Just a reminder that I will be at the Nepean Horticultural Society on Thursday evening, talking about the procedures we used to make the three native plant meadow areas at Beaux Arbres. I’ll be showing lots of pics of summer wildflowers to cheer us up during this unpleasantly cold spell in March.
Harebells (Campanula rotundifolia) have been blooming continuously since the beginning of July in the rock garden.
Some of the plants of boreal Jacob’s ladder in the rock garden, which were cut back hard earlier in the summer when they were going to seed, have rebloomed. Not as showy as their first flush of flowers but still welcome colour in the rock garden, which is primarily a spring garden.
Boreal Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium boreale).
I cannot recommend showy tick-trefoil for borders or small gardens: it is too lanky and in bloom for too short a period to justify it, and its sticky seed pods are a nuisance if you or a pet comes too close. However, it is a lovely component of meadows and naturalization projects. It is a favoured host plant for the caterpillars of Eastern Tailed Blue butterflies.
Showy tick-trefoil (Desmodium canadense).
The first yellow daisies of late summer – sneezeweed and grey-headed coneflower – have been joined by cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum), a robust and quick-to-flower giant which can easily reach to the eaves of a single storey house. The seeds of cup plant are nutritious and sought out by goldfinches and other seed-eating birds over the winter, so the natural impulse is to let the plant go to seed. However, be warned. Cup plant seeds itself generously in gardens and, unless the seedling cup plants are recognized and removed, a natural garden can be replaced by a cup plant plantation. Cup plant’s close relatives from the tall grass prairie, prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) and compass plant (S. laciniatum) are both so slow to get going they need to be coddled by the gardener for their first couple of years.
Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum)
Butterfly milkweed is finally in bloom. It has been very late to develop this year. Its bloom is overlapping with the first of the swamp asters, which is just weird.
Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa): bright orange flowers and a medium height make it ideal for a sunny border.Swamp aster or purple-stemmed aster (Symphyotrichum puniceum) in the swale garden.
Our oldest plant of Culver’s root flowered in July and has now gone to seed. Two-year old plants of this slow-to-mature prairie species are flowering for their first time and are in bloom now. They are shorter than they will be when fully mature; their elegant white candelabra are tucked in among their neighbours. When happily settled in, the tips of the long spires of this lovely plant can reach six feet high or even more.
Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum).
Cardinal flower. What else can I say. Except they are hard to get a good photo of. Intense reds and oranges are not handled well by my digital camera – the intense orange of Mexican sunflower also comes out as a fluorescent blob of colour.
Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis).
Cardinal flower’s close relative, great blue lobelia, is also in bloom right now.
Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica).
I don’t fuss with annuals too much but I like my Mexican sunflowers and I also sowed some seeds of love-in-a-mist. (Nigella). They are an amazing true blue and their seed pods are silly – a combination of striped balloon and jester’s hat.).
Love-in-a-mist (Nigella).
The Allegheny fringe is still extending its delicate tendril and blooming. It has reached the eaves of the studio, climbing some jute twine I provided for it, and has now started to drape downwards rather elegantly. I do love this native biennial.
Allegheny fringe or climbing bleeding heart (Adlumia fungosa).
botanicalartstalk 