-By Gertrude Keller (daughter of Bessie Van Wickle McKee’s sister) from the Blithewold guest book, July 1953

Happy Halloween!

Gail and I look at the North Garden all summer with very critical eyes and every year by this time we’re like discontented apartment dwellers – desperate to clear the clutter and rearrange the furniture.   The North Garden is a kind of living room (pun intended, of course) at Blithewold – or a chapel on most weekends – and we try very hard to keep it looking like it’s in peak bloom all season.  And instead, like any garden, it goes through phases of spectacular and fades of quiet like the “May gap” and “July lull”, for instance.  And every year we try new annuals, and every year we search for a perfect new perennial, and every year we have “had it!” with some of the old ones.  (You have to hear Gail say it with emPHAsis and a roll of the eyes.)

We have both “had it!” with the Phlox (Phlox paniculata ‘David’) which was mildewier than ever this year – at least until we threatened it with expulsion in July and it rebloomed gangbusters and clean in September.  I have “had it!” with the monster daylilies whose suffocating foliage eclipses the few weeks of bloom in my mind.  (Plus, truth be told, I’m not wild about having to come in to deadhead them on weekends.)  And Gail has “had it!” with some of the iris which I have never managed to capture in a picture because they’re in bloom for all of about a week and a half and I miss them.

Fall is a perfect time to do some spring cleaning – perennials that have been cut back are much easier to divide and will focus energy on root growth as they settle in.  For the past couple of days Gail and I have braved high winds and cold fingers to divide phlox, iris and daylilies and do a little moving and removing.   We haven’t taken out all of anything but we we’ve made some space for new ideas.  — And tulips!  A few volunteers will come in tomorrow for one last push to plant 640 tulips in the North Garden – a bigger show than ever.  In August, Gail and Lilah made the final selection of Apricot Beauty, Amazone, Formosa, Cistula, Dreaming Maid and Black Hero.  Should be a beautiful beginning to a brand new season in the North Garden.

Do you go through your garden in the fall to clear the clutter and rearrange the furniture?  Do you have a garden or beds that you try to keep in a peaking succession of bloom?  – And what is your success?

It might all be eye candy but it’s delicious outside!  Yesterday was one of those amazing, quintessentially New England, fall days – cloudless cerulean sky framing the blazing end of the earth’s color spectrum – and I ate it up.  As soon as I could, I hightailed it out of the greenhouse (where spray mounted bubble wrap is peeling off the panes like a bad sunburn — we’ve conceded failure, alas) and went for an afternoon photo-op walk in search of some major and minor things worth planting for extra special fall color.  (Today is the other kind of New England fall day:  chill grey bluster and rain.  The kind of day to stay inside and write about yesterday.)

Common witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is turning a sort of ordinary yellow but if you take the trouble to move in for a closer look, you’ll see the extraordinary yellow blooms uncrimping.  It’s native to the eastern U.S., hardy in zones 3-8 and ours is a sizable shrub about the size of the potting shed.

Another blooming beauty – and again you have to have your eyes peeled for the blooms – is the Franklinia alatamaha.  It’s also worth stepping up to this tree to see the subtle slow burn of the leaf colors.  Native to Georgia and possibly extinct in the wild, this small tree is truly a beauty worth preserving.  Hardy from zones 6-9, our Franklinia is tucked in a sunny protected spot on the front lawn of the house.

The Katsuras (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) are eye candy that happen to smell like candy.  Every time I walk under this tree I am struck by the shadows it casts (there’s no prettier silhouette on the ground), the blaze of fall color that lights it like a candle and the mysterious sugar scent of its fallen leaves (I can’t detect it from a single crushed leaf – it takes a path-full evidently).  Hardy zones 4-8, Katsuras can reach 70′.  We also have a Weeping Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum ‘Pendulum’) which reminds me of Cousin It.

Fall flame colors need a foil and I know I’ve gone on about Chrysanthemum (or Dendranthema) ‘Sheffield Pink’ before (full sun, zones 4-8).  It’s a perfectly autumnal pink and I wish I had a patch at my house to reverberate against my burgundy-wine dipped flowering dogwood.

Amsonia hubrechtii is an autumn must-have native perennial (zones 5-9).  It has a pale blue star flower moment in the spring, a lengthy summer plain green featheriness and then a bright blaze now.  It’s the flash of yellow along the wall of the North Garden in the picture below.  As always, click on images for a larger view. The Tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) against the house is one of my other major fall favorites because it starts the whole show in August with a few well placed red patches high in the canopy and then keeps on coloring.

The Linden viburnum (Viburnum dilatatum) is turning shades of peachy orange so of course it made it on my list and the bright red fruit is an added eye treat.  (A good sized shrub – ours are about 10′ tall.  Zones 5-8)  Seven-son flower (Heptacodium miconioides) is another star for the showy bracts left over from the sweet September flowers. Some don’t find the scent altogether pleasing but it reminds me of honey soap.  (Tall shrub to 20′ and hardy in zones 6-9)

I could go on and on – I haven’t even mentioned a single maple yet!  That’ll be for another post perhaps.  Meanwhile I’m going to try to picture where in my own garden I can fit a few of these delicious plants and where in my neighbor’s yard I could sneak a Tupelo…  What’s your favorite eye candy this fall?  Are you planning on planting anything specifically to satisfy a fall craving?

Mother Nature must have kicked Jack Frost out of bed this morning because he came by bright and early to nip our roses (and a few noses and other posies).  Gail and I tried to remember when frost first hit here last year and although she had a frost at her house right before Halloween, we weren’t truly hit here (at least according to my shoddy record keeping) until snow fell on December 2nd.

Regardless of our actual frost date though we stick to the same schedule every year for putting the gardens to bed.   We always worry that our volunteer work force might revolt and desert when the weather gets too bitter – our tea break just isn’t long enough to give everyone’s chilly fingers a chance to thaw.  I have to say though that if I had a choice, I’d prefer having the catharsis of a timely frost to taking the beds apart long before Jack’s had a chance to nip them.  So I gave a little internal cheer when I saw the frost warning in the forecast yesterday.  This frost was a fairly light and patchy one as they go but it makes me feel a bit less heartbroken about sticking to our schedule.  The Florabundas took annuals and dahlias out of the North Garden yesterday (we left the foliage on the dahlias and kept them outside overnight in hopes that they’d get “hit” before storage), and today Cathy, Gail and I finished taking annuals out of the Rose Garden (we cut them off at the ground to allow their roots to decompose a little in the soil over the winter) and moved the last of the container plants into the greenhouse.  We had saved things like the New Zealand Flax (Phormium) and Camellias for last because they can take the cold.  A few annuals melted in the Display Garden beds that we’ve been saving for last but I think we can eke out one final weekend of technicolor.

Have you had a frost yet?  Informal poll:  When do you do your end of season garden chores?  Do you wait for a frost to hit and bundle up to work outside?  Do you wait until spring to do the major cleanup of melted annuals?  Or do you put the garden to bed when the sun is out and the time is right for you?

The William F. and M. Kathleen Church Cutting Garden (I love using its whole name) went full circle yesterday – from spring’s tulips to spring’s tulips.  Last Tuesday, after cutting buckets of bouquets from the still blooming garden, the Deadheads made quick work of clearing out the beds.  Toni, a volunteer who claims to be older than God, said, “We may not be good gardeners but we sure are good at tearing it apart!”  I disagree with her assessment of the group’s gardening skills but I think she’s absolutely right about the Deadheads knack for tear down.  They had the garden emptied (except for dahlias which ought to be hit by a frost, and a few perennials); the fence cleaned of spent summer vines; and the long row of peonies all cut back all within about two hours.

Way back in early August, while I was on vacation, Gail and Lilah placed a massive tulip order.  And I’m so glad that Lilah made notes (collages actually, complete with cheeky comments and pictures cut from the catalog) about which gardens they were all intended for.  Do you ever place bulb orders and then wonder what the heck you were thinking by the time they arrive?  Not having to stare blankly at the boxes while scratching my head in search of a memory made bulb sorting so much easier.  Thank you, Lilah!  In the Cutting Garden we’re trying a bunch of new-to-us colors and a few combinations that, if they are gorgeous (I’m pretty sure my combo choices will be especially stunning, Lilah!), might make it into the North Garden next year.  And again, the Deadheads made quick work of a tedious job.   We’ve got-it-good in the Cutting Garden though -  the soil is soft and crumbly and there’s not even the challenge of roots and rocks to break the zen trance of planting in rows.

Fred and Dan took most of the vine fence down this week too and with that gone and the beds mostly empty (looking), it’s just like a blank page for fresh thoughts.  Or maybe a new year’s resolution or two.  I enjoyed that garden this year but for next I’d be inclined to say it needs More.  More color.  More rows filled to busting.  Maybe because some of the other Display Garden beds were so exhuberant and bright, the Cutting Garden seemed almost pale and empty in comparison.  Our list of cut flower favorites keeps growing – I’m not ready to give up our favorite asclepias (you know the one), and it’s not possible to grow that garden without zinnias, dahlias, gomphrena and scabiosa.  I’m pretty sure it just can’t be done!  But there’s always room for new tries and who knows, maybe some of the cutting garden favorites will find their ways into other beds…  It is a new year after all.

Are you thinking about new year’s resolutions yet in your garden?  Do you grow any flowers to cut?  Are there any you would love to recommend?