By LYN DESMARAIS
Part I: ‘Seasoned Gardeners,’ have you taken any vacation yet this growing season?
Gardeners here in Brandon are telling me that their gardens are gorgeous this year. They have loved not having to water anything but their potted plants/annuals this summer. Many perennials have grown three times their normal size with all the abundance of rain. This is a great time of year to ask ourselves- do we like how our gardens look today? Some gardeners are deadheading and cutting back iris, peonies, roses, daisies, daylilies, bee balm, some hosta and other mid-summer favorites. Others are planning for next year and moving and dividing plants. I’m still weeding! All of us need to stop and go on vacation. All the work will be there waiting for us next week, next month, next year.
So, which plants are happily blooming right now, despite all our help? All hydrangea, roses of sharon (common hibiscus,) and other ‘bush’ hibiscus. These beauties need space. If you want them to be happy in your garden, give them elbow room. Other bloomers from now until the end of September and beyond are wonderful perennial wildflowers like Black Eyed Susans (rudbeckia), Queen Anne’s lace (wild carrot), golden rod (solidago), Joe Pye weed (eutrochium purpureum), milkweeds (Asclepias), and thistle (aster family). These can all have a place in your garden. Just contain them, they like to spread. I have seen several gardens with wild spaces, sometimes corners, or sections in an otherwise formal garden. They are in their glory right now, blooming their hearts out. Gardeners are adding pink and white turtlehead (chelone), chrysanthemums (mums), blue globe thistle (echinops), blue-gray sea holly (eryngos), late-blooming daylilies (hemerocallis), coneflowers (echinacea), all colors, cultivated black-eyed susans (rudbeckia Goldsturm is a favorite), daisies (leuanthemum) and scarlet lobelia to add pops of color, interest, and depth. In fact, I get more compliments on my wild gardens than I do on the ones I fuss over and spend numerous hours on. How disheartening. While wild gardens are often a mixture, another way to plant is to experiment with large blocks of color. I am seeing arrangements of the Karl Foerster Grass with Russian sage up at Walgreens in Middlebury. It’s a dramatic display of huge blocks of violet and gold, and it’s so effective because it’s large and fills that space completely.
Planning and Planting
This is the perfect time to take an hour or two and plan for next year. What are you missing that you like? Is there a plant or a color? Come into Brandon and look at the gardens. So many are at peak right now. They have been blooming all season and are just lovely to look at. Their caregivers are master gardeners, even though some would balk at the term being applied to them. The results speak for themselves. The gardens can give you planning ideas. Then go visit some nurseries and see what they have left for sale. We are all desperate to plant in the spring. We need color. But autumn is the best time to plant for plant survival. You won’t have to water as much come spring. Try to get your perennials in the ground by the end of September and your bulbs into the ground by the end of October.
Part II: New Gardeners- run away now!
If you’d like to try gardening and don’t want to start digging up your yard at home, and having a muddy mess, then try any of the following:
- Go help a friend. Much like grandparenting (or so I’m told), it’s absolutely delightful and you can go home, put your feet up, consume lots of calories, and feel like you’ve done a good day’s work and have earned a great rest.
- Consider joining the gardening group forming in Brandon. We will all be grateful for an extra pair of hands and your energy. Easier than a friend, who may come to depend on you. Easier to say you ‘have a meeting’ or ‘must get home’, when you’re tired and want to leave.
- By far the cheapest and easiest thing, get online gardening magazines and read them cover to cover. Fill your phone and devices with snapshots of pictures of beautiful gardens, I recommend White Flower Farm, get your fix this way, and buy flowers from Brandon Florist, Brandon Farmers Market, Renaissance Farm, Woods Market, or Understory Farm or other farms I may not know about. Then you have the best of all worlds: no garden chores forever nagging at you, no backaches, sunburns, soggy clothes, insect bites or bad knees. You decide.
