Design and Differences: Two Ranters Discuss. Part II

When a recent Instagram post on how to edit self-seeders by Marianne sparked some design pushback by Anne, they moved the mulch-rich exchange to email to wrangle over it in more depth.  The resulting [long] conversation re: chop and drop, self-seeders, gardening visiting, garden writing, and design seemed worthy to share here in three parts (with links & headings), as it is a testament to the importance of discussion — particularly when you don’t agree.

Part I is available here. Interested readers are encouraged to continue the conversation in comments. 

 

Anne picks up from last time, trying to figure out why on earth Marianne would remove leaves only to compost and replace them later… 

To Chop & Drop & Mulch, or, To Compost & Mulch 

Anne

I hate bare soil! I don’t understand your distinction between mulching and planting densely. I do both – why would you not?

Marianne

I do both too – I just don’t use fresh garden debris that still looks like fresh garden debris.  I like to give it a few years on the compost heap or in the chicken run. For the most part, it’s all about planting densely.  If I see bare soil by May I am failing (or working on a new area).

Anne

Taking things to a compost heap in order to bring them back again is work that I’m delighted to be free of.

Marianne

And I don’t resist mulching. What I resist is mess. I do not like to leave the leaves to smother my volunteer seedlings, or make it tough to see where I need to plant bulbs in fall or appreciate them in spring. Nor do I wish to smother them with roughly chopped foliage from the previous season. I think it detracts from the plants and the overall scene unless it’s a woodland area where I very much leave them. 

Anne

I see you are giving up a lot for those – annual? – seedlings?

Marianne

Some annual, some perennial.

Anne

Perennials come happily through their own dead foliage. They are made to do that.

Marianne

Yes, but I want both. My annuals need light to germinate, and some perennials have their crowns rotted away by too much debris. 

Anne

I have never had that experience with crown rot; it’s new to me, that idea. Alpines, maybe, cyclamen perhaps?

Marianne

There’s plenty — most from drier or higher parts of the world. Agave. Stachys byzantina, lavender, some hellebores (species like H. ballardiae and H. ericsmithii – bury at your peril). Occasionally the mulleins. My valley is wet, and cold in the winter, and giving them a sodden blanket of leaves isn’t the cleverest idea. Iris and peonies need to stay shallow to bloom well, so I’m conscious of that too.

And — here’s the dreaded ‘subjective’ nugget again…the source of much Wareham consternation — It has a lot to do with how I want the bed to look in the winter and early spring. I don’t want it framed in a mass of last year’s foliage and leaves, and I don’t want to step on cloaked emerging bulbs while I’m working in those beds pruning.   

 

 Ah – I grow my bulbs in the meadow! AW

Anne

You must have mulched at some time, with something, to know this. Tell me more? Spring/summer? Chop and drop or compost?

Marianne

I do not strip the soils like a mad woman. I just generally pick up larger debris in early spring, having already taken off leaves when bulb planting in autumn (and adding mulch where necessary).  As the season begins I wait for some of the self-seeders to develop, edit them, and mulch again if necessary. 

I’d far rather plant densely and cover the soil that way if possible.  I do chop and drop the comfrey under the apple trees mid-season. And Chelsea chopped tops usually go under the perennial in question because it most likely can’t be seen and the volunteers have volunteered by that point.

I am really surprised that chop and drop is so prevalent now, as I have several gardener-friends suffering from arthritis, and the techniques puts a great deal of repetitive stress on one’s hands. Which is all well and good when you are 30, but not so good when you are 50. I need my hands to work for a very long time. Perhaps older gardeners just hire someone to do the chopping and dropping for them?

Anne

I don’t understand this either. It’s true that Charles or Angus tend to do this work, but they do it with a hedge trimmer or strimmer. I have done it too, that way, without finding it hard. I don’t find it hard in short bursts either. If I leave it to the spring I tend to tread the dead foliage down, which, as long as there is not a steep slope is just easy.

Marianne

Hedge trimmers on perennials?  That makes my back hurt just thinking about it. A lot of the social media reels show young horticulturists chopping each stem two or three times, not just strimming it.  There is a difference between strengthening muscles and repetitively injuring them.  I do enough choppy-choppy with pruning.

Anne

Are they doing it with nail scissors??!!!

On the necessity of volunteers. Or not.

Marianne

Very amusing. If you’re using a hedge trimmer or strimmer, you must be doing so on homogeneously massed plants?  You’d not be able to pick and choose with intermingled shoots coming up from early spring perennials, annuals or bulbs. 

I use a strimmer on a large swathe of Epimedium versicolor near the creek, but it is one species, so it works fine.

Anne

Yes, ideally, you’ll cut plants down in fairly small pieces. For the Marianne’s of this world, it means they look tidier and vanish quicker. 

Marianne

Fabulous!

Anne

You would be cutting down very late to have shoots of spring perennials. We don’t do that. I predominantly cut and leave in autumn. If homogeneously massed plants describes our garden and borders, then I think that’s what we do. 

It’s true that you won’t get volunteer seedlings and weeds so much with cut and drop or other mulches. I can live with that.

Marianne

I can’t. Those volunteers are heavy lifters in the garden. Orlaya, many species of poppies, Buplureum, Verbascum, Verbena bonariensis, larkspur, tansy, Euphorbia wallichii, Anthriscus, Queen Anne’s lace, bronze fennel, bog sage, Cleome, Tinantia pringeli, Lobelia siphilitica, wood poppies, etc, etc, etc.

I adore them and they provide continuity between beds in the garden. And I don’t want to lose the seed heads and architecture of many other plants in the autumn. I leave leaves to nourish the woodland garden.  It would look bizarre naked.

Anne

That’s very kind of you! You’d even think of removing leaves and killing that natural cycle?

Marianne

Yes. In my beds. And it’s not as though they go into bags by the curb, or are burnt.  They stay on my property and create gorgeous soil-like leaf mould. You leave the leaves. I compost. Speaking of dropping, can we drop this before one of us dies of exhaustion?

I think you are simply planting in greater masses of the same plant more than I am.  Which is very effective, and obviously cuts down work, and is a different way to approach design.  Why can’t we have both?

Anne

I’m not sure massing plants more makes much difference to this issue. (And I think it IS the issue. – MW) I don’t think Veddw is quite like you’re suggesting and it continues my confusion. If you cut the lot down in autumn even multi-planted beds (which most of mine actually are) come back in the spring.

Marianne

I apologize, I’m not thinking carefully enough of your beds. In places you’ve deliberately chosen a small complementary group of perennials that will allow you to do this the same way a mass of the same plant would. I have not.

Anne

This describes my planting process.

Marianne

I’ve got a new perennial/annual/biennial bed that is 15’x30′ and holds 144 plants of 25 taxa. I think it might give you a heart attack. It may give me a heart attack, we’ll see. I might even try chopping and dropping as an experiment (as the entire bed is an experiment) and forgo a season’s volunteers. 

 

Anne

I think I might find it too fussy. (I’ll try not to be hurt. – MW) BUT – it depends when they do their thing. If they all flower at once it could be cacophony. But I try to spread my flowering over four months in summer.

Marianne

I pay little attention to beds in other parts of the property that are a mass of one thing, like ostrich fern (Onoclea struthiopteris), or hosta. They are calf deep in the bones of their ancestors. They are helpful place holders and soil preservers when you don’t want turf or bramble, but if I’m being honest, they bore me.

Anne

You need to add something dramatic to your hostas and ferns.

Marianne

I need to remove all the self-seeded hostas due to deer pressure.  Right now the only dramatic thing in those beds is me on Saturday morning, throwing the f-word around like a sailor.

Anne

So, the annuals popping up are the only things needing your careful selectivity?  (And – so sorry about your deer curse)

Marianne

No. Perennials seed too — and spread. Particularly some of the otherwise virtuous natives. There’s a lot of editing that needs to be done. 

Some of your multi-planted beds (such as the Euphorbia griffithii, Aegopodium & Lysimachia ciliata or the cardoons, heuchera and fennel (you see I do pay attention!) get on without too much fuss together. And they are striking. They certainly charmed the socks off of my tour group guests (and me) last year. But don’t you ever get bored with the static nature of the design? Or is it the seasons playing on the plants that is enough change?

Anne

Now you are making me laugh. You think you could get bored refining and improving two intensively planted acres that are not even finished yet? I’m still working on the planting and design of every part of the garden. Including, as it happens, the cardoons (which do change, dramatically with the seasons) and accompaniments:

Oh – and I just added these alliums to my Euphorbias –

Marianne

Perhaps I will move towards more of that as I go on, but right now, it’s like I have a studio and I’m painting painting painting, then scrubbing out and painting again. It’s exciting.  But maybe just for me. [gulp]

Anne

All that re-doing is maybe the biggest difference between us, after all.

On Veggie Gardening

Anne

More labour because you grow veggies too..

Marianne

Yes, but not every single one, and not those that require a lot of care. Our gardens are very similar in that we garden in valleys on slopes, and the sunlight is often blocked by the surrounding woods, so I do not get 14 hours of sun on my tomatoes. More like seven.  I can’t grow all I want to grow.

Anne 

It’s a waste of garden space!

Marianne

Chuckling again.  You can take my May Queen lettuce out of my cold dead hands.

I love to cook, and the ability to use fresh ingredients from the garden is important to me. However, if I don’t harvest them in the morning, in preparation for what I might make that night, I don’t have a lot of hope of cooking with them later. I’m just too tired.  

Anne 

I hate cooking and am so pleased I share the chore with Charles. These differences between us are critical, I think.

Marianne

They are – which is why I’m glad we’re good enough friends to discuss them.  Remember when people did that once upon a time?

Anne

Well, we certainly still do!

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Next time: Garden writing and teaching