Wordless Wednesday: 'The Bee-loud Glade', October edition

Textures in Autumn

Walking around the garden today, I was struck yet again by the variety of flower and foliage textures and sizes. There are plants with huge flowers, like this 'Josephine' clematis...

And those with petite, delicate flowers such as the 'Dallas Blues' switchgrass and the Brazilian vervain, better known as Verbena bonariensis.

This annual verbena is truly popular, showing up more regularly in 4 or 6-packs of transplants (for those who want a little speedier performance) as well as in seed packages. V. bonariensis is a great bee and butterfly plant, and gives a wonderful airy effect in the garden.

The sturdy Japanese anemone contrasts wonderfully with another switchgrass, 'Cheyenne Sky'.

A little festive decor: ornamental gourds and a pumpkin contrast with the last of the annuals and a container of decorative kale.

Sturdy and steady Virginia creeper is beginning to display its fall finery. I need to do some serious pruning of this plant, as it may knock down the arbour one of these days! Or perhaps, it's holding it up.

From the delicate foliage and flowers of the heather (right panel), to the sturdier and larger flowers of the foxglove (top left), the amusing beadlike flowers of variegated Obedient plant (Physostegia, bottom left), to the striking and wonderful blossoms of 'Cloudy' aconite (centre), there is a huge variety still going strong here.

A sedum's flowerhead is composed of many delicate, petite star-shaped flowers. This one is 'Mediovariegatum'.

Buddleia are similar: a collection of tiny florets make up the larger, showy flowerhead. This is my alltime favourite buddleia, 'Sungold.' I have two of them this year, and am hoping at least one will overwinter decently.

We all know I love asters, echinaceas, rudbeckias, chrysanthemums of all sizes and colours. I love the breathy, delightful petite beauty of 'Lady in Black' calico aster...

The jawdropping spectacle that is 'Hot Papaya' echinacea, definitely a star in my books...

And everything in between! Someday, I'd like to do a bed of only members of the compositae family...with a huge variety of textures as well as colours...but for the time being, we have the joy of Picasa to make a virtual garden.

The October Country...

"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn/ Stand, shadowless like Silence, listening to Silence." ~ Thomas Hood.

"There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October." ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

"My lonely spirit thrills to see the frosty asters like smoke upon the hills." ~ Bliss Carman


"Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits." ~Samuel Butler

"Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter."~ Carol Bishop Hipps

"Summer ends, and autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always, and a full moon every night." ~Hal Borland

"Every green thing loves to die in bright colours." ~Henry Ward Beecher

"There ought to be gardens for all months in the year, in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season." ~Sir Francis Bacon

"Heat lingers As days are still long; Early mornings are cool while autumn is still young."~ Po Chu-i.

"The stillness of October gold /went out like beauty from a face." ~ Edward A. Robinson

"May we make wise choices in how and what we harvest, may earth's weather turn kinder, may there be enough food for all creatures..."

"...may the diminishing light in our daytime skies be met by an increasing compassion and tolerance in our hearts." ~ Kathleen Jenks.

Why I love grasses for fall colour

It's been a few years since my fascination with ornamental grasses began. I started out slowly, with a couple of Miscanthus varieties, then a Hakonechloa, then a Calamagrostis. It takes grasses at least three years to develop some size, and the warm-season grasses seem slow to establish and late to bloom here in my garden. But they are so worth it. The foliage, the flowerheads, the way the light glistens on leaf blades and flowers, the song of the grasses as the wind wafts through them...they're just all around delightful.

There are a few caveats when purchasing grasses.

You need to make sure to select the right grass for your conditions, as some are very drought tolerant but hate soggy soil, while others need regular moisture.

Most are happiest with full sun, but some are shade tolerant.

Some bloom early in summer, like the feather reed grasses (Calamagrostis), while others, such as the panic grasses (Panicum) and silver maiden grasses (Miscanthus) are later blooming.

Make sure to select varieties that are clump or sod-formers, rather than rowdies that spread by runners. There are a few grasses that can be thuggish, such as gardener's garters or variegated ribbon grass (Phalaris). In some areas, Japanese blood grass is invasive, but here in NS it tends to be quite well behaved, being marginally hardy.

And most importantly, watch out for zone hardiness. There are a few fountain grasses (Pennisetum) which are hardy here in Nova Scotia: 'Hameln', 'Karley Rose', possibly 'Red Head', but purple fountain grass cultivars (Pennisetum 'Fireworks', above, among others) are hardy only to zone 7 or 8 or warmer. There are a few places that sell those grasses here without telling you that they're not hardy, but a reputable garden centre such as Baldwin's or Ouestville Perennials or Briar Patch or Bunchberry Nurseries won't do that.

The feather reed grasses (Calamagrostis cultivars such as 'Karl Foerster', 'Overdam' and 'Avalanche') bloomed in July, but their tawny golden seedheads are still holding on nicely in my garden. I do find their stems are a little more apt to break down in the wind than are those of other grasses, but I love them anyway.

On Friday, I was in Truro at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, and my friend Carol took me down to the Haley Institute at the farm part of the campus, to show me the grass garden that she and her students planted a few years ago. It's at its best now, with sedums, pussytoes, asters and coneflowers mixed among the cascades and fountains of perennial grasses.

Some people like to do their grasses in display beds of grass only. While I like those, I get impatient earlier in the season when the grasses are just growing and not blooming, so I prefer to incorporate perennials and shrubs with my grasses, as the garden at NSAC is done.

Doesn't this look a lot better than just boring old lawn? Low care, drought tolerant, effective at holding the sloped area in place, and awash with life--birds, bees, other pollinators flitting around the flowers and seedheads.

I love panic grasses, also known as switchgrasses. Their flowerheads are delicate, with tiny individual flowers, and they're subtle--you need to slow down, stop and look at them to appreciate them. Many have gorgeous coloured foliage, some with red or burgundy tips such as 'Shenandoah' or 'Cheyenne Sky'; others are bluer in foliage, such as 'Dallas Blues' and 'Thunderhead'.


Definitely showier in nature, and eyecatchingly fabulous throughout fall and winter, are the miscanthus species and cultivars also known as silvergrasses and maidengrasses. These later blooming varieties stand tall in a garden, and sound like waves of water when the wind rustles them. Some of them have remarkable fall colour, including purple flame grass, M. 'Purpurascens'. Some have wonderful gold striations in their foliage, such as 'Strictus', 'Gold Bar', and 'Little Kitten.'. They're just great plants.

The best way to get to know and appreciate grasses is to look for display gardens featuring them, such as those at many nurseries. This garden is at Bunchberry in Upper Clements, and features a rich selection of grasses, from the low clumps of Carex 'Ice Dance' to the tall, elegant sprays of moor grass, Molinia 'Skyracer'. Many municipalities are using grasses in their public plantings, businesses are embracing them for their landscapes...what are YOU waiting for?

Don't ask me how many grasses I have. I keep bringing them home, even now in late September. And best of all, I've given my sister her first grass. She's on her way to being smitten with them. I hope you are too.

Skywatch Friday: Autumn Light, autumn harvests

For Skywatch Friday this week, another juxtaposition of sea and sky, sun and land. The boldness of autumn light is officially upon us, and we're going to focus on the crisp, clear days, humidity vanquished, brilliance of sea and sky. This is the lighthouse at Margaretsville, Nova Scotia, further down the shore from us.


See how the dazzling flowers of various Miscanthus cultivars erupt into gleeful colour and light as the sun smiles upon them. It's hard to resist Miscanthus's charms. That would be why I have nearly a dozen cultivars of them.


And of course, autumn means the harvest is in high range for the next few weeks, as tree fruits, cole crops, grains, potatoes, root vegetables and more are harvested. Preserves are being made, veggies are being frozen or dehydrated or canned, and pumpkins are being displayed for the glee of their colour, a celebration of the season. This weekend will see hundreds of people out at upicks around the region, getting apples and squash and pears and tomatoes and many other fruits and veggies; if not picking them themselves, they're purchasing from farmers markets.

The sky promises to be pleasant all weekend. Good harvests, everyone.

Wordless Wednesday: End of Summer, Start of Autumn...

Skywatch Friday meets Belated Bloomday

With all the weather scudding around these days, my gaze isn't turned so often skyward as it is to the colourful flourishes in my gardens, so this Skywatch Friday is meeting up with Garden Blogger's Bloom day. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, because as visitors to my garden have remarked in the past several weeks, "Wow! You have lots of colour happening here!"

Yes, it's true, there's still plenty in bloom here. Part of that is planning on my part, by having selected a variety of perennials that come on later in the season. Part of it is because we normally have slow, cool springs but then we have wonderful late summers and autumns. Things are slower to bloom here, and they last longer, because they're not bludgeoned by too much heat. Mind you, the coming of September normally means the coming of much wind off the water, and this September is being no exception. However, although some things get a bit battered by the winds and rains, there's still a lot of happy colour happening.

It seems there are two predominant colour groups, flower-wise, at this time of year. The first is yellow, varying from the delicate primrose colour on the waxy bells, to the more robust golds of the fall chrysanthemums. Above, clockwise from left: fall mums; waxy bells (Kirengoshoma); a variety of rudbeckias, and echinaceas, along with golden agastache and Efanthia euphorbia; 'Sungold' buddleia; yellow patrinia (Patrinia scabiosifolia); 'Herbstsonne' shining coneflower, with only Miscanthus giganteus reaching higher in the garden. Centre, the gentle yellow of Solidago 'Little Lemon', a fabulous goldenrod if there ever was one!

The other predominant colour of this season is magenta-fuchsia-pink. These are the bright eyecatchers, bee magnets all. Clockwise from top left: Chelone, turtlehead; 'Jenny' aster; the Explorer rose 'Martin Frobisher'; 'Josephine' double clematis; NOID colchicum; One of the heathers (Calluna vulgaris) just finishing its bloom; 'Purple Bush' eupatorium; Tricyrtis 'Samourai'; centre, Vernonia crinita 'Purple Bowl'.

That's not to say these are the only colours in the garden, of course; while the gentians are mostly finished with their cool-blues, there are still eryngium, echinops, and agastache with blue blooms, and there are certainly other colours happening too. Clockwise, left top: 'Pastel Patchwork' wallflower; two double echinaceas, 'Secret Passion' and 'Pink Double Delight'; 'Cloudy' aconitum; 'Coconut Lime' double echinacea; despite already having berries on the female holly, it's flowering some more; a pink potentilla shrub, which I only grow because it was a breast-cancer shrub one year and I planted it in memory of my mother in law Marilyn; one of the tall sedums, 'Frosty Morn', with its cool pink and white flowers; and the pristine, sparkling star of a white Nigella.
Some of my grasses are just coming into their own, and since their foliage is as delightful as their flowerheads, I've combined the two charms to include in one post (for Foliage Followup); Centre, Japanese Bloodgrass; top, Japanese anemone in front of Panicum 'Dallas Blues'; right centre, Pennisetum 'Fireworks' varigated purple fountain grass, NOT perennial here; Miscanthus purpurescens, purple flame grass, bottom right; bottom left, 'Malepartus' miscanthus flowers; centre left, Panicum 'Shenandoah's' foliage glows burgundy. I'll have more to say about grasses in a few days.

Thanks to all who visit, and to those who host these fun memes!

Always making an aster of myself

The beginning of aster season is always one that finds me with a mixture of delight and dread. The delight, of course, comes from the fact that asters are floriferous, colourful, and present a wonderful flourish of colour when many gardens are starting to wind down.

It goes almost without saying that the dread comes from the fact that they are one of the finales of the main gardening season. They're a valuable part of what Nancy Ondra and Stephanie Cohel refer to as 'Fallscaping', in their wonderful book of the same name: focusing on designing your garden so that autumn is one as rich with colour and texture as spring or summer. While part of me loves the cooler weather and the richness of autumn colours, there IS that part that quails at the thought of winter. But we're focusing on the good things today, and asters are one of the joys of the fall garden palette.

One of their charms for me is how their colours are quite different from many shades of September. At a time when foliage on shrubs, hardwood trees and some perennials, along with many of the flowers still blooming in this month, are alight with bronze, copper, gold, crimson, orange and red, asters erupt with sometimes cooler, sometimes even hotter shades. This purple New England aster in my friend Jerry's garden is a perfect contrast to the brighter yellows and golds echoed by its central florets.

I like white asters for their cooling appearance, and in the case of the calico asters (A. lateriflorus), the tiny flowers that festoon lateral branches of these plants can almost completely cover the plants. Despite the tiny flowers, the calico asters are one of my favourites, reminding me of pagoda dogwoods or the plicatum tomentosum viburnums such as 'Mariesii' and 'Summer Snowflake', with their layered, lateral-branching effects.

Asters don't all bloom at the same time. There are petite, earlier-flowering forms, often alpine, which gladden the gardeners heart during summer, and the distant cousins that are annual 'asters' (Callistephus). I don't grow the annuals, but do have a wide variety of perennial asters, some of which are just as delightful while in bud as in full bloom.

'Woods Pink' is a dumosus aster, one of the lower-growing, even ground-covering, forms. It's wellnamed, being a powderpuff-pink shade, and a nice addition to borders.

A word about genus nomenclature. In recent years, DNA typing and further study has led taxonomists to move some former members of genus aster to other genera, including Symphytotrichum, Eurybia and Eucephalus. It's always so encouraging to gardeners to have an easy-to-pronounce name switched to something more cumbersome, isn't it? (Or not...) However, for simplicity's sake I am going to refer to all of these as asters, and you'll find plenty of websites and books that do the same, offering the newer name as synonym. No one will scold you, unless it's some taxonomist with nothing better to do.

I used to have a perennial problem with asters, in that I would buy a couple and plant them out, then forget where they were, and inadvertently weed them out in the spring. I would also invariably leave several wild asters, of which there are at least a dozen species in Nova Scotia, (plus the infinite interspecies hybrids that form from these promiscuous plants), to come into bloom instead. Now, I simply leave them all to grow, and whether they are cultivated types like this tall, NOID New England aster...
...or wild varieties like this white wood aster (which now is classified in the genus Eurybia rather than Aster, but it's close enough), they are all welcome to put on a show in my borders. Asters are great pollinator plants, often covered in bees, bee-mimics, and butterflies during warm latesummer and autumn days.

One of the newly added, lower-growing named asters in my garden is 'Anneke', a dumosus variety. You can make these as well as the taller varieties bushier and even more floriferous, though a bit later-flowering, by cutting them back in June or early July to about half their height. They will then be less prone to blowing over in the rains and gales of September, and produce even more stems of brilliant blossoms.

One of my favourites is 'Jenny', which is planted under a 'Snow Pavement' rose, and the hot pink of the aster is cooled and charmed by the pale lavender of the rose. Again, the buds just opening are as delightful (in my mind) as are the fully-flushed blossoms that will be here in a couple of days.

In my front border, a Michaelmas or New York aster named 'Dragon' (A. nova-belgii 'Dragon') is producing a vivid display of bright purple-blue flowers. It's new this year, and I've marked it because I want to move it a little more mid-border; this year it's only about a foot tall, but I've found in subsequent years the Michaelmas daisies can get fairly tall, especially if I happen to forget to prune them in late spring or early summer.

A. nova-belgii 'Puff' is another of my favourites with its pure white flowers that resemble miniature shasta daisies. I first located this plant at the garden centre at Kingsbrae Garden in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, where it charmed me on sight. It has continued to be a delightful addition to my garden for several years, although 'Winston Churchill', a deep pink-wine variety I bought at the same time, shuffled off its mortal coil (or was possibly victim of my pre-laissez-faire aster weeding of years gone by).

My absolute favourite New England Aster, 'Alma Potschke' is not yet in bloom because of where it's planted in less than full sun (and I keep forgetting to move it until it's too large), so we wrap up this little ode to asters with an almost-as-brilliant variety, the delightful 'September Ruby'. I forgot to prune this one this past June, and it gets somewhat rumpled by catching the west wind in my back garden, but its hot-magenta flowers create a blaze of colour that never fails to cause a smile on my face.