Winter lists

Photo: Julie Wiatt

You may have noticed that the last three months or so have been hot and very dry. Our gardens have noticed, too. But we have made it through October, with many glorious and comfortable days. The ground remains warm and inviting; it’s a perfect time for planting, for the roots of new perennials and transplanted shrubs will have many weeks, perhaps even to February, to spread out and collect energy for spring. The only challenge will be gathering our own energies to dig into the inhospitable soil (adobe brick is more like it) to make the planting holes.

We could never say that November is our favorite month in the garden. Shorter and grayer days await us, and grayness, too, in the landscape. The fiery splendor given to us in October has fallen to earth. Stripped of leaves, deciduous shrubs give us the clues we have been needing, by their shapes ­— gaunt or thickly congested — and their colors — mouse-gray, olive green or straw brown. They are inviting us to make plans: what to move, where to prune, what to add.

Lists abound (with age they abound anyway): Let's plant low creeping ground-covers around the big field stones that are the steps down beside the North berm. Decide now, and order them after the catalogs arrive. They need to be interesting ground covers, plants with the “right stuff” to hang in there despite drought, blooming once or maybe twice if cut back, but always looking good.
This past summer, we were particularly impressed by the tiny Sedum “John Creech,” a 2” tall, easy-to-grow creeper named after Dr. John Creech, former director of the U.S. National Arboretum. Dr. Creech discovered the plant in the Siberian Academy Gorodok Gardens in 1971. In 2001, U.S. sedum authority Ray Stephenson positively identified it as S. spurium.

This is not just any S. spurium, but a rare, weed-smothering ground cover with small scalloped green leaves topped with pink flowers in fall. (To order, see www.plantdelights.com or www.carrollgardens.com.)

Another sedum worthy of a special place in your garden is S. makinoi “Ogon,” a creeping, yellow-leafed form with yellow flowers in summer. They are also fabulous in blue-glazed pots. A shade-tolerant sedum, S. ternatum “White Waters,” has spreading evergreen foliage and white flowers. This sedum has unusually large leaves and dense form. (See www.carrollgardens.com.)
Another shade-tolerant fall bloomer is Solidago caesia, a non-sneeze-inducing goldenrod growing 2’ to 3’ and naturally found in high, dry woods. The cheerful yellow flowers, beloved by butterflies, arrive in small clusters. Great with the large blue-lavender aster “Raydon's Favorite” or the slightly smaller blue aster “October Skies.”

Soon we will be inundated with leaves. Easy Gardener hopes you will send some off to the city or county leaf piles to be ground for mulch, but consider sweeping/blowing the vast majority into your planting beds to be the blankets your gardens need for winter. Another benefit of the leaf cover is weed-suppression —something you will appreciate come spring.

In the wan light of a late November afternoon, take the time to visit every corner of your garden, for it is the small vignettes and treasures there that keep us going. If making a garden takes a practiced eye and a constant determination to improve aesthetic values, it takes an even more relentless willingness to work during a season when there are a hundred things one would rather be doing.

Pull up the now-dead annuals, cut back the drooping or mushy perennials to 6” and throw all this good matter into the compost pile, or mound it over the stems of the elephant ears, banana, or cannas; the peony bed; or around the base of the azaleas, which should NOT be standing in a bed of swept-clean bare dirt.

Contribute all this rich, sustaining humus back to the earth. Cover with a blanket of leaves. A good drink of water would be in order, for our evergreen and deciduous shrubs need water most as they are going into winter. The drying winds take a heavy toll from the leaves and stems of the woodies. Water again, very generously, every two weeks until the ground freezes.

Then, feel virtuous, and curl up with a good catalogue, plus the cat or dog. Now the real work begins: Make some more lists.

Pat Howell is a Takoma Park gardener and landscape designer/garden builder. She is available for hand-holding and answering questions through Deephaven Landscapers.