Right Before Winter . . .

Getting a three-acre formal garden ready for winter requires a professional.

   Karl Thompson, a landscape architect, has been the chief gardener at Wethersfield Estate and Gardens in Amenia, NY, for six years. His first concern is preparing 100,000 square feet of lawn for the next spring. In September, when the thermometer seems to hover around 70 degrees and the ground is moist and no rain is forecast for several days, he aerates the grass which alleviates compaction and allows air to get to the roots. Then he applies weed killer and seed with a drop spreader, which will encourage new grass growth and discourage broad-leaf weeds. It’s important, he says, “to let a garden go to sleep with wet feet.â€�

   He makes sure that the gardens receive at least an inch of moisture from rain or the irrigation system every week.

   Thompson also has to prepare the plantings for winter, which is especially harsh on the hillsides of Wethersfield. Rhododendrons are sprayed with Wilt Pruf to protect them from burning by winter winds. The delicate boxwoods are framed and wrapped with burlap. Tea roses are cut back after a few hard frosts, and covered with mulch and pine boughs and encircled with a burlap-covered snow fence.  

   The white cedar is trimmed late so the snow falls off more easily.

   In Wethersfield’s flower beds, the plants are cut down, all weeds pulled up, and the soil is covered with three inches of pulverized maple leaves. The worms aerate the living soil. All of this mulch can attract mice; so poisoned bait is placed strategically to keep the population down with the help of the garden cat.

   Millerton Nursery can help you get your garden ready if you need help trimming plants, spraying them with natural deer discourager, putting deer fences around vulnerable trees and mulching garden beds to hold in the heat and protect plants from the cold.  

   Petrina Lopane will also arrange for autumn tree planting of maples, crab apples and cherry trees up until the ground freezes. Looking at the maple trees already turning color, she said it looks like it will be an early winter with a lot of snow.

   Peter Muroski, owner of Native Landscapes Garden Center in Pawling, takes another stance.  He advocates doing less.

   “Leave the leaves on the ground. It’s healthier for the garden. Watch what Mother Nature does.â€�  Mound clippings into a huge compost pile to create a winter home for animals; leave sunflower heads to dry and provide food for birds. Late fall when the ground is moist is also a good time to rip out invasive aliens like bittersweet which suffocate plants.

   Twin Brooks Garden Center in Millbrook suggests leaving the hydrangea blossoms on all winter long to provide a dramatic impact in the snow. But tropical plants like canas must be moved inside in front of a very sunny window, or cut back and stuck in the basement, coming out only when danger of frost is past.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less