Sunday, June 24, 2012
Part 1 of a 4 part series: Winners, Losers, Worth the bother, and "Buddy, your're on probation"
My winners are: veronica, asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed), gaillardia (blanket flower), Lobelia cardinalis, sedum, aster, and astilbe.
Veronica has good colors - blue, white and pink. It does not spread and has a shape that makes it easy to weed around - you won't spend all of your time yanking out grass from around this plant. After it blooms, it looks good. It has a positive presence in the border even past bloom. This violet-pink veronica is shown in front of the chartreuse flowers of lady's mantle - a good color combination. I am really fond of the blue variety but don't have any blooming right now.
Asclepias tuberosa (there is a picture in my first post) and gaillardia are superb for their color - brilliant clear orange (butterfly weed "asclepias tuberosa"), and red-orange and a deeply saturated yellow (blanket flower "gaillardia"). I use them in my "hot" garden - they can stand up to a brilliantly sunny day. They are good with just about all other hot colors, and do well with clear, strong blues (complementary colors always balance a color scheme) such as with many delphinium.
Lobelia cardinalis is a tall, moisture loving plant with clear, gorgeous red flowers (picture with hummingbird in a previous post). Hummingbirds love them, and I love hummingbirds, so I make sure that I have them in the back of my border.
Sedum and asters are great because they flower at the end of summer and well into the fall. They look good before they flower - thy have a nice shape that can make a solid statement in the border.
Astilbe are excellent in the shade garden. Their flowers are light colors - soft pinks and soft whites, nothing strident - that you can see in a shady spot. Even if they did well in the sun, they would not be appropriate - their soft coloration would get washed out. Astilbe has feathery, almost fern-like foliage. The flower looks a bit like that of filipendula. I have a pink and a white variety separated by asters. I have liriope in front of the astilbe, and hosta, tree peony, and holly behind it in this photo.
My winners are: veronica, asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed), gaillardia (blanket flower), Lobelia cardinalis, sedum, aster, and astilbe.
Asclepias tuberosa (there is a picture in my first post) and gaillardia are superb for their color - brilliant clear orange (butterfly weed "asclepias tuberosa"), and red-orange and a deeply saturated yellow (blanket flower "gaillardia"). I use them in my "hot" garden - they can stand up to a brilliantly sunny day. They are good with just about all other hot colors, and do well with clear, strong blues (complementary colors always balance a color scheme) such as with many delphinium.
Lobelia cardinalis is a tall, moisture loving plant with clear, gorgeous red flowers (picture with hummingbird in a previous post). Hummingbirds love them, and I love hummingbirds, so I make sure that I have them in the back of my border.
Sedum and asters are great because they flower at the end of summer and well into the fall. They look good before they flower - thy have a nice shape that can make a solid statement in the border.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Filipendula
I am not sure whether Filipendula is classified as a shrub or a perennial; maybe a shrubby perennial. I have had it tucked into the front corner of my smaller border for years, and the only problem I have with it is that it does not like the shade from the plum tree. There was no plum tree when I planted the filipendula; now there is a good sized happy tree that gives us wonderful plums every year. The filipendula will just have to soldier on.
I like this plant because it has delightful, clear pink flowers. When it is done flowering the leaves are really nice. The plant never looks scraggly or unkempt, regardless of the time of year. Because lilies placed behind it bloom afterwards, and a Rose of Sharon blooms after the lilies, I have a constant stream of blooms from early June to mid August in that part of the border.
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Who wouldn't love that leaf? I recommend this plant, especially for the end of a border. It serves very well as an anchor plant.
I am not sure whether Filipendula is classified as a shrub or a perennial; maybe a shrubby perennial. I have had it tucked into the front corner of my smaller border for years, and the only problem I have with it is that it does not like the shade from the plum tree. There was no plum tree when I planted the filipendula; now there is a good sized happy tree that gives us wonderful plums every year. The filipendula will just have to soldier on.
I like this plant because it has delightful, clear pink flowers. When it is done flowering the leaves are really nice. The plant never looks scraggly or unkempt, regardless of the time of year. Because lilies placed behind it bloom afterwards, and a Rose of Sharon blooms after the lilies, I have a constant stream of blooms from early June to mid August in that part of the border.
.
Who wouldn't love that leaf? I recommend this plant, especially for the end of a border. It serves very well as an anchor plant.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Design
It is finally time to get back to blogging about the garden. I have decided to write about garden design, and why it is important.
When my husband and I bought our house in January 1984, I had no idea what the garden would look like. When it revealed itself to me in the Spring, I was both enchanted and horrified. There were beds and borders with lovely peonies and daisies. There were also pernicious vines studded with thorns that seemed to have wrapped themselves around the property. I did not know what to do; I just wanted to bring order to my property.
I did not have a grand plan or an ambitious idea about transforming my yard into a prize winning space. I really just wanted order. Many years later, I realize that that goal was an excellent one, and I will explain why from a design point of view.
Design goals are many - create and enhance function, economy, and beauty. I am most interested in creating and enhancing beauty in my garden. I have discovered over the years that having an orderly garden, even if it is boring, is more beautiful than a disordered one because the eye, and thus the brain, cannot tolerate confusion for long. The eye wants help, needs help, to decipher what is going on. If there is not a clear sense of order, the eye is confused, and the viewer becomes anxious.
An obvious question, then, might be "why didn't you just plant beds of pink impatiens?' Actually, that might not have looked too bad. But I wanted more. I wanted delphiniums, I wanted prairie-type flowers, I wanted hydrangeas. Whenever you add variety to a design, especially an organic design, you make the design process much more complicated. You start dealing with height, color, texture, shape, and timing issues. The goal becomes coordinating all of these considerations into an ordered garden. It seems like an overwhelming task.
Design elements in the garden include balance, repetition, pattern, scale, light and dark, color intensity, color hue, and interest. I am first going to tackle scale and interest.
I have two large borders on my property. The smaller of the two can be viewed from many vantage points - close, several feet away, and many feet away (20-30 feet). This garden works best when the whole garden works as a whole. The larger of the borders can be seen up-close, no more than 10 feet away if you are looking at it dead on, and 20-30 feet away if you are looking at it at an angle. I will illustrate and discuss these scale considerations more fully in a subsequent blog. I bring it up now because I want to discuss the up-close view of a section of garden. My long border works as a whole, but it also works in sections or "rooms". This picture shows one of these rooms in late May of this year.
A garden season can be 12 months long. Many novice gardeners get excited about plants in the Spring, and plant their garden with lovely early-flowering plants such as iris, cranesbill geranium, dianthus, poppies, peonies and creeping phlox. The problem with this scheme is that the flowers stop blooming, and you are left with a green garden for most of the rest of the season. There is a relatively simple solution to this problem; place late-flowering plants in front of early-flowering ones. There are exceptions, which I will explore further in an up-coming post. I will leave you with some plants that I like to plant at the front of a border, and a picture. The plants are sedum august joy, asters, and many herbs.
Sedum august joy has been planted in front of a bearded iris clump in this photo. After the iris have finished flowering, I can cut them back. By that time, the asclepias tuberosa (there is a picture of this flower blooming gloriously in an earlier post) to the front left will be blooming, and the sedum will be much larger. It took me years to figure this scheme out, despite that just about all of the garden design books mention it. This design suggestion also makes it easier to keep an orderly garden. Once many plants have flowered, they can look awful - think of poppies especially, but also obedient plant and monarda. If they are placed behind yet or soon-to flower plants, you can hide or cut them back. Order is maintained, and visual anxiety is kept at bay.
When my husband and I bought our house in January 1984, I had no idea what the garden would look like. When it revealed itself to me in the Spring, I was both enchanted and horrified. There were beds and borders with lovely peonies and daisies. There were also pernicious vines studded with thorns that seemed to have wrapped themselves around the property. I did not know what to do; I just wanted to bring order to my property.
I did not have a grand plan or an ambitious idea about transforming my yard into a prize winning space. I really just wanted order. Many years later, I realize that that goal was an excellent one, and I will explain why from a design point of view.
Design goals are many - create and enhance function, economy, and beauty. I am most interested in creating and enhancing beauty in my garden. I have discovered over the years that having an orderly garden, even if it is boring, is more beautiful than a disordered one because the eye, and thus the brain, cannot tolerate confusion for long. The eye wants help, needs help, to decipher what is going on. If there is not a clear sense of order, the eye is confused, and the viewer becomes anxious.
An obvious question, then, might be "why didn't you just plant beds of pink impatiens?' Actually, that might not have looked too bad. But I wanted more. I wanted delphiniums, I wanted prairie-type flowers, I wanted hydrangeas. Whenever you add variety to a design, especially an organic design, you make the design process much more complicated. You start dealing with height, color, texture, shape, and timing issues. The goal becomes coordinating all of these considerations into an ordered garden. It seems like an overwhelming task.
Design elements in the garden include balance, repetition, pattern, scale, light and dark, color intensity, color hue, and interest. I am first going to tackle scale and interest.
I have two large borders on my property. The smaller of the two can be viewed from many vantage points - close, several feet away, and many feet away (20-30 feet). This garden works best when the whole garden works as a whole. The larger of the borders can be seen up-close, no more than 10 feet away if you are looking at it dead on, and 20-30 feet away if you are looking at it at an angle. I will illustrate and discuss these scale considerations more fully in a subsequent blog. I bring it up now because I want to discuss the up-close view of a section of garden. My long border works as a whole, but it also works in sections or "rooms". This picture shows one of these rooms in late May of this year.
Sedum august joy has been planted in front of a bearded iris clump in this photo. After the iris have finished flowering, I can cut them back. By that time, the asclepias tuberosa (there is a picture of this flower blooming gloriously in an earlier post) to the front left will be blooming, and the sedum will be much larger. It took me years to figure this scheme out, despite that just about all of the garden design books mention it. This design suggestion also makes it easier to keep an orderly garden. Once many plants have flowered, they can look awful - think of poppies especially, but also obedient plant and monarda. If they are placed behind yet or soon-to flower plants, you can hide or cut them back. Order is maintained, and visual anxiety is kept at bay.
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