October Surprise

(Note:  I sat down this morning to write about the gorgeous Helianthis angustofolius at the end of my driveway.  Halfway through the process, I realized that what I was writing seemed hauntingly familiar.  I went back through the archives and found that I had covered the subject exactly two years ago today.  Re-reading that 2010 post, it says precisely what I wanted to say today.  I have never repeated a post, but this one is worth doing so.)

I walked out to the end of the driveway this morning to collect our newspapers (yes, we’re dinosaurs who actually subscribe to the print editions of multiple newspapers), and was greeted by our stand of Helianthus angustifolius. It’s part of the ‘Manhattan’ bed and is the penultimate bloomer in that three-season site.


Helianthus angustofolius in October bloom

This is one remarkable perennial: it blooms after the first frost. Very tall (six-feet plus) on bamboo-like canes, it lies in wait at the back of the bed, waiting for its moment. It is hidden by a tall rudbeckia that blooms from August into mid-September, after which the birds have reduced the rudbeckia to stalks. Meanwhile, low-growing asters at the front of the bed started blooming in early September and are still in evidence.

But the Helianthus takes you completely by surprise. Until it blooms, it is truly part of the tall greenery at the back of the bed. Once it opens up, there’s no overlooking it. There are multiple – up to half a dozen – blooms on each stalk and their weight bends those stalks to a confounding series of graceful arches.

I would like to take credit for first planting this specimen, but honesty forces me to acknowledge that there was a small clump of it growing in the original Old Stone bed. We divided it, moving half out to the Butterfly bed where it would get better late summer sun. It took off (it spreads by rhizomes) and the clump is now about ten feet wide and two feet deep, fully intermingled with the aforementioned rudbeckia. Some years ago, we potted up a single plant, took it to a nursery, and asked for a further identification. Many books and websites were consulted but the nursery was unable to come up with a specific cultivar.

Chelone lyonii

Bees love it, of course. It, along with the asters, is one of the last sources of nectar on the property. Betty spent part of yesterday cutting back daylily foliage and the bees were everywhere.

A handful of other perennials are still in bloom. The pink turtlehead (Chelone lyonii) is holding its own in our lower shade bed even as the rest of the bed turns an inexorable yellow. The two sidewalk beds closest to the house are still a pleasure to look at. In the ‘inner’ bed, a white David’s phlox is in its second month of bloom and a Persicaria ‘Painter’s Palette’ has both the beautiful, multi-colored foliage it has displayed all season plus, now, an abundance of pink spikes.

Persicaria 'Painter's Palette'

In the ‘outer’ sidewalk bed, a clump of balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) eaten down by deer earlier in the season is making up for lost time by flowering long past its usual date. Because we’ve not yet had a hard frost, the cleomes are still in bloom, and probably prolifically self-seeding next year’s crop. Also, there’s a clump of pinkish-white Japanese anemone that, left to its own devices, would take over the garden. We allow this one clump to remain because of its reliable September flowering. To keep it in check, we spend much of the spring and summer pulling out its never-ending runners.

The outer sidewalk bed, with
Daphne Atlantica in the
foreground

The single most striking perennial in the outer sidewalk bed is a Eupatorium ‘chocolate’. Joe Pye weed never was more elegant than this. The foliage is indeed a purple-chocolate brown, but the bloom – huge puffy heads of tiny white flowers – is remarkable. We’ll have those floral clusters until early November.

Finally, although a shrub rather than a perennial, our Daphne ‘Atlantica’ is putting on an autumn show. We nearly gave it up for dead after last winter and it spent much of the spring and summer staked in hopes of strengthening its trunk. Whatever we did worked: the plant roughly tripled in size over the course of the summer and then began putting out fragrant white flowers. It is still going strong.

Lookin' Out My Front Door

(Update:  On May 28, the three robin nestlings turned into fledglings.  As robins do not return to a nest, we have the use of both our library and the inner sidewalk bed again.)

For the past two weeks, I've been unable to use my library.  The problem is that a robin has built a best in the thuja occidentalis just outside, and everytime I open the door to the library, it spooks the robin sitting on three eggs.  I do not know how robins choose their nesting sites but a western red cedar right up against a house seems like a reasonable choice.  The nest is on the 'house' side of the tree and the foliage is quite thick.  But the nest is just four feet off the ground and the thuja rises more than 15 feet at this point.

Our piers andromeda with its new
pinot noir-colored foliage.  Behind it
is the pink rhododendron that just
bloomed this week.

Just outside another of the library's windows is a beautiful sight:  a pieris (andromeda) in its spring glory.  We planted the pieris a decade ago because it's an ideal foundation shrub for New England.  It's an evergreen and keeps its white canticles well into winter.  Our specific cultivar has lightly speckled leaves that give it added visual interest.  But the real payoff is in April when it produces new foliage: a red the color of a pinot noir.  That red will linger into mid-May when the leaves begin to turn green.

Looking left, four
dependable foundation
shrubs: ilex, pieris and
rhododendron.

Just in front of the pieris is a rhododendron that burst into bloom just this week.  The rhodie is the only thing in that part of the garden (the inner sidewalk bed) that survives from before our ownership of the house.  For the first seven years of its existence, the rhodie sat in the perpetual shadow of a five-clump river birch.  The birch was dug out by hand (as opposed to by machine) in order to save the many perennials in the bed.  I made a point of preserving the rhododendron's root system during the excavation.

The rhodie has repaid our kindness by thriving.  It has tripled in size and bloomed prolifically ever since.  Behind the pieris and the rhodie in the photo above is the newly-leafing-out oxydendrum.  This is the first year it is starting the season with the same branches from past year.  In each of the past four years, snow had taken out as much as a third of the existing branch system.

Looking left from the front door you see an ilex (holly) in the foregound; a peony growing quickly; another, much less auspicious andromeda, and a leucothoe.  At the corner is a pair of rhododendron blooming white.  All four shrubs are great foundation plants for cold climates; all are evergreens and all have thrived with their southeastern exposure.  The shrubs have been repeatedly moved as they have grown; the area once sported another ilex and a smaller rhodie.  The leucothoe and pieris have expanded into their places.

The inner and outer sidewalk beds,
as viewed from the front door. 
Double-click on the image to see
details.

Looking straight out the door is a winderful sight that will grow and change as the season progresses: the inner and outer sidewalk beds.  On the right, starting closes to the camera, is the first growth of coreopsis 'Moonbeam'.   Just beyond it are a growing family of Stokesia laevis, or Stokes' Aster, which will bloom a prolific white and blue in June.  To their right is white astilbe.  There are at least a dozen peonies growing in this bed together with Siberian iris and heuchera.  I'll show them as the season progresses.  The blue flowers you see are muscari, more commonly known as grape hyacinth.

On the left, in the outer sidewalk bed, are geranium, heuchera of every color, alchimella or lady's mantle, phlox, and literally dozens of specimen perennials that will make themselves know as the season progresses.  There's a daphne Atlantica that is starting to overhang the sidewalk.  To its left is a now-golden, but soon to be red Japanese maple.

These beds have undergone a gradual transformation over the past few years.  Once almost all perennials, lower-maintenance shrubs have been introduced and less aggressive perennials introduced.  I promise to continue to update the images as the season progresses.

Mid-September Color

I glanced outside my office window this morning and saw a remarkable sight: our outer sidewalk bed awash in color.  This mixed perennial and shrub border has been in bloom since early May, but seldom has it shown such a variety of color and texture as it does now.

The outer sidewalk bed.  Double-click to
enlarge and follow the descriptions of
what's in bloom.

Looking from the bottom of the photo to the top (double click on the photo to blow it up to full-screen size), the yellow closest to the grass is a second bloom of coreopsis ‘Sunbeam’.  Its main bloom was back in July and, by heavily cutting it back in August, we’re getting a modest repeat performance.  Just above it is a wigela  ‘My Monet’ with its white leaves flecked with pink and green.  It’s not in bloom, but it’s gorgeous.  The pinkish flowers on long stems are Japanese anemone.  They’re nice to look at, but are a garden thug.  Keeping them in check is (except for these few weeks) more trouble than they’re worth.

The great masses of blue you see are asters.  They’ve been trimmed back twice this summer to maximize flower production.  The variety is unknown; they have a yellow center.  Best of all, they’ll stay in bloom for two-plus weeks before fading.  For great texture, there’s also an amsonia hanging over the sidewalk.  It bloomed back in May but its foliage is about to turn a lingering, golden yellow.

Above the first flight of asters is Daphne Atlantica.  This shrub has doubled in size this year and, far more impressive, has been in near-constant bloom since late April.  The white flowers are wonderfully fragrant.  To its left and just visible as small spots of reddish purple are the second bloom of a veronica.

Beyond that are the fading yellow-gold floral remnants of a stand of helenium and, just above that, rudbeckia Goldstrum.  Finally, below the lamppost is the ubiquitous sedum ‘Autumn Joy’.

The character of this bed has changed in the past few years.  Once almost entirely perennials, it is now interspersed with low evergreens and slow-growing shrubs; all part of Betty’s strategy to minimize the labor required to maintain a bed that is eight feet wide and nearly fifty feet long.  She has edited large sections of the bed that were once given over to plants with short bloom times, disease issues or aggressive habits (multiple stands of iris, for example).  This year, we spent a total of perhaps ten hours moving plants.  The rest of the time, we’ve been able to just enjoy this highly visible bed.