The Garden Colours of August

 It's late August, somehow--after a slow, cool start to spring and summer, things have become rather hot and dry in the past couple of weeks. I hear people lamenting a lack of colour in their gardens, and I'm not sure why.

Recently, I went to Quebec City to attend the annual Garden Writers Association symposium. While it was far from the best conference I've ever attended--though I saw some friends and made a few new ones, I found the overall group very clique-ey, like high school--, there were some interesting moments, and I got to meet some terrific folks at the trade show, like Angela Treadwell-Palmer of Plants Nouveau. 

'And they were all Yellow..."

I remember there was a time when I thought I didn't like the colour yellow. Maybe it was because of the awful lemon-yellow of painted walls, or harvest gold appliances, of my childhood and youth. I do not wear the colour yellow, but I love my softly yellow walls in my home, and the cheerful colours of so many yellow flowers. I'm still not particularly a fan of school-bus yellow flowers, but there are so many other, more subtle and gorgeous flower colours, and this seems to be my year to plant a lot of yellow. Starting, of course, with one of my favourite roses, 'Graham Thomas'. 

Enraptured with Echinaceas

It's no secret to regular readers of bloomingwriter that I am hopelessly addicted to coneflowers. They've been putting on a show here in my garden, despite the dry weather, for the past 4-6 weeks, and while there's a bit of a pause right now, they are pushing new buds and preparing to show some more once we've had a bit more rain. 

A few words about the weather, before I move on to talking more about echinaceas: July and August have been the driest months I've ever experienced in the 13 years I've lived here at my home. July wasn't so bad, but August saw so little rain, and so little fog, that even my 'lawn' pretty much stopped growing. And unbelievably, I stopped planting about 3 weeks ago, because the soil was so dry and I decided it was easier to tend plants in containers than drag the hose all around the yard watering them. We've had some rain now, but much of eastern Canada could use a lot more rain to bring up wells, irrigate crops, dampen down forests, and otherwise return things to normal.

The closing down of planting season...almost!

Hard to believe we're into the latter part of October already, isn't it? The days are so much shorter now, and of course windy, often rainy, and sometimes even cold-ish. When it's not raining, blowing, or cold, there's plenty to do in the garden. My planting bench may be finally cleared of things to actually plant (except for bulbs, which I haven't started yet)...

But there's still a surprising amount of bloom in the garden. This fall monkshood variety is aptly called 'Cloudy', and although it's late to bloom, I think it's my favourite aconitum.

There are also all kinds of interesting seed heads to admire, if you're into seed heads like I am. Here we have telekia in the foreground (something similar to Inula), with the teasels and Miscanthus 'Malepartus' towering in the background. I leave most seed head stalks stand for bird food and for winter interest, or interest-as-long-as-they-stand-the-wind.

Still have several varieties of tricyrtis (toad lilies) in bloom in our garden, though the foliage is definitely looking moth-eaten (actually, probably leaf-cutter bee eaten, plus wind whipped.). This one, I think, is 'Empress'.

This is a great time of year for the warm-season grasses that flower in late summer and autumn. Many of the pennesetums aren't hardy here, but I think this one is. 'Hameln' and 'Karley Rose' certainly are, and hopefully 'Red Head'. This, I think is a species, unnamed.

Lots of bright red berries festooning shrubs around our garden now, even though much foliage is still holding on as well. The common burning bush is a cheery plant, and while it's invasive in some areas, I've never seen so much as a seedling from mine.

The same with its relative, the amur cork tree, which has even more interesting seed heads.

This common green barberry becomes electric with foliage colour as fall progresses, but for now it's extremely heavy-laden with fruit. Birds eat the berries on the outer branches, but they don't try to get too deeply into the shrub.

Meteorologist Cindy Day remarked on CTV Atlantic the other night that heavily-laden mountain ash trees means a hard winter in weather folklore. I don't know whether that pertains to high bush cranberry but this tree is well-laden with fruit for now--til the birds clean it off. The mountain ashes ARE really laden with berries too, but I don't have any right in the garden, just in the wilder areas of the property.

I planted a grapevine maybe 7-8 years ago, long enough ago that I don't know what variety it is. I don't tend it other than to prune it some in the spring, and string some support for it. This year it has a lot of grapes, enough that I'm tempted to make jelly out of them. If the birds don't get them before it stops raining around here.

The berries of Hypericum 'Albury Purple' start out red and turn to purple-black as they ripen. These sorts of berries are often popular in flower arrangements, although not this hypericum in particular as it's low-growing with short twigs. It's going to be carefully mulched as cold weather comes on, because it's a bit marginal for our garden. I'm getting buddleias (butterfly bush) to come through the winter now, though, so I love a challenge.

The native witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is in bloom in woods and gardens now. Mine has lost many of its leaves in the gales of wind, which makes those dainty, spidery flowers easier to see. Often you can smell witch hazels before you can notice them, because the blossoms have a light, pleasantly spicy scent.

Also native, winterberry or Canada Holly (Ilex verticillata) needs both males and female plants in order to produce berries. It took me a couple of years to sort out which of my shrubs were male and which female, and then I had to plant another male and a female so as to have good berry production in different parts of the garden.

More blooms still coming on the 'Purple Bowl' ironweed (Vernonia crinata). This is a beautiful variety, with flower heads that do cluster in a bowl-like shape. The bees certainly appreciate it, and so do I.

Many people have problems with Physostegia, the so called obedient plant, being disobedient. It's actually called by that common name because you can move the florets around on the flower spike and they will stay put, but the plant itself often has roaming tendencies. I have the variegated form, and it's never been disobedient, growing quietly in its part of the garden, its clean green and white foliage nicely attractive. Then in September, it starts producing flowers, and keeps on flowering for another couple of weeks yet.

Next week calls for fairer weather, so I should be able to get some weeding, thinning, and cleanup done in the garden before I start with bulbs. What about you--are you finished planting for this year, or just getting into the next phase of 4-season gardening?

Lotsa August Colour & Heading to New Brunswick

What a wonderful few days I had on the road, talking gardens with fellow enthusiasts, photographing plants, cheering on fellow gardeners...thanks to my gracious hosts for their many kindnesses and generosity of spirit. We had great attendance at the talks and seminars, and as always, I think I learned as much as or more than those who came to the events. Tuesday I head out to New Brunswick, and I'll have more to say about that shortly.

My mantra in these dog days of August, as many people know, is that we CAN have plenty of colour as we go through late summer and into autumn. The photos in this blog post were all taken today, in my gardens. Above is part of the coneflower garden, but all of the garden is looking pretty enthusiastic. Perhaps there are a few weeds, but we'll declare those pollinator plants and carry on.

Astrantia 'Lola' is in the background of this photo, and I did cut back all the dried flowers, the better to encourage more bloom and show off the richly coloured 'Beaujolais Bonnets' scabiosa and 'Jade Frost' eryngium. 

So Tuesday morning I head out first thing to catch the Digby-Saint John Ferry, which is always a great trip.  I love taking the ferry every chance possible; the ship is lovely, the crew knowledgable and pleasant (I've been up on the bridge on one crossing, and had a great time). After landing in Saint John, I will hustle off to Fredericton, or more accurately, Lincoln, to visit Scott's Nursery, which I profiled in the most recent issue of Saltscapes magazine. I'll be at Scott's from 130-330, and hope to see some of my New Brunswick gardening friends there. Plus of course we ALL know there will be plants I can't live without, won't there? I'd better sell some books so I can afford plants without dipping into the grocery fund. Tee hee. 

No time for my blog, I am too busy planting!

Hello, friends, fellow gardeners, and other visitors. Did you think I had run off to far away lands? Not exactly...it's been a busy busy month, this July, which of course kicked off with the Open Garden weekend. My voice finally came back completely after about two weeks, which was surely a record for laryngitis. Highly entertaining when one makes a living asking questions of others.

I don't know how YOUR garden is going, but ours has exploded into a rhapsody of lushness. Shrubs are covered in blooms, daylilies are filled with scapes and packed with high bud counts, grasses are growing taller and taller..in fact, pretty much everything is growing taller and taller.

Naturally, I can't resist bringing home new or new-to-me plants, and there have been more of those than ever, this year. They range from tiny saxifrage alpines to fascinating perennials like this yellow stokesia...

To the not-hardy but definitely delectable chocolate cosmos, which really does smell of chocolate. I have to remember to dig and store the tuber of this plant this year!

Long ago, when I was a student at NSAC, the greenhouse lab technician wrote a poem for me. Ken and I were always bantering back and forth, playing little tricks on each other, and as I was going into exam time I spent even more time in the greenhouses, either playing with plants or actually studying. The last couple of lines of the poem, which I still have somewhere, went thusly:

"As she runs to the greenhouse we still hear her chanting,

No time for degree, I am too busy planting!"

Some might think "I'm not finished planting yet!" will be my epitaph. They're probably correct. But you know what? This is the perfect time of year to do planting, at least in our climate. Warm days, cool (ish) nights, adequate rainfall...all these things are highly welcoming to new plants whether they be annual transplants that you just had to save, or container grown trees and shrubs!

There is LOTS of colour in our gardens these days, but as far as I am concerned, there always is. There are the big showy annual poppies with their brilliant colours, countless lilies and roses, astilbes and hostas, cranesbills and filipendula...

But there's also a feast of foliage here. When I look out one office window (the other is obscured by the ever-joyous 'Limelight' hydrangea), I see a feast for the senses--lots of flowers, yes, but also rich foliage from golden tansy to copper beech to purple barberry to blue oat grass. It all makes me happy.

I spend a LOT of time when not actually gardening, staring through my camera's various lens at plants and their visitors. What I love about macro photography is that the camera's lens 'sees' things I can't with my naked, aging eyes, like the hairs on this bumblebee's legs.

If you aren't growing astrantia (masterwort), I'd like to know why! It's a fantastic plant, very floriferous, attractive to a huge number of pollinators, makes a nice clump, and some varieties self-seed, though I haven't had that pleasure yet. There are about half a dozen varieties in our gardens, from white 'Star of Heaven' seen here to deep red flowered varieties, to pink varieties, to 'Sunningdale Variegated', which has gold and green leaves.

Summer is also a time for family, and I've been very happy to have my son home visiting. He is a film and camera buff, creative like his mother but more into making films to tell stories than into writing. He has been teaching me more about my camera, too.

And the happiest of things I can share? I am back riding my horse after more than two years of not riding! This is pretty important to me, especially as I'm going to be getting new knees within the next year, which will make all things easier to do. After losing a number of cherished friends in recent months, I decided that what I'm dealing with is only pain, and no matter what I do I hurt. So I might as well do what I love, and to heck with the pain. Leggo, my faithful Morgan horse, seems to approve too.

I'll try to post more regularly in coming weeks, but if not, you'll know why...I'm still too busy planting!

Catching up, with an Invitation

It's been quite a while since I posted here, but I think the reasoning is pretty obvious to most fellow gardeners. June in Nova Scotia has been almost as cranky as May was, weather-speaking, and we have to garden when the sun shines, so to speak. Since I decided to increase the size of some of my beds this year, it's meant a lot of extra work, often during less than pleasant gardening weather--either too cold, too hot, or too wet!

As many of my readers know, I've felt a bit like Hank Williams lately..."I've been everywhere"...while on my book promotion tour and the garden club speaking circuit. I'd like to extend yet another bouquet of thanks and appreciation to all those who have come out to the various events, bought books, swapped stories, and been just the fantastic gardening buddies that you all are. It's been a hectic, rewarding spring and I'm honoured by all your support and friendship.

Now it's my turn to give back, or in this case, pay it forward.

My friend Captain Dick Steele passed away in March of 2010, to the sorrow of many, many friends and fellow plant aficionados. Captain Steele was fondly known as Mr. Rhododendron for his passion for these handsome landscape plants, and he spent many years breeding hardy varieties for our climate. Dick was a founding member of the Atlantic Rhododendron & Horticultural Society, and there has been a scholarship endowment set up in his name at my alma mater, the Nova Scotia Agricultural College.

Being a self-employed writer and sorta-photographer, I'm not exactly what you'd call well off. However, I do have a rather large and rambunctious garden, which is ever-expanding because I test so many plants here. I have no idea just exactly how many plants we have in the numerous beds around the property--I should count them but it might scare me! Especially as there are about 50 still waiting to be planted. And that doesn't include the annuals in containers.

So what I'm doing to help raise awareness and funds for the Captain Steele Endowment is holding an Open Garden weekend at our property on July 1, 2, & 3, 11 am-5 pm daily. Admission will be by free-will donation, with all proceeds going to the Endowment fund. I'll have some milkweed plants to give away courtesy of my friend Rob Baldwin's nursery, some of my own plants for a free-will donation, and some books for sale, too.
Yes, that's a puddle from the monsoon we had last night and this morning. Gardening here can be entertaining...

I've stressed before: our property is not the perfect sort of display you'll see at a public garden, or at someone's property that has landscapers designing and/or maintaining it. We do everything here ourselves, and as I noted above, I test a lot of things here to see how they'll do, including plants from Proven Winners, from local nurseries such as Baldwin's and Bunchberry Nurseries. But it's a happy, lush garden, with a lot of focus on pollinator-friendly plants, handsome foliage plants, winter interest, native plants...something for pretty much everyone.

The weather here in Scotts Bay can be highly capricious. Today, for example, we had a bombastic thunderstorm roll through with heavy rain and a bit of hail; then it partially cleared, was sunny in the front yard while more moody clouds rolled up the Bay of Fundy. So while it might be hot and sunny in Halifax--or down in Canning, or two miles up the road--during the July 1st weekend, we're never sure what it might be like here, so please bring foul weather gear if coming to visit that weekend.

For a few more details, including how to get here, please check out the dedicated page here on our Open Garden weekend. I'll relink to it if I do more posts before July 1st, but given the pile of work still needing doing here...there might not be another post til after that! So if you're interested in seeing what it's like to garden on the Bay of Fundy, and contribute to a great cause...we'll look forward to seeing you!

Catching up with some great catches

Well, I'm baaaccckkk! Vast improvements in the weather coupled with a need for a bit of a break have kept me in the gardens and away from the blog, but today is cool and showery, a great day to do a little catching up. I've been roaming around the province, doing book events plus of course checking out nurseries; I haven't been to all my favourites yet this year, but have certainly visited those in the Valley and part of the south shore. With the book-travel winding up soon, there will be more time for just relaxing travel to gardens and nurseries.

Before I go on about some of the great plants blooming here, a couple of interesting housekeeping tidbits for those who visit Facebook and nursery websites:

Baldwin's Nurseries now has a Facebook page, and I hope people will visit and 'Like' it.
Glad Gardens has a new website as well as a Facebook page. I think these pages on Facebook are extremely useful for keeping people current quickly.
The Friends of the Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens are holding their Native Plant sale tomorrow from 9 am til noon at the gardens. The gardens are at Acadia University in Wolfville. Baldwin's Nurseries, Bunchberry Nurseries and I will all be there, and the Friends are selling a host of native species great for home gardening.

April Showers did bring May blooms for not-wordless-Wednesday

Although the weather in Nova Scotia continues somewhat cool, cloudy, wet, and definitely sluggish, our gardens and our plants will NOT be denied, will they? It's been a hectic week, and being away for a few days really brought home the changes when I got back Sunday after Saltscapes Expo. Then we had an election, and while that was good for my riding with the return of my excellent MP, Scott Brison...I worry about my country. That's all I'm going to say about that!

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: The Keeping of Bees...

“The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.” Henry David Thoreau

Winterless-post: favourite perennials

As we stagger through the seemingly interminable ordeal that is winter in Nova Scotia, it’s sometimes hard to remember what our yards looked like when it was sweet summer. While this seems to have been a particularly long and gruesome winter, we’ll make it through to spring again soon. I keep telling myself the pulmonaria will be blooming before we know it,

This is the time of year when plant breeders begin ramping up the excitement by unleashing scores of new cultivars on a gardening public eager to try different plants. I’m as keen to experiment as anyone, but I also have plants that are such proven performers in our garden, I’d never think about casting them out in favour of some sweet new thing with a fancy plant patent and complex name. Many of us love to push the zone by trying plants that aren’t reliably hardy, but we also like to grow plants that come back reliably, year after year, like dear friends. That doesn’t mean they won’t, occasionally fail to thrive or even expire, but no plant is foolproof unless it’s plastic.

Submitted for your approval, some of my favourite perennials.

Winter-themed Plants for a White New Year...

I trust that everyone has had a wonderful Christmas, although many of us have been plagued by weather challenges. Here, the Green Christmas gave way on Boxing Day night to an onslaught of weather, including freezing rain, rain, snow, and much wind, assorted power outages and other adventures. Today, the weather continues, blasting us with a few of those 'flurries where winds blow onshore'. But that's fine with me as I have not been outside for two days, content to read, write, nap and otherwise wind down from the chaos of Christmas.


When we were still snow-less in Scotts Bay, I got to thinking about various plants that have snow-related cultivar or common names, thinking that would make for an amusing post. Some of the plants that I have in my garden include Hemerocallis 'Roses in Snow.'

Wordless Wednesday: Frostflowers for December