Moss creates serenity in gardens

Web posted February 27, 1998

By George Bria
Associated Press

POUND RIDGE, N.Y. -- Moss grows in damp, shady places: On rocks, the bark of trees, rotting shingles and graves. Romantic poets love its mystique. ``And ever upon old Decay, the greenest mosses cling,'' wrote John Greenleaf Whittier.

I see the Whittier image every time I pass a neighbor's stable, where a wooden roof displays patches of luxuriously verdant moss.

Moss is nurtured as a ground cover for its hardiness and velvety texture and, elsewhere in the garden, for nuance, contrast and a sense of age and permanence. It stays green in winter, and the first rain quickly revitalizes it after a drought.

Some lawn fanciers see moss mainly as trouble, and they get out lime to sweeten the ground when it appears. Its presence, nevertheless, means it likes the acidic turn of the soil amid usually damp and shady growing conditions. If it pleases you, moss is relatively easy to propagate and maintain.

Worldwide, there are 15,000 species of this primeval vegetation, but nowhere is it more admired and cultivated than in Japan, where some moss gardens are hundreds of years old.

It was in Japan, in fact, that one of the loveliest private moss gardens in my neighborhood had its origins. Dr. Bernard ``Bernie'' Gastrich, an optometrist, created beautiful moss patches on his wooded grounds, inspired by what he saw on visits with his wife to the ancient cultural city of Kyoto.

``There was a certain serenity about it,'' Dr. Gastrich recalled of his Japanese experience as he showed me around his own moss creations. ``It gave an aged-forest kind of atmosphere, and we loved that.''

Dr. Gastrich, now 66 and retired, also was so captivated by Japanese bonsai that he has become a nationally known expert on crafting these miniature trees. Here, too, moss is often used for effect.

Much of the moss that Dr. Gastrich cultivates is known commonly as ``cushion moss,'' botanically a member of the Leucobryum family. Patches of it were already growing on his property before his visits to Japan, and he then enlarged them.

That's the usual way of working with moss -- enlarging an existing patch or digging some up and transplanting it. The main thing is remembering to keep the moss clean of other vegetation and debris.

``Fundamentally, you keep litter off it,'' Dr. Gastrich said. ``If you allow leaves to build up into a thatch it will choke out the moss. But if you keep these things out, the moss will spread by itself.'' He uses a back-pack leaf-blower to get the needles out.

To keep grass and weeds from intruding, Dr. Gastrich sprays once a year with the herbicide Roundup, which kills grass and other leafy plants but is harmless to moss.

``I just walk through the moss back and forth and just squirt here and there where a maple seedling is coming up or something else that I don't want,'' Dr. Gastrich said.

Few nurseries carry moss, so the easiest way to start a patch is to strip some from an existing area and transplant it to a spot you've already prepared. You gently slit under the original patch with a wide knife and lift it, trying also to retain the material on which it is growing.

Dr. Gastrich said he prepares the transplant area by scratching the surface ``so that there will be good contact between the soil at the bottom of the moss and the new soil that it will rest on.'' ``The key,'' he said, ``is not to allow air layers, or pockets of air, to get in between.''

Mosses grow from spores, developing green filaments called protonema, which push into the host surface. The plants adhere by tiny rootlets and produce leaves that are so tiny, flat and closely packed they are hard to distinguish. A patch of moss may include thousands of such plants.

Rocks with rough textures welcome certain mosses if the conditions of light and dampness are right. Such moss-covered rocks, with their sense of antiquity, are among the loveliest things on Dr. Gastrich's woodsy grounds.

Rocks also harbor lichen, a fungus growth that forms beautiful crustlike patterns but is not to be confused with moss.