It has been more than one year since we purchased our land in Stewart County, so, with a new growing season I thought I'd update you all on the progress. First of all, progress in a garden is always an ongoing thing. Natural gardens and really all gardens change daily. This is so out at the land so these pictures are only a snapshot in time. They vary from vistas to wildflowers to cultivated flowers. The one thing they all have in common is that it is clear Mother Nature is in control because I simply cannot cultivate everything you see--nor do I wish too!
We start the tour with a beautiful vista down our back hill under a dogwood. This is a rather large hill and the vision is for it to be filled with wildflowers and grasses. This is where the majority of the wildflower seed was planted early this spring. An unexpected result of clearing this hill last spring has allowed a lot of already existing wildflowers to germinate and bloom. Some of them you will see in this post. On the day I took this shot Mr. Fix-it bushogged all of the broomsedge. This will allow even more sun to penetrate to the ground surface so that the wildflower seed that has germinated will get light and will grow.
One of the surprises in the area that was mowed last fall was all of the phlox found growing on the Wildflower Hill. The pinks and purples are delightful.
This is a native wildflower that I actually transplanted to the little pond area by our overhead shelter. It is of course Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum species). This is one perennial I can't get enough of due to its long period of interest and ease of care. Also, thus far the deer have not eaten it! I have several different cultivars of it and also the False Solomon's seal (Smilicina racemosa now apparently changed to Maianthemum racemosum). I have been busy trying to move every bit of it out to the land and I am actually making progress. This clump was moved last year and came back wonderfully.
Another shot of the little clump by the little pond.
These violets were nice bits of color on the Wildflower Hill. I am not sure what type of violets they are so if anyone can positively identify them let me know please. It is probably a woodland violet.
This is the view toward the overhead shelter I call the gazebo. If you will remember the canopy we had over the structure collapsed due to the weight of snow and ice within the last month or so. Mr. Fix-it did an outstanding job of replacing the roof with metal we had leftover from when our garage was built twelve years ago. Yes, I hold on to everything as you never know when you might need it. The metal is all different colors but it works to keep us dry and out of the sun. The gazebo is surrounded on the north and south by a prairie style garden. Behind the gazebo is a small pond and a woodland garden. This is also where the above Solomon's Seal grows. I'll post on the prairie garden later but for now suffice it to say it has growing in it: baptisias, asters, Tartarian asters, compass plant, helianthus, amsonia, salvias coneflowers, cannas, grasses, heucheras, catmint, sedum, veronica, liatris, and daylilies.
Here is an up close picture of the north side of the little gazebo. It looks like the plants are pretty far apart but remember these plants have been here only one year and will quickly fill in.The southern side has about 600 'Sun Disc' daffodils currently blooming in it but the whole area is pretty much natural. The electrical transformers and wiring is scheduled to go in the area so I have not done much with that side.
This is the view on the extreme north side of the prairie garden under the oaks. Here the divider between a cultivated area and the wild area are stepping stones. These heucheras 'Miracle' you see as the chartreuse foliage in the foreground are a truly a miracle. I planted them last spring and never watered them. They kept their foliage all winter long. As this new foliage came in the deer kindly came and ate all of the old foliage. I don't know how that happened but it did. I hope they leave the new foliage alone. These heucheras are a tough, large, and vigorous cultivar of heuchera. I highly recommend it. Also, these can take a lot of direct sun because they get the western sun each afternoon.
Spanish bluebells grow along side some pink Spanish bluebells behind the gazebo by the pond. They were moved while in bloom last spring and barely winked at the move. Firepinks have also joined the chorus in this area and the red of their flowers contrasts nicely with the blue and pinks of the Spanish bluebells.
I am not sure what this little yellow wildflower could be. It is growing sporadically in the field. It is a pretty yellow.
I had transplanted a lot of spiderworts out to the Driveway Garden. Imagine how surprised I was to find spiderworts growing wild on our Wildflower Hill. This type may be Tradescantia subaspera. It prefers moist, acidic soil and that is exactly what we have--even on the hill during certain periods of the year, like spring. This pretty little clump was mowed over by me while I cut the grass, but it seems to have not suffered any major damage. Big sigh of relief.
'Florida Flame' azaleas are blooming. I am loving the azaleas this year and so far the deer have not nibbled on them, tho they have sampled the rhododendrons. I can completely forget about hollies as they are all chewed down to nubs. Darn deer.
This last picture is of another wildflower area in our back corner of the field. The columbo grows here with wild abandon. Many of these American columbos are getting ready to bloom. I love this area as the columbo looks like hostas coming and so prolific are they that the sight is really something. Within another month or so all of these columbo will have gone completely dormant and the summer wildflowers such as butterfly weed, lespedeza, goldenrod, and asters will take over. Also growing on the land but no pictures of them are: ragweed (transplanted and wild), yellow rocket, waterleaf, and many, many more wildflowers yet to be identified....
in the garden....
We are finally breaking ground on the house so I am very busy working on that, but gardening is never far from my heart. I think that hopefully by the time the house is done most of my gardens will be moved. I've worked more than one year on this process but it is a very time consuming thing and I am not really where I need to be. As it is, it looks like I'll have another winter season to get everything moved before we put our house on the market. This is great news for me because as wonderful as it is having a new house to be, it is ever more so wonderful to have a new garden I create from scratch. I am so excited to have this opportunity! Thanks for following along....in the garden.
Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden
Good morning you all! This has been a brutal winter here in Middle Tennessee--at least on the humans and those animals and wildlife that have to live outside. Brrrrr, I don't even want to think about them except maybe just a little bit. Today I'll be talking about Mr. Fix-it and my farm and our native warm season grass (NWSG) wildlife habitat.
My husband and I were quite lucky to find our dream property about this time last year. Not only does the property have some nice and varied rolling terrain, but it has a lot of native plants. In fact, there are not too many invasives but the ones that are there we are working on eradicating. That land is fairly untouched and undisturbed. Today we'll discuss the native warm season grass called broomsedge, aka bluestem broomsedge, and Andropogon virginicus.
When we first purchased this land we thought this lovely bunching bluish grass was little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium). Then, in a meeting with two of Tennessee's wildlife biologists I received a definitive identification of all of this native warm season grass to be broomsedge--not little bluestem. Upon doing further research it is easy to see why I was confused. Both the broomsedge and little bluestem look very similar and can even grow in the same conditions. In fact, this website helps the uninitiated to determine the differences between little bluestem and broomsedge. It is not easy to tell the difference to someone not trained in these things.
Broomsedge is a very common NWSG in Tennessee. In fact, I was informed by my neighbor's wife (a farmer's wife) that farmers hate broomsedge. Broomsedge is not particularly good forage for cattle and its presence can indicate high acidity and low fertility as well as overgrazing. On our land we already know we have high acidity but did not know about the low fertility. It all makes sense now that we see all the broomsedge. When farmers have broomsedge in their pastures they will usually add lime to get rid of the broomsedge according to my neighbor's wife. That is also the advice of many websites I have found online. Of course, you should do a soil test before you add any amendments to soil. For us we will not add lime on this hillside as that would be changing the natural state. I believe in letting nature work her course in her own way if I have a choice. And in this case I do so no lime or amendments.
While I was a bit disappointed this NWSG was not little bluestem, the two biologists assure me it IS native and is an excellent wildlife habitat grass. The major difference between little bluestem and this broomsedge is the depth the roots travel in the ground as far as I can tell. Little bluestem roots can grow several feet down whereas the broomsedge roots pretty much stay about 12-18" deep. Deep roots would be good on this large hill but the broomsedge will help with erosion and keep the hill intact just as well as the little bluestem. This is a good thing.
Our slope is an approximately 800' east facing slope that is surrounded by forest. At the bottom of the slope there is an old logging road; which is on our property and which we maintain; and next to that road is a stream. I had a great concern for establishing this hillside in an early succession prairie habitat so that its maintenance would be minimal and so that the stream would not be affected by runoff. As in minimal I mean only rotational mowing once a year in order to keep the woodies down. We love the natural look of this prairie area and since we have more than 50 acres of forest we wish to keep this open area open. A prairie wildlife habitat was just the solution for us and I had enlisted the aid of Tennessee's wildlife biologists to help me with that. I am taking their great advice on establishing this area to its natural state that will provide diversity for all.
Our broomsedge helps to provide cover for deer. The deer love this hill and we can often see not only the evidence of the deer but also the deer themselves. We also have a lot of birds utilizing this area. Quail, American woodcock, turkeys, and small songbirds all like to forage and even nest in broomsedge areas. Broomsedge, because it is a clumping grass, does not completely cover the ground and is not hard for small ground dwelling birds to maneuver in and amongst the vegetation. Many of the NWSGs are like this in that they clump and do not completely mat up the ground. Many of our introduced lawn grasses will quickly cover the ground completely because they spread by runners. Introduced lawn grasses have their place but only near your home because that is where you most likely spend all of your time and where you are more than likely to do most of your maintenance. Mowing and maintaining a turf grass type grass back here would be nigh on impossible. A wildlife habitat area is the perfect solution for the wildlife and for us. Don't you just love the beautiful golden color of the broomsedge? This broomsedge has not been fazed by the weather this winter. Even after several ice storms and a couple inches of snow the broomsedge still stands proudly waving its amber waves of gold.
While this wildlife habitat of broomsedge is a good start on what I envision this hill to look like long term, it is not quite complete. Missing are native forbs such as wildflowers. There are some wildflowers growing in this area, which is a benefit but not enough to give me the diversity I desire. Diversity is not only what I desire but also I think what the wildlife desire. While I would not want to crowd the field with tons of native wildflowers I do desire things like coneflowers, compass plant, ironweed, rudbeckia, asters, and daisies to mix in with the broomsedge. There are of course some wildflowers in this area. They consist mainly of: beggar ticks, burnweed (not so great), common milkweed, passionvine, bee balm and a few others. It is possible that this year will see many more wildflowers appear now that this area has been cleared and maintained in a manner that will encourage native wildflowers to take hold and grow. To help that process a long I have ordered several pounds of a native wildflower mix formulated especially for this kind of land. I plan to aerate then frost seed the seed once it comes in. It may take a year or two for the wildflowers to grow and to really make a difference but like all gardeners, I have that vision and a lot of time to wait for it to happen. My source for my native wildflower seeds is Roundstone Seeds located in Kentucky. They come very highly rated and I am most excited to receive my seeds and see how they do. If you are into natives (who isn't now a days?) and would like to buy some seeds go check out Roundstone's website. It is a very good website and I hope to visit their farm sometimes this year.
Normally one would perhaps drillseed and also clear existing vegetation and maybe even apply amendments before spreading wildflower seeds. But, in our case we love the broomsedge and do not want to eradicate it so eliminating existing vegetation would be bad. Despite all of the broomsedge here there is plenty of bare ground for the wildflower seed to take hold. Frost seeding will help with establishing seed to ground contact as the ground expands and contracts this spring. Putting any equipment on this hillside would simply cause more damage than the good it would do because of the angle of the slope. Burning is another alternative and good way to start wildflower seeds but with the slope of this hill and with no firebreaks this is something we will forego for now. Hopefully, all will go well with seed germination and I'll let you all know later this year how it goes. So for now, I'll plan and prepare and spread my wildflower seed and enjoy the lovely broomsedge growing on my NWSG wildlife habitat....
in the garden....
Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden
I have never had a wildflower meadow but have always enjoyed fields of wildflowers. Now that I have a little bit of space on our new land I have begun the process of starting my own wildflower meadow/garden. It is a process, as I am quickly learning.
A wildflower garden is not so simple as throwing out some seeds and hoping for the best as I have learned through researching wildflower meadows online. American Meadows has a wonderful website and people who are more than happy to help out new wildflower enthusiasts like myself. They have been wonderful with explaining the process of seeding a wildflower meadow but for me I guess it was all still a bit overwhelming. Part of the problem is that wildflower meadows take years to develop fully and while they are lower maintenance than lawns and gardens, there is still a lot of maintenance to be done if one wishes to be successful. So I am doing my new wildflower meadow my way.
Basically I have gathered that you should: kill all weeds and grasses ahead of time (two doses of glyphosate did that), don't overly disturb the soil because you will stir up dormant weed seeds (lightly raked the soil), seed specific seeds after the first couple of hard freezes (if erosion will not wash away the seeds in the winter), or early enough that the seedlings can get established before a freeze, or in late winter/early spring (I have not decided on which option I will use), mow and treat weeds as they grow but make sure you don't mow down your new wildflowers, burn the area after a few years, keep out woody weeds, and basically manage your wildflower meadow rather scientifically-forever. If you do this you will get a beautiful wildflower meadow out of the process. Well, that remains to be seen in my case because I am in the very early stages of my wildflower planting experiment. And here is the experiment or the 'my way' part of managing my wildflower meadow.
Instead of relying only on seeds to start the wildflower meadow I decided that since I was moving flowers from my current garden (Tiger Gardens) to the new garden (Tiger Way Gardens) that perhaps I could kind of start with an instant meadow by moving plants instead of relying only on seeds?
My first step was to choose all of the appropriate plants in my garden I thought might be appropriate for the conditions in my wildflower meadow area. The plants had to not only grow in the conditions (full sun, heavy clay, acidic soil, waterlogged at times), but they had to be native plants (or naturalized) that would care for themselves and not take a lot of work from me to maintain. My goal is to have a wide diversity of plants that will provide a little ecosystem that will attract not only pollinators such as bees and butterflies, but also migrating and year round resident birds. I also want color throughout most of the year but mainly in the summer, even tho I tried to chose plants for year round interest. I realized that given these conditions, I had many appropriate wildflowers already growing in my nicely manicured gardens that could make the move to 'the wild side of a meadow garden'. Bingo! I now had a location to move the plants to and geez, I didn't even have to prepare a garden (but I did kill the current vegetation weeds growing there and I have lightly prepared the area for seeds in a few months or so. So today's post is to showcase the few wildflowers I have already successfully moved from Tiger Gardens to Tiger Way Gardens. Almost all of the plants I transplanted have succeeded in growing wonderfully. These plants are almost all native (or naturalized) to the United States, and will spread themselves around and provide year round interest. I planted them fairly randomly but in drifts that I hope will form colonies over time. We shall see how that goes. According to American Meadows the advantage of planting with seed is that the seed sowing process arranges seeds in a random manner; which is good for wildflower gardens. We want these kinds of gardens to look like nature planted them. The plants I show here are not the only plants for the wildflower garden as I did order seed as well, plus there are a few other perennials I transplanted that I did not get photos of. They include: balloon flower and baptisia. Additionally, as I dug these plants from my current garden I was able to split and divide most all of them. There are several of the following plants growing in the wildflower meadow but I only show one picture per plant here. I will share the seeding part of the process when the time comes. I spent a lot of time choosing the appropriate seeds for my wildflower meadow and hope I made the right choices! At any rate, I know I did good on these plants so without further ado they are....
Rudbeckia lacinata, aka Cutleaf Coneflower
Tatarian Asters, browsed by the deer-darn it!
Joe Pye Weed.
Amsonia hubrichtii, look at all of those buds!
Rudbeckia maxima, aka Giant Coneflower.
Rudbeckia triloba.
Chrysanthemum x superbum, aka Shasta daisies.
Filapendula rubra, aka Queen of the Prairie.
I placed crushed eggshells around all of the newly planted wildflowers so that I would be able to distinguish them from the weeds (there are still many that I have to battle). You may notice the eggshells in some of the above pictures. I don't plan to fertilize this area but will most likely burn it in a few years and do other maintenance as necessary....
in the garden....
Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden