The sweetspire is golden, the sourwood and sumac are coloring up, and the asters, anemones and helianthus are in full bloom. Yet my yard still has a long way to go before I’d call it satisfyingly fall-exuberant. Before I plant some new arrivals that promise an even more colorful autumn next year, I’ll have fun scrolling through other gardeners’ outdoor spaces for ideas.
The perennials, annuals, trees and shrubs that Mr. McGregor’s Daughter has in her garden include plants I’ve not appreciated enough for their fall color — the burgundy leaves of a ninebark (’Monlo’), the golden glow of sweetshrub, the berries of false Solomon’s seal.
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One of the best things about fall for gardeners is the chance to correct what’s not working. I want to move the bleeding heart where its normal summer dieback won’t look so conspicuous. And the amsonia, baptisia, Shasta daisies and meadow rue, which I’ve moved up into bigger and bigger pots, need to go into the ground. Early fall in our Zone 6 garden is a great time to dig, plant and move, especially when it comes to perennials.
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The weather here in the Southeast was beautiful this past weekend. So nice, in fact, that I decided to head outdoors and tackle some end-of-summer yard work. We had plenty of rain this year so my garden had a great growing season and many plants were way overdue for a good trim.
I started with my butterfly bushes which had become ginormous — beautiful, lush, fragrant and huge. The vibrant purple, fuschia and pink blooms are simply too pretty to put at the side of the road for pickup, so as I trimmed the limbs I put the blossoms into a ready container of water. I learned the hard way that butterfly bush blooms are a finicky lot; cut blooms need to go straight into water or they wilt and don’t recover.
My kitchen received a bright pop of color courtesy of the trimmed butterfly bushes and a few fern fronds.
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Water features usually take a lot of planning and, depending how large and complex they are, a fair degree of digging and assembly time. In fact, my husband and I have talked endlessly about creating a waterfall and pond and have yet to dig out more than a 20th of it.
More on affordable water features »
Magellan Coral Zinnia
If you gave into springtime cravings to grow a lush and beautiful garden — whether veggie or ornamental or both — you’re now in the summertime slog. It’s one thing to spend a few hours working in the garden when the temperature’s a cool 60 degrees and the most rampant weeds of your area have yet to take hold. It’s quite another to do battle with aggressive weeds, bad bugs and too much or too little water – all while heat and/or humidity make 30 minutes of hoeing akin to an athletic event.
To spend your gardening time smartly, check out the best ways to have a beautiful garden with the least amount of pain.
Gardeners love to say that gardening is a thrifty way to beautify your landscape, raise a lot of your family’s food, get plenty of exercise and commune with nature — all at the same time. But, despite our love of economy, some of us know in our hearts that we succumb to pretty plants in the nursery like some people cave in to pretty shoes.
I’m in the midst of landscaping a steep hillside to keep my husband from having to mow it. After foraging among the discount centers for good deals on junipers, yews and boxwoods, I head to a local independent nursery that’s known for its high-quality plants. They love to see me coming, because they know I’m a sucker for interesting specimens. An hour later, my collection is increased and my bank balance is decreased.
Still, I’m all about saving money on the nitty-gritty: I save seed, take cuttings, divide plants, convert plastic food and beverage containers into seed beds and container plants. And I love checking in at Compost Confidential to see how Joe Lamp’l is progressing with his “Quest for a $25 Victory Garden.” Joe, a nationally known lecturer and TV personality, has laid his garden out for all the world to see. His biggest single expenditure to date has been $7 for seed-starting mix; he got people on Twitter and Facebook to send him free seed. A month ago, after a prolonged period of rain that put the damper on the garden’s (and his tomato seedlings’) progress, he splurged ($5) on two large tomato transplants. It was a hard decision, he said, but one based on reality: the growing conditions were awful, and he needed to start producing food soon.
Which just goes to show you, a large pretty plant can be a hard thing to pass up.
Somebody asked me the other day if I had gotten my garden in. The question took me a little aback. I’m never without a garden, even in January, because ornamentals are year-round enterprises and even in winter, things like Siberian kale and parsley are possible, with the help of cold frames.
But I knew what she meant — had I gotten my vegetable garden in? I have, but that’s always a work in progress, in or out of season, and veggies are only part of what matters to me out there in the yard. I can’t eat ‘em but I love my sweetspires, astilbe, goatsbeard and hodgepodge collection of several hundred shrubs, grasses and perennials, not to mention the few young trees we’ve put in (even though we’re sitting right next to woods).
I don’t dedicate muc
h real estate solely to vegetables. Instead, ornamentals and edibles share their various spaces with each other: The peas are flowering next to a rose hedge. A shady bank of perennials near the kitchen door contains parsley and chives. The potatoes are tucked into a hill next to the compost pile. Coneflowers, shasta daisies, bee balm and joepye weed flank the tomatoes and squash. Every year the blueberry bushes duke it out with the butterfly bushes for who can take up more space. And, of course, it doesn’t have to be a question of either/or: you can have pretty and edible garden beds.
So I loved reading in Garden Rant, one of my favorite gardening blogs, that too much focus on “recession gardens” (growing vegetables to save money) could diminish — in new gardeners’ eyes — the value of ornamental gardens and, more importantly, of gardening itself. I couldn’t agree more. Saving money while we garden is a good thing. Gardening only to save money means we miss out on the great joys of this most wonderful of endeavors.
