Pruning and Grooming
Pick off all faded flowers promptly, so the plants will not exhaust themselves by setting seed. Remove any dried or fallen foliage so it will not rot and invite disease. Pinch the growing tips of plants that threaten to grow too tall and lanky. Shear hedge plants regularly and nip back creepers that spread out too far and strangle other plants. Refresh and renew any mulch or moss carpet as needed. In a garden so small, the least imperfection seems magnified.
Insects and Disease
Once a week, all summer long, my sink gardens get a quick treatment from an all-purpose aerosol bomb, used according to label directions. So far, with one exception (the mysterious plague of “inchworms” we had in the spring of 1961), this has kept insects and disease at a safe distance.
Winter Care
In mild or warm climates, sink gardens should not need any special protection in winter. But in Connecticut, the deep-freeze is so long and severe, I move my gardens to the cold frame. To make sure that the soil does not freeze and crack the container, I sometimes sink it to the rim in the soil. I’ve also packed salt hay tightly around them successfully. Or a garden could be wintered over on an unheated porch.
But most of the hardy plants used in sink gardens should not spend the winter indoors or in a warm greenhouse. They must have a cool rest period for several months to complete their natural growth cycle.
CHAPTER 9
MINIATURE PLANTS, BONSAI-STYLE
Only in the true Oriental bonsai do art and horticulture combine in such an extreme state of perfection—and in miniature to boot. Paintings may be as magnificent, but they’re inanimate. Ancient trees of the forest may have equal artistic virtue, but they’re not shaped by the hand of man. Living bonsai trees, sometimes centuries old, become masterpieces because, says Claude Chidamian, “they’re planted in philosophy, shaped by art, grown with love.”