September Bloom Day

Blue Lobelias in east garden.

All-whilte Lobelia.

 

A very wet August brought us respite from the heat and drought--I recorded over 11 inches of rain during the month of August this year--and my garden seems to have revived to nearly normal. Every 15th of the month is Bloomday, hosted by Carol Michel's May Dreams Garden blog, so welcome to my September garden: let's take a look at what's blooming.

The deer ate back the buds of most of my Blue Lobelias, but after the rains the plants recovered enough to offer a nice array of flowers. They really set off the area of my east garden where I've been trying to create a shady woodland. I had just pruned the Japanese maple tree which I grew from a 6" seedling twelve years ago when I took this photo. I even found one all-white Lobelia in there--a sport or mutant? Lovely in any case! 

 I have two other Japanese maples in my little woodland, as well as a Carolina Silverbell tree and a Pagoda dogwood. The bed is finally starting to look somewhat as I had envisioned, but will need a few more years' growth to achieve fullness.

 

The east garden miniature woodland

 

Also on the east side of the house, my  Viburnum 'Brandywine' is making a wonderful display as its berries turn from pink to blue.

 

Viburnum 'Brandywine' berries

Moving on towards the back yard, the "Autumn Joy' Sedum is looking nice next to the wild blue Ageratum--unfortunately deer are very fond of this Sedum so it must be kept protected or there would be nothing left. I call this the "Herb bed" because my husband Herb dug the first part of it. Our hummingbirds love the red Salvia as well as the Brazilian Salvia 'Black and Blue.'

 

                Sedum 'Autumn Joy' with blue Ageratum and Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster'

Red Salvia 'Windwalker Royal Red'

 

Behind this bed I have a witchhazel variety named 'Diane' flanked by two Viburnums I grew from seed collected at Brookside Gardens in Maryland--by the look of the leaves I think these may be Leatherleaf Viburnum. And one of these has developed some flower buds--unseasonably, it seems to me. I'm curious to see what the flowers and subsequent fruit will look like. It may reveal more about the particular species.

 More interesting is to note the chewed-up leaves. A number of clearwing hummingbird moths visited my garden this summer, and Viburnum is the host plant for the caterpillar of this moth, so I hope they are feeding on my Viburnums and will make my garden their home.

 

Leatherleaf Viburnum? budding.

 

I recently planted one of three Gaultherias I bought this past spring under the witchhazel tree after treating the soil with acidifier. Let's hope it survives and prospers. The alkalinity of the soil here can be a problem for many acid-loving plants.

 

Prairie sage and wild sunflowers.

A lovely color combination found in the back-most bed I call "The Badlands" was this blue sage (Salvia azurea) with some late-blooming native sunflowers. My display is still very skimpy, but hopefully will grow fuller with time if I can get the deer to stop eating it. Deer aren't supposed to eat salvias, but they will browse it if nothing else is available, and the sunflowers too.

 

Beautyberry (Callicarpa dochotoma 'Early Amethyst')

My two Beautyberry 'Early Amethyst' bushes are displaying their lovely berries and haven't been too badly chewed by the deer. And there are still some flowers on my butterfly bushes, they're finishing as other fall flowers come into bloom.

 

Butterfly bush 'Miss Molly'

I spent the past two days cleaning up a bed on the west side of the house--the crabgrass was almost up to my knees!--and while doing so, I transplanted a lovely wild purple aster that I'd found in the very back of the yard near my neighbor's fence. The aster was so tall I had to cut off the top so it wouldn't pull out of the ground, but hopefully it will recover and show even better next year. This one was a volunteer, I think it came from seeds collected in Warm Springs, VA, a few years back. Some times these volunteers can be wonderful additions to a native garden.

 

Purple aster with Caryopteris shrub in the west bed.

Also on the west garden, my Ceanothus 'Gloire de Versailles' has recovered from the browsing and is producing some blooms. This plant is a hybrid of the native New Jersey tea plant (Ceanothus americanus) with the California native lilac. Its flowers are fragrant.

 

Ceanothus 'Gloire de Versailles'

In the front yard on the west, my Abelia "Panoramic Color Radiance' did not get too badly eaten this year, and has some lovely blooms.

 

Abelia 'Panoramic Color Radiance'

The dogwood tree in front of the house is starting to show its fall foliage. And the deer left me a few hardy begonias under the cherry tree to flower and re-seed themselves, only because  of timely spraying with repellent.

 

Dogwood tree and front walk.

Hardy begonias.

Some of my potted plants are looking good too--the white Heliotrope on the front walk is lovely, as are the porch hanging baskets.

 

White Heliotrope.

Fuchsia in hanging basket.

Porch hanging basket.

The tuberous Begonia in the hanging basket on the back deck is still blooming but starting to fade, while the Salvia 'Black and Blue' is holding its own. The humming birds love this plant and we've had quite a few of them visiting our deck. Most of them don't seem to be bothered by our close proximity and feed while we're there, but a few are very shy.

Tuberous Begonia on the back deck.

Salvia 'Black and Blue'

I hope you've enjoyed this stroll through my garden on a lovely September day. Can't wait to see what the Autumn Equinox will bring!

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!

Fall Garden Interlude

Swamp Sunflower (Helianthus angustifolia) with Russian sage (Perovskia).

As a break from the postings of my Montana adventures, today I wanted to post a bit about this year's late summer and fall garden and share photos of some of my flowers. Most of my plant purchases from late spring (and even one from the previous fall) had been held over in large pots during the summer, since my travels and the merciless biting bugs had not allowed much time for planting them earlier.

Plants awaiting new homes.

This fall has been the warmest since we moved to this area, with very spotty rain, so the first focus of my fall gardening frenzy was to get all these plants in the ground. This meant expanding my flower beds considerably to accommodate them. I'd bought a dwarf butterfly bush (Buddleia) with pale lilac flowers and a spirea (was it coincidence? I didn't know I would encounter so many of these plants in Glacier N.P., but now this plant will remind me of those others).

The Little Indians border in October.

Planting the Buddleia and the Spirea.

I decided to put the Buddleia and the Spirea towards the back of the Little Indians bed, near the Asclepias, in hopes of attracting more butterflies to the back yard. The Aster laevis which had been eaten to the ground by deer the previous year, finally bloomed, thanks to the garlic spray I've been using, as well as the camouflage the Asclepias provided. Finally, a few butterflies are starting to show up!

Buckeye butterfly (Junonia coenia) on Itea bush.

This shot looking at the east side of the house gives a good idea of the expansion that has taken place during this year's growing season. If only I could speed up the growth more! But Nature has its limits, even with lots of fertilizer.
 

The east garden.

 

Viburnum 'Brandywine' with Gaillardias

I'm partial to the berries of this variety of Viburnum 'Brandywine' at the stage where the berries start turning pink. As the season progresses the berries gradually turn blue. 

Backyard bed with pink dogwood and hibiscus.

The bed I laid out in the back yard last year is developing nicely--the pink Kousa dogwood 'Rosy Teacups' has gained a couple of feet in height and width (with protection from deer depredations), but the star of this summer was the pink hibiscus that our neighbors gave me, grown from seed from their plants.

Pink Hibiscus (Hibiscus moscheutus)

Such a knock-out color! This variety of hardy hibiscus can be deceptive--it dies back over the winter and is very late to start growth in the spring, so for a while I thought it was dead. Good thing I left it alone, it eventually re-grew. I like it so much I bought another one this fall, a white variety with a red center. They're wonderful flowers that blossom at a time when very little else is blooming. 

Pink Asian lily with Bouteloua grass clump

This bed was also planted with about a dozen Asiatic lilies, but I'm afraid I got this bargain purchase in the ground a bit late, and they didn't grow until late in the summer--one plant actually bloomed in late September, but the rest, despite a few buds, were too late to open before the first frost cut them down a week ago. The ornamental grass Bouteloua 'Blonde Ambition' in front of the lily is another plant that has been struggling in my garden, but it seems to be making some progress. Perhaps next summer I'll see an explosion of bloom in this bed. There's still so much empty space to fill...

Back yard looking east.

To remedy that I bought another bunch of native perennials at the Arboretum's Arborfest, including more of the lovely Swamp Sunflower, and asters. I'm currently working to plant those, along with more spring flowering bulbs, before it gets too cold to work outside.