Fall blooms and colors

There are a few stalwart plants blooming now.  Some that have been reliable for several years are Asters, both novi-belgii and nova-angliai.  They add that little bit of color to the border, and I start to wonder why I haven't planted more of them.

These start growing in late summer and eventually get tall and start blooming, seemingly without any care.

Daboecia cantabrica 'Atropurpurea', Irish Heath, has been blooming and continues to bloom, with it's enchanting purple balloon flowers.

A Verbascum phoenicium started by seed last November has gotten big enough to start blooming now, focus is not very good.  The others from this sowing seem to want to wait until next year to bloom.  A Fibigia is on the left.  This is my vole-free gravel-laden bed that can grow peacefully except that lots of little weed seeds keep sprouting.

Some of those long-blooming perennials are still blooming-

Some of those great little Violas, Johnny-Jump-Ups.  Not only did they start blooming fast from seed, but then seeded arounnd some little babies that even made it to bloom by fall.  Some people don't like their invasive qualities.

A few stragglers of the Lychnis coronaria.

It doesn't seem like Fall without the thrill of those flaming leaves in reds, oranges, and yellows. I'm happy to live in a climate where the trees have a long fall to develope them, unlike Denver, Colorado where untimely fall snows turn green leaves into slushy brown ones.

This is my Aronia 'Viking'.  I harvested the berries earlier.  It is supposed to grow 6' tall but gets taller.

This is Amber Ghost Japanese Maple.  The colors became more of a flaming red later but I didn't get out to photograph it.

This is a cutleaf Weeping Japanese Maple, with some blueberries peeking out behind.  This one favors golden orange with red highlights, my other one is more a wine red.

This is
Hypericum frondosum.  It had nice coloration in fall of 2009, pictured here, but is still green today, there must not have been the right cold temperatures for it this year.  Burning bushes and maples seemed to color up fine.

Well, I'm spending a lot of time researching the native plants and some vegetables I want to grow next year.  It seems a lot of the plants in the mint family, Labiatae, that we all love to grow are non-native- lots of mints, oreganos and other herbs.  So I'm getting interested in a group of North American natives, the Agastaches.  I am looking at some that are natives and wanting to grow them next year.  I did grow one last year, Agastache foeniculum, which did make a nice little plant but it is an imported plant.  Hopefully it will bloom next year.  The Agastaches have nice aromatic foliage and can be used for tea plants, and are well-loved by hummingbirds, butterflies, and especially bees.  The flavors can be minty or can be lemon, anise, licorice, etc.  I'm excited to see how well they will do in taking ground away from the weeds and getting large.  Mints do well in that respect and when blooming are really aswarm with bees, including a lot of the smaller and native bees.  So it will be fascinating to compare them.

Well, this cold weather took everyone by surprise.  I hope the cool season greens in my deck stock tank can overweather the frozen conditions out there.  And the greens I planted in July.  I've been getting some very nice big turnips lately.

Happy Thanksgiving, my menu will feature vegetarian stir-fry with Asian squash, onions, ginger, mushrooms, Shungiku greens (Chrysanthemum coronaria), which I am contemplating growing next year, and water chestnuts; and then some oven-baked Asian eggplants with a little onion, baked to a mouth-watering deep brown perfection.

Hannah

Progress in No-weed Beds

Here is a sample bed I'm working on, one of my worst weed-infested beds since it is next to the lawn full of unscrupulous grasses knowing no boundaries and giving no quarter.  I initially killed the grasses and weeds in this bed with newspaper and black plastic, and this lasted for a while but the main plants in the bed were too vertical, like irises and daylilies, and some fig trees, and there was not enough ground coverage so the grasses invaded again.  This first bed had a second newspaper treatment over winter and is partially bare enough to allow planting some new plants that should give better leaf coverage, some hollyhocks.

The next photo is of an area where some Columbines and Figwort are already growing and competing with the grasses for coverage.

This bed, solidly planted for several years, has attained nearly no-weed status, with early spring bloom from Hellebores and species Tulip batalinii Bright Gem, and tree Peonies, and summer bloom from hardy Geraniums-

And along the driveway under some Red Cedars, I planted sword ferns, and variegated Vinca minor 'illumination', but the grey-green clumps of Rose Campion, Lychnis coronaria, sowed themselves in a row that will burst into deep hot pink blooms later in summer.

A sloped bed that is a work in progress, also winter-killed with newspapers, has Lady's Mantle that had self-sown elsewhere and been transplanted, a native Shade Phacelia nemoralis, and a favorite ground cover and edible salad plant, Corn Salad, which will self-sow and grows in the winter.  There is still a little grass but it is slowly being crowded out.

This bed was an attempt at a grey-green themed bed, with Festuca, Irises, and Alpine Pinks along the front. 

The pinks looked great the next year, but were slowly invaded and overgrown with grass...

This is the right side of the bed (note irises along front), and has been taken over on the left side by a lovely bed of Sheep Sorrel, which can be eaten in moderation in salads and was very nice in late fall and also in early spring but is now going to seed.  An Amber Ghost Japanese maple is in the center, surrounded by Heucheras of various leaf colors.  A Wormwood plant lends some grey-green to the right, and the wild Dovesfoot Cranesbill, Geranium molle, is behind the irises.

Some contrast of the Amber Ghost foliage and Crimson Curls Heuchera-

And another Heuchera with silvery accents, Hollywood.

Lastly, a view of our front bank, which used to be a mess of grasses and weeds that I had to weed-whack, but I planted ground cover Comfrey grandiflorum, Geranium macrorrhizum, Hypericum calycinum, and some Sword Ferns, and let them fight it out, and there are massive Rosa Rugosas at the top of the bank which bloom profusely in spring.

Kind of a divide and conquer strategy.  Weed replacement takes a lot of strategy, because it is a battle, millions of them against one of me and my hopefully growing army of successful (invasive, self-sowing, native) plants.  Win a few, lose a few.  If one plant doesn't succeed, what's next?

-Hannah

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