Sidewalk Greenspace on New York's Upper West Side
My favorite variety of morning glories continues to be the Bavarian “Grandpa Ott” with its deep purple blooms.
They do a great job of climbing the fence — or bamboo rods, or tall plants, or anything else they can find for support — and although their flowers don’t stay open for long, there are so many of them that they provide a constant stream of color for months throughout the late summer and into the fall.
Someone left a sprouted sweet potato lying on the dirt in one of the garden planters this spring, so I dug it in just to the level of the surface and it’s been very happy, with four vines coming off of it, each six feet long and happily tangled in the fence trellis.
I’ll need to do some research to know how to over-winter it — do I just leave it in place and assume it will die back and resprout in the spring?
There’s not a huge amount of floral color left this late in the season, but we still have a decent wall of green along the hundred feet of sidewalk frontage.
This year’s crop of grapes is small, and won’t be ripe for at least another month, but I was reminded of what we have to look forward to by this photo of a prior year sent in by neighbors Roy and Mary — thanks for sharing!
Summer is here and all of the plants have leafed out.
The various clumps of dianthus growing along the fence seem to have generally survived the winter and are blooming again.
I love the way the globes of these alliums intersect and overlap, like adjacent spherical pyrotechnic bursts.
This azalea bush looked a little forlorn over the winter, but has made a wonderful return.
This week’s warm weather has encouraged the grapevines to open their first buds.
The daffodils have been in bloom for two weeks and show no sign of stopping.
