More Titivating

Isn't that a great word? Titivate? I bet it doesn't mean what you think.

Before I started working on the big bed I chronicled in my previous post A Year in the Making, I started pulling everything out of my small front foundation bed, which has always been another source of frustration to me. I've redone it at least three times since moving here. I started working on it as soon as I got back from 2018's Hardy Plant Study Weekend here in Washington. It's much smaller, and the work went quite fast. The bed had gotten very overgrown and weedy, and the rocks that originally edged the bed had all sunk into the soil and could no longer be seen. I had to dig them up and set them aside in piles to be set back in place.

About a third of the way through digging everything out

About two-thirds of the way finished, just after I dug out a large Forsythia that anchored the bed

The bed was full of rampant self-sowers like rose campion, Catananche caerulea and Eryngium 'Blue Glitter.'

The self sowers in this bed had all been planted much too close to the front of the bed, and tended to sow themselves into the gravel, where they thrived happily with their long taproots. That also made them sheer hell to dig out completely.

By the end of August it was empty, except for some large clumps of low growing Sedum

I thought at first I might save some large clumps of  Sedum 'Angelina' and 'Fuldaglut'  but eventually decided to toss them as well. I didn't start planting right away, however. I knew the fall rains would bring on weeds, and so I waited. I don't have pictures of the empty bed with its newly sprouted carpet of weeds, but I got down on my hands and knees last fall and gave it a thorough going over, and then started to plant.

The first thing I planted wasn't a plant -- it was a mosaic stepping stone from Bright River Studio, surrounded by a variety of low-growing Sedums and Sempervivums, planted at the base of an Arctostaphylos 'Pinnacle Ridge,' a drought-tolerant shrub that would be the bed's new anchor.

The Sedum clumps at 6:00 and 11:00 were from Loree at The Danger Garden, but I don't remember what they're called

I had already started collecting plants for this bed, as well as culling them from other areas around the garden. I also divided some Geranium renardii that I had dug up from this bed and replanted them, and saved some of the Eryngium 'Blue Glitter' to plant far at the back of the bed this time. I managed to shop in my own pot ghetto for more plants.

Setting out pots

I got almost everything in the ground long before winter, but waited to put back the rock edging.

Right after the snow from our big snowstorm melted in February

The two yard waste bins and the wicker coffee table in the photo above are traffic barriers to deer. They walk through the garden often, I know because I see tracks, but I seldom see evidence that they've eaten anything. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that continues.

By early April I had finally managed to put the rocks back around the edges

Early May

Late May

Oregon sunshine, pink and blue Salvias, and tall purple NOID Sedum

Early June, from a different angle

July abundance

Sisyrinchium striatum

Sisyrinchium striatum

Eriophyllum lanatum/Oregon sunshine

Centranthus ruber

Long row of Shasta 'Crazy Daisy'

Tall blue Veronica spicata

I like the way the buttons of Eryngium 'Blue Glitter' come up through the frothy white Shasta daisies

Deschampsia caespitosa 'Northern Lights'

The Sedums and Sempervivums around the Bright River Studios mosaic have filled in well

Another bed that needed tweaking was the narrow circle of beds that ringed the grass in the center of the front garden. It had four different kinds of grasses in it and not enough perennials -- and too much space for weeds. The frothy grass in the photo below is Anemanthele lessoniana -- pheasant tail grass -- which would fall over into the gravel path and made walking down it treacherous. I tripped over it constantly. It's a cool season grass so it doesn't get cut down in early spring like the Panicum that was also growing in the same bed, therefore it looks like crap for too much of the year. It's one of those grasses that you're supposed to clean all the dead stuff out by running your fingers through it and pulling it out, a technique that never works for me. I wanted to get rid of it. It's a nice grass in the right place, but I dug it up and tossed all the clumps into the yard waste bin.

I also pulled out and tossed some clumps of little bluestem, that had never thrived in this bed. And the third grass I took out was Melica uniflora, a nice enough grass, but it self sowed into its neighbors, a habit I found annoying. There were some Kniphofia caulescens in the bed as well that never flowered, unlike the Kniphofia uvaria that grew elsewhere, so out they came too.

That left Panicum "Rohtstrahlbusch' as the bed's workhorse grass. It thrives despite neglect, only flops in very heavy fall rain, and turns pretty colors in the fall. I thought the bed needed another grass, but one I wanted to use sparingly, and it had to be a diva. So I chose Stipa gigantea.

Pheasant tail grass flopping right into the path to the greenhouse

I had such great success with the seeds I had sown for my large prairie bed, I decided to order more of some of them, and do a second later sowing to plant here. I sow most of my seeds in the winter, but these I sowed inside the greenhouse this spring, in the space that had been vacated by all the pots of winter seedlings that were now permanently outside after being hardened off.

The bed cleaned up in late winter/early spring

The other half of the bed, same time of year

The view from the front door now, looking toward the greenhouse:

A path with no grass to trip over (as long as I can manage not to trip on the hose)

And the view from inside the grass circle:

I planted a few clumps of mature Baptisias here

Centranthus ruber

Stipa gigantea in flower

Lilies and Echinacea purpurea

The bees love this flower, and in the fall, the birds devour the seedheads

Verbascum foliage

Echinacea youngsters

A type of mat-forming Dianthus

More clumps of seedlings that will flower next year

I just have this one little area at the far end of the bed to clear the weeds out of and plant up

My success has emboldened me. It's finally time to start dealing with this horrifying mess.

Unfortunately, on a recent coolish morning I discovered a bald-faced hornet nest in the Styrax tree.

Paper wasp nest in the Styrax tree -- photo taken from about 30 feet away

By the time you read this, it hopefully will have been dealt with by a pest control company. Previously, I've left paper wasp nests alone under the eaves of the house, unless they've been built too close to doors that we use constantly. I know this nest will be abandoned once winter comes, but I really would like to start working in this bed now, without fear of disturbing them and getting stung.

They're just going to have to give their lives so that I can get my garden in order.

Wednesday Vignette

For my Wednesday Vignette today I thought I'd share a photo I took back in May, while on an NPA tour of Tanya's garden. Tanya writes the blog My Secret Garden, and I've toured her garden before, but of course it's always changing. Her blog is chock full of great photography, and you can also follow her here on Instagram. She and I have both been sharing pictures on Instagram all summer of the open gardens in the NPA Open Gardens Book. I have an enormous backlog of photos to share here on my blog. I've been debating with myself whether I should just start sharing them now, or wait till winter and do it then, like I did this past winter. What do you think?

Tanya has really mastered the skill of placing art in her garden. I love how she put this bust in the middle of a sea of Vancouveria. She has lots of other art placed all around her luscious garden, some classical in nature like this, and others whimsical and fun, showing off her playful sense of humor.

At any rate, I've probably got more than enough Wednesday Vignettes to keep me going for quite a while.

Anna at Flutter & Hum hosts Wednesday Vignette. You can check out her post today here.

A Year in the Making

In my previous Tell the Truth Tuesday post about how I keep my garden watered in the summer, I mentioned my new prairie/meadow-type garden bed. I've posted a few photos of this bed on Instagram, but haven't posted anything about it in the more lengthy, detailed blog format. Are you interested in reading about this bed and seeing more detailed pictures of how I went about putting it in, and why? I hope so.

I'm going to start with a little history.

The long bed that runs along the southern edge of our front yard has been a problem ever since we moved in. It was one of the few original beds that existed when our previous owners lived here. Our house was built by the previous owner for his family, in fact, he owned his own building company. Besides the fact that all the native subsoil here is glacial till (sandy soil and lots of rocks), the topsoil in this bed is sand, covered with bark mulch.

Sand, like at the beach. Although I've tried amending it with compost, digging in this bed is still very much like spending a day playing at the beach. If it's wet, I could literally build a sand castle with it. So not only is the sand fast-draining, but it's also basically a raised bed. It's hard to see in the following photos, but on the neighbor's side of the bed is a retaining wall that goes from about 12 inches high at the street to four feet high 60 feet in.

This photo of the bed was taken either on the day of our home inspection, or very soon after moving in, back in 2009 -- the gravel you can see just beyond is my neighbor's driveway

Another view of the same bed taken from the other direction, looking toward the street, later that same year

This bed has gone through a few changes since we moved here, one major one being the removal of two of the trees. In an ice storm in January, 2012, we lost the top half of one of them, and decided to get rid of it that summer. It made sense to also take out the cherry tree near the street, which dropped immature fruit every year as well as constantly producing runners everywhere in the bed and the lawn from its roots. We replaced them with a paperbark maple/Acer griseum and a 'Forest Pansy' redbud/Cercis canadensis.

The bed after the two trees were removed -- here you can also see my neighbor's side of the retaining wall

In this photo from 2013 it's very colorful, but most of that is from annuals like California poppies and Nasturtiums

I edged my side of the bed with the thousands of rocks that all my beds produce like a crop

I have always found the soil in this bed frustrating. It's hard to keep watered in the summer, and it's so sandy and lean that I really needed a crash course in what would thrive there. Although the trees provide some shade, it's along the southern boundary of our house, so it gets southern summer sun, and the reflected heat of all that gravel from the neighbor's driveway. It was easy to ignore it, however, once we redid the front garden and installed the greenhouse, because the bed was more or less hidden on the opposite side of the greenhouse and I seldom went there.

But last year I finally decided to tackle it.

By 2018, neglect had more or less turned the bed into a wasteland of weeds

Starting in August of last year (2018), I started pulling out everything that was growing in it -- weeds, perennials, small shrubs. Most of them got tossed. I dug around things I wanted to save, figuring I'd leave them in over the winter and then pull and divide them quickly in the spring when I was finally ready to replant the entire bed.

Here you can see I've dug around some Sedum 'Autumn Joy,' three large clumps of Kniphofia, a huge, 24-inch wide clump of Phlomis russeliana, some Baptisia and lilies

Of course, the fall rains caused all those seeds that I had disturbed to spring up -- hooray, light and water, just what we need!

A winter full of rain, cold, sickness, snow, more rain and cold, aches and pains (I AM 63 after all) made me pause for a while. During that pause, I did a lot of reading and seed-sowing. I knew by now that I was going to turn the area into a prairie garden. That lean, well-draining soil seemed ideal for those kinds of plants, from what I've read. I had actually already started buying and stockpiling suitable plants back in the fall -- grasses, Amsonia hubrichtii, Stachys 'Hummelo,' Sanguisorba, Amorpha canescens, and others.

What did I read? I started with Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West. I heard her speak at the Hardy Plant Study Weekend, and found her inspiring. From there I went on, of course, to Planting: A New Perspective by Noel Kingsbury and Piet Oudulf, and then, because I knew I'd be starting a lot of plants from seed, Sowing Beauty: Designing Flowering Meadows From Seed by James Hitchmough.

Books that I already owned that I hauled out to re-read were: The Water-Saving Garden By Pam Penick; Grasses by Nan Ondra; and Drought Resistant Planting: Beth Chatto's Gravel Garden.

In early spring whenever I could I'd spend a couple of hours out there on my hands and knees digging up the weedy grasses and plants like red campion and California poppy that had sown themselves in the millions throughout the bed.

Big pile of campion

At this end of the bed I dug around some healthy clumps of daylilies and a Yucca linearifolia

After I dug up the daylilies I left them in clumps while I waited to divide them -- I still have several clumps sitting around

Making progress, although I was not looking forward to digging out that fully grown Physocarpus 'Diablo' on the left -- on the right hand side you can see some of the millions of seedlings destined for life in this bed

At one point, my neighbor Mary came home from work and saw me on my hands and knees pulling California poppies in the bed near the street, and claimed she could see them springing up behind me as I worked. I wouldn't be surprised if that was true.

Meanwhile, I would haul the seedlings that I had sown in the greenhouse out every day for some fresh air and sunshine, and then haul them back in every night.

Little pots, full of seedlings...

Finally, by May 19, except for a couple of Baptisias which I had decided to leave, as well as a couple of clumps of low-growing Sedums and some ornamental Oregano, the bed was empty. Now I had a deadline. I wanted to get it filled up again and everything planted before I went away to the Garden Bloggers Fling, in mid-June.

Empty! (mostly)

Lonely Baptisia

Sedums out by the street

I made myself a printout of everything I had sown that I had multiple pots of, organized by height, and then got out there and physically grouped all the plants of similar height together, so that I could sort of plant them in waves from the center outward.

I started with a shrub, maybe hard to see, right in the center -- an 'Austin Griffiths' Arctostaphylos, and some grasses, namely Panicum 'Northwind'

I had sowed a lot of blue and pink Salvias, because I wanted the bed to have a ribbon of Salvia -- it's not big enough for a whole river

Slowly placing more plants, working for a few hours every day

So many plants to keep track of, it started to do my head in a bit

Besides planting the many potted plants that I had overwintered, as well as the thousands of seedlings I had produced, I also had to divide and replant the perennials I had dug up. I figured anything that had not only lived through my years of neglect in that bed, but had actually managed to increase, deserved to be saved and replanted. So for a few days I clawed around the rootballs of three clumps of Autumn Joy Sedum, Phlomis russeliana, Kniphofia uvaria, Astrantia major 'Vanilla Gorilla' and Hemerocallis 'Bold Tiger' and produced lots and lots of divisions to be replanted.

Replanted tiny Astrantia division

Clumps of Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and Kniphofia uvaria

Finally done, just in time to go away!

The overturned pot is marking the spot where I'd like to plant another shrub. I'd like to move my Embothrium coccineum to here so that it can get more light, but it's not a good time of year for moving stuff like that. I'm marking its place till fall/early winter.

Woo Hoo!

In case you're curious, this bed is 10 feet wide by 50 feet long.

Here is how it looks now, about a month and a half later.

The Astrantia divisions are pushing out lots of new growth

Phlomis russeliana has already started increasing in size

I tried starting Dalea purpurea from seed in pots inside the greenhouse, but couldn't get them to live in the pot once they had sprouted, so I decided to try sowing them direct in the bed

Muhlenbergia rigens, the only one of three that survived the winter in its nursery pot outside

Some of those tiny seedlings are getting quite large

Some of the seeds that I ordered were from Prairie Moon Nursery, which specializes in American prairie plants, either from seed or plugs. I decided early in the spring to order plugs of some plants that I hadn't had much success with. Unfortunately, the Verbena stricta that they sent me turned out to be the wrong plant, they sent Verbena urticifolia instead, which has a white flower. Fortunately, they let me know, and offered a credit.

Verbena urticifolia

There are still too many bare spots that I hope will fill in, either with low growers or with widening clumps -- in the meantime I need to keep them free of weeds

From Seed:
Erigeron karvinskiana 'Stallone'
Verbascum phoenicium 'Violetta'
Veronica longifolia 'Pink Shades'
Veronica longifolia 'Blue Shades'
Salvia nemorosa New Dimension Rose
Agastache cana 'Bolero'
Agastache pallida 'Globetrotter'
Agastache mexicana 'Sangria'
Salvia nemorosa 'Rosenwein'
Digitalis ferruginea 'Yellow Herald'
Agastache foeniculum
Hyssopus angustifolia
Pycnanthemum virginianum
Monarda fistulosa
Dalea purpurea
Heliopsis helianthoides var. scabra 'Burning Hearts'
Calamintha nepeta 'Marvelette Blue & White'
Calamintha nepeta 'Blue Cloud'
Salvia azurea
Digitalis parviflora
Digitalis ferruginea var. gigantea
Selinum tenuifolium
Trifolium rubens
Dianthus carthusianorum
Salvia verticillata 'Purple Fairy Tale'
Salvia superba 'Adora Blue'
Salvia 'Blue Queen'
Salvia 'Rose Queen'
Centranthus ruber
Platycodon grandiflorus
Agastache aurantiaca 'Navajo Sunset'
Salvia nutans
Erigeron glaucus
Erigeron speciosus 'Azure Fairy'
Echinacea paradoxa
Hyssopus officinalis
Vernonia fasciculata
Echinacea purpurea
Agastache mexicana 'Sangria'
Agastache cana 'Heather Queen'
Echinacea pallida
Ratibida columnifera
Daucus carota
Ammi majus
Lupinus 'Minarette'
Baptisia australis
Rudbeckia maxima
Verbena stricta
Veronica teucrium ‘Royal Blue’
Shasta Crazy Daisy

Plugs from Prairie Moon Nursery:
Ruellia humilis
Veronicastrum virginicum
Salvia azurea
Penstemon pallidus
Parthenium integrifolium
Coreopsis lanceolata
Verbena urticifolia

From divisions:
Inula magnifica
Phlomis russeliana
Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’
Kniphofia uvaria
Hemerocallis 'Bold Tiger'
Astrantia 'Vanilla Gorilla'

From local nurseries:
Amsonia hubrichtii
Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo’
Amorpha canescens
Geranium 'Rozanne'
Sanguisorba

Grasses from various nurseries
Panicum 'Heavy Metal'
Panicum 'North Wind'
Deschampsia caespitosa
Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'

So, that's the story of what's been obsessively occupying me for the last year. How about you?