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Marilyn Young is the Horticulture Assistant at Wave Hill.
With the ideal of a garden as a year-round pleasure, it may be easy to delight in summer, but gardeners may be less certain how to sustain interest and color from fall through winter. There are lessons in the Wave Hill landscape to remedy this. All about the gardens and grounds, summer flowers give way to seed-bearing fruits as the warmest season falls away to autumn. Colorful berries are part of the regenerative process of nature and a good way to enliven the garden as winter comes. Feeding the birds, who contribute by digesting the protective shell and then doing a wonderful job scattering seed, provides an added treat.
Begin the berried treasure course in Wave Hill’s parking lot with the Pyracantha ‘Lo Boy’, commonly known as firethorn. Its thorny stems and brilliant orange berries persist almost all winter. In the shrub border by the entrance are two examples of a favorite berried shrub: the winterberry Ilex verticillata. The cultivar ‘Christmas Cheer’ was planted almost 30 years ago, and is paired with the similar ‘Winter Red’. The leafless branches of these deciduous hollies, covered with red berries, make a striking display in a snowy landscape. Three additional cultivars of the winterberry are planted in a colorful array in the semi-circular shrub border before Glyndor House. On the southeast corner of this house, the commanding presence of a pair of tall evergreen Ilex opaca are glorious as their berries ripen to a bright red against the shiny, green leaves.
Staffperson Betsy Ginn took both shots here at Wave Hill this winter. These lustrous yellow beads are Ilex opaca ‘Princeton Gold’. Look for them along the walkway between Wave Hill’s Perkins Visitor Center and the T.H. Everett Alpine House.
Now make your way north past the Perkins Visitor Center. Tucked in around this brick building are several Callicarpa dichotoma and C. bodinieri cultivars. Commonly called beautyberry, their delicate amethyst berries line the branches like clusters of small jewels. Planting several shrubs together in a small group is recommended to ensure cross-pollination and plentiful fruit. Also located here are favorites of Director of Horticulture Scott Canning: a trio of Viburnum nudum ‘Winterthur’ graces the Perkins Visitor Center; in the fall, their lustrous leaves turn red-purple, and their lingering fruits ripening to a dark blue hue.
Across the way to the left is the Viburnum bed. The border is usually alive with twittering birds sheltered and sustained by this stately group of shrubs. Viburnums are attractive in flower, in fruit and in autumn, when the leaves light up with fall colors. The red berries of Viburnum setigerum and V. dilatatum provide a veritable bird buffet.
Rosemary Verey, having seen the red berries of the Idesia polycarpa tree here and other places, notes in her volume The Garden in Winter that “bunches of berries were spectacular against a clear-blue winter sky.” These beauties can be found between our Aquatic Garden and the Shade Border.
Peppered about the Perkins Visitor Center, the Wild Garden, the Shade Border beyond the Aquatic Garden and the Herbert and Hyonja Abrons Woodland are several varieties of hollies, as well as viburnums, spice bushes and shadbushes. One place to search out berried shrubs is the area below Glyndor House—the Elliptical Garden and its adjacent slope with plantings of bayberries (Myrica pennsylvanica), winterberries and the Prunus maritima, commonly known as the beach plum.
This afternoon after a light snow, I took a walk up to the pergola that surrounds the Aquatic Garden, now closed for the season. The path heads around and then down a long corridor lined with several Euonymus japonicus ‘Chollipo’, festive with their variegated creamy yellow and green leaves and lovely little orange berries. This evergreen-lined walkway leads to a grand, red-berried Ilex x aquipernyi next to a pair of our older Idesia polycarpa, trees full of bright fruits the birds don’t seem to like.
There are many more shrubs and trees bearing berries throughout the grounds at Wave Hill, too numerous to mention them all here. Once you start seeking berried plants you will find them often. You may begin to enjoy this part of nature’s process even more than their flowering moment, and welcome some berried treasures into your own garden.
Bibliography for Suggested Reading:
Clarke, Ethne. Autumn Gardens. San Francisco: Soma Books (an imprint of Bay Books & Tapes). 1999.
Kingdon-Ward, F. Berried Treasure. Subtitled Shrubs for Autumn and Winter Colour in Your Garden. London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited. 1954
Verey, Rosemary. The Garden in Winter. Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown and Company. 1988.
Wilder, Louise Beebe. The Garden in Color. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1937.
This post was authored by Wave Hill Gardener Harnek Singh. Harnek tends the Shade Border, Monocot and Aquatic Gardens.
The Aquatic Garden at Wave Hill, despite its slow start on account of cooler weather in early summer, could not be more spectacular than right now. In our pond the numerous cultivars of hardy and tropical water lilies are beautifully intermingled with bold leaf plants like taros or elephant ears (Colocasia esculenta), water lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) and red-stemmed arrowheads (Sagittaria species). Tall plants like papyrus, cattails and water canna take the beauty of our pond to the new heights.
While you are there don’t forget to look for the small, diamond-shaped red and green leaves of mosaic plant (Ludwigia sedioides), which grow in clusters and float on the water on the west side of the pond. And, of course, you have to say hi to our friends, big fish Finny and the frogs Hoppy and Hopper.
After a gentle walk around the pond, you might find a hidden bench under the surrounding shady pergolas to rest and dream your heart away!
Harnek's portrait of an elegant elephant ear in the Aquatic Garden
The water lotus, as captured recently by Harnek
Laurel Rimmer is Assistant Director of Public Programs. Among her many contributions are botanical drawings of plants found at Wave Hill, such as the bottlebrush buckeye drawing below, and the photographic portrait beneath it, too.
The bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) demands attention in the landscape. Not a plant for small city gardens, this southeastern native matures into a multi-stemmed shrub eight to twelve feet tall with an infinite spread, advancing slowly and politely over time. Large compound leaves, showy summer flowers and a dense mounding habit give it a distinctive look in the landscape.
The showy flowers of Aesculus parviflora appear at a time when few other woody plants are in bloom. At Wave Hill, our plants bloom in late June and early July, their large, upright flower panicles temporarily luring butterflies away from the bounty of perennial flowers in other areas of the garden. From a distance, the entire shrub appears to be accented with fuzzy, white rhinoceros horns. Upon closer inspection, the individual flowers have a dainty spidery appearance. Nuts in pear-shaped capsules develop in late summer; they are enjoyed by squirrels but are poisonous to humans. Our large old bottlebrush buckeye dates back to the Perkins era; look for it on the hillside between Wave Hill House and the Aquatic Garden.
Bottlebrush buckeye grows best in rich, moist, well-drained soil in sun to part shade. Once established, it requires no pruning or other special attention. Despite its ease of culture it is not a common plant in the nursery trade, in part because of its rather poor appearance as a young containerized plant. To the untrained eye it resembles a couple of gangly sticks with a few tufts of leaves on top. Gardeners who are familiar with the plant, however, can look past its youthful awkwardness to see its true potential as a beautiful and unusual landscape specimen.
Spring is back. For gardeners and plant lovers it is one of the most exciting times of the year that brings their beloved perennial plants back to life after a long winter sleep.
Among these plants is the epitome of American wildflowers known as Trillium grandiflorum (large-flowered trillium). The name “Trillium” refers to the plant structure: three petals, three sepals and three leaves (which are technically bracts).
Trillium grandiflorum
In the beds on the north side of the Shade Border, pure white flowers of Trillium grandiflorum start to bloom in late April, gradually fading to pink after a month-long display. Trillium grandiflorum seeds require double dormancy−it takes two years for seeds to germinate. Even under optimal conditions they take seven to ten years to reach flowering size. As a result, the vast majority of plants sold in commercial nurseries are believed to be collected from the wild. Such heavy collecting, combined with other pressures such as habitat destruction, may effectively endanger this plant in some areas. In the Shade Border, other notable Trillium species include red flowering Trillium sessile (toadshade) and yellow flowering T. luteum (yellow trillium).
Red-flowering Trillium sessile
In early spring, another American native, Podophyllum peltatum (mayapple), is also in abundance in the Shade Border. Despite the common name “mayapple”, it is the flower that appears in early May not the fruit, which appears in the summer. Mayapple’s anemone-shaped flowers are usually hidden under its umbrella shaped leaves. Its fully ripened, egg-shaped and fleshy fruit is edible; other parts of the plant, however, including rhizomes, leaves and seeds, are poisonous. The root and plant contain Podophyllin, currently being studied for its ability to fight cancer, and other healing properties.
This post was authored by Harnek Singh, a Wave Hill Gardener. Harnek tends the Shade Border, Monocot and Aquatic Gardens.
