Wildflowers along the Blue Ridge Parkway

One of the benefits (totally) of being in the Southern Appalachians for the summer is proximity to great trails.  I joke to friends and colleagues during the academic year that "they don't let me out much" meaning that I'm at the Garden all the time, not out hiking.  But nothing to complain about that really.

Squaw root (Conopholis spp.)

But it was a joy to spend time on the Mountains to the Sea trail this morning, on a segment just off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Silene virginica on a rock outcrop

a checker spot (?) basking on a Crateagus branch

There were lots of plants in flower, even though we're past the 'main' spring wildflower time.

Bowman's Root (Poteranthus), Fire Pink (Silene virginica), and Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia) as well as Flame Azalea were in flower.

Kalmia latifolia (Mountain Laurel) in flower

Sedums, Tradenscantia, and Opuntia were on the rock outcrops, segregating themselves to wet and dry areas.

Coral honeysuckle

Coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)

Our native honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens, is a great plant.  All four of ours are looking exceptionally good this year.

This one, the most robust, is next to the kitchen door leading out to the main vegetable garden.

Morning sun seems to suit it just fine, as it increases in size every year.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds are a frequent visitor, although I haven't seen any of the early scouts visiting this one so far this year.

It often re-flowers a bit in the fall - providing welcome nectar for the hummingbirds heading south.

Ruby-throated hummingbird migration

Wow, thank to one of my favorite real-time citizen science/classroom science sites (Journey North), I see that early ruby-throated hummingbirds have made it way past the Carolinas.  Check out this map.  Let it run to see the progression of the migration.

I need to get out my feeders immediately!

January gardening

My gardening companion spent a good bit of time yesterday pulling up more ivy in the ravine behind our small house in the mountains.  He's done an amazing job clearing out undesirable species (think invasives) in the understory, so it's waiting for woodland wildflowers to be planted (that'll be my job, whether we end up building a studio down on the old coal road, or not.)

It's getting close to time to head home down the hill to the Piedmont; classes start next week, and there are things to do.  My vegetable garden there is pretty much dormant, except for garlic and kale, although the hoophouse experiment at the garden where I work is apparently doing well. I'm looking forward to ordering seeds for growing transplants, turning over the beds, amending the soil, etc.

The temperatures in the mountains were in the upper 40's (°F) -- quite lovely, really.   It was ideal weather for walking, observing, and enjoying the beautiful blue skies.

Leaves and an exposed wall

My gardening companion has been busy. The snow has melted and the temperatures moderated, so he's been busy rooting up English ivy (and removing it from a stone retaining wall on the edge of our landscape in the mountains).  It's not a bad stone wall at all, built with decent looking rocks, with just a bit of rubble and concrete supporting the parking lot for the adjacent apartment building.  I haven't been much help, with a troublesome finger making heavy pulling and clipping not such a great idea.

The bags of leaves, saved this fall, proved useful for additional mulching down the slope. We're both envisioning woodland wildflowers to accompany the trees and shrubs already planted. 

So the transformation from weedy forested ravine to native forested ravine continues...

Sustainable Gardening

I've been thinking quite a bit about 'sustainable gardening' lately.  I promote (what I consider) are sustainable gardening practices in the classes I teach -- minimal inputs of water, fuel, pesticides, herbicides, and inorganic fertilizers, don't let leaves leave your property, don't kill things, promote diversity, plant mostly natives, think naturalistic planting design, minimize areas devoted to lawn, etc. 

We've been happy with our 'natural garden' created with this approach in our own home landscape in the Piedmont of South Carolina.  And we're continuing this in our second home in the mountains (where we'll probably 'retire'), where we're populating the slope around our small mountain house with native understory shrubs along with native trees.

Vegetable gardening is a bit more problematic;  vegetables, by their domesticated nature, are nutrient and water hogs, so the gardener is ALWAYS grubbing around for more sources of organic matter and nutrients. 

Homemade compost is excellent, but it's hard to produce enough that's high nitrogen, unless you have chickens, rabbits, cows, or horses.  Chickens and rabbits are feasible in an urban environment if you're at home most all of the time, but not so practical if you're away for weekends or holidays.

But what exactly is sustainable gardening? 

I'll assert that it is creating an ecologically-balanced landscape on the property that you inhabit, and that restores most of the ecology that once was on that site, along with making sure that no extra inputs of fertilizer or pesticides get washed into the stormwater drains. 

That's what we've tried to do, in our attempt to create natural woodland and forest habitat and meadow on what once was almost 2 acres of lawn in the Piedmont, and incorporated organic vegetable gardens into the mix as well.

In the mountains, trying to restore an invasive-rich ravine into a rich cove forest of native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers is an amazing effort;  my gardening companion has made remarkable progress already. 

And converting part of the driveway and bare area below the house to vegetable garden beds is productive, too.

So, my first 'take-home' message, is let's get planting natives instead of 'ornamentals' in our gardens and landscapes.

Preparing vegetable beds for spring

I've amended all of the soil in my satellite garden beds now.  Garlic is planted in a couple of them, but the rest are devoted to getting ready for spring.  The asparagus is flourishing, hooray, (not shown in this image), so I'm hopeful those beds are fine, especially after the mulching of compost that they received.

I half-heartedly transplanted kale and mustard greens in one of the beds (the one on the far left) last weekend, but the resident woodchuck (not yet in semi-hibernation) crept up and made short work of them.  Hhrmph. 

If it's not the herbivorous squirrels (who knew), the major herbivores (big-time) are woodchucks. 

OK, I AM a wildlife gardener, but this is getting tiresome. 

I came across a 'gardening tip' today that vanilla extract (the real thing) sprinkled on lettuce leaves was a woodchuck magnet (that's according to Sharon Lovejoy, in Trowel and Error) -- it may be worth trying in my Havahart trap!

Seasonal changes and musings

We've had a long extended fall season, with colorful leaves persisting for weeks.

The ginkgo leaves are at their peak now, with an beautiful golden color.  They'll all drop any day, but they're glorious while they're here.   The dogwoods, even in spite of their drought-stressed summer, are putting on a show of reds and oranges.

The kids I had outside in a program today delighted in the perfect fall weather, which was clear and cool, following several rainy days.

We discovered fall fruits and seeds (having them squish them between their fingers is always interesting - I demonstrate- -- are they sticky, indicating sugars, or smooth, indicating lipids, how many seeds are in each fruit, etc.?)

Who eats them?  Oh, they're poisonous, many kids say when looking at red fruits.

Hmm, why do you think red fruits are 'poisonous', I ask, after some 'wait' time.  Hmm, what eats these berries or fruits?  And we talk about the virtues of being sugary or being lipid-rich. I finally explain that red fruits are basically signaling 'I'm ready to eat.'

Aha!

Cloudless sulphur caterpillars

It's been great fun (as well as rewarding) to have a new butterfly garden (that emphasizes host plants as well as nectar plants) at the Botanical Garden where I work.  Two of our long-term volunteers and I came up with a list of our essential plants for a butterfly garden, as we were relocating ours from a less hospitable site (windy and rocky).

Most of the plants were then rounded up with the help of Garden staff, purchased with support from the Carolina Butterfly Society, or donated (largely from our home gardens).

Cloudless Sulphur caterpillar on Cassia

It's been magical through summer and fall.  The garden has flourished beyond expectations, and has been full of caterpillars and butterflies.

The sulphur butterfly caterpillars taking advantage of the Cassia obtusifolia (Sicklepod) plants were excellent to see, along with monarch caterpillars munching common milkweed, gulf fritillary caterpillars on passion vine, black swallowtails decimating the fennel and dill, and sleepy orange caterpillars on the Cassia plants.  Not to mention the Giant Swallowtails that have appeared, apparently because Rue and other herbs are around.

Droughty conditions and watering again

We don't like to water much;  we've designed our landscapes (yikes, it's now plural) to be largely self-reliant on rainfall, but a very long spell (weeks and weeks, maybe a month or more without any rain), and pushing 90°F temperatures through the end of September has even hardy natives looking wan, not to mention those from moister sites and higher elevations.

So I'm dragging the hose around, my gardening companion has gone to the mountains this weekend to water newly planted trees and shrubs in our landscape there  (he also has vegetable harvesting duties, and watering the raised beds, too).   So, we're hoping for some decent rain with the cold front that's coming in tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've managed to tidy up the perennial beds, get them ready for needed renovation, change out some containers, and plant to edit the front meadow tomorrow morning (it needs it, big time). There's a group of folks coming after a Osher Lifelong Learning Gardening for Nature program in mid-October, which somehow has become the program where 'we visit your garden.'

I like to encourage people to create gardens that welcome them home  -- ours does that, but we've gotten used to the mulch pile next to the garage (hmm), so it does create a bit of mild anxiety.  But I'm a teacher, and sharing the process is what learning is about.

Gardens are always changing, and even though we love our natural landscape, there are always shrubs to manage, and trees that don't flourish, etc. And we're ready to do the next round of editing and planting.

My vegetable beds in the Piedmont are doing well, with lots of nice fall greens (mustards, arugula, lettuce, and kale) in spite of a herbivore that keeps eating the leaves of my red cabbage and broccoli plants.

harvested garlic in early summer

I'm looking forward to planting garlic, as soon as we get some rain, and it cools off a bit more.

I caught sight of a large Eastern Cottontail rabbit this evening as I was watering, and thought, hmm.  I was blaming woodchucks creeping up from their forest den behind the brush pile, or squirrels, led to herbivory by dry weather.  Who knows?  All are possibilities.  But I'm glad enough to share a bit, at this point, although it's getting tiresome.

Fall equinox

I'm doing a Harvest Moon walk tomorrow evening, which should be nice.  And, it's always good to celebrate the first day of fall.

It's warm enough still (too warm, actually) that the nocturnal symphony (crickets, cicadas, tree frogs, and their ilk)  is still in full swing, although muted by droughty weather.

And, we need rain.  Planting (of shrubs, perennials or fall vegetables) requires lots of watering to properly get a planting place ready.  Even in the mountains, I've had to frequently drench my raised beds to keep up moisture levels.

Restoring the ecology of your yard and garden

About 15 years ago, a garden board member mentioned Sara Stein's book Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards to me.

It was transformational to read.

She described the arc of her learning as a gardener from tidy ornamentals (the wildlife vanished) back to ecological gardening, and restoration.

I was reminded yet again of this coming back from a recent trip (to Garden Writers Association's annual meeting).

Returning into the Greenville-Spartanburg airport, visible through the small jet window, there were subdivisions, barren of any actual plantings, with red clay subsoil visible through the window.

Aromatic Aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium)

We have a wonderful aster blooming now in our front meadow garden in the mountains.

It's an Eastern US native (formerly Aster oblongifolius, now Symphyotrichum oblongifolium).   Asters have been split up into three genera now, following modern taxonomic techniques, and their new generic names sound unfamiliar, but are accepted.

The flowers on these plants are currently covered with honeybees, bumblebees, and butterflies, and they make a wonderful addition to the fall-flowering asters to use in gardening, as they're low and spreading.  This looks like a great plant!

A Japanese Garden: soothing colors and textures

An unexpected outing to Ft. Worth Botanic Garden's Japanese Garden brought a fresh awareness of texture, form, and shades of green.

In this extraordinary garden, plant shapes, foliage texture, water, and rock create a harmonious and restful place.

Color is not the point; its peacefulness is grounded in green foliage.

Fall vegetable gardening

I'm doing another three-season vegetable gardening program tomorrow, this time for our Osher Lifelong Learning program.

Amazingly, 24 people are signed up - a remarkable number, it seems to me, and totally encouraging as interest in vegetable gardening!

In my own vegetable garden, my beds are turned, lots of cool-season vegetable seeds are sown, and I've got flats of lettuce mix, greens, and arugula going.

I'm plotting with my fellow garden educator about growing fall greens in an unheated (and unused) hoop house at the garden where I work.  Hmm, that sounds like fun!

We actually have two hoop houses as possibilities (in our after-school greenhouse, my Sprouting Wings colleagues have added water containers painted black, to provide radiant heat, so it may be more congenial than the totally unheated hoop house.)

Garden design thoughts

Work conundrums have gotten in the way lately of enjoying the magical morning light, the bounty of the vegetable garden, and experiencing the joy of gardening. 

But, preparing for a class about mixed borders, I made note of a point in Ann Lovejoy's excellent book about garden design (Ann Lovejoy's Organic Garden Design School).  She wrote about how gardens were a process, not something to be finished, in much more elegant prose than what I'm remembering.  This book is one of my favorites, actually;  it's wise about sustainable gardening, but equally wise about creating a garden that suits you.  And isn't that the point?

An excellent vegetable garden

We've been admiring a fabulous vegetable garden carved out in 'vacant' space under a bridge in our neighborhood in the mountains.

Montford is a designated historic neighborhood and one that's undergone up and down changes, with the fortunes of Asheville. It's a vibrant neighborhood, now, with an active community association and a recently refreshed website, probably thanks to a new tech-savvy volunteer.

We were delighted to discover an article about the hidden vegetable garden and accompanying chicken coop in the online posting this evening.

It's the vegetable garden under the bridge.

I wish I had some good photos to post; my gardening companion took some on our small camera, but hasn't shared them, as yet.  And my 'big' camera is too heavy to drag along on my morning walks so I haven't taken any myself.

But it's an inspirational place -- empty sunny land that's been converted to a productive vegetable garden.  How cool is that!

Succession plantings and paying attention to plants

I attended a most interesting symposium 'Speaking of Plants' this weekend at the NC Arboretum.  The draws for me were Fergus Garrett (Head Gardener and CEO at Great Dixter, an amazing garden in the south of England developed by Christopher Lloyd) and Carol Reese, an Extension Agent from Tennessee, who has an excellent reputation as a speaker. Neither disappointed.

Fergus Garrett was remarkable. An excellent plantsman and gardener, to be sure, he articulated a continuing vision for Great Dixter in a way that brought it to life, and his second talk about plant combinations and succession planting was excellent -- I wanted to sign up immediately for a week-long course at Great Dixter, and I'm not really a practitioner of intensive gardening.   But I loved his focus on plants and their characters;  pay attention to their foliage, not just their flowers, he said, and how they look throughout the season.

It was an great symposium (even if way too heavy on the lectures; as an adult learner (and consumer of such programs), and a program organizer for adult programs myself, I think a MAXIMUM of presentations is 3 per day, and that's stretching it, even if they're 45 minute presentation.

We had 4 the first day, and 3 the second -- all for an hour and 15 minutes, with time for questions only with the final speaker!  Yikes!

You've got to provide some balance: interaction with other participants, garden walks with the speakers, garden study tours --- anything to get your audience of keen gardeners outside and refreshed a bit, before diving back into presentations.

entrance to the upper parking lot at the NC Arboretum

The NC Arboretum is looking great.  I particularly admired this planting at the entrance to one of the parking lots.

Turning over beds

In spite of a very rainy day, the evening respite (from the rain) allowed me to get out and seed flats with arugula, mesclun mix, spinach, and cilantro. 

I've got more seeds to sow tomorrow, but first I wanted to turn over my vegetable bed blocks in the main vegetable garden and the satellite garden. 

freshly turned beds in the main vegetable garden (with Mocha)

I managed almost all of them, and they await amendment with compost, before planting. 

Hand-turning beds is a satisfyingly physical activity;  it made up for not having time to walk this morning before our butterfly garden tour at the botanical garden!

A establishing meadow

We transformed the mulched beds in front of our small mountain house into a new 'meadow' border last fall and this spring. It's probably best described as an informal perennial border, rather than a meadow, but we're working on it.

Rain and warmth this summer have nurtured these plants.  We lost a few over a very tough winter, but mostly they've thrived in the heavy clay soil (somewhat amended).

The Joe-Pye has been great;  in the Piedmont, it sulks without extra water.  In the mountains, this plant is a wonderful butterfly nectaring spot.

The purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), always short-lived, looks great, and was a magnet for this swallowtail butterfly (I think a Giant Swallowtail, as it had two stripes on its wings and isn't something I see often, but they're not evident on this picture).



And I'm looking forward to seeing the Arkansas Ironweed in full flower, and the Solidago, and the asters, too.