by Christie Purifoy | Apr 15, 2020
In real life, not so much. But in the garden? Purple has my heart.
I’ve been trying to analyze why this is the case. Why, given myriad options, do I choose purple-flowering plants again and again?
I think it began because I’ve never been drawn to hot, bright colors. So many summer-flowering plants are red and orange, and while I’m learning to appreciate those colors (for instance, tithonia or Mexican sunflower is a new favorite of mine), purple blends easily with the paler pinks and apricots I have always enjoyed.
But no matter the reason, my garden color profile–at least in summer–is largely a purple one.
Here are some of my favorite purple bloomers:
- Phlox paniculata ‘Jeana’: First things first: Not every purple plant is purple-with-a-capital-P. Some are more lavender, some more mauve. This wonderful phlox is a pinkish purple, but I love it more for its performance than its hue. Tall phlox is a romantic, cottage-garden staple, but it often suffers from terrible powdery mildew in my garden. This particular phlox won the trials for mildew resistance at a research garden near my home, Delaware’s Mt. Cuba Center.
- Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’: My love for this plant is well discussed in this garden library. I love how it smothers weeds, how it spreads itself around, how it blooms for most of the summer, and how it seems to unite all the disparate plants in my garden. There are many other nepetas or catmints to choose from. All are easy to divide in spring in order to increase their numbers in your garden.
- Anise Hyssop (agastache): A perennial herb in the mint family, this one is easy to start from seed, makes great tea, and attracts so many pollinators to my garden.
- Russian Sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia): Like a lavender cloud in my late-summer and fall garden. This one shines when the rest of my garden has grown tired. Especially great for dry landscapes.
- ‘Boogie Nites’ dahlia: One of my favorite dahlias, this purple flower blooms and blooms and looks simply stunning in the garden.
- Johnny Jump Up (viola tricolor): A favorite heirloom flower for spring. Seeds itself around and returns year after year.
- Crocus tommasinianus: Affectionately called “tommies,” I plant them by the hundreds in fall. My goal is to see a purple carpet across the lawn in spring. A real classic.
- Tulipa ‘Rem’s Favourite’: This color-streaked tulip does well for me in pots. I plant the bulbs in containers in the fall, keep them sheltered in my potting shed, then move their blooms around in the spring wherever I want a bit of color.
- Gomphrena (globe amaranth): I love this annual. It can be found in shades from white to pink to purple and really fills out empty spaces in the garden in late summer. It thrives in heat and humidity and looks beautiful when cut and allowed to dry.
by Christie Purifoy | Apr 14, 2020
Sheet mulching. Also, sometimes called “lasagne gardening” or “composting in place.”
There are few garden practices I would call life-changing, but this one most certainly is.
First of all, what is it?
Sheet mulching is the practice of layering organic material onto the surface of the ground, rather than digging up or tilling.
It is an especially good idea for any area where you would like a new bed: for instance, turn an area of weeds or sod into rich soil for planting without ever picking up your shovel or an herbicide.
How do you do it?
Easy.
- Cover your area with a single layer of ordinary, brown cardboard (plastic tape removed) or a thick layer of regular (non glossy) newspaper. Wet well with a garden hose.
- Add at least six inches (a foot would be even better) of organic material on top of the cardboard or newspaper. I love to use mushroom mulch (a rich by-product of mushroom farming), but you could use shredded bark, chopped leaves, straw (not hay), compost, or composted manure. Woody toppings will take the longest to break down.
- Time. Follow those two steps in the fall, and you will have a bed ready for planting in spring. But feel free to do it at any time. You’ll know when the bed is ready: over time, the cardboard or newspaper will break down, but not before the grass and weeds underneath have died and decayed and fed the soil.
Why does it work?
Sheet mulching mimics nature by building soil from the top down. Picture a forest: why is the soil beneath the trees such rich hummus? Because year after year, the leaves fall, decay, and–top down–the soil grows richer.
THAT is the power of sheet mulching.
by Christie Purifoy | Apr 9, 2020
I’ve been reading Digging In: Tending to Life in Your Own Backyard by Robert Benson.
I’ve enjoyed Benson’s other books, particularly his book Living Prayer, and I’m enjoying this one as well: it’s sweet and simple and sometimes humorous, and I read a few pages each night before bed.
Benson isn’t really a gardener. He describes himself as the supportive laborer for his wife–the real gardener in the family. That means this wise little memoir is perhaps even better suited for the non-gardeners among us: I imagine it could inspire more than a few of them to pick up a spade and plant a rose.
But here and there, Benson writes something that I read with a jolt of recognition. Yes. That’s it, exactly, I say to myself.
Which is what I said when I read this:
“Gardens are about waiting and about hope as much as they are about anything.
You wait for spring to come and for roses to bud out and for the earth to green up again. You wait for seeds to germinate and irises to spread. You wait for the dogwoods to turn white and pink and for the maple to go golden in the fall. And all the while you hold a vision of some new thing in your head, of what the garden will be someday.
You cannot hurry it along, not any of it. Spring comes when it comes; roses bloom when they will; the garden grows at its own sweet pace. What it teaches you is to wait, to be patient, and to pay attention.
Some morning the sun will rise, and something you have always dreamed of will come true.”
by Christie Purifoy | Apr 8, 2020
In fairy tales significant things always show up in threes. It’s a magic number, I suppose.
Turns out, it’s magic in the garden, too.
This week in our community space, I posted a video called “Rules of Thumb for Planting.” One of the things I talked about was the magic rule of planting with odd numbers: three of one thing, at a minimum, and five, seven, nine or more as you have space (though I think once the numbers get big enough, our eye doesn’t detect the “oddness” quite so readily).
Why do this?
Odd numbers simply look more natural. As I shared in the video, even numbers, with their formality and symmetry, highlight the hand of the gardener. Sometimes, that’s exactly what we want. For instance, my formal flower garden is edged with an even number of boxwood balls.
But, if we want a naturalistic look, and in most of our garden this will probably be the case, odd numbers help hide the hand of the gardener. Our plantings have a better chance of looking as if they just happened to grow there.
Pictured above is a new (mostly empty!) flower bed outside my kitchen. As I slowly fill it in, I’ll be planting lots of odd-numbered things because I want this area to look naturalistic, almost meadow or prairie-like. You can see I already have three grasses massed in the far corner. Three bare-root roses have been planted as well. These roses will have single flowers in pale yellow, rather than something ruffled and pink, to fit with my meadow-like plan.
by Christie Purifoy | Apr 7, 2020
Every gardener will have her own “star performers.” These are the plants that we fall back on again and again because they work so well.
These are the plants that need little hands-on care, the plants that solve particular problems, and the plants that bring us pleasure with little pain (which is why–though I ADORE my roses–they are not on this list!).
Your own star performers will be different. They will depend on your climate, your garden style, and the challenges of your particular space. But it can be helpful to know about those plants that others have found especially useful.
I hope my star performers inspire a search for your own.
- Nepeta (common name: catmint): I mostly grow a variety called ‘Walker’s Low,’ but there are many good ones to choose from. I love its minty scent, the way it spreads and covers a lot of ground, and the way its tall, wispy flower spikes seem to weave all the diverse plants in my garden together.
- Verbena bonariensis: A vigorous self-seeder. The airy pinkish-purple flowers sit on long, narrow stems, waving in the breeze and attracting butterflies all summer long.
- White Black-eyed Susan vine: Annual vines that are easy to grow from seeds are such gifts to the garden. I love this one for its pure white flowers. Grows over the course of the summer and by fall is simply covered in pretty little flowers.
- Agastache foeniculum (Anise hyssop): Another easy-to-grow from seed plant, this one is perennial. Purple flower spikes (are you sensing a theme in my garden?), the scent is lovely and it supposedly makes a great tea. From the mint family.
- Daffodils: Because they bloom early, deer and other animals don’t touch them, they are cheerful, and they come back year after year with no care at all.
- Alliums: Few plants are as easy yet lend so much drama to the garden. You can plant “in the green” in spring by buying potted alliums, or plant the bulbs in fall in well-draining soil. The big purple and white balls even look great in the garden once they have dried and turned to seed.
- Garlic chives: a wonderful cottage-garden plant. It seeds itself around, has beautiful white flowers in late summer (when many other plants have stopped blooming), and, like other garlic and onion plants, critters leave it alone.
