Five Cold Months in a Midwest Flower Garden
DURING MY FOUR DECADES living in Iowa, I believe this is the first time we have reached All Saints Day and several tender flowers are still in bloom. We are headed for a serious freeze this evening, but today the large yellow blooms on the Kevin Floodlight dahlia and the gently fragrant white blooms on the peacock orchids (Gladiolus acidanthera) remain fresh and unsullied. The pleasure of their morning cheer was soon sullied, however, when I walked into the gazebo and discovered the thermometer on the west wall had been stolen. Perhaps the theft was premeditated, because the screws securing the thermometer to the wall had been unscrewed and not simply yanked free of the cedar stud. The garden has no security cameras and even when the gates are locked, it’s relatively easy for someone to climb over the fence. As a stiff septuagenarian, even I have entered the garden by scaling the fence when the locks were frozen in the winter. Given the location of the garden near First Avenue, the ease of access, and the minimal security precautions, it’s remarkable how rarely the garden experiences any vandalism or theft. I liked the size and appearance of the thermometer, the right instrument for the space. Fortunately, it’s still available on-line, and by next Monday Amazon will have delivered its replacement. A minor expense, a minor hassle. What saddens me is that someone invaded this sanctuary and stole something that belonged in the garden. Gardens should not inspire such behaviors.
ON A LIMESTONE BLOCK at the back of the rock garden, someone last night left behind a large clump of fresh scat, a moist brown turd about the size of a misshapen tennis ball, full of undigested crab apples. It appeared that the animal had gulped down the tiny apples without chewing–and the fruit had passed through a digestive system that had minimal interest in doing anything with these freshly eaten morsels. At least the crab apples provided distinctive material for marking a trail across the rock garden terrain. After disposing of the scat, I spent several minutes watching sparrow-like birds feeding in one of the flowering crab trees, which still have thousands of small, soft, reddish orange apples available for anyone with wings. Although my bird species identification skills are woefully inadequate, I suspect one group of feeders was several house finches. Many years years ago, a friend (who was an avid bird watcher) and I spent an autumn morning walking around Bever Park. One of the birds we encountered was a house finch, which he informed me had in recent years significantly increased its numbers in Iowa. I regret that most of what my friend told me on our morning stroll has been forgotten, but his introduction to the house finch has stayed with me.
LATE IN THE DAY, hordes of starlings and a solitary blue jay visited the crab apple trees. The feeding patterns of these larger birds were more hectic and restless than the sparrows and finches, the individuals jumping from limb to limb, never staying in one part of the tree for long. And then one member of the flock would take flight, heading toward the top of a tall maple tree outside the garden, and all his friends immediately followed him. Last week I was talking with the gentleman who looks after our family’s retirement accounts. He commented that he relies on his study of psychology for sensing when the stock market will rise or fall. Understanding the nature of human behavior is more important than understanding economic market theory. Humans buying and selling stocks are like birds eating a meal of crab apples. One starling heads north, for whatever unknown reason, and everyone else follows in pursuit.
IN NOVEMBER, the ornamental grasses are the key species in many of the perennial beds. I’m enchanted with a large cluster of a 6' tall switch grass just north of the pergola. Unfortunately I don’t know the name of this switch grass. It was a donation from a friend, dug up and transplanted into the garden five years ago. The seed heads are a beautiful dark burgundy above the green leaves, and each year the clumps have grown bigger and bolder. Although they were just planted three weeks ago, I have high hopes the five clumps of Northwind switch grass will make an effective visual partner with the older switch grass. The Northwind should retain a more erect, vertical bearing. Perhaps in a year or two the Northwind will equal the height of the older switch grass.
DESPITE MY AFFECTIONS for the ornamental grasses, my eyes inevitably gravitate to the plants that still have a few fresh-looking flowers: the dahlias and peacock orchids, the white anemones south of the patio, the prolific tall verbena (Verbena Bonariensis), the remarkable Rozanne cranesbill (non-stop blooms since June), a few phlox, several mallow in the herb bed, a lone black-eyed Susan under the pergola, several yellow daylilies, and a single yellow and orange red hot poker along a gravel walkway south of the silent fountain. Yesterday, while trimming some of the verbena in the north dahlia bed, I came across a miniature New England aster, only 3-4" tall, with a tiny blue flower. How precious those unexpected gifts.
WHILE THE GARDEN’S SWITCH GRASS CULTIVARS may be sterile, the northern sea oats enjoy rampant fecundity in the rain garden. They are industrious self-seeders, and the new plants quickly develop a tight fist of roots, fiercely gripping the soil around them. Even in relatively soft soil, they can be difficult to remove, and a new colony of sea oats need to be removed from under the pergola. As they have migrated north, they have buried a row of astilbe in the rain garden. The most pragmatic solution is to remove the astilbe and let the sea oats in that corner of the garden have free rein–or should it be “free reign”? I hate to move the astilbe, but they are too mild-mannered to deal with the sea oats. Prior to the sea oats invasion, the astilbe flourished in that moist, sandy, humus-rich soil, doing much better than the group of astilbe next to the SW park bench. Even though the latter group is protected from the afternoon sun and has ample mulch, the soil still dries out too quickly in mid-summer and the plants become dry and shriveled. They need to be dug up, the soil enriched with fresh compost and perhaps some chicken grit, and replanted. A job for next spring.
THIS MORNING as I stood in front of the Alumni House patio, surveying the garden, I was struck by how gracefully the garden had slipped into a late autumn mode, consolidating its resources in preparation for the winter. The crab apple trees have lost nearly all their leaves. Some red fruit remain behind, dessert for a small flock of sparrows, but the trees are reduced to their lean skeletons, offering minimal resistance to the northwest wind. Last week the two viburnum nearest the patio entrance were covered with a lovely blend of red and brownish-orange leaves. Today they are barren.
IN LATE FALL my attention is frequently attracted to plants in the aster/sunflower family. The garden now has hundreds of coneflower seedheads, their spiral seed arrangements illustrating the Fibonacci golden ratio. The black-eyed Susan seeds are arranged in a similarly efficient pattern, but those dark seedheads are more tightly fisted, rarely with any missing seeds before the arrival of winter. The garden’s birds are more attracted to the larger coneflower seeds. The New England and aromatic aster seedheads are smaller than the coneflowers, the white fuzzballs more delicate-looking.
I DON’T FIND ALL SEEDHEADS as aesthetically elegant as the asters and sunflowers. For example, the frozen, desiccated kniphofia seedhead is slumped over, displaying no resistance to freezing temperatures. I was surprised a red hot poker in the “D” bed produced another yellow and orange bloom in late October. We’ve never had a kniphofia bloom so late in the year. The foliage needs to be cut back, but I’m glad we waited until after the plant managed another bloom cycle. In the rain garden, the turtleheads are another plant with a stack of seed clusters. Nevertheless, I take several photos of the turtlehead seed spike and the orange-brown foliage, trusting the photos will help me appreciate something I’m missing with the naked eye.
SCATTERED THROUGH THE GARDEN are plants that depend on their foliage for the gardener’s protection and good-will. In this group are the Helene von Stein lambs ears, the Husker Red and Dark Tower penstemons (found in almost every bed in the garden), all of the hellebores (whose foliage remains reasonably green and fresh-looking into the winter), the two large yarrow patches in front of the patio, the beautiful red mounds of the bloody cranesbill (that for a few weeks in the fall suggest a miniature forest of red maple leaves), and the snow-in-summer (their silver-tinted leaves relishing the cold weather). And, of course, the evergreen yews and arbor vita: it is easy to forget the architectural stability they provide the garden in all four seasons.
LAST WEEK we had our first spring flower--a single snowdrop, three months ahead of schedule. Perhaps confused by the unseasonably warm weather, it produced a lovely little white bloom, with those delicate green dots at the end of the inner petals. It’s remarkable how much pleasure can come from seeing one small white flower, less than 2" tall, appearing unexpectedly in a terrain dominated by this year’s exhausted, desiccated plants.
TODAY’S MOST PLEASURABLE TASK was cutting back several mounds of catmint along the east-side borders of both flower beds. I’m a devoted fan of the catmint, unfazed by drought or cold weather. They start blooming in the middle of the spring and are still in bloom six months later. Their primary drawback is their exuberant growth, which necessitates they be cut back several times a year. The pruning task, however, is quite pleasant--an enticing fragrance surrounding me as I gather up the old stems and leaves.
EACH FALL I’m always surprised at how much fresh, spring-like foliage I encounter. Just in a single flower bed I found over two dozen plants entering the winter months with new leaves ready for the spring:
• Catmint
• Tall Stonecrop (small buds of fresh foliage at the base of each plant; I leave most of the summer’s stems and seed heads until spring pruning, the coppery-brown seeds elegantly balanced on the hollow but sturdy stems that remain erect even in a heavy snowfall.)
• Grape Hyacinths (after disappearing in the summer, the green leaves re-emerge in the fall; I should plant more grape hyacinths to mark where other spring bulbs are planted.)
• Betony (two Stachys macrantha planted five years ago; each betony has patiently expanded its width without requiring any grooming or attention; in the same genus as lamb’s ear, their foliage and flowers look so different but they share a quiet toughness.)
• Love-in-a-Mist (scores of Nigela damescena seedlings covering the flower bed; because these annual self-seeders are so thick, I don’t cover this area with the wood mulch.)
• Allium (most ornamental onions are still in hiding–with the exception of several Allium schubertii, the tumbleweed onion--but one of this year’s allium has apparently produced fertile seeds; the middle of the bed has a plethora of baby allium, creating what looks like a field of tiny chives; I did cover the area with mulch, assuming these allium could push their way through such an impediment.)
• Daylilies (a few daylilies have generated fresh growth; when earlier this month I removed old foliage from a Stella d’oro, I found two flower buds.)
• Barren Strawberries ( Waldsteinia fragarioides, a thick, hardy ground cover that remains green throughout the year.)
• Cushion Spurge (one annual fall task is removing the old foliage of the Euphorbia polychroma, leaving in place a tight clump of new basal foliage ready for the spring.)
• Yarrow, Penstemon, Hollyhocks, Ox-Eye Daisies (all produce summer foliage that will often survive through the winter.)
• New England Asters, Goldenrod, Black-Eyed Susans (these members of the aster/sunflower family produce clusters of green leaves at their base in preparation for the spring.)
• Sorrel, Creeping Charlie, Queen Anne’s Lace, Dandelion (despite their charms, these plants that I treat as weeds. )
• Daffodils and Summer Snowflakes (hundreds of green shoots of daffodils and Leucojum aestivum have sent up their green periscopes, checking out the situation.)
THIS MORNING at 8:00 a.m., the temperature was 8F and, as I expected, the garden lock was frozen. To warm up the lock, I turned on my tea kettle, heated a cup of water, and poured the hot water over the lock. Once I had the lock opened, I put the lock in the greenhouse so it would dry out, and then began my walk around the garden. Although the surface of the snow suggested I was probably the first human to visit the garden this month, the rabbit and squirrel tracks (and rabbit turds) provided ample evidence that various animals had been utilizing the garden. During the fall I had occasionally seen a rabbit in the garden, but I recently discovered a pair, which would suggest they have plans to use the garden for their home. I don’t mind an occasional rabbit, but the rabbits can do some serious damage to the tulips and other emerging plants in the spring. If they are still around in February, I may set up the live trap and see if I can deposit them on the other side of the Cedar River. . . . The biggest surprise of the day was that inside the gazebo was a Coe College banner that had blown off a pole outside the garden. The banner was spread out across the entrance to the gazebo, informing me that Coe had been founded in 1851.
WHEN I WAS SIX YEARS OLD, my favorite book in my modest collection of Little Golden Books portrayed a family whose home was only accessible by a long drive through a forest. I don’t recall the name of the book or the story’s plot, but I have never forgotten how much I wanted to live in a similarly secluded world, a private paradise surrounded by trees. This morning, walking into the Alumni House Garden, I felt my dream had been partially fulfilled, as if I were entering a pristine space only available to a chosen few. While the garden’s walls are low enough that I can see the neighborhood’s houses and businesses, the garden’s fresh winter scene felt so perfect, a frozen Eden governed by its own magic. Of course, gardens are always dependent on creating illusions. There is never much separation between the garden and the not-garden, inevitably sharing the same air, the same weather, the same sounds, the same wildlife, even many of the same plants. But for a few moments I felt I had returned to a children’s book I loved 70 years ago, and who would not desire such an illusion to last for a few minutes.
OVER THE WEEKEND, I had shoveled a path from the garden shed, through the SW gate, around to the patio’s steps, and then across the patio to the Alumni House. The path made it easier for me to obtain several jugs of water from a faucet in the janitor’s closet, water I used for the plants in the greenhouse. Once my irrigating chores were done, I returned to the garden with my Canon camera, intent on photographing the garden after the recent snowfall and a frozen fog’s rime that was covering the garden in a frosted veneer. Rime typically disappears within hours after being formed, but the weather conditions this weekend were ideal for its survival. The recurrent morning fogs produced additional rime crystals, transforming the garden into an exquisite landscape. The flowering crab next to the patio’s handicap accessibility ramp was transformed into this 20' tall crystalline sculpture. The tree’s icy armor appeared hard and impregnable.
I REFRAINED from shoveling any of the walkways going into the garden, not wanting to disturb the clean uniformity imposed by the recent snowfalls. I thought the snow had transformed Coe’s English-style garden into a French garden. English gardens invite visitors to enter into the space, to engage on an intimate basis with different flower beds, each full of unique combinations of plants and textures. In contrast the classic French garden is designed to be appreciated by remaining outside the garden, finding a location where you can best view the beauty of the garden’s design and symmetries. Today, I had no desire to break through that transient snow globe that separated me from the garden. I did not want anything to shatter those smooth surfaces. My photos came out darker and bluer than the scenes I was shooting, but I decided not to amend the colors or exposures. The quiet, subdued images suggest how I felt while standing in the cold, using the camera’s zoom adjustments to move closer to various locations without ever needing to step any further into the garden.
AFTER A DIVINE WEEK OF EARLY SPRING WEATHER, it was painful to watch this morning’s wind and snow. When I arrived at the garden after lunch, the garden’s NW gate was unlocked and open, but the absence of any footprints in the recent snow suggested that no one had chosen this day for a leisurely stroll around the garden. Unlike last week, there were no sun worshipers sitting on benches while eating their noon meal. As for the early spring bulbs, the blossoms of the yellow crocus, winter aconites, and snow drops were all sealed tight. The purple and white Tommies crocus scattered across the east end of the lawn were also firmly closed, but I was impressed by their erect stature in the ice and snow, patiently waiting for warmer weather.
AS I WALKED TOWARD THE NW GATE, I passed a group of 15-20 Tete-a-tete daffodils, their small yellow blooms resolutely open in this mini-blizzard. In the nearby crevice garden were two varieties of reticulated iris, ‘Katherine Hodgkin’ and ‘Eye Catcher.’ The blooms on these dwarf iris remain fully open, day or night, snow or no snow. The icy snow crystals on the ‘Katherine Hodgkin’ blend beautifully with the three large petals and their intricate patterns of blue lines radiating from a gold center accented with dark blue dots. There is also a wonderful group of these iris in the large sun dial’s flower bed in front of the gazebo. The blooms of these miniature iris are as beautiful as any to be found in the garden throughout the year, but today they gained my special admiration because of their resolute toughness, unfazed by this late winter storm. Their blooms will only last for a few more days, but today they were incomparable.
MY SWISS ARMY WRISTWATCH says it’s 3:40 pm,
but the sundial in the middle of the garden
quietly suggests it’s twenty minutes earlier.
Perhaps less accurate, but in the garden I find
the sundial’s ancient technology more appealing.
In the gazebo, the copper-plated thermometer believes
it’s 34 Fahrenheit, a temperature confirmed
by the slow drip of melting snow
from the gazebo’s sun-facing roof.
In front of the gazebo’s open porch
lies a cold Sahara of undulating snow
that has been swept clean by a western
wind, but when I look at
the crab apple’s barren branches, there’s
almost no movement, just a slight shivering,
all its fruit devoured by squirrels or juncos
or perhaps a transient flock of cedar waxwings
passing through this urban neighborhood.
The gazebo has its own sundial flower bed,
but the hour divisions are hidden
by the snow and a mass of broken
Verbena bonariensis and their brown seedheads.
Other plants in this white desert remain stoically erect,
the hydrangea, the hibiscus, the shrubby potentilla ,
the lean, hollow stems of the Joe-Pye weed.
On the other side of the garden I notice
the dogwood’s red twigs, framed
by the rusty curves of Cara’s “Trinity” sculpture,
which in turn is framed by the dark green yews,
topped by a few islands of snow.
I look west and face the sun, which
has dropped below the apple tree’s lowest limb
and now appears inches above the roof
of the Alumni House. The shadows continue to slip
across the garden, the octagonal fountain
now captured by their surreptitious advance.
Except for the hum of traffic on First Avenue,
the garden is quiet, no birds fussing,
no blaring radios or shouting voices
or ambulance sirens–only the irregular
percussion of the wind chimes.
Walking back to the garden’s unlocked gate,
I pass the sundial, now in the shadows,
its work finished for this day. . . as is mine.
FINI
This segmented essay is based on passages from Monday Morning Garden Reports posted from November 2021 through March 2022. ~Bob