Kates Garden Journal

With fall arriving very quickly and a very cool forecast which included a chance of frost, I headed up for a look at Toledo Botanical Garden to see the last blooms of summer. The beauty of going mid week, and off season is that there are very few people around to bother you and I could enjoy the time in peace.

Late season blooms are one of the things that people get stuck on – including the major stores. They sell chrysanthemums and pansies and nothing else.  While I like the bright yellow of chrysanthemums there are lots of other things still blooming including some terrific grasses (below) and the Queen Charlotte Japanese Anemone (at the top of the page).

One of my favorite fall shrubs is also putting on a good show right now – the Callicarpa, or Beautyberry. This one is has slightly more yellow  than I am used to, but still a delightful shrub, and it  is a Callicarpa bodinieri. The lovely berries though shine even on cloudy fall days.

Fall is a time when the landscape changes quickly from lush summer green to colorful fall in the trees leading all too soon to the bare branches of winter. Making the effort to get out and see the shrubs and plants change is definately worth doing.

Each year I go to the Garden Writer’s Conference and this year it is in Indianapolis which is driving distance for me. So what is a Garden Writer’s Conference? Well all those wonderful pictures in those glossy garden magazines are all taken by garden writers and garden photographers, and many of them attend this annual gathering. The days include business topics such as how to improve writing, and how to get more assignments as well as new plants and trends.

The best part of the conference of course is that we visit great gardens. The problem is that when you get a large number of garden writers and photographers in one place they jostle for a place to shoot the picture and we end up on top of each other for popular shots like this area!

If you read this and wondered where the picture was – boy is this blog having problems! I have tried to give it a new look in the attempt to get it working, but so far still no images.

Earlier this week I was walking toward the back of the property and noticed some pink in the hedge. On closer inspection it turned out to be a rose. This was later to bloom than the invasive white rose and quite restricted as far as where it was – just two patched.  I decided to research natives and invasive roses and decided that it maybe one of the natives, so hopefully someone will verify that. The rose is a simple rosy-pink flower, with some white flowers.

Then there was the ‘other rose’. This was the one that was almost thornless that I have tended for a year waiting to see what it did. Well it finally put out a bloom and mimics all those invasive roses in the hedgerow. A disappointment but not totally surprising. The rose was also an enthusiastic grower and overtaking my herb garden, including the lemon balm!  I decided that the rose had to go along with its mate next door – yes there were two of them. It looked like this:

Then there was the little rose that was vibrant and I thought was another wild one. Problem was – when I dug it out the roots were in perlite and potting mix! so this was not a wild rose and I had dug up a new one that was planted, or a very opportunistic little wild rose found a good place to grow! Alas, even replanted, I do  not have much hope of the poor little thing.

We have been here several months and the herb bed was established last fall, but with rain and the new raised beds it became overgrown and in desperate need of attention. Last Saturday was the day.The biggest problem was the milkweed that had found a home there. I went through last year and took it out but the thing has roots that went down a mile ! Now there are those of you who think milkweed should be left alone – well fine but it was a large mass in a place where I wanted herbs and had taken on the status of weed.

Last year I had assumed the weed was in the hedgerows as well as my garden, so had no qualms about taking it out. I then looked around and found nothing in the neighborhood. Maybe it had been planted and gone wild, I don’t know but knowing its value to the butterflies I was hit with remorse. This year I am trying to establish it along the edges of the garden. There are lots of native plants and lots of invasive honeysuckle (both white and pink) around there, so I hope it finds root and settles.

Yesterday was the big spring perennial plant swap in town and I went in to help set up and label plants. After several very warm, dry days the morning forecast was for a dry start then rain around noon. Alas things got here a little faster and the day dawned with drizzle then steady rain, then back to drizzle. Toledo gardeners were not to be discouraged though and a great crowd of both volunteers and gardeners were there bringing in perennial divisions by the basketful. Common entries were daylilies and hostas but almost everything was gone in the first 45 minutes.