Instant gratification gardening

I engaged in a bit of instant-gratification gardening on Sunday. I want to say the squirrels made me do it — and in a sense they did. But if I’m honest, they gave me an excuse to do what I was wanting to do anyway. To quote Jon Hamm: This is what happened.

My very first gardening move at this house was winter-minded, and I’m really trying to maintain that perspective throughout the making of the garden. But nowhere more so than this bed against the garage wall, in the new courtyard, which is the view out our back windows when we’re trapped inside for the winter. A view that has been bleak until now: just ratty asphalt, white garage wall and a lone evergreen. I’ve obviously planted the bed’s anchor tenants, as I like to say, and they’re big enough to establish the structure. The aforementioned largest of the three evergreens, a juniper ‘Taylor,’ went into the temporary cut-out bed here three years ago. The Taylor to its right and the shaggy common juniper ‘Gnom’ both joined it over the past two months — smaller, but big enough to have presence. And then there’s the redbud I bought two years ago and have kept sitting in its nursery pot the past two winters, waiting for a permanent home. There’s also a peony behind the Taylor twins that’s likewise been there three years. It dies back in the winter, but it does add some fullness at the moment. But so far that’s three evergreens and a bare tree for winter, right?

All well and good, and certainly progress. The master plan for this bed, though, is even more winter-minded. It’s packed full of grasses, which (following their fall performance) will turn beautifully straw-colored and maintain some volume for winter. Those are then threaded through with towering wildflowers (including my beloved ironweed, naturally) whose skeletons will form 6'-8' dried-flower bouquets against the wall — and provide shelter and sustenance for pollinators. I was resigned to doing all of that with plugs, both for affordability and ease of planting in this location. Not only is the soil full of rocks (and potshards, broken glass, you name it), but there’s also a big drainpipe running right across the middle of the bed, parallel with the wall. So digging a large hole is difficult, and it limits placement to either behind or in front of the pipe. Whereas I can easily sink a plug pretty much anywhere I want it.

Also, I do expect the native grasses and wildflowers to grow relatively quickly — they are “weeds” after all — even if they’re a fraction of their future size this year. So it makes sense to start small, for all the reasons.

All but one, that is. I’ve lived through three winters with barren views out here. I’m being patient all through the garden, having planted it gradually over the last three summers (starting with nothing but turf grass), leaning heavily on tiny plants in the big push this year. I kept thinking I wanted there to be just one spot I could look and see some semblance of what I have actually dreamed up — and I want it to be this winter wall.

I don’t have the means to fill it with larger versions of everything I’ve planted here, but when the squirrels decimated all the little bluestem plugs I had planted out front, I had a choice to make. There were two at the center of this bed that I wasn’t convinced were the right choice anyway, so I decided to move those two out front, replace one with a bottlebrush grass plug (of which there are several others here) and the other with a 3-gallon nursery plant for the instant-gratification moment I was desperately craving. I paid between $2 and $3 apiece for the plugs, and the one big grass was 10x that, but the impact of that one plant — a switchgrass nativar, Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’ — is immeasurable. And well worth effort to dig it a hole.

It’s still surrounded by all those bottlebrush plugs that I’ll have to wait to fill in, but this one addition created enough drama and cohesion among its neighbors that I can stand the wait. 

And I put in one other plant while I was at it. I didn’t mention it Tuesday when telling you about the squirrel mischief, but the smooth blue asters that I’ve made a main element of this garden have also been under attack. First a deer came around and bit the tips off nearly every one of them. Then the bunnies, I assume, polished off the remaining leaves on several. So they’re all either a little bare stem in the ground trying to resprout, or a shin-high topless seedling (like the one between the Taylors, above). For all the effort I’ve put into this, I want asters this fall goddammit. So I spent about $12 on a single 1-gallon smooth aster plant — of a surprisingly good size — and put it in the most important aster spot. It’s hard to see in these pics, but it’s right behind the white yarrow, left of the tree trunk. And wow it’s already so pretty.

Don’t be surprised if I wind up replacing one of the ironweed babies at the back with a bigger plant as well. For that, I’m not sure I can stand the wait.