Garden Gawk: Saxeville

Garden Gawk: Public Spaces in the City of Wautoma

Actually, this is the widest space pictured here and part of a commercial space pf a business which sells a few potted plans, pots, statues, antiques, etc. catering to tourists.

I'm always gawking at gardens.  Maybe I'm a garden stalker.  Sometimes I take pictures.  I usually don't even get out of the car.  Sometimes I don't even stop the car. Thought I'd share.  You might find some images inspiring, weird, or wonder, "what is going on there?".  I have THAT thought a lot.

Newspaper box as garden art?  I will qualify this as being the backside of a planting that is adjacent to a municipal parking lot.

Someday (?) this will look pulled together...

This hellstrip is the narrowest piece of "hell" I've ever seen.  It is a two foot wide space between two parking lots reclaimed by the Waushara County Master Gardeners.

The sign should say Wetlands "Parking", as the space around the sign is just about the whole park.

This rustic metal sculpture is a good value-added...

But they should have stopped right there.  The bo-dingly value-added butterfly on a wire just adds that trash garden aspect too prevalent here in Waushara County.

I suppose this was the best they could do, hiding these utilities on the back of a park sign, again it is more a "parking sign".

Another hellstrip

If the gardeners of the public space are lucky they have a fence as a backdrop...

...all too often it is an open space between parking space and street.

None of these spaces is ever watered.  The plants included tend to be drought tolerant perennials and natives.  I suppose it is better than expecting a tree to survive in the space allowed; something you see a lot of in larger cities in Wisconsin.  Did you know the life expectancy of a city street tree is just seven years?

Lawnless Front Yards:Strange Trend or Progress?

My (nearly) lawnless front yard

Under the big white pine that dwarfs my house and shades most of my front yard, that grassy plant is actually a carex 'Ice Dance'.


Near my porch, morning sun makes its way. Half my front yard is deep shade, half bright sun.

Recently, I have seen a lot of discussion about tearing up our front yards and ______________________. You can fill in the blank with "grow your own vegetables", "plant it to natives", "plant a more sustainable garden". The list is pretty long.

I'm not a big lawn advocate, but I do like a little well-grown lawn. There is something about the feel of a nice piece of grassy sod under my bare feet in early summer that speaks to me. My dog loves to stretch out on the lawn and watch me garden. She says she's supervising.



From a design point of view lawn has a place, especially in the front yard. There is something that to me looks a bit off when I drive through a neighborhood and there is no grass in a front yard. For a small village, there are a good number of lawnless front yards here. I am sure most passers-by would include mine among them. It is very possible mine actually started the trend here, although I do not consider mine "lawnless".



See that tiny patch of lawn under the Red jade weeping crab apple?



My shady side of my front yard is planted to hosta,azaleas, dutchman's pipe, astilbe, hydrangea and carex. The sunny side roses, daylilies, and privet. That small piece of grass I have often considered tearing out and bedding strawberries instead. I still may someday. Now, I still like that 8' by 8' of lawn, even though it is inconvenient to mow. To the designer in me, this area calls for a flat expanse of green. That's why I considered the strawberries. Don't get me wrong, I love strawberries, but I am not ready for them in my front yard.

As I mentioned, there are some other lawnless front yards in the village. Back before the esteemed Dr. Apps retired and moved home, buying the house across from mine, I could safely claim the best garden award. There was nothing going on here garden-wise. Then I tore out the pathetic grass under my white pine, planted hosta, and five other homeowners followed...in yards with full sun. We are talking some serious crispy critter hosta. Two of those moved on and realized their error and dumped fist-sized rock in their yards to cover its entirety. Not sure where that idea came from, but people do seem to like their rock here in central Wisconsin. For me, going with hosta was a good choice.


This house was built with these huge surrounding areas of foot-deep gravel and 200-300 pound boulders. I carefully choose plants and softened this effect, planting down deep into the gravel.

I also planted this nice side yard in a native cutting garden for the same homeowner late one fall.


This picture was taken the next year. This is a one-year-old garden!

Those rock gardeners are also the ones with the strange plastic garden art and drift wood stumps.

No one in the village has torn out their front yard and planted a vegetable garden. Gardening in the front yard is demanding. Sometimes, some years, it has been the only part of my yard that has gotten enough attention...appearances you know.

Some will argue that natives are less work and that natives are a good solution. In my mind, they need editing and crowd control as much as the next garden. Left unchecked, many yards in my village would grow into mini-forests of weed trees with boxelder and silver maple seedlings running riot within ten years. I know the village maintenance guy says the boxelder and silver maples are the bane of the sewer lines in our village. The village actually has a plan of grinding/rooting out roots in the sewer main.

Most of the time natives just look weedy.

I think a front yard should be a matter of choice. It should enhance your home and lifestyle. It should fit your neighborhood. Lawn would look silly in Arizona, just as the rock in front yards here looks... wrong. Maybe someday that strawberry patch will happen out front. I think the house finches would have a hay day! And when people in this area actually learn to design with natives, I'll open my mind to that idea, but outside of Piet Oudolf (who does not live in my village), it hasn't happened yet.

Native Plants in My Garden

Mother nature as landscape designer, these are entirely natural and unplanned native "plantings".

This time of year it is easy to talk about the bones of a garden, its structure, or design. Walking in my garden a few minutes ago with Faithful Companion, it was easy to see a lot more, in particular the late fall natives with their seed heads that give me something to look at through the winter months.

This brought me to think about the large number of natives there are and how few many gardeners use in the design of their gardens. Natives are hard for landscape designers to put into a formal design plan. Natives are more the plant seen in a natural setting or seeded in a wild area. That many natives have a billowy form makes them a sure bed for a long border. The ephemeral nature of others makes their inclusion in anything other than a spring planting problematic.

Knowing the different genera well, a gardener who want to include natives into a formal landscape design has many to choose from that are often overlooked when developing a formal landscape plan.

I think a discussion of the pros and cons of several of the Upper Midwest's natives might aid those of you looking to incorporate more natives into planting this coming spring.

This Joe Pye weed benefits from early and often pinching of the central lead and axial leaders as they form. Pinching the central leader encourages each axial to develop a leader which will flower. If your first "pinch" is actually a 6" cutting from the main stem taken the end of May, beginning of June the cutting will root using rooting hormone. You can also easily root cuttings from turtlehead, native phlox, veronicas, and salvias, too. Multiplying your natives this way is almost easier than crown division and will increase you plants without sacrificing any bloom from the parent.

First, when thinking about plants and natives in particular, gardeners are often reluctant to pinch and dead-head natives. In any formal landscape design, a certain amount of staking, pruning, and dead-heading is a must. In my small yard one of the ways I use to manage my large collection of plants is through judicious use of my pruners. Doing so curbs many natives from their more blowsy and billowy natures. In this group that put out significantly more flower heads, develop a bushy structure, or will repeat bloom are coneflowers, tickseed, native phlox (the precursors of the tall garden phlox), most shrubs, Joe Pye Weed, asters, turtlehead, obedient plant (whether or not you consider it actually a native), salvias, and veronicas.

The not-so-obedient obedient plant is a plant that does well in mass plantings and can be pinched to encourage multiple blooming stalks.

Turtle head belongs in a group a natives that look good outside their bloom period. It has structure and a presence early in the season and is able to fill in the background of a border or formal planting.

Turtlehead in July, holding up its part in a border.

Later in the season, turtlehead seen in bloom. Blooming late,its glossy foliage and long-lasting pretty pink flowers make it a delight in the fall garden. Turtlehead suffers from few, if any pests, many times deer will not browse, or if they do, can be considered just another pinching and only serves to make it more floriferous.

Some plants straddle that line between what some call a native and other determine an early escapee, like the aforementioned obedient plant. These include filipendula, also know as queen of the prairie, echinecea purpurea (a native in much of the Midwest, but not actually here), plants that are cultivated selections of natives (think of all those colorful coneflowers and heuchera), and rudbeckia. (I will add to this list as I think of others!)

This plant is one I have seen listed in both the echinecea and rudbeckia genera, usually with the species name nitidia or lacinata. I have also seen it with a selected cultivar name 'Herbstonne' also, or referred to commonly as shining coneflower. It is a great back of the border plant sometimes reaching 7' high. It doesn't need dead-heading, it is a great fall food source for goldfinch.

As these plants are natives, they do not suffer from fungal diseases, nor insect pests overmuch. That they also serve as food for wildlife while note suffering from the forages is a clue about the pinching part of today's post.

Next entry, more on natives in formal garden design...

Disguising a Drain Field

I was asked to design and plant a cutting garden which would attract hummingbirds, bees, and other birds. This garden also needed to disguise a drain field, not have roots which would encroach on the proper drainage of the field, and would not hinder pumping of the tank in the future.

This rules out any trees and shrubs. It needed to hide sewer caps and to screen the view to the road. This garden was planted in late August. These pictures are from September of its first full year.

For spring color, there are drifts of tulips, about 350 in all. Tulips are followed by columbines, daisies, colorful heuchera, phlox, hosta, coneflowers, both sedum 'Autumn Joy' and 'Matrona', a few daylilies, and grasses.





The garden is 30' by 40' features a crushed granite path and a seating area. I think it is a successful way to mask a drainage field, provide long season color to a yard, and attract bird and bees.

Collecting Seed

I have spent quite a bit of time collecting seed this fall from a variety of my more unusual plants. These include plants I want a lot more of, plants I wish to sell or give to friends, or plants that I see a particular specimen has looked a bit more interesting than its cohorts of its species in my garden.

Last year I grew a cleome from seed. One of the plants seem to be bulkier, the first to germinate, yet never grew as tall. I collected seed from it and planted them this year. In turn its offspring yielded some plants with these same characteristics.

Cleomes like it hot and dry. The weather in central Wisconsin was far from cleome weather. We had the coldest June on record, the second coldest July, the wettest September, the driest October. You get the idea. The results with my cleome were far from ideal, yet I could tell this plant was quick to branch and never grew ungainly tall. Although it did flower and set seed, its flower show wasn't the specacular one for which I had hoped. I will collect seed again this year and hope for the best.

The other seed I have collected this year includes rattlesnake master, chelone glabra, liatris, ligularia 'Desdemona', heuchera 'Palace Purple', ligularia 'The Rocket', gaillardia 'Arizona Sun', an incredible peach Japanese tree peony, nicotiana 'Tinkerbelle', seed from some of my nicer open pollinated daylilies, a particularly well-branched and bushy hyssop, and a echiacea 'Magnus' with a flower which was easily 6" wide and very open and flat among others.

Many of these I will winter sow. This is a great method to grow plants from seed without obsessing over temperatures, moisture, and fungicides. For those of you unfamiliar with winter sowing, I incourage you to check out winter sowing in your particular zone at http://www.wintersow.com/.

And as for success with my seed sowing, I'll let you know. It can be exciting as these pictures of daylilies my son hybridized by crossing daylily 'Stella di Oro' with another daylily grown from a packet of daylily seed purchased from Jung's a number of years ago show.