In Neil Jorgensen’s Kittery garden, primroses take spring by storm

Ah, spring! Birds twittering. Showers sprinkling. Primroses popping. Really, where would spring be without primroses, even near the ocean? What? You didn’t think that they would thrive oceanside? Well, Neil Jorgensen proves they can by the hundreds.

When Neil and his wife, Martha Petersen, decided to leave their inland home and move to coastal Kittery, Maine, two requirements topped his wish list for a new home. First, Neil needed to live on ample land; he and Martha could not maneuver on less than an acre. Coming in a close second was his desire for a landscape replete with primroses (Primula spp.). Not that he needed to recreate in exact detail his former inland garden that had won him fame by its inclusion in Ken Druse’s classic, The Natural Shade Garden (Clarkson Potter, 1992), but for Neil, life was not worth living without primroses. Actually, when Neil thinks gardens, his orientation is strictly informal, and a woodland garden featuring primroses was what this former environmental education professor and current garden designer had in mind.

That said, when Neil and Martha—a landscape designer specializing in sustainability and native plants—found the “perfect” property, he was so distracted by admiring the view of Spruce Creek (actually a bay) that he completely forgot to check the soil underfoot. It was not until he started digging into the Presumpscot blue clay that reality struck with a thud. “Maybe we should be doing pottery rather than trying to grow plants,” he remembers saying at one point. But memories of Primula sieboldii romping around his former garden in mob scenes were still vivid in his mind. Plus, primrose paparazzi had given him a brush with notoriety, and impromptu primrose cocktail parties would be difficult to live without.

The only solution was to amend the soil. He built it up in mounds to create something similar to raised beds. Sparing no good gardening practice, he developed his own humus: he composted all healthy plant material, stockpiled his own partially decomposed wood chips for mulch, and enlisted wood ash from his woodstove. Every time he dug a hole for a plant, he shoveled in some compost and perhaps a little scoop of sand as well. After a while, the underground was looking up.

Apart from the soil composition, other challenges left him undaunted. The overhead also needed some help. Most of the property lacked any sort of canopy. While many gardeners would applaud and celebrate vibrant sunbeams on an open property, Neil was accustomed to growing in shade—and so were his beloved primroses. Even if he could be negotiable on that point, the primroses stood firm.

Shade was not the only issue. The garden desperately needed a windbreak. For primroses, plants that dote on moisture, desiccating winds can be a killer. No question: vertical elements were necessary. But this is a man who had started his own rhododendron collection from cuttings, so if anyone was equal to the challenge of filling in a landscape to provide cover, he had the credentials.

What ensued was a tug of war against the powers of destruction. Hemlocks were Neil and Martha’s first choice for wind breaking purposes, but that battle was forfeited when the trees were overrun by woolly adelgids. Success came at last with hardy cultivars of Thuja plicata, the western red cedar. Neil planted rhododendrons in the woodland understory for their spring show, but many suffered from lace bug infestations, except those having leaves with a felted covering (indumentum) such as Rhododendron degronianum ssp. yakushimanum.

Meanwhile, Neil and Martha were working on the deciduous-tree element of the property. Neil raised his own Japanese maples from seed and collected choice varieties from hither and yon. His penchant for collecting turned out to be a saving grace. He found that the bare branches of many deciduous shrubs suffered from winds gusting off the water. Incidentally he discovered another enemy—late winter sun could be lethal for them. Winter exposure was also an issue for some shrubs meant to diffuse sunlight when the primroses popped up in the spring. “Siting is everything,” he says. He sheltered particularly tender plants by placing them on the north side of the house.

The couple was adamant about preserving the view. “You do not need a solid windbreak. You can scatter trees around to produce the same effect without ruining the view,” Neil says.

He had other tricks up his sleeve as well. He routed gray water from the kitchen sink out to the primroses to satisfy their need for slightly soggy soil. The fact that the property is 15 feet above the water’s edge also helped to prevent ground water from being brackish. Only hurricane winds blowing from the west (not a typical weather pattern in Kittery) would dump salt spray on the land.

The proof of sweet success comes in spring. In mid-May, the woodland area is a riot of primroses and color. Neil has a rush of felted-leaf, bright magenta Primula kisoana. His stampede of tomato red and pale pink P. japonica has reached numbers that almost require crowd control. And the snowflake-like P. sieboldii is so rambunctious that he weeds out all but the vibrant colors. Not to go unnoticed are companions such as the common yellow and copper cowslips among the later blooming P. x bulleesiana, which bears candelabras of pastel blossoms. The entire assemblage mingles with hellebores (Helleborus spp.), cobra lilies (Arisaema spp.), Trillium, foamflower (Tiarella spp.), Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla spp.), barrenwort (Epimedium spp.), ornamental grasses, creeping phlox (Phlox stolonifera), and other botanical marvels scattered throughout.
For a few weeks in spring, it is absolute saturation coverage. Springtime shock appeal in Kittery is Neil Jorgensen’s goal after all, and the result is bliss.