Notes on Preparing the Garden for Winter

It poured all night, but though the grey clouds still seem reluctant to move on, the rain has thankfully abated in time for Marion Jarvie's morning lecture on Preparing the Garden for Winter. 

The gardeners who have gathered together in Marion's Thornhill, Ontario garden on this damp October morning are not novices looking to learn garden basics like how to divide a perennial. No, these are hard core plant enthusiasts who have come to learn from the renowned designer and plantswoman who has been gardening for over 30 years.

The topic for this particular morning is getting the garden ready for winter, but it is hard for everyone assembled not to get distracted by the plants in the garden all around them. 

What's this plant? What's that plant, we all want to know? Everything is so interesting and unusual. 

Marion's greatest challenge turns out to be keeping her talk on track! Lucky for the curious among us however, she is just as passionate about talking about plants as we are.

It is late fall and Marion's garden is looking amazingly colorful. 

 

Japanese Anemone, Anemone x hybrid 'Party Dress' 

There are flowers to be sure, but the color has a lot more to do with foliage.

But I digress...I want to share with you some of the things I learned about getting the garden ready to put to bed for winter.

One of the first things Marion suggested was to weed your garden and then apply a layer of mulch. To mulch your flowerbeds, she recommends you add a top dressing Gro-Max Premium Garden Soil which is a blend of compost, aged bark, peat, sand and topsoil.

This was a new idea for me. Usually my garden has to wait for me to get around to adding soil amendments and a bark mulch sometime in early spring. It makes sense to put everything in place in late fall so the garden can get off to a good start the moment the weather warms up. 

As an additional bonus of Marion's method of mulching in fall is that it can actually help to suppress the seeds of annual weeds. Hey, who doesn't want to weed less?

Did you give in to your desire for to keep the flowers going and buy some garden Mums this fall? I did. Mums may be a bit of a fall cliche, but its are hard to resist that injection of late fall color. 

Usually I rip these marginally hardy plants out in late fall and compost them. After hearing Marion's talk, I think I may have been too hasty in scrapping them. God knows, it is a waste of money to buy new ones each year! 

Marion manages to keep her Mums going by providing with them dry, sheltered conditions against the walls of her house. The key to keeping them going through the winter is making sure whatever location you place them in is dry. Mums hate getting soggy.

As Marion asked the gardeners assembled, what have you got to lose in trying? 

Generic Hellebore picture used here and not one from Marion's garden

Hellebores form flower buds in fall and Marion suggests that now, while the soil is still warmish, is the perfect time to feed them. To feed her hellebores Marion uses a 20-20-20 fertilizer.

More tips and pictures of Marion's garden in an upcoming post...

A Beginning and an End

Today I am going to share with you the start of a big project and the end of what I refer to in my head as "Phase 1".

I have always had an overall vision for the design of my garden and to my plan's credit, I have stuck pretty close to it over the years- never changing my mind or the design direction the garden is headed.

This is not to say that I have never second-guessed myself. I have done that many times! But at the end of the day, my gut instincts usually serve me best and my first ideas are most often the ones that I end up carrying through to completion.

I carry the design plans around in my head. I see it like a drawing- although I have never committed it to paper.

There are a few design challenges. For one, our backyard is like a bowling alley: long and narrow. The previous homeowner put flowerbeds down the outside perimeter and had a circular herb garden at the end of the expanse of green grass that ran down the centre of the property.

It was a fine enough garden, but the yard felt really narrow and much smaller than the 150 feet that it was in reality. I kept many of the original features and have made lots of changes-perhaps a subject best kept for another post- with the addition of a place to relax and unwind being our latest project. 

So here it is! 

Midway down the yard and off to the right- a small circular courtyard of pea gravel (in its present form). A narrow border of plantings enclose it like a cocoon.

One of our biggest challenges in creating any backyard retreat was going to be the mosquitoes. Living this close to the Credit River we have tons of mosquitoes- even in the middle of the day. Who wants to be batting away at mosquitoes while trying relax and sip a drink?

We decided me needed to make a mosquito proof enclosure. Our house is late Victorian and so our plans are to eventually build something traditional in keeping with the house- our own take on a standard gazebo. 

Umbrella Loblaw's Superstore $50 (approximately). The folding wooden Adirondack chairs were also purchased at Loblaw's late last summer (just under $50 each).

If time and money were no object we would have built the gazebo this summer, but that's not the case. So for now, we have mapped out the space with our little pea gravel courtyard. (Eventually we will build the gazebo overtop of this foundation layer of fine gravel.)

There isn't a lot of sun in this part of the yard, but the umbrella is not just for show. It serves several functions including protecting our heads from falling walnuts! At this time of year, the black walnut tree overhead drops a steady shower of golf-ball-sized walnuts that are as hard as rocks. 

The umbrella also holds up the oversized mosquito net that we purchased on clearance (not installed at the time I took these pictures).

The surrounding plantings still need a bit of finessing. Here are a few early favourites:

Phlox paniculata 'Creme de Menthe'- many of my phlox are finished, but this one is just coming into its glory. Love, love the variegated leaves! 

Sunflowers self-seeded themselves into the planting scheme.

Coleus, 'Vino' and Hydrangea 'Little Lime'

Sedum 'Matrona' Height 40-50 cm Spread: 45-60 cm Full sun is best, but I have mine in part shade. The flowers are big and heavy so pinch the plant back in June to prevent it from flopping when in flower.

Agastache 'Blue Fortune' Height: 60-75 cm, Spread: 60 cm. Full sun or part shade. I am amazed at how big this plant has gotten in its first year. It is a blooming machine!

White Joe Pye Weed, Eupatorium altissimum 'Prairie Jewel' Height: 90 cm, Spread: 40 cm. 

Moist soil (or afternoon shade). 

Brilliance Autumn Fern, Dryopteris erythrosora 'Brilliance' Height: 45-60 cm, Spread: 45-60 cm. Part Shade and moist soil.

Another project almost complete are these plants supports. We made two 5' plant supports for diagonally opposite sides of my four raised beds. (The other two raised boxes have lilac standards in the centre of each bed.)

One of these 5' supports sits in my raised herb bed and so I have elected not to finish it any way (the last thing I want is flakes of chipping paint falling in among the plants we eat!).

The supports are made of inexpensive spruce and I used a fence post finial to decorate the top (about $15-20 in raw materials). With the exception of angled saw cuts, they are fairly easy to make. (I wasn't sure if there would be enough interest to do a how-to post. If it turns out that there is interest, I will do one.)

We also made two 6' plant supports for the circle garden at the back of the yard. (You can just see it in the distance through the arbor.)

Turtlehead, Chelone obliqua Height 60-90 cm Spread: 60-75 cm Full sun or part shade. Mine is in part shade. The clump is at least 5 years old and is quite sizeable.

Just before we take a closer look at the taller plant supports, let's pause to admire the Turtlehead flowers blooming just to the right of the arbor we will pass through. It is really amusing to watch bumblebees try to sandwich their little round bodies into these tight-lipped flowers.

I elected to paint these plant supports burgundy, which is the color of the shutters on our white house. Scrambling up the sides is a small bell-shaped clematis that bloomed a little over a month ago: 

A few other recent additions to this area of the garden:

I got this Rhododendron at a 50% off sale in late June. In a garden that tends to the messy, I love the compact shape and neat, glossy leaves. Rhododendron 'P.J. M.' Height: 150 cm, Spread: 150 cm. Full sun to part shade.

On the right a great foliage plant Caryopteris divaricata, 'Snow Fairy'. It has insignificant blue flowers and beautiful variegated foliage. Height: 60 cm and Spread: 60cm (very similar in size and shape to a small Spirea) Full sun to half shade.

This is a perennial Goldenrod new to the garden this year. I misplaced the plant tag, but feel pretty confident that it is Stiff Golden Rod, Solidago rigida. 

This is a skyscraper of a plant that is almost as tall as I am (120 cm)! Until I find it the perfect home, I have it in half-shade, but it would much prefer to be in full sun. As you can see, it tends to flop and requires staking.

Stiff Golden Rod, Solidago rigida

I hope your enjoying these first few days of fall.

I am going to link this post to May Dreams Gardens Garden Bloggers Bloom Day meme on the 15th of this month and also to Fishtail Cottage's Garden Party on Thursday. To see other pretty gardens, please click the links.

The Last GBBD of 2012

We were walking along the road with the dogs the other evening when my husband took my hand in his.

"Oh, your hands are soft!", he said with surprise.

"Hmm...", I acknowledged, though with an undercurrent of sadness, "I haven't been gardening."

Usually, my hands are rough sandpaper, but the last few weeks have been busy ones with little time for pulling weeds or mucking about in the dirt.

The gardening season is almost over, in fact this will be the last Garden Blogger's Bloom Day that I can participate in this year. 

My blooms are down to a few roses, some hydrangeas and a few perennials that are sprinkled throughout the garden.

What a wild ride this gardening season it has been, eh?

June weather in April, then a cold snap that sent everything into shock, followed by a summer with relentless heat, and little, if any rain. 

Thankfully, fall rains made up for summer's lack of generosity. The garden recovered somewhat at least. Fruit and berries were sacrificed however, as tree and shrubs held themselves in reserve. 

No pretty ornamental crabapples to put in fall arrangements this year! 

I usually pick up tubs and tubs of black walnuts off the lawn. This year there wasn't enough walnuts to fill even a single bin.

Fall has not been without a few surprises as well. 

On the weekend, it was like Mother Nature was turning off and on a fall light switch. Friday night, temperatures plummeted and we had our first hard frost. 

By Saturday morning, everything was covered in tiny ice crystals. 

As if on cue, the enormous black walnut in the backyard dropped almost all its leaves in the space of a single day. By evening, the snowstorm of falling leaves had covered entire lawn in a golden blanket.

Then... just to keep us guessing as to her intentions, Mother Nature graced us with a mild, humid day on Sunday.

Will winter be this unpredictable? I guess we will soon see!

So what remains on this, the my last Garden Blogger Bloom Day of 2012? 

My velevety-red coleus and the one above perished in the cold snap. My potato vines are mush. 

On Saturday morning, I discover a dopey half-frozen bee on the blue Agastache (left). The sky-blue calamint (right) continues to bloom in the front garden, although the tiny flowers have faded to light mauve in the cold.

Up until Friday night's frost, there were still a few Lavatera flowers.

And a bedraggled clematis that I got at an end-of-season clearance sale was so happy 

to have found a loving home that it flowered late last week as a thank you.

 My harvest of carrots was again a little meagre this fall, but I am still at that novice stage of vegetable gardening where any kind of a harvest, no matter how humble, is still exciting. 

I am very glad that I grew more annuals this year, especially sunflowers.

The chickadees feasting on the sunflower seeds were a joy to watch in the first weeks of fall.

There are still a few chores to do in the garden before all is said and done. 

I have some tomato plants to remove, bulbs to plant and leaves to rake. 

Then I will have the winter to think about what worked and what didn't... 

to consider the lessons learned...

and to dream about what I want to grow next year.

Seeds are set. With or without me, the garden is preparing itself for next year.

Just a hollow husk of its former glory, this poppy has dispersed its seeds on the wind.

 Next year's garden has already begun...

I am going to link this post to May Dreams Gardens GBBD. 

To see other beautiful October gardens in bloom, please click the link.

Gratitude

Perennial Fountain Grass

When is life ever simple or straightforward?

The other day, I opened the back door to discover that a tiny chickadee had become trapped in our enclosed porch. The screen door, which is always propped open so the dogs can come and go in the summer months, meant that the chickadee actually had an easy means of escape. Instead all his attentions were focused on the freedom clearly visible through the glass windows.

I watched helplessly as he flung himself repeatedly against the panes of glass; wings beating furiously against the unyielding window. Something had to be done or he was going to injury his wings, or even worse, break his neck. But how could I catch him?

Annual Cleome

This was not the first time that I have had to rescue another creature in recent days. Just last week, I was in out driveway putting away our recycling bins, when a golden retriever appeared out of nowhere. We have a small community, so I know all the neighbourhood dogs, and the retiever was not among them. This dog was clearly lost.

Our house on the corner is the last respite. The retriever would have to face the prospect of crossing a very busy road before she could wander further. Quickly, I hatched a plan to put her in the fenced back garden, until I could find her owner.

"Well, hello there!" I said in greeting. The tail started to wag. I have never, ever met an ill-tempered golden retriever.

"Aren't you a good girl! Come here!" I commanded in friendly voice. Obediently she trotted over, relieved to be rescued with a few kindly words and a gentle pat on the head.

Looking to gain her complete trust, I gushed further praise, and rubbed behind her ears, while sneaking my hand around to gently grab hold of her collar.

She did not object when I opened the back gate and lead her into the garden.

Annual pink cosmos and blue Salvia.

Do you have a personal I.D. and phone number on your pets?

The golden retriever had none; just a city dog license and a tag with her vet's contact information. The vet's number was long distance. How far had this dog come I wondered? Hmm...perhaps the vet's tag were old and the owner had moved. The only local number was the dog licensing offices. Would the owner face a fine for letting their dog run loose? Probably! But without a personal I.D. tag, I had no choice but to call the city's animal control offices.

"She's a repeat offender!", the woman on the other end of the phone declared after I read off the retriever's license number to her. Repeat offender? I looked over at the retriever's round, joval-looking face in dismay. Was she really suggesting this dog was a criminal of some kind?

"Will the owner face a fine before they can reclaim their dog?", I asked. In my head, I wondered just how grateful the owner was going to be for this rescue.

"Yes, but she's been warned several times to keep better control of her dog, so don't feel too sorry for her." I waited on the line while the animal control officer tried to get the dog's owner on the phone. No answer! Instead an officer was dispatched to pick up the poor retriever to take him to doggy jail until his owner came to pay the fine and claim him.

Had I done the right thing?

 Feather Reed Grass and Perennial Fountain Grass

The same nagging doubts made me hesitate when I found the chickadee trapped in the back porch. I didn't want to cause injury in an attempt to do good.

In spite of my trepidation, I seized the opportunity to act when the exhausted bird slid down the glass to the shelf along the bottom of the window. For a brief moment, he was trapped between the little decorative bottles on the shelf and the window pane. I cupped my hand around his tiny body, taking care not to damage his wings...ah-haw, caught him!

Holding this little soul in my hands was like holding air.

For a brief moment, we regarded one another. Then with his black beak, the chickadee pecked at my hand just to let me know who was boss.His beak was so tiny however, it hurt not at all. My grip remained firm. The poor chickadee grew still, resigned to his fate. I am sure he must have thought that he was lunch.

I walked to the door and opened my hand. Gratitude took wing and then was gone.

All the images in this post were chosen for their delicate, bird-like qualities. 

The pictures were shot recently in one of the city's parks.