Filed under: Gardening, Flowers, Garden Tours
Like any great room, a great garden needs to balance style and substance. Here, the spaces that do it right.
Pier 44 Waterfront Garden, Red Hook, Brooklyn. Photo: Marie Viljoen
The right plants for the right place: Perfection. This long, narrow waterfront garden looking out over an inlet on New York Harbor must survive biting winter winds and desiccating salt spray off the nearby water. As the seasons progress, the plants must withstand the high temperatures and humidity of the city at its tropical worst. So to see lush growth in early summer is to realize that plant choice has everything to do with successful gardens in tough environments.
Creamy yucca flowers stand four feet tall, regularly punctuating the two parallel planting beds, acting as striking focal points amongst the sprawling blue catnip, purple berberis bushes, silver-leafed perovskia (Russian sage) and chartreuse spirea. Sturdy wooden benches nestled within the foliage and flowers give visitors the chance to settle and watch the passing water traffic.
Word has it that while Lynden B. Miller, the renowned public garden designer responsible for this garden's layout, loves the form of yucca's spiky grey-blue leaves, he loathes the conspicuous flowers. See, when the flower stems die, new leaves form at an angle from the stem, throwing off their original symmetry. Until I saw these specimens I had held yucca off at an arm's length for this reason. Now i see its softer side. And if it can make it here, it can make it anywhere.