Early Autumn
It’s early October and we are admiring the fall color, along with most of New England (who all seem to congregate on the Jackson Covered Bridge). Some predicted that the foliage display would be more striking this year with all the rain. I’m not sure that’s the word I would chose – the reds seem deeper and darker, and the oranges are as captivating as ever, but the yellows are delayed and muted by green leaves that remain.
You can see the difference in yellows in the garden photos below – 2023 is on the left and 2022 is on the right. There was so much more yellow last year.
Looking at the photos, it is amazing to see how much the plants grew and spread this season! As the saying goes, perennials sleep, creep, then leap… I guess this was Leap Year!
To keep a record of the garden’s changes year to year I’ve added a new section to this blog, called The State of the Garden. Is our native garden living up to the hopes and expectations we had three years ago when we started this project? The new 2023 section takes in depth look at the season and its flora and fauna highlights.
Late-season Pollinators
We’ve had quite a few late season pollinators. Late blooming asters attracted a Common Bumble Bee, a Common Flower Fly (middle left) and a Golden Sweat Bee (top right). A Catskill’s Potter Wasp (bottom right) is pollinating the Pearly Everlasting. Although wasps have a bad rap, they are beneficial insects that help to keep things in balance in the garden.
Finally I understand how some native bees can overwinter in the stalks of perennials – they are unbelievably tiny! I love the way the Pure Green Sweat Bee (bottom left) fits perfectly into the tiny flower of the Butterfly Milkweed.
I love this time of year when the fruit of the Common Milkweed opens to reveal stunning white fibers with seeds attached. These wispy fibers are not just a visual delight – they are caught by the wind dispersing the seeds.
New for 2024
We’ve decided to incorporate some nonnative plants into the front garden for 2024. What!??!! Why? Well, after years of being supportively neutral, Kathy has caught the gardening bug, and it’s the kind of bug that causes one to pour over daily emails from White Flower Farm and other catalogues, lusting after the showiest and most colorful blooms.
The first idea was to create a nonnative bed to fill in a barren patch at the top of the driveway, but it’s not sunny enough there. Then Andrew suggested replacing the native plants in the beds next to the front door with splashy nonnative perennials. The front of the house seemed drab once we stopped planting the window boxes and hanging baskets with annuals due to concerns about pesticides. That’s thinking outside the box! Andrew always has great solutions.
Kathy was psyched to plan these new beds – now the blooms she admired in the catalog were within reach – but which ones? Not one to wing it or waste this precious opportunity, she created a spreadsheet of flower color, bloom time, and height. The winners are delphinium, hollyhock, tall phlox, iris, daylily and clematis. Now we hope to enjoy an amazing season-long show without harming our pollinators by planting annuals.
Fall Bulb Planting
Kathy also convinced me that planting tulip bulbs alongside the driveway for early season color would not push us outside the 70% native rule. Creating spreadsheets is not the only way Kathy brings her unique talents to gardening. She loves symmetry and precision, so a random assortment of the three chosen colors (my solution) was not an option. She used colored squares to create a design, and even measured to make sure they were placed 6 inches apart. You can see the ruler in the photos if you look closely.
The colored squares seemed great until we realized that once the squares were finally in the perfect position, all the bulbs had to be planted right away or the paper would blow away and we’d have to start over. Oops. It was sunny and 84 degrees – warmer than it was most of August! Because the soil was very compacted and gravelly and the bulbs had to be planted 8″ deep, it took far longer than we could have imagined. We celebrated by jumping in the pool – in October, in New Hampshire! At least it still looks like fall.