Design – Lee Reich

ESPALIER, A TASTY FUSION OF ART AND SCIENCE

April 2, 2026/0 Comments/in Design, Fruit, Pruning/by Lee Reich

Let’s Revive an Ancient Technique

Let’s go back in time, say, four hundred years. You’re puttering around your garden, your walled garden — walled to keep out animals and unfriendly neighbors. Hmmmm, you think, why not plant a fruit tree in that strip of earth against that wall, perhaps a fruit that will also benefit from the extra warmth over there? May as well make the plant look nice and orderly, too.

And so originated espalier (ES-pal-yay): a plant, usually a fruit plant, usually trained to an orderly and two-dimensional form. The word is derived from the Old French aspau, meaning a prop, and most espaliers must, in fact, be propped up with stakes or wires.

Although today we rarely build walls to fend off unfriendly animals or neighbors, an espalier still might warrant a place in the garden. Read more

BARKS OF ANOTHER STRIPE

February 11, 2026/5 Comments/in Design/by Lee Reich

Even Shrubs (Have) Bark

Hear “bark” and I’ll bet “dog” or “birch” comes to mind. Well, foxes also bark, and the cinnamon brown, flaky bark of paperbark maple is every bit as eye-catching as is the more talked about chalky white bark of birch. Winter is a wonderful time to appreciate plants’ bark.

Shrubs never develop trunks thick enough to be swathed in broad expanses of bark, yet a few of them do have notable bark. Read more

WHAT’S DOING IN YOUR ‘HOOD

April 1, 2025/4 Comments/in Design, Flowers/by Lee Reich

Rhododendron Death?

I don’t know if this is happening in your neighborhood, but in my neighborhood a fungus is reported to be ravaging rhododendrons. Except that it’s not a fungus. Those browning, wilting leaves are caused by cold.

This past winter, temperatures did drop a few degrees below zero Fahrenheit, but that’s pretty much par for the course these days. In years past, winter temperatures here on the farmden regularly dipped down to near minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, which was why I was always reluctant to plant rhododendrons.

A WINTER FAIRYLAND

February 20, 2025/4 Comments/in Design, Soil/by Lee Reich

The Goodness It Brings

If we’re going to have cold temperatures, we might as well have snow. You might think that snow has nothing to do with gardening, that once a white blanket drops over the landscape, all garden activity and thoughts of gardening cease. Not so: Your gardening activity might cease and my gardening activity might cease, but a lot goes on gardenwise. Read more

My favorite bark. Can you guess what it is?

WOOF, WOOF, BUT NOT A DOG

November 26, 2024/2 Comments/in Design, Gardening/by Lee Reich

More than Meets Your Eye — So Look Closely

The transition from fall to winter brings many trees and shrubs from their most ostentatious to their most subtle beauty. Like a developing photographic image, the textures and colors of various kinds of bark come slowly into view against the increasingly stark winter landscape.

If you were to choose one plant for its bark, what would it be? Paper birch (Betula papyrifera) usually comes to mind, of course. But there are so many other trees and shrubs with notable bark, some as striking as birch, others with a subtle loveliness best appreciated during a winter stroll or viewed through a window from a comfortable chair.

My favorite bark. Can you guess what it is? Read on.

Whole books — Bark, by G. T. and A. E. Prance and Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast, by Michael Wojtech — have even been devoted to bark. They are useful adjuncts, in addition to other features such as tree form and remnants of autumn leaves on the plant or ground nearby, to winter plant identification. Read more

EASIER MEADOW PREP

August 14, 2024/6 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Planning/by Lee Reich

Genesis

In my previous blog post, I described various ways to prepare the ground for a meadow. With that said, I admit to not following any of what I wrote about ground preparation for the meadow here on the farmden. Not that my instructions were wrong. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.” Meadows also.

Last week’s meadow prep is geared to the meadow steward who wants to be presented with a riot of color for as long as possible. That view necessitates the killing of existing vegetation and sowing seeds or setting out small plants of desired species.

My own meadow began life under the ownership of my elderly neighbor who, with two riding lawnmowers helmed by her granddaughter Read more

MEADOW BEGINNINGS

August 8, 2024/3 Comments/in Design/by Lee Reich

Small Meadow Prep

Despite the low maintenance a mature meadow requires, thorough preparation and planning is needed to establish one. Don’t let “meadow in a can” (a container of meadow plant seeds) or some other promise of an instant meadow fool you into believing that just sprinkling seeds or rolling out a seeded, biodegradable carpet on top the ground will result in a carefree riot of season-long color.

Thorough preparation is needed because meadow plants are not set out in neat rows easily weeded by hand or by hoe. Neat rows, after all, would ruin the random charm of a meadow. The goal, therefore, is to create conditions as weed-free as possible before setting out plants or sowing seeds.

The first consideration Read more

FORM & FUNCTION MEET WITH ESPALIER

May 1, 2024/6 Comments/in Design, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Espalier Goals

Espalier (es-pal-YAY) is the training of a plant, usually a fruit plant, to an orderly, two-dimensional form. The word is derived from the Old French aspau, meaning a prop, and most espaliers must, in fact, be propped up with stakes or wires. This method of training and pruning plants had its formal beginnings in Europe in the 16th century, when fruit trees were trained on walls to take advantage of the strip of earth and extra warmth near those walls.

Espalier in Normandy, France

Why go to all the trouble of erecting a trellis and then having to pinch and snip a tree frequently to keep it in shape? Because a well-grown espalier represents a happy commingling of art and science, resulting in a plant that pleases eyes and, if a fruit plant, also palates. You apply this science artfully (or your art scientifically) with manipulations such as pulling exuberant stems downward to slow their growth, by cutting notches where stems threaten to remain bare, and by pruning back stems in summer to keep growth neat and fruitful. Read more

HAVE YOUR “CAKE” AND EAT IT, TOO

March 27, 2024/7 Comments/in Design, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Take a Moment for Forethought

Luscious photos now splash pages of mail-order catalogs, the web, and plant tags at local nurseries. It’s hard to remain rational about planting this time of year, and more so the colder the last winter’s climate.

What I’m suggesting is to give plantings some forethought and, rather than looking for either ornamental or edible trees and shrubs, considering plants that fulfill both functions. That is, trees and shrubs that earn their keep year-‘round with leaves that remain lush and verdant all summer, then light up with fall color, and, of course, bear fruit, and perhaps unfold with eye-catching blossoms in spring.

Persimmons ripening

Lots of trees and shrubs fill this bill, but here I’d like to restrict consideration to fruits that I would pop into my mouth right out in the garden; doctoring up as jam or in a pie is not obligatory. Read more

THE GARDEN IN WINTER

January 31, 2024/6 Comments/in Design, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Forming Relationships

This may sound crazy but even this far north, winter isn’t a bad time to admire the garden. With leaves and flowers a memory of the past season and a hope for the coming season, the garden is reduced to its bare bones. Not that the wintry scene need be dull or bleak. Good bones give structure to the landscape, knitting it together in some places, dividing it up in others, framing vistas, and providing firm footing for the eyes (figuratively) and feet (literally). Even now.

Three-dimensional forms are what give structure to a landscape. A house usually is the most obvious mass jutting up into space on a property. Too often it’s the only structural element, feebly tied to the landscape with some gumdrop-shaped junipers or yews standing, as if guarding, the foundation.

I have effected a relationship between my yard and my house by building a grape arbor out from the rear wall, then enclosing the ground beneath this arbor with a brick terrace (my house is also brick) edged with a low hedge of potentilla. Similarly, the stone wall supporting what previous were slopes at the front and side of my house flow into the landscape with a contiguous stone wall sweeping out across the yard. Read more