Plant Talk

A Few Flowers for a Bouquet as the Garden Fades Away

It takes awhile to pick a bouquet now it's October, for it means poking about in every corner of the garden to fill even a medium-sized vase. A flower here, a flowering grass there, to tuck into a square, green glass vase.

One of the last mophead hydrangea heads, a bronze Rudbeckia hirta 'Autumn Colors' and a bright golden, chocolate-centered R. hirta are the showy elements. These brazen flowers are fluffed out and blended with the leaves and flat seed heads of sea oats grass (Chasmanthium latifolium) and the stiff spikes of violet-flowered Verbena bonariensis. The colors, shape, and chocolate centers of the rudbeckias are echoed in the much smaller Helenium autumnale.....

 

 

Raspberries, Agastache and Snails - October 1st and the Garden Is Still Going....

  Last week's drenching rain brought out the snails, and although I know I should get rid of them before they lay all their eggs, they pretty much did their damage in the chill damp of June. The hostas and ligularias are long shredded, and going down anyway... and for some reason this little guy, despite how effective he and his kin are at destroying plants, is so much more appealing than slugs I can't quite bring myself to crush him.

If you, too, suffer snails in your garden, I suggest you refrain from reading the lovely meditation of a book "The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating," by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, with its insights into snail behavior and nature that has prevented me from being as ruthless about snails as I need to be...

But not all is ruin in the garden, and many plants are holding up longer than the sadly tattered hostas... the trees are holding onto their leaves despite the windstorms, some perennials are still in bloom, and we're reveling in a late crop of the sweetest raspberries ever...take a look...

Agastache has been blooming since late June, alive with bees and butterflies, with strongly fragrant foliage smelling both of fruit and spice

My little Japanese maples, all growing in pots, have so much presence this time of year as their leaves turn shades of coral and gold...

The intense gentian blue Salvia patens, unfortunately tender, has been flowering abundantly since June

And the joy of sweet ripe raspberries on an October morning....I cut these vines way to the ground in February or March, for a single late crop of berries, which was very late this year...if we hadn't had that burst of warm, sunny weather in September we would have had the meagerest of crops....

 

 

Nursery Nosings

We need to support our favorite nurseries year-round so that they'll be open and well-stocked next spring when we really need them! Believe me, there's plenty of reason to hang out in nurseries this time of year, and not just because of special events like the charming camel who will put in an appearance at Swansons over the holidays.

There are always new plants to drool over and dream about, like this ebony-foliaged daphne (Daphne x Houtteana). Update: Horticulturist Riz Reyes weighed in on this plant after reading this post, and here's his expert words about this beautiful new plant: "Sadly, Daphne x houtteana  is a poor garden plant. It's excellent as a container specimen by itself or amongst other companions, but this variety doesn't last long in the garden for most people. It's semi-evergreen, not all that fragrant, and looks leggy for most of the year." Still, it'd be a great foliage plant in a container ..perhaps treat it like a Hebe 'Amy' or other pretty little shrubs you can never be too sure about their life expectancy.....

The repeated lavender tones in this beautyberry (Callicarpa bodinieri 'Profusion) fluffed out with pale Japanese forest grass and ornamental cabbages, is sure to inspire some winter potting.

How about a display of rosemary contrasting clipped and loose forms? Few evergreen shrubs look so good in winter, and the strongly aromatic foliage is a cold-weather treat.

Best of all, you can always find a satisfying plant fix or two  - it was this gorgeous pairing of the new apricot/bronze Heucherella 'Sweet Tea' played off  the variegated Euphorbia 'Ascot Rainbow' that gave me the pleasure of spinning springtime on a cold, blustery November afternoon.

Torch Tree

My neighbor's maple tree in Langley, still holding on to its flame-red leaves, is a destination, maybe almost a pilgrimage, this time of year. I shot a photo of this statuesque beauty and sent it off to tree guru Arthur Lee Jacobson for identification. The leaves are large and deeply lobed, the tree has a pyramidal shape, and I have to admit it's not particularly noticeable until late October when it's fabulously warm and bright autumn color is a magnet.

Jacobson tells me it's the appropriately named scarlet maple, or Acer rubrum. His wonderful guidebook Trees of Seattle, which I refer to at least once a week and probably more often, says it's a good large shade tree and tolerates moist, even swampy, soil. If you're up for a tree expedition, check out the cultivar 'Red Sunset' used as a street tree along Fremont Ave. N from N. 34th to N. 50th streets, or a big old specimen east of the wading pool in Volunteer Park.

Or drive along Park Avenue in Langley and soak up the glow still emanating from this torch of a tree...for a few days longer, anyway....

Sliding into Winter...Lasting into November

Looks like this poor hosta got the Day of the Dead memo.  The autumnal melt-down of a plant like this 'Sum and Substance' hosta is such a sad moment, no matter how we think we're prepared for our gardens' slide toward winter.

Despite the Japanese maples pretty much losing all their leaves in recent rain and wind, I found enough color and foliage to cheer me up when I went out yesterday morning with my camera. So here, on the first day of November, is a look at what's still going on out there...now I just have to clear away biomass to find space to plant the big box of narcissus that arrives in the mail this week.

The orange of Begonia boliviensis never looked better than on a dark autumn morning...and this annual is still in full, vivid bloom.

 

The sweet shape and silver marbling on cyclamen leaves lights up the garden floor...

A purple rhodochiton and black-eyed-Susan vine (Thunbergia) are still climbing and blooming like crazy...

Love the chartreuse foliage of these alpine strawberries, which picks up the paler green in the tri-colored sage. And up until a few weeks ago, the strawberries were still producing tiny, champagne-scented fruit.

Hardy fuchsias, like this golden-foliaged Fuchsia magellanica 'Aurea', got a late start in our cold spring, but they're making up for it by blooming well into November...if they don't drown in this week's rainstorms....

Carrying On....

We spend so much time fussing over our gardens, tidying them and caring for them, that it's easy to forget how tough and hardy they are. This time of year, as plants carry on despite rain, wind and weather extremes, we're reminded of nature's strong life force and how plants persist...until the first killing frost, anyway (usually around mid-November in Seattle). 

I'm surprised so many tender plants are looking good into October, and maybe for a few more weeks, in my garden....

I'll miss the cheerful, bright Begonia boliviensis that have been blooming since June to trim out the edges of my raised beds. Usually you see them grown in hanging baskets, but I like to grow these tender perennials in the ground.

I'm hoping these carnivorous pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea) will survive the winter with a good blanket of mulch.

 

The few nasturtiums that survived a mid-summer onslaught of aphids are still in full bloom

 

I've had great luck with these cut-and-come-again mesclun lettuce mixes...and am hating the thought of eating store bought lettuce again for the first time in months

Halloween Bouquet

Happy Halloween! I love this holiday that celebrates all the wild spookiness and weirdness of my favorite time of year....I enjoyed Halloween more when it was casual and do-it-yourself, before Martha Stewart started turning out magazines dedicated to decorating and cooking for it, as if Halloween isn't the antithesis of perfection...to restore my enthusiasm, I remind myself that nature ignores silly expectations and extravagances. Without any instruction from anyone, it clothes itself in the essence of Halloween, with blowing leaves, dark skies, skeleton branches and ripening pumpkins.

Sometimes we've had a hard freeze by now, but this year the garden is still going, and I picked this very late bouquet - the foliage is Spirea 'Magic Carpet' and rainbow chard, setting off a mop-head hydrangea,  the last nasturtiums, and a second flush of alstroemeria and Gaillardia 'Oranges and Lemons'...these are all such durable plants that have been producing since mid-summer; then I would have popped them into a green glass vase, or maybe a creamy white one; but for Halloween, nothing but swirly black ceramic would do.

Autumn Fire

If you love bright red autumn foliage,  look no further than the slow-growing, easy-care sourwood tree. Too often we plant burning bushes (Euonymus alata) for that blast of pure red, but they are awkward, twiggy shrubs with little to recommend them except for their vivid color for a week or so in October. Sourwoods (Oxydendrum arboreum) turn that same gorgeous scarlet in autumn, plus they're attractive year-round. I wonder why they're so rarely planted in urban and suburban gardens?

Here's a rundown of sourwood virtues:
-they grow slowly to 15-30 feet, with a pyramidal shape that's easy to fit into smaller gardens.

-In spring, their leaves come on with pretty bronze tints

-In summer, the leaves are large (5-8" long), deep green, and showy. Sourwoods flower in summer, with fragrant creamy white flowers that drip off the tips of the branches. Best of all, the seed capsules dry to silvery gray and contrast beautifully with the bright autumn foliage.

-The fireworks begin in late September, when leaves blast red and hang on the tree well into November.

-Sourwoods have a handsome winter silhouette.

Sourwoods can be grown in a container for their first few years. In the garden, they do best in sunny locations with well-drained soil. Keep them irrigated, mulch well in winter and avoid underplanting because sourwoods resent competition. I can't imagine a more beautiful autumn scene than a bright red sourwood planted against the luminescent gold of a ginkgo or katsura tree....

Here's a sourwood in full autumn color growing in a garden along Park Avenue in Langley...there's no photo-shopping on this brilliant color, that's the real thing..

Simultaneous Seasonality....It's the Moment

Right now, today, is the most exciting moment of autumn. Fall color may still intensify, but we're at the confluence where most leaves have turned, yet are still hanging on, and a hard frost hasn't done its damage..so tomatoes are still coloring up, dahlias, asters and nasturtiums are blooming, yet all around us the world has turned golden, flame and scarlet. All it'll take is one serious wind and rain storm or a chilling kiss from Jack Frost, and simultaneous seasonality will be over for another year.

However much we flinch from acknowledging it, I keep hearing that our country is in the unprecedented reality of "Post Peak Prosperity". I'm afraid that the view back from the downward slope reveals that we  didn't appreciate the peak while we were up there... 'tis the moment to open our eyes to nature's prime moment before we're plunged into months of post peak autumn.

Nasturtiums and asters are still going strong.....

While maples like the coral bark (Acer palmatum 'Sango-kaku' (top) and the supremely scarlet Acer palmatum 'Baldsmith' are blazing.. (I can't remember the name of the pretty upright little tree in the 2nd photo...any guesses?)

The Last Bouquet?

I kept thinking this was probably the last big bouquet of the season as I arranged flowers Thursday for Museo Gallery's opening party tonight. The temperature was plummeting, wind gusting, and the rain starting to fall. A real October day, which means it's time to harvest the last of the hydrangeas and dahlias....This big bouquet actually needed three gardens to fill it out. I plundered some rusty-colored Sedum 'Autumn Joy' from a neighbor on one side, and a few dahlias from a neighbor on the other. The mophead hydrangeas, crocosmia seed pods, and little purple-belled Clematis 'Roguchi' are from my garden. The vase was made by Whidbey Island ceramist Al Tennant; its mottled glaze sets off the rich, subdued colors of the flowers, fruit and grasses.

It was lovely to arrange flowers while the rain beat against the windows and the wind "wuthered" around the house. October is my favorite month, autumn the season I love best, yet it's a little melancholy to think I'll be buying flowers for every Museo opening for the next five months. No that the garden won't flower, but the Camellia sasanqua, Viburnum tinus 'Spring Bouquet', witch hazel's  fragrant little blooms, snowdrops, and hellebores won't be enough to make an extravagant, heart-healing bunch. It won't be until April, when the narcissus, daphne, bleeding heart, and fritillaria come on full tilt that I'll be able to gather glorious big bunches of flowers from the garden again.

I do love the colors of autumn, collected here in black hypericum berries,  sedum and pennisetum blooms. The hydrangea petals add bulk and the feeling of movement. The red and orange dahlias spark the more muted tones of the other flowers.