Cait's Garden

It’s a sad time of year for me. The time when my beloved pansies will be taken down by an 80+ degree heatwave next week. Pansies (like me) cannot abide hot temps. I still recall the excitement of bringing home that flat of pansies this past March. The first flowers of the year, and wow, how stunning they’ve been these past two months. Sure, it’ll be fun to re-do the planters in summer flowers, but it’s still a bit sad. I will try to move my planter pansies into a cool spot in the garden and with luck, they will take a second bow this autumn.

I like to call “May Night” Salvia by its German name “Mainacht” because it’s a German cultivar…and because it’s just fun to say. I consider this the mack daddy of all purple sages. Bold and robust, from its deep, almost neon-bright blue-purple color to its long, bushy spikes of flowers, it makes a statement. Deadheading provides a smaller show of flowers in midsummer. Best of all, the bees love this plant, ensuring many photo opportunities!

Keeping a purposeful border between our garden and our lawn takes commitment. The lawn is determined to steal back the spaces we’ve claimed from it. So every spring, it’s time to grab the sharp shovel and clean up that edge. When your garden gets big, that’s a lot of edge! I have spent many an hour sitting on the ground, shaking dirt and worms out of chunks of removed turf. One good thing about my borders, they are free-form curves. (See the yellow line in the photo as an example.)  With curves, it is easy to enlarge the garden just enough to fit in one more plant. Or two. Or three. Just bump out the border with another curve! You can’t possibly mess it up; no measuring or mapping out lines is involved; and best of all,  it looks really soft and pretty.

It’s a cloudy, rainy day and I am reminding myself to focus on the good parts of my garden instead of worrying over the not-so-good. Living plants are a moving target. For every reliable flower or shrub, you have one that mysteriously disappoints, either due to weather, bugs, dislike of its location, or mysteries beyond your knowledge. This failed plant can look like a giant blight on your beautiful landscape to a fixated gardener. But we must remember to look at the big picture, as visitors to our garden will do. They won’t notice that one under-performing plant. They’ll be too busy looking at our gorgeous successes. The trick is to learn to look at the big picture ourselves!

Why wait until September for asters? With the cultivar called “Wartburg Star” (ugly name, pretty plant) you can have cheerful, delicate purple asters in May. They are hardy to Zone 4, easy to grow, and like Fall asters, spread very slowly by rhizomes, so divide them every couple of years. Spring Asters are also called “East Indies Asters” because they originate in the Himalayas. Pretty exotic, huh?

I love all kinds of salvia. Most people know the purple varieties, but for the earliest blooming sage, pick this charmer for your garden. The plant shown in the photo is a Meadow Sage (Salvia Pratensis) called “Pink Delight” and can now be found in your favorite garden centers.  It starts blooming in early May and continues for several weeks. Its generous pink flowers always cheer me up.

Ah, Catmint. How do I love thee, let me count the ways…. If I could have just one perennial in my yard, Nepeta “Walker’s Low” might be it. It forms perfect mounds of fragrant, silvery green foliage topped by plentiful lavender flowers. Deadhead after the long bloom cycle and it will flower till frost. They love sun but do fine in part-shade, they are not fussy about water, they don’t get diseases, you can divide them easily, and they are very hardy.  Just note that not all varieties of Nepeta bloom all season long.  Look for “Walker’s Low”  for repeat blooms and outstanding foliage.

I had to dump out the contents of my rain gauge this morning because although it holds 5 inches of rain, it was nearly full. This is not a typical rainfall for our area, but it does happen. Sometimes in May, sometimes in August. Droughts and floods around here are quite unpredictable. We’ve had hot dry April’s and cold rainy July’s. That is why reading your plant labels before you buy plants is more important than ever. Drought resistant plants are all the rage, especially with the new interest in native plants. But make sure those plants are also moisture tolerant. A plant that loves it dry all summer will not be happy with our occasional month-long rainy spells. Likewise, a plant that requires constant moisture needs a great deal of babysitting through drought season. The key is to pick plants that are survivors, no matter the weather extremes…because we live in Illinois and things get crazy here!

Centranthus ruber ‘Pretty Betsy’  is an old-fashioned plant that is difficult to find in stores, so grab it when you see it.  The particulars: Hardy to Zone 4, 2-3 feet tall and wide, lovely branching form with bluish-green oblong leaves, cherry red flowers from May through August (which are more plentiful if you deadhead regularly), good for cut flowers. It spreads from seed, but not aggressively. In fact, I’m going to skip deadheading this year to see if I can make more of this great plant to share!

With garden success comes garden failure. I keep a list of  my current plants, as well as all those that didn’t make it. To be a  carefree gardener, one must learn to avoid the temperamental plant. My soil isn’t the greatest, temps and rainfall around here are unpredictable, and I don’t want to babysit my plants. (I mean you, Delphinium!) There are a few flowers that I’m willing to replace as many times as it takes to keep one alive, like lavender…which I finally found the right spot  for on the fifth try… and buddleia, for all those butterflies. With other plants, one strike and you’re out. I feel the same way about shrubs, which can be temperamental, too. You can research a shrub well, put it in the supposedly right spot, and still get a poor showing due to bad weather conditions, an ambitious chipmunk den under the roots, or some mystery you can’t solve. Those little plant tags are not crystal balls. In general, learning what works in your garden can be a painful process, and you can’t take it personally. We are working with living things and there is always a chance for the unexpected, good and bad. The trick is move on, learn what we can, and keep a sense of humor.