My Favourite Rock

Last week.

One of the first big landscaping things we did when we started to sink roots into The County was buy this big limestone boulder.   We generally call it The Rock, and wanted to use it as a quasi headstone for the ashes of our beloved dog, a black Lab named Bogart, who had recently and quite unexpectedly died.

Bogart’s ashes are, indeed, buried under an overhanging part of The Rock, as are the ashes of  a subsequent dog and cat.  I used The Rock to anchor a new flower bed and patio  I created; a paper birch (Betula papyrifera) is on the other end, and there is a Nannyberry (Viburnum lentago), large upright Juniper and a white Spruce (Picea glauca) on one long side with a wide grass passage on the other.

Last October

For the first few years the rick was barren – scraped clean by the mechanical process of yanking it from the ground, transporting it to our property then planting it in a a two foot deep hole.

Over the years plant life appeared on The Rock, growing from the fissures and holes that occurred naturally, finding the bits of sand and soil that were blown into these fissures and cracks, sending roots deep into The Rock and surviving our cold winters.

There are bonsai-like conifers: a cedar and two junipers, one upright and one prostrate.

Three conifers growing in The Rock

There are grasses, Echinacea, Sedum, moss, dandelions (of course!) and my favourite, Aquilegia canadensis – our native columbine:

 

All these plants just found their own way to The Rock – seeds either dropped by birds, buried by chipmunks or insects or blown in by the wind. I don’t do much ‘gardening’ on The Rock – just a bit of editing now and then (ie puling dandelions).

It’s an ever evolving micro landscape that fascinates me every year.

10 years ago – the Rudbeckia is long gone; it was too hard to keep the lawn grass out and the site is too dry most summers  for it.

And in the winter, under an insulating snow blanket.

Wordless Wednesday – County Road, Mailbox

What the Bunnies Eat

We have lots of rabbits around the County.  I see them every year, all summer long,  hopping into the tall grass along side roads, or in the middle of the driveway at night, eyes bright and ears tall in the headlights before they disappear into the shadows.

What I mostly see in winter are trails in the snow, sometimes ending at the base of a shrub, where the paw prints become muddled with their pellets and half eaten branches.  In past years I’ve surrounded the tastier shrubs with cut buckthorn branches – one of the very few positive uses I will grudgingly ascribe to this invasive and really annoying shrub.  I didn’t bother this past fall because the past two winters have been mild – rabbits had more appealing choices to nibble on.  This year, with a return to normal snow falls, the varmints have targeted the tender young bark and dormant buds of their favourite woody plants.

Also targeted, interestingly enough, have been two purple kales – leaves and stalks – but not a green kale.  Here’s a photo of them in September and one from last week.  You can see the naked stalks of the purple kale stalk but the green one has simply died with nary a nibble.  Weird eh?

 

 

Burning Bush – Euonymus alatus – the usual target of hungry rabbits in the back field.  No need for me to prune, rabbits do it all.

 

Korean Spice Viburnum – Viburnum carlesii – a new target this year.

End Note… Also seen last weekend —bits of rabbit fur, blood, guts….I think the local coyote  may have discovered his or her own source of food this winter; perhaps my shrubs are safe after all…

Jolly!

Jolly

going to seed…

Ironweed – Vernonia noveboracensis

This time last year we had already had our first frost – not unusual around here – but this year, summer started late and it’s just now starting to cool down.  Today’s high is 11 but the next two weeks, if you believe the forecast, will be in the high teens and low twenties.  With overnight temperatures nowhere near frost warning levels.

Even so, and swarms of Monarch butterflies notwithstanding, autumn is upon us.  Trees know it – leaves are starting to turn yellow, red or plain brown and fall.  Native perennials know it too.  Foliage is holey and ragged looking and flowers are going to seed, creating some lovely images as they wait for a bird to gobble them up or a strong wind to shake them free and send them flying.  Here’s a few of my favourites, ready now for collecting (or not!).

 

unknown – what am I??

Goldenrod – Solidago

Echinacea purpurea

Big Leaved Aster – Eurybia macrophylla

 

 

Autumn 2017

Last Day of Summer…

Here in the County September has been even more lovely than usual. The vacationers have mostly gone home, beaches are clean and quiet, it’s been sunny every day and the temperatures have been in the mid to high twenties – warmer than most weeks this past summer!

Perfect for people – a bit too dry for the garden though. Every morning, it seems, a long ‘branch’ from one of the tall sunflowers breaks off – too weak, without water, to carry the growing weight of expanding seeds. The Hostas and Hemerocallis (Daylilies) are starting to wither away; leaves from several tree species are turning brown and falling. Everything is looking really, really, droopy. And although temperatures are due to fall back to normal soon, there’s no appreciable rain in the 14 day forecast. Just when trees and shrubs need it to shore up strength in anticipation of winter dormancy.

Although I’ve been enjoying these languid days, swimming in Lake Ontario after an hour or two of relaxed yard work, small creature activity in the garden has become somewhat frenetic as bees and butterflies try to capture as much nectar and pollen as they can before it’s too late. I’ve been fascinated, in particular, by the Swallowtail butterflies this year. Far more numerous than I can ever recall, their wings are divided so that, unlike a monarch that will land and sit still while feasting, the front half of a Swallowtail wing flutters continuously while the bottom half seem to remain motionless. This habit makes them appear to be forever on the move, anxious to move onto the next Zinnia or Echinacea bloom.

Looking forward to some rain (and who thought anyone around here would be saying that, after our record breaking spring and early summer rainfalls!) and wishing you a slow luxurious fall into the colder months.

Native vs Non Native gardening

Giant Swallowtail Butterfly on a Zinnia – the flower is definitely not native to Southern Ontario

I recently started following the Royal Horticultural Society on Twitter (@The_RHS); I’m not sure how this feed came to my attention, likely it was Twitter itself, that clever creature, that suggested it.  It was a good suggestion.  Even though it’s a British organization, and the information they share is abut British gardening and British plants and British garden shows, the RHS does, not infrequently, post tidbits that are relevant over here.  Also, their picture are very pretty.

This morning the Society tweeted that the second paper from their Plants for Bugs program has at long last been published.  (The first paper was published in 2015.)

Plants for Bugs is a “a four-year study into wildlife gardening, which was undertaken at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey…”  as in England, just southwest of London.  The scientists set out to determine what sort of plant typically found in an English garden does best at attracting insects: native or non-native.

Garden commentators in North America have, for many years now, been battling it out (sometimes quite heatedly) over this question.  There are extreme gardeners who ONLY plant natives and those who couldn’t give a whit if a plant is native or not, as long as it looks pretty.  Most commentators fall in the middle – wanting to use natives when possible but not closing the door to aliens (aka non-native plants).

The arguments for using natives run along the lines of they are more drought tolerant (true, but only if it’s a drought tolerant plant to begin with: you wouldn’t stick a native Marsh Marigold – Caltha palustris – in gravelly soil on a south slope); they’re better suited to our climate (until you factor in climate change and how Prince Edward County’s Plant Hardiness Zone has gone from zone 5b to zone 6a in the past 20 years); and they provide better food – nectar, pollen and roughage – than non-natives.

It’s this last assumption that the folks in England wanted to measure.  In 2009, they created 36 planting beds, each nine square metres, and planted some with a mix of plants native only to the UK; other plots had plants that only grow elsewhere in the northern hemisphere while the rest had plants that grow in the southern hemisphere.  Then they waited, and counted the invertebrate life that showed up.

“By the end of December 2013 (four full years of recording) approximately 80,000 invertebrates had been counted and more than 300 species identified.”

The peer reviewed papers that have so far resulted from the study have led the RHS to come up with key messages for the home gardener.  To quote from the RHS site:

From the first paper, that studied pollinating insects:

• The best strategy for gardeners wanting to support pollinating insects in gardens is to plant a mix of flowering plants from different countries and regions.
• Emphasis should be given to plants native to the UK and the northern hemisphere, though exotic plants from the southern hemisphere can be used to extend the season
• Regardless of plant origin (native or non-native), the more flowers a garden can offer throughout the year, the greater the number of bees, hoverflies and other pollinating insects it will attract and support.

From the second paper, that studied insects that chomp on plants, suck the juices from plants or eat other bugs that suck or chew:

• The best strategy for gardeners wanting to support plant-associated invertebrates is to plant a predominance of plants native to the UK.
• Plants native to the Northern hemisphere are likely to support only marginally fewer (less than 10%) invertebrates in some functional groups (including herbivores and some predators) than UK native plant schemes. And exotic plant schemes based on Southern hemisphere plants will still support a good number of invertebrates, albeit around 20% fewer than plants from the UK.
• Regardless of plant origin, the more densely your garden is planted or allowed to grow, the greater the abundance of invertebrates of all kinds (herbivores, predators, detritivores and omnivores) it will support.

 

I’m guessing these messages will appeal to many North American gardeners as well.

For me, the takeaway is to plant densely using a diverse mixture of annuals, perennials, shrubs and bulbs to create as long a flowering season as possible.