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By Kyrnan Harvey

Mother’s Day is still a few weeks away, giving you plenty of time to shop around for a living plant that will typically be in bloom around second Sundays in May for many years to come.  

Three woody plants readily come to mind that happen to be 100 percent deer proof, long-lived, justifiably popular and reliably in flower May 5 to 15 on Long Island: wisteria, lilac and tree peony. Choice varieties of wisteria and lilac can be found locally at garden centers, with tree peonies less likely. You can get some terrific varieties of tree peonies via mail order, and there is still time to get an order delivered by May 13 but don’t delay.

If you buy an old home with a garden, it is very likely there will be some herbaceous peonies. Durable and long-lived, they are an old-fashioned perfumed favorite for garden and vase. But these peonies die to the ground and are cut down in early fall.

A tree peony in bloom.

Tree peonies, on the other hand, are so-called not because they become trees but because they have woody stems: They are shrubs that do not get cut annually to the ground.

Originally cultivated a couple millennia ago in China for the medicinal use of the skin of its root, Paeonia suffruticosa is a conglomerate of wild species, primarily Paeonia rockii, that have been hybridized. Its sumptuous beauty was naturally celebrated early on by artists, scholars and monks, thereby attaining cultural and imperial significance and assimilation into Japanese court and temple too. In both China and Japan they came to represent wealth, status and female beauty: 

‘When the peonies bloomed,

It seemed as though there were

No flowers around them.’

– Kiitsu (as quoted at TreePeony.com)

The advent of grafting for propagation in the Edo period in Japan contributed to its spread, and breeding by famed nurseryman Lemoine in France in the 19th century and by the American A. P. Saunders in the 20th have resulted in scores of stunning varieties of color and form. 

They are expensive. You can chance upon cheap one- or two-year grafts, in two-gallon pots, labeled merely “red” or “white” or “pink” or “purple.” I avoid these, unless I catch one in flower from which to judge its vigor, and the price is not more than $30. 

Examples of tree peonies in a garden.

There is a wonderful source in northwest Connecticut called Cricket Hill Garden, which I have not visited. It has a beautiful website, dozens of varieties for sale, though some ship only for fall-planting, and White Flower Farm has always shown great judgment in the quality of its plant selection ­— they have six gorgeous varieties still available.

These will be shipped bare-root. You could pot it up for presentation. Avoid a water-logged site for planting. All peonies, herbaceous or woody, will thrive in full sun. Dappled shade is often recommended for tree peonies, and this is indeed preferable because the flowers will last longer, which is not many days by the way, even in the best circumstances. If your soil is compacted you must loosen a square yard a foot deep and, of course, amend with compost if it isn’t loamy. 

If planted in good soil in a good location your gnarly little grafted tree peony will make modest growth this year; will present one or two flowers next year; and will, in five years, become a yard high and wide, with at least a dozen fat buds, and will for many more years to come be a perennial highlight in the gardening year.

Kyrnan Harvey is a horticulturist and garden designer residing in East Setauket. For more information, visit www.boskygarden.com.

All photos by Kyrnan Harvey

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Zinnia Queeny Lime Orange
Canna South Pacific Orange F1
Marigold Super Hero Spry
Tomato Valentine F1

By Heidi Sutton

If you’re like me, you are just chomping at the bit to get your garden started. 

After a winter plagued with one snowstorm or nor’easter after another, it’s hard to believe that spring has finally arrived. Avid gardeners hibernating in their homes for what seemed like months have been keeping their spirits high by perusing the gardening catalogs for the latest plants and products, all the while patiently waiting for the ground to thaw.

In perfect timing, All-America Selections recently announced National Winners for 2018 — new varieties of flowers, fruits and vegetables that will do well in any climate throughout the United States and Canada. With fun names like Sweet American Dream, Super Hero Spry, Queeny Lime Orange, Valentine and South Pacific Orange, these cultivars are the best of the best, beating out thousands for the ultimate title.

Since 1932, this nonprofit organization has annually tested new varieties of flowers and vegetables in various locations throughout the United States and Canada. Judges look for improved qualities such as disease tolerance, early bloom or harvest dates, taste, unique colors and flavors, higher yield, length of flowering or harvest and overall performance.

Here’s what the judges had to say about some of the award winners:

1. Zinnia Queeny Lime Orange: A “WOW” color in an easy-to-grow zinnia is what this flowering annual brings to the garden. Sporting lovely, large, dahlia-like blooms on a sturdy, compact plant, this variety provides cut-flower gardeners and growers with a wonderful hue for today’s floral trends. The unique color evolves from dark coral/peach/orange to a light peach with a dark center as the flowers age and each uniform plant produces prolific deeply fluted blooms that last about 3 weeks without preservatives or feed.

2. Canna South Pacific Orange F1: This variety is more vigorous, more uniform and has more basal branching than comparison cannas. It offers an outstanding bloom color in an attractive, vivid bright orange that contrasts nicely with the bright green foliage. Pollinator gardens will love this addition of an attractive canna that sports uniformly colored flowers over a long blooming period. Bonus: This canna is grown from seed, not tuber, meaning less chance of succumbing to disease.

3. Marigold Super Hero Spry: Super Hero Spry is a lovely compact (10 to 12 inches) French marigold with dark maroon lower petals and golden yellow upper petals perched on top of the dark green foliage. The list of winning attributes includes a more uniform and stable color pattern, earlier to bloom and no deadheading required. These stunning blooms make any garden fit for a Super Hero!

4. Tomato Valentine F1: Hands down, the judges agreed this was the most appealing grape tomato they trialed. With an appetizing deep-red color, it has a very sweet taste and will hold longer on the vine without cracking or losing the excellent eating quality. The plant is quite prolific and will mature early (55 days from transplant). Gardeners should plan on staking the indeterminate vines for best results. Tomato lovers will appreciate the sweet, firm flesh that is meaty enough to resemble a Roma tomato but in a smaller, grape-type fruit. These easy-to-harvest tomatoes can take the summer heat and keep on producing.

5. Corn, Sweet American Dream: With its excellent germination, very tender, super sweet kernels, this newbie will make a great addition to the home garden. American Dream matures slightly earlier than the comparisons and produces vigorous, healthy plants with cobs that have good tip fill of bicolored kernels. Plants grow 6 to 7 feet tall and mature in 77 days after planting the seed. Perfect fresh, roasted, grilled, canned or frozen.

For a complete list of the new plants chosen by the AAS, as well as other information about the organization, visit its website at www.all-americaselections.org

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HOPE ‘SPRINGS’ ETERNAL

Alyssa Cutler took this photo of a forsythia branch in Port Jefferson on April 2. She writes,  ‘[This was taken] right after the snow stopped on April 2. This is what Long Islanders are about. Strong backs to weather storms, eternally hopeful and rejoicing in the beauty around us. Also, we smile a lot more in the spring and summer!’

Send your Photo of the Week to [email protected].

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A young tree hydrangea, after late-winter pruning, collects some April snow. Photo by Kyrnan Harvey

By Kyrnan Harvey

Naturalized snowdrops (deerproof) have been a delightful sight for weeks, and my favorite crocus (not deerproof), the rampant self-seeding Crocus tommasinianus, has been braving the snows for a long time already. But, really, signs of spring have been scant. The beginning of the baseball season always corresponds neatly with the beginning of the gardening season. I am seeing forsythia-yellow here and there, albeit only in sunny, sheltered locations, and I just got a text that the first Little League practice is Wednesday. So I think it is fair to assume that baseball season is under way, which means there’s an awful lot of gardening work to do.

The snow has melted away and the ground is not frozen, but the low standard for “a nice day” through this past March has been 40 degrees but at least with sun and no wind. Thanks for nothing. Only last week did we begin to see the landscape trucks and trailers lumbering around, but we had started a week earlier with cutback of perennials, especially the many grasses we grow.

I do prefer to leave nature’s mulch, the leaves, un-removed through winter. But there are places were they do accumulate too much and, wet and matted, they will smother to death germinated seedlings of desirable perennials. So we do remove leaves occasionally. But the best thing a gardener could do, where feasible, is to spread a thin layer of compost over the leaf litter. Any organic mulch will do, bagged or delivered by the yard. You get the tidy, uniform look of freshly mulched beds — but without disturbing the soil ecology provided by nature’s mulch.

If you have a garden of many naturalized perennials, like I do, then mulching in April is not recommended. Biennials like forget-me-not, foxglove, black-eyed Susans, sweet rocket (Hesperis) and love-in-a-mist will have germinated the previous summer, and thus have attained enough stature to push through light leaf litter. But naturalizing perennials like columbines, hellebores and coneflowers will be smothered equally by heavy, wet accumulations of leafage — and by landscapers’ mulch. 

The easiest way to a romantically wild, not overly manicured, garden is to let desirable perennials self-seed. Let your Echinacea and Salvia and Verbena bonariensis go to seed, and then be sure not to crush and smother them in the spring and you will have that cottage garden you admire in books.

There is a lot of late-winter/early-spring pruning of woody shrubs and subshrubs to do. It confuses novice gardeners but it needn’t. Spring-flowering shrubs (lilacs, viburnums, Spiraea thunbergii and Spiraea × vanhouttei, brooms, Japanese quince, forsythia) bloom on last year’s growth and should be pruned, if necessary, after flowering. Any and all summer-flowering plants get pruned hard, now, before new growth starts. Buddleia, Caryopteris, peegee hydrangeas (H. paniculata ‘Grandiflora’), Spiraea japonica varieties, rose of Sharon and, last but not least, roses. These flower on the current season’s wood and must be pruned in March or April to avoid legginess.

There are some woodys that are grown for the color of their leaves or stems. Willows, like the blue arctic willow (Salix purpurea) and Salix integra ‘Hakuro Nishiki’ (ubiquitous in garden centers in the last few years) and shrubby red-stem or yellow-stem dogwoods get cut hard at the end of winter.

The marginally hardy Mediterranean subshrubs (rosemary, lavender, culinary sage, Santolina) did take a beating this winter — remember the two or three near-zero nights in December? — but wait a week or two before cutting down to live wood. In the meantime, if your perennial cutback is complete and end-of-winter pruning too, there are plenty of cool-season weeds to pull, like the hairy bittercress, henbit, chickweed, shepherd’s purse and dandelion. Get ‘em before they go to seed.

 Kyrnan Harvey is a horticulturist and garden designer residing in East Setauket. For more information, visit www.boskygarden.com.

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A view of Northport Harbor and Estate boathouse from the Vanderbilt Museum’s rose garden. Photo courtesy of Vanderbilt Museum

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum, located at 180 Little Neck Road in Centerport, will host its first Gardeners Showcase, “Bringing Back the Gardens,” during the spring and summer of this year. The museum invites local nurseries and garden designers to show off their skills and creativity in one of the gardens that grace the 43-acre waterfront estate, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Spots are available for nine showcases, and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

In return for their effort and contribution, participants will receive:

* Signage that identifies their business at each garden showcase site. This signage will be viewed by the more than 100,000 anticipated Vanderbilt visitors during the spring, summer and fall.

* Recognition on the Vanderbilt website and publicity on its social-media platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram).

* Publicity through news releases sent to regional media including Newsday, News12, Patch, and Long Island weekly newspapers.

* A one-year, Associate Membership to the Vanderbilt Museum.

To secure a spot in this year’s Gardeners Showcase, or to obtain more information, please contact Jim Munson, the Vanderbilt Museum’s operations supervisor, at 631-379-2237 or at [email protected].

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Grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis ‘Blonde ambition’) is a welcome presence through winter. Photo by Kyrnan Harvey

By Kyrnan Harvey

At the High Line, the exemplary greenway planted over the abandoned elevated railroad on the west side of Manhattan, the professional horticulturists wait until March for the “cutback” of herbaceous perennials. The dry foliage and stalks gone to seed offer shelter, food and perching possibilities to birds. Leaving them uncut through winter also protects the dormant crowns of plants from winter cold and wind.

But there is a third reason practitioners of the New Perennialist movement delay until March — along with the ecological and the horticultural, there is also the aesthetic. The art of close observation has rewarded us with appreciation of the browns of winter: the lines, the textures and the patterns, especially with the white counterpoint of snow underneath and fresh snow draping the skeletal remains.

The 19th-century Irishman William Robinson was the progenitor of the movement that steered away from formal, geometrical, Victorian bedding-out schemes and garish patterns of hothouse flowers. Through his illustrated books, “The Wild Garden” and “The English Flower Garden” (readily available in reprints); his journal, The Garden; his famous garden Gravetye Manor in Sussex; and through his friendship and collaboration with his contemporary Gertrude Jekyll, he introduced many gardening traditions that today are synonymous with “the English garden” — herbaceous borders, mixed borders (small trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, biennials and annuals grown together in informal drifts), ground covers and rock gardens.

Robinson rejected the artificial, statuary, topiary, fountains and carpet bedding and extolled the naturalistic, the wild and the untidy. His inspiration was not Italian grandeur but rather the simple cottage garden: hardy plants from around the world naturalized to blend into their surroundings. “The best kind of garden grows out of the situation, as the primrose grows out of a cool bank,” he writes in “The English Garden.”

It is an aesthetic that discovers and appreciates the subtle beauties of the natural world in all its diversity near and far. Karl Foerster (1874-1970) was a German nurseryman and writer who discovered a great many perennials, not least grasses, and elevated their status within gardening cognoscenti.

Many of these are North American natives — asters, coneflowers, goldenrods, and most importantly, grasses — but it was European plantsmen, nurserymens and philosopher-gardeners (Ernst Pagels, Mien Ruys, Rob Leopold, Henk Gerritsen, James van Sweden, Wolfgang Oehme) who in the mid-to-late 20th century introduced and popularized many dozens of plants — and the naturalistic aesthetic — that today we take for granted and that is now known as the New Perennialist movement.

And it is a Dutchman, Piet Oudolf, who today is the most acclaimed and influential plantsman and garden designer. The planting at the High Line is the embodiment of his celebrated aesthetic, and is merely one of his many public gardens revealed in a documentary that premiered last November titled “Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf.” He has written numerous books but my favorite is “Oudolf Hummelo,” co-written with Noel Kingsbury. (Hummelo is his family garden in Holland started in 1982.) It is in his beautiful books (or his Instagram) that you will quickly appreciate the merits of delaying until March the cutback of perennials.

As winter drags on, I only just started to cut back the grasses to expose the pushing daffodils. I know of a gardener who uses a mower at its maximum cutting height, but I have Narcissus, Camassia, Allium and Eremurus visible already, so I use my gas-powered hedge trimmer, which makes really quick work of cutting down even the most beastly Miscanthus, and I can be careful not to step on the precocious perennials.

Nor am I in any rush to get to work on the late-winter pruning and cutback of summer-blooming shrubs like Buddleia, Caryopteris, Hydrangea paniculata and roses. I prefer to wait until late March, when any threat of arctic blast is past.

Kyrnan Harvey is a horticulturist and garden designer residing in East Setauket. For more information, visit www.boskygarden.com

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Children can discover the wonder of plants the Brookhaven Ecology Center next month. Photo from Town of Brookhaven

Spring Pee Wee Gardening

The Town of Brookhaven Highway Department offers Spring Pee Wee Gardening classes for ages 3 to 5 at the Wildlife Education & Ecology Center, 249 Buckley Road, Holtsville on Thursdays, April 12, 19 and 26, May 3, 10 and 17 or Fridays, April 13, 20 and 27, May 4, 11 and 18 at either 10 to 11 a.m. or 1 to 2 p.m. The children will learn about the environment, animals and plants through crafts and stories. $50 for six-week session. For more information, please call 631-758-9664, ext. 10.

Adult Horticulture Classes

The Town of Brookhaven’s Department of Highways will present Adult Horticulture Classes at the Holtsville Ecology Site, 249 Buckley Road, Holtsville on Wednesdays, April 11, 18 and 25 and May 2, 9 and 16. Participants will learn about starting plants through propagation, growing vegetables from seeds, spring gardening techniques and unique gardening crafts. Fee is $50 for six-week session. Deadline to register is March 29. For more info, call 631-758-9664, ext. 10.

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Above, Begonia ‘Pink Minx,’ with its constant bloom of bright pink flowers and unique Angel Wing leaves, is easy to grow, making it a top contender for the title of perfect houseplant. Photo courtesy of Logee’s Plants for Home and Garden

By Kyrnan Harvey

As a plantsman and gardener, I have always been more generalist than specialist. There are avid collectors of day-lilies or hostas, roses or rhododendrons, Japanese maples or dwarf conifers, snowdrops, dahlias and peonies. There are rock garden enthusiasts who have to grow every Saxifraga and Primula and Penstemon. In the U.K. and Ireland there are 630 National Plant Collections in which special-interest plant groups are identified, documented and conserved in private gardens, nurseries, local parks, botanic gardens and historic estates.

I love all these plants. Phases of zeal come and go for me, but of paramount importance to the garden designer is the creation and sustaining of harmonious environments, keyed in to the genius loci, pleasing to our senses and attractive to wildlife too — the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Houseplants too can inspire passions. Cacti and succulents are ideal objects for homes with plenty of bright light but excessively dry heat. If you are not one to turn your thermostat down to 60 at night, but keep your home uniformly cozy at 72, then you can have a dozen or more different African violets featuring delightful colors on extremely compact plants. Following International Aroid Society on Instagram has been an eye-opener for me: stunning foliage in unbelievable variety. I would collect these Philodendron and Anthurium and Monstera and Alocasia if I had a large airy home or lived in the tropics.

Above, Begonia ‘Potpouri’ is the perfect houseplant for winter months, covering itself with fragrant rose-pink blooms from January to June. Photo courtesy of Logee’s Plants for Home and Garden

But I must say, if I were to amass a small collection of a single plant group of houseplants, it would be begonias. There was a great bookstore back in the aughts on Bedford Ave in Williamsburg. The owner Miles kept a solitary cane begonia in a glazed Oriental jardiniere in the center display table a good distance from the storefront window. I donated an old jade plant for the window and neither it nor the begonia ever received water. When my brother was moving last summer, I adopted two cane begonias. They hadn’t been watered in months. I cut the woody stems down to a few inches; then repotted and watered the plant. A few weeks later it was gorgeous.

The wax begonias that we plant as annuals are dead easy to grow, and cane begonias (these are the old-fashioned “angel-wing” begonias, now also called “fibrous”) are nearly so. They are very resilient and tolerant of neglect. Let them dry between waterings indoors, cut the canes hard at the end of winter, and move outdoors in bright — but indirect — light from May to October. The leaves can be reddish or green and mottled or spotted in white or silver. Logee’s catalog has a couple dozen varieties, and in the summer they will outdo themselves with the most charming sprays of pendant flowers in varying shades of pink. Such dignified plants, begonias give much more than they require.

The leaves of rhizomatous begonias are even more stunning, a limitless variety of color, texture and form. More compact than cane begonias, they also will be covered in flowers. Be sure to let them dry between waterings, but then water until it reaches the saucer.

Rex begonias are a type of rhizomatous (creeping rootstocks) begonia, in the prima donna class: showboats with their psychedelic leaves but demanding more accurate watering, humidity and temperature. Even then, they go dormant in winter for two or three months. A well-grown rex is spectacular, but their flowers are inconspicuous.

Any and all houseplants should summer outdoors. Indeed, this is crucial to their prosperity. Best to resist the temptation of moving them outside too early; wait until well into May and acclimate them by moving them during a forecast of two or three mild, sunless days. I like soft rain on warm days.

Do not leave them, in the first week or two, exposed to full sun, even for a couple hours, or desiccating wind. Situate them in bright, filtered light, and you will treasure your begonias when, in October, you can cut the exuberant growth and bring them indoors.

Kyrnan Harvey is a horticulturist and garden designer residing in East Setauket. For more information, visit www.boskygarden.com.

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Begonia

By Kyrnan Harvey

I follow Logee’s Plants on Instagram and the other day photos of some of their old catalogs, a 1962-63, a damp-stained 1988-90 and a 1997, were posted. These latter sure looked familiar, oblong, tall-and-narrow, staple-bound. Logees’s greenhouses have been in existence since 1892, in northeast Connecticut, their first catalog in the 1930’s. They offered scores of different cultivars of geraniums, and of begonias,  and the old catalogs are great reference sources as well as interesting horticultural ephemera.

My mother was — and still is! — an amateur horticulturist. My architect father designed and built a house in the 70’s that was ahead of its time with open floorplan, cathedral ceiling, and a lot of glass. Plants flourished and a heated lean-to greenhouse was almost redundant. Through the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s my mother was active in a L.I. chapter of Hobby Greenhouse, as well as in the garden club. She and her friend Annette grew many orchids and begonias.

Above, the dancing bones cactus, aka drunkard’s dream prefers certain locations in the house to thrive. Photo by Kyrnan Harvey

I have my hands full March through November with my horticulture business, so it’s better to not accumulate many potted plants that require watering while summering outdoors. Unfortunatly I don’t heed my own advice. There is a 15-year-old Ficus benjamina ‘Variegata,’ grown as a standard (tree-form, not bushy), hugging a north-facing dining room window. In the kitchen a large drunkard’s dream (Hatiora salicornioides) cascades from open shelving, a poinsettia with white bracts recently purchased at Home Depot nestles against the espresso machine, and a pair of the very diminutive Sansevieria ‘Fernwood,’ spotted at Ikea, are on the sill with a tiny venus-flytrap.

A Stop&Shop Kalanchoe, over-summered a couple years and now large, is in full bloom on a stand in a south-facing living room window. At another drafty, albeit historically correct, window a flowering spike of a Phalaenopsis orchid, as yet unopened, is expanding.

Upstairs are a very old, dwarfed, jade plant, crammed into a square cinnabar-glazed ceramic container; my wife’s Kaffir lime tree, from Logee’s; a wild banana (Strelitzia nicolai) and an Alocasia ‘Polly’ that I bought, also at Ikea, to stage the open house for the sale of our Bushwick condo three years ago; a Sansevieria ‘Bantel’s Sensation,’ with vertically white-variegated leaves sourced at Hick’s a few years ago for a client’s wrought-iron urn; a lovely maidenhair fern (Adiantum raddianum) which is an offspring from mom’s defunct greenhouse; two agaves, one that is the straight-species of the century plant (Agave americana), an offset that Richie at Half Hollow Nursery gave me, and the other is A. americana ‘Mediopicta Alba,’ propagated by the legendary Mattituck plantsmen at Landcraft Environments.

Above, a vigorous fibrous begonia. Photo by Kyrnan Harvey

Also upstairs is a variegated myrtle, Myrtus communis ‘Variegata.’ This is the myrtle of ancient Mediterranean lore and has aromatic leaves, but it, like my agaves, gets scale, which I spray with insecticidal soap once or twice a year. There is a bonsai ficus in the north-facing upstairs bathroom window and a rooted cutting of the common heart-leaf Philodendron cordatum, tolerant of low-light, in an antique highball of water in the bathroom below.

Likewise, a neon pothos, with chartreuse leaves, grows downward from a vase I bought on the pottery island (Ko Kret) in the Chao Phrya river in Bangkok. This has grown in just water for about a decade, presumably nourished by the minerals in the clay.

There is a poorly heated wing to our house, a converted porch, in which I stubbornly overwinter a dwarfed lemon verbena, delightfully scented in summer, woody and gnarly at 20 years, and another true myrtle, M. communis ‘Boetica,’ also inherited from mom’s collection. Rounding out the census, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the 20 lantanas potted up from the garden and left dormant in the 50 degree basement.

But I still haven’t mentioned the begonias, the pictures of which in Logee’s old plant lists is what got me started today. Logee’s still mails out catalogs, now 8×10 and full-color glossy, but their website has many more rare, fruiting, and tropical plants listed.

Kyrnan Harvey is a horticulturist and garden designer residing in East Setauket. For more information, visit www.boskygarden.com.

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Chokeberry can be planted in most soil conditions including sandy soil. Stock photo

By Kyrnan Harvey

Single-digit overnight temperatures and daytime highs of 16 degrees with howling winds are as bad as it gets in winter on Long Island, unless your property is at sea level, in which case flooding makes the gardener yet more miserable. Port Jefferson locals were reminded by the Jan. 4 storm that their village was called Drowned Meadow. Elsewhere, “from swerve of shore to bend of bay,” and to varying degrees the blast of blizzard was dramatically exacerbated by saltwater flooding.

I had, for many years, such a garden on Manhasset Bay. Nor’easters and hurricanes coinciding with full moons were likely to inundate the garden, and it sure got ugly if it was a blizzard at that time of the month. The salinity of the water was resented most by rhododendrons and other broad-leaved evergreens that had no business growing there, but for the rest — the tulips and daffodils, the roses and forget-me-nots, the hydrangeas and crape myrtles and garden phlox — come May and June and hot summer, they were as happy as Larry, naturalized in their waterfront setting.

Of perhaps greater deleterious effect than the salt water from the coastal flooding was, on the one hand, the enormous deposits left in the garden — a thick layer of Phragmites seasoned with driftwood and plastic detritus, some of which I would add to my collection of ready-mades — and, on the other hand, the stripping of humus and mulch by the receding tide, leaving feeder roots exposed and begging for amelioration. In that case the gardener has no choice but to have a truckload of mulch — or better yet, compost — delivered as soon as possible. Inflate the tire of your wheelbarrow or call in a professional landscaper.

My garden on Manhasset Bay was not only right at sea level but it was entirely flat. There were many storms in which the salt water and flotsam reached into the garden some 20 or 30 feet, but there were also three or four times in 20 years that the entire acre of garden was inundated.

Of course, you could certainly leave such a plot to open lawn and the random privet and black locust. However, what if you want to garden on it, where coastal flooding is not an infrequent occurrence? What planting strategies are there?

Go with the flow and select a few native plants that are adapted to Long Island coastal and establish them in mass plantings. Use these to create a less exposed ecosystem, a cozier environment, a more distinctive sense of place and to minimize erosion. Of course, as always, there are the deer to consider, which unfortunately eliminates sumac (Rhus), eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana), winterberry (Ilex verticillata) and bayberry (Myrica), all of which fit the bill of desirable LI coastal natives. These can be tried in future years.

However, in order to establish a durable and dependable infrastructure impervious to saline and cervine, let’s select chokeberry (Aronia), arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum) and grasses, like switchgrass and panic grass (Panicum).

There is a superb source for all these and many more in Eastport (between Moriches and Westhampton), a grower and nursery called Long Island Natives. They may have suggestions unknown to me and firsthand experience that contradicts my own.

Very rarely is there coastal flooding in spring. September through December are the months when the coincidence of heavy storm and full moon will inundate the shorelines. Thus spring is the time to plant in gardens where there is coastal flooding. Let plants have a long season to establish in the soil. If you have established beds and plants that are not known to be adapted to this condition, and they were flooded in the storm of Jan. 4, you must immediately spread at least an inch of compost or mulch.

Email your horticultural questions to [email protected] for possible inclusion in this column.

Kyrnan Harvey is a horticulturist and garden designer residing in East Setauket. For more information, visit www.boskygarden.com.

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