This newsletter was originally published
August 18th, 2005. The article referred to in this piece can be acessed
(for a modest fee) in the New York Times archive.
Mid August in Ken’s Garden
It has taken a couple of years to get it right,
but I think my take on “fountains in the garden” (above photo) finally
works. Besides, as you will learn in this issue, I often have too much
of the real thing flowing through my garden!
In
New York City and other major metropolitan areas, some people opt for a
view from an apartment high-rise, while others seek terra firma: a
house and a place to garden. Gardens everywhere have a variety of built
in vulnerabilities, like suburban Japanese beetle infestations or urban
Asian longhorn beetles. City plantings have insecurities unique to
their environment. Consider community gardens growing in the shadow of
high rise development; but even private gardens are not immune from
“improvement.”
Four years ago, Brooklynites Kim Flodin and her husband Farhan Ali
learned that a laundromat would be built on the empty lot next door
They had no “air-rights” to protect them from a developer building on
the commercially zoned plot outside of the bounds of the Historic
Preservation District.
The garden, a 20 feet by 50 feet place featuring plants in raised
beds, a tiny lawn and their own patch of sky, had been a refuge. Then
came the news about the building’s massive wall that would close in
their garden and rob a portion of sky—and of course, sunlight.
I
learned about their story from my Brooklyn neighbor, Bill Fidelo, a
garden designer who worked with Kim and Farhan, to come up with
inventive solutions to their dilemma. “Thumbing their noses” at the
intrusion upon their space, Bill and Kim came up with some creative
ideas for incorporating the wall into the new garden.
I wrote about Kim and Farhan’s urban
gardening-crisis-turned-into-attractive-oasis in the August 18th House
& Home section of the New York Times. Click this link to find the New York Times archive of this article.
Bill Fidelo grew up in Queens, NY with no garden space at all and
always dreamed of having the space to create one. Now his dream has
turned into a career. You can reach him at:
phone: 718-789-8219 e-mail: bfidelogardens@aol.com
Frustration turned Industrial Chic; a
fountain that appears to be fed from a spigot coming from the wall of
Kim and Farhan’s neighboring laundromat.
City dwellers often fantasize about the peace of rural living, but
every country gardener will quickly point out that bad things happen to
good people and gardens in the country as well. I have had the dubious
honor of experiencing both urban and country garden disasters. And with
hurricane season upon us, some very vivid, not so pleasant memories
have come to mind.
Since my New York Times piece describes one urban calamity gardeners
face, I thought it appropriate to share the story (an adaptation from
my latest book Ken Druse: The Passion for
Gardening; Inspiration for a Lifetime)
of some of the garden challenges we have encountered in the New Jersey
garden…and why, in the face of all that can and does happen, I could
never stop gardening.
When Bad Things Happen to Good Gardens
I hunted long and hard before I found the beautiful piece of land
that has become my New Jersey home and garden. Unfortunately, it was
not the rural stone cottage of my fantasies, but a squat colonial-cum
shack that most likely started life as a mill store. The property was
dotted with dead trees, poison ivy and covered by brush—mostly
overgrown shrubs and invasive weeds. But it had the most important
elements I had been searching for: an interesting, even eccentric
parcel, with varied conditions—and water.
The house perched on the highest part of a small island in a
beautiful river, between the fast-flowing main section and a slower
branch that had been dammed for a long-gone mill. A narrow canal cuts
through the backyard, connecting one branch of the river with the
other, and it is spanned by an arched stone bridge. I was charmed by
the rustic stone walls built around the property, which contained the
sandy soil of the natural flood plain. That first day, as we listened
to the river rush along its rocky bed and over the falls of the old
dam, the feeling grew that “This is the place that I have been looking
for.”
I suspected the dangers of being on an island, surrounded by such an
unpredictable force of nature. My suspicions were confirmed when the
agent told me that I would be required, by law, to purchase flood
insurance. I conducted an informal survey of the neighbors, as well as
the people who had owned the house in the past, and received various
reports of floods occurring “once in a decade” to “not since 1938”. One
longtime resident told me just what my hopeful ears wanted to ear,
“never.” I further rationalized that if the island had flooded, how
could there be hundred-plus-year-old trees? In the end, the beauty of
the place out-weighed my reservations.
Gradually, we upgraded the hovel of a house to an eyesore (one can
live in an eyesore). My partner Louis and I worked out a master plan
for the garden, including a near-acre size parcel across the slow
moving branch of the river we have dubbed “little new jersey”. Over
time, as we removed the alien plants and beat back the invasives, we
hope to establish an all-indigenous haven for the native plants that
grew in this immediate vicinity before European settlers arrived.
The rapid changes in those first few months of ownership were often
exhilarating. My worries about floods subsided as a summer-long drought
caused trees to drop many of their leaves by August. The river was
certainly no threat then, having dropped to mere inches deep. But just
weeks later I got a taste of what was to come, when the remnants of a
hurricane roared through the region that feeds the river. The canal
filled up and overflowed across the garden, stripping the mulch off
some newly made beds. We had two more floods in January; and on
Mother’s Day, 1996 a freak tornado came up the river. And I’ll never
forget the wet, heavy snowfall of 1998 that draped itself over the
early-spring garden, and waking up the next day—April Fools!—to
discover a quarter of our trees damaged or destroyed.
We were visited by the “thirty-year” flood ‘98; a “hundred year”
flood in ’99; and then, on December 3, 2000, an ice storm encased the
trees. Heavy winds snapped the largest branch of the white pine in the
woodland garden. The fifty-eight-year-old limb (we counted the rings)
came crashing down into the center of the oldest Japanese maple on the
grounds but, miraculously, caused little damage. The next day, as
chainsaws roared and we carried off pine logs, it began to rain,
continuing through the night and into the next day. Waves from the fast
moving branch of the river crashed against then began flowing over the
stone walls, flooding the property. The rain stopped; but the river did
not crest until hours later, 2 PM on December 5—the worst flood to
date; the flood that the New Jersey governor called the “Millennial
Event.”
This two-page spread from Ken Druse: The Passion for Gardening shows my garden as it looked on December 5, 2000.
Dare I ask, what’s next?
• Spring, 2004: the deepest flood (four feet of water covering the garden—and my 35mm camera went into the brink!).
• September, 2004: perhaps the most surprising (so far). Even though
it has been the shallowest flood, the fast-moving water caused the most
damage of all the floods to date, scrubbing away the soil in several
areas.
I recite this litany only to confirm that things happen when we try
to create art in a living medium. Does nature test me as some people
think God tests human beings? It doesn’t seem to matter that I’ve tried
to be good to nature over the years, promoting causes in every way I
can (including my right to vote, and with my checkbook to important
organizations).
A major player in many of these disasters—the river—is also the
attraction and a source of great peace that I and many others find
here. The churn of the fast branch, low roar of the water over the dam,
and babble of the canal create an ambient hum that soothes the soul and
sets the restful place. Houseguests are forever telling me that they
slept like a log; my mother says that when the daily trials of life
best her, she closes her eyes, imagines herself in this spot, and feels
a calmness wash over her.
The river looks harmlessly low in August—
before any hurricanes come charging up the east coast:
I—we—have no choice but to deal with what nature—and sometimes
neighbors—dole out. It doesn’t help me, in the immediate aftermath, to
think of the additional light that will now fall on the beds when a
tree comes down. And I can’t imagine someone looks with glee at a fresh
concrete wall looming over their city garden and thinks, “oh goodie, a
new garden opportunity”. I take no solace from a well-meaning friend’s
assurance of future “planting opportunities”. Wounds to the garden are
too often wounds to me as well. But as I cart away the debris and prune
the stubs so the plants can heal more quickly, I more quickly heal
myself as well. Whether I like it or not, the garden is changed; and,
eventually, I remember that change is what a garden is all about.