Cait's Garden

Those of us in Zone 5 are experiencing a freakishly warm winter. I didn’t realize how freakish until yesterday, when I was poking around my garden and noticed my buddleias have leaves on them. If you do not have buddleias, aka butterfly bushes, in your yard, you will not know why my mind is blown by this occurrence. Suffice it to say that buddleias are temperamental in our zone. They are a Southern plant, essentially. I managed to kill three of them (or rather, they committed suicide) before I got my current buddleias flourishing. (More tips about how to do that later.)

The reason these leaves are so astonishing is that it’s the beginning of March in Zone 5, and buddleias don’t leaf out in Zone 5 until sometime in late Spring, like May. Buddleias bloom on new and old wood. In the South, where the winters are far warmer, the plants never really die back, so they definitely get blooms on old and new wood. Here, we always get full die back due to the cold, so all our growth comes from new wood every Spring. It’s always a bit tense until I see the first little leaves at the base of the plant every Spring.

However, my buddleias at present have not only a lot of new growth at the base, but new leaves going rather far up on the old wood. Unheard of! While this is exciting, I do worry that in typical Chicago fashion, we will get some nasty frosts and the new leaves will suffer. Fortunately, the base of the plant is still protected by leaves and brush and will hopefully continue to thrive.

Buddleias are very slow to start in the Spring, so you should never plan for them to be the focal point in your late Spring/early Summer garden. And I mentioned they are temperamental. I’ve found they do best in a spot in the garden that gets some protection from winter winds. For me, this means surrounding them with other tall and bushy plants that afford some extra coverage to the area in winter through their dried foliage. Also, there are two ways to buy buddleias. The first is as a large shrub in the shrub section of the nursery. This can set you back $30 to $50 for a pretty much full size bush. The three I lost were all purchased that way. The other way to buy them is as a perennial flower in the flower section of the nursery. That’ll set you back maybe $10. It’s a much smaller plant, but they grow quickly. You’ll have a full-size shrub in two to three years. And they seem to do much better when they are grown in the yard from a small plant. I think they just adapt better to the conditions. It’s worked for mine so far. They’ve each come back for several years now.

As the photo above illustrates, butterfly bushes live up to their name. They do attract butterflies like nothing else in the yard. And their tall and sprawling habitat add a bit of softness and whimsy to the garden. There are many colors to choose from, all shades of white, pink, and purple. The plant shown above is a “bi-color” buddleia. Much harder to find, but a gorgeous pink/yellow combination with an extra sweet vanilla smell. There are even miniature versions of buddleias now (like Blue Chip) that only grow a foot tall (instead of 3 to 4 feet). I have one and it’s nice, but it doesn’t really seem like a buddleia due to it being a neat, compact little clump. I miss the crazy sprawl of traditional buddleia and truth be told, I don’t think butterflies like to land that close to the ground. My advice is, make room for at least one old-fashioned buddleia. Who knows… If global warming is real, perhaps we are becoming the new South!

Well, fellow gardeners, it may seem that I’ve taken a long time off from this blog, but I assure you, I haven’t stopped thinking about gardening. Right after the holidays, the traditional “reading of the garden catalogs” began in earnest. I try not to purchase many plants from catalogs because the plants are just so small it can take forever for them to amount to anything. Plus, now you can eventually find most plants in a garden center if you look often enough. Still, these catalog plants are so incredibly tempting! I usually flag dozens of pages, and then taper my choices down to a handful of must-haves. This year, there were two must-haves for me from Bluestone Perennials, a company I’ve had good luck purchasing from in past years.

The first is Asclepias Verticillata, a member of the milkweed family and a prairie native plant also called “Horsetail” because the whorled leaves are supposed to resemble a horse’s tail. I have many gorgeous aslepias plants in my yard in an attempt to coerce monarch butterflies into hanging around, so I could not pass up this rare white version.

The next plant I couldn’t pass up was “Agastache cana Purple Pygmy” (in the hyssop or hummingbird mint family). I have only recently added an agastache to my garden (Golden Jubiliee) and based on that success, I decided to try this one. This plant is a miniature version that stays low to the ground and is supposed to be covered in purple flowers all season. We shall see.

In just two weeks, I will be heading to my local nursery for the annual buying of the pansy flats. Then there will be a slight shopping drought until May when the first waves of perennials start rolling in. In between, there will be many happy days cleaning up the yard in the crisp Spring air.

This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post about plants with colorful fall foliage. I can’t claim the lovely front yard in the photo…it belongs to my mother…but I simply had to share how great this looks. This photo was taken today and just look at the color! And almost all of it is from shrubbery, like spirea, ninebark, viburnum, and even miniature weigela. A few perennials (sedum, tall and short) and some amazingly tough annuals (alyssum) add to the mix. I was really knocked out to see the show of color. This is some seriously good landscaping!

Having had a fairly lucky gardening year, I would be remiss not to post to this blog on the special date of 11-11-11. Happy Numerological Oddity Day! Well, frost has finally come to my garden, but still not as hard as it has in past Novembers. I have a few splashes of purple mums, hardy geraniums, and even alyssum still fighting the good fight. I wanted to make mention of some flowers that pull double-season duty by putting on a good show of colored foliage in the fall. On the left is a sedum called “Neon” which appropriately has foliage that glows this time of year. On the right is a balloon flower. Balloon flowers, in addition to being long blooming in the summer, put on quite the show of colors in the fall. So you will find me both looking up at the trees and looking down at my plants this month as I try to soak it all in. May this day bring good luck to all my faithful blog readers and gardening friends!

I fully own up to having little patience with annuals in pots. The extra care they need to look good all season confounds me. I have had better luck with adding annuals into my perennial beds. These two have definitely given me a return on my investment: Ageratum (the blue one) and Lantana (the hot-colored one). Here it is, late October, and they are just about the only flower game left in town, as this lone Monarch attests to. (I seriously hope that lone Monarch heads for Mexico soon.) I will definitely be purchasing these two annuals again next year, especially more Ageratum. That little blue plant never quite blooming all year, whereas the Lantana had to “re-load” periodically. Both plants can be a little tricky to find, though, so buy them early in the season to make sure you find them at all.

And with that post, I might have just made my last bloom-related post of the season! I’d be sadder about it, but the fact that I’m making it this late in October is a good thing. We had a good year, didn’t we?

I think this gets the nod for the last perennial in my garden to start blooming. This “Japanese Windflower” or “Anemone” is called “September Charm” because it does indeed start blooming in September. In my case, late September. And thanks to our lack of frosts so far, this is what this plant looks like now. You’d swear it was Spring! Indeed, this plant looks like it belongs with the spring flowers. A light, airy plant with delicate pink flowers born on thin stems (making it look like flowers being tossed in the breeze), this plant seems disconnected from the robust golds, reds, and browns of fall foliage. I wondered this year if I should move it to a different location in the yard, but I honestly couldn’t think of anywhere where it wouldn’t look out of season. And it seems to be happy where it is. So I will just enjoy the oddness of this fresh little flower on an October day.

Obedient Plant deserves a shout-out at this time of year for delivering on the promise we waited for all year. In fact, every year I forget I have this tough garden staple until it suddenly opens with these amazing flowers in mid-September. This is why we plant flowers that bloom in the fall, for giving us fresh color when we start thinking the season is done. Plus, the bees really appreciate them now. The photo to the left is a glamour shot from my civilized garden, but below is a phone camera shot from a recent walk at Crabtree Nature Center. Seems there is a version of Obedient Plant out on the prairie, too! Score one for native plants, yet again.

Last year, about this time, I posted a photo of a scraggly little slip of  a plant I had just purchased called “Boltonia asteroides,” an American wildflower also called Wild Aster. The label said it would get to 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide and boy, they were not kidding. That plant shot up this year to impressive size. I was even able to give a clump to a friend in early spring. I can’t say enough good things about this plant. For much of the season, when it isn’t flowering, it looks like pale green tall grass. Then when it finally does bloom in September, well, you can see the photo. Amazing, isn’t it? I’ve read that, as with common asters, one can pinch these stems back in early July to keep the plant shorter later on. But I personally get a kick out of a flower that sees eye to eye with me. Definitely do not pass up the chance to own that scraggly looking, tiny pot of a wildflower in your garden center when you see it. I am so pleased with the performance of my native plants this year!

I’ve blogged about this shrub before: “Sunshine Blue” Caryopteris (aka “Bluebeard”). Purchased from a mail-order nursery as a tiny seedling a few years back, it has become an anchor in my garden. Most of the summer, the show comes from its naturally rounded form and its dazzling yellow-green foliage. It’s always a bright spot in the yard. In September, we have an even more splendid show as periwinkle blue flowers blanket the shrub, making this a much-needed haven for bees and wasps in addition to a show-stopper. I adore this plant. Nothing in my garden provides this much gorgeousness from the time it leafs out in the spring until the leaves fall in the autumn. Highly recommended if you have a sunny, not too wet spot in your yard.