The Return of the Blues

The blues are back in our garden. 

The outer sidewalk bed on
September 21.  Double-click
on any image for a full-
screen view.

During the heat of July and August, perennials with yellow and white flowers dominate our garden.  Except for some heavily watered and regularly fertilized annuals in containers, blue is almost absent from the color spectrum.  Now, with cooler weather, the blues are back.

The convention wisdom says that September gardens in New England are ready to be cut to the ground; the season is effectively over.  As the attached photos attest, that’s not the case.  Late September brings out a different side of our garden.  The most noticeable change is that blue flowers are out in abundance for the first time since mid-Spring.  For another, plants are allowed to play out their natural tendencies, sometimes with stunning results.

These three containers have merged
into one glorious mass of color
and texture

Yes, the first frost will put an end to the annuals.  The coleus that is growing with abandon right now – there are more than a dozen varieties in containers right now - will be the first to go: even a night with temperatures in the mid-30s will cause them to wilt.  But for the present, they are taking over the containers that were once dominated by plants that succumbed to the relentless heat of July and August.

Blue asters running amok.  They've
been hiding in plain sight all summer

The asters have been biding their time, effectively hiding in plain sight.  Now, they are in full bloom, creating carpets of blue and white all over the garden.  Hydrangea are heavy with blooms that are getting preposterously large; their branches drag the ground.  We have three caryopteris at the front of the property.  Each is blooming with delicate blue flowers.  In the rock gardens behind out home, a large patch of plumbago displays a carpet of mid-blue blooms.

The hydrangea are heavy with
preposterously large flower heads

Foliage plants are also in their glory.  We have three varieties of persicaria: Painters Palette, Lance Corporal and Red Dragon.  These are garden thugs that require constant attention to not take over the beds in which they are located.  Now, as their season ends, they are throwing up airy stalks containing red seed pods.  Our goal is to enjoy the foliage as long as possible, then cut the plant back to the ground before its seeds mature.  It’s a delicate balancing act.

In the Manhattan bed, an ipomea
(sweep potato) vine has been allowed
to dominate its container for the
final weeks of its season

Betty is also allowing her containers to ‘naturalize’ for this, their final month.  Throughout the spring and summer, she has carefully trimmed back individual plants in mixed containers to maintain a desired shape or color balance.  Now, the ipomea are trailing six-foot-long chartreuse vines.  Three containers have grown into a single, glorious quilt of color and texture.  Off in a corner of the property, a ‘Big Red Judy’ coleus has ballooned to a height of four feet and a girth of equal size.

This caryopteris is one of three on the
property, each with blue flowers
for September

From mid-September on, New England gardens live on borrowed time.  Each evening weather report brings reports of possible frost or freezes a little closer.  For the present, it is the Worcester Hills – some 40 miles distant – that are the target of nighttime temperatures in the mid-30s.  One unexpected drop in the jet stream could bring that weather to our front doorstep.

And so we are relishing the return of the blues.

Big Red Judy

Big Red Judy died last night. She froze to death, succumbing to a merciless New England autumn that saw pre-dawn temperatures at our home fall to the upper twenties. She was, by our guess, about six months old.

Big Red Judy was a coleus, a Proven Selections specimen that came to us in a four-inch pot from one of our forays to Andrew’s Nursery in late April. We were attracted by its brilliant, crimson foliage and large leaves. Even before Big Red Judy got home, Betty already knew which pot she would go into: a massive white one with bas relief garlands and swags (fortunately made of foam). Big Red Judy was accented with some trailing light blue flowers and was awarded a highly visible spot at our driveway turnaround (that’s her on the right in mid-July).

Her dainty companion gave up the ghost with the heat of August but, by then, Big Red Judy was so large that she no longer needed an escort. She was soon twice as wide and twice as high as her container, but the foliage just kept looking magnificent.

Her lone problem was that she tended to topple in the wind. In late August, Big Red Judy was moved to Rock Garden 4 where she occupied a space left vacant by the annual mid-summer disappearance of a Dicentra spectabilis, an unusually large bleeding heart. There, protected from the wind, Big Red Judy attracted even more attention from visitors, a lone burst of color in a bed that is relentlessly green at that time of the year. She was the first thing your eye saw from the deck and she glowed in the late afternoon.

Starting in the last week of September, we began bringing annual-bearing containers close to the house in the evening, shuttling them back out to their customary positions only when the morning temperatures rose above 40 degrees. That way, we figured to keep our thirty-plus containers going for another month. It worked, up to a point. Several brushes with frost were successfully avoided.

This morning, though, there was ice on the turtle bird bath. I went out to inspect Big Red Judy. Her leaves were limp and drooped, a sign that the water in the veins of the leaves had frozen. A few leaves at the bottom of the plant were firm, but it was clear that her time was passed.

We buy annuals in New England with the full knowledge that we will be able to enjoy them for six months or less. We keep them on a diet heavy with fertilizer because we know there is only season to admire their flowers, color, or texture. But there is also always next April. Big Red Judy has earned a place in our garden repertoire, along with other coleuses like Inky Fingers and Alabama Sunset.

And that’s one of the joys of gardening: meeting old friends every Spring.