Planting the Skylands Terrace 2023
The terraces at Skylands are bursting with plant life and color once again.
I spent Memorial Day weekend at my home in Maine to carry out my yearly task of planting the large urns, pots, and planters that adorn the exterior of the house. It’s quite an undertaking, but I always enjoy the time, especially with the group that accompanies me from year to year. The greenhouse at Skylands isn’t large enough to accommodate the big plants during winter, so many of the tropical and exotic specimens are stored in hoop houses at my Bedford, New York farm, and then carefully loaded onto a trailer and delivered to Maine for the summer months. As soon as I get there, I design the layout of where things should go, and then we all get to work.
It's always a wonderful time - enjoy these photos taken by me, Kevin Sharkey, and Ryan McCallister.
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- I have a sizable collection of tropical specimens. Here are some of the plants after they’ve been pulled from the hoop houses. Once they are outdoors, they are groomed and displayed. Most of the plants are placed in various locations here at Cantitoe Corners, but a selection also goes up to Skylands.
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- Fernando, Pete, and the rest of the crew work very hard to get all the plants out. They are all grouped by type, so I can easily assess which plants go where.
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- I take more than 100 tropical and exotic plants to fill the many pots at Skylands. Here are the plants heading north for the season – all packed safely in the trailer. The trailer and the team going by car leave a day or two ahead of me, so everything can be unloaded and put in place by the time I get there.
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- This year, I left the day after the plants. A group of good friends and I board a plane early in the morning for Maine. This day and the entire weekend were expected to be very pleasant.
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- After just an hour and a half, we can already see Maine and the roads and bridges to Mt, Desert Island.
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- Here I am with the Tradewinds and airport crew. It was a very safe and smooth flight.
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- And here are some of our hard working gardeners and outdoor grounds crew – Peter Grub, Amos Price, Rick Andros, Wendy Norling, and Ryan McCallister who traveled with me from Bedford.
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- Here are some of the bigger plants taken out of the trailer and placed on the driveway. I decide where each plant will go before they are moved – staying organized saves lots of time and energy. This year, we brought agaves, alocasias, palms, and so many more.
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- Agaves are long-leafed succulents with shallow roots and showy, spiked leaves. A little extra care should be taken whenever working with such sharp plants – always protect the eyes and face when handling agaves.
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- We also had trays of smaller plants and ground covers to use as under plantings – helichrysum, dichondra, and lysimachia.
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- Before we start planting, we make sure all the supplies are ready. Here we have trowels, pruners, hori hori gardening knives, gloves, and plastic bags. The bucket is filled with clay pot shards for drainage in the pots. And a refreshing can of seltzer water, for the gardener at this station of course.
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- Here are bags of soil mix, our wheelbarrow and tarps to catch any soil that falls or cut foliage. Using tarps makes it so much easier to gather the soil and put it back into a container. For planting, we use Pro-Mix BX Biofungicide + Mycorrhizae – a general-purpose growing medium that is great for a wide variety of plants and transplanting applications. A good potting mix will include a mix of sterile soil, very well rotted leaf mold, and compost. On the right, a bag of Osmocote fertilizer – we always remember to feed the plants.
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- It’s always a busy, but fun weekend at Skylands when we fill the planters with beautiful specimens. Look at all the planters and troughs waiting to be filled. The vines on the walls are ancient actinidia, which are small kiwi. They are original to the home and have done exceptionally well all these years. This great, fast-growing, sturdy vine is fruit producing.
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- The plants are carefully placed around the terrace, in or close to where they will be displayed for the season.
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- To protect the rather porous and fragile pots, I like to line them with garbage bags, so the pots don’t soak up too much water. The garbage bags have drain holes at the bottom and are neatly tucked inside the pot, so they are not visible.
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- We also put in a layer of bubble wrap – this is a great way to reuse and repurpose all that bubble wrap that may have accumulated over the winter months from package deliveries. Filling the bottom of large planters with something other than soil also benefits plantings in several ways – it is more economical, easier to move, and better for drainage and root growth. A good amount of bubble wrap was placed right at the bottom of this urn.
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- Here’s a wider view. This is one of two giant Soderholtz pots – Ellis Soderholtz was a pioneer in American garden pottery at the turn of the last century, turning concrete into these gorgeous vessels. This plant is an Alocasia with its pretty large leaves. Alocasia is also known as elephant ear.
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- The pot is then covered with more soil mix and a ground cover that will spread and fall over the sides of the container in the next several weeks. Notice the two glazed terra-cotta sphinxes in the background. They are designed by Emile Muller and guard this entrance to the house.
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- Here, Peter pots up an agave. Agaves are exotic, deer-resistant, drought-tolerant plants. Agaves make wonderful container plants. Everyone takes turns doing everything – from preparing the plants to moistening the potting mix, to filling the pots, to planting.
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- Amos works on this alocasia in another area of the “iced” terrace.
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- And here I am adding some Osmocote to this potted alocasia. This faux bois planter is very old – about 1925 to 1930 – and very heavy. In fact, many of the containers date from this time.
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- The terrace looks excellent after it is done – I can’t wait to see it all filled out later this summer. In my next blog, I’ll share photos from all the great foods we ate and places we visited during this trip to Maine.
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