For my story in the Real Estate section on whether a garden can sell a house (link to earlier post this week), I made a welcome visit to Pepe and John Maynard’s garden in Bedford earlier this month.

It’s one of my favorite gardens in the Hudson Valley, because Pepe has such a great eye and they’ve chosen some very unusual plants. And it’s got such great trees. These photos are about three weeks old — the majestic oak trees had just unloaded most of their leaves the night before.

Lots of dahlias were still in bloom.

And Japanes anemones.

A stewartia tree just outside their bedroom.

Another dahlia.

Pepe has containers filled with ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangeas scattered across the property.

She sprinkles a little aluminum sulfate to make them blue instead of the normal pink. In the fall, she digs them up and sinks them in the vegetable garden for the winter. Then she root prunes them in spring and pots them up again. Such a gorgeous color.

A stand of Franklin trees.

I think this is a pepperidge or black gum tree, behind the walled vegetable garden.

A pair of Hawthorne ‘Winter King’ trees.

Here’s a link to a post when I visited this garden in January. You’ll see these trees totally covered in red berries.

Winterberry shrubs/trees, with orange berries:

And beautyberry. What a shade of purple!

And why not combine it with orange berries, just next door?

Another dahlia.

Oak-leaf hydrangea.

Black Fountain Grass ‘Moudry’; I love this one, but someone, Jan Johnsen I think, said to be careful because it can become invasive.

Umbrella pine.

Great together, no?

Lots of Japanese maples.

And tall oaks.

A paperbark maple.

Wonderful bark in winter.

Amsonia, or blue star.

Monkshood, still in bloom.

Pepe clearly has a penchant for the color blue.

‘Blue Chiquita’ salvia, near the indoor lap pool.

Perennials: Continue planting bulbs as long as weather permits. Pick the last roses of the season. Hill up soil around your roses so that it covers the graft area, to prevent winter kill.

Flowers: Replace flowering plants in window boxes and containers with evergreen branches and berries. The containers should be freeze proof.

Vegetables and fruits: Continue to harvest root vegetables and Brussels sprouts, which are especially good with Thanksgiving dinner.

Trees and shrubs: Continue protection of shrubs from deer. Protect shrubs with burlap if they are likely to be damaged by heavy snow. Move containerized shrubs into a protected area if possible.

Lawns: According to many lawn experts, the late November fertilizing is the most important of the year. This application will feed the root system in preparation for strong growth in the spring. Spread according to directions on the fertilizer bag. First, the lawn should be cut short to prevent fungus formation.

Houseplants: Give houseplants as much light as possible. Continue to let up on fertilizing until spring.

General: Other late fall chores to complete before the holiday distractions: drain and hang hoses and turn off outdoor faucets (but try to keep one available for continuous watering of new shrubs and trees during the winter). Clean leaves off roofs and gutters. Stack firewood in a convenient place. Buy stakes to mark driveway for the snowplow. Fill bird feeders.
Susan Henry

email from Wave Hill:

“Harvest Centerpiece Garden Workshop
Saturday, November 21, 1PM
Create a Wave Hill-inspired centerpiece for your table that will set the mood for giving thanks for the bounties of the harvest. Arrange fresh greens, cones, fruit and vines around a fragrant beeswax  candle. Assistant Director of Public Programs Laurel Rimmer leads this workshop, providing guidance and inspiration. Registration is required, so be sure to follow the link to our website and register now! The fee is $40 and the workshop starts  at 1PM in Wave Hill House.

Come back in early December for a weekend of Holiday Garden Workshops, on December 5 & 6. On Saturday, pot up an Amaryllis bulb in a terracotta pot, cover with a saucer and decorate your “kit” for a beautiful, unique and environmentally-friendly gift for a winter windowsill. Then on Sunday, select a variety of fresh greens, herbs, spices and other natural materials  to create lush and holiday wreaths and swags. Share the experience with a youngster  special to you: Children 8 and older are welcome at either workshop if accompanied by an adult. Fees, times and other details online, where you can register today before the workshops fill! Online registration will be available starting Wednesday, November 18.

Getting here is easy.
Wave Hill provides free shuttle service between the front gate, Metro-North’s Riverdale station and the #1 subway train at West 242nd Street.  Shuttle schedules, pick-up and drop-off points at wavehill.org.
Purchase a Metro-North Getaway Package from Grand Central Terminal or Harlem-125th Street, and receive discounts on round-trip rail  fare and admission to Wave Hill.

Wave Hill is also accessible by car, MTA Express bus, Metro-North, the A subway to Bx7 bus, #1 subway to Bx7/Bx10 buses.

From Mary Prenon at Thompson Bender:

Hudson Valley Tourism Launches Newly Re-designed Website That Makes Trip-Planning Easier Than Ever!

Worldwide visitors to the Hudson Valley now have a one-stop website that takes them wherever they want to go in one of the most scenic areas of New York State. Hudson Valley Tourism, the I LOVE NEW YORK designated regional promotion agency, has just launched its re-designed Internet site at www.TravelHudsonValley.com . This easy-to-use resource offers information on accommodations, activities, dining, events, group travel and meetings and conventions from the tip of Manhattan to the state capital of Albany.

Visitors to the site will see the most up-to-date information as well as hundreds of photographs showing off the beauty of the Valley. Along the 150 miles of Hudson River, you’ll find accommodations from four-star hotels to campgrounds and gourmet restaurants to casual cafes, with links provided to every site.

Need a plan? Hudson Valley Tourism offers itineraries that keep visitors busy from morning to night, and countless fairs, festivals, performances, and happenings can be found for every season in the navigation-friendly Events section.

Discover museums and historic sites at the touch of a button, and visit over two dozen wineries online. Special features include information for group travel as well as meetings and conventions. Themed brochures such as the Hudson River Waterfront Map, Winery Map, and area travel guides can be ordered free through the site. There’s enough information for visitors to plan countless trips to the Hudson Valley, all at their fingertips.

Hudson Valley Tourism, Inc. is the 10-county region designated by I LOVE NEW YORK to promote tourism for the area. Counties include Albany, Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Orange, Putnam, Rensselaer, Rockland, Ulster and Westchester. Regional information can be obtained from any of the county tourism offices, the Hudson Valley Tourism website, www.travelhudsonvalley.com, or by calling 845-615-3860.

Nov. 21
Hopewell Junction: Hopewell Garden Club Meeting. Lynn Eriksen, perennial manager at Sabellico Greenhouse and Florist, will lead a workshop on forcing bulbs. Participants will receive a kit for forcing paperwhites, with some extra bulbs available for purchase. Reservations. $7. 10 a.m. East Fishkill Community Library, 348 Route 376.  845-221-9943.

Dec. 8
White Plains: Greater Westchester Orchid Society Meeting. A speaker on a timely topic relative to orchids, a show table with plants in bloom grown by members of the society, refreshments. Regular monthly meeting; call to confirm. Free. 7 p.m. Ethical Culture Society of Westchester, 7 Saxon Woods Road.  914-428-3028.

Great Bedford garden, 4-bedroom contemporary hit the market for $2.4 million

Can a great garden sell a house in Bedford? Pepe and John Maynard certainly hope so.

For the last 30 years, they’ve been tending an 8-acre garden that’s considered one of the best private gardens in the Hudson Valley. But now that they’re moving to Massachusetts to be closer to their two sons and four grandchildren, the Hook Road property — garden and all — is on the market for $2.4 million.

(Photos here by our Tania Savayan; I’ll post mine later.)

Along with the enchanting four-season oasis, the buyer gets a four-bedroom contemporary, which the Maynards built as a weekend home in 1973. Of course, it’s not exactly the same as it was back then: In 1984, they added a light-filled master bedroom with his-and-her dressing rooms and bathrooms, and in 1998 — six years after the house became the family’s year-round home — they installed an indoor lap pool. But despite these additions, the home’s big draw remains the garden.

“It’s a very special property, and I think there are people who will get it,” says Diane Weber, one of two listing agents with Houlihan Lawrence. “You stand there in that garden and you think: ‘This is an Impressionist painting.’ ”

“We would love to steer a gardener here,” John says. “I think the hardscaping has been done and they can play with the plant material to their hearts’ content.”

John and Pepe:

The Maynards’ garden and the 4,100-square-foot house, which boasts floor-to-ceiling windows in most of the first-floor rooms, play off each other in every season.

“Every window has a view of the garden,” says Pepe, an accomplished high-end garden designer with clients throughout the Northeast. “When I placed stuff outside, I came inside first to see what it looked like.” The master bedroom addition, for instance, juts right out into the garden.

“If I woke up in that bedroom every day — looking at the gardens and that fabulous view — I’d have such a smile on my face,” says Weber.

Dozens of beautifully crafted stone walls lead out from the house in every direction. A massive bluestone terrace sits outside the dining room, and stone pathways lead visitors to and from the many garden beds.

Raised by two great English gardeners on a 1,000-acre ranch in Kenya, Pepe learned as a child to follow the paths of wild animals through the brush. As a result, she believes in creating walkways that follow “paths of desire,” trails that lead to where your body naturally wants to go.

She also learned the proper Latin botanical names of all the plants in the garden — Callicarpa bodinieri for a beautyberry shrub or Nyssa sylvatica for a black gum tree, for example — at a very young age.

Pepe carved much of the Bedford garden right out of a steep hill that looms over the property, adding a series of graceful terraces and retaining walls to create level spaces for ever-more garden beds that overflow with bulbs, perennials, annuals, grasses, long-blooming shrubs and, most of all, trees.

Over the years, she and John have added hundreds of evergreen shrubs and trees — hemlocks, hollies, umbrella pines, magnolias, spruces, rhododendrons and andromedas — to the oak and dogwood forest that was here when they bought the property in 1969 (they built the house four years later). Seedlings that were mere twigs are now fully grown trees. “There is nothing more beautiful than a tree,” Pepe likes to say.

Tall oaks dominate the whole landscape, and their canopy adds a dramatic verticality that takes your eye up toward the sky. Back on the ground, most of the plants are low-maintenance and fuss-free, so novice gardeners could be at home here, too. “By the time I do everybody else’s garden, there’s no time for my own,” Pepe says.

The property also includes a walled vegetable garden, a heated barn, a greenhouse, a garage, an outdoor pool, a wood shed and a chicken house with raccoon-proof runs around it. All it needs now is another sure-handed gardener to take charge — or, at the very least, an enthusiast who’d be willing to learn.

I had a family wedding in Durham, NC, last weekend and of course made a visit to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens near the West Campus at Duke.

They were designed in the 1930s by Ellen Biddle Shipman, who was designing the Longue Vue estate in New Orleans about the same time. She did several gardens in Westchester, but I think they’ve all disappeared. Too bad.

Lots of beds of annuals still in bloom. Here, begonias and asters:

False cypress:

Variegated yucca:

Heather:

Lots of stonework.

Love this evergreen. It’s called Japanese cedar.

Small pond.

Stand of bamboo.

Encore azaleas. They’re supposed to bloom three times a year.

I think this is a ginkgo tree.

And a metasequoia (dawn redwood), one of my favorite trees.

Henriette Suhr has several of these in her Chappaqua garden.

This is a deciduous conifer — deer resistant and a very fast grower, especially in wet spots. I planted three this spring and they’ve already grown several feet.

Here’s one from my yard:

Back to Durham, here’s a stand of crepe myrtle, which is not hardy enough for most Hudson Valley gardens.

There’s a lot more water here than I remember as a student. I was always coming to the garden to “study,” then would fall fast asleep on one of the lawns.

Another metasequoia; this one is just about to lose its foliage for winter.

Lots of tropicals in the garden, like these bananas.

More big water.

Lots of late-blooming salvias, my new favorite perennial.

Smallish ordinary annuals for us grow like shrubs in this climate.

Amsonia, or blue star, which has a great yellowish color in fall. This one is deer resistant, too.

A ‘Saratoga’ rose.

A display near the entrance (or exit); doesn’t do a thing for me. In general, I came away pretty disappointed. I know it’s a tough time of year, but I have much better memories of the Duke Gardens. Next time, I’ll aim for an April visit.

From the PR folks at White Flower Farm:
A FIRST LOOK AT WHITE FLOWER FARM’S FAVORITE SPRING 2010 PLANTS

“Raking season may be just about over, but the gardeners at White Flower Farm (www.whiteflowerfarm.com) already have their eyes on spring. They have been busy selecting and growing the best and newest plants for the spring planting season. Among their early favorites:

Buddleia ‘Miss Ruby’
A unique color among Buddleias, these vibrant pink blooms perch above silvery foliage on compact, semi-upright plants that don’t set a lot of seed. Developed by the JC Raulston Arboretum, ‘Miss Ruby’ is a great choice for smaller gardens and mixed borders.

Hydrangea Invincibelle£ Spirit
The first Hydrangea arborescens that blooms pink—think of it as a pink version of the popular ‘Annabelle’. The flowers emerge dark, hot pink and mature to rich, clear pink. Plants bloom from early summer until frost on new growth, and the dried flower “mops” remain decorative in winter. Use Invincibelle£ Spirit as low-growing hedge or add it to borders and foundation plantings. The Breast Cancer Research Foundation will receive $1 for each plant sold.

Dianthus Pop Star (‘Devon Esther’)
The Star series of compact Dianthus updates the old-fashioned charm of Garden Pinks with new disease resistance and vigor. Pop Star’s deeply fringed, double flowers—lavender pink with a dark eye—perch above diminutive mounds of gray-green foliage. Bloom, heaviest in spring, continues on and off until fall if deadheaded.

I’m still putting my garden to bed for winter — and I’m already looking forward to picking plants for next spring. I highly recommend a new sweet potato vine from Proven Winners called ‘Midnight Lace.’

Before you say that the sweet potato vine is tired and overused, hear me out. ‘Midnight Lace’ is different. First of all, it has great color — a dark purplish-black.

(photo from provenwinners.com)

A few dark plants make the colors of other nearby plants pop. And its deeply cut foliage gives it an airy, lacey feel that adds a wonderful grace note to a container.

Growers often send me trial plants to evaluate before they hit the commercial market. Many are duds that go nowhere in my garden, but ‘Midnight Lace’ is, indeed, a winner.

Unlike other sweet potato vines, it doesn’t demand absolute full sun. In June, a problem groundhog completely devoured a container full of ‘Midnight Lace’ and ‘Emerald Lace,’ another sweet potato vine in the Illusion series.

So I moved the pot indoors to my screened-in porch, which gets an hour or two of morning sun and then shade the rest of the day. ‘Midnight Lace’ came through just fine — its light-deprived companion, however, petered out by mid-August.

Here they were earlier in the summer:

‘Midnight Lace’ is also well behaved, unlike other more aggressive sweet potato vines that can overwhelm their growing spaces by the end of the summer. It’s got more of a mounding habit than a drawn-out trailing one typical of most fast-growing annual vines.

‘Midnight Lace’ will definitely be invited back to my garden next spring.

Ask the master gardeners

Q: My child wants to grow plants from pits. What is a good pit to use for such a project?

A: An easy and rewarding project is to grow an avocado plant from its pit.
The avocado, Persea gratissima or Persea americana, is a fruit originally from South America that later migrated to Mexico. It is also known as alligator pear due to its pebbly skin.

Mostly used to make guacamole and to add to salads, avocado flesh is an excellent source of monounsaturated fat (the healthy one), as well as many vitamins and dietary fiber.

For this project, first scoop out the pit from a ripe avocado and rinse it to remove any excess flesh. Have your child insert 3 to 4 toothpicks at about the halfway mark of the pit. They should be placed far enough in so they support the pit without breaking.

Then take the pit and place it, pointy side up, into a glass of water, so that it is partially submerged. Place it in a sunny window and change the water every few days to keep bacteria from growing. It will take three to four weeks for the avocado seedling to sprout. After that, the pit will split open, with roots emerging from the bottom and a stem from the top.

Keep changing the water every few days, being careful not to damage the newly emerging growth. It will be time to transplant once the pit has developed a good root system (4 to 6 inches) and a stem with 4 to 6 leaves. Fill a pot with potting mix or good garden soil with a little peat or compost and gently place the pit into the soil, leaving about one-third of the pit above the soil surface.

Water lightly and place in a sunny location. Soon your child will have a beautiful avocado plant that he has grown from seed. The plant will need to be brought inside before the first frost. It will then become a delightful houseplant.
—  Margot Lee, South Nyack master gardener, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Rockland