In the heart of winter, a meadow trades the bright purples, yellows, and shades of green of the growing season for softer shades of sepia and brown. These muted tones could fool us into thinking not much is happening this time of year, but in reality, life is everywhere when you look for its clues – and careful observation yields beautiful, art-filled results.
My backyard landscape has evolved over the last 17 years. Whether viewed from my kitchen window, sitting at the ornamental fish pond, or strolling the mowed paths of the lawn, I want my yard to represent a love of shape, color, and whimsy. It’s not just about plants! Every season, aspects of my garden change for the better. Clearing stone walls, creating a meadow, replacing unsafe trees, and building a new walkway to the back door are improvements that enhance my experience living on this beautiful property more every year.
The precise placement of stepping stones invites one to deliberately slow down one’s pace.
For 19 years, the land placed in our stewardship lay untouched and silent with respect to its purpose. Aside from a few photo ops in the snow and the occasional round of catch or frisbee, the land remained a peripheral witness to our busy indoor lives — that is, until we met Dan, Owner/Founder/Designer – of Holmes Fine Gardens. With his magical, easeful manner, he brought a rising breath to our resting land and the movement began. As the first trees were felled and the first blades cut into the earth, I began to tune into the heartbeat of the land, and it started to divulge in a wordless language that it would someday soon become an extension of me, and me of it.
Over time, Dan became an integral part of this deep tuning in process, as he had a connection to the earth that I had not yet cultivated. He seemed unhurried and receptive, and I immediately trusted him to co-navigate the transformation of our property with aesthetic design guidance from our landscape architect, Emily Musall Fronckowiak, APA Certified Aesthetic Pruner. While Emily began designing our new walkway, deck, outdoor kitchen, koi pond, and zen garden around our want for visual serenity, Dan brought a diversity of life and extraordinary color to the property by planting an extensive, lush pollinator meadow, and dotting the land with his favorite natives. I remember the sharp pang of regret I felt upon realizing how little sustenance our land had offered the wildlife for nearly two decades, and I was thrilled to be creating new habitat. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but thinking about habitats was the catalyst I needed to unleash my desire to “invite”.
Fast forward to 2020 – the transformation began to take shape.
I began to see the land, as a picturesque setting for our home, as well as a restorative outdoor living space for our family and guests; a place in which to drop from the head to the heart, as they say. Dan’s palpable respect for the native environment and its offerings of natural boulders, ferns and mosses, and refuge for wildlife heavily influenced many of my choices as I began tuning into the heart of the garden. The rising vision of a “contemplative garden” serendipitously brought us into collaboration with Japanese landscape architect, Takaya Kurimoto. Takaya listened keenly to the experiential objectives I sought to achieve and expertly translated them into a multi-themed garden plan, influenced by Japanese garden design and spatial concepts. Ultimately, I wanted the garden to be a space, like the pauses in poetry, where one could step out of time and meet themselves fully. ~ Anáil Moon
A breathtaking fusion of rare Japanese cultivars and native New England flora coexist beautifully.
Brilliantly colored fungi thrive among the moss.
The Zen Garden – a special place to exhale fully and experience the effortless ease of being.
“As I tuned into the heartbeat of the land, it began to divulge into a wordless language that would soon become an extension of me, and me of it.” ~ Anail Moon
Plantings along the winding stream keep the energy of the land flowing reminding us that it is our very nature to be – in flow.
‘Astrantia major’, Masterwort – an unusual, starry-eyed edition.
A rare Monarch butterfly enjoying the mossy montage.
The koi pond provides a point of visual serenity within the landscape.
The budding Sweet Almond Tree (Prunus dulcis), a gift from Dan, draws the eye toward the Zen Garden in the distance.
“Some would say that I was learning to follow the Tao – what became clear is that the garden would become an extension of my becoming.” ~ Anáil Moon
Fall-blooming succulents nestled amid natural stepping stones.
The experiences within the garden is textural and never-ending in both variety and scope.
Many captivating combinations lie at the heart of the Japanese Garden.
The lush pollinator meadow is a highlight as you approach this magical property.
Coneflowers, ‘Schizachyrium scoparium’, little bluestem, and ‘Muhlenbergia capillaris’, pink muhly grass, heighten the level of texture in the native meadow.
Miel, enjoying everything his special home has to offer…lunch in tow.
Before you start planting, consider the following:
Color: Ensure you have continuous color from spring through late fall. Pines, ferns, and hostas provide a relaxing, cool feel, while black-eyed susans, echinacea, and lilies add pops of color. Mulch adds a finishing touch and the earth tone accentuates the plants from the hardscape area of your pool.
Texture: Different plants provide different textures. Ferns and grasses add movement, allure, and an ethereal feel along with a Zen atmosphere of calm and coolness.
Visual appeal: Potted palms, papyrus, and banana trees add an authentic tropical island feel. They’re also hardy enough to handle splashes of pool water with chlorine, saline pool water, and pool cleaning chemicals. Bonus! You can bring these plants inside to overwinter for year-round enjoyment.
Longevity: You don’t want to plant new trees, shrubs, and flowers every year (except for a few annuals). Be sure to invest in plants that are well-suited to our fluctuating climate.
Privacy: Arborvitae and other shrubs provide natural screens to keep your area private while you and your family enjoy your pool.
PROFESSIONAL TIP: It’s best to consider starting with native plants (our specialty!) because they handle the New England climate well and can tolerate dry periods, as well as the changing seasons.
As a landscape designer, I’m constantly taking in elements of the surrounding landscape, both in my many travels throughout the U.S. and at properties, I visit locally. I often slow my car down to a crawl, sometimes parking on the shoulder with hazards blinking, just to get a better view of a visually appealing landscape (peering behind fences if needed) or at times… an appalling one. After snapping a few photos, I drive away and contemplate how we can pass along the positive attributes from sites that hold appeal and apply these ideas and solutions to the less appealing ones. I find myself constantly attempting to bring forward creative ways to fix these neglected eyesores or improve upon a simple, unfinished garden. These neglected areas have always bothered me – how and why did they get this way? It seems that in the many spaces where humans lay hands in the form of progress, we tend to mess it up.
By providing food, housing, roadways, and other basic human needs to society, natural spaces have become lost, leaving only the remains of scarred landscapes in far too many instances. The responsibility is then left to the property owners, developers, landscape designers, engineers, architects, and landscape professionals to make good land-use decisions that will enhance these areas. If left as is, these sites tend to become a dumping ground for additional debris, turning natural spaces into permanent, unwelcoming eyesores. Once these areas become overrun with invasive plants, debris, or are neglected, a door opens for even more degradation, including dumping and trash pile up, noxious weeds galore, and more. Like a teenager’s room – the messier it becomes, the more it’s inclined to move down a path of further disarray.
Not all development is unpleasant and imbalanced. Here in the Northeast, we’re fortunate to be surrounded by many examples of beauty in both the natural landscape, from the coastal areas, rolling hills, woodlands, and wetland areas – to pleasantly planted areas in which property owners have spent considerable time and resources on development and maintenance.
However, it’s nearly impossible to go anywhere and not see where the heavy hand of development has left a landscape in crisis. Take a look around and you’ll see evidence of these changes in many forms including erosion, invasive plants that take over our tree canopies and their understory (thus depleting wildlife habitats), hot sediment, and pollutant-infused water from roadways entering our streams, aquifers, and ultimately our drinking water, along with the effects of climate change. This development taking place all around us is in the form of roadways, parking lots, buildings and even playing fields to name a few.
Luckily, landscape designers and gardeners are uniquely positioned to make a difference by rethinking how we approach our land practices. This gives me hope – there are ways to make enhancements, even on a small plot of land. The practice of rewilding our landscape has gained global attention and has proven to be an effective and valuable approach to healing the land on a parcel by parcel basis.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a democratic Union that brings together the world’s most influential organizations and top experts in a combined effort to conserve nature and accelerate the transition to sustainable development, had this to say about the critical need for this paradigm shift in landscape development:
“Human activity is degrading ecosystems and driving biodiversity loss faster than ever before. The need to reverse these trends is formalized in Sustainable Development Goals 14 and 15. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the post-2020 global biodiversity framework provides opportunities to rebuild the biodiverse ecosystems which sustain all life on Earth. Rewilding has the potential to do so at a landscape scale, and brings other important benefits for society.”
The rewilding practitioner achieves the goal of reversing biodiversity loss and restoration of healthy ecosystems by utilizing native plants to create the framework for naturally occurring biodiversity (before human disturbance) to repopulate the area and become a functional system. In essence, plant it and they will come!
The benefits of using native plants compared to exotic species are tremendous. Doug Tallamy, an entomologist and professor at the University of Delaware, conducted a study chronicling the benefits of oak trees in our landscapes as it pertains to the diversity and quantity of caterpillar species that are supported by oak trees. He looked at caterpillars as they “fuel the food web” – “they are so important, critically important, in running our ecosystems, and that’s what attracts me. Oaks are not just another plant,” Tallamy mentioned in his 2020 best-seller “Nature’s Best Hope”. Although oaks may take the prize for the overall numbers of other species that depend on them, not all properties can accommodate the space oaks require, and therefore other native plants-shrubs, perennials, groundcovers, and smaller tree species fill those needs.
Our native plants have coevolved with the local animal species for hundreds of years. This symbiotic relationship provides food and shelter for the fauna, while the flora benefits from the propagation and dissemination of its own species. Exotic plants do not share the same qualities. Some, in fact, create issues in the form of invasive plants overrunning our properties along with providing empty calories for our local creatures. In turn, creating a veritable dining dessert, akin to a junk food diet. It’s always a good idea to supplant exotic plants with more resilient and beneficial native ones. Along with providing clean air, water, food and shelter, and even medicine, these transformed landscapes can help increase carbon removal and provide socio-economic opportunities that include community wellness through passive outdoor activities.
10 Rewilding Initiatives as Outlined by the IUCN Commission:
1. Rewilding uses wildlife to restore food webs and food chains.
2. Rewilding plans should identify core rewilded areas, ways to connect them, and
ensure outcomes are to the mutual benefit of people and nature.
3. Rewilding requires local engagement and community support.
4. Rewilding focuses on the recovery of ecological processes, interactions, and
conditions based on similar healthy ecosystems.
5. Rewilding recognizes that ecosystems are dynamic and constantly changing.
6. Rewilding should anticipate the effects of climate change and act as a tool to
mitigate its impacts.
7. Rewilding is informed by science and considers local knowledge.
8. Rewilding recognizes the intrinsic value of all species.
9. Rewilding is adaptive and dependent on monitoring and feedback.
10. Rewilding is a paradigm shift in the coexistence of humans and nature.
We all live on pieces of land that intersect with the natural landscape. How do we achieve better integration? How do we reconnect the native landscape to the planted one and do so in an artful and resilient way? It can be accomplished by creating spaces that take care of themselves – helping not just our visual feast but an actual veritable feast for nature’s creatures… and even our four-legged friends.
We can do this with one plant, one parcel at a time. Let’s clean up our rooms!
Winter may seem like a quiet time in the landscape – in actuality, it’s anything but. Along with keeping an eye on plants and prepping garden tools for use in spring, taking a closer look at invasive plants while they’re in a dormant state and creating a garden plan for implementation in spring allows you to start with a clean slate and dive into the upcoming growing season with ease and excitement!
Take Control of Invasive Species
The best time of year to remove pesky invasives from the landscape is now, while they’re in their dormant state and before the native plants emerge. Invasive plants spread to wetlands and other natural areas crowding out the native plants that birds depend on. A few common culprits to be on the lookout for include – Garlic Mustard, Oriental Bittersweet, Multiflora Rose, and Japanese Knotweed.
Getting Creative in Winter
One of our favorite things to do during the winter months is to create personalized landscape designs for our clients. When approaching a re-design, a revamp of an old garden, or updating a site that offers a clean slate, we first carefully take into consideration our client’s goals and at the same time observe and understand the location and its unique conditions. By looking at plant material both naturally occurring and previously planted, observing how water flows throughout the site (including drainage and topography), and assessing the health and location of large trees – we are able to create a design that’s perfect for the site and also fulfills the property owner’s vision.
Now is the Perfect Time to Focus on Tree Concerns
Check out our latest ad featured in the Newtown Bee
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK
Did you ever notice how cool bark REALLY is?
There’s a lot more to bark than meets the eye – it’s similar in many ways to our own skin and plays a pivotal role in a tree’s survival by keeping moisture in and infection out. Bark also provides endless benefits to a host of other species within the forest ecosystem and adds aesthetic beauty to the landscape including the depths of winter when its texture really comes to life.
Sweet Dirt
Welcome to Sweet Dirt! In this section of our newsletter, you’ll find links to safe local activities to seek out, books to read, movies to watch, and other tidbits – all with a nod towards the horticultural world we love.
Consider taking a short drive up the road to NYBG! Among many horticultural happens both onsite and online, here is a mesmerizing opportunity not to be missed!
KUSAMA: COSMIC NATURE
Saturday, April 10 – Sunday, October 31, 2021
Public tickets on sale: March 16, 10 a.m. ET
Experience Yayoi Kusama’s profound connection with nature
Contemporary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is one of the most popular artists in the world, drawing millions to experience her immersive installations.
Exclusively at NYBG, Kusama reveals her lifelong fascination with the natural world, beginning with her childhood spent in the greenhouses and fields of her family’s seed nursery. Her artistic concepts of obliteration, infinity, and eternity are inspired by her intimate engagement with the colors, patterns, and life cycles of plants and flowers.
Speaking of fungi… here is a book that comes highly recommended you may want to check out.
“Merlin Sheldrake’s marvelous tour of these diverse and extraordinary life forms is eye-opening on why humans should consider fungi among the greatest of earth’s marvels. . . . Wondrous.”—Time
