Red, White and Blue for the Fourth and other times, too

Happy Fourth Of July!  When I think of the 4th it's all about red, white and blue.  In the garden these colors are not usually used together, unless you are doing a theme planting or a flower arrangement.  Occasionally it happens, though, by accident.

This mostly native arrangement has 'Annabelle' Hydrangea for white,
Monarda didyma and non-native Salvia splendens for red, and the blue
 is supplied by Campanulastrum americana and Salvia farinacea 'Victoria blue'.
The green fireworks are bottlebrush grass, Elymus hystrix.

While I didn't plan this color scheme, this combination of
blue flag iris, Iris versicolor, and the red and white striped flowers
of myrtle-leaf mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia 'Minuet'
made a pretty nice display in late May. 

Here are some North American native plants that can supply you with red white and blue flowers for each season of the year.

Reds:

Scarlet sage is not hardy here so I grow it as an annual.
However, its seed will overwinter with a little protection

 In picking out these plants I looked for true reds rather than the many pinks and purples that are out there.  Roughly in the order of bloom from spring to fall  there is red trillium (Trillium erectum), wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), Indian pinks (Spegelia marilandica), fire pink (Silene virginica), red beebalm (Monarda didyma), various red salvias (Salvia ssp.), standing sypress (Ipomopsis rubra), turkscap (Malvaviscus arboreus), scarlet  rosemallow (Hibiscus coccineus) and cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis).

Cardinal flower makes a strong statement in late summer in sunny moist locations

White:

The pure white flowers of bloodroot are one
of my favorites in early spring.

There seems to always be something white in bloom. Here are 10 native plants with white flowers roughly in order of appearance:  Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis), Phlox (all species have some white forms blooming from early spring to late summer), beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis), elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), hydrangea (H. arborescens and quercifolia), summersweet (Clethra alnifolia), swamp rosemallow (Hibiscus moscheutos, often with a scarlet center), tall snakeroot (Ageratina altissima), white turtlehead (Chelone glabra) and various asters.

Elderberry has large flat flower clusters
for nearly a month in late spring.

Blue:

There are also native blue flowers throughout the growing season.  These plants tend to prefer shady locations.  Also their blue flowers show better in part shade than they do in full sun.  Many of the blues tend toward lavender or purple, I've tried to select more mid-range blues.  Here are a few, again in order of bloom:

Virginia bluebells carpet moist ground in early spring.

Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica), Jacob's ladder (Polemonium reptans), Ohio spiderwort (Tradescantia ohioensis), blue flag iris (Iris virginiana), American bellflower (Campanulastrum americanum), gayfeather (Liatris spp.), mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea), blue mistflower (Conoclinum coelestinum), great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) and various blue asters.

This smooth aster is one of the bluer (less purple) native asters in the eastern US.
(Should be Syphyotrichum laeve, sorry)

There are many other red, white and blue blooming natives out there and I would appreciate hearing what your favorites are.  And again, Happy 4th!!!

What worked in 2016

Looking back on how my plans for incorporating the new native plants worked this past year revealed more successes than failures.  Here's a rundown on what worked, what didn't and what I learned.

Plants from seed
Probably my best result came from seed for rose verbena, Glandularia canadensis.  After about 6 weeks of cold stratification I had very good rates germination after a week under lights.  I didn't see any plants from direct seeding outside done at the end of February.  Either that wasn't long enough or the conditions just were not right.  Surpizingly the plants are still leafy green outside (we are on the border of zones 6 and 7).

I also had good results with the annual Texas sage, Salvia coccinea, after a month of cold moist stratification.  We also had a lot of these coming up in pots that had been stored in an unheated garage, but none from seed that was left outdoors.

 The failure here was with Indian blanket, Gaillardia pulchella.  This one germinated during stratification.  I planted the sprouted seeds, but they were weak and didn't amount to much, even after being potted up.

Rose verbena was blooming by mid-July
and continued through the summer.  

This American bellflower is a favorite of native miner bees. 

A biennial that is really happy here is American bellflower, Campanulastrum americanum.  I started a few from seed in 2013 and now have volunteers scattered around the flower beds.  Another name for this species is tall bellflower; mine typically reach 4-5 feet when in bloom.  The deer browse on this a little early in the season, but tend to leave it alone after July.  It can get rather lanky, so it is best toward the back of a border or in the shade where it does not get so tall.





New Perennials

The white flowers of wild strawberry are another way
to distinguish it from mock strawberry, which has yellow flowers.

Since I was seeing good results from a hardy cultivated strawberry from the local master gardeners I thought I would try out some of the native species, wild strawberry, Fragaria virginiana.  Planted in mid-spring, these small plants settled in enough to put out runners to start new plants a foot or two away.  Got some flowers but no fruit this first year.  Looks promising as a fruit-bearing ground cover for next year.

These white woodland phlox, growing in my woodlands
are similar to ones I transplanted to under the pines.

I also planted both woodland and creeping phlox, Phlox divaricata and P. stolonifera, in open shade under some pines.  This is an area where I am trying to replace a mass of vinca.  These species do well in the shade of deciduous trees, we'll see how they handle the consistent dry shade of evergreens.  The woodland phlox that I planted in the spring disappeared in the middle of summer but put forth new growth in the fall.  The creeping phlox, which is more tolerant of dry soils, was planted in the fall.  We'll see which of these two species is more successful here.

In this same pine-rich area I added more Foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia, and hairy alumroot, Heuchera villosa, as seedlings.  In general the Heuchera survive these conditions much better than the Tiarella.  It was probably too dry for the young plants to get established.  While the Heuchera grow better, they are also more subject to browsing by critters, deer or rabbits of both.  Next time I get some Tiarella I'll try it in a moister location, perhaps under a walnut tree.

The flowers of blunt mountain mint are very attractive to pollinators.

A new native I added to the garden was blunt mountainmint, Pycnanthemum muticum.  I had been trying out hoary mountainmint, P. incanum, for a couple of years.  Planted in a partly sunny location, it has been rather slow to grow.  I planted the blunt mountainmint in a slightly sunnier location nearby and it grew to about 2' and was covered with dense pinkish flowers.  As showy as the flowers are the silvery bracts at the base of each flower.

I have been trying to get some blazing star, Liatris sp., to grow for several years.  It seems they get started, then disappear.  I'm pretty sure I'm losing them to some small mammals, ground hogs or rabbits.  This year I tried plains blazing star, L. squarrosa, with mixed success.  The ones planted in the open disappeared, while the ones surrounded by other plants were able to survive.  We'll see if these can get established.

Plains blazing star in bloom.  This species has
button-like flowers rather than spikes

Another regionally native plant that didn't bloom but seems to be getting established is vasevine, Clematis virona.  I didn't notice them much during the growing season, but when I cheked for them this past week I did find that the wiry vines had grown several feet.  I hope I can share some photos of its bell-shaped flowers next summer.


New Shrubs

This gray dogwood managed to bloom before it got pruned back by deer.

My main 'reclaimation' project last season was to displace invasive wineberry, Rubus phoenicolasius, and Japanese honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica, from a steeply sloping hedgerow.  I don't want to destabilize the slope, so I have been cutting back the invasives and treating the stumps with herbicide.  In 2014-15 I put in some smooth sumac, Rhus glabra.  This year I added gray dogwood, Cornus racemosa to the top and middle slopes and American hazelnut, Corylus americana, to the shadier lower slope.  Most of these were planted bare root in the spring and they seem to have survived their first year.  The biggest challenge for the dogwood is deer browsing.  This was also a problem the first year I planted red osier dogwood, C. sericea, but after a year the deer seemed to lose interest.  I have read that deer will browse more on new plants, especially those from a nursery, because their leaves are more tender and they are higher in nitrogen.  After the plants settle in, the leaves toughen up and become less appealing.  I hope it will be the case here.

On a disappointing note, only one of the five bare root red cedars, Juniperus virginiana, survived.  I have my lone survivor surrounded by chicken wire to protect it from deer.  I'll probably need to keep it caged up for a few more years, especially during rutting season.

Now its time to start planning for next year.  Let's see, what should I get????

Native Annuals Wrap Up for 2014

For the past 6 or 7 years I have been interested in using native annuals in my landscapes.  By working with species that are adapted to local climate and growing conditions they can behave essentially as highly mobile perennials, moving around the garden by reseeding to find their optimal spots.  In some gardens this could be a problem with too many randomized plants.  Personally, I like the spontaneity of getting something growing unexpectedly.  (If they do get out of hand I can just pull them up or transplant them to a more desirable location.)

This Partridge Pea reached about 3' in height.  They can look gangly
in a manicured garden, but fit well into a naturalistic setting.

This year I started a number of new native annuals from seed.  In addition, I had some reseed from last year.  Here's a rundown on their performance in 2014.  I'll start with the best.

In early to mid summer the best performers were actually plants that had reseeded themselves from 2013:  Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata) and American Pennyroyal (Hedeoma pulegioides).  Also the biennial, American Bellflower (Campanulastrum americanum) put on a big show.

The Partridge Pea has spread a little from it original planting.  This is an early transitional species, looking for gaps in the in the ground layer to germinate.  It can be pushed out of a densely planted area if there are no gaps.  

The seedpods of Partridge Pea curl up when they release the seeds.  These could look nice in a flower arrangement.

The American Pennyroyal forms dense low border 9-12" tall.
There is a little Selfheal (Prunella vulgaris) mixed in.

The Pennyroyal grew from a mixture of seed originally planted in spring 2013 and reseeding from plants in that fall.  The main feature of this plant is the strong minty scent that persists in the dried leaves and stems.  The blue flowers are tiny and grow from the leaf axils in late summer.  

These Amercan Bellflowers are at the back of a garden, an appropriate location.
They can get 5-6' tall in a sunny site.

In full sun the American Bellflower can get quite tall and unwieldy.  It grows well in shady spots reaching a more manageable height of only about 3'.  The blue flowers are very attractive to bees. Unfortunately deer seem to like it as well.  Although they left it alone after applying a repellent.  Pruned plants will produce a second flush of flowers.  

The narrow foliage of Plains Coreopsis allows to mix well
with other plantings without blocking the view.

In mid-summer and still continuing was Plains Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria).  I transplanted some spindly seedlings in late June and by mid July they were taking off and blooming.  There was a little deer browsing early on, but this seemed to taper off after a treatment with Bobbex.  The native range of this Coreopsis includes Maryland so I am hoping that these will successfully reseed in the garden.

The two annuals that are still going strong into mid-fall are Yellow Sneezeweed (Helenium amarum) and Scarlet a.k.a. Hummingbird Sage (Salvia coccinea).  

I only got a couple of the sneezeweed to germinate, but once in the ground it took hold and has been blooming strongly since mid-August.  One trick with these is that the tiny seeds that I brought come massed together in few 1/16" spheres.  These need to be broken up and spread over the soil surface to germinate.  I mistakenly treated most of these spheres as seeds and planted them too deep resulting in no germination.  

The bright yellow flowers of this Yellow Sneezeweed do not need to be deadheaded.
Just as well, I hope to get some reseeding from these.

The Salvia germinated easily and after growing in trays for a few weeks were transferred to the garden or into pots.  These plants spent 6-8 weeks growing before they were ready to bloom.  Despite the wait, the blooming has been strong since early August.  This species also does well in pots. but it is kind of tall and you may want some other plants to fill in around the lower leaves.

The tubular flowers of this Salvia did attract our hummingbirds earlier in the season.
At 24-30" it shows up well among other garden plants.

Some other annuals I tried that grew but did not excel this season were Sulfur Cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus), Beach Sunflower (Helianthus debilis 'Pan') and Spanish Flag (Ipomoea lobata). The Cosmos suffered from too much competition from other plants and from being nibbled on by the local fauna.  I expect it would have done better in a more protected location.  The Sunflower germinated well in the garden but was overshadowed by the Annual Sunflower I paired it with.  The Spanish flag matured very late in the season with significant blooming starting in September.  It's blooming well now in late October, but all the supporting plants are fading away.  Spanish Flag is native to Mexico (part of North America); I don't expect to see this one reseed.

The fact that we have not had a real frost yet in our area has really extended the blooming season for these plants.  Some I expect to survive a light frost, while others will be killed immediately.  

I did plant a couple of winter annuals, Texas Bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) and Miami Mist (Phacelia purshii), out in the garden in late summer.  I'm keeping an eye on them, but have not seen any definitive germination yet.

Early Summer Blooms

Bees visit American Bellflower in both sunny
and shady locations

Now that we are getting into the hot days of summer, blooming of many native plants and the associated pollinator activity are picking up.  Here at home I saw my first Monarch Butterfly in many years.  You'll have to take my work for it, since it was gone by the time I got my camera.

One plant that has been blooming for awhile is the American Bellflower, Campanulastrum americanum.  This is particularly attractive to a medium sized black bee, probably a Miner Bee.  This plant blooms nearly as well in the shade as it does in the sun.

This Miner Bee is the primary visitor to the Bellflower

This Miner Bee draws nectar from the open face of the flower.  To do this it lands on the stamen and style of the flower.  Apparently the flower's stigma is situated to receive pollen from the bee as it makes its approach to the flower.








Nearby, on the sunny side of the driveway the Echinacea is in full bloom.  These attract a variety of pollinators, such as this Green Sweat Bee.  The Meadowsweet, Spiraea latifoia, has finished it's first round of blooms.  This year I cut some of the plants back significantly to keep the growth in check.  (I'm pretty sure it will put out a second growth.)  So for now the bees will be visiting other flowers for pollen and nectar.

It's interesting to note that with all the activity on the native flowers, I have seen very few insects visiting the flowers on my nearby shrub rose (other than a couple of Japanese Beetles).

Another early bloomer in the dry shade of my Norway Maple is Rosin Weed, Silphium integrifolium.  I chose this species of of Silphium because it does not get as big as the more familiar Cup Plant, S. perfoliatum.  This plant has slowly been expanding its mass, but I have not seen it show up in other parts of the garden.

A Hover Fly monitoring a cluster of Rosinweed blooms.

The flowers on this particular plant tend to form on the shady side.
This makes for a difficult photograph.

A new native annual that I'm trying out this year is Partridge Pea, Chamaecrista fasciculata.  This plant will grow in poor, dryish soils.  So far I'm favorably impressed.  One grouping that I planted near a highway is growing and blooming, despite receiving no additional moisture, other than the small amount of rain this summer.  Like its relative the Sensitive Plant, its leaves will fold up when the plant is handled roughly.  The leaves also fold up when it gets dark.  I wonder if this behavior helps it to survive under dry conditions (by limiting transpiration).

Some drifts are still intact, like the lavender-color Beebalm, Monarda fistulosa;
the orange Butterflyweed has blown over from another part of the
Wildflower Meadow at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

A Monarch Butterfly passing over
some Beebalm and Hoary Vervain

Over at Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, MA, there is a good sized native wildflower meadow installed about 5 years ago.  Here I have seen many more butterflies than in my urban backyard.  This meadow features a number of native grasses as well as many showy flowering plants.  The original planting had the plants arranged in drifts, but the management plan is to let the plants move around as they will, to create a dynamic garden with plants finding there best locations.

In another part of the cemetery I noticed this Bottlebrush Buckeye, Aesculus parviflora, in full bloom.  While native to the Southeastern US, this shrub is very attractive to the bees up in the Northeast.  I spent some time watching how the bees interacted with the flower.  It was more like a mugging than a gentle approach to sip some nectar.  The bee grabs onto to the outside of the flower and extracts nectar from between the petals and the calyx.  In the process the bee's abdomen rubs all over the anthers and the stigma, thus achieving pollination of the flower.  

This bee on the Buckeye flower is about 1.5" long.

Other flowers are about to open up here, like the Scarlet Sage, Woodland Sunflower and Prairie Coneflower, so the show has only just begun.

Seedling's Progress - New Natives from Seed

One of my goals is to increase awareness of Native Annuals and their possibilities in the garden.  A major part of that is encouraging the plants to reseed themselves into the garden.  This is starting to get complicated, especially where I have combined a number of different plants.  It behooves me to learn what the seedlings of both the desired and undesired plants look like.  I getting to the point where I can tell which seedlings are familiar, even if I'm not sure which one it might be.  Here are some photos from this spring of some native seedlings, both 'wild' and ones that I have started in pots.

Lilium seedlings are just a single blade.

The seeds that I am most excited about are for Philadelphia Lily, Lilium philadelphicum.  I wanted to get some experience with a native lily and I chose this one because it's habitat is most like what I keep at home, dry upland woods.  Since I thought that germination would be tricky, I tried several methods: cold moist sand for 60 days, moist soilless mix for 2 weeks at room temperature then 60 days in the frig, room temperature seeding and winter-sowing.  The cold moist stratification gave me nearly 100% germination.  All the other methods were about 50%.  Now it is time to pot these guys up.  I think it will be several years before these will be mature enough to bloom, but I think (hope) it will be worth it.

Partridge Pea is a native annual found in the eastern half of the US.  It germinated well after a 10 day cold stratification.  This plant is able to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere though its association with rhizobial bacteria.  The seed I purchased form Prairie Moon Nursery came with a packet of inoculum to ensure that these bacteria would be present for the new plant.  The leaflets fold together at night and when it is being roughly handled.  I have already planted out a bunch of these along a roadside, where I am hoping they will be able to reseed themselves. 

Indoor sown plants are lankier than these outdoor plants.

Another one of the new plants I started this year was Vigin's Bower, Clematis virginiana.  While it is a pretty common woodland species, I have never noticed it before.  I want to test it out under the dreaded Norway Maple.  I got excellent germination from plants started indoors after 2 month moist stratification in sand.  I also started some outdoors in mid-January, using the Winter Sowing technique.  I think I got better germination using the refrigerator-stratified seeds, but the outdoor plants are more compact.

I also started more Woodland Sunflower, Helianthus divaricatus, and Crowned Beggarticks, Bidens coronata, using the Winter Sowing method.  Germination was moderate, but the resulting plants are of good size and require no hardening off before transplanting.  This was probably a poor year to really evaluate the winter-sowing method.  Since it was quite warm and relatively dry, the covered containers did not get very much moisture in through the pour-spout, making them warmer and drier - not what you want for cold stratification of seeds.

Random Seedlings: 1. Sulfur Cosmos (blunt leaf tips); 2. Annual grass
(single blades); 3. Oxalis (3 leaflets); Tomato (hairy stems and smell)

When you are counting on plants reseeding themselves in the garden, weeding and maintenance become a big issue.  In this photo of random seedlings I can recognize some of these as desirable and other as definite 'weeds'.  Possible desirable seedlings here include  Agastache 'Navaho Sunset', Bidens coronata, Cosmos sulphureus, Monarda punctata, Salvia coccinia, and Rudbeckia hirta.  The largest seedling in the photo is most likely a Sulfur Cosmos, though it could also be a Bidens.  This is a keeper.  The easy to ID weeds are the grasses and Oxalis.  The grasses have only single leaves (monocots) and the Oxalis has a 3-lobed clover-like leaf.  All of the desired plants in this area are dicots, they have two cotyledon leaves.  This makes them easy to distinguish from the grasses.  Where it gets tricky is all of the tomato seeds that come in with the compost.  (I know, I don't cook my compost hot enough.) These seedlings have a tomato smell when bruised and the stem is covered with little hairs.  At this juncture my strategy is to remove only those weeds I'm sure about (grass, oxalis and tomatos) and watch to see how the others develop.

These seedlings are about an inch tall, but strongly aromatic.

One of my favorite Native Annuals that is catching hold around the house is False Pennyroyal, Hedeoma pulegioides.  It's a small plant that will grow on poor soil and in the gaps in the sidewalk.  It is most easily recognized by it powerful aromatic/minty scent.  Usually just lightly touching a leaf is enough to release the scent.

This is the second year these have managed come back on their own.

Red-whisker Clammyweed, Polanisia dodecandra, is naturally found in gravelly soil along creek beds.  I had a hard time getting it to grow under cultivation (I think it resented being transplanted), but now it is showing up in other potted plants which had been nearby the previous season.

These rosettes may be from fall-germinated seeds

American Bellflower, Campanulastrum americanum, has gotten pretty well established since I first started it in 2009.  The first year rosette will stay small all year and take off, growing to 4+ feet, in year two.  I have a few second year plants that are 2 foot tall already.

Fresh shoots from a plant that was started last year.

While I have the feeling that everything is coming early this year I nearly tossed out some pots that I thought were empty.  Just before I did, I found that the Flowering Spruge, Euphorbia corollata, was sprouting in good form.  Another late riser is Butterfly Weed, Asclepias tuberosa.  While one plant has been up for several weeks, a second, less established neighbor, is just now sprouting.

Now the watching continues.  Will there be more seedlings coming up?  Will I figure what's what before it's too late?

Under the Norway Maple - Part 2

As the growing season is slowly coming to a close I thought I would revisit the status of the native species I have be evaluating under my Norway Maple.  There have been some improvements and some failures and one plant that I thought I lost has returned in a different spot.  In general many of the plants continuing to grow, only slower and smaller due to competition from the mature Maple.

Maturing berries of Winterthur Viburnum start off
bright green, then turn pink, then finally dark blue.

First the good news.  After 4 years of growing with no berries, I finally got a good crop from my Winterthur Viburnum (Viburnum nudum 'Winterthur').  While it had been slogging along at the edge of the tree canopy, it produced no fruit until I brought in a native form last fall.  This year, with the cross pollination, mature berries were produced for the first time here.

Another plant the seems to be catching on is the Northern Sea Oats (Chasmantheum latifolium) that I moved in last year.  These overwintered and grew fairly well in the shade along the back fence.  I would like this grass to grow up and obscure the chain-link fence.  A new addition, that seems to be working out is the Bluestemmed Goldenrod (Solidago caesia).  The native habitat for this plant is in open woods, so at least this plant is used to the shade.



The Northern Sea Oats are doing well along the fence. 
The new Bluestemmed Goldenrod is in full bloom (late September)
and the Witchhazel is just getting started 



The Green and Gold (Chrysogonum virginianum) that I thought had faded away returned in a new spot and looked healthier this year than when it was first planted 4 years ago. 

I transplanted a lot of 2nd year American Bellflowers (Campanulastrum americanum, a biennial) along the back edge of the garden.  These did well though early and mid-summer until they died out after completing their bloom cycle.  The test will be whether new plants return from the seed. 

The biennial Allegheny Vine (Adlumia fungosa) did not come back with any new seedlings this year (unless they were lost in the spreading Virginia Creeper).  A new addition that I thought would work but did not do well was Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis); I will keep a eye out for this next spring.

Successes

Other plants that are expanding are:

The Rosinweed is standing tall while the Smooth Aster
and Showy Goldenrod have flopped forward toward the sun.

American Pennyroyal (Hedeoma pulegioides, an annual returning from seed), Smooth Aster (Symphyotrichum laeve), Heartleaf Aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium), Rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium), Showy Goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia, now the dominant grond cover), and Wafer Ash (Ptelea trifoliata).

I should give a shout out to the Rosinweed.  While it does not have the prettiest flowers, it was in bloom all summer.  Then, I cut the spent blooms back to some new flower buds and got the second flush shown in the photo.  (Cutting back when no buds are present just leaves you with a leafy stem; I tried that last year.)

Plants holding their own:

  

Christmas Fern, Bellwort and Wild Bleeding Heart
have looked good all season.

 Male Fern (Dryopteris filix-mas), Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), Rosey sedge (Carex rosea), Alumroot (Heuchera villosa),  Black Huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata), Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), Lowbush Blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium), Dutchman's Pipe (Aristolochia macrophylla), Largeflower bellwort (Uvularia grandiflora), Twinleaf (Jeffersonia diphylla), Wild Bleeding Heart (Dicentra eximia), Witchhazel (Hamamelis virginiana )

Fading or gone:

Barren Strawberry (Waldsteinia fragariodes) has disappeared and the Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense) was down to only two sprigs in the spring before it disappeared.  Hairy Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum pubescens) has been in this area for 4 years but it now seems to be in decline.  I put in a new one this fall and am hoping for its return.

Plants that should work, planned for next season:

Last year I planned to put in Labrador violet (Viola labradorica) and Maple-leaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium) but didn't.  I'll try to get those for next spring.  I will will also give the Canada Anemone another shot.  I also have some Large-leaf Aster (Eurybia macrophylla) that I should move over, seeing as it usually does well in dry shade.

In addition to using plants that are strong competitors that can get their share of moisture there are some maintenance practices that will help the understory plants survive under the Norway Maple (or other mature tree for that matter).  Limbing up and thinning the canopy to let in more sunlight helps a lot. Also, new plants should be irrigated deeply the first year to get them established, as well as under droughty conditions (mid-summer). I have a rain barrel with a special low pressure soaker hose to help with this.  Returning the leaf mulch to the understory area helps to build the soil.

American Bellflower Update

American Bellflower, in bloom from
late June through August

Over a year ago I posted some information on the American Bellflower, Campanulastrum americanum.  This plant, or it's progeny anyway (it's a biennial) have been growing in my yard since 2008.  It spends its first year as a rather innocuous rosette of leaves, but in its second year it shoots up to form a flower stalk between 2 and 6 feet in height, depending on location.  This spring I had an over abundance of second year plants within about 5 feet of the 2009 plants that I let go to seed. This spread is consistent with the smooth round seed just falling to the ground from the tall flower stalks.  Not wanting to throw any of these seedlings out, I redistributed them to a variety of areas in my yard that are normally difficult for growing flowering plants. 

A spontaneous composition on
the edge of the driveway with
Spiarea latifolia, the blue
Campanulastrum and
Rudbecia hirta.

The Campanulstrum growing in
dry shade under a Crabapplealong a foundation.

Along the North side, here the Hostas
hide the legginess of the Bellflower



Growing in rocky soil from under the
deck - plants forming a screen.



It seems that the plant looks better in some of the more challenging locations, where its vigor is moderated.  In rich soil with lots of sun it can become a floppy 6 foot monster.  Some places where it is doing nicely are : cracks in the driveway, a sterile rocky area under a deck, north side of the house, under a Norway Maple and in the deep shade of a Crab Apple along a dry foundation.  I think this latter location shows the American Bellflower at its best.

As far as pollinators, it seems that there is one particular bee, probably a type of Mason or Miner Bee (can anyone ID this for me?), that really loves this plant.  The first couple of years I didn't see much action with bees, but this year the bee activity has taken off!  A few larger bumblebees drop in, but they prefer the Meadowsweet (Spiarea latifolia var. alba) for the most part.

The meadowsweet is preferred by the bumblebees

I have been a little concerned with how vigorously this plant reproduces, however it is fairly easy to pull up so it can be controlled in the garden fairly easily.  It is not as aggressive a reseeder as my Bearded Beggarticks (Bidens aristosa), which I am glad to say is easily edited out by selective pulling.  The question of persistance of the seed remains.  How many years will it lie dormant in the soil? 

Also, since this bellflower is not a Massachusetts native, I wouldn't recommend its use near wild areas in this state.  But I do think it works well as a North American native that is well adapted to the conditions of the modern residential landscape, particularly under trees and along shady foundations.