GARDENOPOLIS Cleveland thanks Ken Weiss who photographed some of the wildlife at our Launch Party on August 30th.
View below some party animals – genus, “gardener”
Pycnanthemum muticum or mountain mint is one of my new favorite perennial plants. Not only does it have a sweet white-pink flower, the leaves and stems have an almost icy appearance. It is lighting up one of the darker spots of a shady forest area in my front yard. I am planning to add lots more of it (plant gluttony, again) throughout that area. Although it is not supposed to do well in deep shade, rather preferring full sun to part shade, I am going to experiment a bit to see how deep into the shade it will thrive. Already now, on the edge of sun and shade, it is doing a good job of lighting up the area. It is native to the US in zones 4-8. It’s height and spread is from 1-3 feet. It blooms from July to September. It tolerates some dryness and attracts butterflies and bees. It is not bothered by insects or deer. It can be used to make tea and may be used as insect repellant when rubbed on the skin. So many virtues!
Permaculture Success….and Failure
Three years ago, I and five other permaculturists (including GARDENOPOLIS Cleveland co-editor Ann McCulloh) built a Hugelkultur in my back yard. The name comes from the German “Hügelkultur” or “hill culture” and consists of a 5-foot+ pile of logs and branches covered with soil. Ideally, over time, a Hugelkultur evolves like this:
In theory, Hugelkulturs offer gardeners multiple benefits. One can simultaneously (1) recycle logs from downed trees; (2) increase gardening surface area; (3) create a sun trap to extend the growing season; and (4) extract water and nutrients from the decaying trees and, thus, eliminate the need for watering.
I’ve had to make adjustments to my Hugelkultur. My first installation of (conventional) top soil contained too much sand. Rain and snow melt quickly eroded much of it away. I then replaced the soil with a sturdier mixture of clay fill and compost, which has stayed in place.
And some plants seem to love their whole Hugelkultur experience! Here’s an exuberant horse radish that seems to be burrowing deep into the decaying wood’s nutrients and water.
But I’ve had failures, too. Here’s a dried out (and barely recognizable) kale plant that couldn’t survive the drought and my three week absence from Cleveland.
Maybe its root didn’t go deep enough to tap the underlying moisture or maybe, as Ann suggests, it, like all brassicas, just didn’t relate to the heavily fungal soil created by decaying wood. Since my basil (of course, a non-brassica) did well —-just a few feet away, not especially deep-rooted–I’m inclined to accept the latter explanation.
Many thanks to Lois Rose, Master Gardener, for sending these photos of the New York Botanical Garden’s Native Plant Garden in its early stages last year.
The first in a series on intriguing gardens and their gardeners.
Margaret’s late summer garden is a feast of exuberant color and form created with a mix of annuals and perennials: take a look at the flowers and foliage, and Margaret, herself, dressed as one of her favorite creatures, a butterfly.
Most striking in the above photo are the giant castor bean plants, grown this year from seeds of last year’s planting. See also, dahlias from tubers and cardoon at lower left.
Cutting garden of dahlias from tubers and zinnias from seed.
Margaret’s container arrangements show an exceptional sense of color and form.
Above container with canna, New Guinea impatiens, verbena and portulaca, surrounded by Gardenmeister fuchsia, petunias and annual blue lobelia.
The pot on the pedastal has canna, verbena and calibrachoa. It is surrounded by darmera peltata, hydrangea, blue cardinal flower (lobelia siphilitica).
She defines space and creates structure in the late summer with annuals, canna and zinnias.
Watch for further posts on Margaret’s garden in other seasons.
To Seamus Heaney in Heaven
after ‘The Peninsula’
Sometimes, when you have nothing to say, it is because
water and ground in their extremity
swallow the words before they leave your mouth.
They’re in the dark again and will never arrive.
The sky road is like that. The road round the peninsula
rides toward a drunken sea and sky.
There is no horizon. The sky and the glazed sea meld.
The whitewashed gabled cottage you mentioned
is there at the point where all things merge and marry,
a compass for swallowed words.
It is as you said – the sea, and the islands riding the sea,
except there is no fog. This is Green Ireland
on a Best Day. Looking back, there is the ground rising,
and the road riding up the grassed hill,
a landscape clean in its own shape,
that holds the code to all landscapes.
Sometimes, when you still have nothing to say,
after a long drive round a peninsula,
it is because water and ground in their extremity
have swallowed worlds.
GARDENOPOLIS Cleveland visits the Native Plants Garden in the N.Y. Botanical Garden
The newest of the New York Botanical Garden’s specialized collections, the native plant garden, designed to be aesthetically pleasing in a kind of wild and messy way, is so much more than just a collection of some 100,000 native plants representative of the indigenous flora of the northeastern and northern Continental United States.
The garden is made of several diverse ecosystems, including wetlands, a lake, meadows, and hillside forests. I saw nothing that is not also indigenous to northeast Ohio.
In late summer it is the billowing prairie flowers and grasses that speak most strongly: goldenrod, ironweed, silvery native mints, rattlesnake master, liatrus, Joe-Pye weed (all with their accompanying pollinators – our native bees, wasps, flies, and butterflies)….
and– in wetter places — both blue and red lobelia (with accompanying hummingbirds) and the showy hibiscus moscheutos.
Both dry and damp hillsides grow many varieties of ferns and carex,
false Solomon’s seal, native ginger,
and so much more …and of course a multitude of native shrubs and trees. To peruse a list of plants used in this native plant garden go to www.nybg.org/native-plant-garden.
A garden of native plants can be perfect for practicing sloth in, as many of these plants look their best when not expected to be too neat and tidy. Thoughtful design can supply the look of intentional order so many people in urban residential settings desire.
Why Does An Onion Cross the Path?
Obviously, to plant itself on the other side. That’s what Egyptian Walking Onions do, which makes them such a great permaculture plant. The 15-inch or so stalk leans over and lays its multi-lobed bulbhead gently on the ground. There the bulbs set root and grow fresh plants.
What it means is a steady supply of scallions that one never has to plant. The supply begins almost as soon as the snow melts. I try to keep a steady supply of three or four in the refrigerator hydrator for off-the-shelf use. The mature bulbs get a little wooden by July, but, after a fresh August self-planting (see photo below), harvest picks up again in September until well into November.
Walking onion posing with the Canadian anemone.
The Sweet Taste of Skirret
If there were ever a contest for best permaculture plant ever, I’d nominate skirret. So would our permaculture classes, where, as part of the food sampling Elsa and I offer, students chase after the last bits. Skirret is strange-looking white root best harvested during in February or March thaws and then roasted in olive oil.
The plant is native to China. However, via the Silk Road, it made its way early on to the West, most notably to the table of Emperor Tiberius, for whom skirret was a particular favorite. It later became a standard root vegetable throughout Europe, but was (surprisingly) displaced by the New World’s potato and is (also surprisingly, given its great, distinctive flavor) little known today.
It actually tastes more like a parsnip with a sweetness that caused the Germans to call it Zuckerwurzel or “sugar root.”
Why is it such a great permaculture plant?
It renews itself: after cutting off the Medusa-like rootlets; after eating the latter you can replant the base and wait for future harvests. Moreover, the base multiplies itself, much like an unfolding paper doll, into several separate roots that can easily be replanted, so you can gradually spread plantings and increase quantities throughout your garden.
Its umbel of small white summer flowers (resembling Queen Ann’s lace) attracts parasitic wasps and other beneficial insects.
It has no pest enemies and requires no more care than harvesting and replanting.
What more could a permaculturist ask for?
Permaculture in Leipzig 2
Leipzig, Germany, is the site of many more than just one thriving permaculturist. (see Part 1 http://www.gardenopoliscleveland.org/2015/08/permaculture-in-leipzig-1/). In fact, the city is abuzz with cutting edge permaculture and sustainability projects that should make Cleveland’s green advocates, well, green with envy. Some context:
The city (population 556,000, or a little bigger than Cleveland) has a number of things going for it. First of all, it experienced relatively modest destruction from World War II bombing and then in the early 1990s, when many old buildings were close to collapse, German reunification funded major restoration. So the city has preserved much of its past.
Second, it has a tradition of resisting authority—- from Johann Sebastian Bach, who (unlike his contemporary, Georg Friedrich Handel) battled secular rulers and addressed his music to commoners, to the Monday night marchers in 1989 who led the peaceful revolution against communist rule.
Third, it has enjoyed an explosion of young people, who, when they aren’t riding bikes, are generally creating a vibrant local scene. Here’s a song from the Sachsenbrϋcke, a bridge that has become a young people’s hangout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpKoNFx8yy0&feature=youtu.be.
Finally—and this is a blog about gardens!—Leipzig is the origin point in 1864 of Schrebergärten—the hugely successful community garden movement in Germany. Leipzig still devotes enormous space to such gardens:
Taken together, it’s no surprise that Leipzig has become a post-fossil-fuel Transition Town (http://www.transitionus.org/) and made substantial progress toward sustainability across the board.
The Leipzig Transition Town organization has even put together a map describing (in German and English) 58 separate sustainable efforts. Here, picked at random, are four:
• KunZstoffe. Recycling and upcycling centre. A stock of materials based on leftovers, waste and discarded products is provided for creating new added value.
• Lost Food is a self-governed cooperative to distribute organic, healthy and local food for an affordable and fair price.
• Dölitzer Wassermühle is a project rebuilding a historic watermill for electricity production. Also environmental education is provided for kindergarten children.
• Lastenrad Leipzig und Radküche: Selling, refurbishing and renting of used Dutch cargo bikes and a vegan, fossil-energy-free kitchen on a cargo bike. (Cargo bikes are bikes specifically designed to carry large loads.)
Here’s the full map list: http://www.nachhaltiges-leipzig.de/wp-content/themes/increase-child/image/Degrowth-Stadtplan-LiW.pdf
See any ideas for Cleveland?
