Art Naturally (The Blog)

Four O’Clocks were my first introduction to growing plants from seed. Uncle Teddy took me by the hand at his home in Schenectady and introduced me, the kid from Brooklyn, to gardening. I can still smell the soil as we dropped the seeds of Four O’Clocks into the ground he taught me to prepare. Four O’Clocks weren’t the only things growing in his garden, so was I.

The Kansas Peonies I grown in my garden was a Mother’s Day present from my son Chris. I have so many gifts he’s given to me over our many years together but I still cherish the bright pink of these robust plants each year as they bloom for me right in season. They return each Mother’s Day, expanding and adding to their beauty, as does he.

One year for my September birthday, my son, Michael came swooping in proudly bestowing upon me a stripling of a Japanese Maple. Still dangling was the $9.99 tag placed on it from Home Depot. Now this mature specimen holds court as a central focal point in my front garden.

A bouquet of Zinnias comes into my hands each year when my husband Dave buys them from the gardener with a stand up the street from us. The grin on his boyish face as he hands them to me with love is matched only by the riotous colors of the single and double flowers grouped tightly in his hands.

On Mother’s Day this year my grandson C.J. bounced up to greet me with a pot full of poppies. He shares my garden with me and helps to bring my attention to all the wonderful colors and shapes he finds there for fear I might miss them. These poppies are pink he told me and reminded me that we need to photograph everything so we’ll remember how they looked.

I’ll remember.

For years I’ve been hauling hoses back and forth across my property. Each year the hoses get heavier and more difficult to move. In the last few years I can count far too many lost additions to my garden for want of water. Not a good way to treat the plants and certainly not a good way to protect the investment I’ve made in my garden.

So we half bit the bullet and had the initial stage of an irrigation system installed. If you live on Long Island and want to know a truly professional company to work with on your irrigation needs, go to Rain Rich located in Greenlawn NY. First we met with Manuel Nava who is the service manager and did a very thorough layout and assessment of our somewhat complicated property. Then Rich Silverman, the owner and founder of Rain Rich met with us to discuss the staging of the project over time.

As he explained, since we have a mature, heavily planted garden, all the digging work would be done by hand in order not to disturb the root systems. The garden, since it was in peak season would be protected and returned as quickly as possible to an undisturbed state. As a skeptical New Yorker I figured, “Oh sure, that’ll happen!”

Well it did! Rich was true to his word. In one day he had a crew come in and hand dig all the trenching for the water and the electrical work. They first moved aside all the wood chips from my woodland walks and then dug the trenches. After the installation was completed, the soil was returned and the wood chips restored. Had I not taken pictures all day during the project, had I been away for the day and missed the frightening havoc wrecked upon my garden I would not have believed that the piping system had been installed. After all was done, it was hard to see that anything or anyone had been tromping around the property.

What an amazing and careful piece of craftsmanship!