Even after so many years gardening (how many? I’m much too young to say 20+) it still feels counter intuitive to transplant in the fall. Maybe it’s because I love the fall garden and don’t want to disrupt it. It’s also so full and lush that it isn’t always obvious where one plant ends and another begins. Where to dig? The only plants I don’t have to question and won’t miss in the fall display are peonies. (And come to think of it, maybe iris and every other spring bloomer…) Peony foliage always looks especially terrible by now though (that said, the new intersectional peonies still look great) and I’m all for cutting it back even if that means leaving a gaping hole. And I certainly can’t imagine moving them in the spring when their new foliage unfurls like fragile baby chicken fingers. They’d survive transplant then – they’re made of tough stuff after all, but they’d resent it and so would I. Now’s the time.

The peonies in the Rose Garden, planted only 3 years ago, were enormous this year – too big for hoops. And no one but me loved the scraggly weirdo, ‘Alley Cat’ so we put transplanting them on the fall to-do list and got down to it last Thursday.

Anyway, out they came and in they went into the Cutting Garden peony row where I will still be able to enjoy old ‘Alley Cat’ and maybe no one else will notice them and ask with a curled lip, “Is that what it’s supposed to look like?!” I’ll miss that question because it always made me laugh… And they’re all ready to go for next year. Their eyes have formed and we made sure to plant them within 1-2″ of the surface so they’ll bloom away come spring. (Eyes down too deep won’t bother bud up.)

I think it was a perfect way to start the fall planting season. I seem to need to ease into it unlike in spring when I’m raring to go. But we won’t actually start playing musical perennials until after the mansion closes Columbus Day weekend, and the last wedding is held, and we’ll shoot to be done by the end of the month because then we’ll have a few hundred bulbs to plant.

Have you started transplanting yet? Did you, or will you move peonies now too?

There are always things we want to change about every garden. Plants we want to move. Plants we want to remove. New plants we want to plant. We don’t just want the gardens to change every year (which we do because we think that makes it more interesting for us and for repeat visitors) but we want to get it right. The North Garden especially. It doesn’t actually change a whole lot from year to year (aside from its latest redesign) because we have settled on a palette of colors that suits that garden and its view. It just needs tweaking from one year to the next to make sure that it’s beautiful from one hot summer week to the next and in peak bloom from May to October. And of course we stack the deck as we do in each garden (except maybe the Rock Garden) with annuals and tender perennials that will fill it to the gills with late season color. (Spring and early-summer color themselves.)

But right now the North is quieter than it should be and than we’d like. The petunias that bloomed so beautifully through July and into August have apparently succumbed to the budworm. And something mysterious has happened to our ever-reliable dahlias, particularly those in the front row. They’re all budded up with nary an open flower on a single plant. With the weather being so soft and lovely (aside from last night’s storm) we feel we’re being cheated one of the prettiest times of year in that garden. But Gail and I are harsh critics when we have our notebooks out. When I looked again through the camera lens I saw that the Aster ‘Lady in Black’ has woven its dark foliage beautifully through the garden and will bloom any second now. I noticed that the Coreopsis ‘Red Shift’ and Phlox ‘Natural Feelings’ that the volunteers deadheaded a couple-three weeks ago are putting on a fresh show. The heliotrope, Zinnia angustifolia (which deserves its own post), Ageratum ‘Blue Horizon’ and its doppelganger, hardy ageratum (Conoclinium coelestinum) are all blooming to beat the band. The back row dahlias, ‘Golden Cloud’, which were recommended by a visitor last year are thumbing their nose at whatever scuzz the front row dahlias have gotten and are gooooorgeous.

Nonetheless, we’re working on a list of plants to move and remove for a showier September next year. We might try to save room in the budget to replace petunias with something else (what else?) when they go by and maybe we won’t rely quite so heavily on our favorite little orange dahlias. We’ve made mental and actual notes to remember to cut the phlox and coreopsis back again next year in early to mid-August because their second flush is almost prettier than their first.

Are you your garden’s harshest critic? What will you do differently next year? Have you had similar trouble with dahlias? Any guesses why?

Despite knowing that pinching new growth makes plants branch into full and sturdy clumps that promise extra flowers, it can be one of the hardest things to do. Somehow it goes against the grain to nip healthy new growth and I just can’t do it sometimes. But then I always wish I had. The nepeta at my house grew so fast I missed my chance to pinch them before the flowers budded and now they’re splayed open and not-so-very pretty even though they’re blooming away. If only I had pinched them back in … April. Or if not in April, then a couple of weeks ago when I realized they were about to bloom. It would have been better to set the bloom timing back a bit for the sake of sturdier, bushier growth. Mental note for mental toughness next year.

Last year our Agastache ‘Black Adder’ and ‘Blue Fortune’ were tall and a little rangy so we determined to remember to pinch them this year. They should end up being a little shorter, the blooms might not be quite as large possibly, but the plant will look much better in the garden and there will be even more flowers for the bees.

We also pinched Aster ‘Lady in Black’, which we bought as spindly single-stemmed plugs. Cutting off the apical meristem, the tip of a new shoot, will send energy into the side shoots and make the plant branch. It feels barbaric to lop off their heads but they almost instantly respond – within a few days anyhow – by starting to branch out from every axil. I hate to think how weak and unattractive the plants might be if we didn’t decapitate them.

And the consolation prize for following through with this necessary but weirdly difficult task is that the pinched tips of annuals and perennials make the best cuttings – as long as they’re not blooming yet. Spring cuttings take much more quickly than fall ones – fast enough that we should have more plants to tuck in later where we need them.

Make sure the cuttings are neither floppy nor woody. Trim off the second or third set of leaves from the top right at the stem using a sharp knife or razor blade. Trim the remaining leaves in half, dip the end of the stem in rooting hormone, and stick it in dampened  sterile rooting medium like perlite or vermiculite. If you don’t have a high-tech mist system like we do, put a low-tech clear plastic bag over the cuttings and mist them with a spray bottle occasionally. Keep them in a bright warm spot out of the sun and they should root in 2-4 weeks. Pot them up for few weeks before planting them out.

Other plants on our pinch-now list are the ones that bloom late in the season like chrysanthemum, which can be pinched again around Father’s Day; Boltonia – I swore last year that I would pinch ‘Nallie’s Lime Dot’, and Helianthus – ‘Lemon Queen’ to keep them from keeling over; and rabdosia (trumpet spur-flower). We also sometimes pinch summer phlox – but only if we don’t want them to get too tall (otherwise we’ll just thin out some stems to give them better airflow); dahlias if they’re up and leggy, Salvia, and potted annuals when we plant them even if they’ve already been pushed into bloom.

What plants are you pinching back now? Are you squeemish about doing it too?

Spring always brings the fast-n-furious out in me. There’s so much that must get done and so much I want to do that I have a hard time organizing my thoughts, let alone my actions. But as much as I might panic and freak out (I do more of that at home) every once in a while I am reminded that spring won’t get ahead of me if I slow down and pay attention.

It’s only April and not only that, it’s early April. What’s my hurry? There’s time to divide and move plants. There’s time to weed. There’s time to enjoy spring as it unfurls. As a matter of fact, seasonally appropriate temperatures have slowed spring back down. The magnolias might have gotten ahead of themselves (our M. stellata is OK because it was planted in a cool shady spot and hasn’t opened all the way yet) but the daffodils will keep peaking probably through the week by the looks of forecast day and night temperatures. The cherry trees, winter hazel, and crabapples, which are all looking pretty close, should stay in a state of suspended animation. There’s plenty of time to take a deep breath and enjoy it.

As for dividing and moving plants, no doubt about it, now is a great time. But take your time. It’s easier – and easier on the plants – to do it as soon as possible before they’ve grown too much but if you promise to baby them, most perennials can be transplanted for a while yet and still bloom more or less on time.

We are trying to be very methodical as we move plants back into the North Garden. We’ll shoot for a couple-three carts-full a day, and are planning our plantings so we don’t do too much head scratching when we get there. We should have everything transplanted within a couple of weeks and we won’t kill ourselves doing it. That last bit is very important. The older we (I) get, the more prone to tweaked muscles we (I) get, particularly in spring and any injury slows us down a little too much.

Are you taking spring slow and steady or do you need the reminder like I do?

It’s hard not to want pretty things on Valentine’s Day. Or any day for that matter. Especially any day in February. But the sun is climbing higher, the plants in the greenhouse are perking up, and lucky for me, there are blooms and buds galore just in time – and just in time for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day over at May Dreams Gardens tomorrow.

We are also finalizing our plant orders and that definitely satisfies my deep desire for pretty right now too. I went back through Annie’s Annuals yesterday and couldn’t stop clicking “add to wishlist” just to see all the plants I covet on one page. (Two pages actually. – I’ve been very restrained.)

Speaking of everything on one page, Blithewold has joined Pinterest! I have to admit to being suddenly a little bit obsessed with that site and elected to direct my addiction towards “pinning” pictures of the plants in our gardens. The North, Rock, and Rose Gardens are filling up and I’m going to start a greenhouse board too. I have been dragging my feet about producing spreadsheet plant lists for each garden – now I know why: this is prettier. And more helpful for anyone who doesn’t know plants from their names alone. (I’m still planning to make spreadsheets available for visitors.) You don’t have to be a member of Pinterest to cruise our boards but if you are a member, I’d love to see you on our list of followers.

Are you surrounding yourself with pretty things today too – virtually or for real?