Clean Sweep

I've never managed to keep a  neat garden, and neighbors and walkers tell me they like my flowers. Still, I worry that the subtext is, "Your yard is an unholy mess, but at least it's colorful." Finally, old age, an arm injury still lingering after cleaning up after Irma in 2017, and my general sleaze coalesced into the proverbial "perfect storm" landscape-wise, and I had to hire somebody to clear-cut the mess.

Chaos is the Opposite of a Garden

Phyla nodiflora, "Fogfruit," makes a wonderful flowering natvie ground cover that attracts many pollinators, the lovely white peacock butterfly included. It was invading the driveway, and  had crept, kudzu-like, over a stack of paving blocks, 6 bags of mulch, and a patch of wickedly spiny agave, itself out of control even though I had been attacking it regularly.

Phyla nodiflora - Good Pollinator Plant

Sea purslane, Sesuvium portulacastrum, another desirable native ground cover,  was smothering a pot of lotus and a nice patch of Heliotropium amplexicaule. It also presented a bad tripping hazard for anybody brave enough to make a foray into the "jungle." Thickets of scorpion-tail, scattered scarlet sage, and blue porterweed competed for light. Swaths of gaillardias and mounds of dune sunflower were flopping over onto the neighbor's driveway. The gravel swale, where I had nourished the fond idea of creating a meadow of blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium), was instead a mess of moisture-loving opportunists. A dead palm tree and deformed Red Geiger, both courtesy of Hurricane Irma, completed the picture of utter surrender.

Even the rosiest of glasses couldn't mask the reality. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I called a garden center to restore the bare bones of  the landscape. Two truckloads of debris and over a hundred bags of mulch later, we have one of the neatest and most cared-for yard on the street, which has its pluses, but is not exactly my ideal garden.

New Look for the Front Yard

Although the yard hardly is bare, the new space comes with a cost beyond what the garden center charged. For years our yard has been one of the very few landscapes in our neighborhood to offer  significant amenities of pesticide-free shelter, food and water for animals. Now in its rather barren state those amenities, especially the shelter, are much-reduced.

 However, we do not want to return to what it had become, which was by no means a garden. One thing I have learned is that the garden is as much about space as it is about plants. Without space,  there is no focal point, no rest for the eye or the soul. If the garden is neither  pleasant for walking or viewing, it is a failure, regardless of the beauty of individual plants. The very word "garden" signals the imposition of some kind of order. A  "wild garden" is a contradiction in terms.

So now, I have to recreate some of the lost habitat without losing the harmony of the space. As the old plants begin to resurface through the mulch, I have to organize them into well-defined beds, augmented perhaps with potted specimens. The self-discipline to pull out the surplus will be hard for me to maintain, but if I don't, the mess will re-establish itself quickly. That should provide motivation enough, because the yard really had become horrible and impassable.

Pots for Color

Given the fact that the yard is so small, I also need to ensure that the majority of the plants do more than one job. The agaves don't exactly fit that requirement, though dragonflies like to perch on their upright leaves, and pollinators love the flowers when they appear finally. But we both love the sculptural quality of the plants. A Red Geiger volunteer seedling will fill the space left by the agaves, and all will have enough room for the next several years. Though not a native, the Geiger will be a multi-purpose asset, and deserves its own post.

Wish me luck!

Summertime Blues I

Blues and purples have a calming effect in the garden, maybe because they suggest shadows and cool water. I have begun consolidating the blues scattered through our yard to maximize their impact - to create mini-oases amidst the reds, yellows, oranges and hot pinks that abound.

Waterlily "Tina"

The tropical waterlily Tina has been blooming like mad, in spite of the fact that I haven't fertilized it in over a year. "Her" pot is in a half-barrel nestled in the dappled shade of a Fiddlewood, one of the most valuable plants in the yard  because of the partial shade it affords.

A clump of chalky-blue Elliott's lovegrass has sprung up beside the waterlily pot, thriving from overspill. Grackles swoop down from the fiddlewood to bathe here because they can perch on the rim of of the pot within a pot, throwing out arcs of water with every wingflap. The grass loves it. I have the frame for an old hanging basket over the waterlily crown to keep them from destroying the plant, but when the grackles are active, I need to add water to the pot every day, and the grass gets a little drink in the process.

Elliott's Lovegrass in Bloom

Dwarf golden dewdrop, Duranta repens, is also good for cooling things down. Lucious racemes of white-edged, deep purple flowers droop from arching stems. I have to keep it in a pot to protect it from root knot nematodes, the bane of southern gardeners, and an especially bothersome pest in South Florida. If it is in full sun, the leaves get too yellow, so it needs some dappled shade to let the flowers and foliage thrive.

Golden Dewdrop

 Duranta used to be considered a Florida native, but isn't classified as such now. At any rate, it is certainly "Florida friendly" in terms of water and fertilizer usage. There is a non-dwarf form, but given the small size of the yard, I need to look for small varieties. The plant's name comes from the golden seeds (poisonous)  that follow the flowers. A member of the Verbena family, it is highly attractive to many butterflies. It blooms periodically throughout the year. I have moved its pot beside and a little in front of another Tina waterlily in the front yard. I like the effect of the branches drooping over the water, and I hope the purples will "talk" to each other.

Blue porterweed (Stachytarpheta jamaicensis), another member of Verbenaceae, would be my choice if I could have only one nectar plant. It attracts not only many butterflies and other insect species, but also hummingbirds. We see very few hummers, only during their spring and fall migrations, but they love the blue porterweed almost as much as the traditional red flowers like fire bush coral honeysuckle, and red geiger. (I remember hummingbirds nectaring at the blue balloon-flowers (Platycodon sp) I had in a rock garden in Georgia).

Native Blue Porterweed

It is hard to convey the beauty of blue porterweed in a photo or small drawing, since each flower spike has only 3-6 pale blue flowers open at a time. Each plant produces multiple spikes, though, so a mature plant, or even better, a clump of porterweeds, will have an abundance of blues dancing above the foliage.

There is a great deal of confusion in the trade over blue porterweed, and many nurseries unwittingly purvey a non-native form, Stachytarpheta urticifolia. This plant does attract butterflies, but also gets woody and scraggly with time. It has a minutely quilted leaf surface, and its flowers tend toward purple. The native porterweed has much smoother leaves, blue flowers, more compact habit, and smaller stature. Naturalist Roger Hammer has been instrumental in clearing up the confusion, at least within native plant circles.

I treat it as something like a long-lived annual or short-lived perennial. I cut it back when it starts to decline, but eventually it is easier for me to pull out the decadent individuals and foster the new ones that have sprung up in the yard. Without grass competition it self-sows actively, but not so much that it becomes a nuisance.

Carpenter Bee(?) on Native Blue Porterweed

Under very wet conditions the leaves may be attacked by a fungus. I have been able to keep this under control by pruning or removing diseased plants.  The porterweeds at a nearby nature center where I volunteered years ago were sometimes attacked by a stem-boring insect, but so far the ones in our yard have been free from this. They do get mealy bugs and spittle bugs, especially the older plants, but essentially are trouble free. They are growing scattered throughout the yard, and also in large pots.

Since we still have had no rain for over a week, fungus is the least of my worries. It rains all around us, and most days the skies get gray and even livid purple, with thunder and some lightning, but it passes us by with nary a sprinkle.