Category Archives: Great vines

Ramping up the late summer garden

Not all plants are created equal. There are some plants that are difficult to grow, fussy to the point of frustration, needy, disease ridden, or completely incapable of facing any environmental challenge without curling up and moving on to that great garden in the sky.

Then there are plants that are so easy you keep asking yourself is it luck? any day now will whatever magical  charm has been  placed on them evaporate and  leave me  with a pile of dead brown sticks? can gardening be this easy?? As a group, annual ornamental vines fall squarely and securely into the latter category.

For mere pennies, ok 200 pennies , you can buy a packet of seeds at the hardware store( or if you are fussy 300 pennies plus shipping and handling will get you specific cultivars from the likes of Johhnys Select Seeds or Burpee), dig a little hole, water until germination and Viola! you get to enjoy  bloom covered masses of plants from late summer until hard frost.

Cypress vine ipomoea quamoclit, morning glory, purple hyacinth bean , scarlet runner bean,moon flower ipopmea alba ,cup and saucer vine cobaea scandens , purple bell flower rhodochiton astrosanguineum , climbing spinach basella rubra,  spanish flag mina lobata, love in a puff caardiospermum halicacabum ,climbing black eyed susan thunbergia spc,nasturtiums, mandevilla ,even bottle gourds are all quick easy and almost foolproof additions to the late summer garden. *

A few others, like  asarina scandens which needs a 10-12 week head start indoors , and climbing aster aster carolinianus whcih needs things a little more damp, are worth a try as well.

This time of year anything you can add to your garden to help assuage that  sinking feeling  summer has past by and soon another winter will be here is essential. Not a year goes by that I am not grateful for the bevy of ornamental vines that are now coloring my garden, check out some photos below.

Next year I am going to try again ( third time is the charm?????) to start climbing monkshood aconitum hemsleyanum ,if  anyone has ever started it from seed successfully or better yet knows of a vendor who sells started plants let me know.

 

*in New England, where all of these are annual, feel free to grow and enjoy…in southern states where these vines are perrenial or seed can oerwinter many can be thugs

Who says a September Garden is a Yawn??

Funny, in the past week or two I have extended an invitation to several people to come see the garden and they have all replied the same way..”ooooh , I’d love to , but September probably isn’t   a great month to view your garden”.  Well, that is just flat out wrong when it comes to this dessert location. First off, I have just as much in bloom, berry and color as I do at any other time, AND you can enjoy it in the beautiful gentle September sunlight (that would be unlike the July sunlight that here in The  Burrow could incinerate you in a matter of seconds).

Here is a photo ( or 40 lol)

Joe -pye weed Eupatorium  “Gateway  and black eyed susans co-mingle

Asters growing in pots to save them from the rabbits are starting

this large sunflowery plant whose name I do not know is lovely

red velvety snapdragons beg to be touched

The dahlias are in full bloom everywhere. I just read today that the double forms lost their nectar forming parts(?) in an effort to super size the flower and are therefore useless to bees. Next year it is back to the single forms for me.

This sunflower came from a mixed seed packet and I really don’t care for it’s droopy petals, but here it is alongside a hyacinth bean vine .

Rudbeckias add so much to the garden in September. Here is “Denver Daisy”

These tiny inconspicuous flowers on the calicarpa bush mean a great show of vivd purple berries is in store for the winter garden

I grow lots and lots of sedum. This is an’ Autumn Joy’ paired with a ‘Brilliant”. The bees go nutso like wacky nectar addicts looking for a fix when the sedum is in bloom

Rosa’The Fairy” goes all summer long, right up until frost

I let the amaranths self seed wherever they wanted to this year, and only ended up pulling a few. They really add a lot of color and drama in a very effortless lazy way.Here the green and burgundy seeded next to a rose bush

This new mum,  ‘Centerpiece’,  is growing next to salvia ‘Royal Crimson Distinction’ . The salvia has been one of my star performers this year. It has flowered for great lengths of time, been cut back, and reflowered 3 times already with hardly any break. The mum came from Faribault  growers in MN. In spring (which is when you should plan the  hardy mums they are trying to sell you now) I ordered quite a few of them from this grower I heard of from a  fellow blogger  . many of them are in bloom now, and I am hoping many overwinter (crossed fingers)

Here is one called ‘Red Daisy’,  in it’s handy dandy rabbit fence enclosure

Rose of Sharon adds lots of punch to the late summer border without taking up lots of real estate. I grow quite a few new cultivars, but here is an old standard  pink that is just as nice

and this verbena called “Annie’ came from High Country Gardens.It blooms non-stop from probably late May until frost and is hardy here in zone 5 and gently spreading. Awesome groundcover plant!

The paniculata forms of Hydrangea all have the first pink-ish tinge on their white flowers, and soon will be cut to dry for arrangements and wreaths.

Rosa ‘Carefree Spirit” is still going strong

and the perennial geraniums are in their second flush of blooms after being cut back in late July

Caryopteri ( Blue Mist Shrub)s is alive and humming with polinators, who can’t seem to get enough of it

The Butterfly bushes, this is ‘Pink Delight’, are also humming with bees and butterflies all day (and Pumpkin who is fascinated by them and wandered into the shot)

This Sedum, a new one called ‘Hab Gray” is lovely both in foliage color, and it’s interesting pale yellow flowers. After it bloomed I left it uncut and the wind knocked it over. In a first for me with any sedum it flowered again all along the top of the stem that was facing the sun (like climbing roses do). Interesting, and a new thing to remember for future years.

The Heptacodium Miconoides tree is blooming for the first time this year.

The catmint has been going like gangbusters all summer, with little sign of slowing down.

The clematis vines that are done flowering are sporting their funky little seed heads all over…they are so  fun to look at and great to press.

The new Drift series of  low growing roses from the breeder of Knockout have performed wonderfully here all summer and look great now in the front gardens. The darker pink has a lovely light fragrance to boot.

Every year I grow a bunch of different annual vines. This year my fav has been the love in a puff cardiospermum halicacabum . The delicate foliage and flowers are crazy adorable, and the little puffs are beyond cute. When the puffs are dry you pop them open and the seed inside has a cool  heart shape on it, hence the name. It is a viscious weed elsewhere in the country, but is not hardy or a nuicance here. Lucky us!

My standard fav annual vine is , hands down, the hyacinth bean vine lablab purpurea. I hand out seeds to anyone who will take them, and like Johnny Appleseed (Cheryl beanseed ??) , hope many get planted and enjoyed. This year I planted them along the new fence, and WOW do I like the effect. The really come into their own in late August and throughout Sept-Oct, at a time the garden yearns for color. They are so easy to grow, too, needing nothing but sun and a little water to get them going.

Another beauty in the climbing department is this Thunbergia called ‘Blushing Susan’

Add in clematis vines: ‘Gravetye Beauty’, ‘terniflora’, ‘Pope John PAul II’, Comtesse de Bouchard’, ‘Rosea’, and Betty Corning’. Salvia ‘White Sensation’, Geum ,turtlehead , the pink and red Knockout roses, the end of the coneflowers, Roses Seafoam, New dawn, Golden Celebration, Magic Carpet,  and my unknown red climber; the awesome berries on all the viburums, hollies,and  snow berry bushes (symphoricarpos the species and ‘Amethyst’), massive colorful hips on the rugosa roses and rosa glauca, thesweet pink flowers covering the  bushcloverlaspedeza t. yakushimaNora Leigh and Franz Schubert phlox, ‘Annabelle’ hydrangaes, both yellow and pink potentillas, mallows, the fragrant hosta ‘Fragrant Boquet ‘, gallardia, lonicera ‘Major Wheeler ‘ the two trumpet vines, the heavily loaded pearand apple trees and heritage raspberry canes,

then add in the annuals; nasturtiums, nicotianas,cosmos, verbenas, sweet peas, osteospermums (in purple, yellow and orange), torinia, and probably a dozen things I overlooked, and that DOES NOT add up to a yawn. I LOVE the September Garden

Happy Bloom Day!!!

Morning Glories

Looking back , and I mean waaaaay back, to my life as a child, I think there were always voices in my head telling me what direction my life should take. For years, like the rest of small beings, they were drowned out by the well meaning intentions of my parents and teachers, and later on by my own misdirected and hormonal voices that as a know- it- all teenager could have drowned out a jet engine.

Now, as a all-grown up adult, I can hear them loud and clear, and I as I think back I can see they what they were telling me when I wasn’t listening.

Ask any of my siblings (2 sisters and 1 brother) about their childhood and they will wax on about childhood friends, neighborhood kickball games, and the veritable zoo of pets that and any one time resided within our walls. My younger sister has a phenomanal memory of places and people and astounds me with her recall of events  long forgotten by me 5 minutes after they happened.

If you were to ask me about my childhood home for instance, I will struggle to tell you what color it was ( maybe blue maybe green, maybe both although I don’t ever recall it getting painted), what the front steps looked like, or even they layout of the inside rooms. It is all very fuzzy and located in a place in my brain I apparantly do not have good access to.

But in full technicolor with oflactory back-up I can walk you around our yard. As you came down our dirt driveway the left side was bordered by  a lilac hedge that belonged to the neighbor, and was glorious in the spring. The hedge was on the far side of their house, so picking was always an option. At the termination of the hedge, and now in our yard, was a giant horsechestnut tree. Those massive leaves, the incredilble inflorencence, followed by what every kid dreams of; free stuff from nature that can be used as weapons. The mace like seed pods of the chestnut provided many a colorful word when stepped on, and lots of battles pitching them at each other.Fun stuff  indeed. 

Straight on from there you were looking at the front of the house, where to the right loomed an easlily  100 foot pine that shaded the whole driveway. To the right of the pine was a little raised bed my Dad sometimes grew strawberries in.

To the left side of the house was another evergreen, probably a spruce as it’s branches remained all the way to the ground. In back of that was a skinny maple that was always ringed with pansies my Mother planted. To the left of the maple was an old cherry tree that my Dad (?) built a landing/treehouse in. The tree’s trunk separated into three parts only a few feet off the ground making it very easy to climb.The cherries were never edible, but as a loookout perch it was ideal.

In the “back” yard next to the white house with the very nasty dog, my Dad had  enclosed an area with wire fencing and often grew vegetables (tomatoes, cukes, green beans, and oddly I recall rhubarb but can’t remeber if that is where it was planted).

Behind our clothesline, was the back end of our neighbor, Mr. Burke’s, property. His land was shaped like a very long rectangle, so although his house was further down almost on Main Street, his backyard was way back here abutting ours. In this peice of land that was un-tended to , grew all sorts of fun stuff including raspberries and blackberries we could pick and eat while standing there looking furtively about in case he was watching. At the edge of his land and separating us from another house was a large hedge that I would swear was privet, but I remember it being very tall, which may not be the case as I was little. We had carved out a little opening in the bottom so you could squish down and actually get into the hedge and hide.

If you went to the end of our road you would enter a wood, ownership unknown, where there were lots of trees to climb and trails to follow until you hit the railroad tracks, an area I think we were not supposed to be in.

All in all, I think our yard was pretty small, but it held such wonders for me. I remember raking leaves (fondly ,which I know is odd ) and making up many games in and around yard. I remember the earwigs that inhabited the veggie garden, and got on the laundry when it was hung on the clothes line to dry.

It is telling that my fondest memory is that skinny maple ringed by pansies, and I am guessing that the flower gardener in me was focusing on the one area in the yard that was adorned. There was also magically ( or so I thought) a perfectly true blue morning glory vine that appeared there eevry summer twinning up the tree and blooming that odd and mesmerizing color. This year I have purchased seeds, which I started indoors in May of that same vine, ipomoea violacea .I have done this in the past, with little success, usually by the time the vine gets big enough to flower the first frost hits the next day, and they are trash.

But this year the morning glories are , in a word,  GLORIOUS! Ahhhhh memories.