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Pink Coneflowers
Add pink coneflower (AKA Echinacea) to your garden now and be rewarded with gorgeous fall color.
Dear Ms. B,
This past spring, I really got in the gardening groove. How can I keep the rhythm going and also protect all these budding beauties?
—Wondering With My Weigela
Illustration by Libby VanderPloeg
Ms. B July Illustration
My Dear Wondering,
Now that your hard work has literally been sown, and the personality of your garden is starting to come alive, take a step back and see what’s really working and what might need a tweak. This is no time to rest on those laurels—which you’ve undoubtedly built up from all the carrying, squatting, planting, digging, and weed pulling.
Seize the moment! It’s a perfect time to add some perennials to your garden, because instead of trying to envision where everything is planted or will come up in spring, you have your whole bloomin’ garden staring you right in the face. Identify holes to fill in with color, texture, and movement. In addition to blooming perennials, think about flowering shrubs, hostas and ferns for texture, and prairie grasses for movement. (Bonus: Native plants provide food and shelter for pollinators.)
July is also a good time to take care of the annuals you’ve put in. Deadheading will encourage your plants to keep flowering, my dear. By removing spent flowers, you help redirect the plant’s energy toward creating more beautiful blooms. Speaking of redirecting energy, I find weeding to be the ultimate therapy for pent-up stress, my garden a safe space for reflection and contemplation in these harrowing times.
Or take this opportunity to move things around, if any of your upstarts seem out of place. And water, water, water. Though the more native plants you put in, the less you need to water.
Many gardeners tend to have a favorite wave of planting season. As I write this to you, I know many in the throes of their infatuation with peonies, lilacs, and apple blossoms. But if you plan ahead by adding aster, coreopsis, coneflower, or sedum, you’ll be rewarded with spectacular fall color. And I don’t want to say that dreaded W-word, but planting dogwood now will leave you with some holiday-ready red stems against the snow, for example.
Plant with intention now, Wondering! And enjoy the wonder that is our natural world.
Yours in scarlet begonias,
Psst on pests...
Who else is enjoying the fruits of your labor? Likely the ever-crunching-away Japanese beetles. Or bunnies, moles, voles, deer... But there are lots of cures. Visit Bachman’s stores or bachmans.com for the saves.
Meet the Twin Cities' new gardening columnist and your new best friend, Ms. B. Read more of her encouraging tips and guidance on all things digging, planting, and blooming in her column each month in Mpls.St.Paul Magazine and here.
