In My Garden: James Golden
James Golden, Stockton, NJ
Open Days Garden: Federal Twist
Read more about James Golden and Federal Twist
James Golden's garden at Federal Twist, near the Delaware River towns of Lambertville, NJ, and New Hope, PA, is a naturalistic garden in the New Perennial tradition: plants grow in interwoven communities and emphasize structure, shape, and form as much as flower. Flowering begins in early June and peaks in mid-July, when the perennials and grasses reach maturity; then a second peak occurs in October, when low sunlight makes the grasses glow in yellows, russets, and golds.
In My Garden, December 15, 2020 special edition
Above: Overlooking the garden, the house is bathed in afternoon light. Below, left: morning dew on a flower of Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Moudry'; right: Joe Pye weed through an aperture of smokebush (Cotinus 'Grace')
In My Garden, November 3, 2020
"With all the rain, I have only drone photos I took last week," James reports, "which I used in a brief blog post this week." The two shown here are from his post, Autumn Test Flight, last week.
Visit James's blog, View from Federal Twist, at federaltwist.com to view more photos of his garden on the ground and from the air. He has been hosting this blog for fifteen years and reports that his next blog post this week will be a review of Bill Noble's book, Spirit of Place, which was featured in the Garden Conservancy's Fall 2020 Literary Series on September 24.
In My Garden, October 13, 2020
"Autumn color is taking its time to reach Federal Twist," James tells us this week. Above, a view of Adirondack chairs on his terrace, with reflections of the garden in the large windows of his mid-century house. The orange at the far end is a tupelo (Nyssa salvatica), one of the first trees to take on color.
Above: dangling seedheads of Chasmantheum latifolium oatgrass with sculptural spires of Inula racemosa 'Sonnenspeer' behind. Below, left to right: Aster tartaricus 'Jindai', a late-flowering white aster, and a senescent autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale) with fallen leaves.
In My Garden, September 29, 2020
Owner James Golden reports that the recent series of cold nights "have brought a bit of autumn color to Federal Twist; the drone photo [in the masthead] taken at sunset shows the surrounding forest beginning to take on a golden hue."
The seven-son flower (Heptacodium miconioides) on the woodland side of the house is in full bloom (to the left in the photo below). James comments, "It's pretty, but the red bracts to follow are really the highlight for this quirky, odd, and beautiful small tree. This photo was taken by a drone at the left end of the house, under the canopy of large sycamores. The tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) to the right is just starting to show some red leaves."
"In the mixed shrubs below the Heptacodium, a gordlinia has produced only this one beautiful flower. This hybrid of Franklinia and Gordonia is borderline hardy here, so I bury it in other shrubs for protection."
