Mother Nature’s Evil Daughters: Sandy and Athena

For all the world it seemed that Mother Nature couldn’t rein in or control her evil daughters: Sandy and Athena. 

The two storm sisters unleashed fury, anger, and rage along much of the east coast; most pronounced in the New York/New Jersey and tri state area.  

The twin’s powers of unbridled destruction hit the New York/Garden State area with inexplicable abandon: whole sea walls and yards distinguished by gaping, yawning maws in one spot, while right next door, relatively unscathed.

Sand from the sea was dumped like snowdrifts across the river onto the mainland.

And then, not to be outdone, Athena’s climate clobber dumped real snow -- at the same time it was raining.

The marina’s piers and boats were ripped from their berths and sent soaring like Dorothy’s Kansas homestead in the Wizard of Oz, only to land somewhere far, far over their Sandy-torn rainbow.   

And I often wondered, where did the birds go during the storm?

Trees especially took it on the chin during Sandy and Athena’s violent temper tantrums.

The destruction is breathtaking.  

Hundred-year old trees – arbor royalty – have snapped like toothpicks, or their roots yanked from mother earth, exposing their lifeline and life-giving arteries -- like a baby torn from its mother’s arms – an humiliating indiscretion that the trees seem embarrassed that we should never see.  We look away in shame/ at this immodest and precarious situation.

It’s not just branches, but entire trees that hulk across roads, yards, and in far too many cases, homes – their jagged silhouette splintered and scarred.

In some cases, wholesale destruction could have been mitigated with proper tree care.  Far too often, pruning and care for trees is nil. 

We allow the trees to go neglected, believing Mother Nature is “doing her thing;” not needing anything from us. 

But we take too much for granted.  We need to work with our mother – help and nurture her in return.  After all, she gives us so much…

Keen observation and seasonal pruning is paramount.  We should look to our homestead tasks as a shared responsibility – not wholesale abandonment at its worst. Or pure neglect with the best of intentions.

I had one family member laughingly admit that the cost of tree care usually “takes a back seat to well, paying the insurance bill.”  The joke was on him, I point out, because now that insurance will have to pay for the tree clean up. 

You will pay one way or the other.

As one now-vintage TV commercial used to declare “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”  (Can’t remember what the product being advertised is…)

I have the privilege to work for one garden client who respects her trees – she lives in the midst of veritable enchanted forest glen. 

It is a Grimm Fairy Tale of sorts, and she is surely its Queen.

She also heeds the wisdom to pursue an arbor maintenance plan. 

Is it a coincidence that no tree came down nor harmed the house through Sandy, Athena and, lest we forget the third bad girl, last year’s Irene.

Towns and municipalities need to do their part and invest in more native trees, rather than fragile exotics. 

Communities need to invest in regular, careful and informed maintenance.

I see too many utility companies practice a slash and hatchet job on trees “that get in the way” of their so-last-century wires and utility poles.

Those wires have got to go! 

Why not invest in the future and infrastructure and bury those wires? They are now strewn like wayward necklaces around all manner of debris and detritus.  It looks like a bad rodeo rope trick writ large.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest and No One Hears it

And then, in the name of all that is serendipity, I received two missives about this issue before I could even finish this post that I started mid week…

I am elated that I am not the only one coming up with can-do solutions to the power line issue.

Initially, when I broached the subject of burying the wires as part of an infrastructure need driven by the love of trees, first and foremost, there were those who scoffed.

No one will pay towns to take on such big cost.  Only rich towns might consider such a task I was told.

Maybe some good can come out of Sandy, Athena and Irene.

No matter if you come to this point of view from an energy or safety or aesthetic perspective, it’s all to the good.

I received one email from my New York Botanical Garden (www.NYBG.org) Landscape Garden Design Alumni Group.  The garden designers and horticulturists were discussing the need to mulch and finely chip the trees properly so that there is no risk of larvae and invasive insects in the mulch or firewood created as a result of the downed trees.

Accordingly, the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation and Council of Economic Entomology notes that nearly 50% of firewood sold in big box stores has insect infestation.  Which means if you are storing firewood or using mulch that is not properly or recycled into pallets you may be fostering yet another unwanted consequence.

The potential of infected trees being reused for mulch, firewood or pallets, just further exacerbates or extends the horror of the storm’s damage and further points to the need for tree care – on so many levels.

It was not so long ago that most every town and municipality employed an arborist to help promote the health of the trees – and in no small way, that of it’s citizens. 

Now, it seems, starving the city’s coffers for the benefit of the few became the modus operandi. 

Here’s to hoping we can return to a time of quality of living and investment in the future.

Now, if one can afford it, there are arborist who will consult and maintain a homeowner’s private property and a municipality’s associated with trees and structural issues. – what the risks are, whether they can be mitigated, and how badly the trees need to come down.  They consider issues of location and what direction the tree is likely to fall.

Check your local listings for a certified arborist near you.

The other email notice I received was from MoveOn.org who created a petition to bury power lines for a more secure grid.

In part, the email reads:

Noting that Hurricane Sandy hit the tri-state area hard, and left millions of Americans without power for several days, Power outages do not only create personal hardship for the people in the affected areas; as Hurricane Sandy demonstrated, these power outages claim lives, negatively affect our economy, and impact national security.

The German power grid has outages at an average of 21 minutes per year. Why? Because most of their lines are buried underground.

Because most power lines are strung through the air, they are vulnerable to ice, trees, and lightening. Power companies around the country keep putting up lines and repairing damages after each storm, only to repeat the procedure after the next storm.

Further, they urge citizens to contact Congress to create and act to facilitate burying power lines in cities and towns across the country. It will improve people lives, boost the economy, and make us less vulnerable.

Here is their link: 

http://tinyurl.com/be9xvok

Enjoy and revere our trees

Garlic Wards Off Vampires. And Other Allium Health Benefits

Last weekend the garlic (allium sativum), onions, and shallots, were planted in our home farm-ette.

My garden nomenclature defines “farm-ette” as bigger than a typical home garden and with more variety than a typical home garden comprised of tomatoes, basil and a few other herbs.

Our farm-ette rewards us with asparagus, brussel sprouts, shisito peppers, potatoes, butternut squash, melon, radish, lettuce, and the aforementioned garlic, onions,, shallot, potatoes, tomatoes, and lots of herbs. 

And of special note is the Ground Cherry tomato, P. pruinosa – that grows in their own kind of a sexy scarf!  

The fruit grows inside a paper-like husk – not unlike the bigger tomatillo.  

I learned that these tart-sweet berries were used by the Pilgrims to make excellent pies, jams and preserves.  

I pop them, straight-away, fresh, into salads and into my waiting mouth!

Garlic

This year’s garlic monikers are too sweet not to share.  

The names are flirty and cute.

One of the garlic varieties we planted is Music – how much do you love that?!

Another is Duganski.  Sounds like the guy at the corner end of the tavern bar! And then there is the exotic, cinema-sounding “Indochine” sounding Inchelium Red Garlic.

Together with the Dutch yellow shallots the close to a hundred allium herb bulbs, split into their cloves and put to sleep for the winter in the prepared soil of our farm-ette.   

There truly is nothing like homegrown garlic, I have to say. 

It is so sweet, juicy, light and spirited that I can eat it raw--with abandon. 

Recently, I noted a food memory from my high school boyfriend, Thom’s grandfather – a Sicilian.  At that time, I was horrified to see him take a garlic clove from the kitchen table’s fruit bowl.

In my house that bowl was stocked with standard-issue apples or oranges or pears, depending on the season.

But Thom’s grandfather, schooled in the Italian way, could pick up a clove of garlic and just bite into it  -- like an apple.

But now, I understand that flavor attraction.  I am in total simpatico.

I revere the homegrown garlic so much that I now offer it as a hostess gift to some of my lucky dinner guests.

I present the garlic nestled into pretty-colored tissue paper tucked into a happy gift bag. 

Some gift recipients appear somewhat startled to learn I gave them a garlic.  

But later, they can't help but thank me, telling me what a delicious treat it is. It's a gift that keeps giving!

I had been struggling a bit to describe the texture of a fresh, homegrown garlic when Chef Joe Isidori, a featured chef in my book: The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook, from Southfork Kitchen and his newest restaurant, Brooklyn's Arthur on Smith, told the guests at a recent book singing event at the New York City Rizzoli Bookstore event. 

He said his homegrown garlic is like a water chestnut. 

"That’s it,"  I squealed in agreement! 

Yes, the texture of homegrown garlic s akin to a water chestnut because it shares the characteristics of crunchy, juicy and light and flavorful. 

Homegrown garlic is nothing like the overbearing, petulant garlic that most are accustomed to. And that lingers on the breath and the clothes for far too long.

Not so for homegrown garlic. 

Homegrown garlic is a refreshing, healthy addiction.

Did you know that?

·            Garlic can ward off vampires!

·            Garlic is rich in antioxidants which help destroy free radicals

·            Garlic is used to prevent heart disease, including atherosclerosis, high cholestral, high blood pressure
        and boosts the immune system.

·           Garlic may also protect against cancer

·           Garlic may help prevent the common cold

·            Gravediggers in 18^th Century France drank crushed garlic in wine, believing it would protect them
        from the plague.

·            World War I & II soldiers were given garlic to prevent gangrene.

·           China is the world’s largest producer of garlic, followed by India  

·            Egyptians fed it to the workers as they built the pyramids

·           Alliums are beautiful plants with puffy Afro-like heads on a slender tall reed

·           The word garlic comes from Old English: garleac which means Spear Leek

  But in the end – it’s all about the taste.  And homegrown garlic is unrivaled in its flavor. 
  And how it complements almost everything it cozies up to.

  So get out and plant your garlic. Even if it’s in your containers. 

  You will thank me next year.

Some of this year's allium harvest from our farm-ette

NYBG Landscape Design Lecture featured Chinese Star, Kongjian Yu

Like kids heading back to school, landscape designers and garden enthusiasts dearly look forward to The New York Botanical Garden’s (NYBG) annual autumn, three-part Landscape Design Portfolio Series.

The venue was new this year: The Asia Society.  This is a much better locale: good theater seats, convenient to get to and good viewing from every spot -- unlike past rooms where often far too hot with overcrowding, chairs that went bump and not enough seating for the SRO crowd.

NYBG’s Landscape Design Coordinator, Susan Cohen, an award-winning Connecticut landscape architect and lauded for her work producing the Landscape Design Portfolio series, told me after the lecture that the series has always had an international theme.  I hadn’t noticed till now.  Susan said this lecture was two years in the making. Just that day, she and Yu flew back to New York from the ASLA conference held in Phoenix.

 

This year there is a Chinese, Japanese and Canadian are the award-winning designers who will present their work, focusing on “sustainable design and aesthetic innovation.”

First up in the series was Kongjian Yu, Chinese landscape architect and educator, founder and dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Peking University and founder and president of Turenscape, one of the first and largest private architecture firms in China.  He recently won the ASLA’s Excellence Award for his work at Qunli Stormwater Park.  He also has recently just published his monograph, Designed Ecologies, the Landscape Architecture of Konigjian Yu.

So Yu clearly has the street cred.  Literally. 

Yu demonstrated how he took what he described as “dirty” areas and “through landscape architecture, made it beautiful.” 

Yu is made for lectures and presentations: he possesses a tall, commanding presence and a compelling passion for his art, dusted with an endearing sense of humor. 

More than a few times, he characterized his designs as “Messy” because he uses lots of ornamental grasses, a la the Midwest prairie grasses or Piet Oldief.

By the end of the lecture, Yu had the audience, laughing along with him, each time he chanted the “Messy” attribute.  Yu seemed delighted with the charm of Messy, saying Conde Nast Magazine on 2008 described one of his design creations as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. And Messy!

He had the audience loving his work and his design stories.  

While there was no mention of how Yu secures his public commissions – in a country that spends 9% of GDP on infrastructure, drinking even a few drops from this spigot can be lucrative and ….

Through images and remarks, Yu described how he and his firm could take a blighted, dirty area, and within a few months, transform the spot into an urban park, enjoyed by its citizens. And in China, that means A LOT of people. Yu cited that more than 200,000 in just the first month!

There seems to be a certain theme and style in Yu’s designs:

·      They follow the contours of the landscape,

·      Refrain from cutting trees,

·      Cut and fill landscape

·      Skywalks and boardwalks,

·      Use of low maintenance plants, and a sense of child-like wonder and joy, bound with a grown-up embrace of the romance. 

He showed his gardens with kids jumping on walls, people taking a nap in the park, and a couple stealing a kiss on a starlight night.   

“You don’t have to change everything,” Yu said, “Just what is needed.”

Just help nature do its work.” He added, “Simple” to emphasize the Zen of his work.

Hardly. 

But the parks do look like they’ve always been there, courtesy of Mother Nature.

A hallmark of Yu’s design and one that makes him a pioneer is his ability to use rainwater. 

Not only

Uses diff pH values to introduce a variety of flora and fauna species.

Moreover, landscape design can artfully create urban solutions to flooding and drought.

He recounted how in 1977 so many citizens had died in urban floods.  “It was on CNN,” he noted.  “People were dead in the streets!”

China recognized it needed a “Green Infrastructure.”

“The landscape can be used as a ‘sponge’ to transform the park through use of walls and plants and a series of interconnected and spiderlike skywalks above.”

Using a “cut and fill” technique, he creates boardwalk networks and then “just” plants the periphery, using the water as a filtration system.  The parks can then generate clean water that is enjoyed by the people. The ponds are filtering the water and introduce new ecosystems. And at very little cost, according to Yu.  

“It is a city AND nature,” Yu points out.  “Like Central Park, but low maintenance,” he adds.

This is surely a model for the other cities.

Yu explains that 75% of their water system was polluted. And they simply couldn’t afford to fix it.

But landscape concepts and engineered design can play a huge role in remedying the problem./issue.

“I learned from the farmer,” Yu explains while showing images of crops and botanical gardens that are nutrient-rich in a planned landscape.

“We can use different nutrients to get the oxygen into the water and create a cascade wall of aerated water, for example.”  We can create a 300 meter aqueduct wall to generate 2,400 tons of water so that 5,000 people can use the water – even to shower using clean water.”

I daresay the thought bubbles of the audience were trying to visualize New Yorkers bathing in a park’s waterfall…

In any event, he has created an eco-friendly waterfront. 

“Seventeen new species of fauna have come to the waterfront in just one year,” Yu cheerfully and proudly claims. 

He also claims they are just helping nature do her thing. 

They capture rainwater and storm water --design the parks and gardens  -- and in one to two years, they have transformed the urban space to one of utility and beauty; at low cost.

Yu went on to describe a landscape in Guizhou in the Yunan province where by following an ecological strategy using wetlands to purify the water and his sky bridges, he created a green infrastructure, saving the government billions.

Having been to the gardens in Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing, and having witnessed this incredible patchwork of storm drain deserts; Yu’s solutions seem sylvan and doable.

Further, I hope his urban works preserve many of China’s heritage neighborhoods.  We stayed in the fascinating, charming hutongs, and I hope the ancient ways of water and land use remain so.  Too many of them have been ripped up for the people or the Olympics…

One Can Make A Difference

Finally, he showed his own apartment as a template for sustainable, green infrastructure.

In a country where scale is sometimes unfathomable and dense, it was easy to recognize  the progress to see how just one family can make a difference and achieve success.  

Yu described how his family collects storm water and produces 60 pounds of vegetables using the collected water.

“We have been living well, testing the systems for three years,” said Yu.  “Using nature, we didn’t even need air conditioning,” he added, noting how humid and hot it is in Beijing.

His apartment is a learning center of sorts.  

His spatial strategy provides free service and can solve almost all the big problems

“Small solutions to big problems,” he repeated with conviction throughout the talk.

“We need a new aesthetic,” commanded.

“Performance Landscape” that is today!

He concluded how it might be possible to repurpose buildings.

He showed several iconic Chinese architecture in new ways, drawing laughs and encouragement. For example, the Birds Nest, designed for the Olympics, can become a farmer’s market!

Tiananmen Square can be a farm, he implored! Make it beautiful not useless.  

Following Yu’s talk, Gregory Long, NYBG president praised Yu as a good leader.  Long thanked the guests, encouraging the audience to get his book that was just shipped.  “Only NYBG has the book,” he added, no doubt spurring the frenzied book buy after the lecture.

How to Establish an Espalier & a Sweeney Todd Encounter with Firethorn

Pre-Haircut: Hort team working on espalier 

I included an Espalier in a favorite garden design client’s transitional side garden room about ten years ago, no doubt, for it’s expected drama. 

The espalier design concept packs a punch in less space. 

While the process can take years, depending on how quickly the plant grows, it is handsome garden art throughout the maturation or development of the garden installation.

According to the lexic, espalier is “latticework used to shape or train the branches of a tree or shrub into a two-dimensional ornamental or useful design, as along a wall or fence.   

Espaliered trees are often managed for decades.

Historically, populations planted and grew espalier in countries that revered their food and didn’t have space for growing fruiting and stone fruit trees. 

For example, the French, Italians, Egyptians and Japanese, to name a few, grow apple, peach, fig, and plum trees along house or barn walls where the tiered, flat tree stems produce delicious fresh fruit without requiring an orchard’s acreage for the full tree petticoat.

Of course, these same country’s premiere gardeners and horticulturists couldn’t leave well enough alone – and before too long were “torturing” their trees into ever more grand and complicated patterns!

In the United States, our curse and blessing remains that we have so much space.

Espalier never really took off in America for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the space issue. 
There was also a perception that espalier was a “fancy-pants” kind of horticulture – (mon dieu -- it even sounds fancy-pants French!)

Not meant for the ethnic, emerging immigrant population here and in the burgeoning suburbs. Best left to the old-European aristocracy and the botanical gardens.

Truth be told, espalier is rather easy-care, sustainable, garden practice we should revive as a more common way to grow fruit trees and enjoy the beauty and bounty of growing our own food.

And there remains a place for the ornamental espalier too, adding unexpected design wonder and awe.   Plants as art, the espalier is strikingly beautiful, especially because admirers recognize and appreciate the patience and love that goes into nurturing this “two-dimensional” tree.

The espalier has ben called one of the most impressive visual achievements the craft of gardening has to offer.

Typically, you will need to spend an hour or so two or three times a year trimming away wayward stems and shoots and encouraging the plant in the directions that please you.

The best time to prune is in late spring after the plant flowers or in the late summer/early autumn. 

The plant material I chose for the now decade-old espalier is pyracantha, commonly referred to as Firethorn.  With an emphasis on the “thorn” part of its name, it’s no surprise that the pruning is more of a gladiator’s match up!

I selected the pyracantha angustifolia or Firethorn (in the rose family) because of its hardiness and strength, after all. 
But also for its all-season interest and a Mediterranean – inspired look. 

It is good for native pollinators, especially birds and bees. 

It also tolerates alkaline soils that dominate foundation soils of suburban homes.

We had friends who used it as a “living fence” fronting the barrier fence that enclosed their pool. It was like viewing an ever-changing art tableau as the plant changed its wardrobe accessories, if you will, from lacy white to glowing, fiery red.

I wanted the spring white flowers – commonly referred to at the “bridal veil.”  It’s pretty and light – almost ethereal -- which is saying a lot and belies the tough-talking reputation of the Firethorn.

The orange berries in the late summer and autumn are like a top-heavy necklace over the purple caryopteris and blue grass that bow at the foot of the espalier in its bed, lending the color palette of that Mediterranean look.

The espalier leads the eye -- paralleling the seashell path.  And the horizontal lines draw the eye onward to the incredible bay beyond – and link the viewer to that part of the “borrowed view.”

The stem patterns are limitless.  You can direct or train the stems to grow into any shape or style you want. 

The various traditional ones include Candelabra, Belgian, U, Fan or horizontal. I chose the latter for the directional, triggered element of movement. 

And beauty, of course.

Setting up Espalier and Care

For the first few years, the firethorns -- four of them -- were allowed to just grow – like a child – it was allowed to be carefree…

The central trunk was surely established after perhaps four or five years, which might have been too long a time – we started the firethorn onto a formal, constructed framework.

The first team to do this was comprised of experts who were or had been students at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) and its School of Professional Horticulture (SOPH)

It was a working, paid, learning assignment.

The students were already hort magicians, dedicated to their passion for the world of plants. They respect good garden design and in this case, the work that would go into making the espalier a remarkable and sophisticated joy to behold.

All of that team, by the way, has gone on to become directors, managers and working arborists and horticultural professionals at the Parks or botanical gardens in the New York metro area.

For that first framework, the team used wire trellis and aluminum poles. The wire stretched the length of the house that is the backdrop for the espalier and the mechanism to create and manage the space intervals of the branches – or lateral buds that in turn create the pattern.  Here that pattern was the horizontal shape.  From stem to stern – approximately 38 feet.  And it is almost 13 feet tall.

This framework worked for a number of years until a few things happened: the plant material got heavier as it got older, putting extra pressure on the wire supports; and a squirrel’s nest and babies added weight to one are. 

At one juncture, this combination caused a cratering.

While there have been lovely bird’s nests perched on the tiers, the squirrel’s nest might have added weight, especially with all that scampering they do…

We tied and wired it back to rights just in time. 

There is a rather funny aside story I will share with about this chapter of the espalier.

From heavy duty rosarian gloves to opera gloves

Never thought those two kinds of hand ornaments would be, ahem, joined at the thumb, did you?

I was gently pruning – and I do mean gently – almost holding my breath. It was the year the last quadrant was sagging a bit. 

I wore long, over-the-elbow, heavy-duty rosarian gloves for this venture. 

While snipping, all was good.

The “crime” must have occurred, as best as I can piece together, while I was merely holding the branch up so that my garden assistant could better tie the lateral branch on to the wire.  I had given her the rosarian gloves to use as she was in the thick of things.

I changed to standard garden gloves. Further, I wore two layers of long sleeve shirts and a jacket.

I gave the encounter no thought.

Later, after heading back into town, to enjoy an NYBG lecture as part of their ongoing Fall Lecture series, me and two favorite garden and hort friends were enjoying an after-lecture supper when one of the ladies points to my arms and exclaims, “What is going on with your arms?!”

To my horror, it was a bit of Sweeney Todd mixed with some religious crucifixion condition. 

Besides some blood, the arms were swelling up.

Well.  Needless to say – I called my dermatologist the next day and he removed thorn shrapnel with a high tech eyepiece guiding him to the itsy, bitsy shavings that were embedded the length of both sides of my arm. I was sent home with a prescription, too.  Sigh..

I knew it was the plant’s adaptation. 

No big thorns had strafed me. Rather it was the plant protecting itself.

Still, I had a wedding to go to that Saturday and didn’t want to have to listen to whispers noting what they might imagine as “abuse,” nor to dominate a conversation pod with that aforementioned Sweeney Todd look.

So, I determined to secure some sexy, long opera gloves to wear and turn a negative into a plus. 

After some rather unexpected research, I found a designer who makes the gloves.  The big department stores and boutiques came up empty for me. They said ladies don’t wear dress gloves anymore…

I went up to the garment district and had a ball buying no less than a dozen vintage – and new gloves. Long, short and 7/8’s length.

When the two Vogue magazine stylists arrive to pick up their leopard print velvet, fingerless kitten or half-gloves, I discovered the glove maker had made two sets. I grabbed the second pair. Big score.

The other big score was that post-wedding; my girlfriend gave me her coveted and glamorous evening and dress gloves that had belonged to her mother who had just passed away.  This was a gift of love.  And I am still weepy when I think about being the steward of this glove cache…

And the best part of that glove gift?  One pair was still sitting in their plastic store bag with cardboard fitted into each finger. Frozen in time. 

The name on the bag was:  Duchess.  It was destiny…

In the end, I don’t blame the firethorn.  I tried to look at the escapade as not only a learning experience but also one that brought joy and love and extended garden glamour.

Next up – how we resolved the Espalier escalation and brought it to a secure, safe place, with an improved, groomed look. (how-to videos and images)

In fact, its Hollywood-like splendor evokes that “I’m ready for my close-up” moment to the extent that the garden clients installed outdoor lighting so that neighbors, passerby’s and garden lovers can admire its pin-up glamour all through the night just like on the red carpet…