The Plant of the Week is actually the Border of the Week
…and that would belong to my mother-in-law, Betty Taylor of Hilton Head, South Carolina. Her gardener, Karen Geiger, is a local talent and her business is Karen Creates. Here’s a plant list of heat loving things that look good together and are all sunbathing up a storm by her pool.
Zinnias and Crossandra (which I forgot to mention on the pod, but they are good pops of different colors)
Gomphrena, Madagascar vinca and Pentas in the front row
Veronica and Artemesia, some lovely, delicate, light lilac perennials.
Four types of Salvia! S. guaranitica ‘Black and Blue,’ S. ‘Amistad,’ S. farinacea ‘Victoria,’ and S. ‘Mysty’ (but it could be ‘Mysty Spires Blue’ (Mysty is more compact—maybe that is what I have because it’s only about 2’ and Betty’s is 3’
The tropical back row: Plumbago auriculata and Ruellia simplex
Oh, you may want to know the story behind the statue, which we fondly call ‘The Humping Turtles’. I don’t think Betty calls it that. Betty’s mother, Sally, (b. 1897) was an inveterate shopper, and they came across a clay rendition at Alfred University years ago. Sally had 2 casts commissioned, and one has always been in Betty’s garden. The other was donated to the University.
This is one of the first things I ever saw, at age 20, when I met Jeff’s parents at their home in Wellsville, NY. It made an impression on me, though I was far more interested in Jeff than gardens at the time.
Guest
Scott Beuerlein is the Manager of Botanical Garden Outreach at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. Also, he writes articles that make me chortle. Find him here, his monthly Horticulture Magazine column here, and his amusing correspondence with Marianne Willburn on Garden Rant blog here. By the way, Marianne will be joining me on the pod in a few weeks!
In our chat, we discuss what to do about the August garden if it’s getting you down, and we don’t exclude the strategy of ignoring it all together. That’s an option. Others include looking around at what’s bad, swearing under your breath, daydreaming about how/what to improve, appropriating ideas from neighbors, botanical gardens, magazines—even your mother-in-law.
I think Scott has it all in good perspective, on this topic and others, and you should check out his writing.
The Play List
I got a little random on the pod in this section, but the basic takeaways are you CAN improve your August garden by means of:
weeding, watering, removing browns and downs
cutting back for new growth on annuals and perennials that have gone past
giving up and going shopping
A couple of other random bits…
Cats are the number one cause of birds’ deaths. Number one. Think about a bell for your adorable little savage
How to prune a fig:
- remove dead, diseased, interior or skinny branches
- choose your main fruiting branches (4-8) and
prune a different 1/3 of them every year to have constant production
How to cook with figs. Go here.
Mugwort. Insidious stuff. Look how it has rambled through Peter Daniel’s Blue Star Juniper and Allium millenium. Ugh. Get busy pulling, Peter, and I hope you don’t have to dig it out and start again…
Listen
Pretty simple—Bunny Williams On Garden Style is available on Kindle!