Garden of the Day: Crown Heights Verdant
[nggallery id=”21338″ template=galleryview] A dispatch from Crown Heights: We’ve been here since 2002, and have worked on the garden incrementally since then. Closest to the house is the concrete patio, which is as we found it. Here we have the shed, the grill, the patio table, the herb garden and the grape arbor. The central…
[nggallery id=”21338″ template=galleryview]
A dispatch from Crown Heights:
We’ve been here since 2002, and have worked on the garden incrementally since then. Closest to the house is the concrete patio, which is as we found it. Here we have the shed, the grill, the patio table, the herb garden and the grape arbor. The central area consists of small plantings with a brick path and flower boxes on either side. Finally the ‘lawn’, which is a mix of grass, dandelions, plantain (the weed) etc. Here we sit in the Adirondack chairs to enjoy the ferns, pine tree, and Bradford pear. As a nature lover, one of the things I appreciate is the way various parts of the garden are microcosms of the wider natural world. The prickly pear (Opuntia) cactus was started from a single ‘leaf’ purchased in a small pot from a vendor in Union Square. Opuntia is native to the northeast and can be seen in ‘the wild’ in Jamaica Bay Refuge, and on the Hudson palisades.
This is fun—Keep the submissions coming!
Garden of the Day: Bushwick ‘English Garden’ [Flickr]
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Garden of the Day: PLG Make-Over [Brownstoner]
Submit Your Garden for ‘Garden of the Day’ [Brownstoner]
I love climbing hydrangea too, as 11:19 suggests. One thing, just make sure your fence is strong and secure because hydrangea is a particularly heavy climbing plant and it can pull down a weaker fence.
Beautiful garden. I vote for morning glories despite the negative vote above. I used them to cover the chain link fence around my previous house, and they worked and looked great.
Keep up the lovely work!
Great gardens
What a fantastic job. It really looks great.
I am casting my vote for climbing hydrangea. It’s not evergreen but makes a beautiful cover in summer, won’t take over and strangle other trees and does well in sun or shade.
More encouraging remarks! Thanks to all for the specific recommendations. As far as vines on the fences go, we’re there. The rear fence was just replaced, so we have to start from scratch. It had ivy, which I don’t like, but we are encouraging a euonymous there. Another spot has a rambling rose which is chore to keep in check, but we like it. Closer to the house is a Virginia creeper, which covers nicely without going crazy, and has berries and bright red foliage at the end of the season. On the other side, grape leaves will soon create a shady spot for the table. There was a forsythia against the rear fence, which got badly damaged last year when a large limb came down on it.
I agree with the need for air and light in narrow urban gardens. Wooden privacy lattice works well — it’s cheap at Home Depot/Lowes. You can just attach it to the chain link. Nice work on the garden. It’s lovely.
Hal,
Ultimately vines would be the best for the fence b/c the allow some glimpses beyond but also give you some privacy, greenery and possibly flowers.
Try native passionflower: passiflora incarnata. It may be a little late to come up in the spring but can cover a fence from not far up off the ground and fill in to the top…and beyond (flowers will face south or the brightest light)
…or try clematis like montana rubens for spring and the hybrids for mid-season. They’ll tend to want to bunch up toward the top and leave the lower area of the fence blank which can leave a feeling of openness or be screened with taller plants/shrubs.
Then there are the roses. Jeanne LaJoie and a number of ramblers and the climber Zepherine Drouhin can take the fewer hours of direct sun of our urban backyards.
Don’t do morning glories or wisteria!!! The former will become a weed vector and the latter will most probably deform the fence…rip out any bittersweet…in fact, if you see mugwort, bind weed or Japanese knotweed, out they go!
There are some decorative and very manageable grapes as well.
To create a sense of scale and space you might think about a multi-trunk of base branching shrub/tree like shadblow/serviceberry (native)…or even a dwarf apple tree. Can be very effective in a year or two.
Might want to incorporate some natives. One mega-performing perennial is “mountain mint”. Another is the native euphorbia. A family of plants that includes cactus-like plants, poinsettias and crown-of-thorns, one of our native varieties takes a couple of years to establish but then super performs with a baby’s-breath (gypsophila) effect which will last for months. Varieties of the native mountain mint can hold silver leaves surrounding silver seed heads at their tips through the later part of summer until winter. They attract native insects.
Have fun!
Best,
FGGardener
Beautiful…..all beautiful.
Love it, love it, love it. Best one so far. And I totally agree with you on the visual space aspect to chain link. It allows peripheral green vision! You would end up in a confined green tunnel without the “open” fence. So while I too dislike chain link, in this case I’d keep it absolutely. Lovely work.