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!

In the Heat of July

Herb with a common Mullein.

The common Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) is a native plant that grows wild in open fields in many places throughout the world. I've seen them on our roadsides and local pastures often enough while driving around, but never had a chance to observe them close-up, so when several plants sprang up in my yard last year, I left them alone so that I could watch them closely. The plants are biennial, with a rosette of silvery leaves growing the first year, developing the flowering stalk on their second year. It has been used medicinally for hundreds of years--I think the flowers are very attractive.

Close-up of Mullein flowers

One of the Mulleins came up right by the front steps to the house. The structure the flowering stem is fascinating--the veins form flanges that support the incredible height of the flowering stalk. The one in the back bed reached an impressive height--my husband Herb is 6'-4" and as you can see in the photo, the flower stalk towers at least a foot above him!

Mullein by the front steps

Our area tends to be quite hot and dry during summers that are punctuated by the occasional thunderstorm and accompanying gully-washers. This environment is hard on many plants, particularly some garden favorites, but there are others that can resist these conditions, and I've slowly been learning which will survive and even thrive.

Coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) are among these, and I'd planted a nice group of them in the back bed. Two winters ago most of them disappeared--I learned that voles (a type of small field mouse) like to eat the roots, and they attacked mine mercilessly. When I replaced the plants last summer, I wrapped the root balls in wire mesh before putting them in the ground so that the voles couldn't get to the roots, and this year, I'm happy to see that my Coneflowers are starting to prosper.  There are several varieties here: orange 'Sombrero', 'Cheyenne Spirit', white 'Avalanche,' as well as an ordinary light pink--I have no idea where the yellow ones came from, perhaps natural cross-pollination.

I spotted a family of goldfinches scouting the flowers earlier--they love to eat the seeds--so I'm hoping to see lots of goldfinches feeding on them after the flowers have set seed. Hopefully, these will eventually fill in the whole bed, although I may put some other plants among them to discourage voles, just to make sure.

Coneflowers ( in assorted colors.

Deer found the Diervilla 'Kodiak Black' (Diervilla lonicera) I planted last summer very tasty, so I took the precaution of caging it so that I could see some flowers this year. This plant, known as bush honeysuckle, is native to the eastern half of North America from Canada to North Carolina. My cultivar is supposed to have dark purplish leaves, but since it prefers cool summers, I'm guessing the heat may be causing the leaves to turn green.

Diervilla 'Kodiak Black'

 Peach color Daylily

The mid-season daylilies are putting on a show now--I forget the names of these varieties, some of which I planted during my first couple of summers here. When I expanded another bed later on I planted another grouping in assorted colors. These varieties that were being discontinued by Gilbert Wild & Son were on sale, and the plants have taken a couple of years to reach this size.

Daylily bed

Daylilies in summery pastel colors

What summer garden could be without Hydrangeas? The white 'Incrediball' is outstanding, but the other two hydrangeas, 'Endless Summer' and a blue lacecap variety that I brought as cuttings from my garden in Columbia seem to die back to the ground every winter, despite deep mulching. These bloom on old wood as well as new, but lag behind and wilt frequently in this climate. With a lot of watering, I hope to get a few blooms eventually, but these will be pink, despite all the aluminum sulfate I add every year. Hard to believe these were a lovely blue in my garden in Columbia!

Hydrangeas on the east side.

Farther back towards the woods.

The orange butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) in back is now well established, but the 'Hello Yellow' variety I planted last year barely made it--one tiny plant has put out a puny flower. Oh well, it may yet gather some strength for next year. The hot-pink phlox was added this year--the butterfly bush (Buddleia) in back should start blooming soon.

Herb's old sunflower bed was replanted with perennials such as lavender, ornamental grasses, annuals and chrysanthemums that will bloom in the fall. I'm still working on expanding this bed, wondering if I should try to create a small bog garden towards the front. This would require digging up a patch about 12" deep, putting a plastic barrier to retain water, and filling it in with peat moss and sand to make the soil really acidic, since bog plants dislike alkaline soils. It seems like a lot of work, and I wonder if it would be worth the effort. Considering the alkalinity of this soil, it might be wiser to select other more suitable native plants for this spot.

Korean fir 'Silverhorst' and purple basil with calibrachoas.

I couldn't resist buying this lovely Korean fir 'Horstman's Silberlocke' (Abies koreana 'Horstman's Silberlocke') when it went on sale at Wayside Gardens, but that was very late in the spring. Rather than risk losing it to our scorching summers, I decided to re-pot it into a larger pot where I can keep it well-watered, and then plant in the fall, when it stands a better chance. Next to it is a pot with purple basil and some Calibrachoas--I love the contrasting colors against the blue-green of the woolly thyme ground cover.

Two other shrubs I purchased are also awaiting in pots for fall planting, you can see a bit of the variegated Abelia 'Panoramic Color Radiance' to the right. My collection of potted plants on the back deck keeps growing too. It takes so much time to water these days, I think I need to buy more self-watering pots. Here is this year's most colorful combination: red annual Vinca (Catharanthus roseus) with Heliotrope, blue Lobelia, Coleus, and creeping Jenny.

Potted plants on the deck.

Heliotrope, annual Vinca, Coleus and blue Lobelia.