Repairing Damage to Plants & Garden Post Sandy Interview in Two River Times

I can't believe I neglected to share this news story interview with The Two River Times.  I was so busy with preparing for my talk on How to Design a Kitchen Garden - and garden design work...

The work of post-Sandy garden and plant care is important.  
With spring, we can more earnestly and aggressively provide remedial care and love to restore and improve our gardens.

Enjoy the news interview.  

By Michele J. Kuhn

The battering of area properties by Super Storm Sandy has not been just to beaches, buildings, cars and boats. Gardens, plants, trees and shrubs have certainly been impacted too.

“I think everyone and everything has been so astonishingly devastated,” said Leeann Lavin, a garden and landscape designer and owner of Duchess Designs in Atlantic Highlands. “For some of my clients, their garden was just gone. We walked into the yard … and it was as if Sandy – and Athena after it – just sort of mowed off the side of the earth.”

Since shortly after the Oct. 29 storm, Lavin has been helping her clients work through the things they need to do to help ensure their landscaping and gardens will return to their former beauty.

“I think the first thing is assessing what has happened,” she said. “Even last fall, right after the storm, I went to my clients to see and assess what the damage was… As soon as we could, we started with a seven-part cleanup plan that I put together.

“It’s kind of curious – here are all these tradesman going in to do the kitchen and the flooring to redo the house and then they look at us and say, ‘You know, I never heard about the plants.’ I say, ‘Look at the investment that the homeowners put into the landscaping.’ Plus these are alive, they are living things, they aren’t like a chair.”

Clearing the debris and sea grass that was deposited on clients’ property was the first order. Washing vegetation with clear water to clean off the salt came next. She then worked the soil with gypsum to counteract the salt, added lime to correct the pH plus an organic soil nutrient and then soil enriched with horse manure to help restore the earth. She also mulched.

“I think it’s really important for everyone to test the soil,” she said. Soil testing kits are available at many hardware and garden stores. Rutgers University also runs a soil-testing laboratory and kits are available from county cooperative extension offices or forms may be downloaded from the lab’s website at njaes.rutgers.edu/soiltestinglab.

Another problem Lavin has been dealing with is restoring vegetation that has become compromised by pathogens because of the storm. A lot of shrubs have been impacted, “especially you’ll see the devastation around holly. A lot has this Indian wax scale on them … You’ll see this around. A lot of pathogens have set in,” Lavin said.

The garden designer recommends that, as she has done for her clients, area gardeners wash their plants, if they haven’t already done it, and add gypsum to the soil. “It can’t hurt it,” she said. Then work to repair and nourish the soil after having it tested to determine what it needs.

“In horticulture circles, people often say, ‘If you feed the soil, the soil will feed the plants.’ If you do little else, if you get the soil right, the plants have a better chance.

“The other thing that is really, really important is that trees have been devastated.”

Some trees were damaged by utility companies cutting branches – she believes strongly in putting utility lines underground. Trees must be properly pruned, she said.

“I think we have a disregard for our trees; we don’t take care of them. Sometimes people say to me, ‘I can’t really afford to take care of them.’ I say, ‘If you don’t do that, you will pay somewhere down the line with higher heating or cooling costs or perhaps the tree will fall on a house’ … Much of the devastation was caused by trees falling on houses. The trees were not taken care of,” Lavin said.

“I look at gardens as not only art but as outdoor living,” she said. “If you are going to be living out there, you really need to treat the outdoor garden room as an extension of the home.”

She recommends gardeners look at the use of “good, native plants” and prune trees and shrubs during the next few weeks.

“I will be focusing, now going forward, to do an inventory and see what has survived the winter and see what is good,” she said. “I’ll make up lists … and see what can we do for the plants to help them help us.”

Lavin also favors gardens that can feed the gardener. “In general, I think we need to grow more edibles,” she said. “People have gotten away from growing their own food but it makes a difference to your health.”

She also is one of the many area residents who are happy to see spring return.

“Plants are resilient and hopefully, after the storms and the long, dark winter, everyone will now be looking for the spring and color and a happy time,” she said.

Leeann Lavin

Lavin, who works in the New Jersey, New York and Long Island area, describes her work as “artful designs” that feature native plants. She has worked at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. She is a painter – working in watercolors – and a writer of food and drink and is the author of the book The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook.

She will be appearing 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, at the Strauss Mansion, 27 Prospect Circle, for the Atlantic Highlands Historical Society to give a talk about how to create a kitchen garden.

Link to Two River Times online news post:

http://trtnj.com/repairing-damage-to-plants-garden-post-sandy/

My Comment:

Thank you so very much for covering this important subject of post-Sandy garden repair. We love our Garden State gardens  and they need all the love and smart care we can give them. They will reward us – in spades…
And thank you for the news announcement for the Atlantic Highlands Historical Society last Wed. The talk about How to Design Kitchen Gardens – and about my book, The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook, was so successful – and I know you played a big part in alerting the interested, friendly audience – who were most keen to grow and eat fruits, herbs and vegetables grown for taste – not transport! Delicious, Garden State homegrown food is the ultimate luxury!

And to clarify please, my email is Leeann@duchess-designs.com

Thank you again.

The Homegrown Cookbook can be purchased at River Road Books in Fair Haven or online: (and let me know – I will autograph 
http://www.amazon.com/Hamptons-Long-Island-Homegrown-Cookbook/dp/0760337578/ref=la_B00703U2EY_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366756092&sr=1-1

The Private Oasis: New Book Explores Glamorous & Doable Landscape & Garden Design

Just because I was all whipped up with the launch of my own book, The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook and so regrettably missed the glamorous garden book party for The Private Oasis: The Landscape Architecture of Edmund Hollander Design heralded by its elegant invitation, is no reason you should miss out:

For anyone who loves gardens and good garden design, this swanky-looking book is a beauty to look at – plus it’s like having your own private landscape architect interpret the looks for your own garden space.  Enjoy a good garden read at the beach  -- but then start taking design notes!

From the Amazon review: Whether a home is a great place to live often depends on what lies beyond its walls. The landscape - when it has a well-thought-out shape and character - gives a home much of its character and satisfaction. In The Private Oasis, two of New York's leading landscape architects, Edmund Hollander and Maryanne Connelly, guide readers through a series of remarkable landscapes and gardens, explaining how to apply their techniques, no matter what the size of the reader's property.

Since founding Edmund D. Hollander Landscape Architect Design in 1990, Hollander and Connelly and the more than a dozen landscape architects on their staff have designed hundreds of residential landscapes, from the palatial to the somewhat more modest. Every landscape, they believe, has a story to tell. The aim of the landscape architect, when working with the homeowners, the site, and the architecture of the house, is to decide what that story is, and see that it is told well.

You can't plant whatever you want, wherever you want it. You can't rearrange the earth arbitrarily. You have to respond to the makeup of the land and its water flows, its vegetation, wildlife and other features using that knowledge to fashion a living landscape. That was a key precept Hollander and Connelly learned from the pioneer of ecological planning, Ian McHarg, and it undergirds all their thinking. Hollander and Connelly marry factors from nature to an understanding of human ecology. Says Connelly: "The solution is always driven by who will be using the landscape and how they will be using it."

The Private Oasis focuses on built elements in the landscape including the entry, seating and gathering places, outdoor dining, swimming pools and water features and tennis courts. It is lavishly illustrated with over 1000 color photographs. A successor volume will focus on plantings. Together, the two volumes will give readers a comprehensive orientation to the making of residential landscapes.

Ken Druse's latest Book, Natural Companions, offers Glamorous Plant Inspiration for every Garden

Author, gardener, and garden designer: Ken Druse, is a rare garden muse.

His latest book Natural Companions is a jewel. 

Looking for all the world like baubles from Tiffany’s or Cartier – whose jewelry designers take inspiration from the botanical world, by the way -- Druse and Ellen Hoverkamp, the book’s photographer cum botanical artist, present the plants as close-ups, glowing from within, against a rich, deep black background.

Not unlike pearls or diamonds on a black velvet jewel box.

It is a stunning, take-your-breath-away, glamorous visual gift at every turn of the page.

If you do nothing more than gaze rapturously at the botanical art you will be richly rewarded.

Druse’s book is a sensual experience.

It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s beautiful. 

I love the elegant black background of the cover and the plant-part morphology beauty shots (see my Garden Glamour blog page background J

Like pearls on that little black dress, the black backdrop makes a visually stunning canvas for the dazzling horticultural gems as presented by Ken and artist Hoverkamp.

In fact, Druse’s latest book, Natural Companions is a masterful, brilliant garden design concept.

The book is sumptuously and intuitively charted by the themes within seasons, with topics that include color, texture, fragrance, foliage, edible flowers, places, water gardens, and grasses.

The fact is this is a “Look Book” for the garden designer and garden lover. 

It’s a how-to guide. 

Confused by the myriad plant choices? 

Does the thought of daylilies leave you dumbfounded? 

The sight of winter Salix leave you sagging?

This book is a garden design aid for those who are flummoxed by the world of plant choices available for a good garden design. 

Likewise, it is an inspiration and a new way to look at plant combinations for those who pride themselves on knowing their Lady Slipper from their Lilac.

At a recent MetroHort meeting, Druse charmed the horticulturists in attendance with his overview of the book and his making of the book.

Ken always manages to make the never-ending world of plants snap back to the personal – and here he shows gardens in situ, such as the Green Gardens of Short Hills in the Garden State

His talk also mixed in his own garden tribulations – he lost his beloved Garden State garden in the climate trifecta last year that wielded a three-punch knock out following Hurricane Irene, a fall snowstorm and a Nor’easter, tropical storm Lee.

But hope springs eternal, especially in a garden and most especially as narrated by Druse at the lecture. 

What would have rendered most gardeners to throw in the shovel; he is humbled but not daunted.  He had the audience laughing with him.

His knowledge of plants is extensive and genuine – I have just about all 17 of his garden books -- most of which are autographed too, I’m proud to say.  This is a man who creates a horticultural language. 

His to  “Botanize” is one I will steal!

It’s his garden mirth along with his creativity and hort smarts that makes all the difference. 

Heck, there are lots of people who know a lot about botany, horticulture, and gardens.

But it’s the way that Druse approaches the subject that makes his art so coveted. 

His worldview and his eye focuses or sheds sunshine on a place that we wouldn’t have ever thought about.  Druse takes us on a botanical journey and inspires us. 

He works mightily to present a book that we know we must have.

To use – not just sit o the coffee table -- although just placing the book on it would all the more accessorize any table.

At the conclusion of the MetroHort talk, the award-winning New York garden designer, Lynn Torgerson signaled, “This was a ‘Killer Presentation’ that set off resounding applause.

This is a MetroHort equivalent of a standing ovation.

The audience was gob smacked!

My notes from the evening are filled with plant combinations. 

For the Color Combinations, I see I wrote: Monochromatic, and to much laughter, to buy “I’m here for you yellow and green.”

Analogous, showed colors that are right next to one another in color wheel, pointing out the Betty Compton and Clematis in roses.

Complementary -- across the color wheel, or split complementary there are foliage colors such as the silver gardens at Old Westbury Gardens

.

Druse talked about Water Gardens, which is like poking a stick in the eye of Neptune.  Remember, this is a gardener who lost his 2-acre gardens to the river and rain…

Regardless, he told the audience about his early love affair with pitcher plants.  He said he got samples from a private collection and tried and tried.  “Three strikes, you’re out!” he said to much laugher. 

He finally got the Jack in the Pulpits to grow from seed, telling how he propagated by cleaning and storing but they always seemed to dry up, until he devised a duct tape style process that he rigged up.

He put the seeds in in bag, in a toilet’s tank to keep them moist!  “Sure enough, this time, the seeds came up when planted,” he said.  “Just be sure to use the tank, not the bowl,” he admonished while grinning.

He showed Shakespeare gardens and Victorian gardens – that no one does anymore but he showed off the carpet gardens at Mohank Mountain House adding, “This is one of few places to do great job this type of garden design.”

Druse also showed incredible Containers gardens using tender perennials and sexy edible gardens. I love that checkerboard lettuce.

And he encouraged gardening with kids.  “Please plant a tree with a kid” he encouraged the audience.   

While his Garden State gardens are no more, he noted, “I will never sell my house.”

And the book, Natural Companions also serves as a memoir. A botanical homage and tribute to his love of plants and gardens.

You must get this book.