The Sugar Hollow Plant List

Echinacea (also known as coneflower) attracts butterflies and in late fall, gold finches.

Taking stock in the garden at season's end! I got 50 more daffodil bulbs planted last weekend and could probably plant 50 bulbs every season for the next 20 years and still not make a dent in the landscape. {I would love our land to be a sea of yellow every late February.}

What is on your wish list? What do you recommend?

HONEYBEE, BIRD AND BUTTERFLY ATTRACTORS

Catnip, white and lavender varieties
Butterfly Bush
Liatris
Glossy Abelia
Sunflowers
Echinacea
Bee Balm
Zinnias
Caryopteris ‘Blue Beard’
Sedum ‘Autumn Fire’
Salvia ‘May Night’
Russian Sage
Black-Eyed Susans
Shasta Daisies
Goldenrod (wild)
Yarrow (wild)
Thistle (wild)
Violets (wild)
Ironweed (wild)

BENEFICIAL INSECT ATTRACTORS

Love-in-a-Mist (self-seeding patch)
Daffodils, common and several other fragrant varieties
Iris, common and a variety that smells like grape Pez

NATIVES

Fringe Tree
Eastern Red Bud
Virginia Sweet Spire
Virginia Bluebells
May Apples
Wild Phlox
Trillium

HERBS

Plantain
Lavender (also good for honeybees)
Lemon Balm (also good for honeybees)
Sage
Rosemary (also good for honeybees)
German Chamomile
Thyme
Oregano (also good for honeybees)
Dill
Garlic
Mint, Common
Mint, Apple

ORNAMENTALS

Lilac, Common
Hydrangea ‘Endless Wonder’
A variety of small, ephemeral bulbs
Hollies, ‘China Boy’ and ‘China Girl’ varieties
Liriope
Dayliles, native, 'Pandora’s Box', 'Wineberry Candy', 'Jolyene' and several other varieities
Grape Hyacinths
Sugar Maple
Willow Oak
Eastern Red Cedars
Japanese Maples (3)
Azalea
Bridal Wreath
Rose, Climbing Antique 'Jeanne LaJoie'
Roses, Knock Outs
Coreopsis, Rose
Plumbago
Hollyhock, Common (deer fodder right now, but I hold out hope)
Veronica Speedwell
Tulips, Rembrandt and basic red variety

PERENNIAL FOOD PRODUCERS

Fig 'Chicago Hardy'
Juneberry (seriously chomped down by deer, but still living)
Black raspberry
Blackberries
Strawberries (in containers, for now)
Wild persimmons
Asparagus 'Mary Washington'
Elderberry
Rhubarb

REMAINING WISH LIST and FINAL THOUGHTS

A weeping mulberry shrub.
'Korean Spice' viburnums for along the front path.
A peony (or two).
More irises.
More Black-Eyed Susans along the ridge above the daylilies.
More compost under the walnut to help plants thrive?
More varieties of daylily for under the walnut.
A better okra crop.
Plant cucumbers for pickling.
Grow squash for the *blossoms,* too.
Find a spot for the elderberry that will let it thrive.
More native phlox.
Plant calendula – for botanical beauty potions.
Don’t plant green beans. (I just don’t love them enough to can and freeze.)

Trees and Shrubs and Cooperation

Looking up from under a flowering tree is an important part of life.
(Photo taken last weekend in Staunton's Gypsy Hill Park.)

Last autumn, I planted my first tree. A red bud. The power of planting a tree and keeping it alive kind of intimidated me. So every day for the last month, I have checked in with it. Staring at it. Willing the buds to happen. And they are starting to show. I am thrilled and relieved and now want to plant more.

Corey and I got a little stuck in planning for the larger components in our landscape. But I think we have figured it out and will be heading to the nursery this weekend. I will focus on the understory trees and shrubs and he will pick out the bigger trees. That is how our house works/worked, too. He focuses on the bones and structure and then I swoop in with the details. It seems to sort itself out - although I know it made him crazy when I wouldn't have much of an opinion on house construction. I just didn't get into that part of it all and this confused the hell out of his genetic make-up. I would be happy moving into any already completed structure and adjusting to its ways through playing around with furniture and color and light.

My wish list for this weekend includes - a pink dogwood, a weigela, a scented viburnum, a caryopteris 'Blue Mist' (or two) and a fruit-producing quince. I bought a fig yesterday - a 'Chicago Hardy'. I might get all crazy and purchase a 'Brown Turkey' or a 'Celeste', too.

In other garden news:

We bought a few more strawberry plants yesterday and put them in containers on our porch. Willa was so excited about being a part of the planting, she wanted to check on them first thing this morning. I know the feeling, sweet thing.

Also, we picked up some broccoli starts in the same trip. I hadn't grown it before last year and it was a surprising winner. We had enough to freeze from just a few plants. Huh.

I am thinking that some more asparagus is in order. We only have three plants in the ground right now and it is a spring-time favorite at our house.

I got on the Kubota tractor two weeks ago and used the front loader. I now understand the beauty of big machinery.

A friend and I took the little ones the other day for a hike up at Sugar Hollow. She has eagle eyes for and a knowledge of wildflowers. It was like having a curtain lifted - I saw things I hadn't noticed before like - cutleaf toothwort, bloodroot and hepatica.

That same friend gave me a generous bundle of rhubarb. That means rhubarb syrup. This weekend. Hopefully with something cold and dirty.

Accepting Help in the Garden

Remember this wish list?

After years of doing battle with our ornery landscape, I finally, finally, finally asked for some help. I took a break from hours with the mattock to get a hand from someone twice my size - to plant some shrubs and create flower beds. I always felt as if I needed to do everything myself, but my back has started to rebel. Turns out, being stubborn is rarely a good thing.

So now, two years after the original wish list, there are four shrubs in our ever-evolving front yard garden room - two glossy abelia, one 'Endless Wonder' hydrangea and a Virginia sweetspire. I'm still lobbying for that Fringe Tree and am on the hunt for native azaleas.

Having these garden bones in place and new beds at-the-ready has me poised for final September plantings. More daylilies, maybe some funky echinacea varieties in yellows and greenish pinks. And whatever impulse buys I make at fall nursery sales over the next week or so.

The blue bench even hit its stride among some Japanese maples that are rusty red and pale green and played host to a few container begonias, impatiens and nicotianas. That color I was waffling over worked out beautifully. Who knew? Some call things like that 'happy mistakes'. I'd say it is more like 'clueless floundering'. But it turns out that's my gardening process and I'll take it.

In Which I Groove On Racemes

I'm on the hunt for this over the weekend.

Virginia Sweetspire. Itea virginica. The ideal summer shrub. Drooping, deliciously fragrant racemes (those cylindrical flowers) lure pollen-drunk bees during the month of June.

Their bzzzzz's will go with the lazy summer-day zzzzz's I hope to catch on a blanket in our garden.

Oh, yes. And the Sweetspire's fall show is nothing to sniff at . . .



When I'm not searching high and low for Itea virginica, I will be out there weeding, weeding and weeding, as the days of rain have left us with a jungle on our hands.

*****************
Photos from Wikimedia.

Much Ado in the Garden - Autumn 2008

Without the urgency of spring's pace, I have always loved the mellower tone of autumn in the garden. So much of my to-do list can be done gradually - over the next two months. And that suits me just fine these days.

1. Clean out the container garden. Compost plants-past-their-prime.
2. Move a compost container to the back porch - so running out in the winter to a far away compost bin is eliminated. As is the stink fest that results from neglected compost piling up in the kitchen.
3. Shred leaves for the compost bin. For leaf mold.
4. For the *new* front yard - plant that saucer magnolia (for Willa!) and the hedge line of glossy abelia.
5. Put plastic mulch down over raised beds - to prep them for spring planting.
6. Harvest and dry rosemary, sage and oregano from the herb garden.
7. Clean out gardening supplies and post give-aways to local friends.
8. Start forced hyacinth bulbs.
9. Plant bulbs in front beds and more naturalizing daffodils along the wood's edge.
10. Revisit my winter reading: The Herb Quarterly, plant and seed catalogs galore, Second Nature, Rosemary Gladstar's Herbal Healing for Women.

*Bonus wish list item* - A cold frame. After asking me what I wanted for my birthday, I told Corey that I would really love a cold frame - so we could have greens all-winter-long. He paused, looked up and said, "How 'bout cash?" He is stretched thin these days. The cold frame can happen. Or not. There's always next year.

And, what is your favorite fall garden chore?

Books: The Southern Gardener's Book of Lists

Both newbie and seasoned gardeners of the south alike will glean valuable information from this book.

The subtitle promises the best plants for any gardener's "needs, wants and whims." Whims? How can you not love a gardening book that understands that *most* green thumbs live and breathe on just that. Whims.

My favorite sections?

Trees To Try in Containers *or* Small Trees for Small Lots, Patios and Under Utility Lines
Trees That Will Outlive Your Great-Great Grandchildren
Substitutes for Bradford Pear
Perennials That Will Bloom Six Weeks or Longer
Some Perennials for Heavy Clay Soil
Perennials for Cracks and Crevices (i.e. stone walls or pathways)
Annuals for Beginners
Super Easy Flowers from a Packet Of Seeds
Old-Fashioned Shrubs
Native Azaleas in Order of Bloom
Roses Most Often Found in Old Southern Gardens

Also remember that this is particularly great time of year to plant trees and shrubs. Through the end of November. Amazing, since most nurseries are having very tempting sales right now, as well.

Shhhh. This tip can remain between the lot of us.

A Blank Slate - The Sugar Hollow Homestead

The big machines and work boots are through with their tromping and their bravado. The piles of seedling-smashing construction materials have disappeared - as each piece was gradually incorporated into the building of our home. And the drone of the mitre saws, compressors and sawzalls have fallen silent.

Now, it's my turn. A blank slate. A chance to take a crack at a small garden in this much-abused (and ignored) space. And an opportunity to inject a little femininity and estrogen into the landscape.

Favorite front-yard garden spaces have always been those with designs based in shrubs and small trees - to compliment the larger, more established trees and a smattering of perennials and bulbs.

My wish list is comprised of mostly native plants - trees, shrubs and woody vines that will offer color and interest throughout all of the seasons. And a few old-fashioned favorites because, well, gardens (for me) are also about nostalgia. Click on each highlighted plant for photos and details.

Shrubs and Trees
Fringe Tree (incredible fragrance in the spring)

Sweet Pepperbush (incredible fragrance in the summer)

Witchhazel (winter interest)

Sweetbay Magnolia

Piedmont Azalea (a much more delicate version of the typical azaleas)

Pinxterbloom Azalea (honeysuckle fragrance and an azalea in one!)
Hydrangeas
Lilacs

Roses (but not the fussy varieties)
Quince
Glossy Abelia

Peonies

Vines

Trumpet Honeysuckle

Passionflower
Carolina Jessamine

If we get three of these plants in the ground this fall, I'll be thrilled. Okay, two. One?! Meh. I know better - it may not happen until next spring. Or the following fall.

But I'll always have the delicious anticipation associated with blank slates. New beginnings. And big plans.