Hedgerow Design

I love vegetable gardens. Sometimes I love the way they look so much that I don’t want to pick the produce. But I do because there is nothing like super-fresh totally delicious food in the summer.

We’ve been eating peas and freezing peas and have another huge picking waiting for this evening.

To think I was wondering if the tomatillos would fruit:

My hope is that the tomatoes will ripen at the same time as the tomatillos, that the cilantro will stick around, and that the hot peppers will come along, all in time for perfect salsa.  The Cherokee Purple tomatoes are looking good.

Beans, both pole beans and bush beans are starting to flower, we can have beets now and some small carrots. We’ve gone scrabbling for new potatoes. And it’s time to get rid of the radishes we haven’t pulled yet so the parsley between them can spring forth. Artichoke plants are looking pretty good, too. — A. C.

Our eight Rhode Island Reds have been living in a crate in the barn since they came to us six weeks ago. Here they were last weekend.

We knew the time was coming for them to move to the palatial estate our friend Jon Bailey had been building for them, a fox-proof and hopefully all other predators-proof run attached to the old coop. Yesterday morning was clearly the time, as one had escaped:

Actually, the escapee is Billy. One of the eight chicks is not like the others; i.e., a rooster-to-be. We’re hoping he’ll be a nice one. ???!  So Julie spent Sunday morning giving the coop a thorough cleaning and the new girls journeyed to Taj Ma-chicken yesterday afternoon.

The old girls were wary.

The new kids have taken over the coop and zip all over their new quarters.

No pecking order squabbles with the old girls yet. We’ll see.

They did find the food right away. ‚ A. C.

The adage I’ve heard about new plantings is that first year they sleep, the second, creep and the third, leap. This garden on Islesboro is certainly leaping. We installed the garden and walkway in August of 2006, and had to dig out gravelly fill and add good loam and compost. It seems to be working.

One of the challenges of gardening on Islesboro is contending with voracious deer. As we did not want to put any sort of fence around the garden, but did want to use some plants that we know deer enjoy nibbling, we opted to try a “fence” of plants that the deer do not like. Hence, the outer edge of the main garden is a combination of lavender and blue oat grass, both things that deer turn away from. So far, so good.

The deer don’t seem to be sampling the willow to the left of the walkway either. Fingers crossed.

I planted some foxtail lilies among the  nepeta and rose, hoping that they would survive (I’ve tried them elsewhere in the midcoast and they haven’t made the winters).

All of this is on the front of the house, and this year we’ve turned the corner of a new sunroom and begun to develop the other areas.

Endless summer hydrangeas grace one end of the addition.

And we are beginning a shade garden around the corner. Maybe in three years these new plantings will be as lush as the ones on the other side of the house. Our next challenge on this property is to create a water feature. — A. C.

One of the gardens on Islesboro that we’ve been developing over the past few years in on four (or maybe it’s five, depending on how one counts) levels. When we first arrived the garden had a few peonies and thousands of poppies mixed in with weeds, along with climbing hydrangeas along the walls. We pulled the poppies and weeds, kept the hydrangeas and peonies, and have added and massaged the gardens every year.

Hauling plants, garden debris and compost up and down the steps is a task. But they look good.

While the peonies tend to be through blooming by the end of June, the rest of the garden is timed to provide a display in July and August, the main months when the clients are in residence.

We’ve learned that the challenge of this site is keeping it well watered in dry summers, as this one seems to be, and choosing plant material that is able to withstand the winter winds and cold.

In spots where plants didn’t survive the winter we’ve added a number of annuals this year, many of which I started from seed in our greenhouse. I look forward to seeing how they perform, especially the gentian salvia. — A. C.

We had a project this week to work at naturalizing along a drive that was disturbed by construction and a power line cut. We added spruce of various sizes and then understory shrubs. All native.

Here is Julie looking up the road on a rather bleak day in late winter.

And here is generally the same view yesterday.

It will take a while for everything to settle in and not look newly planted.

Another view toward a nifty large rock next to the power line cut:

And the way it looks now:

My hope is that the rock will be even more intriguing from the road because it is glimpsed through and around trees and shrubs than when it is fully exposed. And certainly the cleared area beyond starts to recede from view. — A. C.

We picked up eight Rhode Island Red day-old chicks on Wednesday of last week and are now in the process of raising them up to be healthy layers. We’ve had chickens for several years, but have always started off with older birds that were already laying eggs. So starting with chicks is very new for us — and, so far, fun!

Today is a cool, rainy day (for which we are very grateful), so when I went out to the barn to take their picture for this entry, I found them huddled together under the light bulb for warmth. Until they fledge out, they need a lot of warmth. But so far they are not too cold to be unable to break ranks for food and water.

They are growing fast. In another couple of weeks or less we’ll have to move them to some kind of pen so they can have more room and sunlight. We’re thinking of rigging something up for them in the greenhouse that will keep them dry and warm, but also safe from cats and foxes. We also have plans in the works for expanding the run that is attached to our chicken coop so that our expanded flock (the three girls who survived this spring’s fox raid plus the new youngsters) can safely and happily have range during the days we are not around to keep an eye on them.

There is nothing so satisfying as chickens, I’m finding. When I’m stressed with meeting deadlines, their contented scratching or dust-bathing, or roosting side-by-side goes a long way to bringing me back down to earth. The fresh eggs, too, always seem like such a magical gift. — J.W.

The Father Hugo rose that anchors a corner of one of our favorite gardens in which to work has been blooming this past week. It only shows forth for a week or so each year, but the display is spectacular, as the shrub is filled with pale yellow roses. The rest of the summer it has nice fresh, fine foliage, and is an altogether agreeable shrub rose for this protected corner. — A. C.

I’ve known for well over a year that some sort of tree would be going in this courtyard of a new home on the St. George river.

When we thought it might be a low Japanese maple, it seemed quite simple. But when the plan switched to planting a 12-foot Japanese Whitespire birch, I gulped and thought “Well, I like a challenge.” Ella, the Hedgerow poodle, supervised the process.

Now it looks like it’s always been there.

Last September we seeded the field behind this house. The entire field was disturbed in the construction process and our job was to oversee the contouring, keeping the apples in the field, and then return it to a meadow. So far, so good. A few thin patches down below, and one wet spot where a spring has been seeping, but it should fill in well with the different grasses (and a few wild flowers) we sowed. — A. C.

This past week all members of the Hedgerow crew helped at one point or another on revamping the entrances to a series of gardens. The first part of the work was structural: building walls.

This was the first dry-laid stone wall that both Adam and Inga worked on.  Here’s Adam getting started with the base stones.

And Inga working on some of the fine-tuning.

Most of the rocks came from an older incarnation of a wall that was a loose jumble, and they were rocks from the site. While Inga and Adam worked on their wall, I started the long curve that helps define the opposite edge.

I have been involved in the evolution of this particular garden for ten years. It’s a delight to massage a place, learn the plants that thrive in one micro-climate, work with a client’s changing uses of a space and let the place speak to us as we work with it.

Here’s Adam and Inga’s finished wall from the deck steps.

And then the entrance to the water-side gardens, which was once framed by curly willow trees and is now a garden that spills reaches through the walls to the entrance courtyard.

Our cat, Emmett, spends most of his days patrolling the nursery grounds. He’s particularly adept at rodent control, and has an unfortunate desire to aid in the avian natural selection process.

He likes taking to the heights to survey his domain.

The nursery continues to be full, though we have planted enough and sold enough to begin thinking about the next orders. Fruit trees and blueberries have been favorites so far this year.

The grove of birch trees at the end of the nursery is starting to leaf out and look very feathery.

And we are starting to plant things we started in the greenhouse. I planted my tomatoes on Sunday, and expect to be putting out most of these artichokes and cardoons soon.

I keep starting new things in the greenhouse, hoping that we’ll have some fun flowers and vegetables throughout the growing season. But there’s not enough time to get everything going I want to see.

The fig, by the way, has several fruits that seem to be getting riper. — A. C.