This picture of Lantana bandana pink was taken by one of our visitors. This annual will be included in the white form this year.

In 2012 I will continue to refine my designs in some of the larger gardens at MacKenzie-Childs. A gardener will tell you that a plan is never finished; a living garden continues to grow and evolve as the gardener becomes enchanted with new plants, falls out of love with other plants, finds that a plant she chose is not as well suited as she thought, or that the growth habit is just different than she thought it would be. I feel pity for the gardener who labors in a prescribed design and who does not have the freedom to change things up. I am most fortunate that I can make changes and experiment; every moment I am in the garden I am assessing the design and working through what changes I might like to make next season.

My work schedule is almost perfectly attuned to the calendar year. Everything quiets down dramatically after the first of the year giving me time to research, write, and plan. I have been reading production garden books by Elliot Coleman, a four season garden pioneer in Maine, and books by Cabot, Griswold, Thompson, Eck and Winterrowd, all regarding landscaping from an estate approach rather than garden by garden. For a historic and American bit of inspiration I am enjoying Andrea Wulf’s “Founding Gardeners”; this book has me coveting and dreaming of a garden that will feature native plants and trees.

The Production Garden reminds me most of gardens at My Vernon and Monticello

For the plans I have for this year, I look at each garden individually and as it relates to the whole property. I am, for the most part, pleased with the Long Border. I feel the tall grasses, phlox, monarda, and delphiniums that provide the foundation,compliment the tall lilies beautifully. I was very pleased with the geraniums and nepeta filling out the front. I have a few holes that will give me space for dahlias, echinacea , and digitalis. I need to replant alcea as I have edited out too many seedlings. Additionally, when I first planted hollyhocks my supplier only offered singles in black; since then breeders have developed the single flowers I prefer in more colors.

Monarda 'Raspberry Wine' is a big part of our summer display in the Long Border

The Grass Border should be fairly carefree in this, its second, year. I will add more sedum since the bareroot I planted last year did not get pampered enough to make it want to live. We planted it late and neglected it in favor of greater emergencies so I cannot blame it. Likely I and the bees were the only ones who really missed it.

The graceful cascade of Pennisetum 'Karley Rose' is a perfect foil for Salvia 'Black and Blue' with a haze of Perovskia in the background

I am pleased that we continue to fill the holes in the White Garden. This garden along the streambed is so immense that I have to fill it in bit by bit. We simply run out of growing space in our greenhouse and cold frames. Even if I could grow everything, I do not have enough help to get it planted all at once so the White Garden gets expanded and filled in each year. Our plans this year include acanthus, more daisies, and more white lilies.

Chrysanthemums and Miscanthus in the White Garden

The Bog Garden was successful beyond my hopes. By filtering the water entering the pond through the bog, we were able to keep the pond much freer of algae blooms. I will continue to expand the iris planted along the edge and hope for better water lily performance. The bog will be replanted with colocasia; I love their huge, tropical leaves.

Planting Water lilies

My next post will concentrate on the changes I plan to bring to the Farmhouse Garden, some exciting possibilities we are exploring for the Courtly Check Courtyard, and the wildflower meadow I am planning for my bees!

Looking into the archway, a picture taken by Fred Bertram

Plans or resolutions, I have great intentions for 2012. Last year went by at such a breakneck pace; it felt like we were at a dead run much of the time. In 2011 we tried out so many new things that it seamed like we were constantly climbing the learning curve. I am really looking forward to refining and expanding what we started last year.

Simon as a gosling

Our most noted and, dare I say, famous change was the adoption of Simon. I gave very little thought to the long term ramifications of scooping Simon out of the garden (she was on the wrong side of the fence) and taking her into my office saying, “It can just live with us in the Estate Barn”. She has gone on to become the Estate mascot. The darling of staff and visitors, she follows the crew everywhere, has her own pool, is a must see for all dignitaries, and had so many pictures taken of her that we gave her a facebook page. She now has more friends than I do! I have heard rumors of an ornament in the plans.

Simon got a pool and friends for Christmas

In addition to Simon, we had several additions to the farm animal menagerie. Two of our cows, Molly (her daughter MacKenzie was in the Matthew VanFleet book, Moo, along with our rooster, Davide) and Nuala, had calves this spring. Our challenge this year will be befriending Caolinn and Robert the Bruce. They have been leading the wild life protected by their mothers, happy as part of the fold; our task this winter will be to halter train them and make them public friendly. We had our first lambing; novel for me since, as a girl who grew up around cows, I got to “assist” in my first lambing. We will not have more calves this year but  look forward to lambs from Libby and Annick. We are using a different ram this year so I am excited about having lambs in different colors.

Libby is wearing the bow- a plethora of browns

The production gardens will get a fence and three Flower Basket Garden Gates as I try my hand at espalier. I have long admired the cordoned and espaliered fruit trees at Mount Vernon; the stylized designs of our Espalier Collection, especially the Fireplace Screen, have me itching to expand my skills.

We will utilize the sweeps and herb squares to grow more flowers for cutting. In our continuing plan to feature fresh flowers in the shop and farmhouse, we are expanding to Fresh on Fridays. This will be an opportunity for visitors to pick up gorgeous bunches of flowers from our gardens for them to arrange at home.  I have begun perusing the plant catalogs for cutting flowers and plants not already in our gardens. High on my list are sunflowers and dahlias.

I will be planting more dahlias like this Nuit d'Ete for the cutting garden

I have plans to improve frequency and utility of the blog. This winter I will be creating a “What is Blooming Now” section of the blog that will highlight the primary blooms and features in the gardens each week. I will be able to expand on each plant, giving its garden location, cultivar name, and other horticultural details along with a picture of the plant in our gardens. This will be a long term, ongoing addition to the blog that will focus more on each plant. I am resolved to post more often; I know I enjoy blogs that update frequently.

Well, I had intended this post to be a summary and comprehensive plan for the coming year but I got carried away and have only scratched the surface. So, more to come…

And another shot of Simon, standing on the frozen pond

Libby shows off her winter coat and her Holiday bling

We have been using every day-lit, non rainy moment in the last six weeks to cut down gardens, plant bulbs, and most importantly, decorate for the winter holidays. As I mentioned previously, Corinne and Ellie worked four weeks putting lights in the deciduous trees in the Courtly Check Courtyard and in two trees in front of the archway. We also decorated a big evergreen tree in the entry circle. We have used LED lights in all the trees; the lower energy requirements of the LED strings allow us to connect many strings together without blowing fuses. Corinne and Ellie did a superb job- Ellie even came back after dark to take pictures.

Locust Trees in the Courtly Check Courtyard

The archway flanked by a Coffee Tree and Locust treeGarland wrapped lamp postsThe Farmhouse Porch

In addition to the LED lights on the trees we put incandescent lights in various locations throughout the Estate. This year we put fairy lights on the Concolor Fir trees by the front entrance, on the Frasier Fir trees beside the doors, under the archway, and outlining several structures on the grounds.

The Gazebo

The other important element in our holiday decorations is the use of evergreen wreath, garlands, medallions, and boughs. I purchase our wreaths from a nearby Amish woman. She and her family do a lovely job creating a multitude of mixed-green wreaths and hundreds of feet of garland.

The wreaths vary from 10 inches up to huge 48 inch wreaths that we hang on our barn doors. The wreaths and garlands are comprised of Douglas Fir, Frasier Fir, and white pine. As a special touch Ada adds multiflora rose hips; we decorate the wreaths with pine cones and bows.

The garlands are used to wrap the lamp posts, porch posts and around doorways. We intertwine fairy lights through the garlands.

Simon poses on the Farmhouse porch

We use about 200 pounds of evergreen boughs to fill in window boxes, around the fountain, and make arrangements for either side of the doors going into the shop and the farmhouse. I use a base of Douglas Fir, Frasier Fir, White Pine, and boxwood; to these greens I add Oregon Cedar, Salal, and seeded Eucalyptus.  I like to use crab apples and Mountain Ash berries from our property as accents in the arrangements.

I love the different textures each green brings to the evergreen arrangements

The Fountain in the Courtly Check Courtyard

Mountain Ash Berries

 The medallions we hang on the farmhouse, shop, tour center, and employee entrance doors are special decorations we created after visiting Cooperstown, NY and being inspired by the decorations supplied by the Clarke Foundation. Our special project manager created a frame which holds a Courtly Check tile and our signature thistle surrounded by boxwood. I pick gilded leaves, pomegranates, acorns, lady apples, and cones to adorn the greens. I especially enjoy creating the medallions; I like their unique beauty.

Medallions on the shop doors

The Farmhouse medallions use smaller tiles so we have left off the thistle

We hope your holiday preparations are as joyful as ours. I love this time of year with its cheery lights and fresh smells. Enjoy the pictures of our latest efforts.

Simon has been fitted with a bow for the Holidays

You may not know this but in my heart, I promised to try to blog at least once a week. I have failed, repeatedly and dismally. You see, for me, writing does not come easily nor does it come as elegantly as I would like.

Still fall days make the pond a reflective mirror

While I am working in the gardens I am filled with ideas and think of my phrasing, yet when I actually sit down to write it takes ages. Lately I have not had ages.

Simon does not mind the wet days at all

We went through a period this fall when it rained nearly every day. We got so much rain that even on the dry days Corinne and I could not venture into the gardens because it was too wet to work without risking compaction of the soil. All the outside staff had jobs that could be done inside during inclement weather.  I read about wintering over bees, I ordered next year’s perennial starter plants, I ordered the bulbs for fall planting, and I even researched how to blog better. Corinne and Ellie cleaned, inventoried the bulbs I ordered, remade Simon’s sleep pen, rearranged the chairs (don’t ask), and readied the lights for installation in the trees for Holiday. Doug organized his work bench, coordinated maintenance on mowers and snow equipment, and took a week vacation.

A few of the thousands of bulbs we plant each fall

The rain eventually stopped and the gardens dried up enough for us to work in them. We first got busy taking the old lights out of the deciduous trees in the Courtly Check Courtyard and in front of the archway so that we could replace them with new lights. Two years ago we had replaced the incandescent tree lights with energy efficient LED. The press on LED light strands touted their longevity and significantly lower energy usage. We found, to our considerable disappointment, that the kind of indoor/outdoor lights we bought would not remain viable if left outside all year. At any rate, the trees had grown enough so that the cords were beginning to be too tight and needed to be replaced. Corinne and Ellie have been restringing the trees with sealed LED strings that are supposed to last much better outside. This is a tedious job that has kept them up in the lift for two and a half weeks so far.

Ellie and Corinne putting lights in the tree

While Corinne and Ellie are having fun in the lift, I have been cutting down all the gardens. Usually I am able to callously disregard the last blooming perennials reasoning that the remaining blooms are proportionally few, that the gardens need clearing before we can plant bulbs, and well, it is just time. This year I am much more conflicted. Firstly, I have planted more late fall blooming plants  because the late blooming chrysanthemums are just gorgeous, I used late blooming, cold hardy salvias to mark narcissi location, and every bloom is more nectar and pollen to help my bees get through the winter.

Chrysanthemum 'Samba' doesn't start blooming until mid October

But cut I do; I feel vindicated when I find mouse nests and tunnels under the foliage as I trim back the perennials and remove the annuals. I know that if I did not clean up the gardens each fall, my vole problem would be greatly magnified the following year. We have an excellent mouser in our cat, Lucky. He likes to hang out near me as I clear away the gardens. Since I am ridiculously afraid of mice, I feel safer knowing he is there, ready to pounce.

Lucky has a eagle-eye view of possible marauding vermin

Monday I planted the first of the bulbs. I was able to get the entire Farmhouse Garden planted before we got 1 ½ inches of rain Monday night. Now my gardens are too wet again! Oh, well. I will use this time to start working on the Medallions we decorate the doors with for Holiday.

The Courtly Check Medallion on our Tour Center Door

According to the forecast we are likely to have our first flakes of snow that will undoubtedly mark the end of our tender annuals for the season. We have had a few days of “English” weather (misty, cool, not quite rain, but everything is wet) that have kept us out of the gardens. Our boom lift was delivered Monday so that Corinne, Ellie, and I could get the lights for the Holiday display out (old lights) and in (the new lights) the deciduous trees. Every day I walk past the boxes of bulbs we need to plant; it seems that daily I need more and more clothing as I get dressed for work.

We have so much work yet to do, thousands of bulbs to plant, millions of plants to cut down, billions of yards of compost to spread, trillions of …, well, you get the idea (maybe I exaggerated a little). When it rains or is wretched, I do desk work. Blogs are part of my rainy day activities. So often my topic is dictated by what is blooming  right at the minute that I sit down to write and; decisions I made in selecting said plant were months ago. The bulbs we will plant as soon as it dries up will become invisible and forgotten until the earliest among them blooms in late March, early April.

The foliage of early narcissi are the first hint of our huge spring display

My bulb selections are driven by many factors; some I consider are color, bloom time, form, light requirements, and pest resistance.

Generally, when the bulb catalogs start arriving in early summer, I begin by casually browsing as I drink my coffee in the morning or last thing before I fall asleep. Copies of bulbs magazines get scattered throughout my house and office. Sometime in August I start getting serious and begin my spreadsheets designating garden, bloom time, height, color, number to order. Etc. I send my orders off as early in September as I can manage.

I start with tulips. For the most part, I limit my selections to the taller varieties. Tulips provide my big bang of color; the earliest blooming, delicate species, and smaller blooming varieties are some what lost on my visitors. Any tulip that blooms before mid April risks being missed by most visitors.

Tulipa humilis alba coerula oculata (which means white with blue eye) with scilla in White Garden

 I decide what color or theme I want to have in each garden for spring and then build a bloom sequence around that.

Tulips Pink Impression, Apricot Parrot, Don Quichotte, Best Purple in Studio

For example, the long strip in front of the studio will be planted in saturated colors of melon, pink, magenta, purple, and butter yellow of single tall tulips, Darwins and Single Late for the most part. This is the only garden that gets what I call the Soldier effect- masses of tulips meant to be viewed as a whole.

Salmon Parrot Tulip

The Courtly Check Courtyard tulips are selected equally for both color and form. I use the same saturated hues as the Studio Garden but limit the pinks to blue tones and use more fancy types- peony, parrot, and lily flowered. This is the only garden I feel safe putting Black Parrot because this garden is slightly shaded by the time Black Parrot opens and is less likely to get burned shut. I have a few favorites, upstar (peony), China Pink (lily), Don Quixote (Triumph) that echo the pink of the crabapple that blooms at that time.

I also choose the fancier tulips for the Farmhouse Garden although I use lighter colors than in the Courtyard in keeping with the interior colors in the farmhouse. This past year Akebono, a Darwin tulip, was a new addition. It’s soft yellow edged with magenta was a perfect foil for the Bleu Aimable, Queen of the Night, and Cum Laude (all Single Lates).

The Long Border is pink and white before it goes purple

The Long Border is my garden to pull out the entire tulip stops. In it we plant the cool pinks and the warm pinks, doubles, parrots,  lily flowered, and single tulips in all the shades except red and strong orange. I use light, soft yellow, purply-blue, and dark purple tulips as foils for the varying shades of pinks. These colors seem to pop the pinks and whites. I like to use the Impression series of Darwin Tulips in the Long Border. They are the tallest of the tulips I order; their height really shines in the deep Long Border.

My only hot color garden continues to be the Bus Stop Garden. I really love this short little border! I started planting only red tulips but have since added an absolute stunner parrot called Flaming. And King’s Orange- how could I resist a tulip whose catalog copy taunts “not for the faint of heart”- it is like a dare. And another parrot called cockatoo. The combination of the reds, orange and flame reds is very exciting.

In the Shop Garden, the fully enclosed, sweet little space that is entered through the shop, we have experimented with a different method of planting than in the other gardens.

 As I have explained before, when I plant tulips I group them in single variety masses of 9 to 12 bulbs in a 12 inch circle so that when they bloom they have more of a single plant effect. I seldom row them out and never mix the varieties. That was never until a few years ago when I discovered a bulb company whose whole thing was to mix compatible varieties. They sell assortments that have varying characteristics; sometime the colors are complimentary, sometimes contrasting mixtures, some selections are a monochrome with subtle differences in form or color, and some mixtures are one color but comprised of varieties that bloom at different times.

The bulbs a big and the mixes are somewhat irresistible; they just don’t fit my usual planting scheme. I just wanted use some, somewhere. The Shop Garden gives me that space. Here, the space I am planting is so defined that I feel I can do a solid planting block without spending a fortune or being too one note. The past two years I have opted for a mix called Melony Day, a luscious pink that is as delicious as its name implies; for 2012 I have selected a new variety called Cretaceous. I loved the name and the colors are more like the Bus Stop Garden over the fence.

I have gotten so carried away talking about the tulips! The same thing happens when I look at the catalogs. I will review my narcissi, lily, and other bulb reasoning in a future post.

The bright colors of a Monarch against the muted colors of Chrysanthemum 'Samba' and Verbena bonariensis

This is the hardest time of the year for me. I love everything about Autumn in the Finger Lakes. The air is crisp, the apples are tasty, the trees take on scarlet, russet, yellow, and purple tones, and rain has made the soil dark and friable- a lovely word that, to me, means the weeds will pull like a dream. Autumn means the sweltering 90° days of summer when we spend half our time moving watering systems are behind us for another year. Autumn means the little things that have bothered me about the gardens are relegated to the “let’s make sure this is different next year” pile. Autumn means the russet foliage of spent lily stems and perennials are no long something that needs to be cut out but instead, become part of the garden design. Autumn means the grasses and cool-loving tender perennials and annuals have their days of glory.

Up close the tiny blooms of Salvia mesa hybrid Azure looks like an Iris bloom. This is a new salvia for us- it did not get going until late summer, but now- wow!

Autumn means we have to cut down all those still blooming perennials, annuals, and grasses to make way for the 10,000+ bulbs we have yet to plant. In so many ways autumn is perhaps the busiest and briefest season for us here on the farm at MacKenzie-Childs; though it is as long as the other seasons, both ends meld into the seasons before and after that it feels shortened to six weeks. Additionally, we need to decorate the campus for winter and Holiday before Thanksgiving. We will again be stringing lights in the locust trees of the Courtyard, setting up a huge evergreen in the front circle, and hanging garland and greens on door, posts, and porches.

This is a small sampling of the 10,000+ bulbs we have to plant this fall

We have so much to do to get ready for winter; it is hard to know where to start. It is especially difficult to cut down gardens that are still lovely and blooming and vibrant with flower colors as well as being alive with butterflies and bees. Earlier this week, we got some lovely pictures of monarch butterflies and our own honey bees feasting on the nectar in our late blooming Long Border Garden. Enjoy the fantastic pictures!

The Chicken Palace and spent blooms of Phlox provide a backdrop for the showy butterflies and Verbena

This week the blooms of the Long Border have been especially alive with Monarch Butterflies. I overheard one of our artists admiring the orange, black, violet color combination

More monarchs in the Long Border

Aster Monch blooms from summer through late fall. It is one of my favorite asters- blooming continuously since July

Chrysanthemum 'Samba' provides the latest blooms for our hungry bees

Verbena Bonariensis provides energy for a Monarch migrating to winter grounds

This last weekend we celebrated our annual Fall Festival here at MacKenzie-Childs in Aurora. Despite a few weeks of cloudy, rainy, cool weather preceeding the festival, Mother Nature provided a week of very workable fall days with a spectacular weekend gaurenteed to provide our visitors with lovely days to visit, tour, and shop.

Enjoy the pictures of our Fall decorations- be sure to stop in soon before we cut all the gardens down for the winter! 

We had many flowers the bees gathered honey from this summer, Allium was a favorite

A few weeks ago I posted about the honey harvest: it was exciting for Kirk and me- we actually harvested honey! And it tasted good! We felt like true beekeepers.

Our own Taylor Honeypot from the Oddfellows collection being filled with our own wildflower honey

One of the pluses of the harvesting the honey was that we also spent more time looking over the hive. Prior to that time, most of our hive checks had been quick, fumbling, and tentative. Both of our schedules were very busy and the bee suits are pretty warm for 90 degree days; part of me felt that it was rude to open up and inspect the hives in more than a cursorily fashion.

For me, the tipping point came when I went to our local bee keeping group’s monthly meeting; there, I watched one of the experienced members open and inspect the group’s hives. There was nothing tentative about his approach; there were plenty of bees in the air, he ignored them; the hive was open for quite a long time while he methodically went through each frame.

Holding a frame of bees. This picture was taken in May- the frames are much more densely populated now.

 I returned from that meeting with a determination to really look at our hives. I had nagging concerns about the West hive, the one that had swarmed in July. The last time Kirk and I had it open, we felt there was an overabundance of drone bees in proportion to worker bees. After talking with other bee keepers and reading more beekeeping literature, we felt our West hive might be queenless and had a laying worker. This was a problem; to make it through the winter our hive would need a queen.

The Queen Bee shipping cage with a new queen and four workers to attend to her needs. Yes, this came in the mail!

Enter Sofia, our beautiful new Italian queen.  Bees have races- Caucasian, Russian, Carniolan, et al- I chose an Italian Queen; some sources say Italian bees are gentler. I ordered her on a Tuesday; she arrived, with her retinue, on Wednesday. We had rain Thursday so I could not install her in the hive until Friday. In the meantime, she went home with me every night. One does not just leave a queen lying about on one’s desk, it  isn’t proper protocol.

Sofia is the bee with the white dot.

I researched the best way to introduce a new queen and readied our hive for requeening. In preparing for requeening we discovered that the hive had actually raised its own queen. Now I had another problem, two queens cannot occupy the same hive, one will kill the other. Since we had the hive bodies on hand, we decided to split the West hive into two hives.

This is Kirk and me at the beginning of our hive disassembly- When we started all the hives were uniform white- now we have a mixture of white and unpainted boxes

We were able to locate the new queen; we moved her, a couple frames of brood, some brood frames from our very vigorous East hive, and some honey frames into a new hive body. We then inserted the queen cage in a space in the West hive. We decided to feed the new hive since that colony had the fewest number of workers.

A frame of capped honey-we will want to leave some on the hive for the bees for the winter

This week we checked all three hives. We could not find Sofia but could see that we had new brood, so she must be doing her job. We saw the New Queen and were able to observe the East Queen laying one of the 2-300 eggs she lays a day.

Another shot of our beautiful honey

We feel quite happy with our beekeeping experience thus far. In the next month we will concentrate on making sure each hive has enough stores to get them through the winter and readying the hives for winter. We are quite excited to have three hive now- we just need a better naming system than East, West, and New… Any suggestions?

A monarch butterfly on Ageratum 'Blue Horizon'

I do love my annuals. My very first garden- likely 35-40 years ago (GASP! Who is that old!)- was created entirely with annuals. My mother gave me a little rectangular garden; it couldn’t have been more than 12 ft x 3 ft, that was backed with the wire fence that divided our property from our neighbors. In that garden I planted cosmos, marigolds, gladiolas, the gaudy cocks comb and feather type salvias, and morning glory on the fence. The plants were all in lines (like soldiers) and strictly ordered by height. It was bright and exuberant and I was incredibly proud of it.

As I grew and became more knowledgeable, I gravitated towards perennials. I even had a youthful distain of the annuals whose dependability had lured me into gardening. When I started my greenhouse business ( a job that dovetailed nicely with staying home with my growing family and life on our dairy farm) I found the best entrée was to grow annuals- bedding plants as they were known. I read as much as I could get my hands on, subscribed to trade magazines, and worked with the local gentleman who wanted to get out of the growing business and go to Florida. I chaffed at growing just petunias, impatiens, and marigolds. I expanded my selection to include perennials and started to grow more unusual annuals. A pivotal resource in my library came with the purchase of Annuals for Connoisseurs  by Wayne Winterowd. Emphasizing annuals that were the antithesis of neat little mounds of begonias; this book supplied me with lists of annuals to grow and incorporate into my perennial gardens to help them through the August slump.

Nicotiana alata has seeded ittself freely, Winterowd introduced me to this plant

Here at MacKenzie-Childs I depend on the annuals to kick the gardens up a notch after the big perennials stars, like phlox, hemerocallis, lilies, and Monarda, have exhausted themselves in July and early August. Most of the annuals I choose are what I call slow starters. We typically plant them in the holes left by the tulips we dig out every spring. At planting I clip them back to encourage branching; if they have any blooms when we put them in the ground, I remove those as well; I want to encourage root growth.  Right about the middle of August I start getting questions asking what this plant or that flower is called.

Giant Swallowtail Butterfly on Verbena bonariensis flower

Depending on the garden, we use the annuals in various ways. In the Courtly Check Courtyard and the part of the White Garden under the willows, our two shady gardens, we plant impatiens, bright coleus, strobilanthes, and begonias. Because our shade gardens depend on foliage plants for the bulk of their structure, the annuals provide continuous color.

A favorite coleus this year

For a couple of years now we have depended on various members of the annual salvia family to act as Narcissus location markers- we plant them throughout the gardens where their blues and purple colors meld perfectly with the rest of the plants.

Salvia farinacea 'Victoria' an excellent bulb marker!

Because my glass greenhouse is more beautiful than efficient, I order most of my plants as started plugs or liners. In doing that, I am able to delay delivery of my first plants until around St Patrick’s Day; we seldom get really bitter cold after that time and if my furnace goes out, have less risk of losing all my plants. In part, I order some different annuals each year- It keeps me out of a rut and introduces me and my visitors to new plants.

Some of my favorites are the nicotiana sylvestris, nicotiana langsdorffii, and verbena bonariensis   in the Long Border. These are prolific self sowers, I planted them the first year I gardened here and have been editing their locations since. The Grass Border sports a row of Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blue’ to the delight of hummingbirds, my honey bees, and many butterflies. Not all of the annuals are flowering. I have quite fallen under the spell of interesting coleus, tropical colcasia, and strobilanthes dyerianus.

Strobilanthes dyerianus always gets questions

Salvia 'Black and Blue'

Next year, try some new annuals- they will liven up your garden. I have been so happy with the dependable and glorious color they have given my gardens while I wait for the cool autumn temperature to turn my sedums to pink, my asters and mums to bloom, my delphiniums to have another go, and my leaves to mustard, russet , and red.  What are some of your favorite ways to bridge the gap from summer to fall flowers?