Cait's Garden

I’m starting a new series of posts today. I call it “Summer-Proof Flowers”…because there’s nothing as hard on a garden as summer at its height. That might seem a weird thing to say, but the intense heat, and the bouncing between droughts and flooding that is common in a Chicagoland summer, is just too intense for faint-of-heart flowers. Also, many of our go-to perennials, like salvia, phlox, yarrow, speedwell, and lily, are kaput by late July. Once you deadhead all these, what are you left with in your yard? So I took a good inventory of what I was left with and found a new appreciation for my late summer performers.

The first featured flower in this series is not a flower at all. It’s a shrub! Limelight Hydrangeas are a miracle. Seriously, if you don’t have one, buy one. Now. I’ll wait. This sturdy upright shrub (it can reach 6 feet tall, but you can trim it to your liking) is covered in huge fluffy flower cones beginning in mid-July. They start out a bright greenish white which slowly turns to all white, then as summer wanes, they become a lovely pink/bronze color. And unlike other, fussier hydrangeas, these are reliable bloomers year on year with no intervention or soil additives needed. Nothing is more spectacular in mid to late summer. I have several Limelights in my yard and will like plant several more in years to come.

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I like having tall flowers behind my veggie garden. So of course I initially turned to traditional sunflowers. But they turned against me. Literally. The flowers faced south, which means they were pointing AWAY from my yard. Yep, I got to look at the backs of the sunflowers. Not that pretty. Plus, they flopped and then got covered in ants. Yuck! Then I found a much better sunflower. It’s a perennial called “Shining Coneflower” (specifically, Rudbeckia hybrid “Herbstsonne”). It reaches nearly 6-feet tall and is covered in yellow flowers from mid-July well into August. And after that, the birds will love to eat the seeds in the cones. If you want height, dependability, and outstanding color, this can’t be beat. I have three plants in a row (as shown in the photo) and they form a wall about 6-feet wide. They definitely make an impressive group.

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I know, I know. “Swamp Milkweed” is no way to name a perfectly lovely plant. You can call it “Asclepias incarnata” if you prefer. This robust native plant has nothing but good things going for it. It’s a host plant for Monarch Butterfly caterpillars; butterflies in general love it; it’s not picky about soil or moisture; it’s 4-feet tall and sturdy (no flopping); it’s disease resistant; and best of all, it gives long-lasting, sweet-smelling pink flowers in the height of summer. This plant is tough to find in the store, but mid to late summer is a good time to look for it.

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That’s right. I said Joe Pye Weed. Kind of an ugly name for a pretty plant, right? So let’s agree to call it Eupatorium. This native plant has gotten the star treatment from horticulturists lately who have given us gardeners choices other than the traditional 6-foot-high Joe Pye Weed. The plant shown in the photo is a hybrid called “Phantom”  that only reaches 3 to 4 feet high. Perfect for most home gardens. I use mine to help screen my vegetable garden. The pale pink flower heads are just starting to bloom now, so they are great for a midsummer boost. I find the dark red stems especially striking against the lighter green leaves. Plus, this is a sturdy plant that does not flop. Just what I need to weather the storms of July in Chicago!

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We gardeners work hard to attract butterflies to our yards. I sometimes judge the success of my garden by the number of butterflies I see. But times seem to be hard for our butterfly friends. Although I am planting more and more flowers to entice them, I see fewer and fewer. Usually only a couple of monarchs, a couple of viceroys, and the occasional yellow or black swallowtail. The monarchs hit the milkweed, while the swallowtails prefer the phlox. All of them like coneflowers and buddleia. (I’ve also discovered the monarchs are the most camera shy…and they like to chase sparrows!) I wish more people would plant native flowers to support these amazing creatures. I fear one or two butterfly-friendly yards on each block are not going to bring back the butterflies in the numbers we hope for. We need a serious wildflower infusion throughout our neighborhoods, not just in the occasional park.

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July is the time for tall flowers. Showy flowers. Sure, we thought May and June were pretty great, but on the whole those gentle months bring small to medium-sized, perfectly under control mounds of flowers. Now that it’s July, you’ve probably lost control of your garden completely to ostentatious giants like tall bee balm, balloon flowers, Shasta daisies, coneflowers, Culver’s Root, Joe Pye-Weed, tall phlox, lilies, and butterfly bushes. Things are growing on top of and in between each other, plants are climbing other plants, and the colors have gone kaleidoscope bright. Add a spray of water from your sprinkler and just let yourself be dazzled. There are so many choices of plants that are 36, 48, or even 60 inches tall! If you don’t have anything more than a foot tall in your garden, it’s time to build upward!

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Ever see that British sleuth series “Rosemary and Thyme” where two middle-aged women with their own landscaping business solve murders? (Somehow they find dead bodies at every job!) They dress like we were led to believe gardeners dress. You know, crisp button down shirts with the sleeves rolled up, cute cropped khakis, colorful gloves (with no dirt or holes) and wide straw hats with jaunty trim. HA, I say, HA! I don’t know about you, but I am wearing old t-shirts (graphic tees that are no longer culturally relevant work well), cut-off sweat pants, a bandana around my head to catch the sweat, gardening gloves caked with mud (and probably tears on the index fingers), really ugly brown Crocs, a half a can of Deep Woods Off (I don’t even bother with anything less strong anymore), and SPF 100 sunblock. I am unfashionable, dirty, sweaty, and caked with chemicals. And many a time, when I am hosing the mud off my feet (while still in the Crocs), I wonder who the heck ever started the rumor that gardening is an elegant, gentle pastime. I blame the British!

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Destruction! Carnage! Leafy mayhem! This little critter broke through the chicken wire perimeter of the veggie garden and stripped all the leaves off the lettuce, cucumbers, squash, beans, and pumpkins. In one night! Never has such a drastic example of a rodent gourmand existed in my yard! I am just grateful he doesn’t like tomatoes or peppers or this animal lover would be gunning for groundhog. (Well, not in real life, but definitely in my imagination.)

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Or should I say scalping? I just performed the first big deadheading operations of the summer on my perennials. It can be a sobering thing. Some of my salvia now look like they survived a tiny bomb blast. Most of the time, nearby perennials now in bloom pick up the slack. But I discovered one area where I need some later season camouflage, stat! Coneflowers will do the trick, I think. They are such sturdy leafy plants and their flowers last forever. Best yet, no deadheading needed. To the garden center!

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Who doesn’t love roses? But I was taught at a young age that traditional roses are trouble. I watched my grandma and then my mom sprinkling lots of white powder on their roses to prevent black spot disease. Fortunately for me, the Knock Out rose family, as well as other modern shrub roses, make it possible to have fabulous roses that bloom all summer with no risk of disease. The rosebush shown at left is called Carefree Delight and is particularly charming. It gets 3-4 feet tall and wide and is covered in peachy pink roses all summer. I also have some incredibly bright cherry-red Knock Out bushes and a new disease-resistant climbing rose called “Brite Eyes.” Brite Eyes has been especially rewarding for me as it has huge, traditional looking pink roses with yellow centers that have true rose fragrance. I can pick the blooms (sure, they have short stems, but I have small vases) and the blooms continue from June till frost. The only issues I have had with these roses is some stem die back over winter. I just have to prune out the dead branches come spring. I fertilize them once a year. And last summer, for the first time, I had a few aphids that were dispatched with a little insecticide dust. Every yard should have roses!

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