A Tour Around the Circle

I've liked a lot about my garden this year, and the wet monsoon season has helped. But I still struggle with getting "the look" I want for the circle around the white bowl. While some things are filling in and I need to be patient, other plants are just too tidy by nature. I want a looser, less structured appearance.

Let's take a tour around the circle ----

• Take out this small clumpy sage (Blue Profusion) and pot it up for somewhere. Replace it with Black Adder agastche, which is larger and loose and spiky (divide the Black Adder agastache in the pot by the deck). Have this

• Add another blue mealycup sage to this little group of 3. Need to buy

The red Mexican sage between the two will get large

• Add one or two more orange agastaches to make a bigger stand with the others in this spot. Need to buy

These orange agastaches struggled and may bulk up next year, but add more

• Divide the tickseed in the terra cotta bowl and put one between the grass and the tiny dwarf purple agastache. Have this

• Bulk up the tiny sulphur buckwheat and the little Electric blue penstemon by adding more of each to form a grouping of each. Need to buy

• Unpot the Widwalker Red sage and put it where the annual gomphrena is (next year grow gromphrena in a pot and put that by the deck.) Have the sage / Need to buy the gomphrena

This is the most unresolved part of the circle, needing more plants and the bigger sage

I like the idea of mixed plants all around the circle, but need a much less restrained composition. As I've complained before, all my plants shrivel and none touch. By planting multiples together I hope to get the look I'd like while waiting for some growth and fullness to emerge. Maybe?

And Another

Another rain event last night -- this time not the hard downpour and no kitchen flooding, but a drenching rain that delivered .75 inches.

That makes 2.25 inches over the last two nights. That's a lot.

This morning is gloomy, wet smelling and cold. All my plants look full and upright and perky but I worry they are getting too soggy now.

What a monsoon season this has been!

A Hard Rain

The last rain we got was a third of an inch on August 1, and the month has been so dry since. Lots of clouds rolling in and storms all around almost every day, but no rain for over three weeks.

So I went out and watered last night even though big threatening clouds surrounded us and, as usual, the mountains were getting rain but none down here in the basin.

And then right after I came in it rained. Hard.

A real downpour that flooded the kitchen and totaled an inch and a half overnight.

I mopped the kitchen and turned the irrigation off.

1½ inches from one big storm is very rare here. This summer's monsoon season has been an intermittently wet one. Lots of rain, but not spread out consistently. Since May we've had 8.5 inches of rain, the most ever since we moved here.

These Things Are Nice

Despite my laments about skimpy plants and sparse flowering of some things this summer, there are some nice sights to see too.

The Mexican sage, just planted this year, has started to fill in and the first blooms are vibrant red.

Salvia darcyi Vermillion Bluffs - newly planted this year

The second year for a little dwarf goldenrod is looking good. Not sure how big it will get, but it is filling in somewhat and blooming well.

Solidago Little Lemon

A purple agastache in a container by the deck is great. It has been blooming all summer on upright stems  along with the yellow tickseed nearby. I did cut the agastache back by a third in June before any flower spikes had appeared.

Agastache Black Adder

The whole grouping of containers by the deck looks nice and the wild hairy goldenaster is even starting to bloom, flopping into and around all the other plants.

My Prairie Pot Garden

So there are sights that please me in some places!

This Summer's Lament

This summer was a wet one for months. August has been drier, but monsoon season started early and was generous. BUT . . . I lament. Things don't look right in my garden this year.

The butterfly bush is so scrawny -- both the purple one in the corner and the Honeycomb in front. It blooms at the top but it had a lot of dead stems this spring that I had to cut out and although I like the upright vase shape, it's too sparse and thin. 

A short walk around the neighborhood revealed caryopteris shrubs that were dense with flowers and butterfly bushes that were fat and full of blooms.

Not mine                                                                       Mine

I'll do rejuvenation pruning this winter and cut it all the way back. And my Rose of Sharon, leafy and green, has fewer buds and sparse flowers this summer. The similar one in Newman's parking lot was immensely, spectacularly full in July.

Nothing in my gardens touches. The veronicas and geums and zinnias are all stunted. They grow, they look healthy, they are fertilized and well watered, but they are tiny. The pretty gaura withered and produced long arching flower-less stems. You can't even see it here, somewhere next to the sundial.

Could these plants be tinier?

By the way, here it was last year. The gaura was pretty and bobbing and just isn't anywhere to be seen this year. What is wrong this year?

Last year looked so much fuller

In the ring that circles the white bowl, well irrigated, watered, and fertilized every 10 days, I have 3 inch plants. All of them, just three inches across and two inches tall, stranded in mulch, some new but most well into their second or third year. What is going on with my perennials shrinking?

Lots of tiny stunted things in the mulch

A row of blanketflowers between the bench and the white irises never made it past three inches of healthy looking foliage. 

No show blanketflowers

I planted some new Amber Wheels blanketflowers and there are some of the older aristata gaillardias, but none of them did anything.

I don't fertilize those, as they grow best without amendments or inputs, and I made sure they weren't watered too much. 

But nada -- all of them just produced some nice green short foliage and sat there.

Blanketflowers are supposed to be the easiest of all, needing no care. What happened? I grew them around the birdbath in earlier years and they were tall and dramatic flowers.

(The white irises behind the blanketflowers had nice foliage but only two or three flowers this year. The year before I got a full stand of crystal white irises.)

There are some successes in my garden: the Grow-Lo sumacs thrive and have gotten big, the crabapple is leafy and getting bigger. My yellow peony is a nice size, the Karl Foerster grasses under the kitchen window are tall but very thin, and the rosemary is too big for its spot. 

This is as big as the clematis gets each year
(after seven years)

Other things look nice enough, although nothing is big or full. My pots are okay, but no plant that I have put in the ground touches another next to it. All stay safely apart even if a robust nursery plant has to shrink to three inches wide to prevent touching. 

Clematis vines produce about six or seven flowers but stay delicate and skinny and about three feet tall. The plants under the Venosa violacae don't touch -- I've added some potted things in between.

This summer seemed a godsend with the rain, but I am baffled about plant size. And not just a struggler or two, but mature easy to grow shrubs and reliable perennials just look so skimpy.

Next year I will try using higher nitrogen fertilizer rather than bloom booster fertilizer. I'll cut the butterfly bushes and caryopteris plant way down. 

I don't know what else to do.

Annuals in the Ground

Profusion zinnias in a bowl

There is always a world of difference between the annuals I have in pots and the ones in the ground. In the garden they stay tiny and sometimes look stunted. 

In pots they thrive and bulk up. Actually that's true of perennials and even subshrubs too.

This year I planted Profusion zinnias in the kitchen courtyard and put two extras in a pot nearby. What a difference.

In the cramped terracotta bowl they are sizable and dense with lots of flowers going in all directions. I have to keep that pot watered every day.

In the garden each is cheerful and blooming, but only a few flowers at a time on tiny, four inch little plants. 

These also need daily water and I hand water them deeply every day. I fertilized every 10 days or so. But they stay little.

Cute and colorful but tiny

None of them touch. None have grown beyond the size they were in the nursery pot. The flowers are cute, but I know Profusion zinnias get about 12 inches tall and wide or more.

Just short little clumps of zinnias with a few blooms each

Nothing in this garden touches, really. The veronicas have bulked up after several years and the purple aster in front has gotten big, but everything else in front of the redtwig dogwood is a small clump. 

Coreopsis in a bowl keeps going and going

The several orange geums have been in the garden for years now, densely planted, and each carefully grows away from its neighbor, shrinking if it gets too close. They are watered and fertilized.

Even the gaura by the sundial, a nice sized plant when I put it in, has shrunk and gotten so wispy it isn't seen.

I tried several tickseeds in this garden and they shriveled. Badly. But dug up and put in a terracotta bowl, a yellow one has thrived, blooming densely all summer. It has been amazing.

I grew Strawberry Fields gomphrena in a container one year and it got big and bushy with lots of upright stems and bright red flowers all over.

Little gomphrena finally sending up buds

So I tried it in the ground this year and it sent up one (one!) long curving errant stem early on, but has remained a small tidy thing.

Now, in late August I am getting a half dozen buds coming out on a plant about six inches tall. This too is watered heavily every day and fertilized every 10 days.

Angelonias in the ground never took at all. Angelonias in pots are flowery and lovely.

I know the thin surface level roots of annuals get dried out quickly in this climate's harsh sun, but that's true whether in pots or in the ground, and I water constantly and deeply every day. 

What causes such a drastic difference? Soil pH level? Do these particular annuals need lower alkalinity?

Perennials do the same thing -- they look nice enough but only a few inches big in the ground but if I dig them up and pot them, they immediately bulk up, flower profusely and fill out. Clematis vines in the ground stay thin and sparse despite fertilizer and water but the bush clematis in the blue container grows rampantly.

Nothing touches, tiny shrinking clumps of plants, all I see is mulch

My yard looks good this year only because I have a ton of potted things by the garage door and in my prairie pot garden by the deck. I have other containers spread about in different spots too.

I don't want just a container garden. But next year I am not going to plant any annuals in the ground, it isn't worth it. 

I'm not sure what to do about the shrinking perennials and skinny clematis and even the lank caryopteris -- I do want some flowering  plants in my gardens.

Sigh

🌸

Too Much Shade

The 'First Choice' caryopteris out by the front walk is blooming, but the plant is leggy and open and the flowers, while nice, are scattered on the shrub. I think it is in too much shade.
 

When I take a walk around the neighborhood I see small caryopteris plants that are fat, dense shrubs covered in flowers. On Chamisa path the grounds committee planted several 'After Midnight' caryopteris two years ago and they were mail order tiny pants. There is no irrigation there and we hand watered at first.

Now, after two years, those are gorgeous. Still small but easily three times bigger than when planted, and they are full, thick with flowers.

Mine is not. It has been in the ground for 8 years now and is finally the size of the 'After Midnight' shrubs planted two years ago, but much more open. 

I have not pruned it, waiting for it to gain some size, but it really should be cut back every other year to grow in denser. 

In this much shade, though, it might not help.

Plants that want full sun usually need some shade in this climate and elevation. But apparently the caryopteris really does need more sun than my 'First Choice' little plant gets.

Trim it back this winter and then transplant it to the corner by the driveway among the rocks there. It can go where there is an emitter, and then let the blackfoot daisies spread out around it.  →

If I take it out, what else could I plant in that spot by the front walk? There are emitters there.

I could put in a Gro-Low sumac for something neutral to cover that corner. They'll take shade. They look rich and glossy all summer.

Nice and Not

The prairie pot garden by the deck looks nice. The purple agastache Black Adder is really nice. It's upright, full and bouncy in the breeze. 

The hairy goldenaster has not bloomed yet (the other by the driveway has, and is gone by already). It sprawls around the pots nicely, though, filling in gaps.

When I sit in the leather recliner in the living room and look out the slider, this group of plants is full and lush and summery and it frames the birdbath just beyond beautifully. I can sit there and just watch the scene endlessly.

But two of the red salvia greggii I recently got to replace the leggy Windwalker Red salvia are kind of funny. The blooms have a lot of white in them, making the effect sort of pink. A third one is all red.

I liked the solid bright red of the Radio Red salvia greggii last year. The two that survived in the kitchen courtyard are sparse and small but so red. Nice.

Not so nice -- the crocosmia George Davidson in the blue pot behind the deck. 

The strappy arching foliage looked great all spring and early summer but has browned out terribly now. Does it want more shade? It gets some, but is in sun in the afternoons.

The soil is consistently moist, the plants are putting out some flower spikes, but boy does it look ratty. I'm not sure if I'll keep it next year.

Kent's Beauty oregano also looked great all spring and early summer, very frilly looking and spilling over the urn nicely, but is now turning brown, with dry, pinkish tan foliage.

It is also watered and the soil is consistently moist. It too may want more shade; it gets about a half day of sun.

But unlike the unattractive browning crocosmia foliage, this oregano may just have a lifespan that dries out as it matures. The dry foliage looks papery and is kind of nice in its way.

With all our rain and my frequent watering most of the garden looks pretty good now.

Rainy Summer

It rained again last night. This has been the summer I always hope for every year -- rainy. 

We've had 7 inches in May, June, and July, and it has been spread out, not all at once in a big storm. It has been gentle and steady for the most part. 

Typical monsoon season all the way through September -- two more months to go yet -- is about 6 inches, but we've had less many summers.

Even when it doesn't rain, the afternoon skies get cloudy and threatening. Every day. It's been hard to sit on the patio in the late day and the cushions are spending more time stacked in the living room than outside.

The mountains are getting even more. When it doesn't rain here, it's pouring in the mountains. And Ruidoso to the south has been having terrible floods (and deaths) from rain coming down last year's burn scars. It's been horrible.

But of course here, in less catastrophic amounts, the rain has been welcome in my garden. On July 29, 31 and August 1 we got a third of an inch each night -- 1 inch over four days.