Nope.
This is an excellent time to be thinking ahead to the cooler days of fall and what you can plant to enhance your landscape. What makes “right now” so special?
Right now your landscape is probably at its high point. The foliage on shrubs and trees is full and lush. Many of your late spring and early summer plants are in bloom. Take a look around your landscape. Walk around and see it as if with fresh eyes. This is the best time of year to see where the gaps are. Later in the year, and of course in winter, this is less obvious as deciduous trees have shed their leaves and even evergreens are more dormant.
What do I mean by “gaps” in your landscape? I don’t mean to suggest you should necessarily fill every square foot of soil with plants. But when you look at your landscape, as if for the first time, you’ll see areas that don’t look complete, somehow.
Perhaps there’s an awkward space between plants that looks empty, like a smile with a missing tooth. Maybe a dead plant had been removed and never replaced. Or perhaps an older plant has outgrown its usefulness, dwarfing smaller plants around it and preventing sunlight and rainwater from reaching them.
Not only that, but at this time of year you can look at your landscape and see some of your favorite plants at their best and decide if it would be a good idea to invest in one or two more. At our nursery, it is not unusual for Cheryl and me to hear from customers who bought shrubs from us one or two seasons ago and want to buy more of the same, once they’ve seen how well those plants enhance their particular garden plan.
As a general rule, it makes sense to place low-growing plants at the front of the beds with medium sized plants behind them and the taller shrubs in back. Now is the time to look at your beds and determine if there are some plants that are “out of whack” in your landscape. Instead of waiting until fall or next spring, decide now if any plants need to be retired and replaced, and which ones you’d like to see more of next summer.
Need some idea starters? Here are some plants you can research right now and probably pre-order for fall planting. Let’s start with the low-growers…
Ajuga Black Scallop PW
A neat little fast-growing ground cover with deep, dark burgundy leaves and blue blossoms in spring, lingering into summer. I prefer this one to regular Ajuga bronze due to its larger leaves and deeper color.
Creeping Red Thyme
(Thymus praecox subsp. Arcticus) This is a fast-growing evergreen ground cover with wonderfully aromatic foliage. If you’d planted it last season, right now you could be enjoying a profusion of lovely red flowers. Easy to grow and good between pavers, too.
Moving back to some medium-height plants…
Heuchera Lime Ricky PPAF
This would be superb choice to plant behind the Ajuga Black Scallop (or adjacent to any dark foliage plant such as Black Elephant Ears or Black Mondo grass) because the scalloped leaves are a glowing chartreuse in spring turning lemon-lime in summer, emphasizing the contrast with black Ajuga foliage. Mature height: around 2 feet.
Heuchera villosa Tiramisu PPAF
Imagine these splashes of brick red color spattered around your garden, lightening to chartreuse in summer with a light silver overlay.
And now some taller plants…
Carolina Allspice
(Calycanthus floridus) A dense, deciduous shrub that can grow to 5 or 6 feet (or more) at maturity, Carolina Allspice has lustrous dark green foliage and very fragrant, brown to reddish-brown flowers.
Buddleia Bi-Color
Easy to grow and extremely fragrant, this variety sports two different colors on the same bloom stalk: rich lavender and butterscotch yellow. It will bloom all summer and attract swarms of colorful butterflies to your garden. Mature height: 5 to 6 feet.
Survey your landscape, plan for improvements and pre-order plants now for fall planting. Let me know if you need some more suggestions.
The Plant Man is here to help. Send your questions about trees, shrubs and landscaping to steve@landsteward.org and for resources and additional information, including archived columns, visit www.landsteward.org
