Garden Diary: Last Day of Spring

Yesterday was the last day of spring.

This photo, taken shortly after the first day of spring, around the end of March, shows the garden after all the grasses had been burned, leaving a blank slate. Seeing this image from a time in late June, I rather like the minimalist, barren look.

The next photo, taken on June 21, from a similar point of view, shows the change just twelve weeks can bring. One of the characteristics of a mostly grass and herbaceous perennial garden is the empty void of early spring. Another is the almost magical transformation the barren ground undergoes, giving forth a shape-shifting landscape as the plants emerge from the flat plain of earth, some towering to 14 feet by high summer.

Moving out into the garden, some of the theme plants begin to emerge from the blur. Below Filipendula rubra 'Venusta' - certainly the most prominent plant in the garden at this time of the year - appears in a 40-foot drift across the middle of the garden. Glaucous mounds of Rudbeckia maxima foliage add a quirky touch. I think of them as vegetable hippos. This is another theme plant, but it won't make its most important contribution for a few more weeks, when its flower stalks will climb to six or seven feet, each with a single skyward facing yellow daisy.

Moving further to the right, a Miscanthus giganteus is rapidly gaining height in the left background.

Filipendula with Astilbe 'Purple Lance' and narrow, feathery wands of Liatris pyncnostachia in front of the Filipendula ...


Another point of view with the Filipendula, next to a planting of Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster', just coming into bloom ...

Moving to the middle of the garden, looking back toward the house, gives a sense of the scale of the planting. This point is probably about 250 feet from the house, obscured by a screen of London Planes and dogwoods. On the right is another theme plant, Joe Pye Weed, gaining height for its period of bloom in late July.

Turning clockwise, more Joe Pye Weed, Vernonia (planted from broadcast seed), and Miscanthus purpurescens in the foreground, and that single Miscanthus giganteus now on the far right.

A view from the far end of the garden, from behind a bank of bracken, looking back toward the house. This end of the garden has a low profile until later-developing plantings - Silphium terebinthinaceum, more Joe Pye, Rudbeckia maxima, Panicum 'Dallas Blues' and 'Cloud Nine' - gain height. Masses of Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum muticum), with silvery foliage in late summer, and white Physostegia virginiana 'Miss Manners', invisible now, are dotted across a ground of pasture grasses, which have the grace to turn a light brown in summer, helping the garden to read as "meadow."

Continuing toward the left, a planting of Miscanthus 'Silberfeder', a hybrid petasites, and more Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) ...

And the same planting from the opposite side ...

After a wet spring and three weeks of almost daily rain, the soil is totally saturated. That these plants can live in such a hostile environment, much less thrive, is amazing ... but also proof that matching plants to existing conditions makes a garden possible just about anywhere on this earth.

Walking in the garden

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I took a walk in the garden, just looking around, making a weekend assessment. Well, really just looking around to see how my plant friends are doing. It was the 12th anniversary of my father's death, and I was repeating a pattern I became familiar with in his life. After retirement, my father continued to work - not hard work, he helped out in the pro shop of a local golf club - but enough work to take up most of his days. Early every summer evening he would come home. The first thing he did was go out to his garden and spend a few minutes just looking around. Sometimes he would do a little work, pick some okra or tomatoes or beans. He always had a vegetable garden, grown in poor draining red Mississippi clay, but it was one of the delights of his life. Now my garden is the delight of mine. It's a very different garden, but I feel I'm carrying on a tradition I learned long ago.

At the top, a familiar combination of Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum 'Purple Bush'), the foliage of Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula rubra 'Venusta') turning lovely golden color in the August sun, at the front, a small Iron Weed (Vernonia noveboracensis) planted from seed and in its first year, and at the far left Eupatorium perfoliatum, just coming into its own. Seeded vernonia is scattered all over the garden; I expect it to grow into large colonies that will dramatically alter the distribution of plant mass and open space in the next few years.

Next, more of the Eupatorium perfoliatum, with more Joe Pye Weed and Miscanthus 'Gracillimus' in the background, and a (now) small vernonia at front.


Below, the same combination, with addition of Sanguisorba canadensis in the foreground and a couple of flower stalks of Rudbeckia maxima out of focus in the background.


Also seeded widely throughout the garden, Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia syphilitica) is now in full boom. I'm thinking of ordering more seed and using the lobelia as a groundcover.


Last, Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) in its second summer, a gift of a friend, from her friend, who grew it from seed. This is in an area near the deer exclusion fence, where I will eventually plant shrubs to block the view of the wire fencing.


My father didn't use binomial Latin names for his plants, but considering the possibility, even probability of total confusion otherwise, I think he would agree with the concept.

Garden Diary: High Summer

We may be headed for drought. For the past six weeks occasional scattered sprinkles have left some corn fields in healthy, not thriving, growth, while others are stunted and very dry. So far, passing thunderstorms have been highly local, drenching some areas, leaving others parched.


Established plants in the garden are doing well. After several weeks of prelude, the Rudbeckia maxima and Filipendula rubra 'Venusta' are in full bloom across the "wet" prairie. I suppose this is proof of my high water table (at ground surface throughout winter and spring). This past weekend I did have to do some spot watering of new plants. The five-foot Almelanchier laevis looked close to expiration and some Kirengeshoma palmata in the woodland garden were in a state of continuous droop.

But the large, established plants are doing well and give me hope that in future summers I won't have to do any watering once root systems are well established.

Lesson learned this year: monarda does not thrive in this heavy, wet clay. Most of the Monarda d. 'Blaustrumpf' barely survived and only one M.d. 'Jacob Kline' came through winter in good shape. This will not be a plant I can rely on.

The good news. Silphium terebinthinaceum, which I planted as plugs three years ago, is finally mature enough to put up flower spikes (no blossom yet), and Silphium perfoliatum, which I planted as seed two years ago, has finally appeared and will be blossoming at about four feet. Vernonia noveboracensis, also seeded two years back, has appeared in profusion, promising a very colorful fall. And big, bulky roots of Inula racemosa 'Sonnenspeer' from Bluestem Nursery, planted only a month or two back, have taken root and appear to be well on the way to maturity and substantial bloom this summer.


A lot of yellow, I know. I didn't allow yellow in my former Rosemont garden. But in this garden in the woods, with a dark wall of trees all around, I need bright colors to contrast with the surrounding darkness.