WEEDS IN MY GARDEN: AUTUMN

I used to subscribe to several gardening magazines that I really enjoyed.  They discussed new plant varieties, growing information about old favorites, but most of all, they always seemed to have rules for planting--lots and lots of rules.  There were "how to" instructions for beautifully laid out gardens with everything perfectly planned.

Now, that just isn't my personality.  While I understand the principals behind groupings of the same plant to make a greater effect, I sometimes just don't have the space, especially when I have to squeeze that new plant into my garden.  Besides, my garden isn't just for me; it is also for all of the little creatures that inhabit it.

I discovered the pretty combinations in the magazine pictures didn't work in reality.  The creeping Jenny and the dead nettle among the hostas, while beautiful, soon threatened to strangle the garden. So didn't the uninvited native plants like the asters and hay ferns.

While beautiful in their own right, I was intent on raising only the more "glamorous" plant cultivars. Even the showy goldenrod did not escape my weed removal plans.

Then one day, I began to realize that many of these "weeds" were disappearing in the meadow area, obviously falling victim to over browse by deer.  That is when I became concerned and decided maybe I shouldn't take these native ones for granted.  So, I started allowing them to grow in my garden pretty much wherever they showed up.

At first I added a few native great blue lobelia plants which soon spread and became decorated by beautiful swallowtail butterflies.  This pipevine swallowtail is sipping nectar from a lobelia that popped up beside  my grandfather's old grinding wheel.

I transplanted several kinds of native ferns into the garden including sensitive, interrupted, cinnamon stick and Christmas ferns. A tiger swallowtail found a lobelia that had managed to pop up through the fern.  Even the hummingbirds were attracted to the nectar.  I've discovered that although they may prefer red, they will feed from other colors of tubular shaped flowers.

I also added some Black-eyed Susans to my flowerbed that now reseed regularly and provide blooms from June through September.  Because the goldfinches eat the seeds, I allow the spent plant to remain even though it turns an unsightly brown.

 Thanks to the addition of the native plants, I now have a colorful fall garden.  Here a spicebush swallowtail rests on a great blue lobelia with cultivated autumn joy sedum in the background.

Another pink and blue combination with the Japanese anemone 

providing the pink.

Near our garage, several Joe-Pye weeds started to grow.  I allowed one to grow unchecked, and it reached ten feet.  Then I was pleased to discover that the seeds provided a food source for the goldfinches.  A male sits on top of the bloom and is dwarfed by it.

I trimmed one Joe-Pye weed back during the summer to see what would happen.  As expected, the plant branched providing multiple small blooms.  It too attracted the goldfinches.

And so didn't the sunflowers that came up from the winter seed dropped by the birds. Both a male and female goldfinch are enjoying the seeds as they ripen.

 This area started with sedum, but asters, golden rod, and snake root popped up making an even prettier late summer and early autumn picture.

Tall volunteer goldenrods started to grow.

Until they became so tall that the blooms fell onto the sedum making this beautiful contrast.

New England asters filled in around an old pole.

And I transplanted a goldenrod for a little extra color.

Now my garden isn't boring anymore.  It has lots of color and little creatures living in it. Yes, there are some additional weeds that aren't the showy, blooming kind, and even if, as in the picture, a corner of it is dissected by a temporary clothesline, it's still colorful.  It's definitely not going to win the "yard of the month" award given by little, old ladies who ride around in cars and who use a rigid checklist of what should be in an "award winning" garden.  But my garden is unique, a one of a kind, a riot of quirkiness, just like its creator.