woodlandgnome

Six on Saturday: Naturalized

  • A volunteer Rudbeckia laciniata emerges to the left, alongside blooming Vinca minor. One of our new daffodils just planted in late December finally blooms. Daffodils mostly stay where you plant them, in ever expanding clumps. Rudbeckia seed themselves around and Vinca simply runs everywhere!

Misty mornings and warmer afternoons have worked their magic in our garden, coaxing leaves and flower buds to expand, breaking through the soft earth to reach for the light. New growth emerges from winter’s blank spaces where nothing has grown for months, and from last year’s brown and ragged detritus. It has been a week for noticing the new and cutting away more of the old leaves and still-standing stems.

Have you noticed that while some plants remain where you plant them, expanding a bit over time but behaving respectfully towards their neighbors, other plants quickly wander about and colonize parts unknown? Whether by stolon, stem, or rhizome, seed or spore, some plants find every opportunity to replicate themselves and crop up in unexpected places. Spring is prime time for finding these little horticultural surprises.

  • A variety of ferns continue to emerge in this section of our fern garden, especially deciduous Athyriums which are emerging this week. Ferns along the top edge, like the Japanese painted ferns, are volunteers from spores. Hellebores also crop us as volunteers from scattered seeds.
  • A volunteer Japanese painted fern emerges in a path.
  • This Japanese painted fern emerged in the edge of the lawn. I will grow it on in the container for a few months and then transplant it to a permanent spot in our garden.
  • I planted this dogwood seedling along the edge of the fern garden on Wednesday.
  • The new Woodwardia unigemmata ‘Ping Wu’ is growing as I help moss to establish as groundcover around it.
  • Athyrium niponicum ‘Burgundy Lace’ emerges among the Itallian Arum.

I’ve found several sporeling Japanese painted ferns emerging along the edges of paths and even the lawn this week. One leaf is poking out of the mossy side of a ‘step’ in an uphill path. Others grow from along the edges of other beds. A tiny Cyrtomium, a Japanese holly fern, has unfolded three fronds already through the moss under a large fig tree. I watch for these fern babies, as I also watch for Hellebore seedlings growing where they might be mown down in a few weeks, and transplant them to safer spaces.

The garden is endlessly generous when allowed to follow its own course. I found five dogwood tree seedlings growing in a container on the front porch last summer. At the end of the season I knocked them out of the container and potted up each one separately in a gallon sized pot of its own. They have grown on all winter, developing good roots, and I replanted two of them into part of the fern garden on Wednesday.

Native Iris cristata has required several years to settle and finally bloomed for its first time this week. This small shade loving Iris spreads on rhizomes to form ever larger patches.

Of course, there are always plants on our ‘not welcomed’ list, and also desirable plants that soon overwhelm us with their vigorous abundance. I’m already cutting out vines from shrubs and trees and digging up dandelions from herb containers. We always have too many of certain perennials, like Rudbeckia laciniata, which will grow to 7′ tall. It is gorgeous in August when covered in golden flowers, but I don’t need an entire bed of them.

Perhaps our feelings towards prolific plants, which crop up in unexpected places, is a Rorschach test of our gardening style. Where do we, and our personal wishes, fit into the natural evolution of our garden? How much do we control the space, and how much do we serve as guide and steward of nature’s processes? This is a question I come back to again and again.

Ajuga reptans began blooming this week, finally emerging rather late with new growth. This tenacious ground cover perennial spreads by stolons and by seeds. Gardeners in our area either love it or try to label it a noxious invasive plant. I appreciate that the bees love it, and it is very drought tolerant. Here, it grows at the edge of the street in front of our home, a tough spot for any plant!

This week I came across an article about the great contemporary French gardener and landscape architect Gilles Clement, who came to see our entire planet as one large garden. Working closely with nature in his own garden, which began as open space, he developed the concept of “le jardin en mouvement,” or, “the garden in motion.” He was fascinated by nature’s energy in filling the space with plant life, and his challenge was how and when to insert himself, as the gardener, into nature’s processes.

Nature includes both the plants that grow naturally in a place and the plants we choose to introduce. It include both the animals who turn up in our gardens as well as ourselves, the human presence, which transforms a wilderness or a wasteland into a garden. We humans are part of nature, and to assume otherwise is to miss an important concept of garden-making.

“To do as much as possible with, as little as possible against.”

Gilles Clement

Naturalized Ipheion, a South American native which grow from bulbs, emerges in our front lawn alongside native fleabane, Erigeron pulchelllus. The fleabane is pretty in bloom, but spreads itself so much it has nearly taken over the grass and now emerges in several containers. It is beloved by pollinators. This is one of those native wildflowers I pulled as a ‘weed’ when we first came to this garden.

I’ve come to understand that we need some synthesis of the natural flora of a place and the chosen flora the gardener desires- whether that is a tomato or a peony. I spent years pulling up ‘weeds’ here, which I later learned to recognize as desirable wildflowers. A few of the plants I, or earlier gardeners on this land have introduced, ended up behaving like ‘weeds,’ shading out or pushing out other plants that I want to thrive. Sometimes a little of something seems nice, but at some point the plant becomes overwhelming. Perhaps that’s why I always carry a pair of secateurs in my pocket!

But I am especially happy to discover a plant that I appreciate and enjoy appearing in an unexpected yet appropriate place. That shows me nature’s intelligence at work, a partner in this ongoing experiment in making a thriving and prolific garden. Whether nature’s forces provide a new expanse of moss, a baby fern, a seedling tree, or a flowering perennial; it is a gift, and evidence of the power of cooperation with the creative spirit of our shared Earth.

  • New growth appeared in this patch of hybrid Epimedium, or barrenwort, this week. Once I cut the old leaves away, which were still showing a bit of their autumn burgundy coloration, The new flowering stems and leaves quickly emerged. This hardy perennial spreads on rhizomes to make an expanding patch, but never becomes invasive. Most species originate in Asia or from southern Europe.

With appreciation to Jim Stephens of Garden Ruminations, who

hosts Six on Saturday each week.

14 comments

  3. It IS interesting to compare how some plants stay in one place, while others wander with abandon. Gardens are fascinating in so many ways. “The garden in motion” is an interesting concept. You mentioned that you’re growing the fern in a pot for a while and then you’ll transplant it. That makes sense, although it also looks lovely and happy in the pot with the mosses. Lovely.

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    • Thank you so much, Beth. I love having the little fern and mosses there on the table where we can see them up close. Athyriums are so delicate and have such detail to their fronds! The fern will be fine in the pot for a year or two, but as it matures its roots will need more space. It is a fairly shallow pot. It is interesting how some plants move around themselves while others depend on birds and squirrels to move their seeds. It is particularly interesting to notice seedling trees coming up in nearby yards as a uncommon species, like scarlet buckeye, spreads from yard to yard along the street. We know the squirrels are planting those nuts in the fall! ❤ ❤ ❤

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    • It is such a special Iris, particularly since it blooms in the shade. We’ve seen it form fairly large patches (in other gardens) as it very slowly spreads. Japanese I. tectorum has a similar growth habit and a similar flower. It can grow on thatched roofs in Asia. A local mail order nursery in NC carries the I. cristata, but it may be harder to source in Europe.

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  5. As I give Agastache the side eye for wandering too much into the vegetable beds. That is where I insert myself. Luckily, Fred taught me that it makes a nice herbal tea, so I pull it up, wash off the dirt and make tea, otherwise it would be everywhere. I let dill get away with that, but not Agastache. I am excited to start filling my new bed with who knows what – native plants and no doubt more vegetables.

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    • Agastache is a current ‘darling’ of a lot of gardeners wanting to grow natives to support pollinators. It is a butterfly and hummingbird magnet. I’ve seen it covered in butterflies at a local nursery while other nectar-rich plants nearby were ignored. I think it can get very weedy by late summer. And it seems to be a short lived perennial for me. I’ve not had trouble with it wandering, but I haven’t planted it near a vegetable bed, either. Do you like the tea? I’ve never tried it. ❤ ❤ ❤

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    • I wonder whether it prefers a moisture environment? I wonder that because ours was greatly reduced during our very dry year last year and I couldn’t find a trace in several areas where it was well-established by late winter. In true perennial style, it is re-emerging now. At least with Ajuga, there are eventually offsets to try once again, There is a super-sized taller variety available this year from Plant Delights in Raleigh NC (online catalog) and I have been tempted to try it. We have two or three varieties growing here, but nothing fancy. And it is such a happy surprise when it blooms each spring!

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      • Ours is down in a riparian situation, but, although the area is also innately humid by default, it is not always humid. No one ever tried it in a drier situation because it supposedly prefers riparian or well irrigated situations.

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      • All sorts of wildlife, including deer, live in the forest that our landscapes are in, but for some mysterious reason, they avoid certain portions of the most important landscapes. No one knows why. I would like to know how to keep them out of other landscapes and my home garden.

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