I can’t think of a better way to spend a record-breaking official first day of spring than playing musical plants out in the garden. At home I move plants around usually because I didn’t put them in the right place in the first place. (Left to my own devices, I’m an incurable plunker). But here we move plants to change things up every year – as well as to get them in the right place. Plants’ sweet spots always want finessing even if you’ve given it careful thought.

The trick to playing musical plants this early in the season is to have an excellent memory – or to have taken really good notes – or to have left labels.

I always forget how difficult it is to identify perennials at this stage, as they’re just starting to emerge, or if they’re still just a gnarl of knobby crown at the surface. And it’s like an eye-test to find them under the shredded leaf mulch before stepping on them.

It’s also really important to remember, when you can identify the tiny sprigs emerging from a fist-sized crown, exactly how big the plant is likely to get. We want an intensely planted garden but we also want to make sure plants have room to grow without being sat upon by something else. I’ll freely admit to being guilty of “mis-under-estimating” in order to fit more in. Sometimes combinations work anyway and sometimes we have to move things around again next spring. But if the garden was always the same we’d get bored. Wouldn’t you?

I’m pretty excited about some of the changes in the Display Garden. Today I went from being worried that holding onto our theme of planting for the pollinators would keep the Display Garden looking too much the same, to being sure that it will look fabulously new and different this year. And we probably only moved a dozen plants around in there so far. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make a garden exciting again. The same is true at home: as soon as I transplant one thing to the right spot I get jazzed about the whole season.

Do you get a move on in the spring too? Do you move plants so the garden will look different every year or to finesse perfection?

Speaking of getting a move on, the daffodils are. I’d hate for you to miss any of the show and it’s just beginning so here’s the first official daff-cam shot.

Even though the mansion won’t be open until April 1, the grounds are open daily (year-round.) Come see for yourself.

Don’t tell anyone but I am not a big fan of potted mums. For weeks now they’ve been popping up on doorsteps everywhere and plopped pot-and-all into every other foundation bed, and I can’t help yawning. They’re just so… municipal. Now, you know me – I’m all for whatever gets people buying plants and out in their gardens/yards, but mums? Really? There are so many other things that are more interesting – including …  mums.

Hardy Chrysanthemum – or Dendranthema or whatever the kids are calling them these days – are so much lovelier than the ones that are forced into bloom only to die from neglect or stress a few weeks later. Hardy mums have a looser more graceful form – extra loose if we forget to cut them back in June – and they live for practically ever and tend to be generous spreaders. Sheffield Pink is our grandmotherly favorite, spread along the edge under the dawn redwood hedge in the Display Garden and borrowed with something blue in the Rose Garden. I don’t know and haven’t been able to find the name of the sweet yellow and red one in the Rock Garden. Anyone recognize it?

It should be noted that some of the potted mums for sale are hardy mums in disguise. Neither Gail nor I remember planting the deep-pink mum in the North Garden and have credited a wedding decorator. (We toast the happy couple every fall.) Over the last few sunny days, it has been as covered with different species of bees, flies, wasps, etc as any aster. And that right there is reason enough to plant the hardy mums – they’re a great late meal for pollinators.

Potted mums have become part of people’s -non gardeners and gardeners alike – fall tradition but wouldn’t it be great if growers started forcing Cuphea micropetala instead? Aside from being an outstanding tender perennial worthy of a position in the garden from June on, the late summer-into-fall flowers look just like candy corn. And I know at least one nursery owner who puts luminous Plectranthus ciliata on display in the fall. I’m sold. How about you? Do you buy potted mums or have you made another late-fall flower part of your garden’s tradition?

The North Garden Star Wall Project has officially begun! (The wall, 100 years old this month, will be restored this winter.) Yesterday Team Rockette dug and hauled hundreds of pounds of perennials out of the two beds along the North Star wall and southeast side and heeled them in the vegetable bed (readied by Team Deadhead on Tuesday) for the winter. They also unceremoniously pitched all of the annuals along with moldy-old Phlox paniculata ‘David’ (it may be mildew resistant for awhile but for us, no longer) and anything infested with goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria), which over the last few years has insidiously reentered the North Garden in a number of places.

As hard as the work was yesterday – we all needed restorative naps afterwards – I kept thinking about how much easier it was, psychically at least, to do a major renovation project now as opposed to spring. As hard as it is to cut back or take out late season flowers that the bees and butterflies are still working, I find it much more difficult to move or destroy anything with fresh growth full of the season’s potential. And fall weather is much more reliably cooperative too. The ground is still warm so plants’ roots can take hold easily and there’s plenty of rain in the forecast. As much as we’d like to be able to get back into the North Garden with Team Florabunda, today’s rain is helping yesterday’s transplants settle into to their temporary home. The timing for that is also perfect. As long as you’re careful to not plant wherever you’d want to sow the early crops next spring (and we were careful) a vegetable garden makes a brilliant holding bed for anyone that doesn’t have space for a dedicated nursery bed.

We still have to get the roses (Ballerina) and hydrangeas (Limelight) out and sundry back row denizens but we’re nearly there thanks to the Rockettes – and the Tuesday Deadheads – (we could not have done this without them) and we’re right on schedule despite the rain. Stay tuned for progress reports and maybe even a discussion about all of the ideas being floated about potential design tweaks. (If the garden is going to be under the mayhem of construction, why not think about making a change or two? – Always preserving the family’s intentions, of course.)

Are you starting a big project now too? Do you prefer to do the work in spring or fall?

There seems to be a different quality to the flowers that bloom late. I could be making this up but they seem to absorb the light more than reflect it like summer flowers do. (Don’t they?) Maybe it’s just that the lower light makes everything catch it and keep it, summer’s hanger-onner blooms included Or maybe fall flowers seem extra-special and luminous simply because they keep the season colorful for us and nutritious for the wildlife right up to the bitter cold. (Click on pictures for better view.)

Asters and Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ have finally come into their own and the space they’ve taken up all summer is totally justified (except for the 4′ wide ones in the North Garden that bloom even later than this…)

What would we do without fall blooming grasses like purple love grass (Eragrostis spectabilis) and pink muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris)? Both are natives and I know the purple love grass reseeds because I have it coming up like a puff of smoke out of a driveway crack at home. I don’t remember ever growing the mist grass before and I’m deeply in love (but can’t seem to take a decent picture of it.) Even if that doesn’t reseed (and I don’t know if it’s likely to), I’m looking forward to the clumps increasing enough to get a good shot. This year we’re going to try to winter-over purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’) down cellar. Anyone had any luck with that?

The toad lily (Tricyrtis hirta) surprises everyone, even those of us who have always been fond of it. It’s just that strange and lovely.

But strangest of all is the crabapple in bloom down at the water’s edge. We can only surmise that it is under extreme stress after being defoliated by Irene, swamped by extra high tides and subjected to wide night-temperature swings in the last couple-three weeks. Clearly it’s desperate to survive – like it always has so far in the toughest spot. Fingers crossed. There may be a new crop of apples yet for the birds…

What’s catching the light in your garden?

If it wasn’t for the thick morning fog we might not know that the seasons are in an indecisive transition. And if we didn’t crash through strands of fog-lit spiderwebs with every step we wouldn’t know we were sailing into fall.

It’s transition time for the gardens that feels a little like waiting out a slack tide. We’re still enjoying all the activity in the garden; excited to see brand-newly blooming flowers (a subject for another post) and we’re certainly not ready to let go of any of summer’s color or seed heads. Instead we’re spending more time on patrol for skrunky leaves and tenacious weeds. If you’re in the same boat, trying to keep your garden looking its best for a few more weeks, try cutting back old leaves from Japanese anemone (leaving the seed heads, of course.) There’s a life-raft of bright green foliage coming up inside the old – it makes a bigger difference than you’d think. And removing brown leaves from everything else – dahlias, phlox, veronica… is almost as gratifying as deadheading ever is. On the other hand, some plants blacken in a dramatic keep-able way. I wouldn’t dream of cutting down these cardoon yet (above, left) or even any of the echinacea.

We’ve got big projects on the horizon that we’re itching to begin as soon as the mansion closes for the season (after Columbus Day weekend; reopening the day after Thanksgiving for Christmas.) This winter the North Garden wall will be restored(!) and we need to move all of the plants out of the adjacent beds and into the vegetable garden-slash-nursery bed. The deadheads started making room in there yesterday (instead of deadheading.) We’ll also take that opportunity to get into the other North Garden beds to amend soil and relieve years of compaction. We’ve got another big perennial haul-out planned (we’ve had it with the daylilies and enormous asters) and we’ll do our usual musical-perennials with everything else, trying to get it just right for next year.

But for now we wait, fuss, and plan. Is your garden in transition too? Are you starting fall projects now or waiting until the last minute?

(Click on any picture for better view of webs, spiders, weeders, and fog.)