Tuesday View: The Front Border 8.28.17

Aug30

Monday was the first day back to school for the kids and that officially means late summer. A few haters will point out that it actually means autumn, but no. Summer won’t give up so easily and I won’t give up on summer… even if there was a slight nip in the air this morning 😦

The front border doesn’t look autumnal at all, and this week as we join the vacationing Cathy at Words and Herbs for the Tuesday view it’s all about sunflowers!

The front border this Tuesday.

The sunflowers seem to know there’s still plenty of time to flower and set seed before the axe falls. They’re really nice right now and between the bright flowers they already hold enough partly-ripe seedheads to bring in a steady stream of goldfinches.

This is my current computer screen background. Sunflowers and ‘Australia’ canna, all looking even better with the beige stalks of ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass as a screen.

As usual I’m not looking forward to fall. I’ll stay in denial for weeks and then sometime in early October bite the bullet and make the transition from late summer to fall. Even my blog categories show this bias and I had to laugh a few weeks ago when I noticed all the other seasons are broken down into ‘early spring’, ‘spring’, and ‘late spring’, but fall is just ‘fall’. I guess that helps get through it just a little bit faster.

Halfway down the border, Molina ‘skyracer’ is one sign of late summer. It’s a great plant for the edge of the border where its height doesn’t block anything yet breaks up the monotony of shorter plantings. A ‘see through’ is what people call it.

Besides grasses going to seed there are some other sure signs that summer is ripening. The neat little lumpy sedums are blooming.

I think this is sedum ‘brilliant’, given to me by a friend years ago and carelessly unlabeled because I was sure I’d remember the variety. From the minute the buds swell in the spring to the minute I cut down the dried stalks so the swelling buds can grow it’s an attractive thing.

But the annuals won’t give up for at least another month. Even the zinnias which have been going since May are still looking good.

A painted lady butterfly getting her fill off the ground cover zinnias. This might be ‘Zahara something’ but as usual…

I’ll leave you with yet another photo of the end of the border. These ‘Cannova Rose’ cannas with the purple Verbena bonariensis have me convinced I’m the most amazing garden designer who ever planted a canna or paired a color. Be prepared to see this photo one more time when the yellowing kochia plant does its burning bush routine.

Coleus, ‘Cannova Rose’ canna, Verbena, kochia, and a few orange ‘Zahara’ zinnias. Not bad for a bunch of leftover cuttings, tubers, and self sown seedlings… and a six-pack of zinnias 😉

Do give Cathy a visit to see how other views are developing this Tuesday, and it’s not too late to join with your own! You probably have a good four weeks before autumn really insists on arriving, and only until that happens will it officially be too late. Obviously when autumn does get here no-one is going to want to see pictures of fall foliage and asters, so what’s the point of starting then, might as well wait until you can post snowy photos 🙂

Have a great late summer week!

Deck Season

Jul11

I’m about done with this gardening thing, it’s just so much work!

The deck awaits. Cool drinks, evening sunsets, it all sounds so much better than slaving away in the garden.

We have yet to hit our traditional summertime combo of brutally high temperatures and endless rainless weeks, and for once it seems our climate has decided to make it easy on the garden and gardener. The garden has been enjoying excellent growing weather and perfect transplanting conditions, and I think I’ve done more this year than ever to shape up the yard. The deck has been no exception. Overwintered tropicals came out of their garage storage earlier than ever and containers were put together way before the usual Memorial Day rush. I like the way it came out this year (which was not the case last summer).

My biggest splurge this year, a blue sky vine (Thunbergia grandiflora) which I snapped up the minute I saw it. I was hoping it would take over this whole corner of the deck but for now it’s more intent on sending out more and more of its beautiful flowers. At least the self-sown petunias on the left make a nice color compliment.

In my opinion the whole point of annuals is you can try something completely different each year, enjoy an entire season of noncommittal color, and then count on winter to completely clean the slate for next season. For the most part I started with a clean slate, but this year I tried to bring in a few new things rather than just sit in the rut I felt like I’d been settling in to.

Calibrachoas will always earn a spot in the deck containers because of their unending bloom. As long as the tobacco budworms hold off on their late season attack and I get a little fertilizer on them, they’ll keep going like this for weeks!

My ‘ outside the box’ move didn’t last much longer than putting down the traditional purple fountain grasses and substituting with a couple new coleus. Lots more foliage this year rather than flowers, but for the most part, since I overwinter so many plants, I’m bound to always be stuck in at least some part of the box.

If there was a color theme this year it was orange and purple… sort of… I’m never much good at sticking to a theme, plus I’m always far too easy on the self-sown annuals which show up, such as the pink petunias and red snapdragons in the back.

Cannas and coleus are back this year and doing great. The coleus were all new purchases made to replace those I was too lazy to bring in last fall. Lesson learned with that but now I’ll have to make all new decisions on which ones to take in when frost threatens. Experience shows it will be all of them 🙂

The far corner of the deck. The cannas are just starting, coleus are already too big, the Virginia creeper is creeping over from the other wall, and who would have thought I’d like white salvia?

Since May the plan has been to re-do some of the unfinished ends of the deck. You know how the goes. As of July 11th there’s been no action, which isn’t world ending, but it does mean I haven’t yet hooked up the drip lines which should go to each planted container. The regular rains have been my savior but as things grow that won’t last. I need to get things going!

A little bit of a mess here but the succulents and cacti are enjoying the regular rain. Usually they get nothing but disrespect from me and are lucky to get a haphazard splash from the hose once a month… I wonder if I need a new cactus… I’ve been good all spring 🙂

By all estimates I have about another week left in me before I throw in the towel on whatever projects didn’t get done this year. All work and no play is making me an extremely dull gardener and summer is too short for dullness.

Gotta go, weeds await!

Tuesday View: The Front Border 6.20.17

Jun21

The summer solstice is just a few hours away and this week’s Tuesday view should fit right in. The abundance of summer is starting to show, and it shouldn’t be long before the next flush of color begins.

Things aren’t that different this week but I did get the chance to do some major weeding and cleaning out, and (to me at least) it shows.

Besides thinning the iris and removing their spent flower stalks -a brutal process of ripping nearly half the plants out- I’m also well into filling the empty spots. Each summer I make room for plenty of annuals and tropicals (or they make room for themselves) and this year I have an additional two or three foot wide expansion strip which needs filling.

A few healthy sunflower seedlings have popped up near the mailbox and I’m going to call that perfect. It’s one less space which needs manual filling.

Filling the new bed is much less trouble than I thought it would be. There are always a few spare canna roots which get planted, plenty of reseeding annuals which come up on their own, and this year I’m adding bunches of coleus cuttings which I started off of the four new-to-me mother plants which I picked up here and there.

Verbena bonariensis transpants look terrible for the first day or two after transplanting but bounce back quickly. I didn’t even bother watering these and I’m sure most will turn out fine.

So this year’s main annual color will be coleus, cannas, dwarf zinnias and plenty of other odds and ends which tend to follow me home, and as far as following me home this spring may have been an all time record as far as high numbers of purchased plants and low numbers of self grown seedlings. I still think I stay well on the cheap side of frugal though since the majority were either six packs or clearance purchases, but I do snap every now and then and end up with something exciting or new. To ease my conscience I try and take cuttings or overwinter a few bits, so I guess it’s the horticultural version of reuse/recycle.

A few hot days and the Arundo donax variegata has burst on up out of the ground. It does makes a statement I think.

As I continue to add and add and add I hope the bed takes on that super full, overflowing with color and texture look. For that to happen I’ll need a few more things, and there are still no signs of anyone starting zinnia or gomphrena seeds (my reliable standards), but I’m sure something will work out. In my opinion annual plantings should be a little more spontaneous and different each year otherwise what’s the point?

As usual thanks to Cathy at Words and Herbs for hosting this weekly update, and if you have a chance to give her blog a visit please do, it’s always a pleasure and I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading about other Tuesday views from around the world… or even better yet consider joining in!

Tuesday View: The Tropics 11.1.16

Nov2

As you can see from this Tuesday’s view, the weather forecast was correct and Tuesday night we received our first strong frost. One night and the tropical summer was over… but for this part of PA the last week of October is a late frost date, so there are no complaints from this end. It was a great year!

No denying fall is here now. The cannas are browned, the dahlias are blackened, yet even at the end of the season there’s still some color left.

You wouldn’t guess it but I did spend a few minutes cleaning up. The mildewed Verbena bonariensis had been bothering me so those were cut down, and a few large blackened salvias and coleus were taken out as well. For the most part though the rest will come out this weekend (I hope) as I dig canna and dahlia roots and pack them away for the winter, but I have to say even with less color it’s still kind of interesting. I’m discovering things here and there which have been overshadowed by the annuals for the past three months.

A bit tousled by this weekend’s thunderstorm, chrysanthemum ‘Carousel’ is still holding up to the cooler nights. The green nicotina is also doing well, but the surprise was the fat clump of Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima… recently renamed though) which was hiding under the verbena I pulled.

Today I did go ahead and plant a few leftover snowdrops in the tropical bed. The idea of early spring snowdrops sounds nice enough, but I’m pretty sure it will prove to be a bad idea come July when I want to replant all the summer visitors in the same spot. “Oh well” I say. Summer is a long time off and spring flowers are more fun to think of.

So as the season winds down here I’d again like to thank Cathy at Words and Herbs for hosting the Tuesday view each week. It’s been a nice run but I believe winter has most of us calling it quits for the season and our thoughts are turning inside and towards the holidays. Not a bad idea at all, but I might still have another week or two in me, if only to prove that I really did dig up and store all those fantastic roots and bulbs for next year!

Tuesday View: The Tropics 10.25.16

Oct26

It’s a cold and breezy Tuesday this week, with a wind that makes you feel like change is a’comin to this end of Pennsylvania. The forecast tonight is a dip below freezing and there’s a good chance this will be the last week a colorful and lush view shows up in Cathy’s weekly meme. There are still a few weeks left to the season, but after frost hits the view will be decidedly less colorful.

A gloomy, gray Tuesday afternoon. The last of the autumn color has worked its way down the mountains and into the garden and things are entirely autumnal. The wheelbarrow is covering the flowering thistle, I’m hoping to get a few ripe seeds before it freezes.

Whether or not this turns out to be our killing frost remains to be seen, but with the cold wind blowing I’m completely indifferent. Sunday was spent clearing the rest of the garden of everything I wanted to save, so now it’s just a matter of letting nature run its course. Snow is predicted for Thursday so I guess I’m officially giving up 🙂

One last view. The tropics have been good to me this year.

So next week will likely show some serious changes. Once frost hits I like to get things out of the way and cleaned up fast so that I can put down some mulch before winter hits. Any unmulched areas will likely sprout a carpet of winter weeds such as hairy bittercress and I’d rather not start next season with that kind of a mess on my hands. Wish me luck.

After you wish me luck please consider giving Cathy at Words and Herbs a visit to see how autumn is progressing through other gardens in other parts of the world. It’s always a great visit and a fun way to keep up over the season. Have a great week!

Tuesday View: The Tropics 10.19.16

Oct20

I’m a day late in joining Cathy for the Tuesday view, but I think it’s just that time of year when things begin to unravel and go to seed so hopefully my tardiness will be forgiven. Here it is!

Autumn comes to the tropical garden

The view looks remarkably similar to last week’s with just a few more hints of autumn color in the background and a few more tints of brown in the front. We had a slight frost last Monday and again on Friday but for the most part the garden is intact.

The tender new leaves of alocasia x portora took the low temperatures very seriously while the dahlias just shrugged them right off. Serves me right for not bringing this elephant ear in earlier.

Last week’s lows have been followed by a few warm days but I think the damage has already been done. Most tropicals get all miffy once nighttime temperatures drop below 50 and I guess it’s time to start thinking seriously about bringing them in.

My newest elephant ear, colocasia esculenta ‘tropical storm’ is gaining back a little strength following a run in with spider mites. I ended up snipping off all the foliage to get rid of them, now it’s a matter of hoping for the best over winter.

Even with some of the largest leaves showing a little frost damage, the cooler nights seem to intensify and brighten the last of the autumn colors.

‘Knockout’ rose seems to get even brighter as the thermometer drops. It’s a nice mix with the season long color of the Verbena bonariensis.

Although I made a good effort of removing most of the chrysanthemums from this bed, I did leave ‘Carousel’ for some late season color. The plan was for it to carry on after frost blackened most of the other color in this bed, but here it is joining in as just another supporting player. I like it for the long stems and late blooms which last into November but tolerate it for it’s floppy stalks and necessary June pinching.

Chrysanthemum ‘Carousel’ opening up as one of the last floral events of the 2016 tropical border.

‘Carousel’ is pretty much the only thing left to anticipate in the border, everything else is just finger crossing for additional days without frost. We are into a slight Indian summer of warm, hazy days following our earlier run-in with cold, but even that is somewhat irritating as I like the cooler weather for transplanting, bulb planting, and fall foliage enjoying…. not that I’m complaining too much about having a few last drink nights out on the porch sans jacket 🙂

Looking up towards the back end. I love that all 6 feet of that annoyingly bright white vinyl fence is now hidden behind an interesting wall of greens and flowers. And I love that I still have plenty of dahlias!

So here’s to another Tuesday view where the tropics are still green! Long live summer and all the best for your upcoming week 🙂

Tuesday View: The Tropics 10.11.16

Oct12

Tuesday is here and again I’m happy to join up with Cathy at Words and Herbs for the view. Things still look warm, but the lows last night seem to have brought in the tiniest bit of frost which singed a few tomato leaves here and there in the vegetable garden. We’re living on borrowed time!

Still a tropical view. The one kochia has gone brown, but the flowers and foliage of nearly everything else is all autumn abundance 🙂

I wish I had more to say but I’ve been distracted by the chrysanthemums and fall bulbs and time consuming things such as fall baseball and gymnastics. I’ve also had a bulb buying relapse and in a weak moment ordered many more snowdrops than I could possibly need. That and tulips… even though I recently said I wouldn’t buy any new ones this year.

My suspicion is that I’m the only one concerned about this latest purchase, but now that I think about it further (since I have absolutely no idea where to place these latest purchases), I wonder how the tropical border would look with a large swath of tulips and a small throw blanket of snowdrops. I bet it wouldn’t look half bad!

Have a great week 🙂

Tuesday View: The Tropics 10.04.16

Oct5

The nights have taken a turn towards cool here and for the first time it feels like the tropical bed is showing signs of autumn. The winding down of the season is ok by me, but my fingers are crossed we don’t have a repeat of last year when a single 23F (-5C) night in mid October crushed all hopes for a mellow end to the season. Frost is inevitable, but a brutal freeze? Unnecessary.

The Tuesday view on this first week of October

This Tuesday as I again join up with Cathy at Words and Herbs, I’d like to also give a nod to Eliza and copy her idea of showing a flashback to the earlier days of this season. Everything looked so cute and tiny back in this last week of June.

The first Tuesday view. A few perennials making a show, but the only annuals visible are a flat of small orange zinnias, freshly planted out of their six-packs.

Things have grown since then and one of my favorite growers has been the annual burning bush (Kochia scoparia). One by one the individual plants in the seedling clumps I planted out are starting to color and I have to admit I like the look, even though the plants will go brown once they pass their peak of redness.

I love all these colors but last week the kochia at the lowest right of the clump was just at its peak. Only seven days later and it has browned, so I hope the rest of the clump doesn’t follow as quickly.

Sneaking up alongside the kochia is a new chrysanthemum seedling. I evicted nearly all the mums from this bed earlier in the year, but I guess this one was small enough to miss.

Not the greatest photo of it but a nice enough self-sown mum with small spoon shaped yellow petals.

Slightly less impressive are the late season flowers of ‘white frosted’ Japanese thistle. There’s not much to them, and some might mention the word “weedy”, but I’m hoping for seeds since the spring variegation on these is great and my only other plant of this perennial thistle died during our relentless May rains.

The less than impressive flowers of ‘White Frosted’ Japanese thistle (Cirsium japonicum).

There’s nothing less than impressive about the cannas and dahlias. I know I constantly show the same combos, but….

Canna ‘Bengal Tiger’ looking as variegated as ever alongside the deep red flowers of dahlia ‘Mathew Alen’. The purple cloud of Verbena bonariensis has been going strong all summer.

The path up through the center takes a little maneuvering to get through. The purple leaved cannas have pushed most everything out of their way, and the dahlias now sprawl across the path.

Dahlias and verbena up through the middle of the tropical garden.

The resident hummingbirds headed south a few weeks ago and with the exception of a few last stragglers migrating through the flowers have been left to the sleepy bumble bees of autumn. Monarch butterflies still stop in here and there, but it’s getting pretty quiet as things cool off.

Dahlia Sylvia seems to make a nice spot for a bumblebee’s afternoon nap.

Sleepy bumblebees kind of sum up how I feel about the garden these days. Maybe it’s allergies or lack of a good night’s sleep, but if you had to put me in camp grasshopper or camp ant I think I’m more of a grasshopper. I’ll enjoy the sun and last bits of warmth while they last, and just have to hope for the best when the axe of winter falls.

Agriculture in Suburbia

Oct1

This post was mostly finished last weekend but for some reason I never got around to publishing. I wish I had a good excuse, but it might have just been one of those Sunday evening get ready for the workweek make lunches and clean the kids off from the weekend kind of things. In any case here it is and to be honest I have little idea what I was talking about back then with all the design comments and self reflection. Sometimes I really wonder where this stuff comes from, but regardless the pictures have me thinking of last June when the garden looked ready to die so let me just start off with a photo from then 🙂

The beauty of the garden in June. Roadside daisies and dead grass. Fortunately the rains came back in August, but not until all July passed and I reached the “wordless Wednesday: I hate gardening” stage.

It’s always nice to hear compliments about your garden, and I am one who by reflex nearly always shrugs them off or dismisses them. I’m sure there’s some childhood trauma involved which has long been forgotten, but it’s my way and it’s a rare day when I can just accept with a thank you. Now I’m not saying I get a lot of compliments, but I do get a comment every now and then about a nice design touch or a combination which actually worked out. Those are the compliments I always downplay since I rarely (unless I’m doing it subconsciously) put a whole lot of thought into what goes where. With few exceptions my design process revolves around having a new favorite plant in hand and then desperately needing a spot in which to cram it. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.

The front border in mid September. If I had to put a name to this year’s design theory it might be something like ‘neglected agricultural’.

The front border along the street may not look brilliant, but it does look colorful, and with five months of winter breathing down my neck colorful is perfect. Colorful and agricultural I suppose, since this years feature plant seems to be ‘Hot Biscuits’ amaranthus and in my opinion it either looks sort of farmyard weedy or like a particularly bright sorghum crop. Ornamental or not I just can’t look away. It’s big and bright and grainy and between it and the wheat-like feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) and the sugarcane-like giant reed (Arundo Donax) I feel like it’s almost harvest time out there.

The view from the street side. The purple perovskia has seeded around a bit and put out a few runners, the purple coneflowers as well, but I’ve done essentially nothing here since March and I kind of like that.

I owe this year’s crop of ‘Hot Biscuits’ to my friend Paula who surprised me one afternoon with a packet of seeds in the mailbox. I had grown it before and ended up losing it, but fortunately she had a few seeds to spare and sent them my way. That was last year, and I efficiently killed all the seedlings which sprouted, but this year was a different story and I ended up with a few clumps of healthy seedlings.

Just the first of many amaranthus close-ups which will pepper this post. No one could plan this combo since I’m sure it violates numerous design principles, but I just love it.

The amaranthus shows up here and there all along the border, which is probably a good thing since even the simplest design theorist will tell you it repeats and unifies a theme. Repetition is important since this bed frequently suffers from “I always start from the driveway end and use up all the best plants there” syndrome. The far end of the bed gets less weeding, less watering, less tending… it basically gets less of everything, so carrying the amaranthus theme all the way through helps hide the sparseness of the neglected end.

Here in the preferred end of the bed are well tended seedlings of Benary’s Giant wine zinnias and the pink gomphrena ‘fireworks’. These were the seedlings I was most excited about this year, so in they went first 🙂

I did have a few too many zinnias this spring so was pretty generous about placing them in the border, but when the Brenary’s Giant scarlet began to open next to the pink gomphrena I immediately cringed. For about a week I thought it looked awful but now I quite like it. It reminded me of the first time I saw pictures of some of the late Christopher Lloyd’s magenta and pink plantings at Great Dixter. They also bothered me at first and I think my first thought was “grow up Chris and plant some lavender and white and pink instead of that mess”… but look at me now.

Scarlet zinnia with ‘fireworks’ gomphrena. Am I suffering from retinal fatigue or does it actually look nice together?

Maybe the green lawn and the parchment color of the feather reed grass tames it a bit but between this and the orange of the amaranthus I’m just plain pleased.

A very technicolor look with the yellow of the ‘Tiger Eyes’ sumac across the lawn.

Here’s another amaranthus photo-bomb.

Looking down towards the ‘less interesting’ end of the border.

Ok. One last amaranthus photo.

From the neglected, far end of the border, more amaranthus 🙂

You may have noticed a bright golden patch of marigolds in the border. The fall smack dab in the middle of my newfound love for the most offensively bright colors and I’m not sure I can resist planting a whole border of them next year. I had to smuggle these seeds out of my stingy older brother’s garden last year and was lucky that a few sprouted and survived July’s dry spell. He’s been letting them reseed for a couple years now and they still come up in a good range of colors on relatively short and large flowered plants.

A few marigolds putting on a nice end of summer show. More might be nicer, and by more I mean a whole border.

What to plant them with? I think they’ll go at the far end of the border, alongside the bright gold of a juniper, but other than that I have no plans. Should I back them up with some darker foliage plants?

Korean feather grass (Calamagrostis brachytricha) in front and pennisetum ‘Karley Rose’ towards the back. With the ‘Limelight’ hydrangea it all looks very calm and refined, but I think a nice border of marigolds will give it a good jolt of color!

We will see what happens. There’s a good chance it will all come down to whatever seeds sprout the best next spring, but in the meantime it’s nice to dream about having a more plan-comes-together kind of garden. That is until the snowdrops bloom. Once that happens my brain goes to mush and I’m lucky if I get anything planted 😉

Tuesday View: The Tropics 09.27.16

Sep28

Of course it’s late, and of course I’ve left this to the last minute, but I’d really like to join in with Cathy at Words and Herbs and get my Tuesday view up on time. I can’t be a day late with everything 🙂

The last Tuesday view of September

Cathy’s view has hints of autumn this week and I believe the same is happening here. The last two nights have been into the chilly zone, and friends North of here have had their first frosts. In the mountains, the maples are beginning to show color this week and if I can hope for anything it’s that there will be for another two or three weeks before the first frost hits here. It’s been a good run though, and I really can’t complain.

My little Canna x ehemanii surprised me with a bloom this summer, hopefully I can overwinter it and have twice as big a plant next year.

Color is at a peak this week and most everything is doing its best to flower and seed out before the final axe of winter falls. It’s a tropical garden after all, and there’s no long kiss goodnight. The first frost means it’s over.

My unknown peachy dahlia with ‘Black Forest’ rose, ‘fireworks’ gomphrena, and peach colored salvia splendens. Even though the light wasn’t too good for this photo the colors still just explode.

So I’ll just keep my fingers crossed and enjoy each day. Winter is too long to not soak up every last minute of summer (and this borrowed summer) while we still can. Have a great week!

sorta like suburbia

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Category Archives: annuals