I managed to get some photos this morning. It is GOR-geous out! Finally lower humidity again and clear sunny skies. August 6th, where did the summer go?

This is a new area in the front garden devoted to vegetables. The only place I can get FULL sun. We just created it this spring, in the front perennial bed. I have tomatoes in the Right bed and Peppers in the left bed. The milk crates are to keep the rabbits off them over night. They are still small because I got them planted late. In the foreground are 3 plants I bought at the nursery last week. I fell in love with this Salvia called 'Rock'n Blue Suede Shoes'. You can't tell from a photo but the color blue is just really making me happy. The daisy like plant is a new coreopsis. I don't usually buy those any more, but this one is such a nice soft yellow and the flowers are large. 'Uptick Cream' is the name and both are Proven Winners.

Hibiscus 'Berry Awesome'. We moved it this spring, so it's looking a little less spectacular than the past two years, but I think it has been a successful move and I'm just happy it bloomed this year.

It has not been a good year for Lilies. Not enough sun, but the biggest problem has been the rabbits! They ate at least 3 Lily plants to death. They are now brown sticks in the ground. They took the lower leaves off the rest of them. I'm lucky they bloomed at all but they are quite undersized and I don't know how they are going to be next year. This is the last of them to open. I know I ordered Casa Blanca lily bulbs in the spring and planted them, but so far they have been just pink. I'm waiting for this last one to open. I thought it might be the Casa Blanca but now I see there is some pink on the exterior of the petals, so I'm not going to be surprised if it's not.

This is a squash plant. We created a Berm along the street side of our front bed to prevent the rain from running off into the street. We used unfiinished compost and topped it with bark mulch. These squash plants volunteered. Surprise! And it actually looks attractive with the rest of the garden. This photo doesn't really do it justice.

And aha! there is actually a butternut squash developing.

Savannah rose - so happy to see blooms. This bush should be 3 ft tall by now and the flowers should be double that size. For the first time, rabbits ate all the lower leaves on all our roses. I wasn't sure they would come back at all. There was no first flush of blooms earlier. This is the first time it bloomed and it usually blooms on June 1st.

Sungold tomato just ripening. We put some early tomatoes in pots and they just finished up. They had a difficult time with all the rain and lack of sun early on. We put these tomatoes in the ground much later than usual, but they are doing very well now.

This is the prettiest tomato in the garden. There are a lot on this plant. It's an heirloom Cherokee Purple and I can't wait for a ripe one!

Agastache 'Honey Bee Blue' - my usual. They are skimpy this year with so little sunshine early on, but I still love them.

Dwarf Dahlias in a pot - this is the first bud starting to open.

I tried to get by without giving this shrub support again and it was doing great until we got hit with some heavy rain and now it is flopping all over everything.

And that's about it. I'm intensively avoiding the backyard that has gotten away from us this year. [g] What's going on with everyone else?

Oh, PM! I can’t wait for the coreopsis update next year! That Uptick Cream is beautiful! I have realized how little white I have in my main garden, which made me think of a white/creamy yellow garden I saw once that was breathtaking. Uptick Cream would be right at home!

I can’t believe your rabbit damage. I know MA is overrun with them, but that’s worse than anything I’ve heard from you all in the past. Lilies are too expensive to lose to rabbits. My lilies are getting enough sun, which is a minor miracle. Will post a pic later.

Your volunteering squash are so fun! I do not grow vegetables, but each year i think about how to start. I could use some volunteers! Until then, it will have to wait until I have some raised beds.

I wonder if you’ve had more rain than us. We’ve had a really wet summer, but I must admit my garden seems to be loving it after last year. My bushes I planted 5 or 6 years ago have never looked so happy. I do know the slugs are happy. Next year is going to be a challenge in spring. They’ll probably eat every single thing trying to emerge!

Just a three photos now. This is the waning end of Dianthus carthusianorum. I love its tall sparse form, and the bloom has lasted a long time for a dianthus, well over a month. I hope to add more in the future. You can see one tall stalk in the foreground of all the echinacea, same color as the echs.

My swamp milkweed is disappointingly pristine. I added more this year, so the monarchs are welcome to visit! I’ve only seen three caterpillars so far.

I finally added some yellow this year, and Rudbeckia Orange Fudge is a happy sight.

Try Pearly Everlasting. Mine always has caterpillars and cocoons on it.

Just looked it up. It says it likes sandy soil, which I don’t have. Does it do just as well in well-drained garden soil? Any special insights?

Deanna, I hope the ‘Uptick Cream’ will be a keeper. I’m weary of hybrids that are just a flash in the pan. I tried a couple of the newer hybrids but they were poor performers and not very attractive in the garden. This one is supposed to be hardy to zone 5 so I have my fingers crossed. The Uptick series has won awards so…. I bought this locally, but I see that Bluestone Perennials is offering it.

I can’t believe the rabbit damage either. I think some type of wire fencing is the only thing that will help, which just wasn’t in the cards for us to put in place this year. The most upsetting damage this year…. I had a pretty good size collection of Epimedium and they’ve killed off most of them. I have a few left that were planted in a bed of vinca that they evidently didn’t want to go into. That was a plant that has been so successful in my shade/part shade under Maples. A bulletproof plant. They never ate that before either. I also had no bloom on Dianthus this year. They kept coming back and chewing it to the ground.

I’ve spent most of the season complaining about the rabbits. [g] Yesterday I made lists of plants they’ve eaten and plants they didn’t and I felt a little better because the list they left alone was twice as long. I hope I can get something in place for protection next year though and I want to increase the plants that they stay away from.

The squash seed had to be just seed from the organic squash we buy at the grocer and it ends up in the compost. I love that. I am very happy with the Berms we made. Over the summer, they have diminished in size as the material breaks down, so I will have to keep adding to it. Next time I'll add more sticks and branches. I dug into one part of the Berm yesterday to plant the Coreopsis and there was beautiful, dark, fluffy soil in the Berm. I'm going to have to make more berms all over the garden. [g]

I think you have had more rain than I did. I had a season like that a few years ago, where it rained often and in good amounts and the whole garden, trees and shrubs too, all looked better than I ever saw them. This year has been pretty good for rain, but that was an exceptional year. But I don’t envy you, the slugs! That is one problem I don’t struggle with.

Your Dianthus is SO tall! I didn’t know they grew that tall. I’m amazed at the stand of Echinacea you have! It’s such a nice wild area there. Wow, how tall are they? Do you know the variety? Why is having ‘pristine’ milkweed disappointing? Lol Oh, do you mean you’d rather see them eaten by caterpillars?

Yes, PM, I do want my milkweed to be ravaged by caterpillars! I have seen a . handful, but I was lucky enough to see by chance a butterfly just emerged out of its cocoon yesterday and drying its wings.

Can you tell me more about your berms? They are clearly more than soil mounded. I would love to recreate what you've done in some areas, especially the ones at our new office that are hounded by clay. How did you create them and how long before you got that beautiful soil?

I've started adding beer traps around the garden . I'm hoping to at least reduce the number of eggs that will be laid. If I don't, I may not have anything survive spring to mature--they'll eat seedlings as well as all emerging shoots.

My echinacea are all seed-grown. I've got the standard, Magnus Superior, Prairie Splendor, Bravado, and Pow-wow Wild Berry (a couple purchased from nursery).

Joe Pye Weed is finally blooming behind the echinacea. Mine is +7' tall, really very tall. I'm not sure why it gets so tall. i could be that it gets some shade and is reaching for sun.

The beds are messy now, but I kind of like it. Between me being gone so much and the rain, things are taking their natural course, but that's OK.

Glamour Girl is now blooming, with the remnants of Flame Coral behind it. Glamour Girl is 3-4' tall, but Flame Coral is a 2'-2.5'. I like Flame Coral's red eye, too. If I have time I'll rearrange these to take advantage of their height differences.

Sum and Substance is growing well. What a dependable hosta. The bare space is front of it will get contemplation this winter.

Jewelweed doesn't disappoint, of course. I always like it, but I've learned the hard way to make sure 90% of its flowers don't go to seed! 10% will . make more than enough plants for next year!

Casablanca lilly

The chartreuse leaves of Ray's Golden Campion, Silene dioica, in a pot with a red annual. It was wintersown this year. I'm excited for this one to . mature! It is a short-lived biennial and the golden color is not reproduced by every seed, so I doubt it will be a permanent part of the garden as time passes.

And the pot ghetto. There are SO MANY pots in the back you can't see. So many. It will be a busy fall!

Deanna,

The Berms. The last two winters I have been focused on figuring out more ways to address drought in the garden. My full sun bed in the front of the house, slopes away from the house , of course, as everyone’s does. So the rain runs off into the street to some extent. I already capture the rain coming down from the downspout into the rain barrel, but I thought, maybe if I built a Berm along the low street side of the bed, it would keep the rain on the property and keep that bed moist.

It has really been successful in that regard. Of course, it’s not a great year to judge it because we have had so much rain. Next time we have a drought will be more instructive.

Aside from that purpose, I am seeing the added benefit of building up the soil. I chose the location by where it would capture the most water and fit in with the design of the bed. It allowed me to still grow the plants that don’t like wet feet on the other side of the Berm, at the top of my steepest slope, if I want to - like Salvias. All the plants directly behind the berm really benefited this year. Not only water, but fertility from the Berm breaking down.

The volunteer squash was such a delightful surprise. The foliage is so attractive and the plants have remained healthy all season. It has just taken off all along the top of the berm, and I’ve had to “arrange” it around the Sedum AJs and Grasses. It climbed into a Sedum and deposited another squash, which was a fun surprise this week. I had a half dozen seedlings and I thinned out to two of the strongest. That squash has grown 100% better out front in full sun on that berm than it ever did in the back where I get 5hrs tops and tree roots to contend with. And I don’t think it looks out of place with the rest of the perennials and shrubs. I want to do it again next year.

I also had volunteer borage come up. I discovered a few years ago that Cardinals have some kind of interest in the Borage plant, that I still don’t know what it is, but I grow that for them now. I think I can grow the squash and borage together in the Berm next year. But there are so many possibilities for what you can grow there. And you could grow nothing in it too. I wouldn’t plant perennials or shrubs in it, because it does break down and needs to keep being replenished. I have grown them right up next to it though.

To build it - well, depends on whether you compost or not. I have two passive compost bins that I bought from the town years ago when they were trying to encourage people to compost. I fill them up with any kind of plant material - deadheaded hibiscus blooms at the moment, weeds that are not going to seed, grass clippings, leaves. Then we collect kitchen scraps - egg shells, coffee grinds, banana peels, vegetables, orange rinds, paper towels sometimes, tea bags…etc. Nothing diseased. I leave the tops off the containers to allow the rain to keep it moist and if it doesn’t rain I have to water it. That’s all I do until it’s full.

In the fall, last year and this year, we have a pile of branches from pruning in the spring that I haven’t used yet. We have grass clippings. By the time I am building the berms, I’ll probably have brown leaves. I will take it all….the branches on the bottom, and then layered on top the contents of the compost bins, the leaves, the grass clippings. I make them a couple of feet wide and a couple of feet high. Maybe 18”? Depends, I don’t want to shade the plants behind them. I shape them like a long wide sausage…lol. I do curl the end sides to keep the rain from running around the side of them. Then I top them off with a good thick layer of bark mulch. I’m not sure I would always do this if it was in an out of the way area, but right in front of the house along my best bed, I wanted it mulched.

This year, I plan to replenish by pulling back the bark mulch and adding to it then adding another thick layer of bark mulch again. I want to add more branches this year to slow down the break down. If I could get away with not having to replenish it every season, that would work out best. I’m also adding new locations where I plan to grow vegetables next year, for the fertility. I found the beautiful soil in July and I constructed the Berm last Fall. So, not that long really.

Deanna,

I have had milkweed in the garden for over a decade and they are just growing wild in a bed I can’t keep up with so I don’t go check for caterpillars often. It’s also a bed that is most affected when we are in a drought and everything browns quickly, so another reason to avoid the bed. [g] I do have enough of it for the butterflies and I try to plant other things they use. Butterfly weed, Parsley, Dill? I’ve seen a caterpillar on the Parsley at one point. I’ve seen more butterflies this year than usual which makes me happy. They love the asters this time of year, which haven’t bloomed yet. I just bought a new butterfly bush - a dwarf and I did see a Monarch on that the other day. I saw a black butterfly yesterday - maybe a Swallowtail? I didn’t get a close look at it. Wow - that you saw a butterfly emerging from a cocoon!!! That must have been so special.

EDIT: Wow - I just saw TWO monarch caterpillars on my Butterfly Weed plant out front! I'm going to have to pay more attention!

Sorry you have to still be fighting the slugs! I hope the beer traps do the trick.

OMGosh, I LOVE that photo of the echinacea with the JoePye Weed behind it. Really nice! Which variety is that echinacea in that photo, or have you lost track, the way I do? [g] Your Joe Pye Weed doesn’t look like it’s reaching. 7ft is a really nice height. Great screen for a property line too.

'Nature’s Course' has it’s benefits and don’t forget how much the birds and beneficials love it when you do less!

I bought ‘Glamour Girl’ three years ago and added it to my front bed. I love the color. It had the reputation of being very resistant to powdery mildew. In my garden, it had less resistance than others I’ve grown and was a mess by fall and I shovel pruned it. Yours looks clean in your photos! A really pretty stand of them and they stand erect with all this rain?

I have not seen Jewelweed in a garden or the nurseries. I have read multiple posts here, how much people enjoy it in their garden. It looks great in your garden. It fits right in.

I finally have CasaBlanca Lily in my front garden. I planted bulbs this spring - and 2 of them turned out to be a NOID pink lily but the other three are Casablanca! I just took a photo of them this morning. You have a lot of flowers on yours! I love them because they are SO fragrant, gorgeous detail on the blooms, and they bloom so late. It extends my lily season. I have to do better protecting the lilies from the rabbits next year though. I found a lady bug on one of my blooms this morning. Yay!

Deanna, I only have less than 20 pots in the pot ghetto this year…lol. It is a relief. I am aiming for NO pot ghetto next year.

'Cherokee Purple' Tomato - We just ate the first ripe tomato tonight and it was so good! Very juicy and had a lot of flavor. The skin is very thin and it does split if you leave it too long on the vine. I try to pick them before they are all the way ripe and let them finish on the counter. This is the best year we've had with this variety.

The bees were all over this, this morning,....

'Cherokee Purple' Heirloom Tomato

Lemon Balm, I'm going to try for tea....

Take that, rabbits! lol It's blooming even without all the lower leaves!

Wish I could have captured the lady bug, it's gone. And there is so much texture to the bloom, that I just am not able to capture.

Deanna, That shot of the whale tail is AWESOME! That is near your house? You have a great location for sure! Yes, that whale looks like maybe an adolescent. Such a delight when we get a nice surprise like that!

On the berm, I took the time to detail the experiences I’ve had with it, for anyone who hasn’t tried something like that to be able to see how beneficial it can be. And probably because I find it all so fascinating too. [g] Like you said…it’s funny how excited we get talking about carting around yard waste and building piles…lol. Must be like when we were kids and liked making mud pies and making sand castles at the beach!

I know, I know, I must be a big disappointment about the pot ghetto…lol. I have been so focused on just redesign and Berms, etc. that buying new plants was not on the radar. BUT - it’s not a good thing that you are trying to encourage me to do better, because it really doesn’t take much. I went out this morning and dragged home 3 more plants. :-) And why wait for spring? Fall is a great time to take advantage of sales and replant for the spring. It’s just that when I buy in the Fall, they all have to get into the ground quickly! That is the trick of how to keep the pot ghetto under control. You can do all the impulse buying you want as long as you plant them all before a freeze! ;-) Of course, when spring comes around, there is still a lot of temptation to bring home more! Lol

I’m going to have to enjoy the Jewelweed in your garden, Deanna. I couldn’t keep up with it. More photos of the jewelweed and the hummingbirds!

And no roses yet? Don’t worry, you’ll get to it. Next time I’m ordering, I’ll send you a link to a supplier!

You’re lucky to grow Cardinal Flower. You must have nice moist shade for them. I tried them but they petered out pretty quickly in my dry yard. I love reds and violets. I just have a hard time fitting them in with the rest of my colors. I wish I had another full sun bed in the back that I could dedicate to the more saturated colors like that.

You have a Fall blooming Clethra? I have one too - ‘Sherry Sue’. It’s tall and it blooms in the Fall. It’s usually the last thing to bloom in the Fall. The rabbits made such a mess of it last year, I had to cut it all the way back to the ground this spring, so I’m probably not going to see bloom on it this year.

Wow to the Ghost Pipe! I wonder if that is native there? Is it a mushroom type plant? It’s so different!

Nice catching up. We must have at least 2 more months of gardening weather. I hope we will all find some nice garden views to post photos of. I’ll Start a new September thread tomorrow!

Edit: BTW - if your daughter is looking for more yellow - 'Julia Child' rose pushes out gorgeous butter yellow blooms all season and is fragrant and healthy and vigorous!

We think the whale was a juvenile, too. He took his sweet time making his way a significant distance upriver. One friend followed him for three hours upriver AFTER we finally went inside! In the morning he was still hanging around near our house exploring side rivers.

Thanks again for the berm details. I just thought of another area at the bottom of a slope which is builders fill, and I’ve been struggling with getting things to grow near the edge, and I really need things to grow there and anchor it as it is the edge of a drop-off that can erode away. A berm would be perfect. I’ll build my first one this year!

I’m glad to see you’re in remedial classes with that pot ghetto and are heading in the right direction. More more more! Or, I could simply be a bad influence!

I would take a photo of the hummers, but they move so doggone fast! A couple were humming around it this weekend in the morning, which seems to be one of their favorite times of day here.

Ghost Pipe is native. You’d think it was in the mushroom-ish family, but it’s actually is a flower that doesn’t use the sun at all. It absorbs food from other living things in the soil, like mushrooms! So, they’re not the same, but they’re kind of like besties. Since it needs shrooms, it grows in the same areas with the same conditions. It is definitely easier to find in rainy summers. When I was looking up how far its native range is, I was surprised to see if lives nearly everywhere in the US except the really dry southwestern states.

As for Julia Child, you have sung her praises enough to put her on my must-have list when I figure out where to put a rose!

Deanna, glad you were able to see that whale. Nice way to end the summer!

You’ll have to let me know how the Berm works. I have to wait for tomatoes and squash to finish before I can get started on the Berm I am planning.

We just ripped out a weedy corner of our front bed where messy Cosmos and the remnants of California poppy with a weed dressing, were just getting on my nerves. [g] then we added three new Mums along the street to supplement the grasses. Cleaned it all up with mulch then I spent another hour just cleaning up the tomato patch and it all looks 100% better.

I realized that while I love to let some things go and have a little wild look going on, I really need it to be contained. Just having a neat border around an inner wildness is very Zen for me.

I can understand how difficult it has to be to get a photo of a hummer. They really are SO fast. It almost has to be accidental. I’m lucky if I catch them long enough to know it’s a hummingbird before they zip right out of the yard again.

Sounds like we had the perfect summer for Ghost Pipes. I’ve never seen one before.

Can’t believe summer is over!