Engulfed by greenery, the mid-May transformation always startles. Town meetings have concluded. Yard signs for candidates or movements are a relatively recent phenomenon here. Do they influence anyone? Are they just more visual litter?
Perfumed air is a welcome contrast. Lily of the valley, lilac, viburnum, and more, are able to influence entire neighborhoods, in a pleasurable and benign way.
Lilacs
It has been a gorgeous lilac season, maybe because these plants are cold-adapted and were unfazed by the past winter’s cold. The bushes are so powerfully fragrant that they fill the air: How we forget these pleasures when the calendar flips to another season.
While common lilac, Syringa vulgaris, abounds on the Vineyard and does well here, sometimes it is fun to try something a little different. A hybrid I planted in 2011 flowers a bit earlier than the rest. ‘Clarke’s Giant’ Syringa x hyacinthiflora produces highly fragrant, enormous, lilac-blue florets the size of a quarter, and flowers ahead of the rest of the usual lilacs.
Storm damage and wood chips
An article in the Royal Horticultural Society’s March Garden described the efforts at the gardens of West Dean to showcase increasingly eco-friendly approaches to management at this beautiful estate and public garden in West Sussex, U.K.
According to Tom Brown, the head gardener, “We’re creating more deadwood habitats, such as dead hedges.” One fun solution to a dead tree, available to anyone, is to leave it: “If a tree dies, we leave it as habitat, with an owl box on top.”
Here, broken branches and damage from winter snow and storms continue to show up as spring growth commences. Prune out if it is a manageable size: Cut just outside the branch collar, the faint ridge that marks where the branch originates from the larger branch or trunk. Consider creating a dead hedge of your own, à la West Dean.
It is very encouraging to see that after chipping the storm damage, many have opted to retain the chips. The Island’s biomass belongs to the Island, on the Island. There are so many ways woodchips can be utilized.
More practically, however, Keene’s pit is overflowing, chips are not being accepted at this time, and chips are being sent to the mainland for disposal. Why not leave them on the land where they originated?
Retaining the chips, composting them, or finding other uses for them aligns with the view that the biomass a piece of land produces belongs to that land, and should remain there.
Bird-sown
Bird-friendly habitat is a natural form of insect control. Birdfeed, what we buy and place in bird feeders, is unusable by nestlings. Baby birds require the insect protein their parents capture and bring to the nest. Gardeners hope this includes juicy grubs, caterpillars, and other insect pests plucked from gardens.
Keep your eyes peeled. If you wish a bird-friendly garden, and most gardeners do, you must expect to find many seedlings of plants adult birds like to eat: smilax (greenbrier), oriental bittersweet, barberry, poison ivy, bush honeysuckle, privet — to name only a few. Often these seedlings will be found beneath the branches of trees that are excellent roosting places.
Early in the season is when many are easy to spot, and easy to pull. Pictured is an oriental bittersweet seedling, at this stage easy to pull and to identify by the orange roots.
Similarly, though, desirable seedlings are emerging now in beds and borders. A bleeding heart seedling that sprouted in an inconvenient place is being transplanted to a more appropriate location.
Forest, next phase
And speaking of trees that are excellent roosting places — large beeches near me are slowly losing ground against beech leaf disease and beech bark disease, and are shedding branches that have died.
It is indescribably sad, the thought of losing these graceful queens of the woodland. However, we must be prepared to plant a tree where one has been lost. Oaks, hickories, and sassafras appear to be the next phase of the Island forest that will plant itself; humans can promote them.
I have tried a number of North American tree species here at home. All are growing well. Liriodendron, Aesculus, Juglans, Taxodium, Ilex, Acer, Castanea, Morus, Oxydendrum, Magnolia, Hamamelis: There is much to choose from.
Hippeastrum vacation
Once their turn as holiday decoration is over, hippeastrum (amaryllis) revert to their more natural inclination to bloom around Easter. After that, they do well being placed outdoors in a quiet, out-of-the-way spot to grow as many leaves as possible. The foliage fuels the bulb to produce the next flowering. During this phase, bulbs need very little attention, although experts recommend an occasional liquid feed.
In the garden
Weather prognostication is that a strong El Nino is building faster than predicted (bit.ly/WCVB_ELNinoComing). This may mean less rainfall and a drier winter. The Vineyard is facing greater pressure than ever on water resources, with housing intensity and landscaping styles that treat water as never-ending.
I commend Laurisa Rich for her 2012 and 2014 promotion of durable rain barrels on behalf of the Lagoon Pond Association. We bought two; they are sturdy and well-designed. Recently, the screens on the inlets needed replacing: an easy fix in this design.
Soils are borderline warm. Hill potatoes. Remove flowering stems from rhubarb. Keep garlic and onions weeded. Replace cardoons that failed to overwinter by severing offsets from survivors to pot up individually.
Community Greenhouse, a community nonprofit organization at 114 New York Ave. in Oak Bluffs, is accepting plastics for recycling use. Purchase its plants at the greenhouse, and bring your nonbranded plastic for reuse.