Advice to the design-challenged: plant lots

It’s a good thing that the previous owners left good, well-delineated planting areas in my urban front beds, side beds, and courtyard area, because I’m not that skilled at overall garden planning and design. I just love gardens and plants. I guess I’m like those people who say they don’t know much about art but they know what they like.


This is what I like: full, colorful beds with mostly tall plants, and lots of fragrance. That said, I’ve had to compromise because of the abundant shade throughout the property. Shade will limit your color and number of blooms, depending on how much there is. But that’s OK, because I like foliage too.


My strategy has been to ignore any and all spacing recommendations that come with plants. I squeeze it all together and let the best plants win. This gives me the fullness that I’m after and is also useful in making sure I get the most bang for my buck in the few beds that have good sun.

Given my limitations, a smart thing to do would be to have a succession of spring to fall flowering plants for maximum wow factor, like daffodils to daylilies to rudbeckia to grasses in a sunny bed (with some slight additions), but that would be too limiting. So trial, error, and pack-it-all-in is still my design plan. And aim for a mid-summer peak. That’s partially for Garden Walk, but also because mid-summer is when I most enjoy being in the garden. Which is what it’s all about—not the work, the being there. Right now, the emerging lilies are making that especially pleasant.

And—let's not forget! Happy Bloom Day!

Thanks, Birds & Blooms!

I am Blog of the Week currently over at the Birds & Blooms website. Birds & Blooms is a gardening magazine that focuses on bringing wildlife to our backyards through gardening—they cover a lot of general interest gardening stuff as well. The print magazine has a 2.5 million circulation, and the website is organized by gardening region. Editor Stacy Tornio came up with some really fun questions for me; check it out!

Roses-the trade-off

For me, it's worth it, but for many other gardeners, it is not. And I understand why. Those of us who like the full, old-fashioned blooms of English or neoEnglish roses generally have to put up with lanky shrubs and intermittent bloom cycles (or even once only). On the other hand, if you'll accept a kind of boring, semi-double bloom and standard colors, you can have nice, compact ever-blooming shrub roses. They're great for roadside medians and other public landscaping situations, but I wouldn't give up garden space to them. I think many belong to the Knock Out family.

The roses I am drawn to are old roses or the David Austin line of contemporary takes on the old rose form and scent. For me, lack of scent or faint scent is a dealbreaker with roses, and too many of the modern hybrids have traded scent for disease resistance, floriferousness, and shrub form. These are all important qualities, but I don't grow roses for their disease resistance or their shrub form. I grow them for the flowers. And the scent. (Have you noticed how florist roses never have a scent—just a faint musty smell?)


This is why I tolerate the tendency of old-fashioned roses to be climbers, whether they're listed as climbers or not. My David Austin Abraham Darby gets black spot. And my Louise Odier is very stingy with her post-Junes blooms. So be it. When they make Knock Out roses that look like this (above) with a scent to match, I'll buy them.

A beautiful preserve with beautiful weeds

In addition to the native ferns, eupatorium, mayapple, and other woodland plants at Beaver Meadow Nature Preserve, the white blossoms of rosa multiflora are everywhere, at least in June. It may have been planted in the early years of the establishment of the preserve in order to provide cover and prevent erosion; the tall, abundantly flowered bushes provide a picturesque bower along the trails.

This plant is pretty commonly known as one of the most persistent invasive species in North America. It is classified as a noxious weed in at least 11 states and there is an outright ban in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Well-meaning state conservation departments distributed this throughout the U.S. as a wildlife cover and songbird food source, but it quickly escaped all its boundaries and ran rampant. It’s still pretty though—both in blossom and fruit—and goats like it.

This is the first time I have seen r. multiflora in such abundance—you don’t see it too often in gardens and parks around here—but the knowledge of its criminal behavior didn’t lessen my enjoyment of this wonderful preserve in any way.

Preserves around here are mainly for bird watchers; special viewing areas are built in many of them so that you can watch the birds unseen. Plants aren’t quite as much of a priority, though I’ve seen plenty of lovely wildflowers during my walks. But I think the agencies that run these places correctly assume that most of their visitors come for the animal sightings. They may stop to smell the roses, but they're not worried about them.

My favorite non-native/native bulb

There is an Audubon preserve a bit south of us that is carpeted with ramps, fiddleheads, and erythronium Americanum (trout lily) at this time of year. Oddly, the erythronium in my garden are not this native Northeastern variety; I do best with the “Pagoda” cultivar. I also have the revolutum and the tuolemnense (above). I had the European dens-canis at first, but this faltered and disappeared pretty quickly.


I would love to see an entire bed with nothing in it but yellow erythronium and brunnera. Its beauty wouldn’t last very long—erythronium have a relatively short season, leaving the brunnera to carry one for a bit longer—but it would be glorious.


The native Americanum is now offered for sale at an area nursery; its mottled foliage is interesting, though not as big and glossy as the “Pagoda.” For crazy spring foliage though, you really can’t beat tulipa gregii, which is intertwined with the erythronium here. (I have a carefree attitude about bulb planting; I really don’t pay too much attention to what I had planted in the same spot before.)

The other silly nickname for erythronium is dog’s tooth violet. The bulb (which no one sees) is supposedly shaped like a dog’s tooth; I guess they call it a violet because it blooms as the same time. This is why I like botanical names.