Monday Morning Garden Report: 28 December 2020
The last MMGR for 2020. While walking from the McCabe parking lot to the garden shed this morning, I was thinking about how a gardener must become a story-teller, creating narratives for the self or others, envisioning plots for how plants will grow and relate with each other and with the environment, and on occasion recording how those plots are resolved and inevitably evolve into new plots. In the winter, there is a lot happening, but this morning feels so quiet, all the energy in hiding under a thin snow cover. I see no flowers in bloom, no evidence of recent growth. Everything would seem to be hunkered down, hibernating, waiting for the return of a warmer sun. But even in this quiet, motionless, frozen terrain, a few stories are revealed.
As I open the SW garden gate, I discover that someone has been here before me, fresh boot prints confirming an entrance into the garden since last night’s snowfall. The person, probably a man judging from the boot size, walked into the garden, stopped in the middle of the path, pivoted, and walked out. I wonder who the person was, what he was looking for. Was he a Coe person or a stranger from the neighborhood? Lost or just curious? Did he see anything? Winter gardens can be a visual challenge. With the fresh snow, everything has become white or brown or the dark green of the freshly trimmed yews.
The yews are the protagonists in a different story, one only I know. This past weekend I finished pruning the yews along the north and south borders. I’m pleased by their improved trimness, the absence of the scraggly branches, absences only I would likely appreciate. I regret I don’t know the history of the garden’s yews. Since this was designed to be an English-stye garden, it was inevitable yews would play an important role, and they certainly provide an effective visual background for the perennial flower beds. But all parts of the plant are poisonous, and all the animals apparently know this. Although the yews’ thick foliage would furnish a formidable shelter, I never see any birds or squirrels in or on the yews. No nests, no bird poop, nothing. On the ground behind the yews, I occasionally find rabbit turds, but that seems to be as close as any larger animals come. In fact, at the moment, I can’t recall ever seeing spider webs or insects on branches or any evidence of anyone spending time in the yews. The absence of invaders may help to explain their longevity. Two years ago we hiked to the Fortingall churchyard in the center of Scotland and visited the Fortingall Yew (Taxus baccata), an ancient yew estimated to be over 3,000 years old and one of the oldest living things in all of Europe. It’s not likely Coe’s yews will enjoy such longevity, but I have no intention to dig them up anytime soon, and they certainly had no problems dealing with the August derecho.
While the garden’s boot-wearing visitor did not stay long, a cat’s snow prints suggest a more diligent investigator. The cat entered by the same SW gate, followed the gravel path to the front of the garden, took the short series of steps onto the patio, jumped onto the wall around the patio, made its way to the crevice garden, walked around the back of the crevice garden, and continued behind the espalier flowering crab before the trail disappears. I notice that the espalier in winter looks like a formidable warrior. The frequent trimming, 2-3 times a year, has produced branches covered with thick knobs of dark gray bark. The tree gives the impression of a dedicated weight lifter, flexing a sequence of taut muscles, confident in winning the garden’s body-building contest.
The morning’s final story is of four juncos at the top of a flowering crab that has not been espaliered. My bird-identification skills are limited, but from 20 feet below, I can make out the light gray bellies and slate-colored heads and backs, leading me to conclude they are juncos. Ornithologists estimate there are over 600 million juncos in North America, more than all the human beings on our continent. Apparently four of them are in the Coe garden, evenly spaced on separate branches, three of them facing south into the wind, their feathers slightly puffed to improve insulation. While they remain motionless, the fourth junco is pecking at a branch below his perch, perhaps finding a small remnant of a red crab apple overlooked by previous diners. When I walked into the garden a couple of weeks ago, a squirrel was engaged in a frozen fruit feast on a smaller crab tree next to the gravel path, our heads perhaps two feet away from each other. He didn’t flinch and kept on eating. Today, no squirrel in sight, and the absence of any tracks across the garden’s lawns and flower beds would suggest today’s visitors have been one human, a cat exploring the terrain around the patio, and four juncos high in a tree, as far from the cat as possible. ~Bob
The last MMGR for 2020. While walking from the McCabe parking lot to the garden shed this morning, I was thinking about how a gardener must become a story-teller, creating narratives for the self or others, envisioning plots for how plants will grow and relate with each other and with the environment, and on occasion recording how those plots are resolved and inevitably evolve into new plots. In the winter, there is a lot happening, but this morning feels so quiet, all the energy in hiding under a thin snow cover. I see no flowers in bloom, no evidence of recent growth. Everything would seem to be hunkered down, hibernating, waiting for the return of a warmer sun. But even in this quiet, motionless, frozen terrain, a few stories are revealed.
As I open the SW garden gate, I discover that someone has been here before me, fresh boot prints confirming an entrance into the garden since last night’s snowfall. The person, probably a man judging from the boot size, walked into the garden, stopped in the middle of the path, pivoted, and walked out. I wonder who the person was, what he was looking for. Was he a Coe person or a stranger from the neighborhood? Lost or just curious? Did he see anything? Winter gardens can be a visual challenge. With the fresh snow, everything has become white or brown or the dark green of the freshly trimmed yews.
The yews are the protagonists in a different story, one only I know. This past weekend I finished pruning the yews along the north and south borders. I’m pleased by their improved trimness, the absence of the scraggly branches, absences only I would likely appreciate. I regret I don’t know the history of the garden’s yews. Since this was designed to be an English-stye garden, it was inevitable yews would play an important role, and they certainly provide an effective visual background for the perennial flower beds. But all parts of the plant are poisonous, and all the animals apparently know this. Although the yews’ thick foliage would furnish a formidable shelter, I never see any birds or squirrels in or on the yews. No nests, no bird poop, nothing. On the ground behind the yews, I occasionally find rabbit turds, but that seems to be as close as any larger animals come. In fact, at the moment, I can’t recall ever seeing spider webs or insects on branches or any evidence of anyone spending time in the yews. The absence of invaders may help to explain their longevity. Two years ago we hiked to the Fortingall churchyard in the center of Scotland and visited the Fortingall Yew (Taxus baccata), an ancient yew estimated to be over 3,000 years old and one of the oldest living things in all of Europe. It’s not likely Coe’s yews will enjoy such longevity, but I have no intention to dig them up anytime soon, and they certainly had no problems dealing with the August derecho.
While the garden’s boot-wearing visitor did not stay long, a cat’s snow prints suggest a more diligent investigator. The cat entered by the same SW gate, followed the gravel path to the front of the garden, took the short series of steps onto the patio, jumped onto the wall around the patio, made its way to the crevice garden, walked around the back of the crevice garden, and continued behind the espalier flowering crab before the trail disappears. I notice that the espalier in winter looks like a formidable warrior. The frequent trimming, 2-3 times a year, has produced branches covered with thick knobs of dark gray bark. The tree gives the impression of a dedicated weight lifter, flexing a sequence of taut muscles, confident in winning the garden’s body-building contest.
The morning’s final story is of four juncos at the top of a flowering crab that has not been espaliered. My bird-identification skills are limited, but from 20 feet below, I can make out the light gray bellies and slate-colored heads and backs, leading me to conclude they are juncos. Ornithologists estimate there are over 600 million juncos in North America, more than all the human beings on our continent. Apparently four of them are in the Coe garden, evenly spaced on separate branches, three of them facing south into the wind, their feathers slightly puffed to improve insulation. While they remain motionless, the fourth junco is pecking at a branch below his perch, perhaps finding a small remnant of a red crab apple overlooked by previous diners. When I walked into the garden a couple of weeks ago, a squirrel was engaged in a frozen fruit feast on a smaller crab tree next to the gravel path, our heads perhaps two feet away from each other. He didn’t flinch and kept on eating. Today, no squirrel in sight, and the absence of any tracks across the garden’s lawns and flower beds would suggest today’s visitors have been one human, a cat exploring the terrain around the patio, and four juncos high in a tree, as far from the cat as possible. ~Bob
Monday Morning Garden Report : 21 December 2020
While a few notes for this report were hastily recorded on Monday, it is now Wednesday when I finally open my word processor–and thus my report will cover the first three days of a week which culminates with a Friday Christmas. This morning when I arrived at the garden about 9:30, the temperature was in the upper 40s and before noon the gazebo’s thermometer was proclaiming 51F. Since we enjoyed similar weather on Monday and Tuesday, I’ve had three consecutive days in December when I could work in the garden without a winter coat.
Wind directions are sometimes difficult to discern within the garden walls, but on Monday I usually felt the wind was from the south or southeast. The north side of the garden, which receives little or no direct sun in December and January, still had large patches of snow and ice; in contrast, the south side only had thin snow smidgins in shady areas. Despite the appealing outdoor temperatures, I began my day on Monday by working inside, cleaning up the garden shed and the greenhouse. The last four months, both areas have become dumping stations, and I knew it would be difficult to work in those two spaces until after the floors had been swept, and the piles of books, papers, tools, plants, garden supplies, etc were either thrown away or placed in more sensible locations. At the moment, the tender perennials in the greenhouse don’t yet have assigned parking spaces–or their space is occupied by some object requiring removal. Once the rugs were shaken and the floors swept, the day involved moving objects hither and thither, attempting to create an illusion of rational order. Most of the 75+ plants in the greenhouse need to be repotted, which will occur once serious winter weather restrains my inclinations for outdoor gardening.
On Monday afternoon I returned to a job initiated two months ago: pruning the yews in the northeast and southwest borders. I usually prune these evergreens early in the summer after the emergence of new growth, but that trimming never happened this year. I have the impression yews can be pruned in any season, and the late fall does offer a distinctive advantage: the plants in front of the yews have disappeared for the winter, making it easier to move the ladder around for reaching the yew tops. And, indeed, the trimming on Monday went much faster than it has in the past–though I still need a couple more hours for finishing up. One challenge is that the days are so much shorter in December than in June, and I would prefer to do this work when I can see what I’m doing. There is also the challenge on the north side because the August wind storm permanently shoved the fence into the yews, restricting access to the back of the yews. Despite this obstruction, I should be able to conclude this year’s clipping after Christmas.
On Tuesday, the temperature reached 50, and I spent most of the afternoon engaged in one of my favorite jobs: cleaning dead vegetation from a perennial bed. I like this work because at the end of a couple hours, I can see that something has been accomplished: the area looks “better” than it did before. Of course, for some winter inhabitants, the removal of the vegetation means the loss of food and shelter, but there are many lingering “wild” areas around the margins of the garden to fulfill those needs. Today’s primary focus was on the “G” bed, including the rain garden. I began by cutting back the Lysimachia ciliata (a dark purple-leaved loosestrife) and the shriveled hosta foliage behind the SE garden bench. When I first started working in the garden in 2014, it took over a year before I eventually figured out the hosta’s impressive neighbor was a loosestrife, a relative of Lysimachia clethroides, the gooseneck running rampant across much of the east end of the garden. I love the curved white racemes of the gooseneck loosestrife, but its relentless rhizomes are too aggressive for most areas of the garden. The purple-leaf species has a similar dense root system–in fact it was the similarity in the roots that confirmed for me its loosestrife identity–but they are not nearly so aggressively expansive.
While removing dead daisy, daylily, penstemon, Platycodon, Siberian iris, Queen Anne’s lace, and peony foliage from the ‘peninsula’ (the area between the rain garden’s two drainage channels), I was surprised that the exposed black soil was not frozen. Using my Japanese hand hoe, I could dig up many of the goosenecks and their accompanying roots, most of which were preparing to produce new plants. After transporting the piles of foliage and roots to a compost bin, I removed the bamboo cane pole that came with the Crimson Queen Weeping Japanese maple planted two years ago. The maple was chosen to replace an ornamental willow that was an unwise choice, proving to be visually bland, almost invisible. Given the maple’s potential difficulty surviving a super-cold Iowa winter (it’s a borderline Zone 5), it may also be an unwise choice, but I thought the burgundy foliage and curved, weeping form of a mature 10' tall maple would be perfect for the space. A similar maple did well in our back yard for over 15 years, convincing my heart to over-rule my head. I selected one of the most cold-hardy cultivars I could find. To its credit, it has survived two dry summers, one Iowa winter, and one derecho–and in two years has grown a foot taller. So far, so good.
One other accomplishment on Tuesday was that I obtained mid-day photos of the seasonal sundial recording the winter solstice. Technically, I was one day and 20 minutes late but close enough for my purposes. Because of the soil freezing and thawing, the sundial was not quite level, compromising its seasonal accuracy. Once I had adjusted the sundial, the December 22 shadow was right on the winter solstice sweet spot. [See photo that accompanies this report.]
This morning (Wednesday, 23 December) it was almost 50F when I started working. It was quite comfortable but also quite windy with gusts of perhaps 35-40 mph. Large, low-level cumulus clouds were racing across the sky from west to east, a cold front on the way (by midnight, the temperature had dropped over 40 degrees). I spent most of the morning cleaning up the beds directly in front of the patio, primarily removing old foliage from the coreopsis, tall stonecrops, and several large colonies of cranesbill. In the fall the Geranium sanguineum produces fresh, ground-hugging green leaves beneath the summer’s old stems and foliage. In the process of removing this foliage I uncovered several small spring bulbs just beginning to emerge, probably Chiondoxa (glory-of-the-snow) or Eranthis hyemalis (winter aconites). They should be among the first flowers to bloom in February or March.
While a few notes for this report were hastily recorded on Monday, it is now Wednesday when I finally open my word processor–and thus my report will cover the first three days of a week which culminates with a Friday Christmas. This morning when I arrived at the garden about 9:30, the temperature was in the upper 40s and before noon the gazebo’s thermometer was proclaiming 51F. Since we enjoyed similar weather on Monday and Tuesday, I’ve had three consecutive days in December when I could work in the garden without a winter coat.
Wind directions are sometimes difficult to discern within the garden walls, but on Monday I usually felt the wind was from the south or southeast. The north side of the garden, which receives little or no direct sun in December and January, still had large patches of snow and ice; in contrast, the south side only had thin snow smidgins in shady areas. Despite the appealing outdoor temperatures, I began my day on Monday by working inside, cleaning up the garden shed and the greenhouse. The last four months, both areas have become dumping stations, and I knew it would be difficult to work in those two spaces until after the floors had been swept, and the piles of books, papers, tools, plants, garden supplies, etc were either thrown away or placed in more sensible locations. At the moment, the tender perennials in the greenhouse don’t yet have assigned parking spaces–or their space is occupied by some object requiring removal. Once the rugs were shaken and the floors swept, the day involved moving objects hither and thither, attempting to create an illusion of rational order. Most of the 75+ plants in the greenhouse need to be repotted, which will occur once serious winter weather restrains my inclinations for outdoor gardening.
On Monday afternoon I returned to a job initiated two months ago: pruning the yews in the northeast and southwest borders. I usually prune these evergreens early in the summer after the emergence of new growth, but that trimming never happened this year. I have the impression yews can be pruned in any season, and the late fall does offer a distinctive advantage: the plants in front of the yews have disappeared for the winter, making it easier to move the ladder around for reaching the yew tops. And, indeed, the trimming on Monday went much faster than it has in the past–though I still need a couple more hours for finishing up. One challenge is that the days are so much shorter in December than in June, and I would prefer to do this work when I can see what I’m doing. There is also the challenge on the north side because the August wind storm permanently shoved the fence into the yews, restricting access to the back of the yews. Despite this obstruction, I should be able to conclude this year’s clipping after Christmas.
On Tuesday, the temperature reached 50, and I spent most of the afternoon engaged in one of my favorite jobs: cleaning dead vegetation from a perennial bed. I like this work because at the end of a couple hours, I can see that something has been accomplished: the area looks “better” than it did before. Of course, for some winter inhabitants, the removal of the vegetation means the loss of food and shelter, but there are many lingering “wild” areas around the margins of the garden to fulfill those needs. Today’s primary focus was on the “G” bed, including the rain garden. I began by cutting back the Lysimachia ciliata (a dark purple-leaved loosestrife) and the shriveled hosta foliage behind the SE garden bench. When I first started working in the garden in 2014, it took over a year before I eventually figured out the hosta’s impressive neighbor was a loosestrife, a relative of Lysimachia clethroides, the gooseneck running rampant across much of the east end of the garden. I love the curved white racemes of the gooseneck loosestrife, but its relentless rhizomes are too aggressive for most areas of the garden. The purple-leaf species has a similar dense root system–in fact it was the similarity in the roots that confirmed for me its loosestrife identity–but they are not nearly so aggressively expansive.
While removing dead daisy, daylily, penstemon, Platycodon, Siberian iris, Queen Anne’s lace, and peony foliage from the ‘peninsula’ (the area between the rain garden’s two drainage channels), I was surprised that the exposed black soil was not frozen. Using my Japanese hand hoe, I could dig up many of the goosenecks and their accompanying roots, most of which were preparing to produce new plants. After transporting the piles of foliage and roots to a compost bin, I removed the bamboo cane pole that came with the Crimson Queen Weeping Japanese maple planted two years ago. The maple was chosen to replace an ornamental willow that was an unwise choice, proving to be visually bland, almost invisible. Given the maple’s potential difficulty surviving a super-cold Iowa winter (it’s a borderline Zone 5), it may also be an unwise choice, but I thought the burgundy foliage and curved, weeping form of a mature 10' tall maple would be perfect for the space. A similar maple did well in our back yard for over 15 years, convincing my heart to over-rule my head. I selected one of the most cold-hardy cultivars I could find. To its credit, it has survived two dry summers, one Iowa winter, and one derecho–and in two years has grown a foot taller. So far, so good.
One other accomplishment on Tuesday was that I obtained mid-day photos of the seasonal sundial recording the winter solstice. Technically, I was one day and 20 minutes late but close enough for my purposes. Because of the soil freezing and thawing, the sundial was not quite level, compromising its seasonal accuracy. Once I had adjusted the sundial, the December 22 shadow was right on the winter solstice sweet spot. [See photo that accompanies this report.]
This morning (Wednesday, 23 December) it was almost 50F when I started working. It was quite comfortable but also quite windy with gusts of perhaps 35-40 mph. Large, low-level cumulus clouds were racing across the sky from west to east, a cold front on the way (by midnight, the temperature had dropped over 40 degrees). I spent most of the morning cleaning up the beds directly in front of the patio, primarily removing old foliage from the coreopsis, tall stonecrops, and several large colonies of cranesbill. In the fall the Geranium sanguineum produces fresh, ground-hugging green leaves beneath the summer’s old stems and foliage. In the process of removing this foliage I uncovered several small spring bulbs just beginning to emerge, probably Chiondoxa (glory-of-the-snow) or Eranthis hyemalis (winter aconites). They should be among the first flowers to bloom in February or March.
Monday Morning Garden Report: Monday, 7 December 2020
Pearl Harbor Day and also my son’s 44th birthday. I spent the morning periodically thinking about those two events–one of which I recall quite vividly–while walking around in the garden, taking over 130 photos, and planning what I hope to accomplish before winter takes over. The weather forecast is for unseasonably warm temperatures and no rain or snow until the end of the week. My dream is to have 2-3 days when the ground is not frozen, and I can finish planting more spring bulbs.
This weekend I decided to include in the fall issue of The Garden Quarto a quote from the English gardener Helen Dillon, a passage saved in my commonplace journal: “The most serious gardening I do would seem very strange to an onlooker, for it involves hours of walking round in circles, apparently doing nothing.” That’s how I felt this morning, two hours of serious gardening but all I was doing was walking around and taking random photos. Here are a few items that caught my attention.
• Every fall I’m surprised by how many plants are already displaying new foliage. In most instances the new spears and leaves are keeping a low profile, close to the ground. But hidden among the garden’s dominant browns and grays are many examples of new growth:
–Hundreds of daffodil and snowflake shoots.
–Nearly all the sedums and stonecrops.
–Grape hyacinths and ornamental onions.
–Perennial coreopsis and ox-eye daisies.
–Penstemons and hollyhocks and cranesbills.
–The silver-gray foliage of the lamb’s ear and snow-in-summer.
–The tansy’s fernlike foliage, surrounded in the “D” bed by the green basal leaves of Scabiosa caucasica (pincushion flower) and Lychnis chalcedonica (Jerusalem cross).
–Several green and burgundy rugs of ground cover plants (ajuga, barren strawberries, purple-leaf loosestrife).
–Several self-seeding annuals that are already germinating, including swarms of baby Nigella damascena (commonly known as “love-in-a-mist” or “devil-in-a-bush”) sprinkled through the “L” bed in front of the patio. In and around the tulip/dahlia beds in the middle of the garden are hundreds of our Midwest native tickseed..
–Among the oak leaves in the crevice garden is an ice plant’s freshly minted growth.
• When I scroll through my Monday morning photographs, I’m intrigued by how frequently I’ve focused on warped, desiccated flowers–reminding me of my web slideshow two years ago featuring old zinnia blossoms. While the flowers certainly look worn out and ravaged, I find myself emotionally attracted to their resilience. Although their bright pollinator-enticing colors are gone, their quieter, autumnal demeanors feel so perfect for the season. Most will become a meal for a hungry organism (perhaps for winter-time birds, perhaps for bacteria in a compost pile), but some will produce new descendants in the spring. I am particularly attracted to the seedheads of the purple coneflowers and the New England asters–both members of the huge aster/sunflower family. The coneflower seedheads are frequently missing many seeds, revealing the fibonacci spirals that ensure a maximum number of seeds in a minimal space. The fluffy aster seedheads are smaller. The individual seeds look like tiny orange match sticks in a field of starched white threads. [Photo of aster seedheads at the end of this report.] The camera images serve as my magnifying glass, enabling me to expand their dimensions so I can more easily see their most intimate qualities.
• Although it is getting late in the year, I’m still hoping to plant more spring-flowering bulbs. According to the weather forecast, we should have a week of unseasonably warm and dry weather before our Indian summer is over and the ground freezes. In the next few days, I would like to fill in these gaps:
–Plant 100 Siberian blue squill in the “H” bed in front of the red twig dogwood. I had intended to remove the dogwood this fall and replace it with ornamental grasses (a combination of miscanthus, switch grass, and pinnesetum), but that job never got done. Even if I do dispatch the dogwood next year, the squill will still be in a good location.
–I have 100 snowdrops that need planting. I’ll put some along the gravel walkways in front of the patio and at the east end of the garden; I might also plant a few in the flower bed surrounding the sun dial in front of the gazebo.
–I have about 75 tulip bulbs, four varieties. Some of the red & yellow mix can go in the bed surrounding the espalier flowering crab. That area should still have a few red survivors from a tulip-planting binge two years ago. The remainder of the new tulips can go into a sunken wood tub in the “G” bed, their presence adding a visual zip to that bed in the spring. South of those tulips, I will try to remove some of the indomitable vetch and plant my remaining Elegant Lady tulips.
–I still have a bag of Leucojum (spring snowflakes) and I would like to plant those among the hostas behind the SE bench–an arrangement which will match with the Leucojum I’ve planted among the hostas behind the NW and SW benches. I should have enough snowflakes to plant a few in the fern bed behind that hosta bed.
–One job that will take some time is planting more spring bulbs in the “D” bed, an area currently over run by New England asters and Canada goldenrod. I would like to remove all of the goldenrod, and I need to do that now while the stalks and attached seedheads help me locate the plants and their extensive rhizome system. Once the goldenrod are gone, I can fill in that area with pheasant-eye daffodils, hoping they will complement a colony of white daffodils that are long-time residents in that area. The challenge is that last spring I failed to mark the precise boundaries of the existing gang of daffodils.
–I still have a bag of reticulated iris bulbs intended for the crevice garden. That’s another task that will first require some preparation–e.g., raking out the leaves that have blown in from the oak tree next to the Nassif House and pulling up the cleomes (while ensuring their seed is well distributed across the bed’s gravel). Once the bed is cleaned up, the planting will not take very long.
I feel like for the last two months it has been virtually non-stop bulb planting. Because of the devastation of our backyard at home due to the August 10 derecho, I dug up all our spring-flowering daffodils and Siberian squill and started replanting in early October. I have made no attempt to maintain an accurate bulb count, but I would estimate at home I have re-planted 4-5,000 bulbs in the last two months. The numbers are much smaller at the Coe garden, but by the end of this week, we will have added at least 2,000 more bulbs. Two years ago, one major push was to create a large swath of crocus blooms across the east lawn. It will be interesting to see how many of those bulbs have survived and if they have begun to naturalize and expand their territory. By the end of this week, the fall planting will be finished–except for throwing around some native wildflower seeds–and we enter the winter season when I spend my days cleaning garden tools, catching up on old writing projects, looking after a few plants in the greenhouse, perusing seed and garden catalogs, and patiently waiting for those early spring flowers to bloom. ~Bob
Pearl Harbor Day and also my son’s 44th birthday. I spent the morning periodically thinking about those two events–one of which I recall quite vividly–while walking around in the garden, taking over 130 photos, and planning what I hope to accomplish before winter takes over. The weather forecast is for unseasonably warm temperatures and no rain or snow until the end of the week. My dream is to have 2-3 days when the ground is not frozen, and I can finish planting more spring bulbs.
This weekend I decided to include in the fall issue of The Garden Quarto a quote from the English gardener Helen Dillon, a passage saved in my commonplace journal: “The most serious gardening I do would seem very strange to an onlooker, for it involves hours of walking round in circles, apparently doing nothing.” That’s how I felt this morning, two hours of serious gardening but all I was doing was walking around and taking random photos. Here are a few items that caught my attention.
• Every fall I’m surprised by how many plants are already displaying new foliage. In most instances the new spears and leaves are keeping a low profile, close to the ground. But hidden among the garden’s dominant browns and grays are many examples of new growth:
–Hundreds of daffodil and snowflake shoots.
–Nearly all the sedums and stonecrops.
–Grape hyacinths and ornamental onions.
–Perennial coreopsis and ox-eye daisies.
–Penstemons and hollyhocks and cranesbills.
–The silver-gray foliage of the lamb’s ear and snow-in-summer.
–The tansy’s fernlike foliage, surrounded in the “D” bed by the green basal leaves of Scabiosa caucasica (pincushion flower) and Lychnis chalcedonica (Jerusalem cross).
–Several green and burgundy rugs of ground cover plants (ajuga, barren strawberries, purple-leaf loosestrife).
–Several self-seeding annuals that are already germinating, including swarms of baby Nigella damascena (commonly known as “love-in-a-mist” or “devil-in-a-bush”) sprinkled through the “L” bed in front of the patio. In and around the tulip/dahlia beds in the middle of the garden are hundreds of our Midwest native tickseed..
–Among the oak leaves in the crevice garden is an ice plant’s freshly minted growth.
• When I scroll through my Monday morning photographs, I’m intrigued by how frequently I’ve focused on warped, desiccated flowers–reminding me of my web slideshow two years ago featuring old zinnia blossoms. While the flowers certainly look worn out and ravaged, I find myself emotionally attracted to their resilience. Although their bright pollinator-enticing colors are gone, their quieter, autumnal demeanors feel so perfect for the season. Most will become a meal for a hungry organism (perhaps for winter-time birds, perhaps for bacteria in a compost pile), but some will produce new descendants in the spring. I am particularly attracted to the seedheads of the purple coneflowers and the New England asters–both members of the huge aster/sunflower family. The coneflower seedheads are frequently missing many seeds, revealing the fibonacci spirals that ensure a maximum number of seeds in a minimal space. The fluffy aster seedheads are smaller. The individual seeds look like tiny orange match sticks in a field of starched white threads. [Photo of aster seedheads at the end of this report.] The camera images serve as my magnifying glass, enabling me to expand their dimensions so I can more easily see their most intimate qualities.
• Although it is getting late in the year, I’m still hoping to plant more spring-flowering bulbs. According to the weather forecast, we should have a week of unseasonably warm and dry weather before our Indian summer is over and the ground freezes. In the next few days, I would like to fill in these gaps:
–Plant 100 Siberian blue squill in the “H” bed in front of the red twig dogwood. I had intended to remove the dogwood this fall and replace it with ornamental grasses (a combination of miscanthus, switch grass, and pinnesetum), but that job never got done. Even if I do dispatch the dogwood next year, the squill will still be in a good location.
–I have 100 snowdrops that need planting. I’ll put some along the gravel walkways in front of the patio and at the east end of the garden; I might also plant a few in the flower bed surrounding the sun dial in front of the gazebo.
–I have about 75 tulip bulbs, four varieties. Some of the red & yellow mix can go in the bed surrounding the espalier flowering crab. That area should still have a few red survivors from a tulip-planting binge two years ago. The remainder of the new tulips can go into a sunken wood tub in the “G” bed, their presence adding a visual zip to that bed in the spring. South of those tulips, I will try to remove some of the indomitable vetch and plant my remaining Elegant Lady tulips.
–I still have a bag of Leucojum (spring snowflakes) and I would like to plant those among the hostas behind the SE bench–an arrangement which will match with the Leucojum I’ve planted among the hostas behind the NW and SW benches. I should have enough snowflakes to plant a few in the fern bed behind that hosta bed.
–One job that will take some time is planting more spring bulbs in the “D” bed, an area currently over run by New England asters and Canada goldenrod. I would like to remove all of the goldenrod, and I need to do that now while the stalks and attached seedheads help me locate the plants and their extensive rhizome system. Once the goldenrod are gone, I can fill in that area with pheasant-eye daffodils, hoping they will complement a colony of white daffodils that are long-time residents in that area. The challenge is that last spring I failed to mark the precise boundaries of the existing gang of daffodils.
–I still have a bag of reticulated iris bulbs intended for the crevice garden. That’s another task that will first require some preparation–e.g., raking out the leaves that have blown in from the oak tree next to the Nassif House and pulling up the cleomes (while ensuring their seed is well distributed across the bed’s gravel). Once the bed is cleaned up, the planting will not take very long.
I feel like for the last two months it has been virtually non-stop bulb planting. Because of the devastation of our backyard at home due to the August 10 derecho, I dug up all our spring-flowering daffodils and Siberian squill and started replanting in early October. I have made no attempt to maintain an accurate bulb count, but I would estimate at home I have re-planted 4-5,000 bulbs in the last two months. The numbers are much smaller at the Coe garden, but by the end of this week, we will have added at least 2,000 more bulbs. Two years ago, one major push was to create a large swath of crocus blooms across the east lawn. It will be interesting to see how many of those bulbs have survived and if they have begun to naturalize and expand their territory. By the end of this week, the fall planting will be finished–except for throwing around some native wildflower seeds–and we enter the winter season when I spend my days cleaning garden tools, catching up on old writing projects, looking after a few plants in the greenhouse, perusing seed and garden catalogs, and patiently waiting for those early spring flowers to bloom. ~Bob
Monday Morning Garden Report: 30 November 2020
For most of the month I’ve been working in other gardens–primarily my backyard at home–but the past week I’ve finally turned my attention to the Coe garden. While there is an enormous amount of fall cleanup that needs to occur, the first order of business has been digging up tender perennials that don’t like Iowa winters and planting spring-flowering bulbs. Here is a quick overview of some recent efforts.
• Last Monday, with the help of two old friends, we resurrected the dahlia tubers in the “E” and “J” beds and prepared them for winter storage in two containers of peat. The August derecho blasted the plants, eliminating any chance of a significant bloom season, but the roots have thrived and we should have an ample supply of dahlia tubers for planting next May. We also dug up the gladiolas in one of the raised “J” beds. Their first year in the garden, they produced no blooms but the roots doubled in size, inspiring optimism they will produce some flowers next year. And, finally, we dug up the Acidanthera bicolor, a South African native and close relative to the gladiola family. Most of these “peacock orchids” had been steady bloomers, producing their gorgeous and fragrant flowers into early October.
• In place of the dahlias, our three-person team of gardeners planted tulips. In the larger north-side “J” bed, we planted a mix of 100 red and yellow tulips and in the front of the bed 100 Tarda species tulips. At the back of the bed we planted five Fritillaria imperialis ‘Rubra Maxima,’ which I’m hoping will be an appealing partner with the tulips, though I have no guarantee they will all bloom at the same time. In the southside “E” bed, I planted about 80 Blushing Lady tulips, the same variety of yellow-rose tulips residing there last year. By the time I started putting the Blushing Ladies in the ground, it was well past sundown and even with the garden lights it was hard to keep track of which holes did or did not have tulip bulbs. Mixed in with these new bulbs should be a few progeny from last year’s planting.
• On Friday I spent four hours in the afternoon planting more bulbs. Twenty Leucojum (spring snowflakes) were introduced into a patch of grape hyacinths in the “L” bed, an effort to provide an extended sequence of blooms after the hyacinths have finished with their show. While planting the bulbs, I was surprised to discover a number of baby hollyhocks whose leaves had been eaten by a recent visitor, perhaps a rabbit or groundhog? I planted another dozen Leucojum among an existing colony of snowflakes in the bed behind the NW bench. Fortunately, it is easy to locate the vacant areas because the Leucojum and ornamental onions in this area are already sending up fresh, green shoots. The nearby Brunnera have also acquired new foliage in the last month, though those lovely leaves will probably be killed by the deep freeze temperatures in December and January.
• Along the stepping stones in the “L” bed, I planted 25-30 Elegant Lady tulips (white and mauve-pink blooms) in an area where previously had been a clump of New England asters and recalcitrant volunteer rose bushes I have tried to remove on several previous occasions. Another group of Elegant Lady tulips were planted in the “F” bed (in the southeast corner of the garden), stretching across the middle of the bed in front of the perennial sunflowers and a Baptisia. A few feet from the Elegant Ladies and in front of the Sioux Blue Indian grass, I planted about 15 Lava tulips, hoping their bright red/yellow combination might add a visual zip to this area for a couple of weeks in late April or early May. I finished the day by planting 20 Blushing Lady tulips in the middle of the “A1" bed south of the patio. This planting moved rather slowly because Blushing Lady tulips had been planted in this same space last year, and I thought we would have some holdover bulbs from that planting, but I only came across two survivors, both quite small.
• On Saturday I returned to Coe for more bulb planting, concentrating this day’s efforts on alliums and daffodils. I began by planting 5 Allium schubertii in the “L” bed, inserted in the midst of an established Siberian Iris colony. These bulbs are quite large and should produce a tall, late-blooming allium that, I hope, will enable a second round of blooms emerging from the same space. I then planted 25 Allium christophii bulbs in the “K” bed, mixed in with the barren strawberries--another effort to use an existing group of plants as a backdrop for the later flowering alliums. I concluded my allium effort by planting a small group of A. christophii at the back of the coneflowers at the other end of the “K” bed.
• I finished this Saturday morning at Coe by planting about 40 Tete-a-Tete daffodils at the east end of the “A1" bed in three groups: one group between two hostas in the raised section of that bed and two groups near the Millennium alliums. [At the end of this report is a photo of Tete-a-Tete daffodils in bloom on April 7.] In the same bed I planted about 15 Pride of Lions daffodils next to the ramp leading onto the patio. The Pride of Lions should start blooming as the Tete-a-Tete are finishing up, giving this area perhaps three or more weeks of cheery yellow blooms in the spring. I concluded my work by removing several volunteer elderberry bushes that appeared last spring in the middle of the bed and planting twenty Lava tulips across the back of the bed.
• On Sunday morning I returned to Coe about 9:00 a.m. The temperature was around 40F and it was windy, but the garden walls provided some protection and I worked primarily in sunlit areas. Most of the morning was spent planting alliums and snowflakes. I began in the “C” bed, planting Allium christophii among the grape hyacinths, replicating what I had previously attempted with the Leucojum in the grape hyacinths in the “L” bed. I also planted a dozen allium randomly distributed in the astilbe colony in the “D” bed. Crossing over to the north side of the garden, I planted Leucojum aestivum to fill in two open areas in the raised “J” beds. While working in those beds, I was struck by the beautiful silver-gray foliage of the Cerastium tomentosum; the severe pruning I gave these snow-in-summer last summer has really paid off, even producing several freshly minted white blossoms. I recently read that one of the common “denominators” of gardening is “the simple joy of growing something you love.” C. tomentosum is certainly among those plants that brings me a “simple joy.”
• I then turned my attention to the east end of the “I” and “H” beds in the northeast corner of the garden. On each side of the plexiglass panel with the F. Bacon quote, I planted two groups of Leucojum aestivum. Behind the NE bench I planted several groups of Allium sphaerocephalon, a total of 50 bulbs. I finished this allium spree by planting 15 big globe alliums mixed in with colonies of Siberian Iris: 5 Mount Everest and 5 Giant White alliums in the iris in front of the gazebo and a large purple-blooming allium mixed in with two clumps of Siberian iris in front of the shrub rose in the “G” bed.
I still have some smaller bulbs to plant, including several additions to the rock garden. I’m hoping that at some point in December we will have a couple of days where temperatures stay above freezing and the soil is not frozen, enabling me to get these remaining bulbs into the ground.
For most of the month I’ve been working in other gardens–primarily my backyard at home–but the past week I’ve finally turned my attention to the Coe garden. While there is an enormous amount of fall cleanup that needs to occur, the first order of business has been digging up tender perennials that don’t like Iowa winters and planting spring-flowering bulbs. Here is a quick overview of some recent efforts.
• Last Monday, with the help of two old friends, we resurrected the dahlia tubers in the “E” and “J” beds and prepared them for winter storage in two containers of peat. The August derecho blasted the plants, eliminating any chance of a significant bloom season, but the roots have thrived and we should have an ample supply of dahlia tubers for planting next May. We also dug up the gladiolas in one of the raised “J” beds. Their first year in the garden, they produced no blooms but the roots doubled in size, inspiring optimism they will produce some flowers next year. And, finally, we dug up the Acidanthera bicolor, a South African native and close relative to the gladiola family. Most of these “peacock orchids” had been steady bloomers, producing their gorgeous and fragrant flowers into early October.
• In place of the dahlias, our three-person team of gardeners planted tulips. In the larger north-side “J” bed, we planted a mix of 100 red and yellow tulips and in the front of the bed 100 Tarda species tulips. At the back of the bed we planted five Fritillaria imperialis ‘Rubra Maxima,’ which I’m hoping will be an appealing partner with the tulips, though I have no guarantee they will all bloom at the same time. In the southside “E” bed, I planted about 80 Blushing Lady tulips, the same variety of yellow-rose tulips residing there last year. By the time I started putting the Blushing Ladies in the ground, it was well past sundown and even with the garden lights it was hard to keep track of which holes did or did not have tulip bulbs. Mixed in with these new bulbs should be a few progeny from last year’s planting.
• On Friday I spent four hours in the afternoon planting more bulbs. Twenty Leucojum (spring snowflakes) were introduced into a patch of grape hyacinths in the “L” bed, an effort to provide an extended sequence of blooms after the hyacinths have finished with their show. While planting the bulbs, I was surprised to discover a number of baby hollyhocks whose leaves had been eaten by a recent visitor, perhaps a rabbit or groundhog? I planted another dozen Leucojum among an existing colony of snowflakes in the bed behind the NW bench. Fortunately, it is easy to locate the vacant areas because the Leucojum and ornamental onions in this area are already sending up fresh, green shoots. The nearby Brunnera have also acquired new foliage in the last month, though those lovely leaves will probably be killed by the deep freeze temperatures in December and January.
• Along the stepping stones in the “L” bed, I planted 25-30 Elegant Lady tulips (white and mauve-pink blooms) in an area where previously had been a clump of New England asters and recalcitrant volunteer rose bushes I have tried to remove on several previous occasions. Another group of Elegant Lady tulips were planted in the “F” bed (in the southeast corner of the garden), stretching across the middle of the bed in front of the perennial sunflowers and a Baptisia. A few feet from the Elegant Ladies and in front of the Sioux Blue Indian grass, I planted about 15 Lava tulips, hoping their bright red/yellow combination might add a visual zip to this area for a couple of weeks in late April or early May. I finished the day by planting 20 Blushing Lady tulips in the middle of the “A1" bed south of the patio. This planting moved rather slowly because Blushing Lady tulips had been planted in this same space last year, and I thought we would have some holdover bulbs from that planting, but I only came across two survivors, both quite small.
• On Saturday I returned to Coe for more bulb planting, concentrating this day’s efforts on alliums and daffodils. I began by planting 5 Allium schubertii in the “L” bed, inserted in the midst of an established Siberian Iris colony. These bulbs are quite large and should produce a tall, late-blooming allium that, I hope, will enable a second round of blooms emerging from the same space. I then planted 25 Allium christophii bulbs in the “K” bed, mixed in with the barren strawberries--another effort to use an existing group of plants as a backdrop for the later flowering alliums. I concluded my allium effort by planting a small group of A. christophii at the back of the coneflowers at the other end of the “K” bed.
• I finished this Saturday morning at Coe by planting about 40 Tete-a-Tete daffodils at the east end of the “A1" bed in three groups: one group between two hostas in the raised section of that bed and two groups near the Millennium alliums. [At the end of this report is a photo of Tete-a-Tete daffodils in bloom on April 7.] In the same bed I planted about 15 Pride of Lions daffodils next to the ramp leading onto the patio. The Pride of Lions should start blooming as the Tete-a-Tete are finishing up, giving this area perhaps three or more weeks of cheery yellow blooms in the spring. I concluded my work by removing several volunteer elderberry bushes that appeared last spring in the middle of the bed and planting twenty Lava tulips across the back of the bed.
• On Sunday morning I returned to Coe about 9:00 a.m. The temperature was around 40F and it was windy, but the garden walls provided some protection and I worked primarily in sunlit areas. Most of the morning was spent planting alliums and snowflakes. I began in the “C” bed, planting Allium christophii among the grape hyacinths, replicating what I had previously attempted with the Leucojum in the grape hyacinths in the “L” bed. I also planted a dozen allium randomly distributed in the astilbe colony in the “D” bed. Crossing over to the north side of the garden, I planted Leucojum aestivum to fill in two open areas in the raised “J” beds. While working in those beds, I was struck by the beautiful silver-gray foliage of the Cerastium tomentosum; the severe pruning I gave these snow-in-summer last summer has really paid off, even producing several freshly minted white blossoms. I recently read that one of the common “denominators” of gardening is “the simple joy of growing something you love.” C. tomentosum is certainly among those plants that brings me a “simple joy.”
• I then turned my attention to the east end of the “I” and “H” beds in the northeast corner of the garden. On each side of the plexiglass panel with the F. Bacon quote, I planted two groups of Leucojum aestivum. Behind the NE bench I planted several groups of Allium sphaerocephalon, a total of 50 bulbs. I finished this allium spree by planting 15 big globe alliums mixed in with colonies of Siberian Iris: 5 Mount Everest and 5 Giant White alliums in the iris in front of the gazebo and a large purple-blooming allium mixed in with two clumps of Siberian iris in front of the shrub rose in the “G” bed.
I still have some smaller bulbs to plant, including several additions to the rock garden. I’m hoping that at some point in December we will have a couple of days where temperatures stay above freezing and the soil is not frozen, enabling me to get these remaining bulbs into the ground.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 9 November 2020
It’s 9:30 a.m on a beautiful Monday morning, sitting on a wooden bench in front of the Alumni House patio. Except for a couple of brief visits to water plants in the greenhouse and pick up unsolicited garden debris, it has been over two weeks since I last did any significant work in the garden. My daytime gardening hours have been consumed by our backyard at home. The August derecho destroyed our shade trees, a devastation that has necessitated a thorough re-thinking of a 200 foot deep backyard, about 1/3 of an acre. The primary task to date has been expanding the perennial flower beds, digging up and transplanting thousands of spring bulbs (mostly daffodils and Siberian squill), hostas, and ornamental grasses. While most of the hostas are going into reconstructed compost bins and the grasses are being moved to the front yard, the bulbs are being replanted in the new perennial beds in hopes they will provide some color for next spring.
Meanwhile, the Coe garden has been left to fend for itself. Because this morning I feel like a wayfarer visiting an old friend, I decided to begin my visit by sitting on this bench, surveying the terrain, and recording a few items that catch my eye. The temp is probably in the mid 60s but off to the north and west are dark clouds confirming a cold front is on the horizon and we are about to receive some rain (which we do need) and much colder temperatures. Although I feel quite comfortable with no jacket or scarf, my exposed skin can feel a chill threading through the air. It may be another five months before we have a morning as warm as today.
As I look across the garden, I’m struck by how the green, manicured lawn is surrounded by an irregular, motley complex of browns, tans, yellows, oranges, and russets. These swaths of autumn color are in turn framed by the dark green yews that border the north and south flower beds. There are also periodic examples of fresh green foliage throughout the perennial flower beds: new cranesbill leaves under the older bloody red foliage, fresh spears of Siberian iris, several alliums with green onion tops, the grape hyacinths creating a shag rug carpet of limp foliage, the two large clumps of tansy generating hundreds of pristine, fern-like leaves after a severe pruning in September (see photo of Tansy foliage at the end of this report). In the herb garden I see the parsley and oregano that have survived a sequence of freezing temperatures, still inviting harvesters to their produce.
In the flower bed across from where I’m sitting are innumerable tiny nigella, annual self-seeders that often germinate in the fall and manage to survive the winter, preparing for an early spring-time bloom cycle. At this time of the year, it’s also easier to note several patches of silver-tainted foliage: the large clumps of bluish nepeta in several beds, the snow-in-summer in the two raised “J” beds, the lambs ear along the borders of the “D” and “K” beds, the yarrow in the bed behind my bench (though, alas, the yarrow is accompanied by the quack grass that I have never managed to eliminate). Earlier this morning, I noted the myrtle spurge in the crevice garden, its blue-green, cactus-like foliage now at its most attractive.
There are a few flowers sprinkled across the landscape, most notably the two groups of orange, yellow, and red mums in the “I” bed–although from my bench I see that the buds of my old Hy-Vee mum have not yet opened. Most surprising are the unusual number of ox-eye daisies blooming under the pergola. The flowers of several patches of tall stonecrops around my park bench are still holding on, and off in the herb garden I spy a mallow’s lone magenta bloom. I finish my survey by looking at the many gayfeather seed heads behind my bench, preparing to release hundreds of dark gray seeds on the fragile wings of the tan, whispy “feathers” that will help suspend them in their brief flight. I wish them all success.
It’s 9:30 a.m on a beautiful Monday morning, sitting on a wooden bench in front of the Alumni House patio. Except for a couple of brief visits to water plants in the greenhouse and pick up unsolicited garden debris, it has been over two weeks since I last did any significant work in the garden. My daytime gardening hours have been consumed by our backyard at home. The August derecho destroyed our shade trees, a devastation that has necessitated a thorough re-thinking of a 200 foot deep backyard, about 1/3 of an acre. The primary task to date has been expanding the perennial flower beds, digging up and transplanting thousands of spring bulbs (mostly daffodils and Siberian squill), hostas, and ornamental grasses. While most of the hostas are going into reconstructed compost bins and the grasses are being moved to the front yard, the bulbs are being replanted in the new perennial beds in hopes they will provide some color for next spring.
Meanwhile, the Coe garden has been left to fend for itself. Because this morning I feel like a wayfarer visiting an old friend, I decided to begin my visit by sitting on this bench, surveying the terrain, and recording a few items that catch my eye. The temp is probably in the mid 60s but off to the north and west are dark clouds confirming a cold front is on the horizon and we are about to receive some rain (which we do need) and much colder temperatures. Although I feel quite comfortable with no jacket or scarf, my exposed skin can feel a chill threading through the air. It may be another five months before we have a morning as warm as today.
As I look across the garden, I’m struck by how the green, manicured lawn is surrounded by an irregular, motley complex of browns, tans, yellows, oranges, and russets. These swaths of autumn color are in turn framed by the dark green yews that border the north and south flower beds. There are also periodic examples of fresh green foliage throughout the perennial flower beds: new cranesbill leaves under the older bloody red foliage, fresh spears of Siberian iris, several alliums with green onion tops, the grape hyacinths creating a shag rug carpet of limp foliage, the two large clumps of tansy generating hundreds of pristine, fern-like leaves after a severe pruning in September (see photo of Tansy foliage at the end of this report). In the herb garden I see the parsley and oregano that have survived a sequence of freezing temperatures, still inviting harvesters to their produce.
In the flower bed across from where I’m sitting are innumerable tiny nigella, annual self-seeders that often germinate in the fall and manage to survive the winter, preparing for an early spring-time bloom cycle. At this time of the year, it’s also easier to note several patches of silver-tainted foliage: the large clumps of bluish nepeta in several beds, the snow-in-summer in the two raised “J” beds, the lambs ear along the borders of the “D” and “K” beds, the yarrow in the bed behind my bench (though, alas, the yarrow is accompanied by the quack grass that I have never managed to eliminate). Earlier this morning, I noted the myrtle spurge in the crevice garden, its blue-green, cactus-like foliage now at its most attractive.
There are a few flowers sprinkled across the landscape, most notably the two groups of orange, yellow, and red mums in the “I” bed–although from my bench I see that the buds of my old Hy-Vee mum have not yet opened. Most surprising are the unusual number of ox-eye daisies blooming under the pergola. The flowers of several patches of tall stonecrops around my park bench are still holding on, and off in the herb garden I spy a mallow’s lone magenta bloom. I finish my survey by looking at the many gayfeather seed heads behind my bench, preparing to release hundreds of dark gray seeds on the fragile wings of the tan, whispy “feathers” that will help suspend them in their brief flight. I wish them all success.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 28 September 2020
25 Observations on a cool but beautiful morning, the first Monday in Autumn.
• Temperature 59F, 70% humidity.
• 0.4" of rain water in the rain gauge (close to the 0.5" in my rain gauge at home).
• Results of the morning’s “police call” (old Army phrase for a group of soldiers picking up trash): several plastic bags (including one bread bag), empty sardine can, empty Greek yogurt container, several pieces of asphalt shingles.
• Checked out books in the two Little Free Libraries; free books for the taking include Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It (first fictional novel ever published by the University of Chicago Press), Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey into Night, and several plays by Shakespeare.
• Trimmed the flowering crab tree south of the patio; discovered it has a branch probably split by the derecho; I’m still undecided on how to trim its upper branches.
• Across from the apple tree, there is a hole in the fence that students use as a convenient shortcut between old and new apartments; several days ago, a student walked through the flower bed carrying a laundry basket full of clothes.
• I’ve trimmed the two primary Elderberries in the SW corner, but I still need to dig up and remove several volunteers that have crowded out other flowers in the area.
• The coleus planted in the two large urns look amazingly fresh; they were remarkably resilient in handling both the drought and the derecho.
• The perennial sunflowers south of the patio were badly beaten up by the wind storm; the survivors are blooming but few are erect. The sunflowers north of the patio were protected by the garden wall and are in great shape, an appealing complement to the “House of the Rising Sun” sculpture installed last fall (see photo at the end of this report).
• A member of the enormous aster family, the Snowbank Boltonia in the “B” bed have only two flowering stalks, a notable decrease to the robust group of two years ago. The light blue-flowered Boltonia in a small bed next to the Herb Garden are also looking much depleted. Next spring I need to dig them up and replant in fresh soil.
• One shining success in the garden this fall is the tall Stonecrop with their distinctive light-green foliage and pink flowers; they have become one of the garden’s most effective late summer mid-border plants. We currently have an open space in the “D” bed that could be filled with a group of Stonecrop to complement the group at the west end of the bed.
• Several Hollyhocks have emerged among the daylilies in the “C” bed; they should be moved to the other side of the garden, filling in vacancies in the Hollyhocks colony at the north end of the “D” bed.
• Last week I cleaned up most of the “C” bed–removing many volunteer cranesbill and cushion spurge–but I missed some of the quack grass, the blades emerging above the yarrow that I trimmed back. The quack grass is really tough to dig out when its roots are interwoven with the yarrow’s roots. As I reread these last few observations, I wonder why I capitilize Sonecrop and Boltonia but not daylilies, cranesbill, cushion spurge, yarrow, and quack grass. I suspect it does reveal some subconscious distinctions in the way I perceive some plants as unique individuals (such as the Boltonia) and others as members of a larger classification (e.g., cranesbill).
• Most of the yews in the west half of the garden have been trimmed. Now that Coe’s campus grounds crew has removed all the hawthorn trees along the north fence, I can finish trimming the tops of those yews. Next week I should turn my attention to the remaining yews in the eastern half of the garden. Fortunately the yews can be trimmed spring, summer, or fall.
• I’m still undecided what to do with the smaller colony of Lady’s Mantle at the NE corner of the patio. The Black-eyed Susan have been steadily expanding into the Alchemilla and have become one of the garden’s most powerful bloom centers in July and August, so I hate to restrain their expansion; on the other hand, the two plants are not the best companions, and I don’t want the Lady’s Mantle to be completely over run. At the moment I don’t know where to move them, and I’m not sure what would be a good choice for filling in that space after their departure.
• One success: the honeysuckle near the NW gate have been blooming all summer and are still blooming. My early spring pruning apparently sent a message to inspire their fragrant flowers; they have not disappointed.
• While most of the old rose bushes have been removed from the garden, the two Knockout Roses I purchased two years ago from Frontier Garden Supply have been model citizens, providing a reliable sequence of red blossoms--as long as I occasionally remember to prune them.
• The New England asters are now establishing their fall presence throughout the garden; the ones cut back early in the summer look particularly good: fuller display of blooms on sturdier stalks.
• The tall Cleome hassleriana (Spider Flowers, aka Grandfather’s Whiskers) have completely taken over the crevice garden; these self-seeding annuals would not have been my first, second, or third choice for this space, but they have asserted their determination to settle in this location. Visitors are consistently attracted to their unique pink and white blossoms that should continue until the first hard freeze.
• Spotted a “new” bird’s nest in the top of the espalier flowering crab; my guess it's a robin’s nest. I just read an article on robin migrations. In tracking individual robins, ornithologists are trying to determine why some robins remain in areas over the winter while others will travel thousands of miles to a new location. At present, we seem to have a healthy robin population in the garden.
• Although I find the reddish-brown winter foliage of Siberian iris an appealing visual presence in the garden over the winter months, this year I cut back most of the foliage beaten down by the derecho. I am surprised to see so much new green foliage emerge, leading me to think that I should be cutting back all the foliage after the iris are finished blooming in the spring.
• For me, the first sign of spring: the green leaves of the two patches of grape hyacinths, whose foliage disappears in the summer months. It might make sense to start using these hyacinths to mark locations of daffodils and other spring bulbs that have completely disappeared by this time in the year, making it difficult to know where to plant new bulbs.
• The large clump of aromatic asters in the “K” bed are entering their prime season, but when I was cleaning up the east end of this bed last week, I was surprised to discover a single aromatic aster mixed in with the coneflowers; I don’t remember planting it there, but it’s likely I have just forgotten.
• The Brunnera behind the NW park bench looked in awful shape after the two-month drought, but after these recent rains, they have all quickly emerged with freshly minted, silver-tinted leaves.
• One major job for this week: remove all the tall goldenrod from the “K” bed. Unlike the New England Asters, most of the goldenrod cut back in the early summer did not produce any flowers.
• The dahlias in both the “E” and “J” beds took a real beating in the August wind storm; the plants have produced a lot of fresh foliage and new buds, but I’m not sure we will have many blooms before the first freeze. This morning we had a total of two blooms: a large yellow Kelvin Floodlight and a dark red on one of the Bishops.
25 Observations on a cool but beautiful morning, the first Monday in Autumn.
• Temperature 59F, 70% humidity.
• 0.4" of rain water in the rain gauge (close to the 0.5" in my rain gauge at home).
• Results of the morning’s “police call” (old Army phrase for a group of soldiers picking up trash): several plastic bags (including one bread bag), empty sardine can, empty Greek yogurt container, several pieces of asphalt shingles.
• Checked out books in the two Little Free Libraries; free books for the taking include Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It (first fictional novel ever published by the University of Chicago Press), Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey into Night, and several plays by Shakespeare.
• Trimmed the flowering crab tree south of the patio; discovered it has a branch probably split by the derecho; I’m still undecided on how to trim its upper branches.
• Across from the apple tree, there is a hole in the fence that students use as a convenient shortcut between old and new apartments; several days ago, a student walked through the flower bed carrying a laundry basket full of clothes.
• I’ve trimmed the two primary Elderberries in the SW corner, but I still need to dig up and remove several volunteers that have crowded out other flowers in the area.
• The coleus planted in the two large urns look amazingly fresh; they were remarkably resilient in handling both the drought and the derecho.
• The perennial sunflowers south of the patio were badly beaten up by the wind storm; the survivors are blooming but few are erect. The sunflowers north of the patio were protected by the garden wall and are in great shape, an appealing complement to the “House of the Rising Sun” sculpture installed last fall (see photo at the end of this report).
• A member of the enormous aster family, the Snowbank Boltonia in the “B” bed have only two flowering stalks, a notable decrease to the robust group of two years ago. The light blue-flowered Boltonia in a small bed next to the Herb Garden are also looking much depleted. Next spring I need to dig them up and replant in fresh soil.
• One shining success in the garden this fall is the tall Stonecrop with their distinctive light-green foliage and pink flowers; they have become one of the garden’s most effective late summer mid-border plants. We currently have an open space in the “D” bed that could be filled with a group of Stonecrop to complement the group at the west end of the bed.
• Several Hollyhocks have emerged among the daylilies in the “C” bed; they should be moved to the other side of the garden, filling in vacancies in the Hollyhocks colony at the north end of the “D” bed.
• Last week I cleaned up most of the “C” bed–removing many volunteer cranesbill and cushion spurge–but I missed some of the quack grass, the blades emerging above the yarrow that I trimmed back. The quack grass is really tough to dig out when its roots are interwoven with the yarrow’s roots. As I reread these last few observations, I wonder why I capitilize Sonecrop and Boltonia but not daylilies, cranesbill, cushion spurge, yarrow, and quack grass. I suspect it does reveal some subconscious distinctions in the way I perceive some plants as unique individuals (such as the Boltonia) and others as members of a larger classification (e.g., cranesbill).
• Most of the yews in the west half of the garden have been trimmed. Now that Coe’s campus grounds crew has removed all the hawthorn trees along the north fence, I can finish trimming the tops of those yews. Next week I should turn my attention to the remaining yews in the eastern half of the garden. Fortunately the yews can be trimmed spring, summer, or fall.
• I’m still undecided what to do with the smaller colony of Lady’s Mantle at the NE corner of the patio. The Black-eyed Susan have been steadily expanding into the Alchemilla and have become one of the garden’s most powerful bloom centers in July and August, so I hate to restrain their expansion; on the other hand, the two plants are not the best companions, and I don’t want the Lady’s Mantle to be completely over run. At the moment I don’t know where to move them, and I’m not sure what would be a good choice for filling in that space after their departure.
• One success: the honeysuckle near the NW gate have been blooming all summer and are still blooming. My early spring pruning apparently sent a message to inspire their fragrant flowers; they have not disappointed.
• While most of the old rose bushes have been removed from the garden, the two Knockout Roses I purchased two years ago from Frontier Garden Supply have been model citizens, providing a reliable sequence of red blossoms--as long as I occasionally remember to prune them.
• The New England asters are now establishing their fall presence throughout the garden; the ones cut back early in the summer look particularly good: fuller display of blooms on sturdier stalks.
• The tall Cleome hassleriana (Spider Flowers, aka Grandfather’s Whiskers) have completely taken over the crevice garden; these self-seeding annuals would not have been my first, second, or third choice for this space, but they have asserted their determination to settle in this location. Visitors are consistently attracted to their unique pink and white blossoms that should continue until the first hard freeze.
• Spotted a “new” bird’s nest in the top of the espalier flowering crab; my guess it's a robin’s nest. I just read an article on robin migrations. In tracking individual robins, ornithologists are trying to determine why some robins remain in areas over the winter while others will travel thousands of miles to a new location. At present, we seem to have a healthy robin population in the garden.
• Although I find the reddish-brown winter foliage of Siberian iris an appealing visual presence in the garden over the winter months, this year I cut back most of the foliage beaten down by the derecho. I am surprised to see so much new green foliage emerge, leading me to think that I should be cutting back all the foliage after the iris are finished blooming in the spring.
• For me, the first sign of spring: the green leaves of the two patches of grape hyacinths, whose foliage disappears in the summer months. It might make sense to start using these hyacinths to mark locations of daffodils and other spring bulbs that have completely disappeared by this time in the year, making it difficult to know where to plant new bulbs.
• The large clump of aromatic asters in the “K” bed are entering their prime season, but when I was cleaning up the east end of this bed last week, I was surprised to discover a single aromatic aster mixed in with the coneflowers; I don’t remember planting it there, but it’s likely I have just forgotten.
• The Brunnera behind the NW park bench looked in awful shape after the two-month drought, but after these recent rains, they have all quickly emerged with freshly minted, silver-tinted leaves.
• One major job for this week: remove all the tall goldenrod from the “K” bed. Unlike the New England Asters, most of the goldenrod cut back in the early summer did not produce any flowers.
• The dahlias in both the “E” and “J” beds took a real beating in the August wind storm; the plants have produced a lot of fresh foliage and new buds, but I’m not sure we will have many blooms before the first freeze. This morning we had a total of two blooms: a large yellow Kelvin Floodlight and a dark red on one of the Bishops.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 31 August 2020
IT WAS OVERCAST THIS MORNING, relatively cool (temp in 70s) in comparison to the horrid hot weather last week. We had a few sprinkles, enough to dampen the back of my shirt while cleaning up a daylily bed, but not enough moisture to reach any roots. Except for the derecho downpour, we have not had a substantial rain in almost two months. On Friday I finished a second round of thoroughly watering the perennial flower beds and the lawn sections. Not convinced today or tomorrow’s weather would bring any substantial rain, I started round #3 this morning with the sprinkler on the SW quad section.
This morning was the first time since last Thursday that I’ve attempted to do any significant work in the Alumni House Garden. I initially intended to focus on cleaning up the area in front of the gazebo, but while carrying my equipment in that direction, I passed by the “L” bed in front of the patio and decided to stop there. This was fundamentally a simple removal operation: clearing away dead/dying flowers and foliage; removing unwanted weeds and grasses; and digging up the sprouting redbuds and remarkably durable rose bushes that keep appearing each year. Five years ago I decided to remove the rose bushes in this bed–since the flowers were short-lived, lacking any fragrance, and not particularly attractive–and replace the roses with daylilies and some front-of-the-border plants such as Coreopsis, cat mint, cranesbill, tall stonecrop, dianthus, Platycodon, and several salvias. Although I attempted to remove the roses’ roots, many root fragments remain hidden away and these roses have proven remarkably resilient in insisting this is their flower bed. This morning I dug up at least six roses that have sprung up this year, and I’m sure there are more waiting to be discovered.
Every day I enter the garden through the SW gate, which means that I walk between the two “A” beds. The walkway is overgrown with grass and weeds. Both flower beds are in terrible shape, a combination of dry weather, wind damage, and an inattentive gardener. The perennial sunflowers and tall hyssop in the “A2" bed are severely banged up. Some sunflowers are in bloom but lying on the ground. The leaves of both elderberries have been shredded, and many branches are broken–though the shrubs are already beginning to revive, with fresh leaves popping out. The elderberry in the “A2" bed did need some substantial pruning, so the derecho can be thanked for that bit of assistance. The one plant unfazed by either the drought or the wind is the lemon balm. It looks fresh and green and continues to exuberantly expand, covering up the less aggressive anemones planted in front of it. I trimmed back the lemon balm in early July, but it has swiftly regained its previous territory. It needs to be moved to the east end of the bed where it would be more effectively constrained by the fence, the yews, and the taller sunflowers. Transplanting the lemon balm would then necessitate choosing a different plant behind the anemones. Perhaps one option would be to turn this into an anemone bed, perhaps a combination of 2-3 varieties. I keep recalling the marvelous beds of anemones we saw in Germany last October, and the attractive blooms we had on our small group last fall.
As for the “A1" bed, it is a complete mess. One problem is that I never trimmed the catmint and goldenrod at the back of the bed. The goldenrod are beginning to bloom, but the stalks are topheavy. So far we have not had much success with a shorter goldenrod cultivate planted in the “I” bed, but on the Missouri Botanical Garden’s website I just came across information on a Solidago cultivar ‘Dansolitlem’ (discovered by plant breeder Gabriel Danziger in Israel) but commonly sold under the trade name ‘Little Lemon.’ It’s a compact form of goldenrod, perhaps 14" tall and a bit wider. According to the website, “It is a clump-forming plant that is noted for having a compact basal branching habit. Tiny light yellow flowers bloom in upright, dense, terminal inflorescences in mid to late summer on stems clad with lanceolate medium green leaves.” I like goldenrod and the garden needs more late summer bloomers; this cultivar could be a useful addition to the garden in several locations.
Another of my summer failures is that I never cleaned up the west end of the “A1" bed. Several volunteer elderberry shrubs, Joe Pye Weeds, and New England Asters have been allowed to run over several smaller plants (such as the Asclepias tuberosa, the ornamental milkweed). I also need to decide what to do with the wild strawberries rollicking over the bed. I’ve tried to view them as a ground cover, but they insist on sending volunteers beyond all boundaries (including the gravel walkways), they have not been prolific bloomers in the spring, and they have not produced any wild strawberries. The original strawberry plant came from the Wilderness Field Station in August of 2015. For me it symbolizes many fond memories, but it may be time to remove the strawberries and adopt a different strategy for organizing this flower bed.
Photo of damaged garden fence near the SW gate (beds "A1" and "A2").
IT WAS OVERCAST THIS MORNING, relatively cool (temp in 70s) in comparison to the horrid hot weather last week. We had a few sprinkles, enough to dampen the back of my shirt while cleaning up a daylily bed, but not enough moisture to reach any roots. Except for the derecho downpour, we have not had a substantial rain in almost two months. On Friday I finished a second round of thoroughly watering the perennial flower beds and the lawn sections. Not convinced today or tomorrow’s weather would bring any substantial rain, I started round #3 this morning with the sprinkler on the SW quad section.
This morning was the first time since last Thursday that I’ve attempted to do any significant work in the Alumni House Garden. I initially intended to focus on cleaning up the area in front of the gazebo, but while carrying my equipment in that direction, I passed by the “L” bed in front of the patio and decided to stop there. This was fundamentally a simple removal operation: clearing away dead/dying flowers and foliage; removing unwanted weeds and grasses; and digging up the sprouting redbuds and remarkably durable rose bushes that keep appearing each year. Five years ago I decided to remove the rose bushes in this bed–since the flowers were short-lived, lacking any fragrance, and not particularly attractive–and replace the roses with daylilies and some front-of-the-border plants such as Coreopsis, cat mint, cranesbill, tall stonecrop, dianthus, Platycodon, and several salvias. Although I attempted to remove the roses’ roots, many root fragments remain hidden away and these roses have proven remarkably resilient in insisting this is their flower bed. This morning I dug up at least six roses that have sprung up this year, and I’m sure there are more waiting to be discovered.
Every day I enter the garden through the SW gate, which means that I walk between the two “A” beds. The walkway is overgrown with grass and weeds. Both flower beds are in terrible shape, a combination of dry weather, wind damage, and an inattentive gardener. The perennial sunflowers and tall hyssop in the “A2" bed are severely banged up. Some sunflowers are in bloom but lying on the ground. The leaves of both elderberries have been shredded, and many branches are broken–though the shrubs are already beginning to revive, with fresh leaves popping out. The elderberry in the “A2" bed did need some substantial pruning, so the derecho can be thanked for that bit of assistance. The one plant unfazed by either the drought or the wind is the lemon balm. It looks fresh and green and continues to exuberantly expand, covering up the less aggressive anemones planted in front of it. I trimmed back the lemon balm in early July, but it has swiftly regained its previous territory. It needs to be moved to the east end of the bed where it would be more effectively constrained by the fence, the yews, and the taller sunflowers. Transplanting the lemon balm would then necessitate choosing a different plant behind the anemones. Perhaps one option would be to turn this into an anemone bed, perhaps a combination of 2-3 varieties. I keep recalling the marvelous beds of anemones we saw in Germany last October, and the attractive blooms we had on our small group last fall.
As for the “A1" bed, it is a complete mess. One problem is that I never trimmed the catmint and goldenrod at the back of the bed. The goldenrod are beginning to bloom, but the stalks are topheavy. So far we have not had much success with a shorter goldenrod cultivate planted in the “I” bed, but on the Missouri Botanical Garden’s website I just came across information on a Solidago cultivar ‘Dansolitlem’ (discovered by plant breeder Gabriel Danziger in Israel) but commonly sold under the trade name ‘Little Lemon.’ It’s a compact form of goldenrod, perhaps 14" tall and a bit wider. According to the website, “It is a clump-forming plant that is noted for having a compact basal branching habit. Tiny light yellow flowers bloom in upright, dense, terminal inflorescences in mid to late summer on stems clad with lanceolate medium green leaves.” I like goldenrod and the garden needs more late summer bloomers; this cultivar could be a useful addition to the garden in several locations.
Another of my summer failures is that I never cleaned up the west end of the “A1" bed. Several volunteer elderberry shrubs, Joe Pye Weeds, and New England Asters have been allowed to run over several smaller plants (such as the Asclepias tuberosa, the ornamental milkweed). I also need to decide what to do with the wild strawberries rollicking over the bed. I’ve tried to view them as a ground cover, but they insist on sending volunteers beyond all boundaries (including the gravel walkways), they have not been prolific bloomers in the spring, and they have not produced any wild strawberries. The original strawberry plant came from the Wilderness Field Station in August of 2015. For me it symbolizes many fond memories, but it may be time to remove the strawberries and adopt a different strategy for organizing this flower bed.
Photo of damaged garden fence near the SW gate (beds "A1" and "A2").
Monday Morning Garden Report: 6 July 2020
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO in a previous report, I commented that walking into the garden, I thought it was beginning to feel like a genuine English-style garden, all the spaces filled in, the plants genially rubbing shoulders with each other, everything fitting together. This morning felt quite different. As I was opening the SW gate next to the garden shed, the branches of two elderberry (some version of Sambucus canadensis) had reached across the gate from both sides, requiring me brush the branches away in order to enter the garden. I was then confronted by a gravel pathway overgrown with various grasses, purslane, artemisia, etc., and overshadowed by an overgrown viburnum, several young Joe Pye weeds (which weren’t there last year), and self-sown fleabane, buttercups, and mallow–all stretching out from the flower beds, eager to claim a bit of sunlight. I had somehow stumbled upon a intractable garden, the inhabitants ominously warning intruders to stay away.
Once I reached the front of the patio, the garden began to appear more orderly, but it still gave the impression of a world full of plants bursting at the seams, piling on each other, competing for any available space. That exuberance was amplified by the appearance of many plants entering their early summer bloom cycle. Here are a few of the flowers that either were not blooming last week or had managed to escape my notice:
• In the “A1" bed, Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed) and the Crocosima ‘Lucifer’. The orange blooms of the Asclepias were peeking out from behind a cover of young elderberry which have migrated east and need to be either pruned or permanently removed. Fortunately for the Crocosima, their red blooms had no such competition, flying well above the wild strawberries’ ground cover.
• At the corners of the “A1" and “M1" beds are the Allium ‘Millennium,’ their blooms just beginning to open. Unlike many ornamental onions, the Millennium’s blooms should last for several weeks. They are also unusual in how well their foliage remains looking fresh and green from emergence in early spring through the end of the summer.
• Purple coneflowers all over the garden. When I first started working in the garden in 2014, most of the coneflowers were located near the water fountain on the north side of the garden; they have now spread their progeny to nearly every bed, establishing themselves as a primary source of color in these first weeks of July. They exemplify several flowers that have patiently but resolutely informed me where they want to settle. In most instances they emerge in groups, rendering emphatic exclamation points throughout the garden.
• The Stella d’oro daylilies are finished blooming, and the mid-season daylilies in the two beds in front of the patio have begun their peak display. A quick count confirmed 13 different varieties blooming in these two beds, and several other daylilies are flashing their colors at the east end of the garden. There is no hint of a pattern among the blooms in front of the patio: it is a laissez-faire riot of color (cf. photo at the conclusion of this report).
• In the “K” bed on the north side of the garden the blue balloon flowers (Platycodon grandiflorus) have made their appearance; a shorter variety with light pink blooms has simultaneously emerged on the west side of the “L” bed (in front of the patio), creating an appealing color contrast with the light purple flower spikes of the blazing stars. I’m not sure what species of Liatris these gayfeathers may be (I suspect either L. pycnostrahya or L. spicata), but these Midwest natives in the last four years have steadily expanded their presence in both the “L” and “C” beds, and they now play a prominent role in the mid-summer foundation of both flower beds.
• In the middle of the garden in the two dahlia beds are the plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria). These Midwest native annuals produce hundreds of small, yellow, daisy-like flowers with maroon centers. A batch of these were sown in a planter several years ago, and have self-seeded on both sides of the garden, consistently preferring the gravel walkways to the more fertile soil of the dahlia beds. They serve as a welcome transition flower between the demise of the tulips in May and the first blooms of the dahlias in August. These tickseeds are another example of flowers telling me where they want to hang out.
• While the ox-eye daisies have long been finished with their primary bloom cycle, the west end of the “F” bed has one Becky Shasta Daisy with large white blooms now in full display. As I was walking by the daisy, I spotted a small brownish gray butterfly I could not recall having ever seen in the garden. Past the “F” bed and behind the SE garden bench is the large patch of Purple-Leafed Loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata), one of the few areas in the garden that has remained virtually unchanged in the last six years. The 3-foot tall plants are covered with hundreds of small, star-shaped yellow flowers, all facing downward. On the other side of the pergola is another loosestrife, the one patch of Gooseneck Loosestrife (L. clethroides) that I have not tried to eliminate. I find the gooseneck’s curved racemes of white flowers very attractive, but the plant spreads too vigorously, running over its less aggressive neighbors. This morning I spotted several goosenecks in the “G” bed that need to be removed–though it’s likely some underground rhizomes will survive and next summer we will repeat this recurrent ritual.
• This morning I encountered in the Crevice Garden the first blooms of the annual Spider Flower (also known as Grandfather’s Whiskers). I have tried to sow this Cleome hasselriana at various locations in the garden, but the crevice garden is the only space where it has been willing to self-seed. Although this full-grown annual does not fit well with its much shorter crevice garden neighbors (mostly low-growing sedums and sempervivum), its bright white and pink flowers with their unique design are too precious to ignore, another example of a flower insisting on the gardener observing its site preferences.
And, finally, I would be remiss not to mention the passing of flowers that last week were still making a significant contribution to the garden’s display:
• Hollyhocks (in the “I” and “L” beds; they concluded their bloom cycles earlier than expected)
• Jerusalem Crosses (most of these growing in the herb bed; after their July pruning, some may produce a second cycle of red blooms later in the summer)
• Bloody cranesbill (the large mounds still exhibit a few lonesome blooms but their primary show is over)
• Astilbe (a couple of astilbe in a shadier area of the rain garden remain in bloom but those in the drier and sunnier areas are finished)
• Catmint (like the Stellas, planted at the front of several borders and will be cut back in the next week; the catmint, however, will go through at least one more full bloom cycle)
• The precious Love-in-a-Mist (the blue blooms of this effective self-seeding annual have been replaced by the fascinating blocks of seed heads, just as attractive in their own way as the plant’s gorgeous blooms).
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO in a previous report, I commented that walking into the garden, I thought it was beginning to feel like a genuine English-style garden, all the spaces filled in, the plants genially rubbing shoulders with each other, everything fitting together. This morning felt quite different. As I was opening the SW gate next to the garden shed, the branches of two elderberry (some version of Sambucus canadensis) had reached across the gate from both sides, requiring me brush the branches away in order to enter the garden. I was then confronted by a gravel pathway overgrown with various grasses, purslane, artemisia, etc., and overshadowed by an overgrown viburnum, several young Joe Pye weeds (which weren’t there last year), and self-sown fleabane, buttercups, and mallow–all stretching out from the flower beds, eager to claim a bit of sunlight. I had somehow stumbled upon a intractable garden, the inhabitants ominously warning intruders to stay away.
Once I reached the front of the patio, the garden began to appear more orderly, but it still gave the impression of a world full of plants bursting at the seams, piling on each other, competing for any available space. That exuberance was amplified by the appearance of many plants entering their early summer bloom cycle. Here are a few of the flowers that either were not blooming last week or had managed to escape my notice:
• In the “A1" bed, Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed) and the Crocosima ‘Lucifer’. The orange blooms of the Asclepias were peeking out from behind a cover of young elderberry which have migrated east and need to be either pruned or permanently removed. Fortunately for the Crocosima, their red blooms had no such competition, flying well above the wild strawberries’ ground cover.
• At the corners of the “A1" and “M1" beds are the Allium ‘Millennium,’ their blooms just beginning to open. Unlike many ornamental onions, the Millennium’s blooms should last for several weeks. They are also unusual in how well their foliage remains looking fresh and green from emergence in early spring through the end of the summer.
• Purple coneflowers all over the garden. When I first started working in the garden in 2014, most of the coneflowers were located near the water fountain on the north side of the garden; they have now spread their progeny to nearly every bed, establishing themselves as a primary source of color in these first weeks of July. They exemplify several flowers that have patiently but resolutely informed me where they want to settle. In most instances they emerge in groups, rendering emphatic exclamation points throughout the garden.
• The Stella d’oro daylilies are finished blooming, and the mid-season daylilies in the two beds in front of the patio have begun their peak display. A quick count confirmed 13 different varieties blooming in these two beds, and several other daylilies are flashing their colors at the east end of the garden. There is no hint of a pattern among the blooms in front of the patio: it is a laissez-faire riot of color (cf. photo at the conclusion of this report).
• In the “K” bed on the north side of the garden the blue balloon flowers (Platycodon grandiflorus) have made their appearance; a shorter variety with light pink blooms has simultaneously emerged on the west side of the “L” bed (in front of the patio), creating an appealing color contrast with the light purple flower spikes of the blazing stars. I’m not sure what species of Liatris these gayfeathers may be (I suspect either L. pycnostrahya or L. spicata), but these Midwest natives in the last four years have steadily expanded their presence in both the “L” and “C” beds, and they now play a prominent role in the mid-summer foundation of both flower beds.
• In the middle of the garden in the two dahlia beds are the plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria). These Midwest native annuals produce hundreds of small, yellow, daisy-like flowers with maroon centers. A batch of these were sown in a planter several years ago, and have self-seeded on both sides of the garden, consistently preferring the gravel walkways to the more fertile soil of the dahlia beds. They serve as a welcome transition flower between the demise of the tulips in May and the first blooms of the dahlias in August. These tickseeds are another example of flowers telling me where they want to hang out.
• While the ox-eye daisies have long been finished with their primary bloom cycle, the west end of the “F” bed has one Becky Shasta Daisy with large white blooms now in full display. As I was walking by the daisy, I spotted a small brownish gray butterfly I could not recall having ever seen in the garden. Past the “F” bed and behind the SE garden bench is the large patch of Purple-Leafed Loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata), one of the few areas in the garden that has remained virtually unchanged in the last six years. The 3-foot tall plants are covered with hundreds of small, star-shaped yellow flowers, all facing downward. On the other side of the pergola is another loosestrife, the one patch of Gooseneck Loosestrife (L. clethroides) that I have not tried to eliminate. I find the gooseneck’s curved racemes of white flowers very attractive, but the plant spreads too vigorously, running over its less aggressive neighbors. This morning I spotted several goosenecks in the “G” bed that need to be removed–though it’s likely some underground rhizomes will survive and next summer we will repeat this recurrent ritual.
• This morning I encountered in the Crevice Garden the first blooms of the annual Spider Flower (also known as Grandfather’s Whiskers). I have tried to sow this Cleome hasselriana at various locations in the garden, but the crevice garden is the only space where it has been willing to self-seed. Although this full-grown annual does not fit well with its much shorter crevice garden neighbors (mostly low-growing sedums and sempervivum), its bright white and pink flowers with their unique design are too precious to ignore, another example of a flower insisting on the gardener observing its site preferences.
And, finally, I would be remiss not to mention the passing of flowers that last week were still making a significant contribution to the garden’s display:
• Hollyhocks (in the “I” and “L” beds; they concluded their bloom cycles earlier than expected)
• Jerusalem Crosses (most of these growing in the herb bed; after their July pruning, some may produce a second cycle of red blooms later in the summer)
• Bloody cranesbill (the large mounds still exhibit a few lonesome blooms but their primary show is over)
• Astilbe (a couple of astilbe in a shadier area of the rain garden remain in bloom but those in the drier and sunnier areas are finished)
• Catmint (like the Stellas, planted at the front of several borders and will be cut back in the next week; the catmint, however, will go through at least one more full bloom cycle)
• The precious Love-in-a-Mist (the blue blooms of this effective self-seeding annual have been replaced by the fascinating blocks of seed heads, just as attractive in their own way as the plant’s gorgeous blooms).
Monday Morning Garden Report: 22 June 2020
THE TIME IS 3:05 pm; temperature is 69F, 70% humidity; overcast with a slight drizzle; 3 ½" of rain in the rain gauge, the second rain this month of over 3 inches. Because of the downpour, many flowers have been pressed to the ground–such as the catmint, already flopping over because of their top-heavy flower spikes.
Walking into the garden, I am initially struck by the yellow and orange flowers, all over the garden:
• Perennial sunflowers facing each other in the “F” and “I” beds;
• Stella d’oro daylilies at the front of multiple beds around the lawn;
• Six clumps of yellow zagreb or moonshine coreopsis;
• The mass of bright yellow yarrow facing the patio;
• The patch of orange flowers in the raised herb garden (I often refer to these as calendula because of the blooms, but truth be told I’m not sure the species of this perennial heavy-bloomer).
The most notable non-yellow flowers on this Monday afternoon are the two large elderberries on either side of the SW gate next to the garden shed. Both shrubs are covered with large panicles of white flowers surfing above the foliage. It’s hard to believe it was only five years ago I planted the younger, larger elderberry, now reaching perhaps 15' tall. Unfortunately it has a colony of poison ivy under its shade that has not yet been killed off, but this spring it was also home to a robin’s nest. While the robins were sitting on the eggs, they also had to frequently be chasing away squirrels investigating this corner of the garden.
It has been a good year for birds in the garden. There is a new nest in the espalier crab tree, though I never witnessed what birds had constructed it, and a flimsy looking nest that cardinals were using in one of the pruned crab trees north of the pergola. A week ago there were at least two young cardinals recently hatched, but two days later when I checked out the nest, it was empty. Not far from the cardinals’ nest we have attracted some nesting wrens. Two years ago I installed four wooden wren houses in four different locations. Last year the houses were unused, but this year we have a wren family using the house attached to a pergola post. For the past two weeks the wrens are insistently chirping at me any time I approach their homestead.
Another first-time event in the garden is the appearance of a tall bloom spike on the Helen von Stein lamb’s Ear (Stachys byzantina). We now have four patches of this woolly betony, chosen for the soft, velvet-like texture of its silver-green foliage. The original clump was planted in the spring of 2015, but this is the first time one has bloomed. I have no idea if the flowers will produce viable seeds. This species has a reputation for producing a lot of seeds and becoming weedy, but that has certainly not been a problem with this cultivar–which has proven to be a model citizen. See photo of the bloom at the end of this report.
While it’s a pleasure to see the emergence of a new flower, most of my attention this week will focus on flowers winding down their bloom cycle. Several of these will require deadheading (dianthus, coreopsis) or modest pruning (some meadowsweet and goatsbeard planted close to a garden path); others will require a major pruning, cutting the plants back to ground level, such as the Husker Red Penstemon, the spiderwort, several salvia, and some catmint. The catmint are still vigorously blooming–and serving many different pollinators–but they are becoming too tall and sprawling. The Johnson’s Blue Cranesbill in the “D” bed offers a similar challenge: dozens of lovely blue flowers but the plant has become leggy and floppy.
Another task for this week will be weeding, fertilizing, and mulching the dahlia beds. Almost all of the dahlia tubers have now “germinated” and are producing healthy above-ground plants. The weeding will be slow because a high percentage of the weeds are purslane, and that plant is incredibly difficult to kill off. The purslane is also appearing all over the gravel walkways. I know Michael Pollan and other avant-garde gardeners are proclaiming we should be eating purslane because of its nutritional richness, but I’m not yet a fan of purslane spreading itself across the Alumni House Garden. Perhaps my determination to limit this weed’s distribution in the garden confirms my inability to see the garden from a more enlightened perspective. But for the next couple of weeks, my intent is to dig it out of the walkways, yank it up from the flower beds, and throw it in the compost.
THE TIME IS 3:05 pm; temperature is 69F, 70% humidity; overcast with a slight drizzle; 3 ½" of rain in the rain gauge, the second rain this month of over 3 inches. Because of the downpour, many flowers have been pressed to the ground–such as the catmint, already flopping over because of their top-heavy flower spikes.
Walking into the garden, I am initially struck by the yellow and orange flowers, all over the garden:
• Perennial sunflowers facing each other in the “F” and “I” beds;
• Stella d’oro daylilies at the front of multiple beds around the lawn;
• Six clumps of yellow zagreb or moonshine coreopsis;
• The mass of bright yellow yarrow facing the patio;
• The patch of orange flowers in the raised herb garden (I often refer to these as calendula because of the blooms, but truth be told I’m not sure the species of this perennial heavy-bloomer).
The most notable non-yellow flowers on this Monday afternoon are the two large elderberries on either side of the SW gate next to the garden shed. Both shrubs are covered with large panicles of white flowers surfing above the foliage. It’s hard to believe it was only five years ago I planted the younger, larger elderberry, now reaching perhaps 15' tall. Unfortunately it has a colony of poison ivy under its shade that has not yet been killed off, but this spring it was also home to a robin’s nest. While the robins were sitting on the eggs, they also had to frequently be chasing away squirrels investigating this corner of the garden.
It has been a good year for birds in the garden. There is a new nest in the espalier crab tree, though I never witnessed what birds had constructed it, and a flimsy looking nest that cardinals were using in one of the pruned crab trees north of the pergola. A week ago there were at least two young cardinals recently hatched, but two days later when I checked out the nest, it was empty. Not far from the cardinals’ nest we have attracted some nesting wrens. Two years ago I installed four wooden wren houses in four different locations. Last year the houses were unused, but this year we have a wren family using the house attached to a pergola post. For the past two weeks the wrens are insistently chirping at me any time I approach their homestead.
Another first-time event in the garden is the appearance of a tall bloom spike on the Helen von Stein lamb’s Ear (Stachys byzantina). We now have four patches of this woolly betony, chosen for the soft, velvet-like texture of its silver-green foliage. The original clump was planted in the spring of 2015, but this is the first time one has bloomed. I have no idea if the flowers will produce viable seeds. This species has a reputation for producing a lot of seeds and becoming weedy, but that has certainly not been a problem with this cultivar–which has proven to be a model citizen. See photo of the bloom at the end of this report.
While it’s a pleasure to see the emergence of a new flower, most of my attention this week will focus on flowers winding down their bloom cycle. Several of these will require deadheading (dianthus, coreopsis) or modest pruning (some meadowsweet and goatsbeard planted close to a garden path); others will require a major pruning, cutting the plants back to ground level, such as the Husker Red Penstemon, the spiderwort, several salvia, and some catmint. The catmint are still vigorously blooming–and serving many different pollinators–but they are becoming too tall and sprawling. The Johnson’s Blue Cranesbill in the “D” bed offers a similar challenge: dozens of lovely blue flowers but the plant has become leggy and floppy.
Another task for this week will be weeding, fertilizing, and mulching the dahlia beds. Almost all of the dahlia tubers have now “germinated” and are producing healthy above-ground plants. The weeding will be slow because a high percentage of the weeds are purslane, and that plant is incredibly difficult to kill off. The purslane is also appearing all over the gravel walkways. I know Michael Pollan and other avant-garde gardeners are proclaiming we should be eating purslane because of its nutritional richness, but I’m not yet a fan of purslane spreading itself across the Alumni House Garden. Perhaps my determination to limit this weed’s distribution in the garden confirms my inability to see the garden from a more enlightened perspective. But for the next couple of weeks, my intent is to dig it out of the walkways, yank it up from the flower beds, and throw it in the compost.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 15 June 2020
IT'S NOW 11:30 A.M. ON THE 15TH. I just finished two hours cleaning up what I call the Wilderness Field Station bed (south of the Alumni House patio) and sundial flower bed in front of the gazebo. Of the plants that I brought from the Field Station in August of 2015, four still survive: wild strawberries (producing white flowers in April but never any fruit), a small but tough thyme that Harlo planted at the Field Station many years ago, a small group of pearly everlasting (Anaphalus margaritacea), and several yellow buttercups (unintended stowaways that now occupy several locations in the garden). It’s another ideal gardening day, bright sunshine, temp in the 70s, relatively low humidity, slight breeze, a perfect day for sitting on a bench under a flowering crab. Last year this and the other older crab trees were busy dropping their leaves, yielding to the scourge of the recurrent scab. So far this spring, we have some brown, fungus-infected leaves littering the ground, but the majority of leaves are still green and attached to the trees–promising the possibility of decent shade for the rest of the summer.
For this report, I have simply recorded in my notebook what I observed while sitting on this bench in the NE corner of the garden. To my left is the “H” bed’s sundial, where I just finished cutting back the snow-in-summer and pulling up various unwanted grasses, sedges, bindweed, fleabane, a Solomon’s seal, and several clumps of creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’). The creeping Jenny is a beautiful yellow-leafed groundcover with charming yellow flowers easily overlooked because of their similarity to the size, shape, and color of the leaves. I find it hard to believe this plant is in the same genus as the larger and aggressive L. clethroides (gooseneck loosestrife) which I am frequently digging up and throwing onto the compost pile. But even the more restrained Jenny has completely outgrown the sundial segment to which it was originally assigned, and it is now being dispatched to areas where it has more freedom to roam. In the meantime, I need to determine what annuals should fill in the sundial segments that currently have no flowers to help mark the time. Last year several four o’clocks magically re-seeded and reappeared in near perfect timing (my pun for the day), but I have not seen any evidence they are planning for a third year.
From my bench, I can see four clematis, each in a different stage of flowering. The clematis on the north side of the pergola was the first to flower, producing large 5" wide blossoms at the end of May (at the end of this report is a June 3 photo of this clematis). Although their blooms are now finished, they have left behind these exquisitely curved, golden seedheads–which ensures I won’t be pruning the vine any time soon. The clematis at the back of the rain garden is also at the end of its bloom cycle, with one lone magenta-white flower. The other two clematis–one on the trellis on the south side of the pergola and the other slumped across the top of the shrub rose--are now covered in small blossoms. Two years ago I provided a four-foot trellis for the clematis next to the rose bush, thinking the clematis could share a few blooms with its thorny neighbor. As it has turned out, the clematis has used the trellis as a launching pad and its magenta blooms now totally cover the top of the shrub rose. Last week I met with the sculptor Cara Briggs Farmer to discuss options for building a taller trellis that would arch over the rose bush and provide a more suitable home for the rambunctious clematis.
Another success story has been the honeysuckle planted four years ago under the “Eiffel Tower” trellis. This honeysuckle has historically focused on producing vines that traipse across the garden mulch and has rarely shown much interest in sending limbs up the trellis or producing blooms. In fact, until this year, I wasn’t sure what the flowers looked like. In April I performed a serious pruning operation on the honeysuckle, attempting to remove all the limbs on or near the ground, and the results have been quite remarkable. The plant has focused more energy on growing the upper-level limbs, and it has produced a good number of large purple “buds” that are opening up into softly fragrant flowers. I performed the same rigorous pruning on the large honeysuckle covering the fence next o the NW gate, producing similar results. Last year that “M1" bed honeysuckle only had a few blooms in the fall; this year, the vines are covered with hundreds of white-yellow blossoms. I had been considering the removal of this honeysuckle, but the profusion of flowers and attendant fragrance have earned it a reprieve–at least for this year.
One last success story in the “H” bed is the establishment of a clump of Coreopsis grandiflora ‘Early Sunrise.’ These were planted last spring in an open area east of the bed’s hydrangea. The plants seemed to struggle through the summer, and I was not sure how they would perform in their second year. W(ell, this spring, they have all emerged, producing a canopy of large, vibrant, golden-yellow flowers, which in many respects resemble daisy-like marigolds. I’m hoping that recurrent deadheading will keep this perennial flowering throughout the summer.
Turning to my right, I check out the “I” bed that runs along the garden’s northeast quadrant. The perennial sunflowers are just beginning to bloom, as are the spiderworts and hollyhocks. Perhaps most striking are the white blooms–with soft pink centers–of the rose campion (Lychnis coronaria). These short-lived perennials have proven to be reasonably successful self-seeders who have randomly spread themselves in portions of the “I” bed. Last year I tried organizing them into a couple of clusters, and one of the clusters has really paid off, creating an appealing mass of white blooms over their fuzzy gray dusty-miller foliage.
The three “J” beds are not at their prime in this stretch of June. The tulips are all gone. The dahlia are growing but they won’t likely be producing any flowers until August. The annual prairie tickseed (another species of Coreopsis) are thriving, but many are still relatively small and the most mature won’t start blooming for another week. As for the two raised beds, the snow-in-summer are finished blooming, and later this week I will trim them back to the ground. I love their silver-gray foliage, but that foliage is hiding a mass of long brown stems that need to be cut out. While they will almost certainly grow back quickly, and perhaps will bloom again in the fall, their upcoming haircut is going to make that space naked and exposed. As for the taller plants at the back of the bed, the columbine are almost finished with their bloom cycle. The fleabane are in full bloom, but they are too tall for this location and really do look like a weed–the wrong plant in the wrong place. The one attractive participant in this bed is the clump of burgundy dianthus blooms. Unfortunately the miniature snapdragon that had been its partner for the last three years did not survive the winter.
As I look out across the other beds visible from my bench, my eyes are irresistibly drawn to the bright yellow calendula blooms in one of the raised “E” beds, the same flowers featured in the Alumni House Garden calendar’s June photo. Equally attractive is the white mass of astilbe-like flower spikes of the goat’s beard (Aruncus dioicus) at the west end of the “D” bed. I planted the Aruncus five years ago in this shady corner of the garden remembering it as a superb back-of-the border plant in English gardens, not knowing that it is a North American native. The clusters of tiny flowers don’t last long, but the plant provides an excellent background of foliage for later blooming flowers, including a group of astilbe that I placed in front of the goat’s beard. Near the east end of the bed, I see three small scarlet flower heads of another Lychnis, the L. chalcedonica (common names include Jerusalem Cross and Maltese Cross). It intrigues me how a few small dabs of scarlet can have such a powerful impact when seen against the dark green foliage of the yews.
IT'S NOW 11:30 A.M. ON THE 15TH. I just finished two hours cleaning up what I call the Wilderness Field Station bed (south of the Alumni House patio) and sundial flower bed in front of the gazebo. Of the plants that I brought from the Field Station in August of 2015, four still survive: wild strawberries (producing white flowers in April but never any fruit), a small but tough thyme that Harlo planted at the Field Station many years ago, a small group of pearly everlasting (Anaphalus margaritacea), and several yellow buttercups (unintended stowaways that now occupy several locations in the garden). It’s another ideal gardening day, bright sunshine, temp in the 70s, relatively low humidity, slight breeze, a perfect day for sitting on a bench under a flowering crab. Last year this and the other older crab trees were busy dropping their leaves, yielding to the scourge of the recurrent scab. So far this spring, we have some brown, fungus-infected leaves littering the ground, but the majority of leaves are still green and attached to the trees–promising the possibility of decent shade for the rest of the summer.
For this report, I have simply recorded in my notebook what I observed while sitting on this bench in the NE corner of the garden. To my left is the “H” bed’s sundial, where I just finished cutting back the snow-in-summer and pulling up various unwanted grasses, sedges, bindweed, fleabane, a Solomon’s seal, and several clumps of creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’). The creeping Jenny is a beautiful yellow-leafed groundcover with charming yellow flowers easily overlooked because of their similarity to the size, shape, and color of the leaves. I find it hard to believe this plant is in the same genus as the larger and aggressive L. clethroides (gooseneck loosestrife) which I am frequently digging up and throwing onto the compost pile. But even the more restrained Jenny has completely outgrown the sundial segment to which it was originally assigned, and it is now being dispatched to areas where it has more freedom to roam. In the meantime, I need to determine what annuals should fill in the sundial segments that currently have no flowers to help mark the time. Last year several four o’clocks magically re-seeded and reappeared in near perfect timing (my pun for the day), but I have not seen any evidence they are planning for a third year.
From my bench, I can see four clematis, each in a different stage of flowering. The clematis on the north side of the pergola was the first to flower, producing large 5" wide blossoms at the end of May (at the end of this report is a June 3 photo of this clematis). Although their blooms are now finished, they have left behind these exquisitely curved, golden seedheads–which ensures I won’t be pruning the vine any time soon. The clematis at the back of the rain garden is also at the end of its bloom cycle, with one lone magenta-white flower. The other two clematis–one on the trellis on the south side of the pergola and the other slumped across the top of the shrub rose--are now covered in small blossoms. Two years ago I provided a four-foot trellis for the clematis next to the rose bush, thinking the clematis could share a few blooms with its thorny neighbor. As it has turned out, the clematis has used the trellis as a launching pad and its magenta blooms now totally cover the top of the shrub rose. Last week I met with the sculptor Cara Briggs Farmer to discuss options for building a taller trellis that would arch over the rose bush and provide a more suitable home for the rambunctious clematis.
Another success story has been the honeysuckle planted four years ago under the “Eiffel Tower” trellis. This honeysuckle has historically focused on producing vines that traipse across the garden mulch and has rarely shown much interest in sending limbs up the trellis or producing blooms. In fact, until this year, I wasn’t sure what the flowers looked like. In April I performed a serious pruning operation on the honeysuckle, attempting to remove all the limbs on or near the ground, and the results have been quite remarkable. The plant has focused more energy on growing the upper-level limbs, and it has produced a good number of large purple “buds” that are opening up into softly fragrant flowers. I performed the same rigorous pruning on the large honeysuckle covering the fence next o the NW gate, producing similar results. Last year that “M1" bed honeysuckle only had a few blooms in the fall; this year, the vines are covered with hundreds of white-yellow blossoms. I had been considering the removal of this honeysuckle, but the profusion of flowers and attendant fragrance have earned it a reprieve–at least for this year.
One last success story in the “H” bed is the establishment of a clump of Coreopsis grandiflora ‘Early Sunrise.’ These were planted last spring in an open area east of the bed’s hydrangea. The plants seemed to struggle through the summer, and I was not sure how they would perform in their second year. W(ell, this spring, they have all emerged, producing a canopy of large, vibrant, golden-yellow flowers, which in many respects resemble daisy-like marigolds. I’m hoping that recurrent deadheading will keep this perennial flowering throughout the summer.
Turning to my right, I check out the “I” bed that runs along the garden’s northeast quadrant. The perennial sunflowers are just beginning to bloom, as are the spiderworts and hollyhocks. Perhaps most striking are the white blooms–with soft pink centers–of the rose campion (Lychnis coronaria). These short-lived perennials have proven to be reasonably successful self-seeders who have randomly spread themselves in portions of the “I” bed. Last year I tried organizing them into a couple of clusters, and one of the clusters has really paid off, creating an appealing mass of white blooms over their fuzzy gray dusty-miller foliage.
The three “J” beds are not at their prime in this stretch of June. The tulips are all gone. The dahlia are growing but they won’t likely be producing any flowers until August. The annual prairie tickseed (another species of Coreopsis) are thriving, but many are still relatively small and the most mature won’t start blooming for another week. As for the two raised beds, the snow-in-summer are finished blooming, and later this week I will trim them back to the ground. I love their silver-gray foliage, but that foliage is hiding a mass of long brown stems that need to be cut out. While they will almost certainly grow back quickly, and perhaps will bloom again in the fall, their upcoming haircut is going to make that space naked and exposed. As for the taller plants at the back of the bed, the columbine are almost finished with their bloom cycle. The fleabane are in full bloom, but they are too tall for this location and really do look like a weed–the wrong plant in the wrong place. The one attractive participant in this bed is the clump of burgundy dianthus blooms. Unfortunately the miniature snapdragon that had been its partner for the last three years did not survive the winter.
As I look out across the other beds visible from my bench, my eyes are irresistibly drawn to the bright yellow calendula blooms in one of the raised “E” beds, the same flowers featured in the Alumni House Garden calendar’s June photo. Equally attractive is the white mass of astilbe-like flower spikes of the goat’s beard (Aruncus dioicus) at the west end of the “D” bed. I planted the Aruncus five years ago in this shady corner of the garden remembering it as a superb back-of-the border plant in English gardens, not knowing that it is a North American native. The clusters of tiny flowers don’t last long, but the plant provides an excellent background of foliage for later blooming flowers, including a group of astilbe that I placed in front of the goat’s beard. Near the east end of the bed, I see three small scarlet flower heads of another Lychnis, the L. chalcedonica (common names include Jerusalem Cross and Maltese Cross). It intrigues me how a few small dabs of scarlet can have such a powerful impact when seen against the dark green foliage of the yews.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 1 June 2020
ALTHOUGH MY WILDERNESS.ORG CALENDAR claims that summer does not begin for another 21 days, meteorologists and gardeners know that summer begins on June 1–an understanding confirmed by today’s weather. The temp was mild in the morning, still in the 60s at 10:00 a.m., but the clouds (and a few intermittent episodes of drizzle) were headed east, and by the middle of the afternoon the unimpeded sun had raised the temp into the 80s, accompanied by a brisk summer wind.
When I arrived at the garden a few minutes after 8:00 a.m., two Coe students were already on the Alumni House patio, progressing through a series of yoga routines, using the glass doors as mirrors to monitor their efforts. Perhaps I should have joined them. Instead I chose to focus on a series of gardening projects, all on the garden’s south side. I began by cleaning up one of the two raised herb gardens. I had planted parsley in the bed last year, and this variety proved to be a prolific self-seeder, the bed covered with parsley seedlings. While trying to save many of the progeny, I did carve out several parsley-free zones for planting three burgundy-leafed basil, a French tarragon, and a large rosemary that had spent the winter in the greenhouse. As I was pulling up miscellaneous weeds and unwanted flowers and herbs (mallow, calendula, dozens of annual tickseed, several clumps of baby chives), I also tried to protect several bronze fennel that had sprouted this spring. When I was done, I thought this herb bed looked pretty good, with a row of calendula (preparing to bloom) in the front, flanked on each side by two large colonies of chives covered with purple blooms. The back of the this raised bed still requires attention–including a decision about where to relocate a patch of little bluestem that really likes this location. But those issues can wait for another day.
As for the other raised herb bed, I did some pruning and weeding but no replanting. Both thyme varieties are blooming, and the oregano has substantially expanded since last year. The Jerusalem Cross flowers on one side of the bed have no herbal properties that I’m aware of, but these Lychnis chalcedonica like this location, and I like how their red blossoms show up at the back of this bed, easily spotted even when seen from the other side of the garden. I did pull up most of the hyssop, which was a fecund self-seeder throughout the garden this past year. Removal of the hyssop should provide more space and sunlight for the rue and the apple mint–whose adventurous root system has so far remained constrained within the mint’s large buried pot. The surprise of the spring is the reappearance of the tarragon in the middle of the bed. Last summer the tarragon dried up and completely disappeared. I assumed it died, but this spring it has re-emerged, more exuberant than ever.
After messing with the herb beds, I walked along the gravel walkway on the garden’s south side, attending to whatever cleaning up operation caught my attention. I pulled up dozens of fleabane (either Erigeron annuus or E. strigosus, Daisy Fleabane). These aster-family dudes are close relatives of the ox-eye daisies whose large white flowers now visually dominate the east end of the garden. I probably should try to remove all the fleabane, but I enjoy seeing a few of these small daisy-like white and yellow blooms at the back of the flower beds. I also am attracted to the humor in the scientific genus name. Erigeron is apparently a combination of “eri” (meaning early) and “geron” (meaning old, confer T. S. Eliot’s poem “Gerontion”), a name suggesting a spring-time wildflower that resembles an old man. But they are assiduous seed-producers, and my reference book on sunflowers (The Sunflower Family in the Upper Midwest, by Thomas W. Antonio and Susanne Masi) assures me they are not suitable for garden use.
In the process of cleaning out the “D” bed, I managed to create a space for planting the three kniphofia purchased from Bluestone Perennials. This is my third attempt to introduce red hot pokers into the garden. This new variety supposedly can handle Zone 5 winters. The space I’ve provided for them is a bit crowded, with daylilies on three sides–and I would prefer they were in the middle of the border, but we’ll see how this arrangement works out. I don’t want to make major changes moving other plants until I know these kniphofia are survivors. To demonstrate my commitment to their well-being, I did surround their roots with my super-duper soil/compost/fertilizer mix–which includes organic fertilizer pellets, bone meal, blood meal, and Bob & John’s “soil optimizer.” I have no evidence that the Bob & John’s enhances the value of this mixture, but I’m inclined to believe something named “Bob & John’s” has got to be good. I also intended to plant some Bluestone anemones, but they were drooping so I watered them and set them in the shade, saving them for another day.
One exciting discovery: the Russell lupines next to the gazing ball in the “D” bed have two large blooms, the plants look very healthy with excellent foliage, there are more blooms on the way, and I found a baby lupine emerging on the other side of the steel ball, indicating that last summer’s lupines had produced and distributed viable seeds. I am particularly pleased about this development because the lupine colony I introduced in the raised bed on the north side of the garden was almost entirely killed off by last summer’s hot, dry weather. This location on the south side is better protected, the soil does not dry out as quickly (though still too fast for the nearby astilbe), and I have assumed this was probably our best option for creating a self-sustaining group of lupines. Of course, our minor achievement is not comparable to the incredible lupine displays we saw in Scotland last summer, but perhaps we are making a small step in the right direction. [At conclusion of this report is a photo of the Lupine with Siberian Iris, Peonies, Penstemon, and a lone Jerusalem Cross also in bloom.]
As I left the garden for lunch, I took a few minutes to stand on the steps of the patio and look out across the garden, now cast in full, mid-day sunlight. For the first time in six years, I felt like the garden gave the impression of a fully developed English-style garden. There have been occasional moments in the past when I had a comparable surge of satisfaction, but those had been on cool, overcast days, perhaps with a bit of light rain. Today, however, there were no such atmospherics. The klieg lights were on, no where to hide. There were certainly some barren zones: most notably the two beds where the dying tulips have not yet been replaced by the coreopsis, cosmos, and dahlias. But overall the herbaceous beds looked complete, the various groups of perennials in tight juxtapositions with each other, like a complex jigsaw puzzle where the pieces are constantly evolving, changing size, producing new color and textural combinations. But somehow, for at least this one hour of a day, the puzzle looked complete, a gratifying omen for the first day of summer.
ALTHOUGH MY WILDERNESS.ORG CALENDAR claims that summer does not begin for another 21 days, meteorologists and gardeners know that summer begins on June 1–an understanding confirmed by today’s weather. The temp was mild in the morning, still in the 60s at 10:00 a.m., but the clouds (and a few intermittent episodes of drizzle) were headed east, and by the middle of the afternoon the unimpeded sun had raised the temp into the 80s, accompanied by a brisk summer wind.
When I arrived at the garden a few minutes after 8:00 a.m., two Coe students were already on the Alumni House patio, progressing through a series of yoga routines, using the glass doors as mirrors to monitor their efforts. Perhaps I should have joined them. Instead I chose to focus on a series of gardening projects, all on the garden’s south side. I began by cleaning up one of the two raised herb gardens. I had planted parsley in the bed last year, and this variety proved to be a prolific self-seeder, the bed covered with parsley seedlings. While trying to save many of the progeny, I did carve out several parsley-free zones for planting three burgundy-leafed basil, a French tarragon, and a large rosemary that had spent the winter in the greenhouse. As I was pulling up miscellaneous weeds and unwanted flowers and herbs (mallow, calendula, dozens of annual tickseed, several clumps of baby chives), I also tried to protect several bronze fennel that had sprouted this spring. When I was done, I thought this herb bed looked pretty good, with a row of calendula (preparing to bloom) in the front, flanked on each side by two large colonies of chives covered with purple blooms. The back of the this raised bed still requires attention–including a decision about where to relocate a patch of little bluestem that really likes this location. But those issues can wait for another day.
As for the other raised herb bed, I did some pruning and weeding but no replanting. Both thyme varieties are blooming, and the oregano has substantially expanded since last year. The Jerusalem Cross flowers on one side of the bed have no herbal properties that I’m aware of, but these Lychnis chalcedonica like this location, and I like how their red blossoms show up at the back of this bed, easily spotted even when seen from the other side of the garden. I did pull up most of the hyssop, which was a fecund self-seeder throughout the garden this past year. Removal of the hyssop should provide more space and sunlight for the rue and the apple mint–whose adventurous root system has so far remained constrained within the mint’s large buried pot. The surprise of the spring is the reappearance of the tarragon in the middle of the bed. Last summer the tarragon dried up and completely disappeared. I assumed it died, but this spring it has re-emerged, more exuberant than ever.
After messing with the herb beds, I walked along the gravel walkway on the garden’s south side, attending to whatever cleaning up operation caught my attention. I pulled up dozens of fleabane (either Erigeron annuus or E. strigosus, Daisy Fleabane). These aster-family dudes are close relatives of the ox-eye daisies whose large white flowers now visually dominate the east end of the garden. I probably should try to remove all the fleabane, but I enjoy seeing a few of these small daisy-like white and yellow blooms at the back of the flower beds. I also am attracted to the humor in the scientific genus name. Erigeron is apparently a combination of “eri” (meaning early) and “geron” (meaning old, confer T. S. Eliot’s poem “Gerontion”), a name suggesting a spring-time wildflower that resembles an old man. But they are assiduous seed-producers, and my reference book on sunflowers (The Sunflower Family in the Upper Midwest, by Thomas W. Antonio and Susanne Masi) assures me they are not suitable for garden use.
In the process of cleaning out the “D” bed, I managed to create a space for planting the three kniphofia purchased from Bluestone Perennials. This is my third attempt to introduce red hot pokers into the garden. This new variety supposedly can handle Zone 5 winters. The space I’ve provided for them is a bit crowded, with daylilies on three sides–and I would prefer they were in the middle of the border, but we’ll see how this arrangement works out. I don’t want to make major changes moving other plants until I know these kniphofia are survivors. To demonstrate my commitment to their well-being, I did surround their roots with my super-duper soil/compost/fertilizer mix–which includes organic fertilizer pellets, bone meal, blood meal, and Bob & John’s “soil optimizer.” I have no evidence that the Bob & John’s enhances the value of this mixture, but I’m inclined to believe something named “Bob & John’s” has got to be good. I also intended to plant some Bluestone anemones, but they were drooping so I watered them and set them in the shade, saving them for another day.
One exciting discovery: the Russell lupines next to the gazing ball in the “D” bed have two large blooms, the plants look very healthy with excellent foliage, there are more blooms on the way, and I found a baby lupine emerging on the other side of the steel ball, indicating that last summer’s lupines had produced and distributed viable seeds. I am particularly pleased about this development because the lupine colony I introduced in the raised bed on the north side of the garden was almost entirely killed off by last summer’s hot, dry weather. This location on the south side is better protected, the soil does not dry out as quickly (though still too fast for the nearby astilbe), and I have assumed this was probably our best option for creating a self-sustaining group of lupines. Of course, our minor achievement is not comparable to the incredible lupine displays we saw in Scotland last summer, but perhaps we are making a small step in the right direction. [At conclusion of this report is a photo of the Lupine with Siberian Iris, Peonies, Penstemon, and a lone Jerusalem Cross also in bloom.]
As I left the garden for lunch, I took a few minutes to stand on the steps of the patio and look out across the garden, now cast in full, mid-day sunlight. For the first time in six years, I felt like the garden gave the impression of a fully developed English-style garden. There have been occasional moments in the past when I had a comparable surge of satisfaction, but those had been on cool, overcast days, perhaps with a bit of light rain. Today, however, there were no such atmospherics. The klieg lights were on, no where to hide. There were certainly some barren zones: most notably the two beds where the dying tulips have not yet been replaced by the coreopsis, cosmos, and dahlias. But overall the herbaceous beds looked complete, the various groups of perennials in tight juxtapositions with each other, like a complex jigsaw puzzle where the pieces are constantly evolving, changing size, producing new color and textural combinations. But somehow, for at least this one hour of a day, the puzzle looked complete, a gratifying omen for the first day of summer.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 18 May 2020
THIS WAS ONE OF THOSE RARE MORNINGS when I walked into the garden, and everything seemed just right, every plant in the right place, a gardener’s dream momentarily fulfilled. Usually, when I enter the garden, I’m thinking about tasks that need to be done: weeding and transplanting and mowing and mulching and whatever. But this morning, the imperfections were incidental. One contributing factor was the congruence of the garden’s fresh growth with the classic English May-time weather: overcast, following an evening rain (0.7" in the rain gauge), high humidity (85%), temperature in the low 50s, a cool breeze. What immediately came to mind was a similar morning several years ago when I entered Holehird Garden in England’s Lake District: similar weather conditions in a garden with a similar size and design, though that description does not capture the atmosphere and ambiance that transcend the visual. Of course, one difference is in Cumbria, I could look off to the northeast and see the rain clouds coming across the Langdale Peaks. Here at Coe, the spell was soon broken by the siren of an ambulance on First Avenue, announcing the personal trauma of someone being delivered to St. Luke’s. With that reminder of where I was, I took out my notebook and recorded a few observations.
• The tulips are kaput. A few of the Blushing Lady tulips are valiantly holding on, but their day has past. We will let them linger, removing their seed pods while hoping the dying leaves capture enough energy to create a few productive bulbs for next spring. But it’s now time to focus on the flowers that will replace them--the dahlias that will come out of their winter storage this coming week.
• Late-season daffodils. While most of the daffodils are no longer blooming, there are several patches of a late season, fragrant variety in the “G” and “H” beds at the east end of the garden that still look exuberant. I think these are “Golden Echo” narcissus: the long, golden trumpets are highlighted by a soft yellow halo (I assume the “echo”) on the surrounding creamy-white petals.
• The ox-eye daisies are now in full bloom. Their white blossoms cover each side of the gravel walkway beneath the pergola. There is also a large patch in the “L” bed immediately in front of the patio, over-running several daylilies intentionally planted there three years ago. The daisies are all self-seeders, deciding on their own where they want to homestead. All I do is attempt to keep them modestly constrained. Perhaps I will remove the ones in the “L” bed, but I’ll wait until they are finished blooming.
• We do have a number of flowers now in full bloom (or darn close):
–The red and yellow blooms of the native columbine.
–The tiny white blooms of the wild strawberries transplanted from the Wilderness Field Station.
–The dramatic, greenish-yellow bracts of the cushion spurge (Euphorbia polychroma).
–Several bleeding hearts, including a few white blooms on a bleeding heart in the “G” bed.
–Several patches of allium, most notably the large purple and white globes in the “C” bed (their 4' tall blooms periodically restraining the large rotating Tom Kelly mobile) and a patch of allium in the “I” bed next to the glass flowers designed by Cara Briggs Farmer.
–The charming little yellow blooms of a small Lamiastrum galeobdelon ‘Herman’s Pride’ (a yellow archangel at the front of the border, near the NW bench; see photo at the end of this report) and in the crevice garden the yellow blooms on a small Delosperma basuticum (from a distance the flowers on this South African native resemble a dandelion’s).
–The racemes of blue flowers on several patches of Cassima planted last fall and a patch of bugleweed densely covered with stalks of small purplish-blue flowers.
• Other plants are covered with buds that will be opening within the next week:
–Catmint: several mounds already large enough to be candidates for their first pruning of 2020.
–False Indigo, including what will be the first yellow blooms on the Baptisia planted last year.
–Many shrubs preparing to bloom, including the garden’s two dwarf lilac bushes, both covered with dozens of bloom clusters, and the imminent white blooms on the viburnum and red twig dogwoods..
–The peonies in the “M1" bed next to the patio look particularly vigorous this spring, but the transplants at the east end of the garden also are promising a good show in another week.
–In a flower bed next to the patio, the Joan Elliott bellflowers (Campanula glomerata), a modest group that has been gradually expanding each year via its underground rhizomes, producing lovely purple blooms in late May or early June.
THIS WAS ONE OF THOSE RARE MORNINGS when I walked into the garden, and everything seemed just right, every plant in the right place, a gardener’s dream momentarily fulfilled. Usually, when I enter the garden, I’m thinking about tasks that need to be done: weeding and transplanting and mowing and mulching and whatever. But this morning, the imperfections were incidental. One contributing factor was the congruence of the garden’s fresh growth with the classic English May-time weather: overcast, following an evening rain (0.7" in the rain gauge), high humidity (85%), temperature in the low 50s, a cool breeze. What immediately came to mind was a similar morning several years ago when I entered Holehird Garden in England’s Lake District: similar weather conditions in a garden with a similar size and design, though that description does not capture the atmosphere and ambiance that transcend the visual. Of course, one difference is in Cumbria, I could look off to the northeast and see the rain clouds coming across the Langdale Peaks. Here at Coe, the spell was soon broken by the siren of an ambulance on First Avenue, announcing the personal trauma of someone being delivered to St. Luke’s. With that reminder of where I was, I took out my notebook and recorded a few observations.
• The tulips are kaput. A few of the Blushing Lady tulips are valiantly holding on, but their day has past. We will let them linger, removing their seed pods while hoping the dying leaves capture enough energy to create a few productive bulbs for next spring. But it’s now time to focus on the flowers that will replace them--the dahlias that will come out of their winter storage this coming week.
• Late-season daffodils. While most of the daffodils are no longer blooming, there are several patches of a late season, fragrant variety in the “G” and “H” beds at the east end of the garden that still look exuberant. I think these are “Golden Echo” narcissus: the long, golden trumpets are highlighted by a soft yellow halo (I assume the “echo”) on the surrounding creamy-white petals.
• The ox-eye daisies are now in full bloom. Their white blossoms cover each side of the gravel walkway beneath the pergola. There is also a large patch in the “L” bed immediately in front of the patio, over-running several daylilies intentionally planted there three years ago. The daisies are all self-seeders, deciding on their own where they want to homestead. All I do is attempt to keep them modestly constrained. Perhaps I will remove the ones in the “L” bed, but I’ll wait until they are finished blooming.
• We do have a number of flowers now in full bloom (or darn close):
–The red and yellow blooms of the native columbine.
–The tiny white blooms of the wild strawberries transplanted from the Wilderness Field Station.
–The dramatic, greenish-yellow bracts of the cushion spurge (Euphorbia polychroma).
–Several bleeding hearts, including a few white blooms on a bleeding heart in the “G” bed.
–Several patches of allium, most notably the large purple and white globes in the “C” bed (their 4' tall blooms periodically restraining the large rotating Tom Kelly mobile) and a patch of allium in the “I” bed next to the glass flowers designed by Cara Briggs Farmer.
–The charming little yellow blooms of a small Lamiastrum galeobdelon ‘Herman’s Pride’ (a yellow archangel at the front of the border, near the NW bench; see photo at the end of this report) and in the crevice garden the yellow blooms on a small Delosperma basuticum (from a distance the flowers on this South African native resemble a dandelion’s).
–The racemes of blue flowers on several patches of Cassima planted last fall and a patch of bugleweed densely covered with stalks of small purplish-blue flowers.
• Other plants are covered with buds that will be opening within the next week:
–Catmint: several mounds already large enough to be candidates for their first pruning of 2020.
–False Indigo, including what will be the first yellow blooms on the Baptisia planted last year.
–Many shrubs preparing to bloom, including the garden’s two dwarf lilac bushes, both covered with dozens of bloom clusters, and the imminent white blooms on the viburnum and red twig dogwoods..
–The peonies in the “M1" bed next to the patio look particularly vigorous this spring, but the transplants at the east end of the garden also are promising a good show in another week.
–In a flower bed next to the patio, the Joan Elliott bellflowers (Campanula glomerata), a modest group that has been gradually expanding each year via its underground rhizomes, producing lovely purple blooms in late May or early June.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 11 May 2020
IT HAS BEEN THREE WEEKS since my last garden report. From one perspective, not much has changed in these intervening days. In April the world was in the grips of a coronavirus pandemic and the COVID-19 virus continues to hold fast to nearly all aspects of our lives. But within the confined space of a small English-style garden in east central Iowa, every day is a new day. The lush, nuanced greens on this post Mother’s Day morning look quite different from the garden three weeks ago, dominated by the confident brass of the daffodils’ yellow trumpets.
This is also the time of year when I always feel overwhelmed: so many divergent tasks, so few hours in the day to do them. Each day I remind myself that gardening is a process, playing a game without a conclusion, pursuing a result never accomplished. There are, however, occasional moments of grace when something looks good, when I think to myself, “Yeah, that’s okay.” Here are a few of those moments on a leisurely walk about the garden on a Monday morning in May, camera and notebook in hand.
• The blooms of the garden’s first camassia, Camassia leichtlinii to be precise. According to my cursory research, there are several species of Camassia that are candidates for flower gardens, but the two bulb companies I used last fall for my bulb orders were pitching the Leichtlin Quamash, a species native to the Pacific Northwest. I suspect my first encounter with camassia came when reading about the Lewis and Clark Voyage of Discovery and their dependence on the boiled bulbs as a food source after they crossed the Rockies–and the gastrointestinal distress they experienced as a result. My goal was to find a late-flowering bulb that would help to fill in some flowering gaps between the demise of the daffodils and the arrival of the daylilies. The ‘Caerula’ camassia blooms have now begun to open up and they are marvelous: erect racemes of blossoms with six elongated, light blue petal-like tepals. When placing my bulb orders last fall, I accidentally ordered twice as many camassia bulbs as I intended, but they are now grouped in three locations and serving admirably in each unique space. I’m already thinking about adding some this fall to the crevice garden–which has a sizable vacancy now that the reticulated iris are done for the year. I suspect the camassia would like the crevice garden’s relatively dry summer terrain.
• Blushing Lady tulips. Most of the tulips in the garden are finished, and Anh (my student garden assistant) was busy this morning deadheading the tulips–as well as many of the daffodils on the north side of the garden. The Blushing Lady tulips in the “E” bed on the south side are still in their prime. Their elegant, durable blossoms are equally attractive whether open or closed (as they were all day yesterday because of the overcast skies with occasional light rain). Around both the “E” and “J” tulip beds are dozens of prairie tickseed–a Midwest native coreopsis. They love the gravel walkway as a germination bed. Most of the coreopsis will end up in the compost bins (which at the moment are all full of compost not yet fully composted), but this morning we began digging up and transplanting some of the larger volunteers into the “E” and “J” beds. They should provide a couple months of summer blooms while we are waiting for the dahlias to put on their display in these beds at the end of the summer.
• The "joys" of the gravel walkways. When I first proposed that the college create a gardener position for the Alumni House Garden, I stipulated that if I were appointed to such a position, I would only be responsible for the perennial flower beds. Culver’s (or whoever) would be responsible for the fountain, the gravel walkways, and the lawn. Well, now it’s six years later, and I still leave the fountain for the college’s Physical Plant crew, but caring for the lawn and the walkways is now my responsibility and probably absorbS more of my hours than the flower beds. This week I will be focusing my energies on cleaning up the gravel walkways. Many of them have become quite “weedy” and those weeds are beginning to produce flowers and more seeds. I had at one time hoped that we could cleanse the walkways so their upkeep would become less burdensome. But so far, that has not been the case. Their seed supply appears to be inexhaustible, and in some cases the problem has been exacerbated by my introduction of profligate seed-producers. For example, in the southwest corner of the garden are thousands of little artemisia–progeny of last year’s Sweet Annie–hoping they will somehow avoid my hoe’s assault. In a stretch along a walkway in the southeast corner can be found dozens of meadow sage, the product of a lovely blue-flowering sage I planted several years ago. And then there are all those tickseeds--relatively easy to kill, but it does take time, and they do keep coming back. A blessing and a curse.
• Flowering Crab. It was an unusual year for the seven white flowering crab. The youngest and smallest tree, located in the “A1" bed next to the patio, was the first to bloom, was covered with a complete canopy of gorgeous, divinely fragrant blooms, and almost two weeks later still looks fresh and vibrant. The other whites were slower to bloom and never had a complete coverage, the blooms seemingly overpowered by the trees' expansive green leaves. The espalier flowering crab with the burgundy leaves and pink flowers was the first of all the flowering crab to bloom, but the leaves’ rich coloration tends to hide the blooms. This year, I think for the first time, we had a nice display of pink blossoms on the two standard flowering crab in the “H” bed at the east end of the garden. One of the first decisions I made in 2014 was to remove two flowering crab adjacent to the pergola; however, the roots of those trees remained behind and were intent on producing new trees. Most of those volunteers were eliminated, but I did allow two volunteers to grow to about 8 feet tall. I prune them 2-3 times a year, trying to keep their burgundy foliage in the form of tight balls.
• The genus Cerastium has some troublesome relatives–such as mouse ear chickweed–but that does not keep me from loving C. Tomentosum, snow-in-summer. While in some situations it can be a troublemaker, the two large patches of this flower in the Coe garden are confined to the two raised “J” beds. The species is super tough (a Zone 2 plant that can live in dry sand), has silver-tinted woolly foliage that looks good in all four seasons, and produces a multitude of charming five-petal white blossoms (see photo accompanying this report). The “J” beds also have a Cerastium cultivar called “Yo-Yo” that is shorter, less aggressive, and blooms later in the spring. Like the tickseed, the self-seeding germination occurs in the gravel walkway, where each spring I can dig up dozens of baby Cerastiums and give to visitors looking for adding this flower to their garden collection.
IT HAS BEEN THREE WEEKS since my last garden report. From one perspective, not much has changed in these intervening days. In April the world was in the grips of a coronavirus pandemic and the COVID-19 virus continues to hold fast to nearly all aspects of our lives. But within the confined space of a small English-style garden in east central Iowa, every day is a new day. The lush, nuanced greens on this post Mother’s Day morning look quite different from the garden three weeks ago, dominated by the confident brass of the daffodils’ yellow trumpets.
This is also the time of year when I always feel overwhelmed: so many divergent tasks, so few hours in the day to do them. Each day I remind myself that gardening is a process, playing a game without a conclusion, pursuing a result never accomplished. There are, however, occasional moments of grace when something looks good, when I think to myself, “Yeah, that’s okay.” Here are a few of those moments on a leisurely walk about the garden on a Monday morning in May, camera and notebook in hand.
• The blooms of the garden’s first camassia, Camassia leichtlinii to be precise. According to my cursory research, there are several species of Camassia that are candidates for flower gardens, but the two bulb companies I used last fall for my bulb orders were pitching the Leichtlin Quamash, a species native to the Pacific Northwest. I suspect my first encounter with camassia came when reading about the Lewis and Clark Voyage of Discovery and their dependence on the boiled bulbs as a food source after they crossed the Rockies–and the gastrointestinal distress they experienced as a result. My goal was to find a late-flowering bulb that would help to fill in some flowering gaps between the demise of the daffodils and the arrival of the daylilies. The ‘Caerula’ camassia blooms have now begun to open up and they are marvelous: erect racemes of blossoms with six elongated, light blue petal-like tepals. When placing my bulb orders last fall, I accidentally ordered twice as many camassia bulbs as I intended, but they are now grouped in three locations and serving admirably in each unique space. I’m already thinking about adding some this fall to the crevice garden–which has a sizable vacancy now that the reticulated iris are done for the year. I suspect the camassia would like the crevice garden’s relatively dry summer terrain.
• Blushing Lady tulips. Most of the tulips in the garden are finished, and Anh (my student garden assistant) was busy this morning deadheading the tulips–as well as many of the daffodils on the north side of the garden. The Blushing Lady tulips in the “E” bed on the south side are still in their prime. Their elegant, durable blossoms are equally attractive whether open or closed (as they were all day yesterday because of the overcast skies with occasional light rain). Around both the “E” and “J” tulip beds are dozens of prairie tickseed–a Midwest native coreopsis. They love the gravel walkway as a germination bed. Most of the coreopsis will end up in the compost bins (which at the moment are all full of compost not yet fully composted), but this morning we began digging up and transplanting some of the larger volunteers into the “E” and “J” beds. They should provide a couple months of summer blooms while we are waiting for the dahlias to put on their display in these beds at the end of the summer.
• The "joys" of the gravel walkways. When I first proposed that the college create a gardener position for the Alumni House Garden, I stipulated that if I were appointed to such a position, I would only be responsible for the perennial flower beds. Culver’s (or whoever) would be responsible for the fountain, the gravel walkways, and the lawn. Well, now it’s six years later, and I still leave the fountain for the college’s Physical Plant crew, but caring for the lawn and the walkways is now my responsibility and probably absorbS more of my hours than the flower beds. This week I will be focusing my energies on cleaning up the gravel walkways. Many of them have become quite “weedy” and those weeds are beginning to produce flowers and more seeds. I had at one time hoped that we could cleanse the walkways so their upkeep would become less burdensome. But so far, that has not been the case. Their seed supply appears to be inexhaustible, and in some cases the problem has been exacerbated by my introduction of profligate seed-producers. For example, in the southwest corner of the garden are thousands of little artemisia–progeny of last year’s Sweet Annie–hoping they will somehow avoid my hoe’s assault. In a stretch along a walkway in the southeast corner can be found dozens of meadow sage, the product of a lovely blue-flowering sage I planted several years ago. And then there are all those tickseeds--relatively easy to kill, but it does take time, and they do keep coming back. A blessing and a curse.
• Flowering Crab. It was an unusual year for the seven white flowering crab. The youngest and smallest tree, located in the “A1" bed next to the patio, was the first to bloom, was covered with a complete canopy of gorgeous, divinely fragrant blooms, and almost two weeks later still looks fresh and vibrant. The other whites were slower to bloom and never had a complete coverage, the blooms seemingly overpowered by the trees' expansive green leaves. The espalier flowering crab with the burgundy leaves and pink flowers was the first of all the flowering crab to bloom, but the leaves’ rich coloration tends to hide the blooms. This year, I think for the first time, we had a nice display of pink blossoms on the two standard flowering crab in the “H” bed at the east end of the garden. One of the first decisions I made in 2014 was to remove two flowering crab adjacent to the pergola; however, the roots of those trees remained behind and were intent on producing new trees. Most of those volunteers were eliminated, but I did allow two volunteers to grow to about 8 feet tall. I prune them 2-3 times a year, trying to keep their burgundy foliage in the form of tight balls.
• The genus Cerastium has some troublesome relatives–such as mouse ear chickweed–but that does not keep me from loving C. Tomentosum, snow-in-summer. While in some situations it can be a troublemaker, the two large patches of this flower in the Coe garden are confined to the two raised “J” beds. The species is super tough (a Zone 2 plant that can live in dry sand), has silver-tinted woolly foliage that looks good in all four seasons, and produces a multitude of charming five-petal white blossoms (see photo accompanying this report). The “J” beds also have a Cerastium cultivar called “Yo-Yo” that is shorter, less aggressive, and blooms later in the spring. Like the tickseed, the self-seeding germination occurs in the gravel walkway, where each spring I can dig up dozens of baby Cerastiums and give to visitors looking for adding this flower to their garden collection.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 20 April 2020
The notes for this report were recorded on Monday morning, 11:45 a.m., temperature of 60F and 51% humidity. Just installed new batteries in my weather station so I trust it is accurately recording atmospheric conditions.
In two days we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, so it would seem appropriate that my preparations for its celebration on Wednesday involve as much outdoor gardening as the weather and my old body will permit. Though alive at the time of the first Earth Day celebration, I have no recollection of the event. At the time I was a corporal in the U.S. Army, stationed with a small ambulance company at Fort Gordon, Georgia, nervously waiting for a levy from the Pentagon informing me of my next duty station’s location. Having recently graduated from Advanced Individual Training as a Field Medic, I assumed my next assignment would be in Southeast Asia, an area of the world that at that era in my life I had no desire to visit. As it turned out on a beautiful spring morning my Sergeant Major walked into my small office and informed me that nine personnel in our company had received new travel orders: eight gentlemen would be going to Korea, and I was told to report to my new duty station at Frankfurt/Maine Airport in Germany. There have been many moments in my life when I felt damn lucky–and I certainly felt that way when I learned that the Pentagon, in its infallible wisdom, had decided I could best serve my country by spending a year in Germany. But this report is supposed to be a record of an April morning’s garden observations, so let’s get to it.
• I began the morning by working in the greenhouse, transferring into pots some garden vegetables I started from seeds in March: 13 Eggplants (3 Long Purple, 6 Ping Tung, 4 Millionaire) and 4 Carmen Sweet Peppers. Several of the plants had become infected with tiny green insects (I call them aphids though I don’t know for certain that is an accurate identification) that I remove with a Q-tip soaked in soapy water. The pepper plants are relatively easy to clean, but the eggplant leaves have a tacky surface, pulling at the Q-tip cotton and making the cleaning process more frustrating and much slower. Once summer arrives and all the plants are moved out of the greenhouse, I need to give my utensils and work area a thorough bleach cleaning.
• I did have two garden visitors this morning, and I gave them a short overview of the garden while quietly maintaining our 6-foot zones of separation. Because the moss phlox are now in full bloom, we checked out the crevice garden, but what caught their eye was the Angelina sedum along the outer edges of the bed. As they strolled through other areas of the garden, I dug up several chunks of sedum, plus a batch of moss phlox, as a gift in appreciation of their visit. I love gardening’s privacy and solitude, but it’s also wonderful to share a garden with visitors and learn to see the garden through their eyes.
• The yellow daffodils on the north and east sides of the garden continue to dominate the landscape. The early-blooming Tete-a-Tete miniature daffodils have had a particularly robust spring and are still in full bloom. The cool weather has given them a longer bloom life than usual, but many of their blooms will be in serious decline by the end of the week.
• I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the appearance of so many Grecian windflowers (Anemone blanda) this spring, with sprightly blue and white daisylike flowers above their fernlike leaves. Like the earlier blooming winter aconites also planted two years ago, they did not produce many blooms last spring, but this year they have emerged as a significant mid-April plant in the two perennial flowers beds in front of the patio.
• Many of the garden’s key perennials are displaying fresh spring foliage. All the daylilies are filling out, creating attractive mounds of green foliage. The burgundy-red stems of the peonies have continued to grow and their green foliage is beginning to open up. The Husker Red Penstemons are all generating the dark burgundy leaves that will play such a primal role in the interplay of foliage colors in May and June. I’m always thrilled to see the spears of Siberian Iris poking through the remnants of last year’s rusty brown foliage. One significant disappointment near the NW gate is the withered leaves of the garden’s largest bleeding heart, zapped by a recent night-time freeze. The plant’s newest leaves, however, appear to be okay. Many of the hostas also have frozen tips, but they will rebound without any permanent damage. The freeze fortunately came before the flower buds were fully formed on the flowering crab. As far as I can ascertain, the flower buds are in good shape.
• A few of the small, guinea fowl fritillary are in bloom next to the “L” bed bench in front of the patio. The real show will be the two varieties of Fritillaria imperialis in the northeast corner: the ‘Rubra Maxima’ with bright orange blossoms and the ‘Lutea Maxima’ (planted last fall) with yellow flowers. These are some of the garden’s most dramatic flowers of the year.
• The spring snowflakes (Leucojum vernum) behind the NW park bench have now begun to produce their lovely white, bell-shaped flowers hanging from the erect stems. At the tip of each petal is a small green dot. Last fall I planted three new groups of spring snowflakes among the hostas behind the SW bench, but so far none has appeared above ground. Last year the Leucojum maintained their blooms into June; I’m eager to see if they do equally as well this spring.
• A close neighbor to the spring snowflakes is a mass of grape hyacinths, with over 200 tightly packed racemes of fragrant blue flowers. I planted these Muscari in 2015 but failed to record their species name; however, after disappearing in the summer, their foliage reappears in the fall–which I believe is a characteristic of M. armenicum (the species name providing a clue for their native Mediterranean home). Last spring I visited a garden in Minneapolis where they plant M. armenicum around other bulbs to help gardeners know where bulbs already exist when restocking a perennial bed in the fall.
• Alas, in an area behind the NW park bench, I see three small thistles have popped up. Two weeks ago in my vegetable garden I dug over a foot deep, attempting to remove thistle roots in a raised bed. Although I had hoped to find them all, when I was working in the garden yesterday, I spied a small thistle emerging in the same bed. They are relentless–but their numbers in the Alumni House Garden have been dramatically reduced in the last five years, and I remain determined that eventually they will be vanquished from this little English-inspired garden in Iowa.
The notes for this report were recorded on Monday morning, 11:45 a.m., temperature of 60F and 51% humidity. Just installed new batteries in my weather station so I trust it is accurately recording atmospheric conditions.
In two days we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, so it would seem appropriate that my preparations for its celebration on Wednesday involve as much outdoor gardening as the weather and my old body will permit. Though alive at the time of the first Earth Day celebration, I have no recollection of the event. At the time I was a corporal in the U.S. Army, stationed with a small ambulance company at Fort Gordon, Georgia, nervously waiting for a levy from the Pentagon informing me of my next duty station’s location. Having recently graduated from Advanced Individual Training as a Field Medic, I assumed my next assignment would be in Southeast Asia, an area of the world that at that era in my life I had no desire to visit. As it turned out on a beautiful spring morning my Sergeant Major walked into my small office and informed me that nine personnel in our company had received new travel orders: eight gentlemen would be going to Korea, and I was told to report to my new duty station at Frankfurt/Maine Airport in Germany. There have been many moments in my life when I felt damn lucky–and I certainly felt that way when I learned that the Pentagon, in its infallible wisdom, had decided I could best serve my country by spending a year in Germany. But this report is supposed to be a record of an April morning’s garden observations, so let’s get to it.
• I began the morning by working in the greenhouse, transferring into pots some garden vegetables I started from seeds in March: 13 Eggplants (3 Long Purple, 6 Ping Tung, 4 Millionaire) and 4 Carmen Sweet Peppers. Several of the plants had become infected with tiny green insects (I call them aphids though I don’t know for certain that is an accurate identification) that I remove with a Q-tip soaked in soapy water. The pepper plants are relatively easy to clean, but the eggplant leaves have a tacky surface, pulling at the Q-tip cotton and making the cleaning process more frustrating and much slower. Once summer arrives and all the plants are moved out of the greenhouse, I need to give my utensils and work area a thorough bleach cleaning.
• I did have two garden visitors this morning, and I gave them a short overview of the garden while quietly maintaining our 6-foot zones of separation. Because the moss phlox are now in full bloom, we checked out the crevice garden, but what caught their eye was the Angelina sedum along the outer edges of the bed. As they strolled through other areas of the garden, I dug up several chunks of sedum, plus a batch of moss phlox, as a gift in appreciation of their visit. I love gardening’s privacy and solitude, but it’s also wonderful to share a garden with visitors and learn to see the garden through their eyes.
• The yellow daffodils on the north and east sides of the garden continue to dominate the landscape. The early-blooming Tete-a-Tete miniature daffodils have had a particularly robust spring and are still in full bloom. The cool weather has given them a longer bloom life than usual, but many of their blooms will be in serious decline by the end of the week.
• I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the appearance of so many Grecian windflowers (Anemone blanda) this spring, with sprightly blue and white daisylike flowers above their fernlike leaves. Like the earlier blooming winter aconites also planted two years ago, they did not produce many blooms last spring, but this year they have emerged as a significant mid-April plant in the two perennial flowers beds in front of the patio.
• Many of the garden’s key perennials are displaying fresh spring foliage. All the daylilies are filling out, creating attractive mounds of green foliage. The burgundy-red stems of the peonies have continued to grow and their green foliage is beginning to open up. The Husker Red Penstemons are all generating the dark burgundy leaves that will play such a primal role in the interplay of foliage colors in May and June. I’m always thrilled to see the spears of Siberian Iris poking through the remnants of last year’s rusty brown foliage. One significant disappointment near the NW gate is the withered leaves of the garden’s largest bleeding heart, zapped by a recent night-time freeze. The plant’s newest leaves, however, appear to be okay. Many of the hostas also have frozen tips, but they will rebound without any permanent damage. The freeze fortunately came before the flower buds were fully formed on the flowering crab. As far as I can ascertain, the flower buds are in good shape.
• A few of the small, guinea fowl fritillary are in bloom next to the “L” bed bench in front of the patio. The real show will be the two varieties of Fritillaria imperialis in the northeast corner: the ‘Rubra Maxima’ with bright orange blossoms and the ‘Lutea Maxima’ (planted last fall) with yellow flowers. These are some of the garden’s most dramatic flowers of the year.
• The spring snowflakes (Leucojum vernum) behind the NW park bench have now begun to produce their lovely white, bell-shaped flowers hanging from the erect stems. At the tip of each petal is a small green dot. Last fall I planted three new groups of spring snowflakes among the hostas behind the SW bench, but so far none has appeared above ground. Last year the Leucojum maintained their blooms into June; I’m eager to see if they do equally as well this spring.
• A close neighbor to the spring snowflakes is a mass of grape hyacinths, with over 200 tightly packed racemes of fragrant blue flowers. I planted these Muscari in 2015 but failed to record their species name; however, after disappearing in the summer, their foliage reappears in the fall–which I believe is a characteristic of M. armenicum (the species name providing a clue for their native Mediterranean home). Last spring I visited a garden in Minneapolis where they plant M. armenicum around other bulbs to help gardeners know where bulbs already exist when restocking a perennial bed in the fall.
• Alas, in an area behind the NW park bench, I see three small thistles have popped up. Two weeks ago in my vegetable garden I dug over a foot deep, attempting to remove thistle roots in a raised bed. Although I had hoped to find them all, when I was working in the garden yesterday, I spied a small thistle emerging in the same bed. They are relentless–but their numbers in the Alumni House Garden have been dramatically reduced in the last five years, and I remain determined that eventually they will be vanquished from this little English-inspired garden in Iowa.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 13 April 2020
At 9:25 this morning the temperature had risen to 34F (39F in the gazebo), with 40% humidity. The sunshine was most welcome, but the NW wind made the air temperature feel well below freezing. And the overnight freeze had done some damage to several plants, including many frozen tulip and buttercup leaves in the “A1" bed (an area of the garden that does not receive much direct sunshine at this time of the year). Most of the early spring flowers, however, were not damaged by the overnight freeze. The exuberant yellow blooms of hundreds of daffodils, moving briskly in the sunshine, conveyed an impression of fresh, unimpeded energy. This will be the prime week for the daffodils, though the blooms of the early Tete-a-Tetes are beginning to show their age.
Before walking through the garden, I spent an hour finishing the spring issue of the The Garden Quarto, featuring poems by the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke and two Americans, Sarah Lindsay and Gwendolyn Ann Hill. Clarke was for 8 years the National Poet of Wales, and I was thrilled when she responded within minutes of my initial email inquiry, giving permission to use her remarkable poem in our spring issue. Hill’s poem originally appeared on the Narrative website as part of a trilogy of “wilderness” poems; she grew up in Iowa City and recently completed her MFA at the University of Arkansas. As for Sarah, she would need no introduction for any of Coe’s older faculty and staff who remember her parents Charles and Phyllis Lindsay. She now has four books of poetry, including Primate Behavior, a finalist for a National Book Award. She works as an editor for Pace Publications in North Carolina. In her email granting permission for us to include her poem about growing peas in space, she included the following paragraph on some Coe memories:
“Unless I’ve mixed some memories, it was in Peterson Hall that an assortment of animals were displayed in somewhat shadowy cases, including a passenger pigeon. And an ostrich stood unprotected, so I took just one little feather that had fallen to the floor. We sisters got to draw on the chalkboard, too, in a time and at an age when drawing on a chalkboard felt pretty cool. I faintly remember being taken to visit Dad in Stewart Hall, maybe when it was still Carnegie. Later I regretted the name change because I would have been so pleased to have a poetry reading at Carnegie Hall.”
Later this evening I will post the Spring 2020 issue to the garden’s website, but because of the campus being shut down, we’ll wait until later this spring or summer to distribute the issue’s printed copies.
After completing The Garden Quarto, I took a quick tour of the garden, recording the following observations in my notebook:
• Peonies are popping up in four different perennial flower beds. The peonies’ burgundy stalks have grown dramatically in the past week and several green leaves are already beginning to open.
• The three varieties of moss phlox in the rock garden are covered with hundreds of flower buds and a few have now opened; the phlox should be resplendent in pink, blue, and white blossoms by the end of the week.
• The flowering crab trees are all leafing out; the most notable are the deep reddish purple leaves of the espalier apple tree in the garden’s NW corner.
• The sharply pointed spears of new hostas and baptisia are emerging from their dense, compacted root systems. Last week I cleared away all of last year’s stems, foliage, and seed pods from the baptisia near the NW garden gate. Fortunately the old stems are easy to break off from the roots in the weeks right before the emergence of new growth.
• The crocus and winter aconite blooms are all gone, but the chionodoxa and anemone blanda are now in their prime. Although many of the crocus Tommies in the lawn did not bloom, I’ll give them some supplemental bulb fertilizer, and perhaps they will come back stronger next spring.
• The grape hyacinths in the “L” bed have dozens of bloom heads that should be opening in the next week. The comparable patch at the south end of the “C” bed receive much less direct sun, and they will be a week or more behind the “L” bed muscari.
• The old spring snowflakes behind the NW bench are beginning to produce flower buds; the snowflakes I planted last fall behind the SW bench have not yet emerged.
• Along the north perennial flower beds, I came upon flower buds for lungwort, barren strawberries, ‘Imperial Maximus’ fritillary, and prairie smoke. Many of the tulips in the lower “J” bed (next to the seasonal sundial) have fully developed flower buds that will probably open up later today, assuming the sun continues to shine. The blooms of the species Tarda Tulips at the front of that bed first opened up in the middle of last week. A visitor to the garden told me those tulips with their distinctive egg-yolk yellow centers are “stunning.” I agreed.
• The two large forsythia bushes at the east end of the garden are beginning to lose their blossoms, but this has definitely been their best spring since 2015. In previous years I had done some pruning on those bushes, trying to keep them relatively contained and civilized, but last year I did not cut them back–and they appear to have appreciated their newfound freedom.
• Among the row of viburnum next to the garden’s east wall is an individual viburnum that blooms early and produces the garden’s most fragrant blooms of the year. I’m certainly no expert on viburnums (and this plant was placed here long before I started working in the garden), but my guess is that this may be a Viburnum x burkwoodii. My Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Garden Plants describes this cultivar as an “upright compact shrub that grows to 7 feet high and with rough leaves that turn orange-red to reddish purple in autumn. In early to midspring, dark pink flower buds open to domed clusters of tubular white, intensively clove-scented flowers.” That description matches with our viburnum.
• I walk by the wind chimes (which are vigorously chiming this morning) to check out the hellebores (cf photo of hellebore at the beginning of this report). These Lenten Roses are entering their peak bloom period with some marvelous flowers. Unfortunately, most of their blooms point downward, and I suspect many visitors pass by without noticing them. As I was beginning to lean over and examine a hellebore blossom, I was greeted by a man accompanied by a black lab (on a leash) who told me he was glad the garden gate was open because he loved to visit the garden while on his morning walks. Although the dog appeared well-behaved, I decided to maintain our social distance and not invite him to walk over and look at the hellebores.
• Last week I cleaned up most of the rain garden, and it looks much improved. The astilbes’ tiny burgundy leaves are emerging and the flag iris appear to have had no problem handling the winter. I was saddened to see a number of frozen leaves on the meadow rue, but it should bounce back. It appears that the daffodils and tulips planted on the berm on the south side of the rain garden have all emerged, but that area receives almost no direct sunlight at this time of year, and just a couple of the yellow daffodils are in bloom. Also emerging at the east end of the bed’s “peninsula” is a patch of camassia planted last fall. Since this area does not receive full sun and can remain wet for long stretches, it may not be an ideal location for these bulbs, but occasionally we must take a gamble and see what happens.
• Alas, accompanying all this good news is the spring’s first observation of emerging horsetail, including several stalks topped with packets of spores--a reminder it’s time to begin my sixth year trying to reduce and perhaps eventually eliminate this ancient, resilient foe.
At 9:25 this morning the temperature had risen to 34F (39F in the gazebo), with 40% humidity. The sunshine was most welcome, but the NW wind made the air temperature feel well below freezing. And the overnight freeze had done some damage to several plants, including many frozen tulip and buttercup leaves in the “A1" bed (an area of the garden that does not receive much direct sunshine at this time of the year). Most of the early spring flowers, however, were not damaged by the overnight freeze. The exuberant yellow blooms of hundreds of daffodils, moving briskly in the sunshine, conveyed an impression of fresh, unimpeded energy. This will be the prime week for the daffodils, though the blooms of the early Tete-a-Tetes are beginning to show their age.
Before walking through the garden, I spent an hour finishing the spring issue of the The Garden Quarto, featuring poems by the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke and two Americans, Sarah Lindsay and Gwendolyn Ann Hill. Clarke was for 8 years the National Poet of Wales, and I was thrilled when she responded within minutes of my initial email inquiry, giving permission to use her remarkable poem in our spring issue. Hill’s poem originally appeared on the Narrative website as part of a trilogy of “wilderness” poems; she grew up in Iowa City and recently completed her MFA at the University of Arkansas. As for Sarah, she would need no introduction for any of Coe’s older faculty and staff who remember her parents Charles and Phyllis Lindsay. She now has four books of poetry, including Primate Behavior, a finalist for a National Book Award. She works as an editor for Pace Publications in North Carolina. In her email granting permission for us to include her poem about growing peas in space, she included the following paragraph on some Coe memories:
“Unless I’ve mixed some memories, it was in Peterson Hall that an assortment of animals were displayed in somewhat shadowy cases, including a passenger pigeon. And an ostrich stood unprotected, so I took just one little feather that had fallen to the floor. We sisters got to draw on the chalkboard, too, in a time and at an age when drawing on a chalkboard felt pretty cool. I faintly remember being taken to visit Dad in Stewart Hall, maybe when it was still Carnegie. Later I regretted the name change because I would have been so pleased to have a poetry reading at Carnegie Hall.”
Later this evening I will post the Spring 2020 issue to the garden’s website, but because of the campus being shut down, we’ll wait until later this spring or summer to distribute the issue’s printed copies.
After completing The Garden Quarto, I took a quick tour of the garden, recording the following observations in my notebook:
• Peonies are popping up in four different perennial flower beds. The peonies’ burgundy stalks have grown dramatically in the past week and several green leaves are already beginning to open.
• The three varieties of moss phlox in the rock garden are covered with hundreds of flower buds and a few have now opened; the phlox should be resplendent in pink, blue, and white blossoms by the end of the week.
• The flowering crab trees are all leafing out; the most notable are the deep reddish purple leaves of the espalier apple tree in the garden’s NW corner.
• The sharply pointed spears of new hostas and baptisia are emerging from their dense, compacted root systems. Last week I cleared away all of last year’s stems, foliage, and seed pods from the baptisia near the NW garden gate. Fortunately the old stems are easy to break off from the roots in the weeks right before the emergence of new growth.
• The crocus and winter aconite blooms are all gone, but the chionodoxa and anemone blanda are now in their prime. Although many of the crocus Tommies in the lawn did not bloom, I’ll give them some supplemental bulb fertilizer, and perhaps they will come back stronger next spring.
• The grape hyacinths in the “L” bed have dozens of bloom heads that should be opening in the next week. The comparable patch at the south end of the “C” bed receive much less direct sun, and they will be a week or more behind the “L” bed muscari.
• The old spring snowflakes behind the NW bench are beginning to produce flower buds; the snowflakes I planted last fall behind the SW bench have not yet emerged.
• Along the north perennial flower beds, I came upon flower buds for lungwort, barren strawberries, ‘Imperial Maximus’ fritillary, and prairie smoke. Many of the tulips in the lower “J” bed (next to the seasonal sundial) have fully developed flower buds that will probably open up later today, assuming the sun continues to shine. The blooms of the species Tarda Tulips at the front of that bed first opened up in the middle of last week. A visitor to the garden told me those tulips with their distinctive egg-yolk yellow centers are “stunning.” I agreed.
• The two large forsythia bushes at the east end of the garden are beginning to lose their blossoms, but this has definitely been their best spring since 2015. In previous years I had done some pruning on those bushes, trying to keep them relatively contained and civilized, but last year I did not cut them back–and they appear to have appreciated their newfound freedom.
• Among the row of viburnum next to the garden’s east wall is an individual viburnum that blooms early and produces the garden’s most fragrant blooms of the year. I’m certainly no expert on viburnums (and this plant was placed here long before I started working in the garden), but my guess is that this may be a Viburnum x burkwoodii. My Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Garden Plants describes this cultivar as an “upright compact shrub that grows to 7 feet high and with rough leaves that turn orange-red to reddish purple in autumn. In early to midspring, dark pink flower buds open to domed clusters of tubular white, intensively clove-scented flowers.” That description matches with our viburnum.
• I walk by the wind chimes (which are vigorously chiming this morning) to check out the hellebores (cf photo of hellebore at the beginning of this report). These Lenten Roses are entering their peak bloom period with some marvelous flowers. Unfortunately, most of their blooms point downward, and I suspect many visitors pass by without noticing them. As I was beginning to lean over and examine a hellebore blossom, I was greeted by a man accompanied by a black lab (on a leash) who told me he was glad the garden gate was open because he loved to visit the garden while on his morning walks. Although the dog appeared well-behaved, I decided to maintain our social distance and not invite him to walk over and look at the hellebores.
• Last week I cleaned up most of the rain garden, and it looks much improved. The astilbes’ tiny burgundy leaves are emerging and the flag iris appear to have had no problem handling the winter. I was saddened to see a number of frozen leaves on the meadow rue, but it should bounce back. It appears that the daffodils and tulips planted on the berm on the south side of the rain garden have all emerged, but that area receives almost no direct sunlight at this time of year, and just a couple of the yellow daffodils are in bloom. Also emerging at the east end of the bed’s “peninsula” is a patch of camassia planted last fall. Since this area does not receive full sun and can remain wet for long stretches, it may not be an ideal location for these bulbs, but occasionally we must take a gamble and see what happens.
• Alas, accompanying all this good news is the spring’s first observation of emerging horsetail, including several stalks topped with packets of spores--a reminder it’s time to begin my sixth year trying to reduce and perhaps eventually eliminate this ancient, resilient foe.
Monday Morning Garden Report: An Email Sent to Faculty and Staff on Tuesday, 31 March
I assume most of you receiving this email are not currently working on campus, but I did want everyone to know that the Alumni House Garden has re-opened for the spring. We are now welcoming any visitors seeking a pleasant environment with some attractive walking paths--and 13 different benches to ensure appropriate social distancing. The NW garden gate should now be open from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday.
Earlier this morning I did a quick tour of the garden and confirmed that spring has arrived. We have hundreds of crocus in bloom, including over 500 purple ‘Tommies’ in the lawn around the two large iron spheres. This weekend eight separate clumps of fragrant Tete-a-Tete daffodils opened up with their yellow petals and egg-yolk colored trumpets. We also have reticulated iris ‘Katharine Hodgkins’ in bloom with beautifully patterned pale blue and yellow flowers. At the east end of the garden, the yellow forsythia blooms are just emerging and several of the hellebores have new flowers.
For those of you who can’t come on campus, we will continue to post to the garden’s website photographic slideshows of the garden and its progress through the spring and into the summer. On the website I also post a Monday Morning Garden Report with information and commentaries on the garden’s evolution.
The Spring 2020 issue of The Garden Quarto will be available for distribution by the end of next week. The new issue includes some marvelous poems by Sarah Lindsay (daughter of Charles and Phyllis Lindsay) and Gillian Clarke (the National Poet of Wales, 2008-2016). We are already assembling manuscripts for the fall issue and would welcome submissions by Coe faculty or staff. Digital copies of the five previous Quartos are available on the garden website; the new issue should be posted by Friday, April 10.
One significant addition to the garden is the installation of two Little Free Libraries (one by the NW gate and the other next to the gazebo). Because of coronavirus concerns, we have not yet placed any books in these libraries, but we will do so as soon as we feel confident we are not exposing anyone to unnecessary health risks. We currently have over 200 books waiting in the wings, including many volumes from the library of Steven Marc Weiss.
Finally, we do have a few plants to give away, no charge:
• Seven scented geraniums
• Four Moses-in-the-Cradle (Tradescantia spathacea, also known as Boat Lily or Oyster Plant)
• Several bunches of hardneck garlic sets (these relatively small garlic variety has a mild garlic flavor)
• 100-150 Flavorfest strawberry plants (these are vigorous June-bearing plants; produce good-sized, bright red fruit; excellent flavor, large yields; developed by USDA, with good disease resistance; I started growing Flavorfest strawberries in the spring of 2016 and now have nine beds; these plants are all excess volunteers that I will either give away or throw onto the compost pile).
If you are interested in obtaining any of these plants, send me an email message and we'll make arrangements for them to be picked up.
~Bob Marrs
Gardener, Alumni House Garden
https//coealumnigardens.weebly.com/
Addendum--One comment and one correction:
Comment: over 30 people responded to the request for plants, far exceeding my expectations; fortunately, I had far more strawberry plants than I had estimated, eventually giving away almost 400 plants.
Correction: the Spring 2020 issue of The Garden Quarto has been completed but because of the shutdown of the campus, we will not do a final printing and distribution of copies until the campus returns to a more fully functional operation. The new issue, however, has been posted to the website. In the opinion of at least one reader, the Spring 2020 issue has some wonderful poems
I assume most of you receiving this email are not currently working on campus, but I did want everyone to know that the Alumni House Garden has re-opened for the spring. We are now welcoming any visitors seeking a pleasant environment with some attractive walking paths--and 13 different benches to ensure appropriate social distancing. The NW garden gate should now be open from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday.
Earlier this morning I did a quick tour of the garden and confirmed that spring has arrived. We have hundreds of crocus in bloom, including over 500 purple ‘Tommies’ in the lawn around the two large iron spheres. This weekend eight separate clumps of fragrant Tete-a-Tete daffodils opened up with their yellow petals and egg-yolk colored trumpets. We also have reticulated iris ‘Katharine Hodgkins’ in bloom with beautifully patterned pale blue and yellow flowers. At the east end of the garden, the yellow forsythia blooms are just emerging and several of the hellebores have new flowers.
For those of you who can’t come on campus, we will continue to post to the garden’s website photographic slideshows of the garden and its progress through the spring and into the summer. On the website I also post a Monday Morning Garden Report with information and commentaries on the garden’s evolution.
The Spring 2020 issue of The Garden Quarto will be available for distribution by the end of next week. The new issue includes some marvelous poems by Sarah Lindsay (daughter of Charles and Phyllis Lindsay) and Gillian Clarke (the National Poet of Wales, 2008-2016). We are already assembling manuscripts for the fall issue and would welcome submissions by Coe faculty or staff. Digital copies of the five previous Quartos are available on the garden website; the new issue should be posted by Friday, April 10.
One significant addition to the garden is the installation of two Little Free Libraries (one by the NW gate and the other next to the gazebo). Because of coronavirus concerns, we have not yet placed any books in these libraries, but we will do so as soon as we feel confident we are not exposing anyone to unnecessary health risks. We currently have over 200 books waiting in the wings, including many volumes from the library of Steven Marc Weiss.
Finally, we do have a few plants to give away, no charge:
• Seven scented geraniums
• Four Moses-in-the-Cradle (Tradescantia spathacea, also known as Boat Lily or Oyster Plant)
• Several bunches of hardneck garlic sets (these relatively small garlic variety has a mild garlic flavor)
• 100-150 Flavorfest strawberry plants (these are vigorous June-bearing plants; produce good-sized, bright red fruit; excellent flavor, large yields; developed by USDA, with good disease resistance; I started growing Flavorfest strawberries in the spring of 2016 and now have nine beds; these plants are all excess volunteers that I will either give away or throw onto the compost pile).
If you are interested in obtaining any of these plants, send me an email message and we'll make arrangements for them to be picked up.
~Bob Marrs
Gardener, Alumni House Garden
https//coealumnigardens.weebly.com/
Addendum--One comment and one correction:
Comment: over 30 people responded to the request for plants, far exceeding my expectations; fortunately, I had far more strawberry plants than I had estimated, eventually giving away almost 400 plants.
Correction: the Spring 2020 issue of The Garden Quarto has been completed but because of the shutdown of the campus, we will not do a final printing and distribution of copies until the campus returns to a more fully functional operation. The new issue, however, has been posted to the website. In the opinion of at least one reader, the Spring 2020 issue has some wonderful poems
Monday Morning Garden Report: 23 March 2020
When I arrived at the garden at 8:30 this morning the temp was 37F; now, two hours later, it’s up six degrees, but the humidity remains steady at 43%. Snowed for several hours yesterday, but the temperature remained above freezing through the afternoon and most of the snow quickly melted. This morning, the garden was covered with a thin veneer of snow, but it has now nearly all disappeared.
At a time when the campus is almost completely closed down because of the COVID-19 epidemic, we’ll probably start opening the NW garden gate next week for daytime visitors. While not many folks are on campus, for those few who are at Coe, the garden might be a good place to escape or enjoy a little walking exercise or take advantage of the cleansing effects of fresh air and sunlight--assuming we do experience a few days of spring sunshine.
Counted crocus blooms in the east end of the lawn. Last Wednesday we had 130 crocus in bloom; this morning the head count was over 300–though because of the snow and overcast skies, none of the Tommies’ blooms were open. The blooms on the winter aconites were also closed tight, but the reticulated iris blooms were fully open and appeared unconcerned by the snow crusted over their petals.
The major event this morning was installation of the two Little Libraries. The two sets of cedar posts holding up the libraries were placed in cement last Friday. This morning Chad and Tom attached the two libraries to their posts. I’m anxious to fill both libraries with books, but I worry that a book might by some terrible twist of fate transmit the coronavirus. So, for the time being, the two libraries will remain empty. At the end of this report is a photo of the two-story library designed and constructed by Todd Tomkins, a woodworker in Iowa City who also built the sign board next to the NW gate.
In the last month we have begun sowing flower seeds in the garden’s greenhouse–as well as starting some cuttings from a scented geranium, apple croton, and Moses-in-the-Cradle (Tradescantia spathacea, also known as Boat Lily and Oyster Plant). Below is a list of flower and herb seeds sown in hand-made cubes of a seed germination medium from Johnny’s Seeds. The first number indicates the number of cubes with a new plant; the number in parentheses indicates the total number of cubes sown with that seed variety:
Calibrochoa (4 varieties): 15 (20)
Celosia Flamingo: 5 (5)
Cosmos bipannatus: 2 (3)
Evening Primrose ‘Pink Petticoat’: 5 (5)
Heliotrope Marine: 3 (5)
Kniphofia ‘Flamenco’: 2 (5)
Lobelia ‘Crystal Palace’: 5 (5)
Mints (4 varieties): 6 (10)
Ptilotis Joey Lamb’s Tail: 7 (7)
Salvia ‘Adora Blue’ (Woodland Sage): 5 (5)
Salvia ‘Merleau Blue’ (Woodland Sage): 5 (5)
Valeriana officialis: 4 (5)
We have also sown seeds that have been total failures. Most notably, the cleome, black-eyed Susan, and blackberry lily seeds collected from the garden in January and sown in early February have all failed to germinate. This has been the third year I have no success germinating cleome seeds collected from the plants in the crevice garden. While they have effectively self-sown in the crevice garden's soil, the seeds have not been willing to germinate in any other locations where I have distributed them. ~Bob
When I arrived at the garden at 8:30 this morning the temp was 37F; now, two hours later, it’s up six degrees, but the humidity remains steady at 43%. Snowed for several hours yesterday, but the temperature remained above freezing through the afternoon and most of the snow quickly melted. This morning, the garden was covered with a thin veneer of snow, but it has now nearly all disappeared.
At a time when the campus is almost completely closed down because of the COVID-19 epidemic, we’ll probably start opening the NW garden gate next week for daytime visitors. While not many folks are on campus, for those few who are at Coe, the garden might be a good place to escape or enjoy a little walking exercise or take advantage of the cleansing effects of fresh air and sunlight--assuming we do experience a few days of spring sunshine.
Counted crocus blooms in the east end of the lawn. Last Wednesday we had 130 crocus in bloom; this morning the head count was over 300–though because of the snow and overcast skies, none of the Tommies’ blooms were open. The blooms on the winter aconites were also closed tight, but the reticulated iris blooms were fully open and appeared unconcerned by the snow crusted over their petals.
The major event this morning was installation of the two Little Libraries. The two sets of cedar posts holding up the libraries were placed in cement last Friday. This morning Chad and Tom attached the two libraries to their posts. I’m anxious to fill both libraries with books, but I worry that a book might by some terrible twist of fate transmit the coronavirus. So, for the time being, the two libraries will remain empty. At the end of this report is a photo of the two-story library designed and constructed by Todd Tomkins, a woodworker in Iowa City who also built the sign board next to the NW gate.
In the last month we have begun sowing flower seeds in the garden’s greenhouse–as well as starting some cuttings from a scented geranium, apple croton, and Moses-in-the-Cradle (Tradescantia spathacea, also known as Boat Lily and Oyster Plant). Below is a list of flower and herb seeds sown in hand-made cubes of a seed germination medium from Johnny’s Seeds. The first number indicates the number of cubes with a new plant; the number in parentheses indicates the total number of cubes sown with that seed variety:
Calibrochoa (4 varieties): 15 (20)
Celosia Flamingo: 5 (5)
Cosmos bipannatus: 2 (3)
Evening Primrose ‘Pink Petticoat’: 5 (5)
Heliotrope Marine: 3 (5)
Kniphofia ‘Flamenco’: 2 (5)
Lobelia ‘Crystal Palace’: 5 (5)
Mints (4 varieties): 6 (10)
Ptilotis Joey Lamb’s Tail: 7 (7)
Salvia ‘Adora Blue’ (Woodland Sage): 5 (5)
Salvia ‘Merleau Blue’ (Woodland Sage): 5 (5)
Valeriana officialis: 4 (5)
We have also sown seeds that have been total failures. Most notably, the cleome, black-eyed Susan, and blackberry lily seeds collected from the garden in January and sown in early February have all failed to germinate. This has been the third year I have no success germinating cleome seeds collected from the plants in the crevice garden. While they have effectively self-sown in the crevice garden's soil, the seeds have not been willing to germinate in any other locations where I have distributed them. ~Bob
Monday Morning Garden Report: 16 March 2020
THE WEATHER ON MONDAY was too appealing to waste indoors typing a garden report, so I’ve waited until Wednesday (18 March) to compose this week’s commentary. It started raining after midnight, and we are still enjoying a steady drizzle. At 9:00 a.m. (temp of 43F) I did a garden walk-around. Twelve observations:
(1) The first week in January I provided the Crocosima bed some mid-winter protection by covering it with branches from my family’s white pine Christmas tree. This morning I gathered up the branches (still remarkably green and fresh looking) and put them in our green yardy, assuming the Crocosima could handle the early spring weather without the white pine’s assistance.
(2) Because of the rain, the blooms of the crocus and winter aconites are all closed tight. The winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) were planted in the fall of 2018, and only a few of them bloomed last spring, but this spring there has been a dramatic increase in their numbers, their small, compressed yellow blooms attracting my attention.
(3) Last fall I planted 200 species Crocus ‘Goldilocks”; the ones assigned to the “J” bed are now up and blooming, vivid yellow patches welcoming yesterday’s sunshine.
(4) In the fall of 2018, my dibblet and I planted over 1,500 Crocus tommasinianus, popularly known as “Tommies,” in the lawn around the two large iron spheres. Last spring, several hundred did appear, but many either did not bloom or the blooms were short-lived. It’s still too early to determine this year’s final tally, but the results look promising. Yesterday morning I counted 30 crocus blooms; this morning there were almost 150, all in the lawn’s northeast corner–the area that receives the most sunlight. It appears many of the crocus have begun to naturalize, with several clusters of new plants around bulbs planted in 2018.
(5) Hundreds of daffodils have now come up all over the garden, but so far no buds have begun to bloom.
(6) Planted 50 snowdrops late last fall (early December), and the survival rate appears to be very low; however, we do have several blooming in front of the patio, and sustained by the moderate weather (not too hot, not too cold) their lovely white blooms continue to look fresh. See photo of snowdrop at the end of this report.
(7) The star attraction in the garden this morning would be the Iris histoirides in the crevice garden. Last week’s garden report initially reported these reticulated iris to be ‘Katherine Hodgkin.' Only this morning, with the appearance of new blooms from bulbs planted last fall, did I realize my error: the first blooms should have been identified as ‘Eye Catcher’ iris. I need to be more attentive in keeping up with my labeling.
(8) Tulips are breaking ground in at least nine different beds, including the “E” and “J” beds that face each other on the north and south sides of the fountain; both depend on bulbs planted last fall, and it appears that close to 100% have survived the winter.
(9) On Monday I spent several hours cleaning around the Hall’s Honeysuckle that resides next to the garden’s NW gate. Last year this honeysuckle was never pruned and it went crazy, producing runners on the ground stretching 30 feet from the mother plant–and taking root in many locations along the way. I originally planted this Lonicera japonica because I thought it was the variety that grew on the south side of our farm house back in Kansas. The honeysuckle were often the only flowers available for decorating family plots at the cemetery on Memorial Day. I have since learned that this Asian native is invasive, requiring constant attention to keep it controlled. While I remain committed to a honeysuckle climbing on the fence along the NW gate, I know it’s time to make amends, remove this variety (which still receives many rave reviews on garden websites), and introduce a non-invasive variety. One option is a European honeysuckle--Lonicera periclymenum 'Serotina' or ‘Graham Thomas’--which produces flowers and fragrance similar to the Japanese species but without its invasive habits.
(10) Yesterday’s spring cleaning focused on the “I” bed west of the gazebo. Evidence throughout the bed of perennials producing new fresh foliage: variegated lilyturf (though one clump has no new leaves), several varieties of mums (among the last plants to succumb to fall’s cold temperatures and the first to re-assert themselves in the spring), new lime-green foliage in all the stonecrop colonies, clumps of daffodils in several locations across the bed, fresh foliage with the meadow sage and the prairie smoke, new leaves on several perennial hollyhocks. The most surprising survivors were a clump of peony roots and a lone daffodil bulb. When I planted some fritillaria in this bed last fall, I had to dig up an old peony bush and 20-30 daffodil bulbs. While raking the bed yesterday, I discovered a wad of peony roots and a daffodil bulb that were never re-planted but are both showing new growth. A testament to their determination to survive.
(11) As I was finishing my walk, I came upon a stretch of the gravel walkway where the new weeds had been removed and the gravel raked smooth by Anh, my garden assistant. While visitors to the garden typically focus their attention on the perennial flower beds, those of us working in the garden will spend the majority of our hours dealing with the lawn and gravel walkways that frame those flower beds.
(12) Met with Tom to discuss installation of the two Little Libraries: one to be placed by the gazebo and the other by the NW gate. I used my old post-hole digger to start the holes for the four posts, but the holes need to be much deeper. Because of the weather forecast, we’ll wait until Friday to finish the holes and install the cedar posts. By the middle of next week, the libraries should be in place. I have a filing cabinet full of books ready for the libraries, once they are installed.
THE WEATHER ON MONDAY was too appealing to waste indoors typing a garden report, so I’ve waited until Wednesday (18 March) to compose this week’s commentary. It started raining after midnight, and we are still enjoying a steady drizzle. At 9:00 a.m. (temp of 43F) I did a garden walk-around. Twelve observations:
(1) The first week in January I provided the Crocosima bed some mid-winter protection by covering it with branches from my family’s white pine Christmas tree. This morning I gathered up the branches (still remarkably green and fresh looking) and put them in our green yardy, assuming the Crocosima could handle the early spring weather without the white pine’s assistance.
(2) Because of the rain, the blooms of the crocus and winter aconites are all closed tight. The winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) were planted in the fall of 2018, and only a few of them bloomed last spring, but this spring there has been a dramatic increase in their numbers, their small, compressed yellow blooms attracting my attention.
(3) Last fall I planted 200 species Crocus ‘Goldilocks”; the ones assigned to the “J” bed are now up and blooming, vivid yellow patches welcoming yesterday’s sunshine.
(4) In the fall of 2018, my dibblet and I planted over 1,500 Crocus tommasinianus, popularly known as “Tommies,” in the lawn around the two large iron spheres. Last spring, several hundred did appear, but many either did not bloom or the blooms were short-lived. It’s still too early to determine this year’s final tally, but the results look promising. Yesterday morning I counted 30 crocus blooms; this morning there were almost 150, all in the lawn’s northeast corner–the area that receives the most sunlight. It appears many of the crocus have begun to naturalize, with several clusters of new plants around bulbs planted in 2018.
(5) Hundreds of daffodils have now come up all over the garden, but so far no buds have begun to bloom.
(6) Planted 50 snowdrops late last fall (early December), and the survival rate appears to be very low; however, we do have several blooming in front of the patio, and sustained by the moderate weather (not too hot, not too cold) their lovely white blooms continue to look fresh. See photo of snowdrop at the end of this report.
(7) The star attraction in the garden this morning would be the Iris histoirides in the crevice garden. Last week’s garden report initially reported these reticulated iris to be ‘Katherine Hodgkin.' Only this morning, with the appearance of new blooms from bulbs planted last fall, did I realize my error: the first blooms should have been identified as ‘Eye Catcher’ iris. I need to be more attentive in keeping up with my labeling.
(8) Tulips are breaking ground in at least nine different beds, including the “E” and “J” beds that face each other on the north and south sides of the fountain; both depend on bulbs planted last fall, and it appears that close to 100% have survived the winter.
(9) On Monday I spent several hours cleaning around the Hall’s Honeysuckle that resides next to the garden’s NW gate. Last year this honeysuckle was never pruned and it went crazy, producing runners on the ground stretching 30 feet from the mother plant–and taking root in many locations along the way. I originally planted this Lonicera japonica because I thought it was the variety that grew on the south side of our farm house back in Kansas. The honeysuckle were often the only flowers available for decorating family plots at the cemetery on Memorial Day. I have since learned that this Asian native is invasive, requiring constant attention to keep it controlled. While I remain committed to a honeysuckle climbing on the fence along the NW gate, I know it’s time to make amends, remove this variety (which still receives many rave reviews on garden websites), and introduce a non-invasive variety. One option is a European honeysuckle--Lonicera periclymenum 'Serotina' or ‘Graham Thomas’--which produces flowers and fragrance similar to the Japanese species but without its invasive habits.
(10) Yesterday’s spring cleaning focused on the “I” bed west of the gazebo. Evidence throughout the bed of perennials producing new fresh foliage: variegated lilyturf (though one clump has no new leaves), several varieties of mums (among the last plants to succumb to fall’s cold temperatures and the first to re-assert themselves in the spring), new lime-green foliage in all the stonecrop colonies, clumps of daffodils in several locations across the bed, fresh foliage with the meadow sage and the prairie smoke, new leaves on several perennial hollyhocks. The most surprising survivors were a clump of peony roots and a lone daffodil bulb. When I planted some fritillaria in this bed last fall, I had to dig up an old peony bush and 20-30 daffodil bulbs. While raking the bed yesterday, I discovered a wad of peony roots and a daffodil bulb that were never re-planted but are both showing new growth. A testament to their determination to survive.
(11) As I was finishing my walk, I came upon a stretch of the gravel walkway where the new weeds had been removed and the gravel raked smooth by Anh, my garden assistant. While visitors to the garden typically focus their attention on the perennial flower beds, those of us working in the garden will spend the majority of our hours dealing with the lawn and gravel walkways that frame those flower beds.
(12) Met with Tom to discuss installation of the two Little Libraries: one to be placed by the gazebo and the other by the NW gate. I used my old post-hole digger to start the holes for the four posts, but the holes need to be much deeper. Because of the weather forecast, we’ll wait until Friday to finish the holes and install the cedar posts. By the middle of next week, the libraries should be in place. I have a filing cabinet full of books ready for the libraries, once they are installed.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 9 March 2020
10:30 am; temp 50F, which is likely the high for today; the forecast is for steadily dropping temperatures through the day; light rain (though, as I’m typing this report, the rain sounds unexpectedly loud and insistent on the greenhouse roof); 90% humidity; 29.00 relative humidity.
We’ve had great outdoor spring gardening weather the last two days. Yesterday I worked in my vegetable garden for four hours: adding soil and compost to two new raised beds, hoeing and fertilizing an asparagus bed, pruning raspberry and blackberry bushes (prior to their transplanting to a new location later this month), removing weeds from walkways and covering with weed suppressant (newspapers covered with hay), harvesting parsnips that had overwintered under a layer of straw, and sowing kale, a lettuce mix, and two varieties of spinach. A great Sunday afternoon.
Although this morning’s weather was less amenable, the morning trip around the garden had some lovely gifts. In the “L” bed in front of the patio I came upon the garden’s first snowdrop blooms. At our home, several batches of snow drops started blooming last week, but the ones at Coe were only planted last fall, and it doesn’t surprise me they are slower in getting started. My goal next fall is to plant several hundred more Galanthus in various colonies throughout the garden. They are small flowers and they don’t last long, but because of their early appearance and exquisite beauty, no flowers give a deeper pleasure.
In the crevice garden, I discovered the first blooms of two Iris histrioides ‘Eye Catcher.’ I have on more than one occasion referred to these as Iris reticulata, but my on-line research efforts this morning lead me to think that while the ‘Eye Catcher’ is classified as a reticulated iris (because of the netted covering on the dry bulbs), this hybrid is more properly labeled an I. histrioides. I had also mistakenly identified this iris as a 'Katherine Hodgkin', but I finally figured out that I had the wrong cultivar. The bulbs 'Katherine Hodgkin' planted last fall are just beginning to appear; the older 'Eye Catcher' bulbs planted in the fall of 2018 are several days ahead, and the first one to bloom has evidently produced at least one bulbil able to produce a bloom this spring (see attached photo at the end of this report).
The third flower in bloom is a pair of winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) planted in the fall of 2018. These are quite small plants, but they produce bright yellow, upward-facing, butter-cup like blooms on very short stalks, each bloom surrounded by a collar of leaf-like bracts. As with the Katharine Hodgkins, it appears that several aconites have begun to create small colonies. All of these early bloomers will completely disappear by the end of spring.
10:30 am; temp 50F, which is likely the high for today; the forecast is for steadily dropping temperatures through the day; light rain (though, as I’m typing this report, the rain sounds unexpectedly loud and insistent on the greenhouse roof); 90% humidity; 29.00 relative humidity.
We’ve had great outdoor spring gardening weather the last two days. Yesterday I worked in my vegetable garden for four hours: adding soil and compost to two new raised beds, hoeing and fertilizing an asparagus bed, pruning raspberry and blackberry bushes (prior to their transplanting to a new location later this month), removing weeds from walkways and covering with weed suppressant (newspapers covered with hay), harvesting parsnips that had overwintered under a layer of straw, and sowing kale, a lettuce mix, and two varieties of spinach. A great Sunday afternoon.
Although this morning’s weather was less amenable, the morning trip around the garden had some lovely gifts. In the “L” bed in front of the patio I came upon the garden’s first snowdrop blooms. At our home, several batches of snow drops started blooming last week, but the ones at Coe were only planted last fall, and it doesn’t surprise me they are slower in getting started. My goal next fall is to plant several hundred more Galanthus in various colonies throughout the garden. They are small flowers and they don’t last long, but because of their early appearance and exquisite beauty, no flowers give a deeper pleasure.
In the crevice garden, I discovered the first blooms of two Iris histrioides ‘Eye Catcher.’ I have on more than one occasion referred to these as Iris reticulata, but my on-line research efforts this morning lead me to think that while the ‘Eye Catcher’ is classified as a reticulated iris (because of the netted covering on the dry bulbs), this hybrid is more properly labeled an I. histrioides. I had also mistakenly identified this iris as a 'Katherine Hodgkin', but I finally figured out that I had the wrong cultivar. The bulbs 'Katherine Hodgkin' planted last fall are just beginning to appear; the older 'Eye Catcher' bulbs planted in the fall of 2018 are several days ahead, and the first one to bloom has evidently produced at least one bulbil able to produce a bloom this spring (see attached photo at the end of this report).
The third flower in bloom is a pair of winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) planted in the fall of 2018. These are quite small plants, but they produce bright yellow, upward-facing, butter-cup like blooms on very short stalks, each bloom surrounded by a collar of leaf-like bracts. As with the Katharine Hodgkins, it appears that several aconites have begun to create small colonies. All of these early bloomers will completely disappear by the end of spring.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 2 March 2020
9:30 am; overcast at 37F; steady barometric pressure at 29.00.
One first-of-the-month task was house cleaning the garden shed and greenhouse, which means sweeping the mud, leaves, sticks, and debris that accompany me every time I walk into my garden “office.” The next--and far more enjoyable task--was an hour-long tour of the garden with my Canon PowerShot G3X (see photo of emerging flag iris at the end of this report). The snow and ice continue to recede, just a few remaining patches on the south side of the garden–though the flower beds near the SW gate remain covered. The lawn has no remaining snow. If you like brown grass sprinkled with a green grass spears, the garden’s inner quad has become an attractive set of 4 “seven-sided rectangles” surrounding a quiet fountain (which still has a clump of ice in one corner). While the garden’s soil should now be percolating with renewed vigor, there’s not yet much evidence of this energy above the soil level. I did find a few chionodoxa (or perhaps crocus: at this stage of their development, I’m not sure I can distinguish between the two) that had just emerged in the “C” bed. Hundreds of daffodils all over the garden have sent up their periscopes, checking out the territory. The biggest surprise was a dozen or more red-tipped tulips emerging in the “E” bed--which was ice and snow covered two days ago--but only a lone, eager tulip in the “J” bed, where the soil surface temperature is 2-3 degrees warmer. The soils of both beds are still frozen once you dig 2-3 inches below the surface.
One of my recurrent winter-time delusions is believing the garden needs more plants: the beds look empty in January, and I keep imagining various possibilities for filling in those blank spaces. Of course, some beds really do have herbaceous gaps in July, but I often forget the perennials’ mid-summer size and expansiveness. This means that when my January and February plant orders arrive in May, I have trouble finding sufficient space for them. Nevertheless, I keep ordering. Here is a list of the flowers I’ve ordered since Christmas.
Anemone A. Atkinson (Qty: 5). Last spring I planted three of these white, fall-blooming anemones in a semi-shady area near the SW gate, and they produced beautiful white flowers for almost two months. In October, while walking through a garden in Germany, I came upon a large bed full of white anemones, a stunning sight. My goal is to add five more anemones to that “A2" bed group, hoping they might create a significant mass of white blooms beginning in August.
Aquilegia McKana Hybrids (Qty: 4). In one of the two raised “J” beds are two columbines that have done very well with a long bloom cycle, even during last year’s long, hot, dry spell. I intend to add one of these hybrids to that group and plant three of these hybrids in the western raised “J” bed. That latter bed had a marvelous group of lupines, but they were devastated by last year’s dry weather. I would love to have a group of lupines in the garden, but they need an area where the soil does not dry out so quickly.
Asclepias tuberosa (Qty: 3). There is an area in the raised “A1" bed that has been a mix of several flowers, including two A. tuberosa. Since these native milkweeds have been the best fit for that area, I intend to clear out the other residents and add these three new plants to that group.
Bergenia Winterglow (Qty: 4). I’m not sure where to put these bergenia; I just know that we currently have no bergenia in the garden, and an English-style perennial flower garden needs to have some bergenia somewhere. Bergenia have the reputation of being adaptable, winte hardy, able to handle shady areas while providing year-around visual interest. This ‘Winterglow’ is supposed to have dark rose blooms beginning early in the spring, but their primary attraction is the leaves, which should acquire a deep red tone in the fall. Since they only reach about 12" tall, they need to be positioned at the front of a bed, probably in a semi-shady area on the south side of the garden since they don’t need full sun to do well.
Cimicifuga ramosa Pink Spike (Qty: 3). These bugbane should grow about 3' tall and after a year or two start producing fragrant (supposedly a honey-like fragrance) pink 5' flower spikes in late summer above their bronze-purple, fern-like foliage. They need an area that remains moist and shady in the afternoon, so they will probably go at the back of the “F” bed, at the east end where I will be removing some Karl Foerster grass. If they become well-established, they should never need much care and can remain undisturbed.
Echinops Platinum Blue (Qty: 3). I’ve resisted introducing any Echinops because their foliage and blooms resemble thistles, and so many hours of my life the last five years has involved digging up and removing thistle roots from the east end of the garden. But I have enjoyed seeing these tall, lavender-blue plants and flowers in British perennial flower beds and decided it was time to give them a try. Classified as a Z3 perennial, they should be winter hardy and able to do well in just about any soil. Their blooms should provide late summer color, plus contributing to winter bouquets of dried flowers. Because they prefer full sun, they will go toward the back of the “I” or “K” beds, but I’m still not sure what plants they should be paired with.
Helleborus Cultivars: Confetti Cake, Rome in Red, and New York Night (Qty: 5). All of our hellebores are in the SE corner of the garden, near the wind chimes. Although they have not expanded their terrain, they have all survived and provided early-year blooms that often last through the spring. This year we’ll add three new cultivars to the group–but I might plant a couple in a shady area in the “A2" bed where only some transplanted hostas did well last year.
Hemerocallis Black Arrowhead, Blue Sheen, Early Bird Oriole, and Moonlight Masquerade (Qty: 6) We have no room for more daylilies, but when it comes to daylilies, I can’t resist variety. We currently have over 30 different daylilies, and I would like to keep expanding that diversity. So this spring we’ll dig up and give away some of the Stella d’oros and replace with these four new cultivars, each one quite different.
Kniphofia Hot and Cold (Qty: 3). If you don’t succeed, try and try again. This will be my third attempt to introduce red hot pokers into the Coe garden. The first group, started from seed, produced great foliage in their first summer but did not survive the Iowa winter. For my second attempt, I did overwinter a group of kniphofia in the green house, but after transplanting they produced two small blooms and then died out. I first fell in love with kniphofia while visiting a garden near the Thames in SW London. This new “Hot and Cold” cultivar is supposedly winter-hardy to Zone 5b. They will require some winter protection, but I think they are worth a shot. This Pyromania strain of Red Hot Pokers is reputed to have a long bloom time, with orange flower spikes that turn cream-colored from the bottom up. I’ll probably plant them in the “L” bed in front of the patio, mixed in with some daylilies.
Panicum Rotstrahlbusch and Panicum Heavy Metal (Qty: 5). I’ve long been dissatisfied with the red twig dogwood at the back of the “H” bed. I would prefer plants that provide more of a visual blockade through the winter, partially hiding the recycling bin and other “stuff” back in that NE corner. While these switch grasses would need to be cut back in the spring, they would still provide a visual screen for about 9 months of the year–and they should blend with a swath of switch grass and miscanthus already planted as a visual screen on the other side of the “H” bed.
Potentilla thurberi Monarch's Velvet (Qty: 1) According to the Missouri Botanical Garden website (my favorite on-line resource for plant information), Potentilla thurberi (common names include red cinquevoil and Thurber’s cinquefoil) is “a clump-forming herbaceous perennial that is native to coniferous forests, stream banks and moist meadows in Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.” Despite its southern heritage, it should be okay with a Z5 winter. This potentilla has dark-red, cup-shaped flowers that might bloom from June until a first frost. Four years ago I planted two other potentillas that have done quite well in the “H” and “I” beds. Those are not “moist meadows,” but I’m tempted to experiment with this “Monarch’s Velvet” in that same area. It probably won’t grow over 2' tall, so we’ll place it close to the front of the border
Primula Supernova Fire (Qty: 1). To date I’ve planted one primula in the garden, in the “K” bed; it survived two years, produced a couple of blooms, and gave up the ghost. I became re-inspired to try primulas again while in Scotland in June, walking through an arboretum that had primulas all over the shaded garden beds. Once I saw photos of this Supernova Fire in bloom, I knew I needed to give it a try: bright yellow centers surrounded by fiery orange red petals. It needs a rich soil with some shade, so my current plant is to plant it at the front of the “F” border near the SE park bench.
Salvia pratensis Ballerina Pink (Qty:3) and Salvia nemerosa Bumbleberry (Qty: 3). I initially purchased these two varieties of meadow sage for the two raised “J” beds, which receive full sun and have good drainage so they dry out well in the winter. But I suspect these salvias need a soil that does not require watering during the summer. Several other meadow sage have done well in the “I” bed so I may carve out a space for both these immigrants in the middle of that bed. I need to remember that when these salvias finish blooming they should be cut back to their basal growth so their late summer foliage is more appealing.
Sedum Brilliant (Qty: 6): Instead of the salvias, I’m thinking about trying these sedum in the raised “J” beds, right behind the Snow-in-Summer that are now well-established in both beds. According to Bluestone Perennials (where this sedum was ordered), the ‘Brilliant’ produce large “pink flower heads that mature to rust red.” They are an erect sedum, up to about 18" and are very cold hardy (Z3), a useful toughness for this raised bed. Flowers open in midsummer, continuing blooming into the fall, and then produce seed heads with that look good in the winter (which has been true for the garden’s erect stonecrop). They supposedly feature jade-plant-like foliage and the flowers attract butterflies. We’ll see if they live up to their hype.
Tricyrtis Dark Beauty (Qty: 3), Sinonome (Qty: 1), and Miyazaki Hybrids (Qty: 3); Three years ago I planted several Tricyrtis (common names: toad lily, Arctic orchid) in the northern corner of the “L” bed, and all but one were still alive last fall. They have not expanded and created a colony, but they have consistently produced some of the most exotic, tropical-looking flowers in the garden, and their a blooming cycle has lasted from late summer into the fall, a time when most perennials are done with this bloom-producing business. Prior to planting the new arrivals this spring, I need to enrich that soil bed and add more mulch to make sure they don’t dry out during the summer. Since I’ve ordered seven plants, I might plant three with the existing group and try creating a new colony mixed in with some hostas in the SE corner.
Veronica Giles Van Hees (Qty: 3). We already have several veronica varieties in the “D” bed, and my plan is to add this shorter variety to the front of the border in that same area. It would appear from the on-line descriptions that this plant has an attractive foliage and should produce a long-lasting cut flower.
9:30 am; overcast at 37F; steady barometric pressure at 29.00.
One first-of-the-month task was house cleaning the garden shed and greenhouse, which means sweeping the mud, leaves, sticks, and debris that accompany me every time I walk into my garden “office.” The next--and far more enjoyable task--was an hour-long tour of the garden with my Canon PowerShot G3X (see photo of emerging flag iris at the end of this report). The snow and ice continue to recede, just a few remaining patches on the south side of the garden–though the flower beds near the SW gate remain covered. The lawn has no remaining snow. If you like brown grass sprinkled with a green grass spears, the garden’s inner quad has become an attractive set of 4 “seven-sided rectangles” surrounding a quiet fountain (which still has a clump of ice in one corner). While the garden’s soil should now be percolating with renewed vigor, there’s not yet much evidence of this energy above the soil level. I did find a few chionodoxa (or perhaps crocus: at this stage of their development, I’m not sure I can distinguish between the two) that had just emerged in the “C” bed. Hundreds of daffodils all over the garden have sent up their periscopes, checking out the territory. The biggest surprise was a dozen or more red-tipped tulips emerging in the “E” bed--which was ice and snow covered two days ago--but only a lone, eager tulip in the “J” bed, where the soil surface temperature is 2-3 degrees warmer. The soils of both beds are still frozen once you dig 2-3 inches below the surface.
One of my recurrent winter-time delusions is believing the garden needs more plants: the beds look empty in January, and I keep imagining various possibilities for filling in those blank spaces. Of course, some beds really do have herbaceous gaps in July, but I often forget the perennials’ mid-summer size and expansiveness. This means that when my January and February plant orders arrive in May, I have trouble finding sufficient space for them. Nevertheless, I keep ordering. Here is a list of the flowers I’ve ordered since Christmas.
Anemone A. Atkinson (Qty: 5). Last spring I planted three of these white, fall-blooming anemones in a semi-shady area near the SW gate, and they produced beautiful white flowers for almost two months. In October, while walking through a garden in Germany, I came upon a large bed full of white anemones, a stunning sight. My goal is to add five more anemones to that “A2" bed group, hoping they might create a significant mass of white blooms beginning in August.
Aquilegia McKana Hybrids (Qty: 4). In one of the two raised “J” beds are two columbines that have done very well with a long bloom cycle, even during last year’s long, hot, dry spell. I intend to add one of these hybrids to that group and plant three of these hybrids in the western raised “J” bed. That latter bed had a marvelous group of lupines, but they were devastated by last year’s dry weather. I would love to have a group of lupines in the garden, but they need an area where the soil does not dry out so quickly.
Asclepias tuberosa (Qty: 3). There is an area in the raised “A1" bed that has been a mix of several flowers, including two A. tuberosa. Since these native milkweeds have been the best fit for that area, I intend to clear out the other residents and add these three new plants to that group.
Bergenia Winterglow (Qty: 4). I’m not sure where to put these bergenia; I just know that we currently have no bergenia in the garden, and an English-style perennial flower garden needs to have some bergenia somewhere. Bergenia have the reputation of being adaptable, winte hardy, able to handle shady areas while providing year-around visual interest. This ‘Winterglow’ is supposed to have dark rose blooms beginning early in the spring, but their primary attraction is the leaves, which should acquire a deep red tone in the fall. Since they only reach about 12" tall, they need to be positioned at the front of a bed, probably in a semi-shady area on the south side of the garden since they don’t need full sun to do well.
Cimicifuga ramosa Pink Spike (Qty: 3). These bugbane should grow about 3' tall and after a year or two start producing fragrant (supposedly a honey-like fragrance) pink 5' flower spikes in late summer above their bronze-purple, fern-like foliage. They need an area that remains moist and shady in the afternoon, so they will probably go at the back of the “F” bed, at the east end where I will be removing some Karl Foerster grass. If they become well-established, they should never need much care and can remain undisturbed.
Echinops Platinum Blue (Qty: 3). I’ve resisted introducing any Echinops because their foliage and blooms resemble thistles, and so many hours of my life the last five years has involved digging up and removing thistle roots from the east end of the garden. But I have enjoyed seeing these tall, lavender-blue plants and flowers in British perennial flower beds and decided it was time to give them a try. Classified as a Z3 perennial, they should be winter hardy and able to do well in just about any soil. Their blooms should provide late summer color, plus contributing to winter bouquets of dried flowers. Because they prefer full sun, they will go toward the back of the “I” or “K” beds, but I’m still not sure what plants they should be paired with.
Helleborus Cultivars: Confetti Cake, Rome in Red, and New York Night (Qty: 5). All of our hellebores are in the SE corner of the garden, near the wind chimes. Although they have not expanded their terrain, they have all survived and provided early-year blooms that often last through the spring. This year we’ll add three new cultivars to the group–but I might plant a couple in a shady area in the “A2" bed where only some transplanted hostas did well last year.
Hemerocallis Black Arrowhead, Blue Sheen, Early Bird Oriole, and Moonlight Masquerade (Qty: 6) We have no room for more daylilies, but when it comes to daylilies, I can’t resist variety. We currently have over 30 different daylilies, and I would like to keep expanding that diversity. So this spring we’ll dig up and give away some of the Stella d’oros and replace with these four new cultivars, each one quite different.
Kniphofia Hot and Cold (Qty: 3). If you don’t succeed, try and try again. This will be my third attempt to introduce red hot pokers into the Coe garden. The first group, started from seed, produced great foliage in their first summer but did not survive the Iowa winter. For my second attempt, I did overwinter a group of kniphofia in the green house, but after transplanting they produced two small blooms and then died out. I first fell in love with kniphofia while visiting a garden near the Thames in SW London. This new “Hot and Cold” cultivar is supposedly winter-hardy to Zone 5b. They will require some winter protection, but I think they are worth a shot. This Pyromania strain of Red Hot Pokers is reputed to have a long bloom time, with orange flower spikes that turn cream-colored from the bottom up. I’ll probably plant them in the “L” bed in front of the patio, mixed in with some daylilies.
Panicum Rotstrahlbusch and Panicum Heavy Metal (Qty: 5). I’ve long been dissatisfied with the red twig dogwood at the back of the “H” bed. I would prefer plants that provide more of a visual blockade through the winter, partially hiding the recycling bin and other “stuff” back in that NE corner. While these switch grasses would need to be cut back in the spring, they would still provide a visual screen for about 9 months of the year–and they should blend with a swath of switch grass and miscanthus already planted as a visual screen on the other side of the “H” bed.
Potentilla thurberi Monarch's Velvet (Qty: 1) According to the Missouri Botanical Garden website (my favorite on-line resource for plant information), Potentilla thurberi (common names include red cinquevoil and Thurber’s cinquefoil) is “a clump-forming herbaceous perennial that is native to coniferous forests, stream banks and moist meadows in Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.” Despite its southern heritage, it should be okay with a Z5 winter. This potentilla has dark-red, cup-shaped flowers that might bloom from June until a first frost. Four years ago I planted two other potentillas that have done quite well in the “H” and “I” beds. Those are not “moist meadows,” but I’m tempted to experiment with this “Monarch’s Velvet” in that same area. It probably won’t grow over 2' tall, so we’ll place it close to the front of the border
Primula Supernova Fire (Qty: 1). To date I’ve planted one primula in the garden, in the “K” bed; it survived two years, produced a couple of blooms, and gave up the ghost. I became re-inspired to try primulas again while in Scotland in June, walking through an arboretum that had primulas all over the shaded garden beds. Once I saw photos of this Supernova Fire in bloom, I knew I needed to give it a try: bright yellow centers surrounded by fiery orange red petals. It needs a rich soil with some shade, so my current plant is to plant it at the front of the “F” border near the SE park bench.
Salvia pratensis Ballerina Pink (Qty:3) and Salvia nemerosa Bumbleberry (Qty: 3). I initially purchased these two varieties of meadow sage for the two raised “J” beds, which receive full sun and have good drainage so they dry out well in the winter. But I suspect these salvias need a soil that does not require watering during the summer. Several other meadow sage have done well in the “I” bed so I may carve out a space for both these immigrants in the middle of that bed. I need to remember that when these salvias finish blooming they should be cut back to their basal growth so their late summer foliage is more appealing.
Sedum Brilliant (Qty: 6): Instead of the salvias, I’m thinking about trying these sedum in the raised “J” beds, right behind the Snow-in-Summer that are now well-established in both beds. According to Bluestone Perennials (where this sedum was ordered), the ‘Brilliant’ produce large “pink flower heads that mature to rust red.” They are an erect sedum, up to about 18" and are very cold hardy (Z3), a useful toughness for this raised bed. Flowers open in midsummer, continuing blooming into the fall, and then produce seed heads with that look good in the winter (which has been true for the garden’s erect stonecrop). They supposedly feature jade-plant-like foliage and the flowers attract butterflies. We’ll see if they live up to their hype.
Tricyrtis Dark Beauty (Qty: 3), Sinonome (Qty: 1), and Miyazaki Hybrids (Qty: 3); Three years ago I planted several Tricyrtis (common names: toad lily, Arctic orchid) in the northern corner of the “L” bed, and all but one were still alive last fall. They have not expanded and created a colony, but they have consistently produced some of the most exotic, tropical-looking flowers in the garden, and their a blooming cycle has lasted from late summer into the fall, a time when most perennials are done with this bloom-producing business. Prior to planting the new arrivals this spring, I need to enrich that soil bed and add more mulch to make sure they don’t dry out during the summer. Since I’ve ordered seven plants, I might plant three with the existing group and try creating a new colony mixed in with some hostas in the SE corner.
Veronica Giles Van Hees (Qty: 3). We already have several veronica varieties in the “D” bed, and my plan is to add this shorter variety to the front of the border in that same area. It would appear from the on-line descriptions that this plant has an attractive foliage and should produce a long-lasting cut flower.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 24 February 2020
Time: 8:30 a.m.;Temp: 34F
Conditions: Overcast, virtually no breeze; barometer at 29.06; forecast for snow/mix later tonight (a forecast that never materialized).
A QUICK TOUR OF THE GARDEN revealed that substantial areas of snow had melted in the last three days. Most of the northside perennial beds are now bare and exposed; as for the southern beds, they are still snow and ice-covered, the walkway between the “A1" and “A2" beds a sheet of ice, very slippery. I did a perfunctory police call, picking up a Fareway bag, two small plastic bags, a Snickers candy wrapper, and a Hy-Vee receipt.
While walking around the garden, I was thinking about Bob Kocher, who passed away last week. When I first typed the previous sentence, I wrote the word “died,” but then I went back, deleted the “died,” and inserted the "passage" euphemism, a momentarily comforting image. Certainly all would agree he was one of the most remarkable professors ever to teach at Coe. I’m sure all of us who knew him have stories to share. I’ll share three that immediately come to mind.
Memory #1: The second year I was coordinating the college’s Writing-Across-the-Curriculum program, I began distributing to all faculty a two-page publication called the Word Shop. Most issues described strategies for integrating writing assignments into academic courses. The first issue introduced a system of “minimal marking,” encouraging instructors to place checks in a paper’s margin for each detected editing error–without any explanations for the check marks. The system emphasized that student writers should be responsible for determining what was wrong, rather than relying on the instructor’s labels. When I started sending out the Word Shop issues I was an inexperienced program administrator without much confidence I knew anything that would be helpful or welcomed by anyone. Much to my surprise, several months after the “minimal marking” issue was sent out into the night, Bob came up to me at a faculty meeting and told me that he had tried using the minimal marking system with student papers. And he had found it really worked: the technique took less time for him to respond to their compositions, it forced the students to re-read and think about the sentences that needed editing, and the students were doing a decent job correcting their errors–not perfect but pretty good. While I don’t recall how I responded to Bob’s kind words, I recall being thrilled to discover a senior faculty member had actually read a Word Shop, had actually tried using a suggested teaching tactic, and it had actually worked. Bob’s welcome support helped me keep producing those Word Shop issues for another 20 years.
Memory #2: At a reception in the Perrine Gallery at the time of Bob’s retirement, several alums spoke during the event, expressing their love and admiration for Bob as a person and as a professor. I particularly remember one of Bob’s painting students who had gone on to become the president of a bank in Georgia. She told us that many people were surprised to discover she had studied art in college–rather than accounting or business administration. She pointed out that as a bank president she could find good accountants, but it was difficult to hire someone with good aesthetic sense. As a bank president, her job was to create a space, with the right colors and textures, where people could feel comfortable, sensing their money would be safe and secure. Bob taught her how to make those distinctions, to understand the difference between one green and another green. I’ve long thought that was the best celebration of a liberal arts degree I’ve ever heard.
Memory #3: This memory, involving the Alumni House Garden, was the last time I saw Bob. While a dinner was being held in the Alumni House dining room, I happened to be working in the garden. Typical of his generosity, Bob came into the garden and told me he had asked Food Service to put together a plate of food for me. Despite my objections, he insisted, and thus I was able to enjoy a delicious supper, a lovely gift at the end of a long day.
The walls of the Alumni House dining room are lined with photos, most of them shot by George Henry, most of them featuring faculty, administrators, and alumni who have had a profound impact on the college. As I tend my garden flowers, I often think of those photos. I imagine the garden exists for the people captured by George’s camera, their spirits abiding in those photos, their spirits communing with the garden’s diverse denizens (including the two chess players featured at the conclusion of this garden report). In those photos are Margaret Haupt, smiling, holding a book in front of shelves loaded with books; Alma Turechek, sitting at a piano, looking up at Paul Ray; a graduation ceremony that features R. Vaitheswarn talking with Bill Spellman, Karl Goellner, and a very young-looking Kent Herron; Baron Bremner with a big cigar and Candy Pufall in the background, laughing; Presidents McCabe and Gage listening to the New England poet Robert Frost; Linnie and Jim standing next to Poland’s Nobel Laureate Lech Walesa (and on the opposite wall, a photo of the Phifers with President George H. W. Bush); photos of Louis Armstrong and Martin Luther King, Jr., two of Coe’s most eminent guests; the greatest of all Coe photographs, the one showing Ben Peterson climbing the stairs in “Old Science”; Pete Wickham, another great chemistry professor, possessor of a great laugh, working with a student in a chemistry lab; George Henry, now in front of a camera held by Ed Kemp; and, of course, a photo of Bob Kocher at his 30-year retrospective art gallery showing.
Bob’s obituary in the Gazette concluded with a sentence indicating that any donations in his memory be directed to the Kocher Visual Arts Endowment here at Coe. As I return to my gardening, I will continue thinking about Bob and his companions in the dining room, but I know the time has come to pay for last year’s meal, perhaps accompanied by an appropriate tip for a friend's outstanding service. ~Another Bob
Time: 8:30 a.m.;Temp: 34F
Conditions: Overcast, virtually no breeze; barometer at 29.06; forecast for snow/mix later tonight (a forecast that never materialized).
A QUICK TOUR OF THE GARDEN revealed that substantial areas of snow had melted in the last three days. Most of the northside perennial beds are now bare and exposed; as for the southern beds, they are still snow and ice-covered, the walkway between the “A1" and “A2" beds a sheet of ice, very slippery. I did a perfunctory police call, picking up a Fareway bag, two small plastic bags, a Snickers candy wrapper, and a Hy-Vee receipt.
While walking around the garden, I was thinking about Bob Kocher, who passed away last week. When I first typed the previous sentence, I wrote the word “died,” but then I went back, deleted the “died,” and inserted the "passage" euphemism, a momentarily comforting image. Certainly all would agree he was one of the most remarkable professors ever to teach at Coe. I’m sure all of us who knew him have stories to share. I’ll share three that immediately come to mind.
Memory #1: The second year I was coordinating the college’s Writing-Across-the-Curriculum program, I began distributing to all faculty a two-page publication called the Word Shop. Most issues described strategies for integrating writing assignments into academic courses. The first issue introduced a system of “minimal marking,” encouraging instructors to place checks in a paper’s margin for each detected editing error–without any explanations for the check marks. The system emphasized that student writers should be responsible for determining what was wrong, rather than relying on the instructor’s labels. When I started sending out the Word Shop issues I was an inexperienced program administrator without much confidence I knew anything that would be helpful or welcomed by anyone. Much to my surprise, several months after the “minimal marking” issue was sent out into the night, Bob came up to me at a faculty meeting and told me that he had tried using the minimal marking system with student papers. And he had found it really worked: the technique took less time for him to respond to their compositions, it forced the students to re-read and think about the sentences that needed editing, and the students were doing a decent job correcting their errors–not perfect but pretty good. While I don’t recall how I responded to Bob’s kind words, I recall being thrilled to discover a senior faculty member had actually read a Word Shop, had actually tried using a suggested teaching tactic, and it had actually worked. Bob’s welcome support helped me keep producing those Word Shop issues for another 20 years.
Memory #2: At a reception in the Perrine Gallery at the time of Bob’s retirement, several alums spoke during the event, expressing their love and admiration for Bob as a person and as a professor. I particularly remember one of Bob’s painting students who had gone on to become the president of a bank in Georgia. She told us that many people were surprised to discover she had studied art in college–rather than accounting or business administration. She pointed out that as a bank president she could find good accountants, but it was difficult to hire someone with good aesthetic sense. As a bank president, her job was to create a space, with the right colors and textures, where people could feel comfortable, sensing their money would be safe and secure. Bob taught her how to make those distinctions, to understand the difference between one green and another green. I’ve long thought that was the best celebration of a liberal arts degree I’ve ever heard.
Memory #3: This memory, involving the Alumni House Garden, was the last time I saw Bob. While a dinner was being held in the Alumni House dining room, I happened to be working in the garden. Typical of his generosity, Bob came into the garden and told me he had asked Food Service to put together a plate of food for me. Despite my objections, he insisted, and thus I was able to enjoy a delicious supper, a lovely gift at the end of a long day.
The walls of the Alumni House dining room are lined with photos, most of them shot by George Henry, most of them featuring faculty, administrators, and alumni who have had a profound impact on the college. As I tend my garden flowers, I often think of those photos. I imagine the garden exists for the people captured by George’s camera, their spirits abiding in those photos, their spirits communing with the garden’s diverse denizens (including the two chess players featured at the conclusion of this garden report). In those photos are Margaret Haupt, smiling, holding a book in front of shelves loaded with books; Alma Turechek, sitting at a piano, looking up at Paul Ray; a graduation ceremony that features R. Vaitheswarn talking with Bill Spellman, Karl Goellner, and a very young-looking Kent Herron; Baron Bremner with a big cigar and Candy Pufall in the background, laughing; Presidents McCabe and Gage listening to the New England poet Robert Frost; Linnie and Jim standing next to Poland’s Nobel Laureate Lech Walesa (and on the opposite wall, a photo of the Phifers with President George H. W. Bush); photos of Louis Armstrong and Martin Luther King, Jr., two of Coe’s most eminent guests; the greatest of all Coe photographs, the one showing Ben Peterson climbing the stairs in “Old Science”; Pete Wickham, another great chemistry professor, possessor of a great laugh, working with a student in a chemistry lab; George Henry, now in front of a camera held by Ed Kemp; and, of course, a photo of Bob Kocher at his 30-year retrospective art gallery showing.
Bob’s obituary in the Gazette concluded with a sentence indicating that any donations in his memory be directed to the Kocher Visual Arts Endowment here at Coe. As I return to my gardening, I will continue thinking about Bob and his companions in the dining room, but I know the time has come to pay for last year’s meal, perhaps accompanied by an appropriate tip for a friend's outstanding service. ~Another Bob
Monday Morning Garden Report: 17 February 2020
MONDAY MORNING, 17 FEBRUARY, 8:10 am, 38F; 83% humidity; overcast. It feels like it could start raining–and 30 minutes later a rain/sleet mix did arrive. Yesterday Todd delivered the new 4' tall little library. After a year going back and forth on the design, last week we settled on a simple, rectangular structure with a cedar roof and siding, two doors, and three shelves flexible enough to handle diverse book sizes. My first job this morning was carrying the library back to the gazebo–not impossibly heavy, perhaps 40 lbs, but it’s bulky and I was pleased to make it to the gazebo without dropping it. By a remarkable coincidence this cedar library arrives only two weeks after a smaller, Amish-built library, gifted to the garden by an anonymous donor. Now that we have two libraries to install this spring, it seems appropriate to quote Cicero’s Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit, roughly translated: “If you have a garden and a library, you will want for nothing.” Although I think Cicero’s Latin talks of having a garden in a library, I trust our having two libraries in a garden is sufficiently close to his inspiring sentiment.
While carrying the new library through the garden’s SW gate, I was greeted by a lone male cardinal, perched at the peak of a flowering crab. This morning’s salutation was a series of short, ascending vocalizations, immediately recognizable as coming from a cardinal, but his sequence of chirps was rather guttural, all in a lower register. If I recall correctly, cardinals sing by using two “voice boxes” (probably not an ornithologist’s terminology), using one set of bronchial tubes for lower pitches and one for higher. This morning’s singer sounded like this was an early season rehearsal, and he was not yet ready to utilize his full orchestra. Still, his song was a welcome confirmation that spring is coming. Last week, while I was working in my back yard, my patch of astilbe, raspberries, coneflowers, and ornamental grasses was visited by a group of about ten male cardinals, but they were all silent, all focused on locating food.
Another task this morning was going into the Alumni House custodial closet and filling up two water containers. Until the water is turned on in the garden, usually around April 1, the Alumni House must serve as our water source for the greenhouse. By the middle of March, the trips to the Alumni House will be 4-5 times a week, but at the moment the greenhouse has a relatively small collection of plants that require watering:
• Two potted rosemaries
• Two planters with calendula and the Italian herb nepitella
• About 20 small pots with various young plants, most of them started in January: a dozen scented geraniums (all cuttings taken from the large lemon-scented geranium that lives on 3rd floor Peterson during the winter), a flowering stonecrop, two mums donated by a Coe student, two Verbena bonariensis, one Christmas cactus, one Codiaeum variegatum (an apple croton, probably a ‘Gold Dust’), and several Tradescantia spathacea (many common names, including Oyster Plant and Moses in the Cradle)
• A dozen pots with three varieties of basil and a cilantro.
And then we have a tray on a heating pad, under a grow light, with 18 different varieties of flower seeds sown last week in cube blocks:
• Arabis caucasica ‘Little Treasure Deep Rose’ Wall Rockcress
• Belamcanda chinensis, Blackberry Lily from Jefferson’s Monticello (this morning I harvested a clump of Belamcanda seeds from a blackberry lily in the “H” bed and later this week we’ll sow it along with other seeds recently harvested in the garden, including black-eyed Susan, purple coneflowers, and cleomes)
• Calendula officinalis ‘Pink Surprise’ & ‘Kablouna Lemon’
• Caspedia globosa ‘Sun Gall’
• Cosmidium burridgeanum ‘Cosmidium-Philippine’
• Cosmos Rubinato & Cosmos Versailles
• Cleome hassleriana ‘White Queen’
• Chenopodium quinoa ‘Brilliant Rainbow’
• Digitalis purpurea, ‘Camelot Mix’
• Gaillardia aristata, ‘Tokajer Baillardia,’ ‘Arizona Apricot,’ & ‘Mesa Yellow’
• Gazania ‘Bronze Shades’
• Lavandula angustifolia ‘Vicenza Blue’ (would like to transplant to the rock garden if we can get one to germinate and survive life in the greenhouse for two months)
• Mirabilis jalapa (Marvel of Peru, Four O’Clock; an annual that has successfully self-seeded in the “H” bed)
• Nasturtium ‘Orchid Cream’
• Shasta daisy ‘New Day Bronze’
All these seeds were old (some purchased in 2015), so I’m not expecting a great germination rate, but so far we have two cosmos, one
nasturtium, a lavender, a gaillardia, and a shasta daisy. We’ll give them another week or ten days, before we start sowing the fresher flower seeds purchased in January.
MONDAY MORNING, 17 FEBRUARY, 8:10 am, 38F; 83% humidity; overcast. It feels like it could start raining–and 30 minutes later a rain/sleet mix did arrive. Yesterday Todd delivered the new 4' tall little library. After a year going back and forth on the design, last week we settled on a simple, rectangular structure with a cedar roof and siding, two doors, and three shelves flexible enough to handle diverse book sizes. My first job this morning was carrying the library back to the gazebo–not impossibly heavy, perhaps 40 lbs, but it’s bulky and I was pleased to make it to the gazebo without dropping it. By a remarkable coincidence this cedar library arrives only two weeks after a smaller, Amish-built library, gifted to the garden by an anonymous donor. Now that we have two libraries to install this spring, it seems appropriate to quote Cicero’s Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit, roughly translated: “If you have a garden and a library, you will want for nothing.” Although I think Cicero’s Latin talks of having a garden in a library, I trust our having two libraries in a garden is sufficiently close to his inspiring sentiment.
While carrying the new library through the garden’s SW gate, I was greeted by a lone male cardinal, perched at the peak of a flowering crab. This morning’s salutation was a series of short, ascending vocalizations, immediately recognizable as coming from a cardinal, but his sequence of chirps was rather guttural, all in a lower register. If I recall correctly, cardinals sing by using two “voice boxes” (probably not an ornithologist’s terminology), using one set of bronchial tubes for lower pitches and one for higher. This morning’s singer sounded like this was an early season rehearsal, and he was not yet ready to utilize his full orchestra. Still, his song was a welcome confirmation that spring is coming. Last week, while I was working in my back yard, my patch of astilbe, raspberries, coneflowers, and ornamental grasses was visited by a group of about ten male cardinals, but they were all silent, all focused on locating food.
Another task this morning was going into the Alumni House custodial closet and filling up two water containers. Until the water is turned on in the garden, usually around April 1, the Alumni House must serve as our water source for the greenhouse. By the middle of March, the trips to the Alumni House will be 4-5 times a week, but at the moment the greenhouse has a relatively small collection of plants that require watering:
• Two potted rosemaries
• Two planters with calendula and the Italian herb nepitella
• About 20 small pots with various young plants, most of them started in January: a dozen scented geraniums (all cuttings taken from the large lemon-scented geranium that lives on 3rd floor Peterson during the winter), a flowering stonecrop, two mums donated by a Coe student, two Verbena bonariensis, one Christmas cactus, one Codiaeum variegatum (an apple croton, probably a ‘Gold Dust’), and several Tradescantia spathacea (many common names, including Oyster Plant and Moses in the Cradle)
• A dozen pots with three varieties of basil and a cilantro.
And then we have a tray on a heating pad, under a grow light, with 18 different varieties of flower seeds sown last week in cube blocks:
• Arabis caucasica ‘Little Treasure Deep Rose’ Wall Rockcress
• Belamcanda chinensis, Blackberry Lily from Jefferson’s Monticello (this morning I harvested a clump of Belamcanda seeds from a blackberry lily in the “H” bed and later this week we’ll sow it along with other seeds recently harvested in the garden, including black-eyed Susan, purple coneflowers, and cleomes)
• Calendula officinalis ‘Pink Surprise’ & ‘Kablouna Lemon’
• Caspedia globosa ‘Sun Gall’
• Cosmidium burridgeanum ‘Cosmidium-Philippine’
• Cosmos Rubinato & Cosmos Versailles
• Cleome hassleriana ‘White Queen’
• Chenopodium quinoa ‘Brilliant Rainbow’
• Digitalis purpurea, ‘Camelot Mix’
• Gaillardia aristata, ‘Tokajer Baillardia,’ ‘Arizona Apricot,’ & ‘Mesa Yellow’
• Gazania ‘Bronze Shades’
• Lavandula angustifolia ‘Vicenza Blue’ (would like to transplant to the rock garden if we can get one to germinate and survive life in the greenhouse for two months)
• Mirabilis jalapa (Marvel of Peru, Four O’Clock; an annual that has successfully self-seeded in the “H” bed)
• Nasturtium ‘Orchid Cream’
• Shasta daisy ‘New Day Bronze’
All these seeds were old (some purchased in 2015), so I’m not expecting a great germination rate, but so far we have two cosmos, one
nasturtium, a lavender, a gaillardia, and a shasta daisy. We’ll give them another week or ten days, before we start sowing the fresher flower seeds purchased in January.
Monday Morning Garden Report: 10 February 2020
AT 9:30 A.M., JUST BEFORE MY GARDEN WALK, the temperature was 23F with overcast skies and 72% humidity. The forecast was for sunshine (and indeed by noon there is not a cloud in the sky), but as I tour the garden it is gray and overcast. Entering the garden through the SW gate, I move slowly, barely lifting my boots, gingerly stepping and slipping along the ice-covered walkway. At this time of the year, the SW corner of the garden only receives direct sunshine for one or two hours in the afternoon, and the icy snow pack still covers the surrounding beds. Only when turning the corner and walking in front of the patio do I gain traction from the naked gravel.
Along the way, I stop and reach for a small, brown seed head of a tall hyssop. When I first started working in the garden in 2014, the giant hyssops were only in the NE corner of the garden, but their quiet self-seeding habits have now enabled them to find a home across all the perennial flower beds on the south side of the garden. I’m not sure the history of this particular variety, but I’ve always assumed it is an Agastache foeniculum, a Midwest prairie native. I love their fragrance after crushing a fluffy seed head between my fingers. One common name for A. foeniculum is “anise hyssop,” and the seed heads do have a slight anise or licorice aroma. Although some people have described the fragrance as “skunky” or medicinal, I find their perfume–at least of the giant hyssop growing in the garden–as quite pleasant, a clean and aromatic mint odor (and hyssop is in the mint family). Certainly one of my favorites. The seed heads are small but visually attractive in a dried flower arrangement (see photo at the end of this report), and the 4-6' flower stalks retain their erect stature throughout the winter. The hyssop’s flowers are wildly popular with our butterflies and carpenter bee populations, but birds appear to be more attracted to the seeds of the purple coneflowers. By this time of the year, I think most of the hyssop’s tiny seeds have fallen to the ground and the seed heads are mostly chaff–though an attractive chaff.
In front of the hyssop is an English thyme (Thymus vulgaris), another member of the mint family. I reach down and break off a 2" long twig sticking above the snow. Although the tiny gray leaves are desiccated and brittle, when I hold the twig close to my nose, the thyme’s distinctive fragrance is immediately recognizable. I have no useful vocabulary for describing its aromatic properties, other than to say it smells like thyme, a fragrance I can usually identify without needing to think about it. Although dried thyme has the reputation of holding its flavor after being harvested better than most herbs, after a few minutes it is much harder for me to detect the thyme’s aroma unless I crush it between my fingers. Perhaps my nose requires a more vigorous signal in order to acknowledge its presence. I’ve read that of all our human senses, smell is for many people the last to lose its efficacy in old age. Even as we grow older, we continue producing new olfactory neurons, replacements appearing every few weeks.
A few steps further and I come to one of the few Sweet Annie (Artemisia annua) that we did not pull up in the fall. Since each plant produces hundreds of seeds, we leave just a few plants to provide a fresh crop of this annual in the spring. A member of the daisy family, this annual artemisia is not particularly attractive during the summer. Many years ago our neighbor was cleaning up a flower bed between our adjacent backyards and pulled up all the Sweet Annie, thinking they were unwanted weeds. Despite their tiny blossoms and unassuming appearance, the leaves and seeds are pungently aromatic–and the fragrance can endure for a long time. It’s not surprising to discover some people are allergic to this artemisia, which can initiate uncontrollable sneezes. I have a dried Sweet Annie stalk in the garden shed that is two years old and still retains its fragrance. In The Sensual Garden, Ken Druse notes that some people have described Sweet Annie’s fragrance “as being like that of Juicy Fruit gum or the inside of an old general store.” The gum comparison seems more accurate, conveying the aroma’s distinctly sweet character.
Of course, most people visiting the garden will walk by the Sweet Annie, unaware of the plants’ potential impact on their olfactory neurons. In fact, all three of these plants are typically ignored, rarely attracting much attention. While even in winter these fragrances are vibrant and undiminished, freely available to any visitors, they do require a moment of discreet intimacy. None of these fragrances are wildly broadcast throughout the neighborhood. As I ponder their modesty, I wonder what is the survival value of these fragrances for the three plants. Whom might the fragrances be attracting or repulsing? Or are their aromas just accidental byproducts?
AT 9:30 A.M., JUST BEFORE MY GARDEN WALK, the temperature was 23F with overcast skies and 72% humidity. The forecast was for sunshine (and indeed by noon there is not a cloud in the sky), but as I tour the garden it is gray and overcast. Entering the garden through the SW gate, I move slowly, barely lifting my boots, gingerly stepping and slipping along the ice-covered walkway. At this time of the year, the SW corner of the garden only receives direct sunshine for one or two hours in the afternoon, and the icy snow pack still covers the surrounding beds. Only when turning the corner and walking in front of the patio do I gain traction from the naked gravel.
Along the way, I stop and reach for a small, brown seed head of a tall hyssop. When I first started working in the garden in 2014, the giant hyssops were only in the NE corner of the garden, but their quiet self-seeding habits have now enabled them to find a home across all the perennial flower beds on the south side of the garden. I’m not sure the history of this particular variety, but I’ve always assumed it is an Agastache foeniculum, a Midwest prairie native. I love their fragrance after crushing a fluffy seed head between my fingers. One common name for A. foeniculum is “anise hyssop,” and the seed heads do have a slight anise or licorice aroma. Although some people have described the fragrance as “skunky” or medicinal, I find their perfume–at least of the giant hyssop growing in the garden–as quite pleasant, a clean and aromatic mint odor (and hyssop is in the mint family). Certainly one of my favorites. The seed heads are small but visually attractive in a dried flower arrangement (see photo at the end of this report), and the 4-6' flower stalks retain their erect stature throughout the winter. The hyssop’s flowers are wildly popular with our butterflies and carpenter bee populations, but birds appear to be more attracted to the seeds of the purple coneflowers. By this time of the year, I think most of the hyssop’s tiny seeds have fallen to the ground and the seed heads are mostly chaff–though an attractive chaff.
In front of the hyssop is an English thyme (Thymus vulgaris), another member of the mint family. I reach down and break off a 2" long twig sticking above the snow. Although the tiny gray leaves are desiccated and brittle, when I hold the twig close to my nose, the thyme’s distinctive fragrance is immediately recognizable. I have no useful vocabulary for describing its aromatic properties, other than to say it smells like thyme, a fragrance I can usually identify without needing to think about it. Although dried thyme has the reputation of holding its flavor after being harvested better than most herbs, after a few minutes it is much harder for me to detect the thyme’s aroma unless I crush it between my fingers. Perhaps my nose requires a more vigorous signal in order to acknowledge its presence. I’ve read that of all our human senses, smell is for many people the last to lose its efficacy in old age. Even as we grow older, we continue producing new olfactory neurons, replacements appearing every few weeks.
A few steps further and I come to one of the few Sweet Annie (Artemisia annua) that we did not pull up in the fall. Since each plant produces hundreds of seeds, we leave just a few plants to provide a fresh crop of this annual in the spring. A member of the daisy family, this annual artemisia is not particularly attractive during the summer. Many years ago our neighbor was cleaning up a flower bed between our adjacent backyards and pulled up all the Sweet Annie, thinking they were unwanted weeds. Despite their tiny blossoms and unassuming appearance, the leaves and seeds are pungently aromatic–and the fragrance can endure for a long time. It’s not surprising to discover some people are allergic to this artemisia, which can initiate uncontrollable sneezes. I have a dried Sweet Annie stalk in the garden shed that is two years old and still retains its fragrance. In The Sensual Garden, Ken Druse notes that some people have described Sweet Annie’s fragrance “as being like that of Juicy Fruit gum or the inside of an old general store.” The gum comparison seems more accurate, conveying the aroma’s distinctly sweet character.
Of course, most people visiting the garden will walk by the Sweet Annie, unaware of the plants’ potential impact on their olfactory neurons. In fact, all three of these plants are typically ignored, rarely attracting much attention. While even in winter these fragrances are vibrant and undiminished, freely available to any visitors, they do require a moment of discreet intimacy. None of these fragrances are wildly broadcast throughout the neighborhood. As I ponder their modesty, I wonder what is the survival value of these fragrances for the three plants. Whom might the fragrances be attracting or repulsing? Or are their aromas just accidental byproducts?
Monday Morning Garden Report: 21 January 2020
I HAVE FEW OBSERVATIONS to share on the Alumni House Garden in this report, because most of my day was spent in my garden studio at home. The studio is a small, heated, cedar-sided bungalow in our backyard, a hideout with a couch, a few books, a computer (though no internet connection, nor a phone), and a kettle for making hot tea. Here is where I occasionally spend a few hours observing what’s happening in my backyard while doing a little reading and a little reading–and occasionally taking a nap on the couch.
Today my primary focus was on preparing a digital, four column chart with brief descriptions of possible seeds I will order for my 1/4 acre vegetable garden by Wickiup Hill near Toddville. By noon I had finished entering the seed profiles from several catalogs I consult (Johnny’s Seeds, Baker Creek Heirloom, Seeds from Italy, Annie’s Seeds, Botanical Interests, Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds, Natural Gardening), leaving me with two catalogs from Oregon still to review: Territorial Seeds and Victory Seeds. I’m hoping I can finish my table of seed candidates by tomorrow and submit my spring seed orders by the end of the week. Once that task is done--which always involves ordering far more seeds than I will ever sow–I will decide where to plant the potatoes and tomatoes, and then scramble around trying to figure out how to make everything else fit in a space that always feels smaller than it was the year before. Fortunately, the garden is in much better shape this year than last. At this time in 2019, I still had eleven permanent raised beds to construct; this year, all but one are finished and ready for action.
As for the Alumni House Garden, my brief visit only lasted a few minutes. I had not yet shoveled any of the walkways so the snow was a foot deep and it was cold, night-time temperatures soon to be dipping below zero F. I also did not want to disrupt the garden’s serene peacefulness, these rare moments when there’s no evidence of recent human visitations. No trash, no footprints, no shoveled walkways. It reminds me of the snow globe I had in my room as a child: a world residing in its own bubble, immune from the noise and dirt of the world just on the other side of these garden walls.
As I’ve recently noted on several occasions, there are few obvious signs of any animal or bird life within the garden in January. The seed heads of the purple coneflowers are still erect, but it’s not apparent these seeds have been the source of recent meals. I hear sparrows chirping, but they are in the branches of the hawthorn trees outside the garden. The rectangular snow lawn is pristine and perfectly smooth, no evidence of any squirrels or rabbits having sprinted across the surface since the last snowfall. At the west end of the garden I do see one set of rabbit tracks and two small displays of rabbit turds, their warmth having created small dimples in the crusty, frigid snow. Tomorrow morning, I will return and venture into the cold with my camera. Perhaps I will be lucky and manage to capture some of the fleeting early morning shadows that appear when the sun is still near the northeastern horizon, ghosts unable to survive in the mid-day light. ~Bob
I HAVE FEW OBSERVATIONS to share on the Alumni House Garden in this report, because most of my day was spent in my garden studio at home. The studio is a small, heated, cedar-sided bungalow in our backyard, a hideout with a couch, a few books, a computer (though no internet connection, nor a phone), and a kettle for making hot tea. Here is where I occasionally spend a few hours observing what’s happening in my backyard while doing a little reading and a little reading–and occasionally taking a nap on the couch.
Today my primary focus was on preparing a digital, four column chart with brief descriptions of possible seeds I will order for my 1/4 acre vegetable garden by Wickiup Hill near Toddville. By noon I had finished entering the seed profiles from several catalogs I consult (Johnny’s Seeds, Baker Creek Heirloom, Seeds from Italy, Annie’s Seeds, Botanical Interests, Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds, Natural Gardening), leaving me with two catalogs from Oregon still to review: Territorial Seeds and Victory Seeds. I’m hoping I can finish my table of seed candidates by tomorrow and submit my spring seed orders by the end of the week. Once that task is done--which always involves ordering far more seeds than I will ever sow–I will decide where to plant the potatoes and tomatoes, and then scramble around trying to figure out how to make everything else fit in a space that always feels smaller than it was the year before. Fortunately, the garden is in much better shape this year than last. At this time in 2019, I still had eleven permanent raised beds to construct; this year, all but one are finished and ready for action.
As for the Alumni House Garden, my brief visit only lasted a few minutes. I had not yet shoveled any of the walkways so the snow was a foot deep and it was cold, night-time temperatures soon to be dipping below zero F. I also did not want to disrupt the garden’s serene peacefulness, these rare moments when there’s no evidence of recent human visitations. No trash, no footprints, no shoveled walkways. It reminds me of the snow globe I had in my room as a child: a world residing in its own bubble, immune from the noise and dirt of the world just on the other side of these garden walls.
As I’ve recently noted on several occasions, there are few obvious signs of any animal or bird life within the garden in January. The seed heads of the purple coneflowers are still erect, but it’s not apparent these seeds have been the source of recent meals. I hear sparrows chirping, but they are in the branches of the hawthorn trees outside the garden. The rectangular snow lawn is pristine and perfectly smooth, no evidence of any squirrels or rabbits having sprinted across the surface since the last snowfall. At the west end of the garden I do see one set of rabbit tracks and two small displays of rabbit turds, their warmth having created small dimples in the crusty, frigid snow. Tomorrow morning, I will return and venture into the cold with my camera. Perhaps I will be lucky and manage to capture some of the fleeting early morning shadows that appear when the sun is still near the northeastern horizon, ghosts unable to survive in the mid-day light. ~Bob