Native perennials

I was poking around in one of the meadow beds this afternoon (clearing the crowns of leaves and mulch).  My gardening companion is enthusiastic about mulch, and some had crept in along the edges of the bed.  Combined with fallen leaves, it was a bit thick.

I had figured that a few extra leaves were protective during the winter snows, but a plus 60°F afternoon had me thinking spring again.  And there's only so much reading one can do about plants and planting, without being out there!

Amazingly, signs of growth were everywhere, from the expanding basal leaf buds to young shoots coming up through the mulch.  Admittedly, these were all tough native perennials (so presumably are right on schedule for emergence now).

I thought I had posted a planting list  (uh, this is my online garden 'record' -- Thomas Jefferson would not be impressed).   But I didn't find one, although it was nice to review the posts that I found (linked above).

Front meadow last summer (August 2010)

Another that popped up was this post about sustainable gardening.  It was a good reminder to read it again.

A luminous meadow

I spent some time this afternoon cleaning up and 'editing' the front meadow. 

It needed to be freed of the weedy annuals that had popped up in late summer, the remnants of vines that had clambered around (including the passionvine, Passiflora incarnata), and generally tidied up -- the Helianthus hirsutus (Rough-stemmed Sunflower) was downright ugly, even to a wildlife-friendly gardener, and I'm confident the goldfinches have long since eaten its seeds.  And the Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), which is such a great host for monarch caterpillars, is in decline as well, and most monarchs are well south at this point, too, and any stragglers are not going to be successful in reproducing here, before the first frost.

Front meadow in evening

It was satisfying work, even if driven by thinking I might have the Osher Lifelong Learning class come visit next after the Gardening for Nature class that I like doing for them.  I think I'll describe what our next projects are, and our real-life challenges as natural gardeners (hmm, full-time work, two gardens at the moment, we have other things to do, etc.)

Actually, our garden in the Upstate is a testament to the toughness of natives and well-adapted plants over a summer of brutal heat and no rain in the last third of the summer, with minimal 'care' on a couple of short visits and supplemental water only to recently planted things.

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 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.

Meadow gardens and perennial borders

The difference between meadows and perennial borders is, perhaps, a matter of scale, with the mix of plants a key to their look and feel.  Perennial borders can look quite meadow-like, at least in our vision of them,  while our 'front meadows' are probably more like exuberant perennial beds than true meadows, which include many grasses.

But I think the key is the mix of flowering perennials, whether they have large showy flowers or the reduced flowers of grasses;  this mix determines how the border/meadow feels and looks (in the garden).  A cottage garden is largely flowering perennials without grasses; a meadow includes a majority of grasses as the matrix.

Front 'meadow' in Asheville

But a sparser front planting bed, in the process of becoming more complex, feels like a meadow in progress, too.