Asclepias tuberosa - in my last post I wrote that there was a picture of asclepias tubreosa (butterfly weed) in an earlier post.  I was mistaken.  So, here it is.

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.

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.

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.  

Liriope

I have a tenuous relationship with the groundcover liriope.  The only reason I still have this plant is that it is so hard to dig out - and divide - and kill.  It spreads.  It is not terribly interesting for most of the summer.  I was originally attracted to it because I thought it  would lend my garden a spare, sophisticated look - the type of look  I associate with modern buildings and art museums.

I recently had a change of heart about liriope.  My husband and I were visiting our daughter in Washington DC over Labor Day weekend.  Because the weather was good, and DC is a very walkable city, we strolled through lots of neighborhoods.  The charming row houses all had nicely tended gardens - and many of them had liriope.

    However, the liriope was not planted in perennial borders, but as a groundcover with shrubs.  "That's what I can do with this plant!"  And that is what I will do with it next spring - when I hope to have enough arm  strength to dig them up and plant them in my front borders.

What is the sound of one hand weeding?

The same as the sound of two hands weeding.  I posed this question because I had surgery on my right rotater cuff in late June.  Since then, I have been able to do very little weeding.  Weeding with my non-dominant left hand wasn't very effective, and I kept succumbing to the temptation to weed with my right hand. Bad idea.

I have learned the hard way that if I weed, I am going to regret it; either by re-injuring my shoulder, or just causing a lot of pain and soreness.  I do not want to have to go through wearing a sling for slightly under 24 hours a day for another 6 weeks.

And so I am embarrassed to show you a picture of one of my very aggressive weed patches.  Amongst the weeds you can barely make out some hostas and daylilies.

The problem with weeds is that they destroy beauty in the garden.  A beautiful garden does not confuse the eye.  Weeds obscure the plants you want to see, largely because there are usually several types of weeds growing in one area.  I suppose that you could have a beautiful garden full of crabgrass - just as long as the crabgrass was the only plant in that area, and did not take over the whole bed or border.

Despite the fact that I have not been able to weed this summer, I have one border that looks pretty good.  I designed this border a few years ago with a pretty well thought-out design.  The front is comprised of a straight line of decorative herbs planted in groups of three.  Behind these I used alternating equilateral triangles - with sides about thirty inches long - to place perennials in.  Each triangle has one type of plant.   Using a pattern consistently throughout this, or any, garden, helps the observers eye both settle down quickly, and be led  from area to area in the garden.

Early August

I always thought that gladiolus were too fussy for my garden.  They make such pretty cut flowers, though, that last year I broke down and bought some at the local Christmas Tree Shop.  I was pleasantly surprised a week ago when I noticed a pink gladiola in one of my perennial beds.  They had successfully overwintered; we had a very good snow pack this past year, and it doesn't seem that there were any frost heaves.  Normally, glads do not survive the winter.  I have a pretty rigid planting scheme in this particular border.  The advantage with such an approach is that you have good structure.  The problem is that you can go through spells where the garden needs a little more excitement.  The gladiolus did not destroy the structure, and introduced a delightful, if unplanned element.

Phlox is a flower that typically blooms this time of year.  You have to be sure to cut off several stalks early in the summer.  I like to cut off all but 3 or 5 per plant.  Unless you choose a plant that is labeled "mildew resistant" you are going to get mildew, even if you trim the plant back.  The flower is so pretty, though, and goes well with so many other flowers, that I keep it. 

Lobelia Cardinalis is a tall plant with bright red flowers,  When I originally tried to purchase it several years ago from a mail order firm, they refused to sell it to me, because it is not supposed to overwinter in the western suburbs of Boston.  Indeed, my Uncle Norm, who has a magnificent garden outside of Cleveland, Ohio, has told me that his always die out.  I have had mine for three years.  Last year I was delighted to have a pair of hummingbirds visit them each day for several weeks right around five in the afternoon.

The lobelia has just started blooming.  Sadly, I have not seen any hummingbirds yet, but I am hopeful.  After all, isn't hope a big reason for gardening?