Although you would hardly know it with the snows swirling and the winds wailing, there's a touch of spring afoot in Bucks County.



At Hortulus Farm Nursery, we have been busy preparing the greenhouses and perennial fields for a grand new opening in May.



For Hortulus Farm Nursery, Spring 2009 will herald a return to the fine, owner-run and stocked horticultural experience you have so generously supported in the past.



Please visit us then to browse what we promise will be an extraordinary collection of the truly rare and exotic, fantastic standards, topiaries, espaliers, and tropicals, and the most unusual and attractive perennials and annuals available anywhere.



We look forward to welcoming you in the spring. Stay warm!

This is another moment when, through a sterling combination of impressive seasonal showmanship and tried and true performance, we are compelled to swoon over a particular genus of plant. At this time of year, when we’re awfully happy for any sustaining blossom, our vote goes to that gorgeous autumnal garden stalwart, the hydrangea, so here we will stop to laud a few varieties that have worked well for us on the farm. Probably the world’s most popular hydrangea is the “PeeGee”, correctly Hydrangea paniculata ‘Grandiflora’, which can grow to a spectacular nine feet tall, although ours are grafted as standards onto some accommodating rootstock and stand sentinel in a group of six around our pool. The name "paniculata" comes from the fact that the blooms are cone rather than ball-shaped, ‘Grandiflora’, of course, signifying extremely impressive ten inch panicles of white/green aging to rusty-tipped splendor. Also notable is the brawny Hydrangea paniculata ‘Tardiva’: we have planted an allee of them, interspersed with white pines, caryopteris ‘Longwood Blue’ and bordered with yellow-blooming potentilla, up above our pool garden, and they never fail to impress. All of the paniculatas are nicely hardy to Zone 3, may be pruned anytime save when they begin forming blossoms in summer, and, unlike many hydrangeas, can take a full day of sun if they get adequate moisture.



The hydrangea we most identify with summer, seen in our mind’s eye banking white clapboard houses with blue clouds of blossom amidst emerald lawns, are the lovely white, pink, or blue “mopheads” and “lacecaps” of the species Hydrangea macrophylla (“big-leaved hydrangea”). Some of the varieties that have worked well for us, all being small, deciduous shrubs hardy to minus twenty degrees, are the “mopheads” ‘Ami Pasquier,’ ‘Hamburg‘, ‘Nigra‘, and ‘Nikko Blue‘, and the “lacecaps” ‘Blue Wave‘, ‘Geoffrey Chadbund‘, ‘Mariesii‘, and ‘White Wave‘. Another valuable hydrangea variety is the laudable quercifolia or “Oakleaf” Hydrangea, as its large, deeply lobed leaves resemble those of the oak, which we have used in combination with magnolias and shrub chestnuts (aesculus parviflora) on the southern bank of the big pond.



An all season stunner, the quercifolia’s cinnamon-colored bark lights up the winter landscape as surely as the red or yellow whips of a witch hazel, then is followed by richly textured, bright green leaves green in spring, huge, conical heads of brilliant white florets in summer, and, finally, as autumn arrives, a dazzling show of red, orange, and maroon foliage. 'Snowflake' is probably the most popular variety, with its impressive size, and large pale green flowers turning to white, then gradually fading to a lovely rosy pink. Also nicely hardy through Zone 4b/5a. And finally, let us recommend the fantastic climbing hydrangea Hydrangea anomala petiolaris, which currently decorates the side of one of our barns. Although a bit slow to acclimate, this rangy, hardy to Zone 4 rambler will cling handily to eventually cover a wall with bright, cinnamon-colored branches, handsome shiny green foliage, and gorgeous white blossoms blooming in mid-June.



Let us deal here with the idea of changing a given hydrangea cultivar’s color from pink to blue or visa versa. First of all, yes, it is possible, although it is much easier to change a hydrangea from pink to blue than it is from blue to pink, and one cannot change a white hydrangea at all. Changing a hydrangea from pink to blue entails adding aluminum to the soil; moving the color dial from blue to pink requires the reverse i.e. the subtraction of aluminum from the soil. To get one of those marvelous deep blue types, simply apply a solution of 1 teaspoon of aluminum sulfate per gallon of water to plants throughout the growing season, taking care not to burn the roots. However, to insure that the aluminum is made available to the plant, it is important that the pH of the soil be lower than 5.5: the lower the pH, the bluer the flowers. Plants grown in soil with a pH level higher than 7 may also lack iron, and iron may need to be added in some dosage as well.



Also, a final word on cutting hydrangea blossoms for drying, which is just the thing to do this month. Don’t do it at the height of their color: fresh, recently opened blooms, rarely dry well in the open air. Hydrangeas do best when allowed to dry a bit on the plant before picking, so try harvesting right now when the petals have begun to take on a vintage look. As well, if left on the shrub a bit longer, many blooms will take on interesting shades of burgundy and pink in the bargain. Picked at the correct moment (why not today?), these stately dried blossoms will provide a handsome decorative statement in your home right through till spring.

Last week I was lucky enough to be asked by my friend Patrick Chasse, the eminent garden designer and founder of the Beatrix Farrand Society in Mount Desert, Maine, to lecture for them and tour a few Maine gardens in the process. For those of you who don't know, Beatrix Farrand, niece of Edith Wharton, was one of our earliest and greatest American female landscape architects, and designed such notable gardens as the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Seal Harbor, Maine, the gardens of Princeton University and the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.



She founded a horticultural study center at Reef Point, her family home, in Bar Harbor, Maine, which she ran until the early 1950's, when she was unable to raise ongoing funding and, dismantling her ancestral home and garden, moved to nearby Garland Farm for the last three years of her life. The mission of the Beatrix Farrand Society is to preserve Garland Farm as a nexus for information, research, and activites concerning Beatrix Farrand, including a Design and Horticultural Reference Library, a Design Archive, and a Center for Internship Studies in Horticulture and Design.



In any case, it's a fine mission and worthy of our suppport, and I was all too happy to donate my lecture to the cause. In repayment, I was happily squired by Patrick to some of the notable gardens he has worked on in Maine, including Martha Stewart's "Skylands" and the aforementioned Rockefeller Garden. "Skylands", a stately Arts & Crafts mansion built for the automotive Ford family shortly after the turn of the 20th Century and adorned with gardens by the noted early 20th Century garden designer Jens Jensen, was a rare treat. However, it is Mrs. Farrand's spectacular Rockefeller Garden that I will share with you now.



Constructed between 1926 and 1930 for Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, wife of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the garden is actually two splendid gardens, a meditative Chinese Garden know as "The Spirit Walk" existing side by side with a spectacular sunken and terraced mixed border garden of astounding exuberance. The "Spirit Walk" is all moss and ferns and carefully laid stepping stones, redolent with the heavenly scent of pine needles and flanked by massive, mainly 14th and 15th Century Japanese, Korean, and Chinese statuary.



The conjoined great "Lawn" and "Oval" gardens, appearing like a stoutly walled apparition in the midst of the Maine woods, are classic Beatrix Farrand, with a strong nod to historic English borders, one side cool colors, the other "hot", in two tiers of extravagant blossom. Delphiniums dance with dahlias, lilies with larkspur, and phlox and stock, zinnias and artemesias, euphorbias and foxgloves all vie winningly for one's attention.



Patrick oversaw the revived planting of the gardens for David and Peggy Rockefeller, son and daughter-in-law of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. He explained that the gardens were designed to be in full, glorious bloom for a scant two weeks a year at the beginning of August, which used to constitute "the season" in Maine, and I was fortunate to be front and center for the show. I don't think I have ever witnessed a border so jam-packed with interesting combinations of color and blossom, both annual and perennial, and sensory revelations abounded.



As every avid gardener knows, garden touring is the most blissful form of self-education: pad and camera in hand, the sun on your back, and a garden at your feet. There are lessons to be learned and noted around every corner: this charming plant juxtaposition, that fencing or gate detail, that imaginative way of staking. What makes a garden designer like Beatrix Farrand great may be, at the most basic level, a technical feat, but what really tells you that you are in the presence of something extraordinary is a visceral experience entirely.

July begins the months of true plenty here on the farm, when the vegetable gardens start to shower us with bounty and the cutting gardens offer up armloads of fetching blossom to bedeck our rooms. This blissful fecundity also describes our animal population right now, most notably in regard to our population of birds, "populate" being the operative word.



We have had a number of females of various descriptions "sitting" for the past month or so and, as in every year, there is some anxiety as to whether all that effort will actually result in offspring. Often, when a female starts to sit, she simply disappears from view, finding some deeply hidden little nook of safety unknown to or unreachable by foxes and racoons. And, often, we have prematuraly mourned the loss of some well loved goose or duck, only to discover her leading a little parade of ducklings or goslings around the pond after a month's absence.



In recent years, however, the geese, especially, have taken to nesting right up against the house so as to thwart the attentions of foxes and racoons, who are leary of coming so close to human habitation. This last month, we have had a White Embden female nesting in our basement windowbox, a gray Toulouse sitting in the crook of our air conditioning unit, another White Embden below the kitchen porch, and our Whooping Swans taking up residence just across the driveway in front of the milk barn.



"Sitting" is far from a solitary occupation. First of all, most waterfowl mate for life and are intensely devoted, so the anxious father is never far away. As well, all the related aunties and uncles stand religious and insanely noisy guard around the expectant mother, warding off anything, including us, that violates their precincts with a great honking and hissing and flapping of wings.



This year our female Whooper sat for at least two months with her devoted husband in attendance, with, sadly, no results from her cache of three eggs. The White Embden beneath the kitchen porch is still sitting, but her nest of eggs has diminshed from a total of six a few weeks ago to just two now as something is eating them (racoon?) when she takes her occasional bath break.



However, the White Embden in the window box, two weeks ago, gave birth to two fine goslings, and, at about the same time, a pair of our mallards materialized from some cloistered spot in the woods with five handsome ducklings. But surely the most amazing birth on the farm must belong to our female Muscovy Duck, who, several years ago, nested eight feet up in the knothole of a tree near the pond. How she got herself and, eventually, her brood, in and out of that tiny space is still a mystery to me, but one morning we awoke to find her proudly leading a family of six tiny yellow offspring around the pond.



The gift of new life is one of the profound joys of the summer season, always balanced, of course, by the losses of winter, and year round fatalities pinned to snapping turtles, hawks, foxes, racoons, and the like. But that's the rhythm of the farm and, in fact, of all of nature: birth, loss, rebirth. To join in it is to reap both peace and understanding, which, as Martha would say, is definitely a good thing.

As that great American musical Oklahoma so accurately opined: "June is busting out all over!" and, surely, that is the case this month on the farm. After a cool, wet spring, then that spate a few weeks ago of sweltering, record setting days, the gardens are positively gushing with blossom and anything that was loitering in the coolness, waiting for a bit of heat to get it moving, has burst forth most accomodatingly, seemingly growing inches overnight.



There isn't a spot in our thirty cultivated acres that isn't putting on a pretty show right now, which is a very gratifying thing indeed. Finally, it seems these past nearly thirty years of gardening and planting and waiting for things to mature and fill their alotted spots have paid off. It would be foolish to say that it's almost as if the gardens are doing it all by themselves now, but that is close to how I feel as I take a walk around. Certainly, we still work hard at trimming and pruning, mulching and weeding and mowing, etc., but as I meander, I feel nearly like a visitor in my own garden, so happily entranced am I by what I encounter.



Those infant plants we planted ten or twenty years ago in the perennial borders are unrecognizable as the brawny stands of astilbe and iris, clematis and fairy rose currently in bloom. Likewise the red hot pokers, coreopsis, daylilies, and heliopsis blazing away in the summer borders. The tiny tufts of thyme and sedum, gentian, daisy, and evening primrose we tucked between the stones in the pool garden are now great carpets and drifts of color and blossom. The roses we planted at the feet of the hoops that surround the French garden now climb twelve feet to festoon them in the most lavish of flowering arches.



This month, even the annual vegetables in the kitchen garden seem to have taken on a life of their own. The lettuces are in high dudgeon, lasting far longer in the prevailing cool temperatures than usual, and the Ruby Perfection cabbages bordering the bean tuteurs are putting on a terrific blue and purple show right now, looking like big moon blossoms. At the same time, the heat of a few weeks ago has also jump-started the more reticent types like the pole beans and squashes, which are beginning their sinuous coiling out of the ground. A particular joy in the vegetable garden right now is also the big stands of variegated horseradish, which, after five years, have finally stopped reverting to green and are displaying their vivacious true colors in a most winning fashion.



And finally, let me praise some of the trees and shrubs we have planted over the years that have finally reached some kind of arboreal majesty. Chief among these are the California redwood we planted twenty years ago at the curve in the drive that now must stand at sixty feet, and the trio of lacy golden locusts in the yellow garden that are brightening the woodland. I am also forced to toss a few accolades at the great drifts of purple smokebush, and purple and golden barberry that are currently adding drama to the summer borders, as well as the weeping copper beeches behind them that provide such a spectacular visual foil.



This is perhaps the greatest joy of gardening: that moment in time when all the work you have put into your space finally achieves the stature you had envisioned for it in those long ago beginnings. And, as if by magic (all right -- and a good bit of annual effort...), you reach that elusive but completely compelling goal of a surrounding and comforting beauty that makes you sigh with pleasure. Such has been this month for me.

Here we are approaching the end of May and I have been sadly remiss in terms of reopening this blog for spring, my only excuse being that this has been a month of intensive planting here on the farm and I have found it very difficult to compose with a trowel in my hand. But what a glorious spring it has been: cool and wet, with everything holding long and strong from the daffodils and muscari that carpeted the woodland three weeks ago to the azaleas, alliums and bluebells that are among our chief glories now. We planted a sweep of miniature triandrus daffodils ‘Hawera’, tall purple allium ‘Gladiator’ and short pinky-lavender allium karativiense down by the creek in front of the house last fall, and they have been blooming nonstop, first the daffodils, now the allium, for a full month now. The amsonia, bachelor buttons, and hardy geraniums are currently brightening the perennial borders, the weigelas and mock oranges are getting ready for their heavenly show, and the peonies are just “golf ball size and showing color”, just the way they like them in the flower market, so next week should be a triumph in the peony ribbon.



Of course, as with all things achieved in concert with Mother Nature, every moment of glory will be balanced with a bit of loss or defeat, and this spring is no exception, as we have seen the demise of two of our most true blue perennial stars: the magnificent 75 year old Japanese maple that graced our front lawn, and the ‘Red Delicious’ apple espalier that has decorated the façade of our upper barn for the past twenty plus years. Their time, simply, was up. The maple has been visibly weakening for several years now, it’s formerly lush, burgundy intensity growing more fragile and airy with each new season, and this spring only about a quarter of it leafed out at all. So yesterday, down the great lady came. I saved some of her prettiest branches to keep in a tall vase in the living room for a bit. Luckily she managed to fling off a few offspring before she met her maker, and we have a number of her progeny following in her footsteps on the terrace and down by the stream walk. We have decided not to replace her as the now open vista down to the creek (where those alliums are so perky right now) is a nice change. The apple followed much the same path: a visible weakening over the last few seasons, the entire right side going feet up two years ago, and the middle section giving up the ghost last summer. We’re going to plant a new one this season and trust we’ll be around long enough to see it achieve the roofline of the barn.



In the vegetable gardens, the beds are amended and tilled, and the cool weather crops (brassicas, lettuce, radishes, carrots) are in. Additionally, our bamboo structures for the beans and tomatoes are built in the beds behind the chicken house this year, and they are looking very handsome indeed, although it’s still a bit early for those heat lovers to go into the ground. The triumph of the bamboo structure, naturally, has been balanced by Mother Nature with a galloping case of bursitis in my left shoulder from the overly zealous jamming of canes into the ground and too much working overhead. Humbly, I have learned my lesson: a few aches and pains are surely part of the gardening life and are, generally, ignored, but sometimes it is wisest to listen to your body when it urges you to stop what you are doing. So, as it is the same shoulder that powers my computer mouse, I believe, that is what I will do for now. Welcome to spring and I will see you next month!