Down To Earth

The garden is full — it must be July

By Kristin Green
Posted 7/9/17

I haven’t gotten everything planted yet. (Yes, I know it’s July.) My back porch holds a collection of trays lined with 4-and 6-packs of stressed out nicotiana seedlings spiked into …

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Down To Earth

The garden is full — it must be July

Posted

I haven’t gotten everything planted yet. (Yes, I know it’s July.) My back porch holds a collection of trays lined with 4-and 6-packs of stressed out nicotiana seedlings spiked into flower, 4” pots of hopelessly root-bound scented geranium, African blue basil, and Salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’ and ‘Indigo Spires’. All of the things that I grew from seed and from cuttings because it was so easily done, why wouldn’t I make as many as I possibly could? I have diligently watered them, sometimes twice daily. My dahlias too are still down cellar, the tubers barely sprouted and nowhere near flowering. I’m weeks behind and there are miles to go before I can (justify) sleep. But it isn’t that I haven’t made time for planting: my garden is full.

Ten years ago when I started carving beds out of lawn I was desperate for the enclosure of an established garden and accepted every offered seedling and division just to fill the place up before grass grew back. I didn’t want to see bare ground or mulch and continued to pack in gifts. My garden is made of enthusiastic spreaders and generous self-sowers from enthusiastic and generous friends.

In recent years I have neglected to adequately edit the collection and can’t wedge in another thing. Not and expect its survival. Amazingly though, some plants have managed to plant themselves and I have to hand it to those for keeping the garden changing. I’m not talking about crabgrass and smartweed, which have an uncanny ability to locate needles of bare earth in the haystack of my garden, rather things like Minoan lace (Orlaya grandiflora). What a happy surprise it has been to see starched white doilies placed all over one corner of the garden where its spiny seeds must have fallen the last few summers. I don’t make time to deadhead anything and although orlaya’s flowers last beautifully in a vase, I resisted picking every one. This year, as soon as seeds ripen I’ll throw a few in other corners in hopes they germinate on whatever soil is under there somewhere.
I don’t have to worry about the biennial (or short-lived perennial) rose campion (Lychnis coronaria) shimmying itself into slots in the garden. It behaves more like an elephant, stomping first-year fuzzy grey basal rosettes all over, trample-smash. Even the weeds don’t stand a chance. And then June’s oversaturated cerise pink flowers balance like spinning plates on the tippy-tops of branched silver stems and turn my garden into a circus. For those of you who prefer quiet colors to loud, white and soft pink flowers can be had instead. (In the event of cross pollination, my money’s on gaudy to dominate.)

Golden feverfew (Tanecetum parthenium ‘Aureum’) is similarly skilled at inhabiting invisible vacancies, particularly in the front of borders and every patio crack. It isn’t fussy about moisture levels or sunlight and produces a froth of tiny white daisies atop chartreuse stems even in dappled shade during a drought. The more sun and water, the longer the stems if my garden is anything to go by. These too make great cut flowers.

I’m always gratified to see a few breadseed (opium) poppies raising their heads above the fray. After the flowers shatter and the pods crisp, goldfinch work hard to get every seed but poppy pods holds hundreds (thousands?) of seeds and birds are messy eaters. Longevity is another bonus. Any seeds buried by over planting and brought to the surface the day I get around to editing the rose campion and feverfew, even years from now, will germinate.

No doubt about it, I should have culled the herd weeks ago to make room for dahlias, salvias, et al. But if summer continues as rainy and gray as spring, I will have time to let these June bloomers go to seed before evicting them and planting the late blooming waiting room plants in the holes they leave behind. That must be what I meant to do all along.

Kristin Green is the horticulturist at Mount Hope Farm and author of 'Plantiful: Start Small, Grow Big with 150 Plants that Spread, Self-Sow, and Overwinter'. Follow her blog at trenchmanicure.com.

Kristin Green

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