I used to work in a windowless office so I completely understand when every other visitor tells me I have the best job in the world. I know. I totally do. But contrary to popular opinion amongst non-gardeners at least, the weather isn’t always 70 degrees and sunny; gardening is not always serenely therapeutic, and it’s certainly not glamorous. Especially not when it involves hauling out a truckload of annuals out of a garden, or shoveling dry compost in a windstorm. Gardening is dirty work.

It’s been an especially back-breaking work-week here between taking out the cutting bed to make room for tulips (next week’s work), cutting back, dividing and moving various perennials around like musical chairs, and forking compost into the two North Garden beds that won’t be trampled during the wall’s restoration project. Of all the hard work this week, the compost was definitely the dirtiest. But it was also the most potentially gratifying.

We haven’t amended the soil in the North Garden in a very long time and it has become compacted from years of feet and years of moving plants around in wet springs and falls, just like the Rose Garden had. And just like we did in the Rose Garden last year, we opted to use Bristol’s own (free) compost made with biosolids and yardwaste, which is super stinky but certified top-grade and tested pathogen-free. Thanks to a strong team of volunteers (Go Rockettes!) who plugged their noses to rake out and fork in the compost, we have every expectation that next year the North Garden will be every bit as stunningly healthy as the Rose Garden was this year. (The Rose Garden is still glorious by the way – although frost/snow might do it in tonight…)

We are coming close to the end of the dirtiest work in the gardens for the season. Once the tulips go in we will have to make a shift to the more mentally challenging work of planning next years gardens. – Just listening to Gail and Tara try to plan where to plant the tulips in the cutting garden is making me feel a whole other kind of exhausted…

Have you been doing dirty work in your garden too?

The North Garden wall restoration project had already begun but it was almost as if we couldn’t wait to get at the wall itself. Three members of Team Florabunda came in on a wet and wildly windy morning, were reluctant to break for tea, and stayed past lunch to take the climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris) off of the North Garden wall. I never thought we’d be able to do it in a day but as soon as we started to rip-tear, none of us could stop. (Never underestimate the enjoyment a gardener takes in destroying something – gardening may in fact be one of the only creative arts that allows for that impulse. Don’t we all kind of love to weed?)

Without the hydrangea, the wall looks a lot smaller, and a lot more precarious. It became very clear as we worked that the very hydrangea that must have contributed to the wall’s downfall was also helping to hold it up. The edge along the east side is severely bowed and another section by the steps had begun to separate – you can just see the light of day through it in the picture below (top right). (Click on pictures for larger view.)

But other things were revealed as well, such as the quartz rocks that young Augustine collected in her travels and asked the masons to insert (also visible in the stone steps picture above.) And it’s much easier now to see the supports for a bench under the star. Gail and I only learned of the bench’s existence when we visited the archives to look at old pictures a couple of weeks ago. When the North Garden was divided into parterres, the bench was in line with the bowling green and the low fountain at the edge of the Bosquet, and must have been removed when the garden was done over in borders.

We all hoped to find buried treasure as well and in a way we did. The wall itself is a marvel and it will be wonderful to see it restored. And in case you are shocked about the demise of the hydrangea – that filled the truck just about to its limits – Fred and Dan took cuttings earlier in the year. It lives and will be replanted.

Do you enjoy giving in to the destructive impulse too? Cathartic, isn’t it?

The North Garden Star Wall Project has officially begun! (The wall, 100 years old this month, will be restored this winter.) Yesterday Team Rockette dug and hauled hundreds of pounds of perennials out of the two beds along the North Star wall and southeast side and heeled them in the vegetable bed (readied by Team Deadhead on Tuesday) for the winter. They also unceremoniously pitched all of the annuals along with moldy-old Phlox paniculata ‘David’ (it may be mildew resistant for awhile but for us, no longer) and anything infested with goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria), which over the last few years has insidiously reentered the North Garden in a number of places.

As hard as the work was yesterday – we all needed restorative naps afterwards – I kept thinking about how much easier it was, psychically at least, to do a major renovation project now as opposed to spring. As hard as it is to cut back or take out late season flowers that the bees and butterflies are still working, I find it much more difficult to move or destroy anything with fresh growth full of the season’s potential. And fall weather is much more reliably cooperative too. The ground is still warm so plants’ roots can take hold easily and there’s plenty of rain in the forecast. As much as we’d like to be able to get back into the North Garden with Team Florabunda, today’s rain is helping yesterday’s transplants settle into to their temporary home. The timing for that is also perfect. As long as you’re careful to not plant wherever you’d want to sow the early crops next spring (and we were careful) a vegetable garden makes a brilliant holding bed for anyone that doesn’t have space for a dedicated nursery bed.

We still have to get the roses (Ballerina) and hydrangeas (Limelight) out and sundry back row denizens but we’re nearly there thanks to the Rockettes – and the Tuesday Deadheads – (we could not have done this without them) and we’re right on schedule despite the rain. Stay tuned for progress reports and maybe even a discussion about all of the ideas being floated about potential design tweaks. (If the garden is going to be under the mayhem of construction, why not think about making a change or two? – Always preserving the family’s intentions, of course.)

Are you starting a big project now too? Do you prefer to do the work in spring or fall?