www.bellewood-gardens.com - Sep. 7, 2005
It's A Jungle Out There
Looking at the extravagant 18- to 20-foot-tall bananas and towering cannas I said "There it is." Jerry, Bea, and I were off on a garden visit to Pompton Plains, New Jersey, to see the Enrich garden that John Beirne cultivates at NewBridge Services. Wrapping around two sides of the low brick building, the lush growth and bright colors are a striking contrast to the typical lawn-and-foundation-shrubs seen elsewhere in the neighborhood. This is an in-you-face garden, right out on the street, impossible to ignore from a passing car, let alone as you walk down the sidewalk. A horticultural therapy program that his clients plant, weed, water, and tend for only a couple of hours each week, John has been cultivating the value of plants and gardening at the mental health facility for five years, as an adjunct to his work as a case manager. When I attended his presentation on tropical plants in containers at Wave Hill (see the Wave Hill Revisited entry in Fourth Week, June Diary entry) John had mentioned the garden and invited me to come and visit it.
Approximately 20 bananas dominate the garden, their stately height and massive leaves towering over the other plants. "Jungles," John says, "are used to rain. So we don't use drip irrigation to water them. An oscillating sprinkler mimics the rain and helps the plants develop stronger root systems as it patters on their leaves." And also, I figure, washes away some of the exhaust fumes from the passing cars and trucks. The banana leaves are often somewhat tattered by the wind, which can shred them into streamers if it blows really hard. Cannas mimic the bananas on a smaller scale, especially the green or red flushed Indian shot, Canna musifolia, now known as Canna indica. Other cannas with deep red leaves also accent the garden. John's favorite is 'Australia', with shinning deep red foliage. Interestingly, there are seedling cannas volunteering here and there in the garden too, re-seeding from Longwood Gardens water cannas that were planted in a previous year. Derived from Canna flaccida, they can be recognized by their relatively narrow, glaucous foliage and dainty flowers. Not that cannas are hardy here, John hastens to explain. But apparently the seeds can winter over. And the seedling plants flower the same season they begin their growth. Some have delicate, near-to-white flowers of the palest lemon sorbet, while others are cream to orange or speckled with red.
The spike-y, agave-like leaves of variegated Furcraea 'Mediopicta' make a stunning accent as the green edged creamy plant erupts from billows of coleus. Thriving with the care it's been given, each winter new offsets, called pups, form around the parent plant and provide additional plants to enrich the garden the following summer. The purple-leaved mound to the left is a Crinum, a tropical bulb that's had the habit of flowering in its winter quarters under cover. This summer, however, it must have heard John disparaging that behaviour and it moved its blooming time up to September.
There are various elephant ears, both Alocasia with their downward pointing leaves and Colocasia that aim skyward from each large leaf's attachment to a sturdy petiole. Ornamental sweet potatoes weave through at ground level: the very vigorous 'Tricolor' reaching out over the narrow strip of lawn adjecent to the sidewalk, as if to snag the ankles of a passer-by. Dark 'Blackie' is even more attractive with its flushes of new growth, the soft brownish bronze-green accenting the various hues of cannas and elephant ears. Spider plant, Chlorophytum comosum serves as an edging on the corner, adaptable to full sun when the plants are first moved outdoors from their winter quarters in an overcrowed 28-foot by 17-foot poly house and equally happy when shaded by their massive neighbors in summer. Coleus make rampant billows of color, pruned back several times throughout the growing season to keep them under control.
John Beirne takes a brief time out, sitting in front of the coleus, a furcraea pup peeking through and a ribbon of Ipomoea 'Tricolor' neatly tucked along the edge
It is difficult to believe this is a summertime-only garden, less than 6 months old. But every year a killing frost comes early in October. Agaves are cut back to tightly furled central core. Bananas are de-leafed, chopped back, and crammed into tight pots to keep them from outgrowing the cramped quarters. Coleus cuttings will be rooted, potted, grown on and then in February new cuttings are taken, doubling their numbers, done again, and again. But for now the sun is shining, the garden is growing, and it is a beautiful jungle out there.
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