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And now back to Park Slope for another garden make-over…The only before picture we have gives an idea of what was here initially when we bought our North Slope garden duplex in 2002—a couple of bushes, and a lot of dirt. The dirt, of course, turned out to consist of a lot of glass and litter and other loveliness. We rented a dumpster and hauled it all out. There was also a narrow concrete area—about 8′ long and 3′ wide—that ran alongside the house. Our building (an old eight-family tenement on a brownstone block that was converted into four condos in 2000) is 85′ deep on a 100′ lot, so the garden is small, with some space lost to the stairs coming up from the basement. The garden faces north.

We hired a landscape designer to install the blue stone patio, where we have the table, chairs and barbecue. We really wanted…

…to hang a hammock somewhere, so she also laid out the rocky area over which the hammock now swings. It’s too overgrown to see now, but you can get an idea of the layout from the drawing of the garden plan. Otherwise, all we really wanted was a lush, almost tropical garden in Brooklyn . The initial plantings included rhododendrons, azaleas, two large hostas, some ferns, some tall grasses, and some non-invasive bamboo (some directly in the garden, and some in two large wooden planters), as well as a Japanese maple tree. Otherwise, much of the initial garden plantings were meant for a shade garden, but then the neighbors on one side cut down a huge tree which turned our shade garden into one with a lot of midday sun, so a lot of those initial plantings didn’t survive.

We know next to nothing about gardening! So we just strive for lushness and low maintenance. We’ve put in several more hostas, and some galium odoratum which grows full and silvery as the summer progresses. Last fall, we planted dozens of daffodils which were in full bloom in April, and we recently put in some sedum ground cover that we hope will fill in some empty areas. And though true gardeners will scoff, we usually put in some impatiens in the spring, which become luxuriant with flowers, almost like rose bushes, and add colorful blossoms to the garden all summer long—but didn’t do much of that this year, and now regret it because the garden needs some color. (Tip: don’t buy the scraggly impatiens they sell locally; pre-order them in the fall/winter from White Flower Farm, which ships them at the appropriate time for spring planting. We’re putting in our order in September!)

To the east and west are the backs of neighbors’ wooden fences, along with leaves from various vines that wander over from their gardens. Along the back (north) is a chain link fence that we covered (temporarily, we thought) with some cheap bamboo fencing, but which we’ve just kept there. So no money was spent on fencing at all. A hardy creeping vine climbs up an old laundry tower which would be a bit of an eyesore but now looks like part of nature.

Some would call this garden overgrown rather than lush—it certainly doesn’t adequately reflect the tremendous talent of our landscape designer, Susan Welti (of Susan Welti Landscape Design, 718-638-7547) since we’re not gardeners and don’t really do anything to care for it at all—but we like it.
Small Park Slope Garden Photos [Flickr]
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