The Dry August Garden

Summer marches on and the soil is dry. We expect that in August, but we don't expect the mild temperatures we've had of late. This week the heat ramps back up to nearly triple digits but the reprise has been helpful in catching up with garden chores. One chore, a rather joyful one, is documenting the garden with photographs. I am taking a break from Fling posts to look around my own garden and bring it to you here, dry, parched soil and all.

A new area on the edge of the labyrinth garden with vibrant colors including Tagetes 'Cinnabar', a marigold I saw at Great Dixer last year. I ordered seed from Special Plants Nursery in the UK (as I couldn't find it domestically) and grew them in the greenhouse. I like that they are tall and richly colored, kind of wiry stems, too. Diascia 'Coral Canyon' next to it.

Wasp on Bupleurum fruticosum. If you are familiar with this very easy evergreen shrub then you are likely aware that it attracts SO many pollinators. It's a little surprising. 

It has rounded lance shaped leaves and is a few feet tall, can be easily pruned if needed and is good with sun to part shade. It's very resilient and kind of pretty - but even if grown solely for pollinators it's a winner.

The annual "clean up" of Phlomis russelliana stems involves simply removing dead leaves along its length. I also remove any yellowing/dying older leaves at the base. Now this (and the 10 or so other plants in the garden) will be a cool focal point with their seed heads and stems remaining through winter into spring. Berm garden in the background.

Drimys winteri, an evergreen magnolia look-alike tree, is definitely a summer water plant as it comes from rainforests of South America. But that foliage, it's worth it.

A pulled-back view of the berm garden, the Bupleurum fruticosum is slightly on the right. The vertical conical plants are Juniperus communis 'Compressa', another super easy and attractive plant for sun, though they have been slow growing for me.

In the shade garden, silvers of Carex conica 'Snowline' and Trachelospermum 'Variegatum' sparkle. The ferns and other water lovers in the shade garden need a bit more attention and irrigation now more than any other time of the year, but these two are fairly self sufficient.

Also in the shade garden Mahonia x savilliana adds a silver note in dark places. Mahonias in general are easy and low-water plants adding a bit of evergreen goodness. My only criticism, if any, is that they are slow growing for me. 

It doesn't look that interesting now but I had a breakthrough idea. We have two huge piles of wood that are at least eight years old that we thought would decompose and be habitat for critters. Since they were covered with a tarp the breaking down didn't happen and there was no evidence of critter nests. Since I have holes in the shade garden (still, even nine years in . . . it's a tough spot to garden!) I decided to move bits of the wood pile over so it can decompose in place and add some goodness to the soil. Not a monumental idea but for us it's a win-win as we move some of these piles and the soil benefits. Plus, it fills up blank space.

My little cutting garden in an old raised bed by the greenhouse. I grew dahlias from seed, the 'Bishop's Children' are my favorite with their dark stems and mostly orange flowers. Dahlias from seed is so easy and they do form a rather substantial tuber by the end of the season.

Speaking of dahlias, this is Dahlia imperialis, giant tree dahlia. Although it blooms really late in the year and frost might kill the top growth before it does so, its foliage is pretty cool. This is my first year growing it, I'll keep an eye out for potential flowers.

The new-ish "crow garden" (named because we feed the crows nearby) is filling in with Teucrium chamaedrys that the bumblebees adore. I had a few other things planted in here that didn't thrive so I added a few more teucrium. Note the wood chips - we have been in wood chip/Chip Drop heaven this summer. We have received three gigantic loads and are spreading them like mad. They really do help keep moisture in the soil and prevent weeds from germinating.

Eriophyllum lanatum, Oregon sunshine, has spread nicely in this area as well. Note the brown grass, typical for this time of the year. It will be interesting to see if the adjacent wood chips influence moisture in the field grass. This is the first year with wood chips here so I'll have to wait until next summer to find out.

This new expansion of the labyrinth garden has filled in nicely. We expanded the graveled area seen here by basically doubling it, removing tired sod and marching southward. Here's what it looked like last summer:

By August and September it's pretty brown and dry, so we thought why not? It's just expensive to buy the gravel and hard on the muscles, so we only do a little bit every year.

The southern edge of the Himalayan mounds (right) and the newest south bank area (left) at the southernmost edge of the property. This area has not been irrigated but maybe once by hand this summer. Also, based on my comment about the crow garden and dying grass, the wood chips here have greenish grass along its edge. I wonder if this is due to the wood chips or just coincidence? These chips have been here a year and a half.

A scene I've never shown before, this is looking north, the greenhouse is just visible on the left. This was/is a wild-ish area that has a lot of native plants including Gaultheria shallon, Polystichum munitum, Oemleria cerasiformis. We have also encouraged the native Populus tremuloides, quaking aspen, to colonize here which it is doing nicely. There are a few corners of the garden like this where it's pretty wild but with a few introduced plants planted by me. We just try to keep the blackberries and other noxious weeds at bay, a mighty task as it's at the edge of the property with a road on the other side of the fence where neighboring blackberries run rampant.

The veggie garden has done exceptionally well this year with the addition of wood chips and beginning no-till practices. Here, Oaxacan green corn (which we will dry and grind into corn meal) is quite happy. The orchard is on the right.

This is affectionately called the Zócalo, a name that means town square in Spanish. It is the center of veggie town in our garden. FM re-laid these pavers to level them out and added cement to keep them from sliding around. Thank you, FM! FM apologizes for the cement stain. He and his toothbrush are scheduled to clean and add sparkle.

The labyrinth garden, looking north with Salix elaeagnos subsp. angustifolia in the center. The labyrinth is the heart of the dry garden, where any watering that occurs is by me, by hand, and only in the driest part of the year. So far this summer I've watered this area maybe three times.

The edge of the meadow with grasses, dried allium and Sidalcea campestris seed heads and Stipa gigantea in the background.

Wood chips spread in this part of the western woodland have helped keep moisture in all summer. Hakonechloa macra 'All Gold' and surrounding plants are all very content in this corner of the garden.

Along the driveway looking east towards the meadow garden (right) and gravel garden (left). The Cornus nuttallii whose trunk is in the center, is once again declining. We thought it was out of the woods as it bloomed beautifully this spring, however it rapidly went brown and dropped most of its leaves. Either way we'll leave it, at the worst as a snag for wildlife and at best a recovered native dogwood.

Pearly everlasting, Anaphalis margaritacea, has started popping up in the western woodland and is happiest in full sun, even though there is a large patch of it in nearly full shade for some odd reason.

The fire pit area with my blue shed in the background.

Earlier this year I wavered whether or not I should cut out an overgrown Yucca gloriosa 'Variegata' - overgrown because I planted it in the wrong place, not anticipating the Arctostaphylos 'Saint Helena' that it's under would grow so wonky and fall on top of it. I went for it, cutting it off at its base which you can see on the right. This is exactly what I hoped would happen, resprouting of new foliage from the roots. I suspect one cannot kill a yucca.

A second Yucca gloriosa 'Variegata' in a more open, appropriate location with a pup at its base, all without any action on my part. Plants are cool.

I close out this post with a not very attractive but kind of funny photo of my log trio. The salvia in this photo keeps dying off in chunks then regrowing on here and there, I can't keep track. I cut out yet another dead/dying chunk (I don't have the heart to rip it out all together because when it's happy it's so pretty) leaving a gaping hole. Enter logs to the rescue, yet again. It kind of reminds me of the trio of logs tied up together with rope and ceramic seagulls drilled into the top that one sees all along the Oregon coast (and inland, for that matter). It makes me giggle.

August is, as my friend Pam Penick of the incredible blog Digging mentioned, the doldrums. I agree, though we don't have it as bad as she does in Austin. Still the soil is bone dry and as we have one last tour of the season coming in mid-September, coming from Wisconsin, a land with summer rainfall, we are doing our best to keep it going. So we keep going. 

One last note, our autumn plant sale is Saturday September 14th, 11 - 3 at the same place, 334 N Baldwin, Portland. Come by if you can! There will be plenty of us selling our plants, pottery, garden books and more. Hooray for plant sales!

That's a wrap for this week at Chickadee Gardens, thank you so much for reading and commenting, we love hearing from you! Happy gardening, doldrums and all.