Sure, it’s tempting to call a gardening article this time of year something like “Putting the Garden to Bed” or “Autumn Cleanup”, but I’m going to instead go with a theme of “Winter Interest”. I’m going to show you one of my tricks to prepare the garden to be interesting even when summer breezes turn into the gales of November and worse.
No, it’s not leaving your scarecrows outside inordinately long. These two were both unfortunately and unusually decorative after our non-traditional Halloween snow.
Halloween snow scarecrows
My garden looks good in winter too. Granted, I define “good” differently in summer than in winter, changing my expectations, but also stacking the deck in my favor. For example, my bird bath makes a lovely fairy garden in the summer, as you can see. Here, my shy fairy opted not to be photographed.
Fairy garden in my bird bath
Then, as temperatures cool, the tender plants come inside, as do any figures. Yep, still no fairy.
Fairy garden ready for winter
But wait, there’s more. Here is Mike moving a fence behind the bird bath to draw more attention to this area that will be a focal point over the winter.
Fairy garden and fence ready for winter
I truly am done with outside gardening for the year. Chicagoland winters make that decision for me. My tools are cleaned up and in the basement till spring and my wagon is moving to the shed. But I’ll still be looking out the window enjoying my garden!
“Nature bestows her own, richest gifts And, with lavish hands, she works in shifts…” ~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham
Dahlia growers know that autumn is a time of great abundance in the garden. While other gardens are winding down, the dahlia garden is gearing up. But it’s not just dahlias as you’ll soon see.
The dahlia garden in early September
Many dahlias will have multiple blooms on one stem. The purple one below, Thomas Edison, is proof positive. Angelina Francesca to the left is putting on quite the show as well.
Angelina Francesca (left), me (middle), Thomas Edison (right)
The zinnias are still going strong, and they really attract the butterflies. We have seen several varieties and they are always out there. The no-care zinnias are a step towards our lower maintenance garden. No, the dahlias aren’t going, but the zinnias are pretty much plop ’em in and walk away. The butterfly show was constant all summer.
Monarch butterfly on zinnias
Other flowers are more at the point of looking like Jurassic Park. Cleome is one of the few invasives I allow to grow in my garden. How can I resist when they look like this? Its kinda like once you have cleome, you always have cleome. Fortunately, the leaves have a unique look in the early spring and they can be edited by pulling out the extras. No digging required.
Garden girl and cleome
We even had a lotus bloom in our pond on Saturday. I think that was just God showing off that if he was only going to give us two lotus blooms all summer, and they last just a few days, one of the blooms was going to be on the day we host Dinner in the Garden for our Willow Creek Church friends. This picture is actually day two, cuz I want to focus on the pistil – yep that yellow salt-shaker looking part. (Consider that your new word for the day.)
Amazing lotus – day 2
The ornamental kale is starting to have a presence. We try to buy ours in the spring when you can buy them in cost-effective flats just like other annuals. (Consider that your money-saving tip for the day.) Be sure sure get the ornamental version, not the edible one. I learned that the hard way,
Ornamental kale
Here’s another show-stopper that can be reasonably priced. Caladiums are high-priced at the garden center and don’t always transplant well. We buy the tubers at Costco in the spring and plant them after frost. It takes them a while to do anything at all, then boom! Ours thrive with morning sun and afternoon shade.
Caladiums
Sweet autumn clematis is a standard for autumn gardens. Be sure to give it growing room and a strong support. We cut ours down to the ground in spring and it still takes over the fence. The mirror stays up all summer and comes in for the winter. Its resin and survives just fine.
Sweet autumn clematis
Ok, one more, just one more. This is turtlehead from my shade garden. Well, actually it’s from Pam’s shade garden, and now lives happily in mine. Soon it will be blooming all the way down the stem.
Turtlehead
We’re enjoying the cooler weather and this time of less work in the garden. Hope you are too.
I knew the Asiatic lilies would be blooming soon, but even after having them for several years, I was amazed when they came through with such coordinated timing. After all, there were just a very few blooming in the last few days, then today they totally exploded with color.
Here’s the back 40, as we call it. Yes, that implies there is a front 40, and even an outback.
Looking a little closer, you can see there are SOOO many blooms.
Let’s get up really close and personal with that one so you can drool a bit.
Our garden wasn’t always a pseudo-botanical garden. There was a time when our 1/2 acre lot had nothing but bad grass and some evergreens. We’ve come a long way, baby! A turning point for this time of year was when our garden was loverly but mostly green, while John and Lucky’s garden was magnificient. My gosh, it was the Asiatic lilies. Go ahead, look at the rest of the pictures and be jealous. Then go shopping and exercise your patience for a few years till they multiply and amaze you too.
These are a little shorter, at about 4′.
There are a lot of different heights, so be sure to pay attention. Apparently I didn’t, so these little guys are less than 2′ tall and need to move to the front of the border.
Its time to take the advice of a wise ancient Chinese proverb “If you have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy a lily.”
“Lettuce” Begin – A perfect pun for what needs to be done – begin growing lettuce. I planted our lettuce seeds in two coal buckets yesterday. They are outside on our deck where bunnies can’t reach them. Lettuce is a cold weather crop. Start it now so its ready before it bolts and tastes bad. Wait too long and the tender juicy greens will not like the heat, and you really really won’t like most lettuces.
I planted ours in the same coal buckets that I just grew tulips in. I planted the tulips in the autumn and left them in the garage. No water, no sun, nothing. Mike noticed them sprouting in late February and we took the hint that they would prefer the warmth and sun of a window in our kitchen. The tulips said thank you by blooming beautifully. The bulbs are still in the coal bucket and I’ll plant them outside when the lettuce is done.
“Spring won’t let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.”
~Gustave Mehler
I’ll be presenting “These are a Few of Our Favorite Things” at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show on Thursday at 11:30. I wasn’t planning to speak this year, but they asked me to fill in for a speaker who cancelled. There was no time to prepare a new presentation, so I opted to “rebloom” a very show appropriate topic. “Favorite Things” is just that, as it is the favorites of local pros and gardening celebs I rub shoulder with while I am the on-site seminar manager. Basically a recap OF the best FROM the best. So if you want to know what favorite the show’s owner shared with me, stop by for a sneak peak behind the curtain.
The show is at Navy Pier on Wednesday March 20 through Sunday March 24th. Its open on Wednesday to Saturday from 10 AM to 8 PM, and Sunday from 10 AM to 6 PM. Stop in for a touch of much needed spring, and say hi to me in one of the seminar rooms.
Have to work? Already downtown? Even busy on Saturday? They’ve got a ticket just for you this year. The Spring Fling ticket gets you into the show from 4 – 8 PM and is available for Wednesday thru Saturday for $10.
Yes, I know its February, and in Chicagoland that means snow and it means cold. It also means that the 2019 dahlia season begins! The Central State Dahlia Society recently had a tuber auction. We bought some and Mike will be down in the basement next week planting those and the tubers we stored over the winter.
Jim Kassner auctioning plants at Central States Dahlia Society tuber auction
The question is, where should you buy dahlias? Well, that depends. The first thing to consider is whether you should buy a tuber or a plant.
Start tubers inside like we do and you can start any day now, take cuttings, and make many more dahlia plants from that tuber. That’s a lot of effort and requires the right conditions and some know-how.
Start inside 6 weeks before the last frost to get a tuber rooted to plant after the first frost.
Plant a tuber directly outside two weeks before the last frost here in zone 5 and you won’t get dahlias till September. We personally don’t want to wait that long. If we are buying dahlias in May, it will be established plants instead of tubers. Check out a local club like ours for their sale.
Buying guide:
Dahlias at big-box stores may have names, or they may simply be marked as a mix. You need to know the name if you want to enter some competitions, and those competitions may require the dahlia to be recognized by the American Dahlia Society. Otherwise, you may not care. Certainly it can be more “iffy” when you don’t know what you are buying.
A more expensive dahlia may be costly because it is a new variety or doesn’t make tubers well. A more expensive dahlia does not mean its a better dahlia. Check out the American Dahlia Society for top performers like the Fabulous Fifty.
Dahlias can be 1 foot tall border plants or the 5 foot tall variety we like. They bloom as small as golf balls (Poms) or as large as dinner plates (AA size). You can NOT tell the size of the bloom from the picture – a close-up picture of a small flower can look really large. This Bristol Stripe Mike bought recently at Home Depot doesn’t state the size, and its hard to tell from the pictures. It also says “Plant once for color all summer”. We know it won’t bloom till August, and that assumes we’ve grown the tuber inside and then planted the rooted plant after the last frost.
If you are going to buy one dahlia that would be big and “could not be killed by a lawnmower” (as Frank Campise, Mike’s mentor, would say), Kelvin Floodlight is the dahlia you want.
Some options for buying tubers:
The auction was a good place for us to buy dahlias that are hard to get or already out of stock on-line, even if we paid more. Arrowhead Dahlias, for example, has many varieties marked as sold out already.
On-line sellers will usually take orders early (December for example) and ship them at a time that is right for your area. Swan Island Dahlias is one we buy from.
Garden centers may have the tubers, and I like to keep local businesses in business – but a garden center that hasn’t opened yet is not an option.
Big-box stores are absolutely an option. Our Meijers and Home Depot have them in now and Costco will soon.
Eight dollars and eight minutes – that’s about what it took to change my outdoor Christmas planter to a Valentine’s Day planter. It was actually ridiculously easy.
I must admit I had the birdhouse, so the $8 covered the heart-shaped welcome sign and the two burlap hearts. The good news there is you really aren’t spending $8 for a short-term planter, you are adding to your reserves for future projects as well. You can see the evidence of that in the outside Christmas planter I started with. Almost everything there was from previous years except the living material – basically the berries, pine cones, and evergreens. Even the birch branches had been tucked away from last year.
One thing I’ve learned is to be careful about what could get frozen in. Perhaps I’d have removed the birch snowman, but that was no longer an option in a Chicagoland winter. I may try switching out his scarf for a heart patterned ribbon on a day when it isn’t snowing.
I decorated the fireplace too. It went right from Christmas decor to Valentine’s Day. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the wall behind our fireplace just happens to be red.
Even there its pretty much scavenger hunt through the house – old Valentines’ Day cards and a candy box, a pitcher from the basement, items I’ve used for Valentine’s Day in the past. What a nice way to pay homage to those pieces of history that you can’t part with, but don’t seem to have a use for. Cuz yes you do!
I’d like to introduce you to Frank N. Pumpkin. He is just too cute. And so easy. The good news is that we aren’t looking for perfection here – I’m not good at perfection. I started with a green pumpkin and used craft paint. Then I sprayed him with clear coat and with hair spray. I’m not sure which of the two is keeping the squirrels away, but it’s working. Frank has been outside all week without a nibble.
The inspiration for Frank came from a pumpkin we saw at Pumpkin Patch in Door County. Here is another simple one we saw there…
For the more ambitious amongst us…
And for those with no ambition…just go get your nails done!
When you see a pond like this, you can’t help but say WOW! And when it’s in someone’s back yard, that is truly amazing. The next thought, of course, is WHY? I enjoy my pond, and virtually every pond owner wants a bigger pond. That’s a given. But this pond is a serious upgrade from anything I would dream of. It’s a dream come true for John, Sheryl, and their family. And surprise…it made sense for them.
John is a long-time friend of pond enthusiast and builder Brian Helfrich of Aquascape. John has probably seen the Aquascape pond that “is” Brian’s yard and wanted a pond that his kids could swim in too. On a hot summer day, the kids will be out there enjoying the water that reaches 6′ deep at the far end. Its way prettier than a pool, and there’s no chlorine. Sheryl can enjoy breakfast listening to the waterfalls. Wine and friends pond-side? But of course. Already sounds like a winning proposition doesn’t it?
The pond extends from the new patio to the back fence and sure made the neighbors happy. The low land that collected water at the back of the property was troublesome. Now, the 3000 gallon rainwater collection system is underground, collecting water from surrounding properties thus making the standing water problem disappear. Tough luck mosquitoes.
Ed Beaulieu of Aquascape said they worked closely with the engineers from Arlington Heights. The village’s main concerns included pumps, electrical, storm water management, and fencing.
Now its time to relax and enjoy. Time for family, friends, and for nature. Ed anticipates biodiversity to happen soon – “Build it and they will come.” Expect dragonflies, pollinators, frogs and small animals to appreciate the pond as well.
Thinking of buying a summer home? Think again! You just may be able to create your dream in your own back yard at a fraction of the cost of second home ownership and without any additional drive time.
