I love Fall almost as much as (or maybe more than) Spring! The season is unequivocal. The leaves of the deciduous trees and shrubs change colors upon meeting their appointed criteria and then drop in light breezes. I love to see the wind blow through the blazing colors, sending them flying in all directions against a clear blue October sky. One of my favorite memories from my children’s childhood is playing the old-fashioned game of Fox and Geese in the yellow maples leaves in our front yard. The leaves were thick enough to carve a figure 8 with our dragging feet then chase each other through the design!

Fall is the season when we begin to really appreciate those slightly boring green shrubs that bloomed early in the spring. The cooler weather and shorter days begin to bring out the underlying colors that have been percolating and baking inside the leaves all summer. Those sugars explode into their designated colors – red, yellow, purple, orange. Can you tell they are my favorites?

Then those same shrubs and trees that have given us that Fall fireworks display show us their inner tracery of trunks and branches. One of my favorite skeletal shrubs is Fothergilla Gardenii, a member of the Witchhazel family. There is no common name for this beauty that blooms with white bottlebrush flowers in the spring and dresses in almost frilly-edged leaves all summer. In Fall this plant reveals purple, yellow, red and orange then drops these colors from zigzagging branches that say, “I’m a Fothergilla!” I’ve had one of these well-mannered shrubs in my garden for almost 16 years now, and it is still never taller than 3 feet but has ranged wide in its spot in the bed.

Flower bed change dramatically in the Fall as well – The summer annuals are brilliant and huge and still inviting to the butterflies and the last of the hummingbirds, but they must come out soon if Fall annuals are to take their place. Those new plants need some time in the warm ground to get established before the truly cold weather sets in. It is heartbreaking to pull out Lantana the size of a VW Beetle, but it must be done!

Enjoy this lovely weather!

Marian

Well, school may be back in session but no one bothered to let the weather know that summer is basically over! Our hot, dry weather is making me long for true Fall, which really begins at the Autumnal Equinox when the daylight is equal in length to the night. I know that we will begin to have better gardening weather soon! I just hope I can hold out that long!

It’s time to start assessing what went right and what could use a little rearranging in the garden so that changes can be made when the rain and temperatures begin to fall. We grow when we experiment and learn from our successes and our failures. I don’t enjoy failing, but as I get older I learn more from my failures than I used to and have begun to embrace that learning process. Don’t get me wrong – I love it when things come together well the first time!

I am always trying new plants in new combinations here that are rather daring so that I can create foolproof combos for my clients. My top criterion is gardens full of thriving plants that are easy to care for. Many native plants fit that profile quite nicely!

This spring, I started planting a new bed of red and purple near my house. It has turned out well with red Dianthus in the spring; red Hibiscus, Monarda, and Salvia through the summer; and finally, purple Ironweed. I put in some of the trailing purple Lantana, and it languished in what I guess is too shaded a spot. I replaced some of the Lantana with red Impatiens that are doing better. The Hibiscus is very tall and one stalk toppled over of its own accord. It might be better suited elsewhere. The Ironweed is another very tall native that I love to see in fields out in the country growing beside glowing Goldenrod! It, too, is taller than I like in this bed; so I tried cutting some of the older plants down to 10 inches when they had reached about 3 feet in height. This helped only a little to reduce the height of these plants (which can be 7 or 8 feet tall!) They will have to move out farther into a meadow area I am planning where native Grasses and Goldenrod can help support them.

I am now adjusting my front borders from a strict Orange and Eggplant Purple theme to more of an Orange and Any Color Purple theme. This is a slippery slope because I love purple, so I have to be very careful not to let every garden become a purple border! It has been hard to find plants that truly represent Black that do well in my low maintenance borders. My Black Parrot Tulips were eaten by voles before they had a chance to bloom even once – as were many other bulbs – but that’s another story!

Now you know how borders develop and change over time into true magnificence – with a balance between strict parameters and flexibility relating to unforeseen variables.

Stick to your plan, edit ruthlessly, and go with the flow.

Here’s to better Gardening Weather!

Marian

August is the month our son was born many years ago. Momentous in its own right!

And then there are the butterflies:

The yellow and black Tiger Swallowtails have decorated the entire growing season, but August seems to herald the birth of many different kinds of butterflies. I begin to see deep orange Gulf Fritillaries, Hackberry Butterflies, dangerously colored Red Admirals, soft yellow Cloudless Sulphurs, tiny Checkerboards and Skippers, the ever-present imported White Cabbage butterflies, and occasionally a regal Monarch floating among the flowers in my borders.

The Fritillaries lay their eggs on our native Passion Vine leaves. Their orange caterpillars have black spikes on them – terrifying to behold! Though not poisonous like some other caterpillars, they warn away the birds with those striking colors.

One of my favorite sights and oldest garden memories is the yellow of the Cloudless Sulphur butterfly against the bright red flowers of Salvia ‘Lady in Red’. An inspiring combination!

I leave a small patch of weedy nettles in one of my beds for the Red Admirals. The telltale fall of the tops of the plants shows that new caterpillars are munching away. Sometimes cleaning up everything in our beds is a mistake that creates gaps in our native fauna’s ability to reproduce effectively.

The Monarch is one of those butterfly species that depends on a poisonous plant to raise its caterpillars – Milkweed! The butterflies lay their eggs on the Milkweed plant. The caterpillars hatch, eat, and grow into beautiful striped larvae with quivering black antennae – a sight I haven’t seen in several years! This year I have seen only 3 or 4 Monarch butterflies during the whole spring and summer season. I am hopeful that with the addition of more Milkweed plants and some focused attention on the Monarch’s wintering grounds in South America we will all begin to see more Monarchs floating against a bright blue sky!

Keep your eyes open – and enjoy every bit of rain we get this month!

Your Gardener –

Marian

I love my red, white, and blue border in July!

Giant ‘Incrediball’ Hydrangeas take center stage with their huge flower heads. If you look closely you can see the true flowers just below the false flowers. They attract the bees with their nectar and pollen stores. These plants live up to their name – 12 to 14 inch flower heads and a height of 4 ½ feet. I have never fed them in the 3 years they have been in my border. I just cut them down in the late winter when they start to look a little bedraggled from the rain and snow.

Below the Hydrangeas are bright blue flowers of Chinese Plumbago ground cover and ‘White Swan’ Echinacea. A couple of cheerful yellow Rudbeckias bloom at the edges, finishing out this beautiful garden. And, of course, the American and Tennessee flags fly high above all!

Remember to water if the rain is scarce. We are heading in to the long stretch of hot and dry that we all know is coming.

Enjoy your veggies and annuals, and have a great month!

Marian

The Nashville weather continues to be rainy this year as May gives way to June.

The Blueberries in our vegetable garden have enjoyed the cool nights and days and are beginning to yield beautiful plump berries that the mockingbirds are extremely interested in trying. Netting has saved most of the berries for us to enjoy!

Arugula, Kale, Sugar Snap Peas, Cilantro, and Dill have been delicious early additions to the dinner table. The potatoes are tall and beginning to bloom – promising a tasty harvest an a few weeks!  Our chickens are let out of their run periodically to explore the yard for bugs and greens. We have discovered that they really like kale as much as we do! No matter how big it is! They repay us for the kale with lovely eggs every day so I don’t complain too much.

In the borders the flush of spring flowers has been replaced with the promise of Daylilies, Hydrangeas, Heuchera, Thyme and early summer annuals such as Lantana (for the butterflies) and Croton that brighten up pots and beds with lively combinations of green, yellow, red, and orange through the rest of the summer.

Yucca flowers stand tall in the beds and enchant moths with their nighttime fragrance. The flowers are dropping quickly this year. Perhaps the lack of many sunny days yet has hastened their progress to setting fruit.

As I walk through the gardens I keep a lookout for honey bees. Our neighbors down the block just acquired a new hive, and I look forward to enjoying the fruits of their labor in my yard as well as everyone else’s within a 3-mile radius!

I just started re-reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer. Exploring life and nature on and below fictitious Zebulon Mountain, the setting and the characters are interwoven in stories that sit side by side – influencing each other in subtle and monumental ways. This is my favorite Kingsolver novel – her prose reads like poetry and is worth reading at least one if not every summer!

Although I have enjoyed this long and beautifully cool Spring, I look forward to warmer sunnier days ahead.

Happy Gardening!

Marian

Well, Spring is in full swing now! The flowers have been blooming in such rapid succession it is hard to even keep a list of what’s happening!

I am surprised again this year at how quickly the days turn to summer and the shadows grow deep underneath large trees. The night temperatures are still bearable and I am glad to be able to keep the windows open so that the birdsong symphony can wake me each morning.

I have seen exactly one hummingbird this year so far! He must have just been passing through on his way to more northern territory. Hopefully there will be others to arrive from across the Gulf of Mexico from their wintering grounds.

I gave in this spring and pruned my ‘Natchez’ Crape Myrtle trees. I was really hoping not to have to do that but they had gotten messy with old seedheads that crisscrossed and tangled across the tops of the trees. They were quite unsightly, so I took to my step ladder and clipped out all the top branches, leaving a framework for new flowers. They look happier now – well cared for.

One of my new favorite plants is the False Indigo – Baptisia. It is a tough prairie plant that sends out long and deep roots that keep me from having to water it at all. It is in full bloom by the second week of May with bruised purple flowers that go on forever on long stalks. Larger, but similar in habit to Amsonia (Texas Blue Star), it will have stature for the next two seasons. It needs lots of room and is a welcome addition to larger borders and prairie gardens.

The summer annuals are taking hold as the spring perennials hold court through May. The cool nights keep my Rhododendrons, Irises and Peonies looking beautiful as they grace the garden with good looks and a fabulous fragrance. As long as it doesn’t rain too hard and knock over the Peonies they will look great until the end of the month!

Keep your veggies watered and remember to walk through your gardens every day to take in all the glory of Spring!

Marian

It is always amazing to me how a week of warm rain in April can bring on the most luscious green color everywhere I look! The grass is green; the trees begin to bloom (leading to much sneezing in my household); the Daffodils and Narcissus begin to plump up and burst into all their glorious colors!

Remarkably, the Pansies and Violas made it through this fairly severe winter in wonderful condition. My orange and purple Johnny-jump-ups look terrific! And I tried some ‘black’ Violas that are also doing well. They are really a very dark purple, but look black in my orange and black border gardens. I like the Violas because they don’t need much deadheading like their larger cousins, the Pansies.

The Redbud trees are cloaked in beautiful purple pink blossoms. The bees seem to be enjoying the nectar from these large members of the legume family. They dive-bomb me as I pass under to fill up the bird bath. My ‘Forest Pansy’ Redbud is unfurling its tiny new burgundy leaves. They will remain red for several months in the tree’s sunny spot. The tree is close to an old Lilac whose buds emerge as an antique mauve and rapidly change to lavender (thank goodness!) As the Lilac blooms, the Redbud seems more pink than purple, but the colors look great together!

The native columbines are beginning to show color now to remind me to put out my hummingbird feeders. They’ll be back before I know it! I love to see them zooming through the garden in search of nectar from the flowers and the feeders. They particularly like Honeysuckle of any kind in the spring, and will come to drink from Salvia, Lantana and Crocosmia in the summer.

Gotta go! On my way out to the garden on this sunny day!

Enjoy!

Marian

I just watched a whirlwind of robins swirl their way around my American Holly trees to strip them of every single red berry! The berries suffered through freezing and thawing multiple times this winter and became fermented. The robins certainly didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I think they were waiting for this day of indulgence. Robins are members of the thrush family and can be seen in large flocks during winter and spring. Lucky for us that Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in the early 60’s or we might not have lovely songbirds like robins and finches and white-throated sparrows adorning our gardens today.

The snow and ice we have had this winter has made everyone a little stir crazy. Any time the sun starts shining I race to the window to feel the warmth on my face. And if the temperatures are bearable I get out into the garden to take care of late winter chores and to see if anything is happening out there. The honeysuckle starts leafing out a little more every day that is warm and sunny. I have broken down some lanky Joe Pye Weed and will tackle the ‘Incrediball’ Hydrangeas soon. They are beginning to show some wear from the ice and wind.

The daffodils peaked out of the beds long ago and have suffered a little frostbite for their eagerness. I am sure they will bloom well anyway. Snowdrops are in full bloom now; and the buds of early blooming shrubs seem to be swelling just a little. It’s time to cut some forsythia branches and force them into bloom inside. Witch Hazel has been blooming for weeks; and Hellebores stage their blooms according to variety. I even found a Dandelion blooming in the yard! Groundcovers such as Sedum and Creeping Phlox look good all year long, providing interest with foliage color and texture through any kind of weather. And evergreen Yuccas give stature to the winter garden with their strap-like leaves boldly braving the cold.

The birds visit feeders filled with black oil sunflower seed and suet cakes. They appreciate the warmer days and are tuning up their songs.

Get Ready! Spring is on the way!!!

Marian