I’ve learned some painful lessons as a gardener. If I don’t do my homework, lovely plants suffer.
On the other hand, others will overrun everything.
One sufferer is the beautiful false indigo (Baptisia). It settled in, and that was that. This beauty can’t be transplanted. I put it in half-sun fifteen years ago (instead of full sun), and realized a year later that it was struggling. A few beautiful blue flowers anxiously search for light, which dwindles as the trees around it grow larger. Yet, I can’t bear to kill it.
Planting in ignorant haste, I repent at embarrassed leisure.
The annual Eschscholtzia californica, or California poppy, brightens California’s highways and byways. It seeds where it wants to, loves full sun, blooms for a long time, and usually reseeds. This poppy is so accommodating it’ll accept alley dust and rubble piles, as well as decent beds. (Really rich soil makes it flop, so it refuses to grow inside the secret garden.)
Like Baptisia, it can’t be moved. That long taproot taps and roots, deeply.
Those wonderful orangey-yellow petals roll up at the first sign of rain. The delicate stems and tightly rolled flowers present a slim profile for occasional pummeling by wind or water. (A bird pooped out this gift twelve years ago, by the way.)
Thrilled every spring to welcome it back, I still scatter a packet of seeds in my baking hot alley garden every few years, just to be sure.
I’m addicted.
Ditto for another annual full-sun stunner, Nigella.
Once seen, never forgotten. It would win any beauty contest, hands down: judges would gape at those misty whiskers and spellbinding white, pink and blue flowers, and scratch in ‘winner.’
Frankly, it’s difficult to tear my eyes away, especially when it grows in groups. Its common name, when in full flower, is ‘love-in-a-mist.’ So aptly named! Visitors gape in admiration, and fall in love.
Finally, when the flowers finish, large green and burgundy-striped seedpods (the ‘devil-in-a-bush’ phase) elicit cries of pleasure from passersby.
Finally, when the pods evolve to a parchment color, I’ll harvest the little black seeds to scatter around next year. (I fill a large pot with the dry, bristle-y pods snipped from countless brown, spent stems, then empty each pod’s many seeds into a separate container while listening to favorite music or an audible book. Harvesting takes a long time.)
I have a love-hate relationship with spiderwort (Tradescantia). This tall bully stampedes through other flowers very quickly. So, though I’m captivated by the royal blue blooms amid those bunches of balls atop thick stalks, I mustn’t forget to chop half of the plant away every season, before it has a chance to overrun every neighbor.
This very firm stance has kept it in bounds. Barely. Though I’m nuts about the darn thing, allowing it to stay is akin to playing with fire.
The same firm treatment is in order for the spectacular yarrow. Those flowers are simply beautiful. Light gray foliage compliments its vivid colors. Coronation Gold, for instance, smartly sets off every plant around it. BUT. Yarrow, too, multiplies with great vigor. A firm hand and sharp spade every summer are necessary to control this rampant beauty.
Again, I can’t live without it. But I better not go senile any time soon.
I love gorgeous grasses- there are so many varieties- and two sorts- clumpers and gallopers. The latter will completely decimate the landscape. Never invite gallopers into your bed- unless you fashion a prison impossible to escape. I’ve done this with one handsome ‘Marlboro Man’ grass, Leymus. I buried a two-foot long Rubbermaid rubbish bin (with the bottom cut out) right up to the rim before planting this cool rogue 15 years ago. It’s sulked in there and tried to expand enough to split the bin’s edges, with no success. “Life is tough,” I snarl at it. “Adapt.”
I can’t imagine my garden without its outrageously handsome blue fronds.
Carex stricta ‘Bowles golden’ is another favorite perennial grass. Offer it decent soil, part shade and ample water and admire those graceful golden fronds, which never grow more than two/three feet long. I have half a dozen of these beauties in the secret garden.
Carex, and another special group of grasses, Miscanthus, are clumpers. They grow in a rough circle and spread very gently. Miscanthus, which loves sun, requires only a little chop-back every few years to reclaim its original circular shape. As it ages it eventually goes bald in the middle: simply chop off expanding edges, dig out the bald spot and pop in the transplant. Snicker-snack, the grass is back. (Some Miscanthus cultivars can grow eight feet tall, by the way.)
Most grasses’ very long, arching fronds mimic fountain spray, to my mind. And their colors- burgundy, vivid yellow, white, green, and even brown, orange and red, provide a visual surprise, because they stand out from the usual ocean of green foliage one normally views.
Properly situated and watered well the first year, grasses require only minimal maintenance after that. (To be precise, whack them to the ground with a chainsaw every April. That’s it.) Consider a grass garden if you have no time to tinker out there. All that movement and color, and ease of care, can offer a champion display.
Do your homework, though, or a few cool ghouls will gobble the garden gone.
On the other hand, others will overrun everything.
One sufferer is the beautiful false indigo (Baptisia). It settled in, and that was that. This beauty can’t be transplanted. I put it in half-sun fifteen years ago (instead of full sun), and realized a year later that it was struggling. A few beautiful blue flowers anxiously search for light, which dwindles as the trees around it grow larger. Yet, I can’t bear to kill it.
Planting in ignorant haste, I repent at embarrassed leisure.
The annual Eschscholtzia californica, or California poppy, brightens California’s highways and byways. It seeds where it wants to, loves full sun, blooms for a long time, and usually reseeds. This poppy is so accommodating it’ll accept alley dust and rubble piles, as well as decent beds. (Really rich soil makes it flop, so it refuses to grow inside the secret garden.)
Like Baptisia, it can’t be moved. That long taproot taps and roots, deeply.
Those wonderful orangey-yellow petals roll up at the first sign of rain. The delicate stems and tightly rolled flowers present a slim profile for occasional pummeling by wind or water. (A bird pooped out this gift twelve years ago, by the way.)
Thrilled every spring to welcome it back, I still scatter a packet of seeds in my baking hot alley garden every few years, just to be sure.
I’m addicted.
Ditto for another annual full-sun stunner, Nigella.
Once seen, never forgotten. It would win any beauty contest, hands down: judges would gape at those misty whiskers and spellbinding white, pink and blue flowers, and scratch in ‘winner.’
Frankly, it’s difficult to tear my eyes away, especially when it grows in groups. Its common name, when in full flower, is ‘love-in-a-mist.’ So aptly named! Visitors gape in admiration, and fall in love.
Finally, when the flowers finish, large green and burgundy-striped seedpods (the ‘devil-in-a-bush’ phase) elicit cries of pleasure from passersby.
Finally, when the pods evolve to a parchment color, I’ll harvest the little black seeds to scatter around next year. (I fill a large pot with the dry, bristle-y pods snipped from countless brown, spent stems, then empty each pod’s many seeds into a separate container while listening to favorite music or an audible book. Harvesting takes a long time.)
I have a love-hate relationship with spiderwort (Tradescantia). This tall bully stampedes through other flowers very quickly. So, though I’m captivated by the royal blue blooms amid those bunches of balls atop thick stalks, I mustn’t forget to chop half of the plant away every season, before it has a chance to overrun every neighbor.
This very firm stance has kept it in bounds. Barely. Though I’m nuts about the darn thing, allowing it to stay is akin to playing with fire.
The same firm treatment is in order for the spectacular yarrow. Those flowers are simply beautiful. Light gray foliage compliments its vivid colors. Coronation Gold, for instance, smartly sets off every plant around it. BUT. Yarrow, too, multiplies with great vigor. A firm hand and sharp spade every summer are necessary to control this rampant beauty.
Again, I can’t live without it. But I better not go senile any time soon.
I love gorgeous grasses- there are so many varieties- and two sorts- clumpers and gallopers. The latter will completely decimate the landscape. Never invite gallopers into your bed- unless you fashion a prison impossible to escape. I’ve done this with one handsome ‘Marlboro Man’ grass, Leymus. I buried a two-foot long Rubbermaid rubbish bin (with the bottom cut out) right up to the rim before planting this cool rogue 15 years ago. It’s sulked in there and tried to expand enough to split the bin’s edges, with no success. “Life is tough,” I snarl at it. “Adapt.”
I can’t imagine my garden without its outrageously handsome blue fronds.
Carex stricta ‘Bowles golden’ is another favorite perennial grass. Offer it decent soil, part shade and ample water and admire those graceful golden fronds, which never grow more than two/three feet long. I have half a dozen of these beauties in the secret garden.
Carex, and another special group of grasses, Miscanthus, are clumpers. They grow in a rough circle and spread very gently. Miscanthus, which loves sun, requires only a little chop-back every few years to reclaim its original circular shape. As it ages it eventually goes bald in the middle: simply chop off expanding edges, dig out the bald spot and pop in the transplant. Snicker-snack, the grass is back. (Some Miscanthus cultivars can grow eight feet tall, by the way.)
Most grasses’ very long, arching fronds mimic fountain spray, to my mind. And their colors- burgundy, vivid yellow, white, green, and even brown, orange and red, provide a visual surprise, because they stand out from the usual ocean of green foliage one normally views.
Properly situated and watered well the first year, grasses require only minimal maintenance after that. (To be precise, whack them to the ground with a chainsaw every April. That’s it.) Consider a grass garden if you have no time to tinker out there. All that movement and color, and ease of care, can offer a champion display.
Do your homework, though, or a few cool ghouls will gobble the garden gone.