Savannah Garden Diary

I just oiled my bench. What virtue! And I need to get around to the other garden benches. Maintenance chores are not my favorite, but there is no doubt that they vastly improve the appearance of the garden. At the same time, I swept up the heap of palmetto berries in front of the bench. Palmettos are very attractive, but they are messy.

This is the bench you are supposed to sit on while meditating in front of the pond. I got it from Gardener’ Supply Company, along with a can of expensive Penofin Oil. I suppose I could just let it go gray, like teak, but I like this golden color, so it has to be oiled occasionally.

I love having benches scattered through the garden. The theory is that the gardener and guests will sit on them and admire the garden. This doesn’t work very well, at least for me, because I only have to sit down and look around and I spot some chore that should be done to vastly improve the appearance of the garden, and up I leap. In practice, I use the benches as focal points or, in the case of this bench, to complete the appearance of the pond.

Gardening Gone Wild has a Design Workshop on fences and walls (which is an excellent idea), so I’ll chip in with my most recent fence.

This is the entrance to the service area and vegetable garden. The mess in that corner of the garden is past praying for, what with compost piles, our johnboat, Richard’s dinghy, and piles of lumber from tearing out the deck. So I decided to screen it off with a fence, made largely from timbers recycled from the deck.

I also needed somewhere to put the dragon fountain Richard gave me, which is not really designed for the great outdoors, being made of plywood with a coating of fiberglass. But I had to rescue it because he commissioned it specially and I have developed a fondness for that foolish head. I made some repairs to the top half, which seemed rescueable. It was obviously not going to last long if exposed to the elements, so I decided a roofed gateway would give it a bit of protection.

The red paint was to give the gateway a vaguely Chinese look that would make the dragon feel at home. The pond beneath the dragon looks all right in this photo, but it has not proved a success. I am going to have to rethink that.

This photo was also taken before the Clematis armandii on the right died. That’s the second one that has died in the same position. I don’t know why. I put them there because they do so well in England that I assumed they liked it wet, and that is the vegetable garden, so it gets plenty of water. Tom has a lovely one just a few blocks from here, so it’s not that you can’t grow them in Savannah. I think I will just conclude that armandii is not for me, and give up on it.

Pam at Wicked Gardener (Wicked Gardener: Next Year’s Plans) has a delightful system whereby she sketches a plan for a corner of the garden and then posts photographs of progress as she pulls the design into shape.

Of course I sketch too, but my sketches are not fit for publication. I really like this approach. I think I shall have to tidy up my sketches.

Yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria) in all its winter glory.

I love those translucent berries. And so will the cedar waxwings when they (with any luck) descend on us in March.

I am rather amazed at how much this tree has grown since planted as a weedy little thing in 2005. Not that it started out weedy, but it had been grown as a bush and I wanted a tree, so I pruned it ruthlessly. Its “trunk” is still an extremely odd shape, but it is straightening out slowly.

I realize that impatience is one of my besetting sins. When I want a tree, I want it now, so I don’t wait to look for one that would be more suitable. The only Yaupon holly left at Miles Nursery was this shrub one, so I took it and now have to wrestle with high-heading it so it doesn’t block the view of the marsh. The same thing happened with the Chionanthus virginicus (ginica?) in the front yard.

My most important chore this winter has been to get rid of the Helianthus-ridden bed and path in the front yard. They were so pretty, and of sentimental value because I found them on a roadside near Okefenokee, but oh, so agressive. Here’s a photo of them 5 years ago when they were just a little clump

It is going to take years to get rid of them completely, but eventually they will be preplaced by frequently mown grass (which I will sod in the spring) and an odd-shaped central island, which will block the view across the street from the front door (which since July has large windows). At the moment, the bed contains hydrangeas, 2 ill-considered Cleyera, and a large red camellia Thom gave me, whose color offends me. Not sure what to do about that.

Helianthus angustifolius in all its native glory. Also in this photo, I see is one of Connie’s clerodendrons. Also charming and well-behaved if you spend hours every spring pulling out their million offshoots. By the time this fall rolled around, I had to take a machete to the Helianthus before people could get to our front door.

Now that we have cleared many trees so that there is some sunshine at the back of the house, I am moving most of my gardening to the back yard. I want the front to be reasonably simple, so that it can be looked after by George and an annual weed/newspaper/pine straw blitz.

This month I have also added to this camellia bed a second Acer palmatum ‘Bloodgood,’ a second Meyer’s Improved lemon, and a banana from the Bamboo Farm. I’ve already forgotten the variety, but apparently a woman on Tybee ripened several pounds from it this year.

In addition, the Brugmansia, which started life as a cutting I stole from Evergreen Nursery when it was alive on President Street, had amazingly survived in a choking thicket of morning glory, and was flowering beautifully, so I chopped it back and moved it to a better location where George won’t weed-whack it. It is now sending out new shoots at high speed.

Furthermore, there is a Brugmansia down the road which is the size of a small tree and blooming like crazy in the middle of December. Global warming strikes again. The first time I saw one that had overwintered (without any set back) in this part of the world was in 2006 in downtown Charleston, but I assumed that was in a heat island.

Here is the Lady Banks rose on the pergola one year after it was planted as a scraggly little plant that had never flowered. This has to be absolutely the best shade vine for this part of the world. What’s not to love? It is a thornless, evergreen rose with gorgeous flowers. Admittedly, it flowers only once a year and you have to prune occasionally to keep it from dripping and drooping all over the place. (The largest tree in the world is believed to be a Lady Banks in Arizona that covers about an acre of land.)

Culture is easy in this climate. She needs full sun (as I discovered with one partly under a live oak at Walthour Road which did not flower as well as its neighbor 6 feet closer to full sun). Not fussy about water or fertilizer. (Which means I have never watered or fertilized a Lady Banks more than 6 months old.)

The book says that outdoor ceilings should be higher than indoor ceilings not to feel claustrophobic and I believe it, so the pergola “roof” is almost 12 feet from the ground. This presents a problem when pruning and painting. The pruning problem I have solved with a truly excellent pruning shear-like gadget with a sliding trigger supplemented by a rope. It is powerful enough to prune the bougainvillea, so it makes light work of the Lady Banks.

It’s now so late in the season that getting plants in the ground is more important than finishing the paving. On the right is the Yoshino cherry in flower with the ‘Nelly Stephens’ holly looking very tiny on its left.

This trellis (left) hides the mess around the back door from the patio. I decided it was unrealistic to think the back door’s surrounds would ever be attractive. It is where everyone washes paint brushes, and drops pipes, hoses, junk when coming in for a meal or escaping from the rain. Better to hide it than hope to tidy it up. The main vine on it is Bignonia ‘Shalimar Red.’

In retrospect, this was a mistake. Crossvine is native, and gets much larger than I realized until I saw one climbing 3 stories up the naked concrete wall of the parking lot at the South Carolina Aquarium. Two years later, I am still hacking it back twice a year to prevent it taking the roof off the house. Why does it grow toward the house instead of our toward the sun as I’d hoped? I need to replace it with something more manageable. I also stuck in some morning glories for a little rapid cover.

To the right is the planting area by the breakfast room steps. (I have already started tiling the steps.) It contains the Lady Banks rose (Rosa bansksiae), which has languished in the front bed for two years because it gets no sun, as well as Gelsemium Rankinii, (swamp jessamine, from Secret Garden).

This is native, but less common and larger-flowered than the Gelsemium sempervirens (Carolina jessamine or jasmine) which scrambles all over our pine trees in February and March. As its name suggests, it is supposed to like lots of water, which it won’t get here.

The little boxwood on the right hides the outlet from the a/c system.

I concreted the uprights for the pergola in place, but Thom kindly undertook to attach the rafters, my artificial hip being averse to falling off ladders. Painting all this wood took about 2 weeks! And I now think I made a big mistake in using untreated lumber for the superstructure (although the uprights are treated).

Why is this a pergola and not an arbor? According to the book I’ve been using to tell me how to build a patio, an arbor is freestanding (or, I guess attached only to a fence or wall) and a pergola is attached to a building. Why then is it not a cloister? Or, alternatively, what is a cloister? Never mind.

Much soul-searching and argument with spouse over what color to paint the planter walls. My initial idea was to stucco them and then paint. But I am rapidly running out of steam and stamina for this project. While painting the cinderblock foundation of the house (revealed now that the deck has been removed), I discovered that mixing the cement paint with textured ceiling paint does a pretty good job of disguising the blocks without the stucco step.

There’s a note in my journal that says this blue-green color is horrid and not what I thought when I bought it. But it’s amazing how you adapt to a color, especially when replacing it would be wretched hard work.

Also visible to the right of the picture is the makeshift bird bath (saucer on an upturned terracotta pot) that was our temporary fix until I got around to building a proper one. It was a bit of a nuisance because saucer and pot were not attached and raccoons kept knocking it over.

The steps to the breakfast room are complete, although they need to be tiled, and the forms are in place for the steps to my study. Behind this is the ‘Nelly Stephens’ holly. I’m slightly afeared that it is going to get too big for that spot, but I suppose it can be pruned. It serves a useful function in blocking the view from the road into the back garden.

We finally collected from Miles Nursery the plants I ordered the other day: two ‘Natchez’ crape myrtles (Lagerstroemia indica), Yoshino cherry, ‘Nelly Stephens’ holly, yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria). Love that name. Apparently, the Guale Indians on this coast made a tea of it for fiestas and all sat around throwing up and enjoying themselves.

All are pretty big. The pickup was groaning and it was a good thing there was a hefty youngster to help load. The yaupon holly was so big that I built the planter around it as shown here. There are already herbs in the herb planter by the kitchen window in the background. Time’s afleeting. I knew this would take forever, and if we’re to have any plants this summer, it’s time to plant.

Making progress on all three planters and on the steps to the breakfast room. Steps to the study were the last bit of construction. By that time we were both pretty exhausted with lugging concrete and cinder blocks.

The other thing I like about this picture is it shows so clearly the eastern side of the garden in “before” state. There is nothing there except a few wax myrtles, the neighbor’s dog fence, and, I think, that sugar cane from Seabrook. I’m not even sure the boats are there. Where were they? Amazing! When I think of the jungle of brambles, pine trees, oaks, and sugar cane that I cleared out after the shed was built in fall, 2006, I am amazed at how rapidly the jungle grows in this climate.

The other thing I like in this shot is the magnolia flowers. February was the only time of year that that tree had any socially redeeming value.

The planters have concrete footers and are made of cinder blocks mortared together and topped with pavers at what I hope is sitting height. I’m pretty pleased with the designs, as a matter of fact. They are based on the size of cinder blocks to make two small planters for herbs near the kitchen, and one large planter for a shade tree and experimental plants near my study.

In retrospect, the completed structure had a lot more shade than I anticipated, partly because I assumed palmettos threw almost no shade, which turns out not to be true. Also, I had no idea that the ‘Natchez’ crepe myrtles would grow as rapidly or be as generally weedy as they turn out to be.