Matchbook strikes a home run

IN THE GARDEN

C7

Finally, warmer days showed up this past week. After a cooler summer and a few recent nights when temperatures approached frost levels, I was beginning to cast anxious glances at the snow tires sitting in the garage.

In the garden, I try to accept whatever nature delivers. There are always disappointments and pleasant surprises but overall, things tend to average out.

Among the disappointments this year was wilt on the clematis and that other pesky fungal problem, powdery mildew. It showed up on my tuberous begonias, something that has never happened before. They’ve continued to flower but the leaves on one plant are as grey as most weekends have been.

Although the spores are spread on the wind and are dependent on weather conditions, obviously perfect this year, the tubers shouldn’t be affected. When it’s time to retrieve them for winter, I’d advise cleaning them well and then dusting with powdered sulphur before storing away.

My dahlias have excelled this year. Sure, there were a few soggy flower heads after rainy spells, but those soft, fleshy stems loved the extra moisture. Short or tall, in the flower bed or in a planter, they’ve never stopped blooming. ‘Karma Choc,’ with its deep burgundy flowers and dark leaves, has been exceptional.

I’ve also been impressed with a salvia that I have in a planter. I love salvias, as do butterflies, bees, and humming birds. This is a new hybrid called Rocking Deep Purple and it’s never stopped flowering, blooming and reblooming all summer long.

The flowers are purple with an almost black calyx — the outer sheath that supports each individual flower. It’s a more compact plant, growing to about two feet (60 centimetres), unlike other varieties I’ve grown that are much leggier. It might behave as an annual except in its native habitat, it’s a perennial.

Breeders have developed these hybrids to flower right through the season with little care, just as a typical annual would.

Who doesn’t enjoy long-blooming plants? If there’s one thing I miss, though, it’s the anticipation factor. Lovely as they may be, these plants change little from day to day.

That’s part of the pleasure for me, walking through the garden each morning, seeing what’s new, checking the progress of a plant that blooms only briefly, buds forming then slowly opening. At this time of year, late ones like turtlehead, helenium and anemone have flowered in my garden, and now there’s little more on the way.

The final one this year is going to be Eupatorium rugosum ‘chocolate.’ I have it in a shadier spot against the fence; if it was sunnier there, it might flower sooner but I don’t mind as it provides a finishing touch, brightening things up with clusters of white flowers that cover the plant like a dusting of snow.

Last year it peaked in mid-October (maybe it was snow). As for the chocolate moniker, it’s because the leaves are purplish bronze when they first appear.

And what is this rare plant? It’s a stockier, less common species of Joe Pye weed, now reclassified by botanists as Ageratina

altissima — useful if you need to track it down.

Joe Pye weed is a native plant of eastern North America and is toxic if eaten, but butterflies love it. When cows had access to it, not likely these days, they produced poisoned milk, believed to have caused the death of Abraham Lincoln’s mother.

Don’t let that discourage you from growing it. It’s a useful plant that, once established, can tolerate dry shade.

Now, let’s enjoy the summer weather while it lasts. The snow tires can wait — right?

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