I promised a post on the decade’s best plants and after making an enormous list with Gail’s help, realized that it was too hard to narrow down our favorites to a mere ten. So, because our favorite perennials and shrubs are essentially permanent fixtures in the gardens (if I haven’t talked about them all already, you can be sure I will), and we’re heading into full-on propagation season, I thought it would be much better to give you a list of plants that we actively choose to grow every year. Below is a probably very familiar looking gallery of 10 of our favorite seed annuals and tender perennials that will follow us into the decade. Gail and I can’t imagine the gardens without them. (I know I’ve already talked about a lot of these guys too so I’ll try to be brief…)

5 favorite seed annuals: Nicotiana (sylvestris, mutabilis, ‘Tinkerbell’, ‘Lime Green’…) I love them all and don’t mind doing a little editing whenever they seed themselves around. Asclepias physocarpa ‘Oscar’ (a.k.a. Gomphocarpus physocarpus ‘Hairy Balls’ – Swan plant) I’ve already gone on and on about this one – sturdy, 6′ tall with delicate flowers and weird puff ball seed pods. Pennisetum ruppelianum a.k.a. Pennisetum setaceum – Fountain grass – we love it because it’s a good looking grass that grows into a large graceful clump by August. Gomphrena - globe amaranth. I heart polka-dots and these are just the best cut flower. Zinnia. No garden should be without zinnias. They’re too easy (7 weeks from seed to bloom) and too beautiful. We especially love the Benary series (for tall) and Profusion (for short).

5 favorite tender perennials: Stachytarpheta - Porterweed. On a fast-growing to 3′ plant, inconspicuous flowers climb a green stem spike. Weird = love. Plectranthus fruticosus – we grow it for matte green foliage with purple undersides and love it for the very late (Sept/Oct) luminescent flowers. African blue basil – you already know why I love this plant – scent + bee-magnet blooms + vigor = love. Salvia guaranitica – It’s Gail’s and the hummingbirds’ very favorite and I’m sorry I didn’t take a decent picture of it this year! And Cupheas, which are also high on Gail’s list. – We’ll take any we can get our paws on but especially love ‘David Verity’ because it’s never not blooming.

What annuals and tender perennials can’t your garden grow without?

I’m having a really hard time doing my job today. Gail has set an all-moved-into-the-greenhouse deadline of October 15 and that means I need to get busy now digging up the tender plants and loading the cart with container plants and bringing them all inside. But those plants are still so beautiful outside that I can’t help but drag my feet and find everything else to do instead. But it must be done. If only there was a frost warning in the forecast, (thank the stars there isn’t!) I’m sure I’d move at steadily fast pace and feel justified in breaking up favorite combinations. But even though a lot of our tender plants can take the cold and even light frosts some of them, it’s less shocking to their little systems to come inside before we turn on the heat. The same goes for houseplants – especially any that won’t have a relatively humid greenhouse to live in over the winter. If you haven’t brought your plants in yet, consider doing it soon so that they can begin to acclimatize to life on the inside.

I have to admit that there is a part of me that likes this particular transition in one way and I’m even secretly glad to have the time to do it right. There’s almost nothing I love better than grooming plants and potting them up. Taking care of the container plants doesn’t even feel like work. Truth be told, I have a slightly perverse tendency to put that off to do something else that might feel more important simply because it is less enjoyable somehow. But potting up and grooming plants before or as they come in for the winter is really important no matter how Zen blissful. Take the time now to clean off dead leaves, prune and shape, weed, check for critters, and give your plants a mildly soapy bath if they’re like mine at home and covered in scale and sooty mold. And re-pot them now to save making a mess of scattered potting soil inside later. As for fertilizing, (a very rare treat for my plants at home, alas) the rule of thumb is to quit feeding by Halloween and resume when the days get appreciably longer triggering new a new growth cycle – usually February or March.

Have you moved your houseplants and and/or tender stock plants back inside yet? Do you have any tips to share?

Positive visualization is a skill we gardeners get a lot of practice in. I think for any of us, whether we’re planting one or two things or designing beds, visualization goes way beyond garden-variety optimism to a creative knack for soothsaying. We totally have ESP. Gail, Lilah and I placed “the big empty” yesterday for the volunteers to help plant today and we talked about how we can actually see in our minds’ eyes what it will look like in August. Never mind that the plants that will grow the tallest, widest, burliest are the wee-est, spindliest specks now. We can see them in their ginormous glory.

I have heard that there are people in the world willing to pay an arm and a leg for an instant garden – and I freely admit to having a gracious plenty of impatience for a gardener – but would gardening be as gratifying if there wasn’t a process from dream to fruition? In any case, for us this was a really exciting part of the process. It’s one thing to have the plants on lists of paper and randomly scattered throughout the greenhouse and quite another to see how they’re all going to fit together in a big showy – soon to be purple-centric – bed. And if there are surprises and changes along the way, so much the better. (The gardener’s mind’s eye must always allow for some unpredictability.) I know I’ll talk more about our lavender/purple experiment as the garden grows but I can tell already (because I can read the future) that I’m going to love it.

We can see the future too in caterpillars munching on their favorite butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) and we can predict that Fred and Dan’s new creation in the container garden will be one of the visitors’ favorite spots. Lilah has dubbed it “The Tanning Bench”.

Do you foresee your garden’s glory as you design and plant it?

We’re bracing for a chilly visitor coming this week from the Great Lakes and although we’re not exactly rolling out the red carpet for her, we’re stocking the cupboards and making sure there’s plenty of cocoa on hand.  When we’re told that the temperatures are going to dip into the single digits with forecasts of windchill in the negative 20’s my anxiety gene kicks on.  I start worrying like I’m told my great grandfather did, over the fate of our precious plants.

The greenhouse has a sophisticated system of furnaces that keeps the temperature of the houses within a very reliable range and the structure is as solid and tight as anything made mostly of glass and aluminum can be.  The only thing we’re lacking is the assurance of a good back up heating system in the worst-case-scenario of the power going out.  What we do have is a temperature sensor hooked up through the phones lines and set up to call us at home if the greenhouse temperature plunges.  And there’s a heater or two ready to go that will probably send out enough heat to keep the houses from falling below freezing.  What would be more reassuring of course is having a generator that could power the furnaces – but that’s a pie in the sky for another budget year.  For now, we’ll bundle up, crank the heat and cross our fingers and toes that our arctic visitor goes back to Canada without stealing any of our stuff for souvenirs.  And since our “stuff” is a large priceless part of what makes the Blithewold gardens the Blithewold gardens and represents hours, days, months, years, decades of work, it’s no wonder that Gail and I get nervous about the worst case scenario.

How do you prepare for cold weather?  Do you worry excessively (like me)?  Do you have a backup plan?

We’ve been hit.  And just like back in June with the sucker punch heatwave, there hasn’t been a chance to acclimate.  All of a sudden in a bitter wind, the plants have turned inside out and I have frozen solid.  There’s a crust over frogs and underfoot and a biting cold that probably has massage practitioners working overtime to un-hunch shoulders.  We’re not ready for this!  It did finally dawn on me this morning, after a week of shivers and complaints, to wear more clothes… And I do think the one way to get used to it is to get out in it.  — I’m working up to that, I really am.

We still have outdoor projects that we’re tackling in mad dashes between restorative cups of hot tea:  We could cut down all of the plants, like this Nicotiana mutabilis (left) and Salvia tingo (right) that we left standing until the bitter end.  Our landscape is no longer graced by their presence and for the sake of public garden tidiness we’ve gotta get ‘em out.  (That’s not to say you shouldn’t procrastinate clean-up until spring.  You certainly could and the critters will thank you for the extra cover.)

Today we busted through a crusty earth skin to heel in the last few frozen plants we had left over from our North Garden furniture rearranging.  I can say that it’s not too late to do this because there have been times our plants have stayed in bossbags under the arbor – and by some miracle (you can’t kill a daylily) they lived to be planted in spring.  But these plants are happier in the ground now, no doubt about it.

We’ve still got veggies to pick – the Swiss Chard and beets have a few tender leaves left, and the Brussels sprouts will be even sweeter for the hit.

When it’s cold out it really takes determination to slow down, breathe deeply and open your eyes from a squint.  But there is so much beauty in the unfolding death of winter and it’s too easy to overlook – especially if you can’t see out from under your hat or swivel your neck inside scarf layers for fear of a draft.  But getting out, for starters, and breathing deeply will help your wimpy autumn skin to acclimate.  – Just think, soon anything over 32°F will feel pleasant!  And if you bring your camera, like I did, you can gaze leisurely at the pretty things while wrapped in a blanket with a cup of tea in your hands.

What are you doing to get acclimated to winter?  Do you still have last minute garden chores?  ‘Fess up now – are you still planting?

What have you done with all of the tender perennials you bought this summer?  Are they in the compost heap?  Have you left them where they were planted in hopes of a mild winter come-back?  Did you take cuttings?  Have you filled your garage/basement/livingroom with plants in pots and roots in bags?

We can answer “Yup!” to all of the above but obviously we have the big advantage of a working greenhouse that we can fill with stock plants, cuttings and more phormiums (a.k.a. New Zealand flax) than any garden could ever need.  When Margaret Roach came through the greenhouse, she noticed the phormiums (that Gail so cleverly tried to hide behind other plants so it wouldn’t look like we’re hoarding them) and mentioned that she winters hers over in the basement.  She also winters her cordylines (Cabbage palm/Cordyline australis) in the basement and I’ll bet you a dollar that her plants look a lot healthier than ours.  I have always suggested a cool but bright winter spot for things like phormiums. – Not that I don’t believe Margaret, but has anyone else kept them in the dark?

Geraniums (Pelargonium) are another plant that can go “down cellar” (as we Rhode Islanders say it).  You can leave them in their pot, cut them back a bit and allow them to mostly? dry out.  Or you can un-pot them and hang them upside down by their naked roots – but that sounds a little like hortitorture to me.  I have a vague repressed memory of losing geraniums that I kept (forgot) in the basement and wonder if anyone else has tried either of these methods successfully?  We take cuttings earlier in the fall and keep a few stock plants in the greenhouse where they inevitably get leggy or weird from growing when they’d much rather slow down.  [Here's a tip you probably already know:  When you take geranium cuttings, let them callous overnight in an open plastic bag before sticking them in the rooting medium.]

Gail loves tender salvias more than anyone else I know so we winter over as many as we can make room for – mostly by taking cuttings.  She’s had some luck with salvias like S. guaranitica and S. uliginosa wintering over in her own garden so we’ll leave a couple in the Display Garden this year too.  You never know – every once in a while even a forgotten dahlia comes back after a mild winter.  We will leave the Savias standing for now with all their own woody protection and we’ll mulch them with shredded leaves.  Fingers crossed.

The potting shed cellar is fairly warm (around 60°F) because of the furnaces but we do keep 4 o’clock (Mirabilis) tubers, gladiolus bulbs, dormant lemon verbena plants and dahlia tubers (in paper bags this year – fingers crossed) down there.

So, what have you done with your tender perennials?

A few typical October flowers opened just in time for bloom day today so without further ado, here are the Chrysanthemums or are they Dendranthema?  Whatever their name is, the ‘Sheffield Pink’ (left) never fails to make me want to stop and memorize that color and I love these mystery deep pinks in the North Garden (right) so much that I’m thinking of dividing them and spreading the love through the beds.  None of us remembers planting them so we’ve blamed/thanked a wedding planner from a few years back who must have thought the North Garden needed a little hit of a late deep color.  I think he/she was quite right.

Here is a late bloomer that I think is less common perhaps because, alas, for us it is a tender perennial.  But I think Plectranthus fruticosa, if you can find it, is well worth making room for.  All season long it garnered compliments for its striking two-toned leaves and now that it’s blooming it looks positively lit from within and everyone wants one or twenty.

Salvia uliginosa has been blooming since, oh I don’t know – July, maybe?  But I think it is worthy of October Bloom Day because its color has recently changed dramatically from a cerulean sky to closer to cobalt.  And to overhear the discussions in the garden, it’s as if everyone is noticing it for the very first time.  We will try to keep the Display Garden bed with these late beauties going for as long as possibly possible…

And what would an October Bloom Day post be without some fall color shots?  No matter how gorgeous the bloomers might be, blazing trees and shrubs are the true attractions and distractions of October (I think my car keys should be taken from me – I am too apt to pay attention to any orange tree rather than the road).  Bristol color is still up and coming but it looks like the stars may have aligned for a spizztacular year.

What are your garden’s October attractions and distractions?

Many thanks, as always, to Carol from May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day every month.  Click on the link and on all of the links in her comments to see what’s in bloom right now all over the country and the world.

It’s time to think about next year’s garden.  (When isn’t it time to think about next year’s garden?!)  Last week Gail cleaned out the cutting bench, filled it fresh with new perlite and we’ve both started hoarding plants for next year’s garden.  Even into my 5th year here, I still don’t feel that confident about propagation.  I’m amazed when my seedlings germinate and a little bit astounded when a cutting takes root.  But tip cuttings are so easy (Gail makes it look so easy, anyway).  You just have to learn by feel what kind of growth to look for.  Now that I’m starting to get the hang of it, I’ve gotten greedy – if a plant is loaded with perfect cuttings, I have to be careful not to want to take them all (we don’t have that kind of space)!

Plants have built in cellular level mechanisms for survival and reproduction.  Some plants will root if the stem touches the ground; some will put out roots and shoots if there’s a mere hint of a whisper of the soil nearby.  I can imagine the potted succulent (left) leap frogging in all directions if we only gave it the ground.  Plants have certain cells that wait for hormonal direction before becoming whatever the plant needs for new growth.  To make new plants, we just have to trigger those cells to make roots.

Step one:  Fresh as a daisy in the morning before plants have transpired the day’s water away, choose a growing tip that is neither so wimpy that it will keel over, nor so sturdy that it’s brittle and woody feeling.  Shoot for fat, green, flexible growth preferably before it has set a flower bud.  Remove it from the plant using snips or a knife and place it in water or a baggie until you’re ready to root it.

Step 2:  Make a clean cut below about two sets of leaves.  Using a sharp knife or scalpel, remove the lower set of leaves right at the stem being careful to not damage the stem.  This is where those versatile cells live.  Cut the remaining sets of leaves by a third or half to restrict transpiration and cut flower buds off to force energy to the roots.

Step 3: Dip the end of the stem in rooting hormone – this gives the plant’s own auxin a fake auxin boost.  We use the kind that includes a fungicide.  Don’t lick your fingers after this point in the process.

Step 4:  Plant the cutting in a rooting medium like sand (again, we use perlite) with the cut nodes below the surface.  Place the cuttings in a bright light spot and keep them moist.

Step 5: Wait.

But don’t just take it from me.  There are beautiful books (Making More Plants by Ken Druse is the prettiest instruction manual I’ve ever seen. – Check it out in my Amazon link on the left.) and there are plenty of websites with a lot of detail if you want to learn more about the process.

Do you take cuttings?  Do you bring favorite plants in for the winter in case your cuttings don’t take?  Do you think it’s all too much trouble and shop for new things in the spring instead?

We planted a lot of cardoons this year. A lot. And now that the season is done, Julie (who doesn’t love giant horsey things in the garden – especially when they’re everywhere flopping big leaves on delicate things – but who generously let us plant them all in the first place) has been asking us, “When are you going to cut them back?, Can you cut them back today?, How about now?, Are you going to dig them up?, Maybe you should dig them up.” So yesterday when they looked frost-flat I did a little research to find out what to do to them for the winter (Gail and I would like *some* to come back…) and I learned all sorts of new things about cardoons. To give credit where credit is due, most of what I learned I found on this site.

Cardoons are winter hardy perennials to about zone 7b but with protection might come back into the zone 6’s (Gail had one come back a few years ago). They are best planted by seed and the first year they establish their tap root, grow gorgeous gray and spiny foliage (some might call it horsey) and the second year they become even more gigantic (they can reach 7′) and they flower. The flowers are thistle-ish, artichoke-like wildlife magnets – birds and bees, etc reportedly can’t get enough of them. But once they flower, the foliage goes downhill for at least a month before sending up new leaves from the base (I suspect that happens more reliably in long growing seasons.)

I have all sorts of appreciation for their ornamental function in the garden but had no idea about the culinary uses and frankly the spiny stalks are about as appealing to me to eat as a fully clothed porcupine. I found out that cooking them for supper is more complicated than just breaking off a stalk and sauteing it up. They must be blanched first. A couple of weeks before the first frost you tie them up in a wheatsheaf bundle and wrap them in burlap or cardboard so just the top feathers stick out. Restricting photosynthesis evidently sweetens the stems and cooked up, they’ll taste like artichoke heart. The entire plant is harvested after the 2-3 weeks of blanching by cutting the base just below soil level. Cook prep is a little high maintenance too – you must remove the spines (duh!), cut the stalks into sections and submerge them in “acidulated water”. That was another learn-something-new-today thing for me – acidulated water is, well, just what it sounds like – lemon water. And that keeps them from turning ugly oxidized colors before cooking. My interest flagged at the recipes because I’m not a cook but if you are, there’s probably all sorts of ways to make tasty things (that I would love to eat) from this most outstanding (horsey?) ornamental vegetable! Have you ever eaten cardoon? Is it worth the wait and the work?

After all the reading up, I’m still not ready to put them to bed for the winter. The flattened leaves popped back up as the temperatures rose and I think they’re still too architecturally pretty to behead. When the leaves really go to mush, we’ll cut them off, throw a little mulch around our favorites and hope for the best!

All good things must come to an end? That’s definitely not my kind of philosophy but it was a little bit true in the Display Garden today. The mansion is closed for the season and it’s time for us to start working on next year’s gardens: Hopefully, if funds and weather allow, Fred and Dan will be able to continue the Display Garden redesign this winter. The Idea Beds are next on their list. Gail and I want to save most of the perennials and shrubs from those beds and decided to move most of them, at least temporarily to the new Display Garden beds (the Ellipse and Stone Bench Beds).

So today we and the Deadheads had the heartbreaking task of ripping the tender stuff out of the still beautifully blooming Ellipse Bed to make room. The Deadheads made the best of it though and cut flowers to take home and some even took a plant or two to winter over. Gail and I chose plants to take in for “stock” and took dozens of last minute cuttings from the garden before the digging, wrenching and hurling started.

We probably should have been more conscious of the resident critters – this mantis found shelter in the chaos but I wonder how many we inadvertently evicted?

Getting started with our first fall project was actually pretty fun and if we think of it as more of a beginning than an end … then all good things must keep on!