Cait's Garden

Look at those beautiful pansies. In the photo, I mean, because the ones I just planted last weekend don’t look anything like that yet. It’s exhilarating, yet trying, potting the first flowers of spring. Frosts aren’t the issue. For me, it’s the wildlife. Squirrels have been digging in my large pots of pansies by the front door, uprooting the plants completely. And this charming planter in the photo? Its flowers have been eaten by a woodchuck. If I can keep these flowers whole for a few more weeks, I will be in the clear. But now, it’s a comical battle.

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Here it is, March 2, and I hope to be making my final post of the winter season. (Or at least my last intentionally wintery post.) You hear the term “winter interest” often on gardening shows and in magazines. I think I’ve got that one covered, just by being lazy and not cutting down my perennials. Well, actually it’s good to keep the foliage on your plants over the winter to provide protection, so there is method behind my sloth.  And when the snow falls just right, it sticks in a quite lovely way to the seed heads of all those coneflowers I have. In the photo, you’ll see those, a very pretty dried out caryopteris (blue mist shrub) and a few bits of aster and coreopsis. Looks pretty nice, huh? Imagine how great it will look when it’s green again!

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Great new trend in shrubbery: miniatures! How often have you been in a garden center, seen a gorgeous shrub, and then had to pass because you don’t happen to have 6-8 feet of space left in your yard? If you’re like me, this happens a lot. Some newbie gardeners try to ignore the tag and assume they can just trim a shrub into submission for life. But that’s no way to treat a shrub! Thankfully, wonderful small hybrids of our favorite shrubs are available.

I am thrilled that there is now “Little Lime” Hydrangea (a 3-foot version of Limelight…perhaps the best hydrangea out there), “Little Devil” Ninebark (a 3-foot version of the gorgeous red Diablo Ninebark), and a few so-called “pillar” barberry bushes (like the brilliant-hued Orange Rocket, shown in the photo) that only get 18 inches wide, but 4 feet tall. I planted three of these in a corner of my flower bed just last summer. I think it’s a great idea to introduce small shrubs into flower beds. They add structure and fullness when your flowers are still growing, plus they are gorgeous in their own right. Definitely a trend to try! So say I, an aspiring gardening trend-setter.

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Like this squirrel, my garden is currently covered in snow. But after months  of hibernation and general sloth, this gardener is starting to get her game on again. It started small. Gazing longingly at the stack of flower catalogs I received before the holidays. But it was all a pipe dream. Until today, when the FIRST SEED PACKETS WERE PURCHASED. Yes, fellow gardeners, it’s on again. I have vegetable seeds at the ready. True, I can’t plant them until the ground can be worked, which is a few months off. But just having them makes me feel better. Before you know it, I’ll be posting about the first pansies of Spring.

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I haven’t posted in a while because when the growing season winds down, I spend less time in the garden (and let’s face it, there is precious little daylight now to see the garden before or after work). But this morning, while out at 6:30AM feeding the birds and squirrels, I picked the last perfect rosebud from my climbing rose. And I was so excited about it (it smells just as sweet as the summer blossoms) that I snapped this photo of it on my kitchen counter. The flowers we took for granted just a couple of months ago are now special and rare surprises. Imagine the frosts this little rose has survived already!

I’ve also been meaning to post about the beauty that is left in the yard this late November day. Most of the showy fall-colored trees are done performing for the year, but there are still plenty of colors to enjoy. The Crimson Pygmy Barberry bush, usually a lovely dark red, is now bright pumpkin orange. The Golden Vicary Privet, usually bright lemon-lime green, is now an amazing eggplant purple tinged with green. And the Purple Smokebush still has its usual red-purple leaves, more visible now that its neighbors in the yard are leafless.

Chicago winters are unpredictable. When it remains mild like this, we can enjoy little pockets of green things in our yards indefinitely, even if it’s just a little foliage here and there. Or one perfect rose on a November morning.

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This has been an extra long growing season. No hard frosts yet and it’s almost Halloween! Of course, most plants sort of gave up the ghost in the past few weeks. Looking out at the yard, the only thing still producing flowers like crazy is the Rozanne Cranesbill (buy these flowers…they are AMAZING) and my various Knockout roses. Many other plants have lovely golden foliage as they shut down production for the year. I must give props to my Limelight Hydrangeas. I took the photo shown a couple of weeks ago to capture how the flowers were starting to turn pink. They look much the same now, although the leaves are yellower. Eventually, the flowers will turn bronze for the winter. But just look at how fabulous this shrub is! Huge, blush-pink flowers…in October! I have these shrubs on either side of my front door. It makes for a reliably great entrance.

I don’t know how other gardeners are, but personally, I stop gardening by mid-October. Oh sure, I’ll do a little clean-up, some raking. But mostly, I let everything sit, undisturbed, until Spring. Then I am a cleaning maniac. I learned long ago that plants do best if you leave them their foliage over the winter. It helps protect the plants. The only exception is diseased or mildewed foliage. That I always remove. Otherwise, I just sit back and watch things slowly go to sleep. Even now, I am getting much enjoyment from looking at my yard. Things are winding down, but they are still gorgeous.

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I would be remiss not to mention the perennial I’ve waited the longest to see. We wait so long to see asters it can be easy to ignore them. But no doubt the flowers are welcome when they arrive.

Asters can be found in varying shades of purple, as well as unexpected colors, such as the bright red aster shown in the photo, which is still in full bloom in my yard.

It’s certainly easy to grow asters, and easy to to make more of them by division. The only downside is a tendency to get powdery mildew…something I usually forget until it’s too late and the leaves look horrible. Perhaps next year I will remember to spray them with an antifungal in the middle of summer when the damage is usually done. On the bright side, the flowers are still gorgeous.

One note, rabbits love asters. Some people I know with plentiful wild rabbits have completely given up on growing them. If you are wondering where those asters you planted have gone, look to the bunny in your yard.

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There are many reasons I love to garden. At the heart of it all is that I love nature. It is hugely important to my life. I like to think that gardeners, especially those of us who take pains to use native plants and go chemical free in our yards, are providing sanctuaries for wildlife that would otherwise be fading away in our urban jungles.  Sometimes, the pains we take truly pay off in a tangible way. Case in point, this Monarch Butterfly.

Let me back up. For the past few years, I’ve consciously planted several flowers in the milkweed variety because they are host plants for Monarch larvae. I didn’t see any results, but figured the butterflies would eventually see my yard as a home. Last year I put in this huge plant called a Swamp Milkweed. Apparently, that one was the charm. About 10 days ago, I noticed this beautiful green thimble hanging from the siding on the garage, a few feet away from the milkweed plant. I researched it and discovered it was a Monarch caterpillar in the process of transforming into a butterfly. It was kind of late in the season. October butterflies, if they make it, are the ones who will fly to Mexico to mate. I was worried, with the cold evenings, that this little guy wouldn’t survive. But today, he/she hatched out, and as you can see, is gorgeous. I was beyond thrilled to see it. I hope this is only the first of many butterflies created and nourished in my backyard.

In my own small way, I helped make that butterfly. That is pretty fabulous. That is why I garden.

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Sedum is a perennial that is often overlooked or taken for granted. When the other flowers are blooming like crazy in the spring and summer, the sedum just waits. It has attractive succulent leaves that add interest to the garden, but nothing that makes you say wow. Until now. This time of year, they are definitely a “wow” and prove why they are necessary additions to any garden. There are many varieties to choose from (including groundcovers), but two of my favorites are shown in the photo. The bright purple sedum is called (appropriately) “Neon” and the white one, which is a newer variety, is called “Stardust.” I prefer these two plants because they are short, about a foot high, so they don’t flop like other taller sedums. And the bright, fresh colors are a real knock-out. These are hardy plants to zone 3 so they survive just about anything. But it is recommended that you do not deadhead them until spring. Since they offer such nice winter interest, I wouldn’t want to anyway.

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Boltonia asteroides “Snowbank” to be precise! Never heard of it? Neither had I until this past July when I saw it at the garden center. But this plant has some history. It’s an American wildflower! Nicknames for it are White Doll’s Daisy and Wild Aster. It definitely has the qualities of both an aster and a daisy. It is also sometimes called Starflower. The clump shown in the photo isn’t all that impressive because I planted it only a couple of months ago. It just started blooming for me in mid-September. At full-strength, this plant should get up to 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide. This will be something else to look forward to on the cusp of fall when many of my other flowers are waning.

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