Post Magazine: On Her Own Turf

Adrian Higgins

Given her large suburban yard, Gail Gee could have done what many ofher neighbors do: Turn it over to the mow-and-blow brigade. Instead, shedecided to cultivate a large, sophisticated garden.

Adrian Higgins, whose story about about Gee and her Howard County garden appeared in Sunday's Washington Post Magazine, was  online Monday, April 24, at 1 p.m. ET to field questions and comments.

Adrian Higgins is the garden editor for The Post's Home section.

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Arlington, Va: How many hours a week, in the spring and summer, does she spend working in the garden? That would seem like a full time job to most people.

Adrian Higgins: This essentially is a full time job, and she does get some help on occasion but it's pretty much a one person show. In that respect Gail is unusual, which is why she makes such an interesting subject to write about, but on another level, she is doing what all dedicated gardeners do, being there. This is the central point of the story, that to create gardens that are personal and distinct, you have to invest a lot of yourself in them. And as with everything else in life, the more you invest the deeper and more satisfying the return.

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1/2 acre in Bethesda: Wow, what a lot of work! How much help did she

have with the physical labor? I have come to the

conclusion that gardening is largely a matter of

having a strong back and being able to tolerate

being bent over double for long periods.

Adrian Higgins: Yes, gardening requires a strong back, a lot of hard work, but if you love it and can visualize the results, the aches do melt away. I am enjoying my annual display of single late tulips, and the misery and cold of installing the in November is long forgotten. I know Gail feels the same way with all her advance planning and work. I have 1/3 of an acre, which is a lot, and Gail has three acres, which is an enormous area for intensive gardening.

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Alexandria, Va: Does Ms. Gee hire any help for gardening tasks? It takes all of my non-sleeping-and-working time to take care of my half acre, and it still gets weedy in the corners. I can't imagine trying to weed, mulch and trim three acres, even with a really nice garden tractor to mow and haul.

Her garden is beautiful, though.

Adrian Higgins: Weeding is one of the constant chores, but I am not sugar coating when I say that once you have the garden established at a certain level, and if you are in the garden every day, you can always stay on top of the weeds. When people throw up their hands at the weeds, it's usually because they have not made weed reduction a part of their routine and are now totally overwhelmed.

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Alexandria, Va: When people tell me I need to "amend the soil" in my heavily clay back yard, what exactly should I be adding? Do I work in into the big clay clumps, or keep layering on top? I'm trying to establish a perennial garden. Thanks

Adrian Higgins: It depends on what your plans are. If you want to reduce the lawn and convert the soil into a bed of shrubs and perennials and annuals, you will definitely want to improve the soil and doing it before you install the plants is you're only time to get it right. Typically, you work organic matter into the clay, even mulch will work, just incorporate it. A garden fork is the best tool for heavy clay because you get penetration into the soil without the resistance found with a shovel. Once the soil is amended, you need to top dress it with compost or shredded leaves at least once a year. This will be incorporated into the soil by worms and other organisms and replace the original organic matter, which in time will break down and disappear. I can understand why Gail wanted a large tractor for her garden, much of what she does in maintaining what she has created involves hauling stuff around and spreading it on the beds.

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Clarksburg, Md: Adrian, thanks for all your help.

Do you by chance know where we can get San Marzano tomatos for planting in the garden? Are you familiar with a local nursery that specializes in a wide assortment of vegetable plants? Most of the places I go to have 3 varieties of tomatos, a few peppers, and thats pretty much it.

Many thanks for all the good advice.

Adrian Higgins: San Marzano is a roma type whose extra solid content makes it great for canning. It's available from a specialty catalogue named Totally Tomatoes (888-477-7333, www.totallytomato.com)

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Maryland: I really enjoyed this article, but am curious about your response about your 1/3 acre. Has your garden been photographed? My guess is your loyal readers would love to see it!

Adrian Higgins: Maybe I can work out some technical thing with the washingtonpost.com and post pictures of my garden. I have done a couple of video tours of the garden but I don't know if they are still available. You're talking to a guy who had just mastered filling a fountain pen.

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Washington, D.C.: Hi Adrian

Thanks for the chat. I am a relatively experienced vegetable gardener and have grown tomatoes, eggplants with a good deal of success over the years.

This year I started some arucola and its doing nicely. But how should I harvest it? DO I snip leaves off in the hope that more grow back in their place or just wait for the plant to get big enough and pull up the whole thing? How big does arucola get anyway?

Thanks for taking my q

Adrian Higgins: It's arugula, and you need to keep harvesting it. You can snip it with scissors and more leaves will grow. Indeed you want to do this to promote continual fresh growth. Once the heat of June arrives, arugla will bolt and grow bitter. Sow some more in August for a fall crop.

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Annandale, Va: What plants would you put with lavender that are already planted near the brick front of my house which faces west It's an area of approximately 20 ft. long by about 4 ft. wide. Would it be too hot for roses?

Adrian Higgins: Roses can take heat and bright light as long as they are in good soil that doesn't dry out. Maybe some of the modern ground cover roses would work. I think lavender looks good with ornamental grasses and perhaps some later flowering silver leafed plant such as perovskia.

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Butterfly central, Va: How do I keep my butterfly bush from looking all and sinewy? This is my second year (first full) with mine. Last summer, I wanted it to establish itself and so didn't trim at all. It was very stringy looking. How do I achieve the more bushy look?

Also, one of my lilac trees is not flowering. Do I have to trim it back? I have not in 2 years as it was small. I had buds last year. Thanks.

Adrian Higgins: If you didn't cut back your butterfly bush in the winter,I would do it now. Cut back the stems to about two feet and remove canes that are crossing and rubbing. Then, in early June, cut back the new growth by about a half. This will produce a neater bush, denser, more compact and with larger flowers, even if they are somewhat delayed. Here's the story on lilacs, you may try feeding it with a superphosate fertilizer, and you can also cut off the fading flowers once they bloom (if you have flowers). But the single most effective way to get a lilac to bloom is to make sure it is not in encroaching shade. My take on lilacs is that the large common lliac only works in our climate on large properties where you can set aside a hedge of lilacs for enjoyment now and then forget about later in the year when it develops powdery mildew. To put a lone lilac in a small garden in a prominent spot is inviting disappoinment. There are other types of lilac which are smaller, more compact and better flowering, and better suited to the small garden, namely Miss Kim and, especially, Palibin. There are less prone to mildew also.

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Falls church, Va: Hydrangea help! So, last year I cut back my brown hydrangea stalks in early spring, not knowing that it wouldn't flower because of it. I had a huge, healthy plant/bush, with one bloom all summer. This year I have resisted, but it's such an eyesore in my colorful garden. I do see a couple of green sprouts on the brown stalks and a lot of new green leafy growth coming out of the ground. I guess I just need some confirmation that I'm doing the right thing? Hold off on the pruning?? I'll do whatever you say!!

Thanks so much!!!

Adrian Higgins: If it looks ugly, i.e. twiggy, you can remove some (no more than a quarter) of the inner branches to open up the shrub. You can also trim the remaining canes a little to remove any clearly dead pieces but don't on any account give it a crewcut. Live with the ranginess for three more weeks and it will look great and flower.

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Richmond, Va.: What are some good varieties of heirloom tomatoes? Do you have any reliable sources?

Also, have any advice for someone starting some love-lies-bleeding and joseph's coat from seed? I've got little seedlings started indoors and will be hardening them soon.

Adrian Higgins: The classic heirloom Brandywine has taken on a cult aspect. It's a very good heirloom, unfortunately, in my view, a lot of heirloom tomatoes promise a lot but deliver a little. They take all season to produce a few large fruit, and they are not as resistant to blights and other diseases. You have to remember that a lot of the hybrids were developed for a reason, better yields, better disease and pest resistance, better heat tolerance, etc. By all means try different types, heirlooms and modern hybrids alike, and do your own comparison. It's so much fun to run your own tests and so much more instructive than trying to glean information from others. I do recommend you make notes on what works and what doesn't, and keep experimenting from year to year. You can give your tomatoes their best chance with good soil and a sunny location. Stake them before they get big, not afterward, mulch them and keep them evenly watered. Totally Tomatoes, aforementioned, is a great place to find alll sorts of varieties, as is Tomato Growers Supply Co. 888-478-7333, www.tomatogrowers.com

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Montgomery County, Md.: Can you talk about balancing the amount of lawn with perennial and annual beds? Most suburban yards have just lawn with a shrub or tree or two and Gail Gee obviously did something very different, but still within a traditional suburban yard.

Adrian Higgins: What's interesting about Gail Gee is that she was earnest and eager and all those good things at the start but it wasn't satisfying, and the reason it wasn't satisfying was because there was no overarching design. Once you get a master plan that you know intuitively is going to work, almost everything you do is working toward the plan in way that is cohesive and related. If you don't have a clear idea in your mind what you are striving for, then each subordinate bed that you develop has no aesthestic or intellectual connection to the next. The key for Gail was to creat this central ellipse feature which became the organizing principle. All the outlying features related to the center and, by extension, to each other. I think it was instructive that when she established a sitting area in one edge of the garden, it was done to form a focal point from various locations. This was done in 18th century English landscape gardens. If you have ever been to Stourhead, for example, the pavilion on the far side of the lake catches the eye but it also gives purpose to walking around the lake. It creates an alluring destination. Gail's benches and arches do the same thing. But she has also located trees and shrubs to frame views across the garden when you are seated at these features.

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San Marzano Followup....: Totally Tomatos sells tomato seeds. Is it too late to grow tomatos from seeds this year?

Adrian Higgins: Not at all, the soil temperatures are now in the low 50s, and tomatoes won't grow much in anything cooler than that. Seed sown tomatoes in the next couple of weeks will soon catch up with oversized seedlings. Also, nurseries do a good job of selling far more varieties as seedlings than they used to, but the only way to get the full range of varieties is to go to catalogues and particularly the specialty ones I mentioned.

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Arlington, Va: Hi Adrian--I heard you on Washington Post Radio this weekend talking about the problems with lilacs and how they look pretty bad for most of the year. You mentioned some alternatives but I wasn't able to write them down. Can you suggest some of those those alternatives?

Adrian Higgins: I actually mentioned a couple of them, i.e. Palibin and Miss Kim, but another worth trying is cutleaf lilac (Syringa laciniata).

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Alexandria, Va.: Gail Gee's garden seemed to have everything--a water pond, a fountain, a deck, a "wet garden," a pergola and so on. That's a lot of "features" to put in a garden. For those of us with smaller gardens, what do you recommend as the "basic" features that every garden should have?

Adrian Higgins: Good question. Design is hard to describe, it's a visual art but essentially you want simple, bold strokes rather than a lot of everything. Less is more, but you have to make up for the reduction in varieties by planting more of the same varieties and then engage in details and layering that augment the strokes rather than erase them. Perhaps if I can show pictures of my garden in one of my chats I can explain this better. The lawn should be a feature that doesn't just happen, but is planned to be a foil, a relief, against adjoining beds. This is one of the strengths of Gail's garden.

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Anonymous: Although the nurseries have a lot more variety than 10 years ago, I'm still seeing some of the same old same old shrub/tree/plant selections that seem to be popular. If you could banish some plant selections from our metro gardens, what would they be?

Adrian Higgins: I find the pink flowering dogwood to be of a hue that is muddy and offputting. The white versions are so much prettier. I think you should only be allowed to buy a Colorado blue spruce or Eastern white pine if you can produce a certificate that shows you live on at least an acre of land that is no lower than 2,000 feet above sea level. But there is generally a better selection of material than 10 or 20 years ago.

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Bethesda, Md.: Could you please recommend a good grass seed for a shady area?

Thanks

Adrian Higgins: A fine fescue. Well, folks we have run out of time. The story on Gail Gee is more than a story on Gail Gee, it's about the way you garden, and the idea that gardening is something that you do, not have. Its central to my whole philosophy of gardening. I do hope that message was received in the piece.

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