The garden is dead, long live the garden

Bowman’s Root in Page Dickey’s garden.
Dee Salomon
Bowman’s Root in Page Dickey’s garden.
It is indisputable that we are moving toward a new garden aesthetic. I would even go one step further to propose that gardening’s "man over nature" ethos — which has a classic exemplar in the formal gardens of Versailles — is now over. Nature reminds us, with greater frequency and intensity, that she is in control, and we are beginning to come to terms with the reality that it is a fool’s game to try to tame her.
As you think about your spring planting plans, slide into a new mindset. Let’s call it "human abetting nature." This mindset finds beauty less in rigorous planting schemes and more in the creation of habitats. The aesthetic associated with this new mindset is, thankfully, more forgiving — not so much the baggy dress to the tailored suit, but a looser beauty that can still be shaped or contained in ways we find pleasing.
As with many of our choices these days, mindfulness is the first step. Where are you planting?
And what are you planting there? When planting at the edge of the woods and in her fields, writer and garden designer Page Dickey will only plant natives. Here she has incorporated American hornbeam, Carpinus caroliniana, redbud, Cercis canadensis and gray dogwood, Cornus racemosa. In her book "Uprooted," Dickey writes about her experience moving from a home where she crafted and tended an intricate garden to her current home in Falls Village with acres of woodland, fields and fen. Instead of working to transform the land into something else, she now listens to the land and responds to nurture it.
This new mindset does not mean that aesthetics are less important than before; rather, the aesthetic has shifted. In Dickey’s garden beds that surround her house, she mixes non-natives with native perennials, such as her favorite Bowman’s Root, Gillenia trifoliata (The Cornwall Garden Club native plant sale will offer Bowman’s Root plants among other native perennials Saturday, May 25, in West Cornwall. cornwallgardenclub.org)
Among Dickey’s favorite native shrubs are Fothergilla, Clethra alnifolia, gray dogwood, Cornus racemosa, and the American cranberrybush viburnum, Viburnum trilobum. She also used Viburnum lentago, called nannyberry, in place of adding more lilac, that had originally tempted her, for a hedgerow along a rough track on her property. From "Uprooted": “Surely I could plant something with more to offer, a plant that would enrich our wild habitat.” I can attest to the beauty of this native tree which grows at the edges of our marsh. It can get as tall as 15 feet and has a wide spread if given the space and light. Flowers in spring, nutritious berries for birds in fall.
Deborah Munson is one of our area’s top horticulturalists and landscape designers, who happily admits that her approach to garden design changed over the past decade: “In an ecologically driven garden/landscape I love a wilder and much freer style where there is little to no delineation between the wild and cultivated landscape and incorporating natives as often as possible; a landscape that over time can find its own way, being nudged occasionally by the human hand, often planted to allow the plants to drive the design, allowing self-sowing and covering ground.” One of her favorite native plant combinations is “shadblow, Amelanchier arborea underplanted with our native foam flower, Tiarella cordifolia and miterwort, Michella diphylla is a favorite combo. Add some snowdrops and white daffodils if you’re not a ‘native only’ purist.”
Out with precision edging. Out with yards of trucked-in mulch covered beds: “We can often create our own mulch on site by composting leaves and other garden debris as well as using plants as a living mulch. One should be aware that trucking in products can often bring new diseases and pests.”
Key to our new mindset, Munson reminds us, is "learning about a plant’s behavior… i.e. invasives (don’t plant) or colonizers (be careful what you ask for.) Is it a generalist, a plant that will grow almost any condition or specialist; for example, a plant that will only grow in wetlands or only in well drained acidic conditions?”
Many of Dickey's and Munson’s favorite native plants — from Redbud to Shadblow to Clethra, Sweet Fern, Viburnum Lentago and Anenome Canadensis — will be available from the Northwest Conservation District annual plant sale. You can preorder at nwcd.org and attend April 19-21 at Goshen fairground.
More on spring plant selection in next month’s column. If you have any questions regarding spring planting, please send them to dee@theungardener.com
Dee Salomon “ungardens” in Litchfield County.
Join The Lakeville Journal for a community celebration, featuring local nonprofits and businesses, festive family fun, great food, and engaging activities.
What to Expect:
See you at the Lakeville Journal Street Fair!
If you have any questions, please email streetfair@lakevillejournal.com
Cobbler n’ Cream
5 to 7 p.m.
Freund’s Farm Market & Bakery | 324 Norfolk Rd.
Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Cocktail Party
5 to 7 p.m.
Douglas Library | 108 Main St.
Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Boot Drive
8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
North Canaan Fire Co. | 4 E. Main St.
3rd Annual Fly-In
8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Triumph Airfield | 547 W. Main St.
Canaan Railroad Station Museum
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Canaan Union Station
New England Accordion Connection
9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Canaan Union Station
Canaan Carnival
3 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Berkshire Resilience Brass Band
5 to 8 p.m.
Canaan Union Station
Barbecued Chicken Dinner
5 to 7 p.m.
St. Martin of Tours | 4 Main St.
Canaan Fireman’s parade
6 p.m.
Foxtrot Farm & Flowers’ historic barn space during UAW’s 2024 exhibition entitled “Unruly Edges.”
Art lovers, mark your calendars. The sixth edition of Upstate Art Weekend (UAW) returns July 17 to 21, with an exciting lineup of exhibitions and events celebrating the cultural vibrancy of the region. Spanning eight counties and over 130 venues, UAW invites residents and visitors alike to explore the Hudson Valley’s thriving creative communities.
Here’s a preview of four must-see exhibitions in the area:
1. Wassaic Project (37 Furnace Bank Road, Wassaic)
“So It Goes” is a powerful group exhibition curated by Eve Biddle, Bowie Zunino, Jeff Barnett-Winsby, and Will Hutnick. The title, drawn from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” signals a reckoning with how we process the horrors of the world. Through play, reflection, and immersive scale, 43 artists respond with urgency and imagination. Installations can be seen throughout the town of Wassaic at Maxon Mills, Gridley Chapel, and Luther Barn, each space transformed by this deeply thoughtful show.
2. Foxtrot Farm & Flowers (6862 Route 82, Stanfordville)
“Queer Bestiary,” a group show curated by Charlotte Woolf, is inspired by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian’s book “Forest Euphoria.” The exhibition investigates queer ecology and human relationship to land through the work of 10 artists using painting, sculpture, textiles, and photography. The exhibit is accompanied by a variety of interactive experiences including tattoo pop-ups, karaoke, book readings, and pick-your-own flowers.
3. ChaShaMa North/ChaNorth (2600 Route 199, Pine Plains)
ChaShaMa North (ChaNorth) will have open studios all weekend and has partnered with Paradice Palase, a platform for emerging artists, to mount a site-specific sculpture exhibition featuring 20 artists entitled “Alone, You Are Heard.” On Saturday evening, July 19, stop by for Weird Music Night for an audio-visual synthesis of experimental music, performance art, and unexpected happenings. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience an eclectic lineup of acts that redefine the boundaries of performance.
4. Millbrook Arts Project(3 Friendly Lane, Millbrook)
The Millbrook Arts Project is hosting a curated exhibit entitled “Generated Utility” at the newly renovated gallery at the village library. The exhibit will feature the work of artists Natalie Beall and Kathy Greenwood. Additionally, visitors will have access to 12 open artists studios across town. The weekend culminates in a free outdoor concert on Saturday evening at 6 p.m. at the Millbrook Bandshell. Enjoy the Indie-Folk sounds of Strawberry Runners and She Keeps Bees.
For more information and a complete list of participating artists and locations, visit: upstateartweekend.org
The late Glenn May on one of his favorite rivers, the San Juan in New Mexico, circa 2010.
My nomadic attorney Thos is planning a fishing and camping trip of major proportions later this summer, starting in New Mexico and working his way north through the Rockies into Canada.
So I wanted to reconnect with a fellow named Glenn May, who was my main fishing buddy for several years in the 1990s when we both lived in Albuquerque and worked at the same bookstore. Last I heard he was living in Colorado, which is on the itinerary, more or less.
An email bounced back so I tried Facebook, only to learn he died in his sleep in February.
He was a little younger than me, about 60 I guess.
This was disconcerting.
I was already working at the bookstore when he came on board, and we recognized our mutual interest when I found him trying to carve out a shelf or two for fly-fishing titles amid the general chaos of the sports section.
I had a Ford Escort, which was good on gas but didn’t hold much gear, especially when you factored in critical supplies such as beer.
He had a gigantic and battered Ford F350 which was terrible on gas but would go anywhere and could hold everything. It also had a long-expired Delaware license plate, which made for some tense moments.
We managed to wangle the same two days off, Sunday and Monday, and we’d often bug out after our Saturday second shift and fetch up somewhere around 1 a.m., pitch a tent and be on the water at dawn.
The bookstore did not pay much, and out West the distances (and gas consumption) are exponentially greater than in the relatively compact East.
If it was near the first of the month, we took the Escort. Mid-month when we were feeling bucks up, we’d go with the truck.
Glenn was a dry fly guy to his core. I had been trained in similar fashion but was dabbling in the dark arts of subsurface fishing, so when one of us was catching the other was often fishing.
He was also a Dallas Cowboys fan. They were suffering through a particularly bad season one year in the mid-90s, and as we drove from river to river we listened to the games on the radio. He lamented, and I privately gloated.
I wandered back east but Glenn stayed put, eventually becoming a fairly big name in the New Mexico newspaper world. He wrote about fly-fishing for the Albuquerque Tribune and about everything for the Santa Fe New Mexican, and that’s not a complete list.
Then he was off to Cameroon with the Peace Corps. And then Turkey, not in the Peace Corps. He did a stint teaching English in South Korea.
I occasionally got cryptic emails describing the fishing in places like Bulgaria, and he kept up a Facebook presence, so I had some idea of what he was doing.
More recently he was back in the Four Corners, working for the Ute tribal nation in some capacity. I think there was a wife in there too.
I’m struck — again — by how, over the years,I have spent a lot of time with fishing friends and I know next to nothing about them except they dislike fishing with dropper rigs and have a weakness for hazelnut coffee.
The other thing that stands out about Glenn was that he was the best trout spotter I have ever fished with. No scouting flies for this guy. He was almost always aiming at specific fish, where I was working specific spots. To use a sports analogy, he played man-to-man while I played zone.
I spoke to him on the phone in 2004. We reminisced about the time we were edging around a canyon pool and when he looked back all he saw was my ballcap floating on the surface. (I was underneath temporarily.)
Or the time the drunk idiots chucked rocks into the pools we were working. They were poor shots so the rocks came very close to hitting us. They also called our fly rods “fairy sticks.”
We snuck up on them later when they were cavorting in a hot spring and let the air out one of their tires. Only one. We wanted the punishment to fit the crime.
They recovered enough that we encountered them later at a rustic saloon that sold flies and had a collection of brassieres attached to the ceiling. Luckily they didn’t put two and two together, probably because they were engrossed by the decor. We prudently oiled out and made our escape.
I’ll wrap this with a story about the famous New Mexico tailwater, the San Juan River.
The first time we tried it together he was doing well with miniscule dry flies, size 24 callibaetis, and long leaders tapered to 7X.
I think this was when my antipathy for what I call “specks” started. No matter what, I could not lay out my speck the way he could.
So while he was horsing big fat rainbows into the net, I was fumbling with tackle and cussing.
Finally, I tied on a big gaudy Royal Coachman fly with a pink post and about twice the normal amount of hackle. I think I bought it at the brassiere bar.
Shortening my leader to something around seven feet and 3X, I heaved it near the streamside vegetation while Glenn watched. He may have smirked a bit.
A nice rainbow, probably rejoicing at the prospect of a square meal instead of nibbling on specks, smacked the ridiculous fly and we were off.
It was big enough, and I had consumed enough beer, that Glenn kindly assisted in netting the beast. He looked at it, the fly and at me, shook his head, and said “Now that is some raggedy fly-fishing.”