White Dew - Swallows Leave
Two years in for me, whilst the garden is in its fourth year. Portions seem more mature and wilder than I expected, and some areas are stunted from drought or being a healthy, often ordered appetizer by the rabbits, voles, moles, and shrews. This year the container compositions have kept their integrity and the same plants have not complained too badly about being hand-watered, and no annuals in the ground had to be replaced. As a team we are continuously gaining new experiences and deepening our understanding of plant and human relationships. As an individual I am holding myself accountable for my actions and attitudes, and being more honest than I ever have been. Questions that lead my process and days are: “What am I trying to accomplish?”, “How would this impact others?”, “What caused this to fail or succeed?”, “When will this get done if not today?”, and “Why (not)?”
There are moments where the garden is growing tired as the plants are plump and mature, and moments of struggle were the young have still not begun to reach out to one another. Some groupings are just now crescendoing! For a gardener, designer, land steward, and observer, this is a wonderful opportunity to understand plant relationships, design principles, and find more captivation in plants!
Front garden after some edits for height and texture have been made.
September is a wonderful month for performing edits in the garden. Plants are quite forgiving in the cooler weather and have not yet finished storing energy for their upcoming dormancy. With almost all of the growing season in the rearview mirror, it is an opportunity to improve designs for spring, tend to future plant health, and make notes for upcoming projects or deadlines. For example, the homeowners and I agreed that something in the front walkway garden was absent in comparison to the neighboring gardens. We found that variations in height and texture were missing in the interior as well as the portions of the side adjacent to the house. Some changes were made last fall, namely pulling Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘karl forester’ to exist across the entirety of the front gardens in pockets near the house.
The decision on how to edit the interior took me longer to come to, mainly because I was not confident in my ability to choose plants to amend the current design or push it to its next iteration. For weeks I took photos and weeded the open areas, waiting for a better pairing or more suitable plants, or a more capable “me”. But that’s not the point of gardening or life at all. Plants are meant to live with one another and these designs can fall flat or crumble should idle hands take over. After coming out of my delusional state, I actively searched for an existing pairing in the garden that excited me through multiple seasons, had varying heights and colors, and could provide shapes and textures in two adjacent spaces that were underperforming. Undoubtedly Aster macrophyllus ‘twilight’ and Achillea ‘coronation gold’ are engaging for their fragrances alone, yet side by side they are curiously enchanting. Together with Agastache ‘blue fortune’, they make a formidable trio that check all the design boxes. This trio exists only in one pocket of the garden and that is simply not enough, decision made! The pocket of neighboring grasses (Molinia caerulea ‘paul pederson’ ) could also use some structure peeking through, so in spirit of the agastache, Liatris spicata ‘alba’ was chosen. Even with the added plants at their immature heights, the space feels more cohesive, inviting, and balanced.
Newly planted and already fitting in: Aster macrophyllus ‘twilight’, Agastache ‘blue fortune’, Achilllea ‘coronation gold’, Liatris spicata ‘alba’.
My mentor suggested earlier in the year that I should find a use for Ajuga in the garden. Of the two varieties that he grows, I am more drawn to Ajuga reptans ‘black scallop’ because it feels akin to a tasty oak leaf lettuce and has deep hues of purple and green that enhance dark shadows in the garden, thus offering a bit more depth and texture. I am curious to try intertwining annual, edible vegetable plants within the perennial gardens, and possibly this ajuga and red oak leaf lettuce could be interchanged. The ajuga was used as a border, filler plant in a few areas in the garden. Planting in such a way allows me to observe its attributes alongside different plant communities and understand how I can incorporate it into my overall plant palette.
Ajuga reptans ‘black scallop’, Scutellaria, Veronica ‘white wands’, & Chrysanthemum.
Ajuga reptans ‘black scallop’ added as a border plant to enhance the differing light levels and textures in this woodland shade garden.
Admittedly, an Aster and Parthenium grouping planted last September amidst a hillside aspen grove was not given adequate stewardship attention this year. The idea was to have the asters offer support around the partheniums, understanding that the asters are late arrivals. I found that the partheniums flopped early, through the lanky asters and never fully recovered. Knowing that this was a potential, they were initially planted close together, but to no avail. A solution for next year would be to cutback the asters in early summer to encourage shorter, staunch growth that would undoubtedly raise the parthenimum like the puffed, white cloud masses that they are! Aesthetically, this would be more in tune with the proportions of the neighboring grasses, Rudbeckia, and Allium.
That said, I am happier and more connected to the gardens and plants than ever. I find myself gazing, crouching low, getting on my tippiest of toes, and backtracking to catch another glimpse the garden has to offer. It is a daily commitment to be active and to create value for myself and others, and I consider gardens to be one of life’s salient riches.
With a fond embrace,
-M-
Aster x hybrid ‘woods purple’ with Parthenium integrifolium.