I have always been extremely impressionable. Last weekend I watched video adaptations of some of English author P.G. Wodehouse’s hilarious short stories, featuring the ultimate upper class wastrel, Bertie Wooster, and his indispensible valet, Jeeves. I was so impressed with Jeeves’ impeccable housekeeping standards that for the next two days I had the bed made, laundry folded and dishwasher unloaded by six forty-five am.
In the same vein, yesterday I read an inspiring piece in Southern Living magazine about southern garden guru, P. Allen Smith and his Arkansas estate. I was so impressed with Smith’s impeccable standards of garden keeping that I resolved to tackle the most unsightly portion of my lower back garden and whip it into shape by the weekend.
To accomplish that task, I must come face to face with the remains of winter’s ravages and spring’s bounty. Weeks ago I pruned all of the deadwood from my biggest ‘Nikko Blue’ hydrangea. To even contemplate Smith’s standards, I must prune the other two big ‘Nikko Blues’ as well. Blasted spring buds mean that they won’t blossom this year, but, once pruned, the shrubs will at least provide a tidy green backdrop for the other plants.
In front of the hydrangeas, traces of spring abundance linger in the bleached-out foliage of celandine poppies—Stylophorum diphyllum—which were glorious this year. The celandines produced numerous bright yellow poppies that lit up the entire side of the yard and were the only plants that kept me from being completely depressed about the hydrangea catastrophe. Now though, they are like the debris left over after a really wild party. I will cut them way back, along with the spent foliage of pink-flowered bleeding heart, which manages to look simultaneously plentiful and disreputable. While I am flinging aside unwanted plant material, I will also thin out the runaway bugleweed—Ajuga reptans—and rampant wild violets, both of which grow only marginally slower than kudzu.
As I have gotten going with the trimming, weeding and thinning, I have made a few discoveries. Unwanted invaders, like the deceptively attractive smilax vine, with its shiny, heart-shaped leaves and invasive habit, have settled in behind the hydrangeas and under the billowing celandine leaves. Garlic mustard, unknown in the yard until a few years ago, has popped up everywhere and must be removed before it sets its tens of thousands of seeds per plant. I found two horse chestnut seedlings, undoubtedly planted by some forgetful squirrel, under one of the hydrangeas, along with a few rose of Sharon seedlings and a nice healthy Joe Pye-weed sprout. I kept the latter, because Joe Pye-weed will flourish in that area and add some welcome height.
I have yet to repeat the trimming and thinning procedure with the third hydrangea, which has more light now, thanks to the fact that the neighbors have removed some small, self-sown maple trees that were shading it. Similar weeds will be dispatched and intentionally planted species liberated. This will give a Japanese painted fern—Athyrium niponicum ‘Pictum’—some much-needed breathing room, though it may now have too much light. The breathing room should also help an ornamental bugbane or black cohosh—Actaea racimosa—that I planted several years ago. I am hoping that the lack of competing plants will result in more feathery flowerheads later in the summer.
Once all the tidying up is accomplished, I will have to make some choices about how to fill the empty spaces. Because of winter’s ravages, the hydrangeas are smaller than usual this year. I really have to make a decision about whether to let them get back to the size they were two years ago. I think that I will keep them a little smaller and fill the space in between with interesting plants like bears’ breeches—Acanthus mollis—and other eye-catching acanthus species. All are tall, growing to at least three and sometimes as much as five feet tall, with a spiky profile and the distinctive, sharply defined, thistle-like leaves beloved by artists for millennia. The flowers, arrayed up and down the top halves or thirds of the stems, are generally purple-pink to brownish and enclosed in similarly colorful bracts. In short, the plants stand out in the landscape and make a definitive statement. I’ll set off my acanthus with some annuals; maybe some lime green coleus or white-flowered New Guinea impatiens. Of course, if I like the lime green idea, I could also invest in one of the many lime green cultivars of heuchera or tiarella as well. Either would work well at the very front of the long border that holds the three big hydrangeas.
Being impressionable can be a blessing or a curse. I find it impossible to sit through really scary movies, for example, and it took me three years to stop having nightmares after reading Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. But in gardening, it also makes me open to new ideas and inspirations, like the kind of meticulous garden keeping showcased in the shelter magazines. When I finally get things nicely tidied in the lower back garden and firm the soil around the last of the bear’s breeches, I’ll write a nice thank-you note to P. Allen Smith.