Mid-Summer Garden Ho-hums

Hydrangeas in the east garden.

 

My garden was sadly neglected during my absence while I was at the Red House in June. It was very dry and so hot that despite Herb's tender ministrations, the weather and creatures have taken their toll on many plants this summer. The deer ate just about everything in sight: my roses, daylilies, the shrub Clematis, the Calendula seedlings. Even plants they'd not bothered with previously were chomped down, like my Rudbeckias and even the black cotton growing in pots on the front walk!

Hydrangea 'Tiny Tough Stuff' and gladiolus

Fortunately, deer don't eat hydrangeas or they would have gone after these too. This year my hydrangeas have bloomed better than ever before, despite the drought. I've been watering them whenever they showed signs of wilting, but I attribute the blooms to not cutting back the stems in early spring. I learned that both the lace cap and the Macrophylla types bloom on old wood, so I didn't prune them at all this spring. Not having any late frosts also helped, I'm sure. In any case, this is the first year that the lacecap hydrangea has produced more than one or two flowers. The flowers of both of the formerly blue hydrangeas are pink, indicating the soil is still alkaline, despite yearly treatments of soil acidifier. The new hydrangea 'Tiny Tought Stuff' is proving to be very floriferous.

Lacecap hydrangea.

The Asian lilies have finished blooming, and the daylilies' buds were eaten so quickly I didn't get a chance to see many flowers this year. Right now the Little Indians bed has very little in the way of color--a scattering of phlox flowers and towards the back, the white hibiscus and the butterfly bush.

The Little Indians bed.

Hibiscus and butterfly bush in the Little Indians bed.

 

Herb's bed has a little bit of color, and hopefully will have more as we get closer to fall. At the moment only the red Crocosmia 'Lucifer' are accented by the blue Centaureas. The perennial red salvia I planted this spring (on the right) finally produced its first spike of blossoms, and more should follow.

Herb's bed.

The cone flowers in the back bed continue to multiply; they blossomed well this year, although the flowers are now a bit past it. The goldfinches are starting to come around to check out the flower heads--I expect to see them gorging on the seeds in a week or two. I've been looking for some good companion plantings for this bed--I think it needs more variety and texture. 

I put in a plant of a red bee balm and one of a baby's breath, but thus far neither has prospered much (the deer ate back the bee balm). The dry soil here may be one problem, but deer are the biggest one. I must find some truly deer-resistant plants for this spot that is so prone to their depredations. So many of the plants advertised as being deer-resistant are anything but--there's nothing else but to try out some new plants here and see how they perform.

Coneflowers.

The current star of the garden is the bed of zinnias I planted this spring. The zinnias haven't filled out completely yet, but there's a nice variety of colors in the Benary's Giant mix I purchased. The deer don't seem to go for zinnias at all, so they've been spared, while the four o'clocks right next to them have been so badly chewed back I don't know if I'll get any blossoms out of them before the first frost comes this fall..

Benary's Giant zinnias

Pink zinnias

Orange zinnias

I'd forgotten how lovely these zinnias are, how easy and fun to grow. The bright colors of  these flowers are hard to beat!