer, it blossoms with wide lilac flower heads that are irresistible to bees and butterflies. It is hardy from Zones 4-9.

Read more about joe pye weeds and other native plants with late summer flowers.

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Green Spotlight: The High Line

Marie Viljoen — 2011-08-14T11:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Like any great room, a great garden needs to balance style and substance. Here, the spaces that do it right.

The High Line in August. Photo: Marie Viljoen

A park for every season...

Despite some serious competition from parks to the south, north and even across the East River in Brooklyn, Manhattan's High Line is widely acknowledged to be the new jewel in New York's horticultural crown.

Pictured above is the Chelsea Grasslands section of the elevated railroad. In a planting design conceived by Piet Oudolf, cultivated meadow grasses and perennials are mixed with native plants to create a sophisticated mosaic that remains true to the essence of the opportunistic weeds and grasses that used to spring from the gravel and abandoned tracks.

Here, a masterful combination of grasses and perennials provides interest in every season. In August the splashing yellow of black-eyed susans, statuesque prairie dock and compass plant dominate the color scheme while rich, rusty sneezeweeds in low mounds beside stands of purple broadleaf ironweed offset the bright daisies. Sporadic, lighter highlights wild quinine, which peaks in July, signal the turning season, while red switch grass gives an early hint of the fall to come. Form and texture are as important as fleeting flowers, and the spiky orbs of Eryngium seed capsules are juxtaposed beside prairie dropseed whose airy, early stems of seedheads herald a sequence of grass bloom that peaks in early fall.

For a full list of plants visit the Highline's August Bloom List and find more images of the stunning August Highline at 66 Square Feet.

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Plant of the Week: Cardinal Flower

Marie Viljoen — 2011-08-10T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Each week, bring a new bloom into your home and garden with our gardener's favorite floral find.

Lobelia cardinalis in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Photo: Marie Viljoen

Lobelia cardinalis, also known as cardinal flower, is a spectacular perennial that stops people and hummingbird in mid flight. Cardinal flowers are best planted in groups for dramatic effect. A native of eastern North American wetlands and stream edges, this is one plant that demands a wet environment. Plant it in a low area that attracts runoff or make the most of a boggy, ill-drained spot. Alternatively, you can also plant it in a container and obstruct the drainage holes to allow for less runoff. Hardy from USDA zones 3-9.

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Green Spotlight: Urban Balcony

Marie Viljoen — 2011-08-07T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Like any great room, a great garden needs to balance style and substance. Here, the spaces that do it right.

A balcony garden in Tribeca. Photo: Marie Viljoen

Remember to look up...

Poised above a busy New York street is this small wrought-iron balcony bursting with summer annuals, a sign of an apartment dweller who adores and needs flowers. Down below, one out of a dozen passersby looks up and smiles.

This urban garden reminds us that we need not over-analyze our plant choices. I can't identify every plant up there, apart from the obvious handful of sunny marigolds and a probable wisteria vine. But the spotlight in this aerie shines upon the fragrant heads of an often overlooked and overused flower: Petunia. Garden geeks may shun them as being too commonplace while new, wary, or by-rote gardeners buy them by the tray-load year in and year out, which makes the garden geeks sigh. But these flowers are hardy creatures. They're charming when planted with a keen eye for color, forgiving of neglect, and unexpectedly perfumed at night.

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Plant of the week: Wild Bergamot

Marie Viljoen — 2011-08-03T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Each week, bring a new bloom into your home and garden with our gardener's favorite floral find.

Wild bergamot at Pier One, Brooklyn Bridge Park. Photo: Marie Viljoen

Go native with this perennial butterfly magnet...

Monarda fistulosa is a member of the mint family, and native to Eastern North America. Its rather lovelier common names are wild bergamot, bee balm, or horsemint, and its strongly scented leaves were traditionally used as an antiseptic tea. The leaves are also edible as a fresh herb or cooked green, but its pale lilac flowers steal the show this month, luring butterflies and other pollinators in midsummer. Full sun is best for producing the most flowers, and it is very hardy, from USDA Zones 3-9.

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Growing Curiosity: Alex Mitchell

Marie Viljoen — 2011-07-31T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Getting to know the faces and stories behind our favorite gardens. Today: British garden author Alex Mitchell.

Alex Mitchell in her London garden. Photo: Paul Debois.

British garden writer and urban gardener Alex Mitchell's new book The Edible Balcony-about small spaces and what you can grow in them-will be released by Rodale later this year in the United States. (Full disclosure: this writer's Brooklyn terrace appears in it.) In the meantime you can get to know Alex at her website, The Edible Gardener.

1. Why do you garden?
I garden for some space from my little kids (though they usually follow me outside within minutes and start shooting each other with water pistols) from London and from work pressures. Mainly though-and it's so hard to express this without sounding pretentious so I'm not even going to try not to-it's for self-expression, to create my own little world that's beautiful to me.

2. Who or what inspired you to garden?
My nursery school was a hut at the end of a long woodland garden in the Kent countryside run by a very eccentric old lady.On the way to the hut you walked down a stepping stone path past perfect little clearings of lawn surrounded by foxgloves and honesty, like magical woodland glades. I thought fairies lived in there. We weren't allowed to step off the path and go into them-she probably wanted to protect her lawns. Maybe that's what made gardening so appealing to me-I can finally walk on the grass.

3. What was the first plant you grew?
A miniature yellow patio rose I planted in the front garden at my shared house in Bristol when I was at university. Looking back, it was quite hideous, but I loved it because it survived a street party that got rather out of hand. The morning after it looked like a dead twig trampled into the mud by the trainered feet of a few hundred students, but a week later it had recovered and was putting out green shoots. How can you not respect something that plucky?

4. How often do you garden?
Whenever I have a spare moment. But also whenever I have a work deadline and that cosmia just suddenly needs deadheading.

5. What is your gardening climate zone?
I was born in Kent which I think is equivalent to your USDA Zone 8. This is only 25 miles away from London where I live now, which is equivalent to your Zone 9, due to the urban heat island effect. Winter temperatures rarely dip below minus 5 Celsius [41' F] and summer temperatures often reach 30 Celsius [86' F].

6. What size is your garden?
About 50 foot long and 15 foot wide

7. What plant has most disappointed you?
My cocktail kiwi planted with great excitement and expectation of bunches of grape-sized sweet kiwi fruit hardy enough to survive our winter. Apparently. For two years I've watched it put out
fresh green shoots full of promise. And for two years I've watched helplessly as they are munched right back to the base - probably by snails. Never seen a bud, let alone a kiwi.

8. What plant has made you happiest?
There's something about nasturtiums that makes me deliriously happy. They're so uncomplicatedly cheerful. And they cover awkward bare spaces and clamber up ugly fences. Of course, you can also eat them so they're a win-win plant really. Californian poppies come a close second - I must have a thing about orange.

9. What do you love about your garden right now?
Watching the bees buzzing like crazy over the lavender and the thornless blackberry, eating apricots and peaches straight from the tree with the kids, snipping off globe artichokes and throwing them straight into boiling water to be eating with plenty of mayonnaise, and rooting strawberry runners from the plants which had the tastiest fruit. I like making new plants without having to go and buy them.

10. What do you feed your garden?
Garden compost and worm compost as a soil conditioner, diluted liquid seaweed feed and worm tea for growing plants.

11. What would you like to grow, that you can't?
Pomegranates - heaven in a fruit.

12. Food, flowers, native or ornamental?
Ornamental food.

13. Most inspiring garden writer, thinker, blogger, personality?
I love reading anything by Anna Pavord and Monty Don - they make gardening sound vital, exciting, essential, like it's about more than just plants. Which, of course, it is. As a designer, I love everything Andy Sturgeon does.

14. What plants do you dislike?
I don't think there's really ever any excuse for spotted laurel.

15. Would you like more sun or more shade?
I live in London. Of course I want more sun!

16. Where is your favorite public garden?
Sissinghurst in Kent. A cliché I know, but I've never seen such glorious, jumbly, colourful planting as here last summer. A perfect mix of formality and exuberant wildness. And it's fun climbing up the tower and pretending you're Vita for a moment - tweed jacket optional.

Visit Alex Mitchell's London garden via this video.

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Plant of the week: Kent Beauty

Marie Viljoen — 2011-07-27T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Each week, bring something new to your garden/windowsill/favorite vase -- and impress your friends with your ahead-of-the-curve picks.

Oreganum "Kent Beauty". Photo: Marie Viljoen

There's oregano and then there's oregano...

Oreganum "Kent Beauty" is a hybrid ornamental oregano, a cross between O. rotundifolium and O. scabrum. Its silvery-blue and lime leaf bracts are tinged with pink and its flowers fade to deep purple. "Kent Beauty" is an arresting perennial for a hot, sunny spot with exceptionally good drainage, and it works well in pots. The only thing this fragrant plant detests is wet feet. Hardy from zones 6-9, it can be grown as an annual in colder climes.

Previous Plant Picks:

Repeat-blooming rose
B ayberry, the native herb
E dible ornamental: white currants
P erfect fruit: strawberries

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Green Spotlight: Brooklyn Riot

Marie Viljoen — 2011-07-22T12:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers, Garden Tours

Like any great room, a great garden needs to balance style and substance. Here, the spaces that do it right.

Vanderveer Place, Brooklyn. Photo: Marie Viljoen

The Greenest Block in Brooklyn Competition is underway in the middle of a sticky New York heatwave. Sponsored by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's GreenBridge, the competition fosters the greening of the most populous borough's heat-radiating streets. In some neighborhoods flowers and leaves are outnumbered by cars and concrete; turn a corner and suddenly, Pow! - there are opportunistic and fiercely competitive flower baskets hanging from the street signs and sprouting from the wide sidewalks.

This garden caught my eye because it seemed the definition of exuberance. There is no holding back: more is more. Chain-link might be considered an eyesore in most situations, but in the face of this floral explosion, it reads as the voice of reason, an orderly construct containing an uninhibited riot of flowers that would never be acquainted in nature. Sun-loving bright yellow Rudbeckia and Helianthus, and pink and white Echinacea--North American natives and their derivitives--jostle beside mauve mophead Hydrangeas, which are usually prescribed for sedate, dappled shade. Tall orange turkscap lilies look down on their lipstick-pink Asiatic cousins. An unusual blue Clematis with nodding flowers (perhaps Clematis "Betty Corning", whispering of Albany) rises above the riff raff below.

This is Brooklyn. Welcome to the party!

See previous Green Spotlights:

Red Hook's Pier 44
F lowers Along a Red Brick Wall
S idewalk Garden
A Lily Garden

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Plant of the Week: Rose

Marie Viljoen — 2011-07-20T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Each week, bring something new to your garden/windowsill/favorite vase -- and impress your friends with your ahead-of-the-curve picks.

Rosa "Pat Austin", bred by David Austin. Photo: Marie Viljoen

The most well-known flower of all has a reputation for being fickle. But a repeat-blooming shrub rose's unmatched ability to produce those sweet-smelling blooms from spring until frost perhaps excuses a little botanical tetchiness. Roses need direct sun (six hours minimum), regular feeding and water. Just like people. Deny them, and that fussiness may become apparent.

For months of flowers, look for roses described as repeat-blooming.

Learn more about rose care from David Austin.

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Growing Curiosity: Trevor Jack

Marie Viljoen — 2011-07-15T13:23:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Garden Tours

Getting to know the faces and stories behind our favorite gardens. Today: Mechanic/urban gardener Trevor Jack.

Trevor Jack's container gardens. Photo: Marie Viljoen

On a corner lot in Brooklyn, surrounded by new development, St. Vincent and the Grenadines native Trevor Jack grows vegetables and salad greens in dozens of white construction material buckets, an empty bath and paint cans. Across the road, raised on scaffolding behind the garage where he works as a mechanic, he has another small garden, elevated to reach the sunlight between high buildings. In the lilting accent of the islands, he talked to me about his gardens.

1. Why do you garden?

I like all my things to be fresh. My vegetables are more fresh than what comes from the store. They spray chemicals on those vegetables.

2. Who or what inspired you to garden?

I start to garden from the day I was born. My mother and father taught me. We grow everything. You name it, you can have it.

3. What was the first plant you grew?

Banana! I had a tree.

4. How often do you garden?

Every day.

5. What is your USDA zone?

I don't know about zones.

6. What size is your garden?

My boss lets me garden in his parking lot and I grow on scaffolding behind the garage.

7. What plant has most disappointed you?

All plants are good.

8. What plant has made you happiest?

No plant make me happiest. It's how you take care of them...

Eggplants ripening. Photo: Marie Viljoen

9. What do you love about your garden right now?

The eggplant is getting ripe.

10. What do you feed your garden?

Miracle Gro. You got to give them nourishment. I have not tried other fertilizers, so I cannot compare.

11. What would you like to grow, that you can't?

Everything. Here people only grow two, three vegetables -- tomatoes, peppers, corn.

12. Food, flowers, native or ornamental?

Vegetables. Vegetables can make me grow, but flowers I must throw away.

13. Most inspiring gardener, garden writer, thinker, blogger, personality?

I don't have time to think about other gardeners.

14. What plants do you dislike?

I like all plants.

15. Would you like more sun or more shade?

More sun. Here we only have two months of real sun. Garden need more sun than shade. Two things make garden grow: sun and water

16. Where is your favorite public garden?

I don't have time to look at gardens. I water by hand every day, carry water from the garage. The time I finish work, taking care of my garden and making something to eat, is time to go to bed.

My advice? It is very important to teach kids to garden. Construction, fixing cars? If there is a choice between gardening and these other things, choose gardening.

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Plant of the Week: Bayberry

Marie Viljoen — 2011-07-13T14:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Each week, bring something new to your garden/windowsill/favorite vase -- and impress your friends with your ahead-of-the-curve picks.

Northern bayberry and its fruit. Photo: Marie Viljoen

Northern bayberry -- Myrica pensylvanica -- is a low-maintenance, native herb. A low-growing stalwart of dunes and coastal vegetation, it withstands dry conditions and salt spray. Crush its leaves and the scent talks of the seaside. A semi evergreen shrub, most people recognize its attractive dusky purple berries, hard as BB pellets. Recently I started to cook with its aromatic leaves and discovered in them a fresh alternative to bay leaf. The shrubs grow in sand, on dry roof tops and resist the onslaught of deer.

Learn more about bayberry.

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Green Spotlight: Red Hook's Pier 44

Marie Viljoen — 2011-07-10T11:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers, Garden Tours

Like any great room, a great garden needs to balance style and substance. Here, the spaces that do it right.

Pier 44 Waterfront Garden, Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photo: Marie Viljoen

The right plants for the right place: Perfection. This long, narrow waterfront garden looking out over an inlet on New York Harbor must survive biting winter winds and desiccating salt spray off the nearby water. As the seasons progress, the plants must withstand the high temperatures and humidity of the city at its tropical worst. So to see lush growth in early summer is to realize that plant choice has everything to do with successful gardens in tough environments.

Creamy yucca flowers stand four feet tall, regularly punctuating the two parallel planting beds, acting as striking focal points amongst the sprawling blue catnip, purple berberis bushes, silver-leafed perovskia (Russian sage) and chartreuse spirea. Sturdy wooden benches nestled within the foliage and flowers give visitors the chance to settle and watch the passing water traffic.

Word has it that while Lynden B. Miller, the renowned public garden designer responsible for this garden's layout, loves the form of yucca's spiky grey-blue leaves, she loathes the conspicuous flowers: When the flower stems die, new leaves form at an angle from the stem, throwing off their original symmetry. Until I saw these specimens I had held yucca off at an arm's length for this reason. Now I see its softer side. And if it can make it here, it can make it anywhere.

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Plant of the Week: White Currants

Marie Viljoen — 2011-07-06T10:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers

Each week, bring something new to your garden/windowsill/favorite vase -- and impress your friends with your ahead-of-the-curve picks.

Just-picked white currants. Photo: Marie Viljoen

Plant this ornamental fruit for its beautiful -- and delicious -- berries. Currants belong in every garden that will have them. Low-fuss, adaptable plants, these shrubs prefer to be planted in full morning sun with shade to cool them later in the day. They are hardy from USDA Zones 3-8. Their attractive flowers are followed by pearls of tart, translucent berries in early summer, perfect for stripping from their stems with your teeth or for turning into clear jellies.