Still seeking immortal plants?
Not yet, definitely not yet. I haven’t entered the garden season doldrums just yet. I’ll still be puttering about until the ground is either frozen solid or buried in snow, preferably the latter. Sure, it’s cooler, but it’s so much nicer for working than it was during that early October heat wave.
You might be wondering what on earth I’m still doing in the garden at this time of year. Fact is, I can always find something to do. I have a large garden to keep me busy, and by garden, I mean the whole yard, not a vegetable plot.
It’s not large in dimensions. In fact, it’s relatively small. The front yard has only a couple of strips that are surprisingly low maintenance. The rear garden, where I focus most of my attention, is smaller than a basketball court and only has one player — me, and I double as ref.
Where it is large is in the content. Ignoring vegetables and annuals, there are about 30 trees and shrubs, which surprised me when I counted them. Then there are the perennials, a few hundred of them, more or less. I say more or less because there are too many that appear to have vanished. That’s partly because I’m forever challenging my climate zone, planting things that should only be grown in places like Kentucky.
Others that have gone missing are shortlived perennials. If you’re ever inclined to rip out all your annuals and only plant perennials because “they live forever” — don’t. There’s a misconception that perennials are immortal when they’re definitely not. Many have quite short lifespans. Lupines, cardinal flower, some echinacea cultivars, for instance, last as few as three years.
Others can be extremely long lived, as long as 30 or 40 years. Depending on the range, an average lifespan of less than 10 years would be a reasonable guess. Not surprisingly, you’d be hard pressed to find this information in a catalogue or on a plant label. You can extend the life of these plants by collecting the seeds or taking cuttings, something else I’ve been doing this month.
Because of this transitory nature of plants, I’m forever planting, moving, and replanting. It’s just one of the things that keeps me busy in fall. With careful selection I could have an almost static garden, but that would be no fun.
I’m not spending much time on cleaning up flower beds. Except for clearing out the veggie garden and pulling out dead annuals, I let most things flop into place where they’ll eventually decompose and return nutrients to the soil, same as in nature. Plants left in place are also a source of food and a haven for wildlife. The stems provide a winter home for many beneficial insects and will also trap snow to insulate the garden.
One more thing I won’t be doing is raking and bagging leaves. My deciduous trees and shrubs don’t provide near enough, which is why I haul in more — bags of them that I collect in the neighbourhood. I compost a huge pile to produce mulch for the garden next year. I’ll add some now to flower beds, mainly around shrubs, again, to insulate and to act as free fertilizer. Any that remain on my tiny lawn, I’ll run over with the mower and leave them to feed the grass.
Goodness, I have bulbs to stick in the ground, begonia and canna tubers to store, planters with tender roots that have to be dragged into the garage for winter storage, others to empty, and even weeds to pull. I might have to up my puttering speed to get everything done.
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