YEAR END REVIEW
The end of the growing season is here, and it’s time to size up which plants and practices worked this past year and which didn’t. I do this review on a more or less continuous basis as I rake leaves, plant bulbs or pick the various odds and ends of flowers and interesting branches for indoor arrangements.
There was a time when my garden had plenty of room and the sparsely planted areas rebuked me with their emptiness. Now the garden is full of plants–sown by me, the wind and the local songbirds, or sprouting wantonly from creeping underground roots. The garden overall is abundantly healthy, but now it needs judicious editing. The Miscanthus sinensis Zebrina or variegated maiden grass is huge. So are the scores of Alma Potschke asters that came up last spring and presented themselves this fall with hundreds of rosy purple flowers atop five or six foot tall stems. On the other end of the size spectrum, the little variegated erodium or heron’s bill has spread itself generously. I’ve vowed before and I’ll vow again–next spring I will divide the miscanthus. Some of the asters have got to go, especially those that come up at all angles from under the yews and hydrangea in front of my house. No self respecting yew should have to duke it out with an aster.
This year I tried sowing my cosmos directly instead of starting them indoors in seed trays on top of my microwave oven. The results were less than optimal, so clearly better established cosmos are more likely to thrive in my borders. My nasturtiums were not as good this year either, and usually they grow like weeds. I will chalk it up to the fact that overall the summer was somewhat less sunny that in other years.
I didn’t mulch nearly as much as I had planned, which made the weeding more onerous. I take consolation in the knowledge that I can continue buying and spreading mulch until the stores run out. In fact, if I add to the number of bags of mulch already sitting in my driveway, and persist in my generally slothful habits, I can easily spread mulch until it is available in the stores again next spring. Everything comes full circle if you are either very patient or very lazy.
Along those same indolent lines, I didn’t get as many of my daffodil clumps divided as I intended to last spring. Since I gleefully ordered more daffodils this fall, I will be too busy planting the new ones to locate and divide the established clumps. It will be a free-for-all next spring, but at least nobody will accuse me of being stingy with my bulb money.
My roses this year were glorious, and it was almost certainly because many of their root systems were kept cool by the thriving blankets of shallow rooted weeds growing on top of them. I notice that whenever I remove those weeds, the roses get the sulks. Of course if I followed up the weed removal with prompt mulching, this might be less of a problem. Fortunately for the roses, a dear friend came to brunch and brought me a bag of composted cow manure as a hostess present. It’s a rare friend who knows what you really want, and it will give me great pleasure to divide his gift among my thorny favorites.
The hydrangeas were also wonderful, sporting huge mopheads or conical flower panicles according to type. The oakleaf hydrangea or Hydrangea quercifolia in the front of the house has grown so large that I am going to have to move the two smaller hydrangeas that grow on either side of it to the back garden. With luck, Gargantua the groundhog will be intimidated by their size and vitality, even after they have been cut back and moved, and will leave them alone.
The daylilies were lovely, especially Hyperion, a classic fragrant variety. Most of my daylilies will have to be divided next spring. I would love to plant the divisions along the “hell strip” between the sidewalk and the street, but my street is one of the few in my little slice of suburbia that not only doesn’t have Belgian block curbs, but has no curbs at all. I know that the minute I plant a full compliment of daylilies in that strip, the planets will finally align and the municipal troops will come and dig them all up in order to install the Belgian block. On the other hand, if I leave the current appealing combination of onion grass, crabgrass and chickweed in place, the curbs will never go in. Next spring I’ll flip a coin to decide the matter and proceed accordingly.
I had way too much perilla mint, which is beautiful but unstoppable. When I put the bronze-leafed beauty in arrangements people always ask what it is. I hardly ever offer to give them any however, because I know that they would hate me after the first year. Next spring I will grub out ninety-eight percent of the perilla seedlings, which will give me just enough perilla to fill my entire suburban lot. At the same time, I will encourage the new variegated lavender because it beautiful and has flourished this year with absolutely no attention from me.
So there you have it. Overall the garden is a success because most of it makes me happy. As for the rest, I will emulate my friends who are Yankees fans and console myself by dreaming of next spring.