Category Archives: Gardening

Verbena bonariensis (I love that name) holds its purple heads high above the garden for a significant swath of summer. A favorite of pollinators, it brings the bees and the butterflies to the yard, and a welcome airy and vertical element to the garden plan, forcing an informal cottage charm to the most formal of proceedings. Known commonly as the purpletop vervain (almost as nice as its scientific name) its color echoes a cross between lilac and violet in hue – remnants of a spring memory happier and more hopeful than the typical latter-half-of-summer fare on display now.

Happening upon a planter of these downtown, I’m inspired to consider a wilder and less structured garden vision for next year. Poppies and cornflowers and hollyhocks come to mind, a cottage garden of sorts being the likely setting for my winter dreams, and the color palette being what you see here – lilac and pink and all sorts of pastels to keep things cool and soft for whatever the next summer throws at us. A happy and heartbreaking couple of words: next summer.

While this hibiscus plant may be dwarfed by two stands of cup plants on either side of it, the blooms are on fire, creating their own masterpiece in the garden right now. Larger than an adult hand outspread, these flowers are impressive taken on their own – when grouped they are simply stunning.

Backed by pool of aqua or sky of blue, the ruby-throated blooms are a spectacular reflection of summer’s sun.

Summer sometimes calls for fewer words, and more looking.

When summer bursts with cheerful color – yellow suns against a blue sky – the heart beats with palpable joy, no matter what might be going on inside. Well, that’s not always true – some summers do inherently suck, and all the beauty and color in the world can’t change that. This summer wasn’t entirely sucky, so I’m offering gratitude for the days of sun and prettiness, remembering that savoring and appreciating things is an integral part of realizing happiness. When you let the heart lean into that, it can be a reserve to help see you through winter.

Despite a horrendous attack by aphids that covered the growing stalks of the cup plant earlier in the season, these blooms still managed to appear, and at the time of this writing they sail gloriously high above the garden, lighting it up, especially when the sun hits them. The bees and hummingbirds and goldfinches have been having a proper field day with the blooms, though I sadly haven’t spied any butterflies at all this year. The world feels in danger, so I embrace the birds and the bees that remain.

This is summer living, and it is grand.

Certain perennials will sometimes offer a second showing of blooms after their first bodacious presentation. This usually happens after they’ve had some time to rest and recover, or after you’ve pruned them hard and allowed them to come back. The second show is never quite as impressive or floriferous as the first – the blooms are often smaller and more scant, more of an echo than a proper second act, but somehow more tender and precious for that.

Such is the case with these electric pink Monarda blooms. I’d sheared the plant back heavily after its first flowering spell, and it began putting out new foliage quickly thereafter, followed by the appearance of a few smaller blooms. I love these follow-up performances – they bring a freshness reminiscent of early summer back to the garden just when it’s really starting to wind down. It’s like summer insisting on staying just a bit longer, and after a few rocky weeks I’m grateful for the chance to do it again with a lighter heart.

Every year around this time, the morning glories that managed to escape my early-season ruthlessness begin blooming and showing me where they are with these colorful blooms. I don’t pull them, happy for this vibrance at the time of the year when the ferns that previously hid them are starting to brown and fall apart. That’s my general feeling on the gardens right now – it’s the downhill slide, and no amount of watering or feeding will turn it around. Sometimes you have to give in to the inevitable end. You may mourn, and that helps some, but it won’t slow or stop or change anything.

There are a few more moments of fresh blooms to come – the Japanese wax bells (Kirengeshoma palmata) and the Japanese anemone (Eriocapitella x hybrida) to name a couple of favorites – and our Hibiscus just started its own show, but the overall sense is one of resignation to the coming end. That means making the most of this time, and this morning – like so many mornings that have come before – coupled with the realization that some of us have fewer mornings ahead of us than behind us.

The overabundance of rain we’ve had in the past week has prolonged the freshness of the garden, which is usually dry and brown and beginning the fateful turn to fall at about this time. That has yet to happen, and so our summer elongates with blooms bright and showy, and foliage that remains green and vibrant. What a treat to be in this area at this particular time, and what a treat the garden in summer always is. Here we have some echinacea in what can only be described as the color of an August sunset.

These beauties were on display at the local nursery – I don’t have the space for any more perennials at the moment. Well, a few could be squeezed in I suppose, but I’m making room for Montauk daisies and I didn’t have Echinacea in the plans, so another year will pass before I begin entertaining that. Yes, I plan that far ahead. It’s why Virgos have their shit together.

When summer is on there is no more luscious time of the year. On the hottest days, it’s best to make a garden perusal first thing in the morning, before the real heat kicks in, when things are still fresh and unwilted (before the hydrangeas get all dramatically histrionic). The garden smells fresher then, the flowers feel more tender, the foliage is somehow brighter. Maybe it’s all in my head, but mental games feed into reality whether we want or realize it. Here it seems harmless enough to start a summer’s day. Come with me as we make a visual tour and I put a stop to my extraneous verbiage for the moment…

I just read a disheartening report that a disturbingly-large percentage of bees have died in the last year or so, a telltale sign of the distresses that our earth remains under. I no longer know how to process all the horrific news that is happening, other than ignoring it for my own sanity and well-being. In service to that, I will lean into scenes like this – a strikingly scarlet variety of bee balm (Monarda) thus far blessedly unaffected by mildew. We will take our small victories where we find them, grateful that there is still beauty left in the world.

Closing in on these final months of my 50th year on earth, I find myself in consideration of all things temporal, such as this aptly-named daylily. Each blooms lasts only a day, but what joy can be found in a single day. As I get older and the days seem to slip by faster and faster, I feel the fleeting things to enjoy, the things that I know won’t always be in abundance – the ease of movement (though that’s already dwindling), the head of hair (though that’s gray), the relative health (though I need a bigger pill box for the statins and prils). It also makes me want to do all the things I’ve been putting off – traveling, spending more time in Boston, finally finishing my “new” project that’s been in the works since 2019. There’s an urgency to the days now, and I’m reminded of that in the face of this beautiful daylily. 

Perhaps I need to get back to growing daylilies – for some reason I never quite got back into them after planting a collection from Wayside Gardens at my parents’ home several decades ago. I wonder if they’re still there – this is a tough plant that can last for decades, sometimes into a century if divided and cared for well enough. I’d put in six or seven plants to form a border between the well-kept and manicured lawn and the more wild forest behind the house. Each summer morning I’d go out and pull off the blooms that had expired in the night before and examine any new ones that had come into bloom that day.

While each bloom may only last a single day, each stem usually produced a number of buds that open over the course of a week, spacing themselves out to give a decent-enough showing. Some varieties have been bred into giving regular repeat blooms, with a second blooming season later on. The strap-like foliage remains fresh and vibrant the whole summer season, making this a lovely addition to any garden plan. I think I’ve about talked myself into finding room for one. 

This last week of spring has seen the garden ease into a more consistent style, as the ephemerals of early spring have mostly faded away in their entirety, as if they were never even here in the first place. It’s startling how quickly they go when the heat hits. And startling how quickly they depart from memory as well, especially as other plants come into their own. The shifts and gradations of a garden in June can be extreme, so I welcome the bit of consistency that regular heat and sun will bring.

We were lucky to have had some torrential downpours in the night, as the ground was in dire need of a deep watering. I set the scene, fortuitously fertilizing and watering a bit in the afternoon before the rain arrived, allowing water to soak in before the deluge so it wouldn’t just run off.

Successful gardening is largely about timing, and reading signs of what a plant wants, and when it needs it. There’s also a bit of luck involved, particularly when we have just so much control over the weather and environment of a garden. We can water all we want; during periods of drought though, it’s often never enough. We rely on the rain. And the sun. And while we can water, we have no way of adding sunlight to the mix – we are at the mercy of the sky and cloud cover.

Gardening is work. Hard work. Sometimes guess work. Always good work.

It’s been a number of years since I’ve grown phlox, but this variety looked so promising in the nursery that I picked up a pair and put them into the space where I recently dug out an unruly Rosa rugosa. It’s a perfect substitute – a strong pink for another strong pink – minus all the thorns and invasive tendencies. Phlox have often been marred my mildew in these humid summers, but this one is said to be more resistant to that annoying malady. We shall see…

This is a shorter variety – doesn’t require staking and isn’t in danger of falling over even with the wind and rain that is still a part of the season. Its color is potent, and the leaves are a dark green tinged with some burgundy to make for a handsome combination. Beauty is all around…

The Itoh peony is a cross between an herbaceous and a tree peony, and it’s a marvelous bridge between the bloom times for each. I also admire its handsome foliage, which stays mildew-free all season long, unlike its diva-like herbaceous cousins. They came into bloom this week, and only lasted a couple of days thanks to the high heat and heavy sun.

It was a quick blooming session – arriving late and leaving early – which is not how I like to roll, but nature won’t be denied. We bend with her, or we break.

The beauty that doesn’t last always feels more beautiful. An unfair act of childish disagreeableness. The steady and stalwart – the flowers that last for more than a season – are too dependable and consistent to be considered more than dull, and there’s something awful about that silliness.

These pretty Itoh peony blooms bring out deeper questions in need of deeper answers.

I’m ill-equipped to complete the job at hand.