DIRT

SOME PLANTS REALLY LOVE THEIR DAY IN THE SUN

The idea of a sunny border filled with phlox, dianthus (the dreaded pinks) and most members of the daisy family—excepting gaillardia and those big blowsy burgundy-tinged sunflowers—has never appealed to me. The colors quarrel and fall somehow flat and the plants simply look dreadful after the blooms have faded or the leaves have blackened. So, there is little to commend the usual sun-drenched garden to my taste. But what a difference a ray makes when put to the gardening effect that you do desire. Without delving into the miracle of photosynthesis, let's talk here about how we might manipulate the sun to provide the perfect feeding ground for the garden of our dreams.

In moving from one garden to another, I have discovered the extraordinary impact of the sun on some of my most beloved plants and trees. My first garden was a wildly over-treed, moody, shady acre, with what I considered some very sunny places around the pool and at some borders' fronts. Using these spots to their best advantage, I could never understand why my success with things I coveted, from tree peonies to variegated deodar cedars, wasn't greater. And then we (myself and some of that garden) moved only a scant mile—but light years—away to a property with an expanse of sloping lawn where the sun shines bright. Now those tree peonies, which they say never move to begin with...well, to say they have flourished is a huge understatement in the face of more than a dozen intricate dinner-plate sized blooms on one plant! The weeping conifers that I so adored, but had convinced myself were too exotic for our climate because I was always cutting away brown spots and severing bare limp limbs...you should see them now: not one desiccated dingy needle, not one straggly branch. So, it dawned on me, that never in my limited but passionate gardening experience had I ever really experienced the extraordinary effects of the sun's rays.

Plants just love the sun, they just love it, and so it is up to us gardeners to temper how much or how little they get, at what time of day and how long it lasts. This seems simple enough, but achieving the perfect conditions is another story. Garden references teem with mentions of the sun—in its full self, half-sun, morning sun, afternoon sun, sun from the east.