No longer a Blog

I now post on Gardening on Granite on WordPress.

Swan Song

The loveliest of all goldenrods is blooming now. It is a flower of elegance and refinement, two words not often used in describing goldenrods.

This is the Wreath Goldenrod, Solidago caesia, a lover of wood edges and dappled shade. In my dooryard garden it is under a Kousa dogwood. My sister has one in her Bow garden that spills over the edge of a retaining wall near a flight of steps. Enchanting!

A coarser goldenrod, but still garden worthy, is the rough- leaved, shown here behind the ironweed “Iron Butterfly”. This clump came to the garden as a volunteer. It, and all these late wildflowers, are sustenance for late bees and butterflies.

Above is the wild New York aster.

Next week’s forecast see a possible frost/freeze on Friday. These wildlings are not as susceptible to cold having adapted over a long time to New Hampshire’s autumn. They and the cultivated hardy chrysanthemums are the last flowerings we will see for half a year.

To

An Affordable Housing Crisis is a Gardening Crisis

I am fortunate.

My landlords at this old farm let me have a vegetable garden and flower gardens in my dooryard and along a sunny old granite retention wall.

Not many renters get so lucky.

There is an article in today’s New York Times about the disappearance of starter homes, and more importantly, starter home prices for young people and young families. We, in New Hampshire., know how hard it is to even find rental housing here.

Without a yard, without land of their own free from landlord or condo restrictions, how will young people grasp a shovel, plant a rosebush, plant tomatoes in open ground and not in a faux whisky barrel?

How will they ever be able to join those of us who belong to the Brothers and Sisters of the Spade, and know one of the greatest joys in the world?

Canna “Candles” and zinnias

New Blog

Since I no longer live in Nashville, I no longer blog on this site. My new blog is “Gardening on Granite” on WordPress.

More Scenes from The Fells

Heather border with main house in the background.

View of Lake Sunapee.

The “Old Garden”. Quiet and restful.

What a mystery! I have no idea what this is. I have emailed The Fells website asking for identification, but have not heard from them as yet.

The main flower border with New England asters blooming.

Fall Alliums.

Another view of the house taken from across a wildflower meadow of goldenrods.

Fall foliage of Rodgersia in a wet spot. This is the first time I have seen this plant outside of a book.

Goodbye WordPress

WordPress will no longer upload my photos into posts, so I am going to a platform that works. This blog  becomes  The Nashville Gardener.

A Fine Phlox for Nashville Gardens

Too many gardeners throw in the trowel in July, after the daylilies finish blooming. What more can there be they ask?. And why should we care when it is this hot?

There are so many fine late blooming plants-

Hardy begonias, the Japanese anemones, salvias, asters-

And this, the native Harpeth River phlox, found in the bottomlands near the river, and a pass-a-long plant if you know the right people.

 

Garden phlox, back in the day of Elizabeth Lawrence, and Helen Van Pelt Wilson, and Louise Beebe Wilder, was a border mainstay. But during my years as a younger gardener, the tall garden phloxes lost favor. Gardeners saw them as disease ridden water guzzlers too often not worth the space.

Their panicles of pastel lavenders and pinks, and cherry reds were easily imitated by substituting some of the smallest crape myrtles- a practice I still think wise.

But I make an exception for the Harpeth River phlox, which has no ugly ankles to hide, and which has made its peace with the Tennessee summers.

 

 

 

 

Blooming Today in A Green Hills Garden

Here is an heirloom crinum, cultivar unknown, that came out of a family garden in Milledgeville, Georgia. It is a very compact form-

And here is the spectacular Erythina bidwillii, which I found last year at Hewitt’s Garden Center out on Hillsboro Road. They were selling it as a patio plant, but having had its parent, Erythina crista-galli, in my old Bellevue garden for over a decade, I knew its potential.

This is a die-back shrub in Nashville. It comes back from the roots, even after the horrific 2014 winter- Southern Living magazine says it is not hardy away from the Coastal South, but they are wrong. Tony Avent’s Plant Delights nursery sells it, and they rate it a Zone 7.

One of these would be enough in any garden-

Some other bloomers and scenes from today-

The biggest job in the front border this month is not weeding or watering, but is cutting back spent and untidy iris foliage, as is well illustrated in the next to last photo-

 

The Ugly Truth

I am re-building my gardening library,and I recently bought Richard Bisgrove’s “The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll”.

Jekyll was a genius in her use of color and her plant placement, and she was fond of using Lamb’s Ear’s  along stone walks and draped over rock walls. This plant was one of her favorites.

Lamb’s Ear’s do well in English gardens.  How tempting it is to try to copy her ideas  and use them and what plants she used in our gardens here in the US!

The Green Hills garden, with its long flagstone entrance walk, once had Lamb’s Ear’s en masse behind its iris border. Every June they sent up their ghostly gray spikes by the dozens, and every year they self seeded and spread.

But the great mats they formed had sickly, blighted centers, not unlike the rot we see in urban areas, after all the prosperous life has fled to the suburbs.

Would-be Southern gardeners take heed, for here is what happens  when Summer comes on-

Here is another view of a blooming clump-

 

This morning I pulled out the plants in the first photo, dug out the roots, and as I was shoveling, encountered a nest of angry red, biting ants scrambling away with what eggs they could salvage-

With great care, I dug in a Color Guard yucca as a replacement. Had I had an artemesia “Powis Castle”, I might have replaced gray with gray, but I think the yucca is the better choice for this garden’s lean soil.

And as to the slovenly foliage of the gone by irises in the background, that is another story, for in two decades, they have never been divided. Perhaps this year the owner will let me  do it-

Soon I will be clipping them to fans and cleaning up the brown shards. At least one hundred feet of bearded iris to be clipped, and in July morning heat.

Which is another Ugly Truth.

 

A Post about Rabbits On My Other Blog

I am battling rabbits at one of the gardens I take care of, and I posted about it today at  The tee-tiny kitchen Blog. The title of the post is “High Clover”.