Now you see it, soon you won’t

Our yellowwood at its peak bloom

After a scorching (90 degrees) day yesterday, I set out this morning to see what damage an early dollop of heat had done to our (primarily) native plant garden in Medfield, Massachusetts. I thought I would focus on our Cladrastis kentuckyea (yellowwood), but there was so much going on, I was outside for the better part of an hour.

This afternoon, there is a carpet
of pink under the tree.

Yellowwoods bloom only once every two years. This year was the most prolific in the tree's ten-year history and, for the past week, it has been a captivating sight in our garden. But the sudden heat forced the tree to make conservation choices.  As I suspected it would, the tree went into overdrive to protect itself, which meant cutting off energy and water to its pantacles of flowers. Two days ago, there were no dropped petals. At noon, there is a carpet of pale pink. If those thunderstorms come to pass this afternoon, the yellowwood’s 2025 bloom will end a little over a week from when it began. That’s my definition of ‘short’.

From brilliant white to brown
in a day.

The maple leaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium) went from bright, white flowers to yellow-brown faded ones in a single day.  The shrub has been in bloom for two weeks and so maybe its flowering was about to end anyway; but the totality of the change caught me off guard.

But the same heat that ended flowers also begat them.  The American fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus) in our back garden had what I considered a so-so bloom this year 

Our fringetree's color popped.

– you had to be standing a foot from the bloom to see it. This afternoon, those flowers are front and center – twice as large and bright as two days ago. Will they be gone by the weekend? Maybe, but they’re giving me a great send-off if they are.

The Sisyrinchium (blue-eyed grass)
was apparently biding its time.

Just as surprising, though, was the emergence of flowers where there were none in what had up until now been a cool, damp spring.  We have multiple clusters of Sisyrinchium, better known as blue-eyed grass, around the garden. I usually expect to see it sometime in late June. Well, five different clusters showed themselves today; and they definitely weren’t there on Wednesday. The bloom period isn’t that long – perhaps two weeks – and it’s a one-bloom-and-done kind of plant, in that it won’t please the eye again until next June.

Our ninebark's flowers popped
with the heat.

Finally, the heat got our multiple specimens of Physocarpius opulifolius (ninebark) to open their flowers. They’ve been at that ‘will-they-or-won’t-they’ stage for ten days or more. Well, today they did. The sign at the base of one of the shrubs was acquired this past weekend at the Grow Native Massachusetts plant sale in Lexington.  I had the pleasure to help put it together, and to work the event both days. Principal Undergardeners are assumed to be have skills most closely related to digging holes and moving rocks.  Therefore, I did my duty in the event’s parking lot. There are no small roles; only small players. Happy to have been one of them!

One Day in June

This is the bed anchored by our
yellowwood tree (Cladrastis
kentuckyea) with Penstemon
'Husker Red' in the foreground

The garden at 26 Pine Street received its first ten specimen trees six years ago this month.  By the end of that first season (late September), we had planted perhaps 40 shrubs and the few dozen perennials that survived being part of the Mole and Vole buffet of the winter of 2014-2015.

The well-known garden mnemonic is 'sleep, creep, leap'. Perhaps, for the sixth year of a garden's existence, there ought to be a fourth entry: 'reap'. It's the time when the garden coheres; when everything comes together and all the digging, dividing, nurturing, and editing swell into the orchestra that is a mature garden.  For our garden, June 2021 is that 'reap' moment.  

We hosted several groups this month - a product of making our garden known to Grow Native Massachusetts and to the state's garden club federation. In its listing, we stress the garden is 'only half an acre' and, because there are no grass expanses upon which gaggles of gardeners can congregate (we have only moss paths), we limit the size of visiting groups to about a dozen or so people. 

Cladrastis flowered this year

What that relative handful of members of the gardening world see is, finally, what we hoped for when we (primarily meaning Betty) set off to create a site that would be a) pollinator friendly, b) overwhelmingly native, and c) low-maintenance for its two caretakers.

Take, for example, the bed anchored by our yellowwood tree (Cladrastis kentuckyea), shown in the top photo (please double-click on the photo for a full-screen slide tour). Betty wanted one as soon as she saw a specimen on a garden tour in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood eight or nine years ago. It was a monster of a tree; probably a century old - and it was in full bloom with droops of white flowers. We found the one we wanted, already twelve feet tall, at Weston Nurseries. Knowing it would need room, Betty settled on trios of fothergilla 'Blue Shadow' and clethra 'Hummingbird' to flank it at a safe distance; then an almost-yellow spirea, pink-blooming mountain laurel (kalmia), and a host of perennials, led by tall, blue-blooming Liatris spicata and Penstemon 'Husker Red'.  Oh, and a couple of hundred daffodil bulbs for early season color, whose dying foliage would be hidden by Alchemilla mollis (lady's mantle).

Competing color in the bed anchored
by Cornus florida and Oxydendron

For the first several years, the bed made me wince because it was so... empty. Then, the Liatris - its common name is 'blazing star' - began to fill in with self-seeded offspring, and the Penstemon ('beardtongue' for reasons I cannot discern), not to be outdone, set out to colonize every square inch of space not already occupied by something else. This year, Cladrastis produced its first significant flowering - a shower of pink-yellow panticles (see second photo above).

In the bed (shown above, left) anchored by our Cornus florida (American dogwood, which bloomed white and pink in May) and Oxydendron (sourwood, which will bloom white in August), blue and yellow Baptisia compete for the eye's attention, as do the pink blooms of Physocarpus (ninebark) 'Little Devil' and the emerging flowers for our two Quercifolia (oakleaf) hydrangea. As a backdrop, the purple-leafed Cercis canadensis (redbud) 'Burgundy Hearts' gracefully sprawls with its now-15-foot breadth. I could have only imagined it would all look this beautiful in 2015. I had no inkling it would be so colorful.

The Magnolia bed

The bed closest to out house is anchored by a Magnolia 'Elizabeth' that flowered soft yellow in May. Now, the bed's color palette has changed dramatically, with Kalmia (mountain laurel) in reds and scarlets, a 'river' of long-blooming Johnson Blue and Rozanne geraniums, both upright and climbing Lonicera (honeysuckle), and the last of our peonies and blue-blooming Amsonia.  Here also are also the most visible of the roughly 20 container gardens Betty created for this year. The bright yellow-flowering container in the foreground is one of a pair flanking the front porch, and incorporate both fragrant Nemesia and prolifically-flowering lemon Calibrachoa.

The back garden has taken the full six years to come into its own. It gets less than half the sun of the front of the property and is planted accordingly. The photo at left shows the Pennsylvania flagstone patio, now filled in with fern and moss, the Chioanthus virginicus (American fringetree) in full, white-flowered bloom, multiple specimens of native Viburnum in flower and, in the right background, six Vaccinium (highbush blueberries) laden with un-ripe fruit. This part of the garden backs up to protected wetlands. The area is alive with nesting birds.

All of these photos were taken on the same June day in 2021.  I could only have imagined how beautiful it would be after so relatively few years. I'm proud to be Betty's 'Principal Undergardener' and to have played a role in seeing it come to fruition.