I am not a fan of the summer heat and humidity. Since I don’t have a vegetable garden, there really isn’t much to do except for some weeding, deadheading, and making plant divisions. I love sharing plants from my garden with friends! Fortunately, we have been receiving enough rainfall that I don’t even need to water my dahlias.
Summer really is the time when I can just observe how my gardens have become a true pollinator garden and sanctuary for wildlife. Speaking of wildlife, there was a visitor one morning while I was out deadheading!
He moved so quietly and skillfully through the patio furniture. He didn’t upset a thing and when he was aware of my presence, he immediately retreated down the stone steps to my woodland garden, being on his best behavior.
Only in the late summer do we get this special light through the woods.
An early summer bloomer in my garden is bottlebrush buckeye, aesculus parviflora. Useful as an understory planting, its long fluffy white flower clusters are spectacular.
The summer native perennials are also coming into their glory right about now.
The cardinal flower self seeds, so my woodland garden has nice color throughout. And there is also the great blue lobelia, lobelia siphilitica, spreading its beauty. This flower requires bumblebees for pollination. Bees use the lower three fused petals as a landing pad. A bee of correct weight will depress these petals on its way to the flower’s nectar, lowering the stigma to deposit the pollen on the bees back. Isn’t nature full of marvelous design and relationships?
One of my favorite summer flowers is Joe Pye weed, eutrochium purpureum. It is a larval host to several moth species. After my recent class on moths at the Cullowhee Native Plant Symposium, I am even more delighted to have it throughout my woodland garden.
While they are not native, summer is also the beginning of the dahlia season. Oh, the assortment of colors and shapes will delight me for several months to come. This has been a bittersweet dahlia season for me because we lost Brian Killingsworth earlier this year. He taught me everything I know about dahlias, and he is sorely missed.
Gardens are all about sharing, and I had the great honor of hosting a group of gardeners at Devotion. They are taking a weeklong deep dive into the public and private gardens of Asheville, all thanks to Bobbie Pell with RoadScholar. Thank you for bringing such an interesting group and I look forward to two more of your groups in the fall.
Summer is a time of reflecting how many people have influenced me and my desire to garden. Nancy Duffy stands at the top of that list. As founder of Muddy Boots Garden Design, she led me on this 10 year journey to create Devotion and her friendship means the world to me.
Although his influence isn’t so direct, Frederick Law Olmsted shaped the vision of what public gardens can be. We are celebrating his 200th birthday this year and each time I wander at the Biltmore Estate or the NC Arboretum, I say my thanks and appreciate the vision he had.
In truth, I am grateful for these lazy, hazy summer days. It means that I can retreat indoors and watch a fabulous documentary about Mary Reynolds, an Irish, world-renowned “reformed” landscape designer who was the youngest ever gold medal winner at the Chelsea Flower Show. In her application for the 2001 Chelsea Flower Show, she wrote: “People travel the world over to visit untouched places of natural beauty, yet modern gardens pay little heed to the simplicity and beauty of these environments…those special places we all must preserve and protect, each in his own way, before they are lost forever.” I know first hand the rewards of her belief that we plant gardens to nurture our land and ourselves.