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?

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).

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!

I’ve gotten a couple of questions in the last week or two about what we do in the gardens to manage pests and diseases. Although a lot of you already know the answer, I don’t seem to mind repeating it for anyone who doesn’t. The short answer is: Nothing! We do not use any kind of chemical pesticides or fungicides for the sake of our own health as well as that of our volunteers, visitors, members, camp kids, pollinators, beneficial insects, birds and other wildlife. (That said, I believe Dan has sprayed some sort of bunny deterring pepper concoction in the Vegetable Garden. Not that it has worked. Also, the trees, shrubs, and lawns are managed differently.)

The long answer is: In the gardens, we try to keep plants healthy and stress-free by providing them with fertile soil (easy because the soil here is lovely) and adequate water. We amend the soil with compost, both our own and the biosolid and yardwaste mix (top grade and certified pathogen-free) made by Bristol’s composting facility, and we mulch with shredded leaves and buckwheat hulls, both of which add organic matter and aerate the soil as they break down.

We welcome insects, and the birds that eat them. We do minimal clean-up of seedheads and stalks in the fall to leave some habitat and cover for birds and insects over the winter. We have even started construction on an insect apartment house. (They’re all the rage in Europe.) It’s made of white oak, faces south for winter warmth, and we will continue to fill it with bits and bobs that that will provide nesting sites for solitary bees, lacewings, spiders, and any other critters that might find it cozy. The section with the slots is intended as a butterfly shelter but I read recently that they don’t really use those. Looks cool though.

It’s the visitors to our Rose Garden who have the hardest time believing that we don’t spray fungicides, etc. Honestly, we don’t need to. I know I’ve said this a million times already but here it is again: along with choosing disease-resistant roses, and giving them great soil and adequate water (about an inch per week), we also fertilize them 3 times over the season (in April as they break, in May/June just before peak, and in August for their last flush) using a slow release organic granular fertilizer (Espoma Bulb-Tone); we rake out the spotty leaves twice weekly; and we hand-pick Japanese beetles. But the real reason the roses look healthy is because there are other beautifully blooming plants in that garden that draw everyone’s attention away from a few yellow or lacy leaves.

In the gardens, we live and let live. Don’t you?