Every gardener longs for Spring, and then for the glorious, florious summer. However, this particular gardener of the flâneur persuasion happens to be rather looking forward to autumn…
Not, mind you, that I’m not enjoying the first real summer in Denmark since 2010! I do not mean to sound like an ingrate; I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the sun, the heat, the fact that shorts have – for the first time in my adult life – become part of my city attire. (Up to this year I’ve stubbornly refused to wear shorts within metropolitan areas, sweating away in jeans and chinos until I was well outside the city boundaries. I suspect it’s all about body issues; I never felt I had nice-looking – or even presentable – legs…)
So why do I long for autumn? Well, it’s quite simple, really… When it’s this hot and dry, all plans about moving plants or putting in new plants must be on hold, since a newly planted plant would die within days.
And my garden is full of plants that are NOT in the right place – and of places in need of new plants… Mostly I need to start planning for summer-long blooms, i.e. a succession of flowers from May through September. (So really it’s summer plus a month on either end…) This will be tricky as plants seem to bloom a fortnight or more later here in my garden than they do back in Copenhagen, only 50km / 30M further South; I suspect the damp clay soil has something to do with that, as it heats up less quickly than the mythological “fine tilth” of the Copenhagen parks…
Anyway, one of the places where the flowers bloom happily and at the right time is around The Puddles, but…
While I do rather love the ‘Frans Hals’ daylily, I do find that it sits uncomfortably with the pale mauve or lavender of the hosta flowers behind it, and I really need to change that. The trouble is, I suspect I will end up moving both plants, so I need to work out where each should go.
The hosta flowers fit in nicely with the other colours of The Puddles; mainly blues and purples of various shades with some yellow thrown in for contrast, but I’ve planted them between Puddles 2 and 3, and there’s just not enough room for them; they overhang the puddles as they were meant to, but perhaps rather too much… I think I need something slightly lower – or something slightly more upright – so The Puddles won’t be hidden away completely.
In other less-planned – and less planted – areas, the Lawn bed has shown me a surprising combination that I love to bits; a bunch of gladiloli that I bought as being “red” – hoping that would mean a true red – have turned our to be coral-red, and they are looking very nice with the orange of the nasturtiums sown around the feet of the ‘rhapsody in blue’ roses (that have not bloomed this year due to deer attacks and possibly also their move to the new bed – they will be fenced by next spring, I promise you!).
All right, so there are some pink lavatera behind that really shouldn’t be there – and some bright blue lobelias that I won’t repeat next year as they just didn’t WANT to act as a ground cover), but if you look away from all that I rather like the hot colours and could imagine a blue/purple rose or four would look smashing alongside it all.
There are also some dark-leaved heuchera ‘Purple Palace’ that stand out, and I think they could happily be replaced with a red or orange crocosmia. They have the sort of upright and showy habit that means that you can dispense with glads and still have the same effect, only with an earlier and longer-lasting bloom. (And without having to lift the corms in winter…)
Apart from the “aesthetic moves”, there are obviously also some plants that need to be moved for their own benefit, rather than mine; The roses the Flâmeur Husband got for his birthday last year are looking rather sad, so they will go into the lawn bed somewhere – or maybe in the extension of the lawn bed, rather? – and the blue iris germanica needs to be lifted and divided, which will give me some much.needed extra plants for all my beds. Same goes for the sedum ‘herbstfreude’ between puddles 1 and 2, the hemerocallis ‘fulva’ and perhaps also the perennial sweet peas. (Though to be honest, one of the reason for dividing the sweet peas is just to get extra plants to give away to a friend who wants more flowers in her allotment garden.)
I’ll leave you with one example of a plant that I moved – and who has literally flourished in its new spot: The white rose that was standing against the kitchen wall and who is now the star of the lawn bed.
I have no idea what rose this is, but it’s tall and lanky – which is ideal for a mixed bed where I hope to have perennials growing under the roses eventually. (Also, the height puts her out of the deer’s way, as well as it puts her right into my line of vision when I’m having my morning coffee on the sofa while the garden is still in a grey twilight.)
I’m not looking forward to autumn because it means the snow will be flying here and lots of it. But…I certainly understand the need to move plants. Gardening is an interesting passion because it seems a gardener is never quite satisfied with plant placement. I have a wagon full of lilies that I pulled out yesterday and today I’ll find them a new home. Enjoy your summer and your shorts! 🙂
Well, I’m still a fairly new gardener, and my garden has only been in my care for three years, so we’re still just getting to know each other… -And I’m getting to understand what level of maintenance I can realistically offer the garden when I only go there once or twice a week in summer.
A wagon full of lilies sounds like a luxury beyond compare;I hope you find the right spot for them!
I am making mental lists of all the things that need relocating, including a rather large tree. Which is to say that I agree about fall gardening and completely look forward to it. I loved the image of morning coffee and the white rose beckoning in the early dawn…
We only have large trees that need to be relocated into the firewood pile…
But for now, let’s enjoy summer and save up energy for that burst of hard – and enjoyable – work that awaits us in autumn! I for one intend to sit on a balcony with a good friend tonight with a bottle of rosé champagne in the sun…
Like you I’m looking at how the newly planted garden needs shuffling around and adjusting. And thanks for reminding me about Gladioli, I’d forgotten about hem
And don’t get me on the subject of shorts and my legs…….
Gladioli have such a bad reputation as a naff flower, but I think they can look stunning when planted in the right spot. Too bad they’re not normally hardy in Denmark, and almost certainly not in my damp clay…
I look forward to some cooler weather in the garden too.
It can be quite sweltering, and I find myself trying to will the cherry plum to grow quicker after the severe pruning we gave it last year. I need it to fill out again so it can work as a parasol in the garden; a shady place to pull up a chair and sit with a cold drink…
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I found myself opening the “garden notes” page of my garden spreadsheet this week to note all the plants that need to be moved around and my thoughts about who will go where. I tend to do most of this moving in spring, but I know from experience that the moves that seem so obvious to me now will be, at best, a fuzzy memory 8 months from now.
Spring will be so busy, so I’m thinking that if I get the moves done in early autumn, the plants will be nicely settled in before winter arrives. But yes, so often these decisions about relocating plants are better made when you can actually see the plants in their full size – and then they can be executed at a later time when weather and time allows it.
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