What is a Garden?

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers, Garden Tours

Our resident expert praises the imaginative, unexpected gardens that have popped up around New York City. Come take a tour through her eyes.

While I design gardens for a living, life in a congested city has trained my eye to spot and appreciate plants growing in unlikely places, and to reconsider what a garden can be. Outdoor space is a luxury in New York City and many people must do without it. The consequence is creativity, and it is from these unusual little gardens that I draw a lot of inspiration.


The garden above is cut out of the sidewalk and squeezed between a wall of graffiti and a busy industrial street. The gardener has not planted hardy shrubs guaranteed to withstand pollution and road salt, but delicate English cottage garden flowers that call to mind the England of Merchant Ivory movies. She gardened instinctively instead of doing as she was advised, and the result is an unexpected and compelling contradiction.

Squeezed into a brownstone's front yard, I pass this garden on my way to the subway. It is tiny, no more than five by two feet, but close inspection reveals that the person who lives here loves plants. There are fescue and sedge grasses, euphorbia and irises, allium, echinops, berberis and small species tulips, all sharing the cramped rectangle in a tapestry of texture and color.

No space for a garden? Grow one straight up. Wisteria blooms once a year for perhaps ten days, and then it is all over. But what a party while it lasts.

Many climbers provide vertical gardens: Boston ivy is a rippling green curtain until its red leaves drop in the fall; honeysuckle blooms in spring, climbing hydrangea and trumpet vine in summer. In the South Confederate jasmine perfumes the air intensely enough never to be forgotten.


Using recycled objects in the garden is all the rage, but before it was the rage, hard-up and innovative gardeners routinely re-used found objects in order to satisfy the urge to plant, and grow. In this garden in Red Hook, Brooklyn above), old oil drums have been sawed in half and painted blue. They are an excellent size for perennials and small shrubs. The color unifies them and provides contrast for the plants they contain.

While I have used small coffee cans to grow tomato seedlings and annuals, a restaurant reappropriates huge feta cheese cans to grow herbs and vegetables on the steps leading to its basement. This simple, cheap treatment turns an ugly entrance and sidewalk into something worthy of attention, and respect...It has become a garden.


I do not use many annuals in my work - I look to the longevity of perennials, shrubs and trees, which return every year. So it is easy to forget what annuals do: Provide flowers and color for an entire season, or for an entire growing year. The beauty of a window box is that it can be planted to suit the season or to suit your mood. Conservative blues and cool pinks for a few weeks, then outrageous hot pink and orange the next. If your moods swing, let the window box's moods swing with you. Say it with flowers.

My first city garden was on a windowsill. And I grew a basil forest in sunny bathroom. People who love plants will find ways to grow them but it helps to know that you are not alone. Plants have a calming, humanizing effect on us. And whether they are growing up a wall, down from a hanging basket, sweating in terrarium on our nightstand or baking on the fire escape, their influence on our daily lives should not be underestimated. Chances are that wherever you find yourself, you can find and make a home for something green.

Still have gardening on the brain? Check out:
Edible Garden: Grow Your Lunch!
Tour Kirstenbosch: A Stunning South African Botanical Garden
Curating a Rose Garden

 

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