A Late June Walk in the Garden

 Sleep. Creep. Leap.

The garden at 26 Pine Street, June 2023.
Double-click for the slideshow.

Those are the words all gardeners learn to live by. You put something in the ground. You pamper it, water it, weed it, and keep it free of disease and interlopers. And, in return, you get… nothing (at least for that first year and, sometimes, for two or three years).  Everything is going on below ground: your plant/tree/shrub is establishing roots. It is exploring its surroundings. It doesn’t care that you want instant gratification. Ultimately, you accept that, at least above the soil line, that thing you planted is sleeping.

Itea 'Little Henry' in full
flower. Three shrubs have
merged into a single mass

Then, after a few years, you see the tangible growth. Your frustration eases – except that you wish you could get more flowers/branches/fruit. Your precious plant is ‘creeping’.

Finally, one spring morning you come out and find you can’t believe your eyes. That scrawny plant is now gorgeous. The awkward teenager has come of age. It flowers in profusion, its branches are sturdy, and its fruits hang heavy. You know all those years of pampering have paid off.  You are proud as punch.

The garden at 26 Pine Street has reached, if not full maturity, a grown-up status. Eight years after the first trees and shrubs were placed, they look as though they’ve always been there. Shrubs planted on three-foot centers with what seemed like yawning chasms between them are now a glorious, full-leafed mass. Trees that were slender saplings are twenty feet high and limbs are touching their neighbors.

The sidewalk's hard edges are
softened by border plants

Best of all are the surprises: the bluestone sidewalk’s edges are softened by geraniums and lavender. A dozen, bare-root asclepias ‘Hello Yellow’ milkweed plants that seemed doomed not to make it through their first year have multiplied to become a glorious colony, dense with flowers – and butterflies. An original plan to use metal borders and gravel for paths within the garden fell by the wayside when moss thrived where we walked. Today, those moss paths traverse the property; gloriously unplanned but far superior to the original concept.

Carolina lupine and asclepias
'Hello Yellow' milkweed

We have taken chances on ‘un-pedigreed’ plants and have been rewarded for being adventurous. Betty spotted Thermopsis villosa – Carolina lupine – at a Grow Native Massachusetts plant sale three years ago. We put it in the front of the garden where it would get full sun. It grew to an impressive seven feet with spikes of brilliant yellow flowers. We let some of the seed pods remain in the soil. This year, a dozen specimens form a brilliant cluster.

Moss walkways weren't part of the
original plan - they were a better idea

Betty was recently asked to give a talk about the garden at a convention in Michigan. Her sponsors made a request that her talk include ‘mistakes’. Betty and I put our heads together and made a list. We started with a reliable one: accepting gifts from friends. While Betty intended the garden to be nearly-all native, she graciously accepted an Asian interloper: a variegated Petasites japonica. It forms a lovely, visually arresting mound of green-and-white leaves. We placed it in a shady site adjacent to a clump of Podophyllum peltatum – Mayapples. All went well that first year. The next spring, we noted with pleasure the Mayapple’s range had almost doubled in size. The Petasites, however, had tripled in area, including a foray into the Mayapples.

Petasites. Now long gone,
and good riddance.

It took three years to completely dislodge the last vestige of the Petasites.

Another error – and it is one we have made with every garden we have had – is to not be sufficiently stern with what I call ‘the Cute Little Interlopers’; plants that hitch-hiked onto the property. At 26 Pine Street, the CILs are the violets. They emerge in early March and are quickly in flower… and almost as quickly in seed. My task each April and May is to grub out every trace of those violets; which by now have insinuated themselves with and intertwined their root into hundreds of ‘good’ plants.

Be wary of Packera aurea

The third mistake is to believe that all native plants are well-behaved. They are not. Exhibit ‘A’ is a thug called Packera aurea, or golden ragwort. Because we have no grass in the garden, we need something else – actually many something elses – to provide a pleasing, low-growing ground cover. Most of these have been quite successful. For the bed comprising our black birch and clump of Clethra (aka summerweet) ‘Hummigbird’, we purchased four pots of Packera.

The dominant ground cover plants in the
rear garden are strawberries, tiarella,
and astilbe.

It is indeed a pretty groundcover with dense, dark green leaves and an attractive golden flower on a tall spike. What is not pretty about it is its intention to take over the entire garden. Three times a year, I venture out with a large cloth barrel and remove Packera from underneath the summersweet, the walkways and half a dozen other places far removed from the mother plants. If you are ever tempted to grow this hoodlum, run – do not walk – to the nearest nursery exit. And, if you already have it growing in your garden, never ever let that golden flower turn into a dandelion-type seed head.

Eight year ago, this is all 
there was...

But the garden is a joy as the accompanying photos will attest. Except for the Petasites photo and this Google Earth view of the garden from September 2015, all images were taken on June 24, 2023 – almost exactly eight years after the first specimen trees were placed in this, their new home.