What Was She Thinking?

A part of my border I consider boring, and I have been fiddling with the area a lot this year.  Last summer I made several changes, including moving the medium height alchemilla (Lady's Mantle) to the back of the border because it spreads rapidly and looks awful after it has bloomed.  This year, I moved it back to the middle of the border because a delphinium in front of it survived the winter unexpectedly, grew tall, and bloomed spectacularly for weeks.  I took this success as a message from the gardening gods to move the Lady's Mantle.

I also got rid of an early-blooming, low-growing, spreading, messy-looking plant that may have been a veronica - I honestly am not sure what it is.  I moved three Knautia macedonica 'Thunder and Lightning' from the middle to the middle-front of the border.

You might think that my changes are a failure because the "before" pictures look pretty good.  I think that, given time, the new scheme will work out well.

Doesn't look too bad, but I was not happy.

Looks good - but I cheated with annuals and a good soaking.

Three weeks into the change - two dahlias are thriving, the soil is parched, the annuals aren't too happy, and I think I am going to like this arrangement.

On a different note, I have another picture of a hummingbird - this one is enjoying my Rose of Sharon.  And for those of you who were worried, my husband was able to affix the suction cups to my kitchen window, and the whole family has loved watching hummingbirds take advantage of the feeder.

 

Making Hummingbirds Happy

I love hummingbirds.  Who doesn't?  I had never seen one until a few years ago.  After that, I was hooked, and determined to provide hummingbirds a welcoming habitat.

There are two ways to attract hummingbirds.  The first is to get a hummingbird feeder.  I saw one at a friend's house that had suction cups that stick onto a window.  She said that you only need a day or two for the birds to find the feeder.

Most of what she said is true - but I had to enhance my environment to get the hummingbirds to notice my feeder.  I bought a few pots of colorful annuals, gazania, snapdragon, and vinca, and placed them near the feeder.  Then, I hung a fuschia  plant near the window.  In a few days, I had my first hummingbird visitor.

You have to be careful with feeders.  The sugar solution needs to be changed every three to four days.  It is easy to prepare - just add one cup of water to one quarter cup of sugar, and heat in a pot until the sugar is dissolved.  Once it has cooled, you can add it to your clean feeder.  Because you are using a sugar solution, you may also attract ants and insects.  Also, I am not having great luck with the suction cups.  The feeder was working just fine until I had to take it down when we had the house stained.  Since then, the cups keep slipping.  Somebody in my family will figure it out.

The purist's way to attract hummingbirds is to plant a garden with flowers and flowering shrubs that the hummingbird can feed from.  I have several of these in my garden.  My neighbor has several in his flower bed, and I have included a picture of his flowers.

His July garden is dominated by rudbeckia (commonly called black eyed susan), echinacea purpurea (purple coneflower), and the not-yet blooming coreopsis (I believe 'moonbeam"), also known as tickseed.

I have a different selection of flowers and shrubs in my border.  Althea (rose of sharon) is blooming profusely now, and the hummingbirds really like it.  They also use the branches to take a break from beating their wings.

There was a hummingbird feeding on the flowers' nectar, but unfortunately, I was not able to get a picture of it.  These shrubs come in lots of colors.  I would tend to stay away from the lavender ones; they tend to get a mauve tint that I don't find very attractive. 

The flower that I have had the most success with attracting hummingbirds is lobelia cardinalis.  The flowers are a beautiful, clear red, and you can easily see and photograph the birds because the plant is erect.

These plants like moist soil and they spread.  I don't mind the spread because they are good looking and distribute red throughout this particular bed.

Beauty in the Garden

Achieving beauty in the garden is often an elusive task.  You can follow the standard rules for achieving it by incorporating thoughtful use of line, pattern, balance, movement and repetition.  But the garden is an organic entity, influenced by weather, pests, disease,  patience, and soil conditions.

And what, exactly, is not beautiful?  Is it something that is ugly?  I think not.  Something that is monstrously ugly, such as a steel mill, is so overwhelmingly powerful and dominant in its landscape that I consider it an amped-up beautiful thing.

To me, lack of beauty is created when there is chaos, confusion, disorder and lack of interest.  That is why a weedy garden is often considered ugly - your eye and brain cannot tell what is going on, gets frustrated, and quits the scene.  Likewise, a design that is symmetrically balanced is often so boring that you want to weep.

My approach to achieving beauty in the garden is to have it be organized and balanced.  The balance includes making lights and darks equally important, and keeping the eye moving.

Despite the fact that I have thought long and hard about how to achieve beauty in the garden, I am not always successful.  I do not have a crew of people weeding and pruning for me.  I cannot make up for the bad winter we just had (my hydrangeas may not bloom, and my peonies were disappointing.)  It takes time, sometimes years, for a plant to hit its stride, as my European ginger did this year.  Patience and acceptance are a gardener's best friend.

And sometimes, plants surprise you.  I have a patch of Agastache 'blue fortune' (anise hyssop), that is blooming beautifully right now.  Growing right next to it is a lovely yellow lily.  I inadvertently achieved color balance because the large area of lavendar works well with its complement, the yellow of the lily.

 

Another happy surprise is this daylily, which I think I bought in Geauga County, Ohio at an Amish run daylily nursery.

I think it is lovely.

A Visit to Prairie Country

Our recent vacation included visiting Minnesota and North Dakota.  People who have never been to that part of the country might be surprised by the differences in plant species and general environment. 

For instance, Fargo, North Dakota, is much further north than Boston.  Fargo's latitude is 46.8772 degrees north, while Boston's is 42.3581 degrees north.  The most remarkable impact created by this difference in the summer is the day length.  It does not get dark in Fargo until ten o'clock at night.  I felt like a little kid going to bed before it was dark out (clearly I am not a party animal).

Despite how far north it is, Fargo can get really hot, and hot early in the year.  I have been told that Fargo experiences "continental weather".  In other words, there are no large bodies of water or mountain ranges nearby to moderate the atmosphere.

As you probably already know, Fargo gets really cold in the winter.  Weeks of negative 40 degree Fahrenheit temperatures were not uncommon this past winter.

This last point leads to an ecological system that is quite different from the one found in Boston.   For instance, I have never seen a rhododendron or azalea in either North Dakota or Minneapolis.  I could be wrong, but I do not think they can survive the brutal winters.

More importantly, tall grass prairie used to dominate the landscape.  Most of the prairie is gone - plowed under or paved over, starting with the arrival of Europeans.

Heroic efforts are being made to restore tall grass prairies.  I am most familiar with the robust program at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota (cows, colleges and contentment).  The Cowling Arboretum,  started in the 1920's, is an 880 acre parcel of land on the campus where the natural habitat is slowly being restored.  My husband went on a tour of the "arb" when our daughter was a student there, and was told that the space is slowly being planted with native prairie grasses.  The only catch, and it is a big one, is that it is very difficult to find native plants.  Someone came up with the idea of locating seeds along train tracks because this land has not been paved or plowed.   The idea is working, slowly.

You many have heard about the strange weather in the Midwest this summer.  There has been lots of rain, and Minnesota was hit particularly hard.  We visited Minnehaha state park outside of Minneapolis, to see the falls and the trails.

The water was rushing frantically on its way to the Mississippi River, no doubt fueled by all of the rain.  Walking along the river, we were lucky to see several snowy egrets (we saw them on the drive from Fargo to Minneapolis as well, in marshy areas.)

Driving around Minneapolis, I was impressed by how many areas were flooded, days after the rains had departed.

Now the Midwest is experiencing colder than average temperatures.  It has been a strange summer.

A rant, then happy talk

First, the rant.  The new way to mow your lawn, or rather have somebody else mow your lawn, is to use a huge lawnmower, or more appropriately, a mowing machine, a behemoth.  The person doing the cutting stands on a platform behind the  mower.  Grass can be cut very quickly.  Therefore, the lawn service can make more money by cutting many more lawns in a day than with traditional mowers.

I do not begrudge anybody the right or ability to make money.  What I don't like, is what these machines do to the lawn.

Because the mower has a much wider wheel base than the old-fashioned kind, there is very little "give" when the lawn is not perfectly flat.  If the wheels are resting on a low point, and the earth crowns between the wheels, the lawn is shaved instead of cut.  This problem is exacerbated because the lawn services seem to like to mow the lawn really short.  Normally, I wouldn't mind what people do to their own lawns.  However, I have new neighbors who have not moved in yet, and their lawn service decided to mow part of my lawn because they did not know where the property line was.  Not only did they shave my grass, they also might a tight turn on my grass, damaging it even more.  AAArgh!

Now to happy stuff.  My garden continues to go through its seasonal show.  My daylilies Stella D'oro are blooming along with lysimachia 'Firecracker' Loosestrife.  I did not anticipate so much yellow in one spot, but I like it.  The bronze foliage of the loosestrife breaks up all the yellow.

My asclepias tuberosa has really hit its stride.  I am glad it is peaking before I leave on vacation.

To the right of the asclepias tuberosa is sedum 'Autumn Joy' and annual lobelia.  The only change I would make to this area (besides fixing the grass) is to have a more prominent blue flower in the vicinity to balance the brilliant orange.

My ancient rhododendron is starting to bloom now.  The bees are captivating to watch as they gather pollen from the flowers.

The flowers start pink and fade to white as they open up.

Finally, my "miracle" amaryllis is finished looking pretty, so off to the border it will go.

I will be on vacation for a week, so please catch up with the Honest Gardener in mid July.  Happy and safe Fourth of July everyone.

My favorite things - late June

I was stumped about what to write about this week.  I've been disappointed with many plants.  They don't seem to have much "oomph" this year.  And there is a part of my garden that is vapid.  Lots of pretty colors that don't stir my soul.  I need to think about these problem areas, and what I am going to do about them (perhaps leave them alone and see if they come into their own?)  Instead of writing more fully about these issues, I will showcase what makes me happy right now.

First is my "miracle" amaryllis.  This flower is at its peak.  Soon it will have a rest in the shade of my liriope patch before dispatching it to the garage for some much needed neglect.

This picture shows one of my favorite summer places - on the slider you see in the middle ground, watching the bees visit my ancient, late-blooming rhododendron.

I have a spectacular filipendula that is blooming with the most glorious coral pink flowers.

This plant has really nice foliage, seen on the right, that looks great after the blooms are spent. Perhaps the plant is getting too big and taking up too much space.  A pruning decision will have to be made.  This picture  also includes Heuchera 'Molly Bush' and Yarrow 'Moonshine' (which responded well to being divided several weeks ago.)

We have a very old climbing rose that looks heavenly.

 
This rose was climbing up our garage when we moved to Wellesley over thirty years ago.  It has survived beautifully, despite losing the garage when we added on to our house.

Finally, my "hot" area has come through for me, despite my trepidation.  The brilliant orange asclepias tuberosa looked, for several weeks, like a large animal was using it for a bed.  The plant prefers poor soil and little water - both of which I have provided this year.  In the last few days, though, I have been very happy with how this area looks.

From left to right, the plants are blanket flower, yarrow, and asclepias tuberosa.

Plants need vacations, too

Lots of us have houseplants that we put outside during the summer.  Some of mine are real troopers - they bloom indoors in less than optimal situations.  Some are stuck in my garage without any love at all for several months.  All they seem to need is some fresh air, sunlight, water, and a bit of fresh potting soil, and they are off to the races.

My geraniums ( the ones we think of as geraniums are actually pelargoniums, also know as storksbill according to Wikipedia), usually do well once they are on my front steps.  First, I cut away all of the dead leaves and stems, add some potting soil and water, and wait.  For bushier, fuller plants, I need to do some pruning.

I usually lose one plant a year.  In addition to losing a plant, I also lost a lot of soil around the plant.  Evidently, squirrels and other varmints were determined to find nuts and seed pods in the pots.

My amaryllis bloom inside in the winter, unless, of course, a plant that I decided was dead suddenly shows life, unwatered and unlit, in my garage.   This amaryllis is joined by orchids that have bloomed stoically all winter in my parched house.

I water the orchids with three ice cubes whenever they are dry.  I expect that they will bloom again before the summer is out.

The amaryllis that did bloom this winter are getting a rest in one of my borders.  I will bring them inside - either to my garage or basement - once summer starts to wind down.  There I will do my best to ignore them.  I think the key to getting amaryllis to bloom again is to wait until you see new growth before re-introducing them to water and light.

 The pots are partially hidden by liriope leaves.

My husband had luck with keeping a fuschia going all winter.  It is blooming nicely on our front porch.

We keep two hibiscus in my third floor studio all winter.  Skylights and a western window provide the most light in the house.  Each year the potted plants are hauled downstairs and placed on our front porch, where they will bloom all summer.

We are keeping our fingers crossed with two other plants - a lemon tree and an agapanthus.  They both live in our sunny den during the cold months.   The lemon tree has flowered several times, and it always looks like fruit is forming - but the fruit always falls off. 

 My sad agapanthus has yet to bloom.  Maybe it is waiting to be placed next to an infinity pool - we can all dream - even an agapanthus on vacation.