Our Life in Gardens

by Joe Eck

  Technically, all bananas are evergreen clumping perennials, producing offsets at their bases, either when the mother “tree” is cut down or, more likely, when she flowers, produces fruit, and dies. Though that death is dramatic—as it is for agaves, for example, which flower only after twenty or more years of growth—it is not so different from the behavior of any border perennial. In northern gardens, the fruit that causes this demise will never be produced, and so our plants simply pass from year to year, perhaps in maternal dreams that never will materialize.

  Some of that dreaming has to occur in the depths of winter, when our plants are shipped off as cumbersome potted logs. Digging them is a hard day’s work, and we try to put it off as long as possible. Often, they still look quite fine by the end of September, and like the grasshopper in the fable, we ourselves are still floating around, enjoying the garden. But we pay more anxious attention to weather forecasts, and we watch the indoor-outdoor thermometers more carefully. At some point, we always know that it is time to dig the bananas. We always hope we get enough notice.

  The very structure of bananas assists us in saving ours, because for so large a plant, a banana hasn’t got much root. Its funneling leaves and stems provide it with moisture, and possibly with nutrients (bat droppings? dead night moths? We could hardly guess). So a “tree” as tall as ten feet need only have a storage root ball the size of a bushel basket. It is a comfortable fit.

  If frost has not already wizened the great leaves, the hardest part of this process is severing them. But each year we think we might have a happier solution, by wrapping thick chunks of cod in the leaves after marinating the fish in garlic and oil and ginger, and steaming them over an open fire. Somehow, there is never enough time.

  But come spring, there’ll be a wan leaf or two, extending out of the sheaf of truncated leaves. They won’t make it into the spring air, and so should be chopped off as well, before the plants are reestablished in the garden, and offer a second chance to that steamed cod idea. The trees will then greet the new growing year pretty much as they departed from the ending one. That is the chain on which all gardening is strung.

  And it offers an answer to the question with which this essay began. Why grow bananas? Especially, why grow them in southern Vermont, so far from where they could reasonably be expected to look appropriate? The first answer is . . . simply because we can. And the second is because bananas can make a contribution to the beauty of a garden, though not if they are used randomly, here and there—promiscuously, like marigolds. We have found that they look best not in the borders themselves but in outer places, under the window where guests can sleep above the lower greenhouse and be shushed by their leaves, or improbably, across the stone path from the calf stall, where we administer bottled rations of real milk for his short life.

  This is the point. Tropical accent plants of any kind—whether bananas, cannas, hedychiums, or any other—are best associated with domestic buildings and with domestic activities, be it a swimming pool, an outbuilding, or even an animal stall. In that way, they will seem part of human contrivance on the land, pass-downs and pass-alongs, rather than something merely plunked down for showy effect.

  THE BAY TREE

  ASK A SMALL CHILD to draw you a picture of a tree, and chances are pretty good that you will get a brown trunk as straight as a broomstick, surmounted by a green blob as round as a childish hand can make it. Refrigerator doors without number have been ornamented by such drawings. As children, we probably made some ourselves. But the most interesting thing about this original idea of a tree is that it remains in the minds of gardeners, though as they become more sophisticated, they learn to call them “standards.”

  Almost any shrub that forms a woody stem can be made into a standard. The great contemporary master of this art was most certainly Allen C. Haskell, who died in 2004, but whose nursery in New Bedford, Massachusetts, was for over fifty years a place all good gardeners visited. In his years as a nurseryman, there was almost no woody plant that Allen hadn’t run up into a standard. We remember plastic tube houses filled with rows of diminutive thymes and rosemaries, fuchsias, pelargoniums, coleus, tender azaleas and camellias, myrtles and bays. Once, one of us noticed a large potted bush of Osmanthus fragrans, the wonderful Sweet Olive of Deep South gardens, which scents the air in winter with its tiny white flowers. “Have you ever made a standard of that?” we asked. “No . . . but I will, the minute you are out the door!” was Allen’s reply.

  Standards became the signature of Allen’s nursery, and if you saw a perfect little myrtle tree ornamenting an expensive room in a popular shelter magazine, that plant almost certainly originated in Allen’s nursery. It would be straight of trunk and surmounted by a green globe of leaves, shaped as round as a baseball, and always in a fine, mossy clay pot. Thousands and thousands were shipped from his greenhouses each year, and every one was perfect. But in fact, the nursery was also always the best place to go for any wonderful plant, hardy or tender, and also to see the most imaginative use of them in the garden surrounding the nursery that was kept to the highest pitch of perfection. A family of rare miniature chickens was apt to cross the antique Belgian block path before you, or the scream of a peacock might startle you while you contemplated the ivory-berried form of Ilex verticillata ‘Ivorine’. All this was the more extraordinary because Allen C. Haskell & Son is buried in a modest, shabby (and we were told, crime-ridden) section of New Bedford, on Shawmut Avenue.

  It was from Allen that we bought our standard bay tree, which we have owned and tended for twenty years and, therefore, for which we take much credit. Still, he gave us a great start, and once (on pain of total excommunication from his good graces if we repeated the information) he explained the trick by which so many other standard bay trees he sold were made. As Allen is gone, we feel we can now share it. But we confess that we do so with a bit of trepidation, for though Allen was a good friend to us for over thirty years, we knew, like all his good friends, that his angers were not to be taken lightly.

  Bay trees (Laurus nobilis) are easy to root from the current year’s mature growth, but typically they will want to grow at first in irregular ways and not as the perfectly straight trunk you want for a standard. So, after the first year of growth, Allen cut down the young bush to about an inch above the ground. Almost inevitably a single, straight shoot would then emerge, and it could be trained upward to make a trunk of whatever height before stopping it by a pinch at the top. That first flexible stem could also be trained into a corkscrew, and Allen had a system for this also, though we paid no attention because the form seems excessively baroque to us, a violation of the dignity a bay tree ought to possess.

  But about the height of the trunk Allen was very particular, and so are we. Potted bay trees will be stood on a terrace or other outdoor garden room in summer, where they will contribute a wonderfully suave note of formality. If they loom too high, however, they seem ungainly. And if they are too squat, most of their elegant dignity is forfeited. The best height (always including the pot itself) seems to be about the height of an average man, around six feet and perhaps an inch or two taller. So the trunk should be allowed to develop to about forty-two inches, and then pinched to induce branching. Eventually the head should be in proportion to the pot, not more than half again its diameter, for if it is larger, there is an unsettling, top-heavy look, such as might be seen on the terraces of Roman aristocrats, who did not grow their bay trees, but inherited them.

  The pot in which our tree has grown for all its life with us measures nineteen inches in diameter and is only fourteen inches high. Those are unusual dimensions for a clay pot, but they offer a squat, stolid effect that nicely anchors the tree to the ground. Nevertheless, a six-foot-tall standard bay tree is a sail in any summer wind, crashing to the ground and possibly fracturing its pot. To prevent this, a four-foot length of rebar (concrete reinforcing rod) is hammered firmly into the ground, extending above just to the rim of the pot. Fence wire is then tie
d to it and looped around the pot just below its rim. The wire and the rebar rust quickly, creating much more a sense of good garden care than of hysterical remedy. We use this system for any plant stood outside that is likely to blow over. Since these are large plants, generally, they are positioned at the edges or corners of terraces, where the rebar can be unobtrusively driven in.

  Developing a standard bay tree isn’t of course a quick process. It takes at least four years to create a trunk and an acceptable branched head. But after that process is complete, one owns a treasure that only gets more beautiful with the years. Still, those years must be of careful tending, as with any fine thing. Watering must be faithful, for though bay trees are native to the dry Mediterranean shores, their questing roots run deep in search of summer moisture. In a pot, they will be entirely dependent on the gardener, and the older they get, the more this will be true. An old tree will have very dense roots and an extensive canopy of leaves that transpire moisture. As with bonsai (which an old bay tree resembles, in essence if not in appearance), two or three days in hot sun with no water may be fatal.

  Careful fertilizing is also crucial, for you will hopefully end up with a rather massive plant in a proportionately small pot. During winter, no fertilizer is required. But at the turn of the year, just as spring growth begins to emerge, liquid fertilizer should be applied weekly, at half the strength recommended on the package.

  Bay standards also require pruning, of two sorts, neither of which can be neglected if the tree is to remain shapely and ornamental. Top pruning is done during winter and consists of shortening last year’s growth to within an inch or two of the point of emergence from the previous year’s growth. The work can be done bit by bit over the whole winter, thus providing fresh bay leaves for stews, soups, and braises. (Use about twice as many fresh leaves as dry, for the strength is weaker, but the flavor is incomparably more delicate.) All pruning should be completed by late March, and if your tree begins to show pale green buds, pruning should be hurried to completion, and the extra clippings given away to friends.

  The second form of pruning required by all standards is root pruning. Many gardeners find that hard, for though they seem to have no trouble taking a good chop at over-vigorous top growth, they are nervous about messing with the roots. Still, it is a necessity because one cannot keep moving any plant into bigger and bigger pots forever. There’s a limit somewhere, if only for portability.

  Root pruning is a technique well known to masters of the art of bonsai, and venerable four-hundred-year-old trees that enjoy the status of being Japanese cultural treasures annually survive it. It must always be done when the tree is still fully asleep but just approaching its flush of spring growth. The plant is removed from its pot, and the earth is gently teased from its roots, using a chopstick or some other sharp implement in a sort of scraping-clawing motion. Only about two or three inches of old soil need be removed, leaving roots dangling in wisps and hairs all around the root mass. Those are clipped cleanly away against the remaining soil, using scissors or sharp secateurs. As much as four inches may be sliced from the base of the root mass. Then the tree is repotted, with a layer of fresh potting compost placed over the crocking at the bottom, and additional compost forced down the two- to three-inch gap left on all sides. Eliminating air pockets is essential, and the end of a wooden kitchen spoon is best for that. It is satisfying work, once you get your courage up.

  For most American gardeners, the greatest problem posed by a standard bay tree will not be in its care, pruning, or repotting, but in where to keep it over the winter. Laurus nobilis is reliably hardy from Zones 8 to 10, which means that when winter temperatures reach a low of around 20 degrees, it begins to suffer. If the trees are potted, they are dead, since the roots of a potted plant will reach the temperature of the ambient air, freezing long before roots in the ground experience even a chill. So throughout most of North America, winter quarters must be found. Ideally, bay trees want to experience a cool, moist winter, with nighttime temperatures hovering around 50 degrees and daytime ones about 10 degrees higher. Frequent drenching of the foliage keeps leaves green and shiny, whereas dry air tends to crisp them. These are not, obviously, the conditions in the average American living room, and so bay trees, for all their old-world elegance, will never take the place of a potted ficus tree.

  Sometimes houses are lucky enough to have a sunporch kept just above freezing, or a bright hallway or seldom-used guest room, where a bay tree—and perhaps other wonderful things—can settle down for a long winter’s sleep. (Gardeners who have such guest rooms do not have guests, any more than they park their cars in the garage.) Failing any of these possibilities, however, our only and best advice is to build a greenhouse, or better, a winter garden or cool conservatory attached to the house. But do not think of it as a place to read books in shirtsleeves or serve lunch to friends and sip a convivial glass of white wine. If such a place does not require you to wear one or two sweaters in the dead of winter, you have simply built yourself another sort of living room, just the right place for another ficus tree.

  We know we run the risk of sounding smug, but our bay tree, now with a smooth, iron-gray trunk measuring nine inches in circumference, has the perfect place to spend the winter. It sits just to the left of the three steps leading down to the winter garden and just across the stone path from the Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’ that produces three-inch-wide cherry-red flowers all winter long. In spring, when all danger of frost is past, it is muscled out the French door, through the kitchen, and onto a corner of our planted terrace, where it serves as a marker post, defining the entranceway to the back garden.

  There is something deeply satisfying about a long association with any plant and particularly with a portable one in a pot. Our bay tree is both one of the oldest plants we grow in a pot and the oldest one historically grown by western gardeners. As with several other plants that may be sheared into imaginative shapes, such as box and myrtle, its cultivation extends at least to Egyptian gardens in 4000 b.c. Roman gardeners loved it, for it offered just the sort of architectural dignity they believed was gardening at its best. In the Middle Ages, when utility was a necessary excuse for any plant otherwise grown for pure pleasure, its leaves had many culinary uses, and tinctures of its leaves and bark were employed to treat aching joints. Where it was not hardy, it was always among the collections of eighteenth-century orangeries, for it takes extremely well to tub culture, and it withstands severe clipping indefinitely. And—as any eighth-grade French schoolgirl knows—its leaves are obligatory in many dishes and always best when harvested fresh. So our bay tree has many claims on our attention. We do not neglect any of them.

  BERBERIS

  Except for the forest trees, the oldest plant in our garden is a single specimen of Berberis vulgaris, the common barberry. It stands at the back of the property, marking the point at which a fieldstone path makes a turn before leading to the stream and beyond. Though it has stood in full sun for almost thirty years now, it grew in the shade of large old maples and beeches when we came here. They had to be felled to form our back lawn, leaving only a fringe of them to mark the boundary between our garden and the neighboring hay field. Maybe because it has passed most of its life in shade—or maybe simply because it is very old—the barberry has grown to about seven feet tall, forming a congested, fountainlike bush of many corky gray stems. It isn’t a comfortable plant to be near, because those stems are armed with hard little brown spines that can get deep into your fingers like splinters from rough old wood. So it is kept trimmed well away from the path and that is a process that never fails to startle us, because the inside of each stem is a beautiful canary yellow, unlike the pith of any other shrub we know.

  The plant itself is not very beautiful. In fact, it could fairly be called homely. And anywhere in the rural parts of North America, barberry has a very bad reputation. Cattlemen and dairy farmers hate it, because it forms dense wiry mounds in pastures, too spiny for cows to nibble
. In wheat country it is the alternate host to wheat rust, so if a barberry bush is growing near a wheat field, dull red streaks will show up on the leaf blades of plants growing nearest it, and then spread relentlessly through the whole field in a sort of russet wave. And hunters moving through the edges of woods curse it for its sometimes impenetrable growth and wicked spines.

  We half believe that we spared this particular plant because its species is so unloved. In us, that same quixotic impulse extends to other hated plants, to Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum), for example, which we grow in a beautiful varie-gated form we rescued from Beth Chatto’s compost heap. Or simple plantains, amiable weeds that nestle at the Virgin’s feet in paintings of the Annunciation to indicate her great humility. But this one barberry was also in a perfect place, offering the perfect reason for the necessary turn of the path. Also, it must have been well over fifty years old when we came, making it now eighty. That alone seemed to give it a claim. Besides, we just didn’t have any other big bush then.

  Like so many other plants that have come to impinge in unpleasant ways on humans, B. vulgaris has had a very interesting history. The genus name carries an exotic sound, suggesting lurching camels and priceless rugs, so it is no surprise that it is based on an ancient Arabic word for a shell, describing the small cupped leaves of most species. A native of eastern Europe, B. vulgaris was widely cultivated from the Middle Ages until well into the nineteenth century for a host of purposes. Until the discovery of synthetic dyes, stabilized infusions of its dried inner bark yielded a fine yellow for tinting linens and leather. All parts of the plant have been employed medicinally for the treatment of many internal diseases—for sore throats, reduction of fever, and even the curing of gum diseases. Infusions of its fruit were especially valued for treatment of illnesses of the liver, explaining one of its popular names, jaundice berry. Its highly acidic fruit, consisting of numerous and persistent pea-sized elongated bright red berries too sour for birds to eat, can be boiled with equal parts of sugar to make a clear, brilliant red jelly.