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| All the bunchberry sod is down, and it looks great! |
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| Just a couple of the huge ostrich ferns we transplanted. |
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| The completed front entrance this past week. |
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| The new rhododendron bed |
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| Dryopteris erythrosora ‘Autumn Fern’ |
The main entrance on Barters Island Road is one of the first impressions you get of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Sadly, it is also the most overlooked and is generally left alone. Not this week, though! Sharmon, the Gardens’ plant records coordinator and plant propagator, and I worked extremely hard adding and rearranging to make the entrance more inviting. Next time you come to the gardens, be sure to check out all that we’ve done.
To start, we added a couple of Ilex verticillata ‘Southern Gentleman’ to fill in the gaps and help cover the weeds that are growing in the woods behind the entry. Then we started on our main project: We transplanted a couple of Christmas ferns to the bed to make a smooth palette for the bunchberry sod. Unlike my colleagues, I did not mind working with the sod at all. The bunchberry sod was very thin and easily cut into the correct shapes needed for the bed. The only problem we had with it was that we didn’t have enough to fill the bed. To make the space look more filled out, we spread the sod out a little and filled in the gaps with sensitive ferns.
When the first side was finished, we moved to the side with the sign. This bed was filled with an assortment of ferns, assorted rhododendrons, Pulmonaria ‘Cotton Cool’, and Pulmonaria ‘Diane Clare’. We took the rhododendrons and the pulmonaria completely out of the bed. The rhododendrons were moved in the another bed that was empty and had only a telephone pole in it. We gave the pulmonaria to another horticulturalist for use in a bed elsewhere in the garden. This is just one example of how plants are used and reused from one side of the grounds to another.
After things were taken out, we started to rearrange the ferns. Our goal was not to create a completely organized bed with straight lines, but to have a more natural setting and, as Sharmon put it, “a bed of organized chaos” was the goal. We rearranged the ferns so that for the most part like ferns were near each other. Some very neat autumn ferns were added to the mix to give it a splash of color. I fell in love with autumn ferns, or Dryopteris erythrosora, after planting them. Their colors are incredibly vivid, and they will really add a pop of color to catch the eye when they grow in a little.
We decided to add a little height, and a slightly different texture, to the bed behind the autumn ferns. We had much fun digging up huge ostrich ferns, or Matteuccia struthiopteris, from the hillside behind the Cleaver Event Lawn & Garden. We transplanted quite a few to different places all around the front entrance. By adding a few to the other side of the driveway, we could keep the theme going throughout the whole area. Keeping the theme means having the same plant or very similar plants carry over into another bed. To finish it off we added three different types of clematis to the base of the sign, then tied them to get them started on their climb. We added, Clematis ‘Matka Urszula Ledochowska’, Clematis ‘I Am Red Robin’, and Clematis ‘General Skikorski’. Two of the three have already bloomed or are just finishing now; the third, the General Skikorski, is just about to bloom. The blooms will be the classic purple and will hopefully brighten up the sign a little bit.
While we were redoing the front, Diane Walden, a staff horticulturalist, and Director of Horticulture Rodney Eason were busy planting the Zen pots that line the two stone walls at the entrance. These pots are full of color and really do brighten up the entrance and lessen the sharpness of the straight stone walls.
Although it may not seem like much, we put a lot of hard work into making the front entrance more cared for and inviting. The new beds are starting to fill out and will look wonderful for years to come, and the pots bring some color to the area. Surprisingly, there is still more to be done! Keep an eye out for more exciting changes at the entrance!
– Kristin Neill, Horticulture Intern
