You might (or might not) remember that a year and a half ago, a few members of Blithewold’s staff were invited to be in Martha Stewart’s Gardening Show studio audience. It was a hoot to sit in those bleachers watching the goings on of (part of) an empire and I have little memory anymore of what it felt like to drive to NYC in the wee hours of a should-be-sleeping-in morning. But I do still have some of the swag she gave away. By far the best thing in the tubtrug full of stuff was a book by her (magazine’s) gardening editorial director. Tomorrow’s Garden: Design and Inspiration for a New Age of Sustainable Gardening by Stephen Orr is full of gorgeous photos (taken by Orr) of inspiring modern gardens all over the country that illustrate a full spectrum of garden-with-nature possibilities. Along with telling his own garden’s story, he interviewed the other gardens’ gardeners on how their designs were created and maintained. And it’s generously peppered with plant lists and tips. The only beef I have with the book is that so many of the designs and ideas appeal to me that I’m no closer to deciding what to do in my own garden.

But it’s time for another look through it because this the time of year, when the season’s successes and problems are still fresh in my mind, is when I do my best thinking about garden design. Just this week, even in the soggy aftermath of the storm, Gail and I worked on a new vision for the moongate bed under the Sophora outside of the Rose Garden. That bed, which is our best example of dry shady conditions, has grown so well it had finally become almost overgrown. The plants we chose for that garden, things like epimedium, liriope, ginger, carex, hosta and tricyrtis, almost all going on 5 years old now, have proven themselves easily sustainable, with minimal supplemental watering during drought, and were finally in need of redistribution to (re)create a more aesthetically pleasing design. Since this is the best time to move epimedium (because it blooms so early in spring) and because this is when our brains are ready for that sort of exercise, we spent yesterday playing musical perennials. (Now that I’ve had a little practice again, I might be ready to make some decisions at home…)

If you are raring for inspiration the way I always am right about now, I say buy the book. –But wouldn’t it be even better to meet the author and hear his freshest thoughts on the subject? I’m so excited that Stephen Orr will be speaking at Blithewold’s annual Garden Design Luncheon next Thursday, November 8, 10am-2pm. A few (a very few) tickets are still available so register here asap. (Our fingers are crossed that his books will arrive in time from storm ravaged New York… If you already have a copy, bring it with you for him to sign.)

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?

As much as I love the freshness of a June garden, September is my favorite month. Some visitors seem surprised that we “still” have so much color but I can’t imagine it any other way. The gentle light and the beautiful cool blue days demand that we be outside reveling in exuberant color. We definitely plan for this time of year (in truth, for the whole summer into fall season) to be stupendous but it doesn’t take much – a few annuals like zinnias, ageratum, and alyssum; and a handful of tender perennials like dahlias, salvias, angelonia, and plectranthus and you’re golden. Or the garden is in any case, especially in the slanted light of September. Even with roses, delphinium, asters, and euphorbia (re)blooming in the Rose Garden, it wouldn’t be nearly as spectacular without the annuals and tender perennials giving them a boost. I know a lot of gardeners choose not to buy plants that won’t survive the winter outside but I think those plants are worth every penny (and seed annuals like zinnias really do just cost pennies) because they’re the ones that carry the garden so effortlessly past its usual early summer peak well into the prettiest months of all.

And of course, some of them can survive the winter and carry whatever we spent on them into the next season too (and the next after that and the next…) We’ve started taking cuttings of some of our favorites like porterweed (Stachytarpheta mutabilis), cigar plant (Cuphea spp.) and heliotrope. We’re lucky to have the greenhouse for overwintering them but sunny windowsills would work too.

Is your garden as colorful as you’d like it to be this month? Do you use annuals and tender perennials too or do rely on late-blooming hardy perennials and shrubs? For a look at a whole world of colorful September blooms, check out May Dreams Gardens Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (September 15).

Our Tuesday volunteer group has been known for years — for ever? — as the “Deadheads” because they work in the Display Garden and traditionally, the biggest summer chore in these gardens has been to deadhead flowers to keep them from quitting and going to seed. While we still ask for help deadheading the annuals in the cutting garden to keep them blooming gangbusters, in recent years we have not deadheaded the other beds as rigorously. Now when the Deadheads ask if we want echinacea deadheaded in the pollinator bed we say, “No… let’s leave their seeds for the birds.” And when they ask if they should deadhead the betony, beebalm, cardoon, teasel, and eryngium, we say, “Nah, don’t those look cool?! Let’s leave them up for the winter.” Perhaps the Tuesday group needs a new name…

I know the betony (Stachys monnieri ‘Hummelo’) wouldn’t have bloomed again because we cut a couple of clumps back last year as a test, but the beebalm (Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace’) might have rebloomed, and there are still buds opening along the echinacea stems. But right now I wouldn’t trade any of those seedheads for their flowers. Not only are they beautiful (in the eye of this beholder) but there is more wildlife activity in that garden than I ever remember seeing before. It’s positively mesmerizing – I’ve been so distracted that visitors have caught me gawping instead of working. Goldfinch, wrens, and sparrows are all vying for seeds and hummingbirds, bees and butterflies are still zinging around working all of the flowers that aren’t ready to go to seed yet.

But there’s a fine line between letting the garden go to seed and letting the garden go. Some gardeners and visitors might think the cardoon seedheads look more like the undead than the simply un-deadheaded. And I imagine that it might make some people nervous to watch them self-destruct and send helicopters wheeling on the wind to float with the butterflies and catch in the grass and on bare patches of soil. But that doesn’t make me nervous. As long as the stalks are still standing upright, surrounded by a colorful garden that looks tended (it’s been meticulously weeded and propped, if not deadheaded) rather than abandoned, and the birds are happy, then I figure we gardeners are as golden as the light that falls this time of year.

Do you deadhead everything up until the bitter end or do you leave seedheads standing for their looks and for the birds? Have you found a happy medium? (Have we? – All opinions welcome!)

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?