Tuesday, October 23, 2012
It's not as spooky as it sounds…
When we gardeners refer to the good “bones” of our gardens, we are not talking about this month’s All Hallows Eve decorations, a new composting element, or the occasional remains of a vole or field mouse we might find. The “bones” of a garden are the elements that are permanent and that provide its structure: trees, shrubs, arbors, walls, trellises, walkways, and statuary or other sculptural elements. They represent the garden as it appears when the growing season ends, when the color and texture provided by blooming plant material is muted by snow and bare earth. The garden’s bones are the single most important design element of a garden — a garden with “good bones” looks right throughout the growing season and in the heart of winter. A …
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Fall is the time to plant for spring beauty in your garden.
My mailbox has been blooming[1] with bulb catalogues for the past few weeks. Lovely color photos of daffodils, tulips, scilla and grape hyacinths are spread out like a bouquet across every horizontal surface of my kitchen. Like many of my other gardening friends, I have been busy cutting back perennials and otherwise getting the garden ready for its winter rest, but I have seized a few minutes each day to peruse the bulb catalogues for spring bloom ideas. It seems counterintuitive as we diligently work to put our gardens to bed, but autumn is the time to choose and plant spring blooming bulbs. Spring blooming bulbs need to be planted several weeks before the ground freezes in order to become well established. They must not be planted …
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
That leaves September chores for the gardener.
Summer’s end finds this gardener hard at work preparing the garden for fall …taking inventory of what worked and what fizzled; cutting back any plant that has finished blooming or is diseased; and preparing the beds to receive new perennials. I am taking advantage of the cooler September weather to divide overgrown spring and summer blooming perennials such as black-eyed susans, daylilies, peonies, Asiatic lilies, moss pinks and yarrow. Dividing these overgrown perennials will result in healthier plants and provide me with free plant material to fill in bare areas in my garden beds. Dividing and replanting the divisions of black-eyed Susans, peonies and moss pinks is relatively easy; you simply cut into the crown of the plant with a shovel…
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Take advantage of end-of-season sales.
In my last column, I wrote about August as the perfect time to assess your garden, eliminate plants that did not perform well this season and determine what new plants you might choose to fill in the “holes” in your garden beds. After assessing my own garden, I have decided to completely eliminate the last small bit of lawn and to plant more hardy salvias, hardy hibiscus and a new crepe myrtle to fill in my garden “holes". My front lawn will now become a fieldstone-and-pea-gravel courtyard with enlarged side garden beds and a central circular garden bed. I have fallen in love with a large cast concrete ornamental urn that will become a focal point of the central bed. And I was able to capitalize on one of the gardener’s most sought after …
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
What went wrong, what went right …
Gardening in the hot, muggy days of August can seem like a marathon. We gardeners can only dream of sitting in our lounge chairs, sipping lemonade and enjoying the fruits (and vegetables) of our summer labor. Enjoy that cold drink in the afternoon after a day of assessing your garden this month — which plants did well and which plants did not. My garden beds are currently decked out in a riot of yellow blooms (rudbeckia), orange blooms (Echinacea) and blue flowers (salvia 'black and blue'). These plants did well despite the heat, humidity and lack of rainfall. I will keep these standouts and increase the number of hardy salvia. I have fallen in love with hardy salvia this summer, and I intend to add an orange-red variety (salvia ‘darcyi…
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
From common little border plant to stunning show stopper …
The summer of 2012 has become the summer of the begonia. These hardy plants have supplanted impatiens as the go-to bedding plant for sunny as well as shady areas. Drought, hot temperatures and a horrific case of downy mildew have left impatiens stunted and diseased ridden, but wax begonias (begonia semperflorens) have remained fresh and profusely blooming. Begonias are a popular choice for both indoor and outdoor gardening. They can bring a stunning variety of leaf forms to container gardening, and depending on the type of begonia, the blossom can bring a pop of form and color. The website of the American Begonia Society lists more than 1,500 named species and several thousand hybrids in the genus of Begonias. The most familiar of these …
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Have some daily beauty throughout the summer.
Throughout this hot, oppressive summer, I have come to rely on a cheery morning greeting from the daylilies in my garden. My bank of daylilies has been steadily sending up blossoms since late May with seemingly no regard to the high temperatures and sporadic watering. Daylilies are very hardy perennials that belong to the genus Hemerocallis and are not true lilies. The term hemerocallis comes from the Greek words hemera (day) and kallos (inherent beauty), and the term is apt — each flower opens to reveal its beauty for only one day. Luckily, each plant produces a succession of flower buds that bloom throughout the summer. There are many varieties of daylilies, and they can exhibit a wide range of colors, textures and bloom time. They all …
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Here's some tips for keeping your garden and lawn alive.
As we clean up the fallen limbs and windswept debris from our yards left by the ‘derecho’ that stormed through here Friday night, we must be careful to drink plenty of water and try to avoid the hot sun. Better yet, do as little as possible until the heat wave passes. This advice is good for the garden as well. Plants suffer from intense heat; that ‘wilted’ appearance gardeners are seeing today is a result of the effects of transpiration (a process similar to evaporation). Plants try to cope with intense heat by drawing up more water through the root system. This water is then released through stomata in the leaves of the plant. As the temperature rises, the rate of evaporation increases. When the soil is dry, plants can no longer absorb …
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
What to do with a bit of dappled light under the trees …
In the past two weeks, I’ve been exploring the kinds of shade that might be found in a garden: filtered or partial shade, dappled shade and deep shade. Last week I wrote about the satisfaction that a gardener can have in choosing versatile plants for an area that gets primarily filtered or partial shade. This column will focus on areas that get dappled shade — the kind of shade that occurs under the canopy of large-leafed trees or evergreens. It is also the kind of shade that is a welcome respite from summer sun and heat and where a constantly moving shade pattern protects under-story plants from the adverse effects of sun and heat. Dappled shade can be dry shade, as the leaves of the trees keep off a great deal of the rainfall, and tree …
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Make the most of filtered shade.
Last week I wrote about the three types of shady areas that might be found in a garden: filtered or partial shade, dappled shade and dense deep shade. This article focuses on the first type of shade garden and what plants might thrive in filtered shade. Because I am going to discuss a number of different plants, I’ve linked each kind of plant to information found on the Missouri Botanical Garden website — one of my favorite sources of information. Click on the link if you want detailed information and photographs. Filtered or partial shade is ideal for the shade garden. Sunlight is filtered through the leaves of large bushes or small-leafed trees like the dogwood or redbud. Vines on a pergola, or an open slat fence, can also provide this …
Nancy A Burns
10:09 am on Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Great article, thanks for using the hotlinks~~makes me want to start gardening again, after all the heat! Nancy more ›