Garden Landscape
"One person's weed is often another person's treasure."
| Most home landscapes in Central New
York, including McLallen House, have
dry, clay soils. In order to establish a home garden with
nursery-grown plants, which are rooted in synthetic soil-less
mixes, copious amounts of compost, fertilizer and mulch are
required to
enrich existing garden soils. Most home owners don't want to expend
that kind of time, energy and money in order to have a beautiful flower
garden. |
| Plant
nurseries and retail garden centers, due to their plant
inventory
selection, are also positioned to determine which flowers are
planted
in the
home landscape. They dictate what's fashionable or popular, but not
necessarily what's practical for the busy home-owner's pocket-book. |
| Feeding
habits of foraging deer, rabbits and woodchucks also influence
plant selection. Although, this is not necessarily a bad thing; as long
they sweep through the garden and hit certain plants once.
Look at it
this way, these four-legged intruders are pinching your plants
(saving
you labor) which encourages sturdier plants with more branches....and
more flowers. It's just frustrating when they come through
again, and
"pinch" another snack! |
So this is
what's going on at our place ...
The grounds surrounding
McLallen House are an experimental, self-sustaining home landscape; it
is a work-in-progress. The intent is to observe over several seasons
which plants grow without amending the soil and which
flower buds the
deer (mainly) tend not to snack on.
Currently the property consists of three main garden areas: the front
perennial border, the westside shrub garden, and the eastside wild
meadow garden.
|
 |
Front
perennial border:
This
garden is planted with pink, yellow, white, blue and purple flowered
perennials that bloom every year and biennials which reseed, grow a new
plant the
first year and then flower the second year. In June, Salvia, German
iris (from George Eastman House) among other irises with Baptisia are
in flower. |
|
Westside shrub garden:
This
shade garden will be a profusion of white, yellow, purple and green
garden through the seasons with hydrangea, kerria, jetbead, harebell,
with vinca, money plant and ferns. |
 |
Eastside wild meadow garden with mown paths:
This
naturalized garden is in
part sun and part shade. It is cut back each fall after seeds have set
to deter woody plant growth.
Over the past three years, various seed varieties have been broadcast,
roadside-dug plants and plants from other areas of the
property
have
been incorporated into this wild garden. Currently it is
primarily a fall flowering garden with a variety of asters, golden
rods, black-eyed Susans and Echinacea. |
|
|
Check McLallen House
Blog for ongoing progress of the garden.
For oblique and acute rants on plants in the abstract and the concrete
elsewhere see Bill's Flower
Blog. Most of these entries have nothing to with McLallen
House. |
|
