aspenhill's blog: Garden Editing

Thursday
Early fall is such a great time to move plants around. This year I have all the time in the world to do it without any other obligations or priorities vying for my time. Spreading plants and self seeders that pop up everywhere are great for increasing your plant numbers, but after a while they do need a bit of what I call garden editing. Some plants upon reaching maturity have truly outgrown their space and need to be dealt with too. Then there are those plants that are growing fine where they are but I think would look better somewhere else. And last but not least, the plants still remaining in my gardens that the deer won't leave alone need to be moved where they can be protected.

My lists today start with some spreaders and self seeders.

Spreaders
For the spreading plants, I purchased something that I hope will work on containing them. It is a 10" deep landscape edging made out of recycled HDPE coiled terrace board. I just started googling and found something that looks strong and flexible at a place called Vevor. I plan to dig up and transplant the spreaders that have grown beyond the area where I want them and then sink that landscape edging deep down into the ground around the edges.

In the Front Steps Bed the asarum canadense and variegated solomons seal have run amok. I want to keep both of these plants in that garden, but in a more controlled fashion. I'll move the extra asarum to the Millstone Fountain Garden and the extra solomons seal to the Stumpery. Then I will try my hand at sinking that edging around what is left.

In the Coach Light Bed and the Dogwood Overlook it is the geranium macrorrhizum that spread like crazy. I'll completely remove it from the Coach Light Bed but I'll keep it in the Dogwood Overlook. I'll have to get ruthless about how much though. I'll move the extra to try to get it established for soil erosion control on the slope of the Fire Pit Area.

Self Seeders
For the self seeders, I want to dig up the onesies and twosies and choose a garden area to consolidate them. The two plants that I want to concentrate on this fall are cimicifuga racemosa and thalictrum rochebruneanum.

I purchased three cimicifugas back in the early 1990s and planted them in the Turret Garden. They, or their descendants, are still alive and well. They look really nice there. Over the years they have self seeded about gently and I find them scattered as far as 50 feet away. I will dig those up and relocate a few to add in with the originals and start massing the others in another spot in the Arbor Retreat.

The thalictrum on the other hand, is so prolific that it has become unsightly. At first I thought the airy height would look great in the Front Steps Bed, but it is definitely in the wrong spot for so much foot traffic, and the volume of these plants in general needs to be eradicated. Thalictrum is a pretty one though and it will look much better in the right place and in controlled quantities. I'll dig up a few dozen and relocate them to the Arbor Retreat as a backdrop to the cimicifuga. They are different heights and leaf textures, but both have airy wispy flowers and I think they will complement each other. The rest will get the 'ol heave hoe. I'll have plenty of offspring from the ones I keep if I ever want to put them elsewhere in the future.

***

Planning is all well and good, but as Annie says, sitting here and thinking about it doesn't get the job done missy But, it won't be this afternoon - I have a lunch outing planned and will be enjoying myself and the company. That tsk tsking missy will have to wait

( No account? Join now! )