Change Comes to My Garden

I wish I could say I've started my tomatoes under lights, but I'm going through some kind of transition in my gardening life. I used to agonize as I pored over my vegetable seed catalogs this time of year, contemplating which pumpkin and corn varieties to order. I would spend time rigging up grow lights and subsequently deciding which transplants to move to larger pots, which to (gasp!) throw into the compost, when to fertilize, when to harden off plants, when to plant outside or in our hoophouse. All these decisions were paramount to getting a good vegetable garden going.

Gradually, however, things changed. First, I began buying starts of tomatoes, peppers and eggplant instead of raising my own; this became possible because of some terrific nursery growers in my neck of the woods. My favorite varieties suddenly became more readily available: heirloom tomatoes like 'Brandywine' and 'Cherokee Purple,' early eggplant like 'Ghostbuster' and 'Neon,' early-ripening green peppers like 'Ace' and 'California Wonder.' Then I began growing these tender crops in a hoophouse with great results: improved harvest and less plant damage from blight and strong winds.

Last year, I began to realize that although I really appreciated my fresh tomatoes and loved our sweet corn, the thrill of gardening was becoming less what I could produce for my table and more what I could see out my window.

Thoughts of perennial borders, woodland gardens and plants that would add winter interest in the landscape began to enter my daydreams and influence my choice of reading materials. I spent the winter reading everything I could get my hands on that had information about perennials, deciduous shrubs, or trees hardy enough to survive in zone 4a, as well as provide interesting textures, cones or berries for eye appeal during our longest season. I swooned over chamaecyparis with green and yellow-tipped foliage, admired pictures of Uva-ursi 'Bearberry' (a groundcover with berries for wildlife), salivated over blueberry bushes that turn brilliant shades of red and burnt orange in the fall and would produce blueberries for us to try and harvest before the birds. I found woodland plants: a yellow-flowered 'Northern Lights' azalea and dainty, low-growing, white-flowering tiarellas.

These winter perusals, of course, also included garden accoutrements such as trellises, arbors, and tuteurs, which sound so much better than "fancy stick-like devices that support your taller perennials."

Last fall I planted five chokeberries along a 100-foot garden border that I will continue to add to in the spring. The chokeberries are Aronia arbutifolia, 'Brilliantissima,' a great substitute for the ubiquitous 'Burning Bush,' Euonymous alata, an invasive plant now banned from sale in New Hampshire. The chokeberries are deciduous, going down in a blaze of brilliant autumn scarlet and leaving small red berries behind. Here I also envision some evergreen shrubs for winter interest along with ornamental grasses and low-growing groundcovers such as Russian cypress or prostrate junipers.

My perennial borders that face south and give more shelter from north winds would be good homes for some of these perennials: hardy-to-zone 4 wisterias 'Rosea' and 'Aunt Dee,' new colors and forms of echinaceas: 'Orange Meadowbright' and 'Harvest Moon' are just two; blue or pink 'Endless Summer' hydrangeas also hardy to zone 4; and acres of hostas with names like 'Guacamole,' 'Green Tomatoes,' and 'Night Before Christmas.' And then the ferns: Athyrium 'Ghost,' a silvery hybrid of the Japanese Painted Fern and the Lady Fern, native to New Hampshire woodlands, and Dryopteris erythrosora 'Brilliance,' an orange-red cultivar with red spores on the undersides of the leaves. As you can tell, my list of plant wants is long and still growing.

Perhaps I will plant a kitchen garden this year: lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and a few other vegetables we really enjoy. Whether or not that will also include corn, pumpkins and squash is another matter. Perhaps some of the smaller veggies will end up in containers. Time will tell. Old habits are hard to break. By Helen Downing, Master Gardener 4/26/07 Posted April 27, 2007