The schoolbus yellow rudbeckias foretold the inevitable starting weeks ago. School has started in Rhode Island, it’s about to start in Mass., and suddenly the property has gone quiet. No more laughing camp kids in bamboo grove and vegetable garden, and fewer busloads of adults too. It’s as if a timer went off that says we all have to get back to work now just because kids went off to school. People are already talking about the “end of the season”. I object.

After all, summer is far from over. I’ll admit that some things, like tomatoes, are starting to show signs of slowing down. Last week we filled a crate to the top for the food pantry, and barely covered the bottom of it this week. But the gourds are still reaching for the moon, soybeans are coming, squash are growing (into baseball bats), and even lettuce is leafing. Not to mention all of the “cool crops” that are just getting going all over again.

There’s nothing quiet about the other gardens. They are as crowded and noisy as a schoolyard with pollinating and seed eating wildlife and are so jam packed with flowers it can be hard to find the paths in and back out again. These next couple of months are exactly the time we’ve been working so hard for all winter, spring, and summer. It’s a little bit ironic that right when everyone else goes back to work, we can finally take a bit of a breather to really look at and enjoy the gardens, assess our successes and discuss changes we might like to make next year.

Which isn’t to say that there’s nothing else to do. Late-summer garden chores are some of the most gratifying. We need to keep paths open and welcoming, and prop up the top-heavy leaners but there’s not much deadheading to do (a topic for a future post) and even the weeding seems under control (though we did just get another little downpour yesterday…) But everything we do in the garden, every tweak and adjustment, edit and deletion really shows and looks like an improvement. Check out these befores and afters…

(The last two pictures are to show the difference in the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) hedge after Fred and Dan trimmed it yesterday – what a difference.) I think the reward for a morning’s or a day’s labor of love – in the garden or out of it – should be to sit back for a few minutes to watch the goldfinch eat echinacea seeds and the hummingbirds work the stachytarpheta, Salvia guarantica, nicotiana, and agastache and soak it all up before summer really does come to an end.

Have you gone back to school/work or are you still enjoying summer in the garden? Do you do a lot of late-summer editing, assessing, and wildlife watching too?

I am as fickle as any gardener. I’ll pick a new favorite color, fragrance, leaf, flower, and plant habit every other week (or day) and reserve the right to change my mind over the slightest disappointment. That said, the hyssops, which have been blooming since June, are vertically eye-catching, and smell like candy, have managed to stay at the top of my favorites list for months now. I also think they deserve the  “Most Attractive Plant” award in the 2012 Blithewold yearbook superlatives.

Agastache, which is pronounced ah-GAH-stah-kee or aga-STAK-ee depending on who says it (tomato, tomahto), is Greek for very much (agan) spike (stachys) according to Allen J. Coombes’ The Hamlyn Guide to Plant Names. (He pronounces it the first way.) Very much spike is right. And probably because their native habitat is sharply drained hillsides they’re fairly sturdy, unfussy, and drought tolerant. They are also hardier than I ever thought. Around here anyway, wet winters and poor drainage are more likely to do them in than cold temperatures.

We are growing North American native anise hyssop (A. foeniculum, zone 4-11) because it seeds itself all over the Display Garden. Its spikes start out a lovely dusty blue and deepen over the season and are more slender than its hybrid child ‘Blue Fortune’ (zone 6-9; crossed with Korean A. rugosa). That’s the one we’re growing in the Rose Garden this year and the bees can’t get enough of it. My personal favorite, planted in the Display Garden and North, is ‘Black Adder’ (zone 6-9). The deep indigo bracts are spectacular especially now that every plant is also decorated with its own klatch of a half-dozen or more American Lady butterflies. (At least I think that’s what they are.) All 3 are standing a good 4-5′ tall now and need propping – particularly top-heavy ‘Blue Fortune’ even though we lopped them back by half in late May or early June. In my own garden, I grew ‘Golden Jubilee’ (zone 5-9), which has brilliant chartreuse foliage through mid-summer and pale grey-blue spikes. The best thing about that plant is that its seedlings have already started to pop up. The more the merrier. We have no intention of deadheading any of these because we’re looking forward to their structure over the winter, but we have used some stems in flower arrangements.

I always though that the cultivars of hummingbird mint like ‘Heatwave’, ‘Acapulco Orange’, and ‘Summer Glow’ were tender but they’re at least as hardy as ‘Black Adder’ and ‘Blue Fortune’. Both ‘Heatwave’ (zone 5-10) and A. mexicana ‘Acapulco Orange’ (zone 5-9) came back for us this year but last winter was unusually dry and mild so it probably wasn’t a good test. We have our fingers crossed for ‘Summer Glow’ (zone 6-9) in the North Garden, which in its first year isn’t as outstanding as the others but certainly could be the prettiest of all with one more season’s growth. We’ll probably take cuttings and overwinter a stock plant in the greenhouse just in case it doesn’t make it outside. The slightly contrasting bracts on ‘Acapulco Orange’ and ‘Summer Glow’ make those my faves over ‘Heatwave’ (plus they’re orange) but the hummingbirds probably have no preference at all.

Are you as in love with agastache as I am? Which ones do you grow?

Do you remember the scene in Grosse Pointe Blank where Joan Cusack’s character describes going to her 10 year high school reunion? She said, “It was just as if everyone had swelled.” I couldn’t help thinking of that when I walked through the gardens this morning after 2 weeks away. It was just as if the gardens had swelled. Between hot days and a whole bunch of much needed rain, the garden grew at least another whole dress size. I barely fit down some of the paths. I wish I had taken before pictures of the vegetable garden because I could have sworn that the gourds hadn’t even thought about reaching the top of the arbor and the corn still looked like wispy little grass.

And in a mere 2 weeks, summer became late summer. How I know is because the Joe Pye weed and rudbeckia are in full bloom and the insect and bird activity has reached a frenetic crescendo. This morning I watched a cheeky little hummingbird bully 2 goldfinch away from “his” bamboo grove. Butterflies are everywhere and there are bees and wasps of all shapes and sizes making every garden buzz. Loudly. I hesitate to say it, but I think the light is even starting to change.

I was right about the Lycoris – they have mostly gone by without me seeing them. But the lotus put up more than one bud as it turned out, and I’m thrilled to have caught this one’s glory. And the Sophora (Styphnolobium japonicum) just outside the Rose Garden moongate is in full bloom and just starting to drop.

I still feel like I missed a lot while I was away and yet I’m certain I have a better appreciation for the changes than I otherwise would. Do you like leaving your garden in order to come back to it with fresh eyes or are you tuned in enough to notice the changes — and fully appreciate them all the way through?

I’m off. Way off, as my mom would say. For the next two weeks I’ll be a million miles away (figuratively speaking) staring at the ocean for one week and pulling enormous crabgrass and pokeweed out of my own garden the next, and missing all of the action here. So I have spent the past few days soaking up the view, memorizing (by which I mean photographing) every flower at its exact stage of opening and going by and hanging on because I know that in two weeks’ time everything will have changed and grown.

I’m going to miss the Rose Garden Sophora tree’s burst into full bloom; the naked ladies (Lycoris squamigera) aren’t even showing any leg yet in the Bosquet but will probably emerge like Venus on the half shell next week (like its cousin, Amaryllis belladona did in the greenhouse this week); the lotus in the cement pond has sent up another bud; and the tomatoes in the vegetable garden look like they’re all going to ripen at once.

I hope that you are able to visit in my absence or will stay tuned to see what became more fabulous while I was away. When I get back we’ll also be treated to a guest post by our intern, Patricia Bailey, who thinks great thoughts about horticultural therapy (no pressure, Tricia!) and I’m dying to do a post on the subtle and not so subtle differences between some of the different species and cultivars of my new favorite genus, Agastache. And as a test and a taste of what’s to come, I have finally resized my pictures for easier viewing. Click on them and please let me know if they’re too big now or still not big enough and I’ll make more adjustments when I return. See you in a couple of weeks!

Yesterday, Gail and I had the pleasure of a road trip to a garden in the wilds of southwestern Rhode Island that would have felt as far away as Borneo or any other exotic tropical place if it weren’t for the assortment of familiar native plants tucked in with the hundreds of pots of eucomis, colocasias, bananas, flamboyant trees, and gingers. We were treated to a personal tour led by this garden’s owner and designer, Louis Raymond, who is easily one of the most enthusiastic self-described plant geeks I’ve ever met. Even under the weather with a fever, Louis practically jumped out of his socks every time we noticed a particularly awesome plant or already knew of one of his fabulous finds by name.

I’m not sure many people garden the way Louis does. For one thing he gardens large. He has a Tetrapanax paperifer ‘Steroidal Giant’ planted next to his back door that surprised him by sending out a sucker that popped up in the dirt floor of his cellar — not to mention all of the pups that have come up in his terrace like unexpected dinner guests. But does its propensity to travel far and wide bother or worry him? Not one bit. He LOVES that plant and he’s thrilled that a couple of them didn’t die to the ground over the winter last year, which means he might get flowers this fall. Woot!

A lot of what Louis grows, big or small (mostly big) he grows in nursery pots, which give him all sorts of control. He can rearrange the furniture whenever he wants (I’ll have to go back to see if he does that), he can monitor the wildly different water requirements, and he can more easily overwinter all of the tender things he loves. I would wonder why he doesn’t choose to live in a southern climate except that I bet he’d be compelled to find cold storage for all of the northern climate plants he also dies for. Now he uses his cellar to overwinter some things and rents a cold greenhouse for the rest. If you look at his garden and only see how much work it would take to move everything in and out, you might be overwhelmed and miss its magic. Clearly it’s a labor of true, mad love — as is any great garden.

Louis’ enthusiasm is inspiring. We gardeners don’t mind the work we put in (we can still complain about the weather) because the process is almost the best part. But we all have different thresholds and tolerances for effort. I don’t mind pulling out shoots of rambunctious plants by hand when they go too far but someone else might prefer to confine the same plants to pots dug into the ground. What’s a lot of work in the mind of one gardener is a piece of cake to another and vice versa. I haven’t always enjoyed schlepping plants in and out of the greenhouse but Louis even made that seem like it should be a super fun thing to do — as long as you love the plants you’re moving. Suffice to say, Gail and I both left inspired to be even more adventurous. Stay tuned.

What kind of hoops do you jump through to grow the plants you love?