Fall Colors

Fall is a good time to learn about color, and nature is a good teacher.  Flower and foliage hues generally become muted.  These calmer colors work well together; put a bright, summery color into a fall landscape and the effect is shockingly discordant.

Something else is going on as well.  There is a common thread that pulls these colosr together.

 
This collection of hydrangeas, russian sage and boltonia are all linked by gray.  The leaves and stems of the russian sage and boltonia are gray-green.  The blooms of the hydrangea are fading to gray-green and gray-violet.  Contrast these flowers with the same hydrangeas mid-summer;  there the flowers are clear blue and violet-magenta. 

A rule I learned in a color class is to find the dominant color, then make sure that there are aspects of that color in every other hue in the composition.

In a garden, find the dominant hue or "feel" of a color.  During springtime, pastels dominate.  In summer, bright, clear colors rule.  Fall is the time for muted, grayed colors.  Winter is influenced by whites and blues.

There are exceptions.  Deciduous trees, especially maples, glow with reds, yellows, and oranges.  The leaves soon fade to muted browns, ochres, and umbers.

You can use this information to put together an outfit, decorate a room, paint a picture, and of course, design a garden.

Shade Perennials

I was inspired by a recent trip to the Cleveland Botanical Garden Center to tackle the shade section of my long border.  Following one of my own rules, I finally moved three early blooming astilbe to the middle of the border, and relocated a pink turtlehead chelone lyonii 'Hot Lips' to the front.  I bought another turtlehead and put it next to the transplanted one.

 The plant with the yellow flowers in the middle of the above picture is a yellow waxbells Kirengeshoma palmata.  This plant was also in Cleveland.  It will get big - up to about three feet.  I hope that I like it when this section has matured.

I also put in two windflower plants Anemone 'September Charm'.  Their blooms appeared right away on wiry stems.  The other day I was walking past my neighbor's house and noticed that they had the same windflower.  Theirs, however, was huge - about four feet by four feet. I'm not sure what I will do if mine get that big.

 

The plant on the right is liriope.  It has started to bloom.  I volunteered at Elm Bank, a Massachusetts Horticultural site, this past weekend, spent time weeding liriope, and learned a few tricks on dealing with its aggressive growth habit.  First, it's better to divide in the spring.  If you are going to divide in the fall, get a garden knife and cut away at the root ball.  Good luck trying to divide it with a spade.  When I do divide, I am going to put some of the plants in my front beds.  Lots of gardens in Washington, DC use liriope as a ground cover for their shrubs, and it looks very elegant.   

Keep the Eye Moving

I was  going to call this post "Moving Day", but decided that title conveyed the wrong message.  I did move a lot of plants last week.  While I was moving them, I realized what was really important about the changes I was making.

The section of border I worked on is dominated by pastels.  I did have three white summer phlox in the back left, though.  The phlox have been imperfect - too much mildew, but a very nice fragrance.  One issue that crystallized as I worked was that the viewer's eye went immediately to the blooming phlox and stayed there.

 
(This picture was taken last year - the asters in the front center died and were replaced with veronica.)

I wrote earlier this summer that I moved three veronica to the center front, and put cranesbill geranium and pincushion flower scabiosa c. 'Pink Mist' behind them.  I took the unusual step of putting a tall plant in front of  shorter ones because the veronica re-blooms profusely after it is deadheaded.  I discovered this summer that there is an excellent second bloom, but that the time gap between flowerings was too long for a plant in the front of the border.

 

I wish that I had taken a picture when the veronica was out of bloom and the phlox was blooming - that would have driven my point home better.

Even though the veronica has bloomed beautifully for weeks, I decided that it was time for a major overhaul.

I bought two ornamental kale plants (annuals), a white butterfly flower, gaura linaheimeri, and three garden asters 'Blue Henry I'.  I took out all of the phlox and much of the lady's mantle (chartreuse flower, spreads aggressively.)  I moved some of these to a nursery border in my back yard.

The lady's mantle were put in the back, against the fence.  Two delphinium were put in front of these in the center.  The gaura was placed in the middle.  The veronica were moved to the middle left, the asters were moved to the middle right.  The pincushion flowers were planted in the center front, flanked by the ornamental kale.  Finally, the geranium cranesbill were put behind the pincushhion flower.

 

By placing the gaura in the center I hope to avoid the unbalanced effect of having a non-pastel colored flower off to the side.  I will see how it works as the season winds down. 

Shade Perennials

The shady section of my long border is ignored most of the year.  A recent trip to the magnificent Cleveland Botanical Gardens convinced me to give this section a little more love.

I am as guilty as most people of thinking that shade plants only bloom in the spring and early summer.  Think astilbe, bleeding heart, fuschia.  Late bloomers include hosta and liriope, which I tend to think of as groundcovers instead of flowering plants.  My shade border also includes a tree peony, regular peonies, and siberian iris.

A walk through the woodland section of the Cleveland Botanical Garden opened up my eyes to plant pairings and choices that I would not have thought of on my own.

One such pairing is turtlehead (chelone) with lobelia cardinalis.  

 I think of lobelia cardinalis as strictly a sun lover, albeit one that likes moist soil.  It turns out that this plant can be quite happy in the shade as well.  In addition to being a beautiful red flower with a long bloom time that attracts hummingbirds, it also helps the soil retain moisture.  That would not work well with asclepias tuberosa, which loves drought conditions, but does work well in a shade garden, especially when there has been little rain.  

I happen to have a turtlehead hidden in the back of my shade border.  Soon I will move it to the middle of the border, and relocate the astilbe that is currently there to the mid-back of the border.

Another surprise was the number of hydrangeas that thrive in the shade.  I think of these plants as sun lovers (that like a drink of water in the late afternoon.)  Lacecap and black stem hydrangea were two species that I noted. 

Harvesting Plums

People cannot believe that my husband and I have plum and peach trees.  The idea of growing your own fruit, in a Massachusetts suburb, seems impossibly exotic.  It is as if fruit were some kind of alien life form that only grows in California. 

Not true, as my friends, neighbors and family can attest.  Each August we harvest plums.  After the plums are the peaches.  Our pear trees died.  I read recently that they don't like wet roots; there is an underground stream in our neighborhood that may have caused their demise.

You do not need much room to grow fruit trees either.  We have less than a quarter acre of land, most of it occupied by a house and driveway.  All you need are two of each kind of fruit; they do not even have to be the same variety.  (You don't need two of a kind if a neighbor - say within a quarter of a mile, has the same type of trees.)

Two years ago we had a spectacular crop of plums.  We have two types, and they produce fruit that can be picked and eaten about two weeks apart.  Since there was so much fruit, I encouraged neighbors to help themselves.  Children seemed to love the fruit most of all.  There was even a local nun who came several times to take bags of plums back to the retired nuns at the local convent.  We were well prayed for that summer.

Last year, the harvest was not very good.  I bought the book The Holistic Orchard; Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way, by Michael Phillips, for my husband.  As with many gifts, I was the one who used it.  Luckily, my husband listened to the suggestions I got from the book (there are many; the book is very detailed).  One was to mulch the trees with ramial  wood chips (thin twigs from deciduous trees.)  Orchards, in their natural state, exist at the edge of deciduous forests, where there is lots of debris (i.e. twigs), from the established trees.  This wood has a high nitrogen content.  Thicker branches have a high carbon content (which is why they burn well, but is not a good mulch.)

The ramial wood mulch promotes a beneficial fungal environment for the tree, especially the roots.  The roots are able to work with the fungi to tap into many more nutrients in the soil than possible without the rich fungal environment.  I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in understanding how and why to produce healthy, productive fruit trees.

Here is a picture of a plum right before I picked it.  The fruit ripens quickly.  If not picked, it either drops and rots, or the animals eat it.

The peach trees are full of fruit.  They will be ready to be picked in a week or two.

Hummingbird Heaven

I despaired that I would not see any hummingbirds this year.  All of the right plants are in my garden - buddleia (butterfly bush), lobelia cardinalis, garden phlox, and echinacea purpurea.  No matter, no hummingbirds.

Perhaps my cat, Jack Bauer, had scared them away.  We haven't had any goldfinches in a few years, after all.

Then, the other day, while I was picking green beans, I thought I saw a lone hummingbird startle and fly away.  Today, while waiting for a carpenter to fix part of my rood deck, I saw them - a pair of hummingbirds checking out the phlox, the buddleia, and, of course, the lobelia cardinalis.

  

As I wrote about last week, my lawn looks dreadful, I have garden patches that are way past their prime, and the most robust plants I have are weeds.  No matter, the hummingbirds are back, and I hope that they stay a while.

Not the best picture - it is hard to photograph hummingbirds.  I have been seeing one or two of them for the last several days.  The white-flowered plant is a ptatycodon (balloon flower).

Vegetables to the Rescue

My well thought-out flower garden, especially the part I see from my bedroom window, is a sad sight.  I had pinned my hopes on veronica speedwell 'eveline', a deep pink veronica, carrying on all summer long.  It will bloom again, in a week or two.  Now there are few blooms and little color.

The lawn is even sadder - full of dead and dried out spots.  My less than perfect lawn prep of 25 years ago always haunts me in mid-summer.  The lawn is uneven.  When mowed, the high parts are shaved rather than cut - leading to burned-out patches.

I always find redemption in my husband's vegetable garden.  Despite frequent, heavy rains that knocked the young fruit off the tomato plants early in the season, it looks like we will have a good crop.  My husband followed a neighbor's lead, and added several loads of compost, free at our town dump, to the vegetable patch.  Even though the tomatoes have not ripened, there are lots of them, and they look healthy.

We have been harvesting green beans, zucchini, and cucumbers. Butternut squash, a surprise plant, will be ready to be picked soon.

The squash blossoms are lovely to look at.  Some day I will try cooking them.  The zucchini will be ready in a day or two.