All posts from The Occasional Gardener

Outside the terrace houses of Heeren Street, ( with the air wells I wrote about in my last post) there is typically, an assortment of terracota and salt glazed pots filled with an assortment of plants- everything from small fruit trees to large and small pots of foliage or flowering plants. What stood out were the pots filled with water and home to an assortment of lotus, water lettuce, duckweed and occasionally- fish.The pots weren't extraordinary, usually terracota and they didn't seem to mind if the pot leaked a little as it all ended up in the monsoon drain in front. Or there were the green lined salt glazed kind usually decorated with dragons. On parallel Jonker Street, the antique stores had for sale larger, grander versions which I think were originally storage jars. I loved these two with botanic motifs on them- the hole gets stoppered with a giant cork. They were huge, stacked up, they almost reached the height of the doorway.

If I were to pick one type of garden that I would want above all others, I would without hesitation and unreservedly choose an interior courtyard garden, just like one of these pictured above that I saw in Malacca last week. The first two images were taken at the rustic guesthouse I stayed in, with a plumeria/frangipani tree, hanging ferns, bamboo and a mossy pool. It was a lush space with cool shadows, birds and flowers. I brushed my teeth 'outside' staring at a giant tropical blue flower that I did not recognize.These aren't glassed in spaces with skylights, they are open interior gardens architected to break up long narrow terrace houses, bringing light and the outdoors into a private around these open spaces. The ground floor is usually a courtyard with chairs and tables or an extension of the kitchen. Upstairs walkways wrap around and shuttered bedroom windows open out into these verdant air wells, the grander houses with not one but two. High ceilings and carved porous vents between rooms allow the air cooled by pockets of deep shadow to circulate with a little help from some strategically placed fans. Genius. Sadly these exquisite ideas of space and light have been replaced with tighter, closed in, easy to air condition modern alternatives and these interior courtyards can only be found in places like Malacca and Penang relics of another era. They are also an eclectic fusion of design and materials, a hybrid of east and west, drawing from Chinese and European Colonial architectural traditions .

In the ayurvedic system, you are required to identify your psycho-physiological type and then to eat the kinds of of food that complement or enhance it. These foods then fall into the category of the six tastes, sweet, salty, sour, astringent, bitter and pungent. I've been reminded in the short time since I've returned how prevalent sour flavours are here in the diet. Apart from the frequent use of the local Calamansi limes and preference for eating both ripe and unripe fruits- things like mangoes are often eaten green and unripe and very sour, dipped in salt or salty soy sauce, there are also a number fruits that are used in cooking to specifically impart a sour taste.On the right is Assam Belimbing or Averrhoa Bilimbing which I'm not so familiar with although its used in a variety of ways both cooked and raw. It has the acidity of a gooseberry and the mouth feel of a kiwi fruit. On the left is dried Assam Keping or Assam Gelugor or Garcinia Atroviridis which is much more prevalent and is used as a flavoring agent to make curries or laksas sour, particularly those that involve seafood. The most common sour fruit which I haven't photographed although I will do at some point is Tamarind, also known as Assam Jawa. You can probably deduce that the word assam means sour.In the Ayurvedic pharmacology of sour taste or Amal Rasa, the properties of this taste stimulate the brain and digestive system. Translated into more western conventions, sour fruits are high in antioxidants and their acidic nature enables antifungal , antimicrobial, fat burning and even anti tumor properties.

Well. Things have taken an unexpected turn. Due to family circumstances I have returned home to Malaysia indefinitely. So The Occasional Gardener takes on a tropical twist. On my first outing with the camera I found some great subjects in my dad's garden- the crabclaws, and also on the street outside- the mimosa, a weed. Some things don't change- I'm drawn to both plants in the home garden as well as the plants that thrive without a gardener. I also hope to be spending some time in botanical gardens and snooping on neighborhood ones too.

I planted the seeds for Rose Barlow, last spring but she delayed her arrival to this one and it's been worth the wait. Tall sylph like legs and a pink puff of double petalled blooms, she's a marked contrast to the surly Black Barlow. The clump of Black Barlow in the South West bed began petering our last summer - they seemed to have lost their vigor, barely making it to half their previous height. Moving a couple of the plants over to the North East bed seems to have re invigorated them- there's a couple of healthy new ones but I do miss the dramatic combination they made with the Spirea.

We finally did it- the quarter moon, a small quadrant patch that's been left for years unplanted mainly because I couldn't really figure out what to put in it is now 'done'. I finally figured out what to do with it after piecing together two things- the two stone/concrete planters pictured above, have spent a few years happily housing some succulents that thrived there on bare rock and a pinch of soil. Succulents it turns out are also Heidi's favorite plants, she always oohs over them at the nursery. It made sense then to just turn this whole area into a rock garden with succulents with the added practical addition of the woody herbs from the vegetable garden, that don't always make it through the winter. Two of them have done really well for a few years, the golden oregano and the lemon thyme and it hasn't escaped me that they thrive on the very edge of the vegetable beds which probably keeps their feet nice and dry. So dry + stony + succulents + woody herbs = mediterranean, desert-ish low maintenance rock garden.Easier said than done, we had to dig fairly deep to make sure it was going to be well drained- this part of the garden gets a lot of water when it rains hard. Some frantic googling and reading to figure out how to prepare the bed for maximum drainage- and I wanted it to slope so- we had to wrap our brains around that. Then we had to get the stones and rocks. With Jim's expert guidance- I decided to mix 3 different kinds of stones to emulate the color variation that's occuring in the walls. It was no mean feat explaining to the nursery staff that we wanted to mix the stones and then only wanting 3/4 (not a half or a full yard which is 'how they do it"). Jim set the paving stones and I experimented with different recipes for mixing the stones- to get the 'look' right- its's amazing how difficult it is to get something to look 'natural'.The planting was easy- herbs towards the front and succulents everywhere else. I echoed the range of color thats in the other beds a range between dark burgundy succulents and lemony lime greens. The result- it rocks- it finally finishes that part of the garden so at a macro level it works really well. What I didn't anticipate was the effectivenes of the scale- although I planned that it would be almost a minaiture garden, I didn't fully appreciate how attractive this would band how it slows you down and forces you to take it in more closely because of

Every year when I start to clean up the beds in spring, I find a wild violet in the vegetable beds - more or less in the same place. I always hesitate pulling it up. It's demure prettiness and reputation from Shakespearean Sonnets to being one of the flowers Emily Dickinson asked to be buried with make it difficult to percieve this flower icon as a weed. So this year, for a change I put it into a tiny pot, mulched it with some moss (another piece of garden debris) and it's been enjoying a renewed status on the window sill the last couple of weeks. It sulks when it's not watered but revives instantly and it was nice to have those pretty flowers to enjoy for another couple of weeks.Speaking of Emily Dickinson, I'm really looking forward to the exhibition at the NYBG The Poetry of Flowers- what a lovely idea to combine a recreation of her 19th-century New England garden with audio of her poetry, exhibition of her watercolors, photographs and discover more about the gardener who became a poet.

I zipped on and off the High Line yesterday since I was in that part of town to see what was happening, racing through it as I had to catch a train. Two things caught my eye, pink tulips just because they were pretty and the daffodils above. According to the High Line plant list they are Narcissus Hawera and they now join the vintage Van Sion on my extremely short list of daffodils I would actually choose to grow. The Van Sion makes the list because of its unusual green color and dense double texture, this narcissus would be because of its adorable daintiness. Tiny pretty flowers on tiny clumps naturalizing easily in clumps of grass. They were also the perfect scale for the somewhat limited space of the high line.+ OGMedia: 10 Great Gardening Apps

The Forsythia around Mamaroneck is already a gaudy show painting the early spring landscape with broad brushstrokes of bright yellow. Its a conflicting appreciation of instant color and then visual overload. I learnt last year however that this actually makes for an interesting backdrop for photos, given enough distance to provide a blur of color. Here, tight magenta Rhododendron and red Maple buds contrast nicely with the vibrant yellow of a Forsythia hedge. This early spring palette has already progressed quickly to richer warm colors. Just last week, on a cold but sunny morning I squinted at some pale fragile Magnolia blooms against a cold blue sky. Today, warm and sunny, I weeded and tidied up the garden taking in the purplish shoots of the Indigo, the red fronds, shoots and stems of Bronze Fennel, Euphorbia and Berberis. Color is back.+ OccasionalOasis: New Zealand

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Dylan Thomas We are having a spectacular transition to spring with temperatures in the sixties. I only recently discovered this excerpt from a Dylan Thomas poem which really articulates for me the sense of energy that comes with spring- like a current crackling through roots and branches exploding into leaves and buds. It surprisingly bookends my post at the end of last summer- fleeting green. In the photos, the reverse is in effect- I couldn't help thinking that the shadows on the lawn looked crisper because the grass seemed a lot greener than I remembered. Everywhere in the garden green things poke their heads through the dull winter palette. At last the green age of spring.

A March tempest roared through Westchester over the weekend, taking down trees, ripping down powerlines, flooding yards leaving many homes struggling to deal with its fury- flooded basements, damaged homes and power outages. I saw two homes with trees crashed through them and curiously noted that they were both Pines. Apparently evergreen trees that carry their foliage are heavier and therfore more likely in rain soaked and windy conditions to fall. I did see another tree- maybe an apple tree uprooted and toppled over due to the thawed snow and and rain drenched soil allowing the winds to unearth it- but the huge Pines crashing through houses- yikes and duly noted.

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