Occasionally I look out on the garden and say to myself, “That’s it, the garden is filled and thriving with plants. It’s enough; perfect.” But before that idea has a chance to take root in my psyche, my mind begins racing with ideas to fill the bare spaces where the lupine died away in early summer. No matter how many plants I have, there always seems to be room for one more delicate morsel, such as Stipa tenuissima, the wispy ornamental grass I saw at a recent garden event.
In summer, with its steady itinerary of visiting gardens, my plant list never seems to end. In my 2004 visit to England I saw the rambling rose “Flower of Kent” growing into the tops of mature pine trees. I wrote, “How lovely that ever-expanding plant with a million small white roses would look clambering up the trunk of a Douglas fir.” Once, while visiting the fantastical garden of Deborah Meyers, I decided then and there that I had to plant the breathtaking Matilija poppy (Romneya coulteri) with its huge, white crepe-paper petals centered on a cluster of golden stamens.
The forecast calls for more days of sunshine and drought. Now is the time to water, not plant. Still, any time in the garden is a time to envision what we would like to see growing there in subsequent years. By midsummer the climbing Rosa “New Dawn” has a second flush of silver-pink blooms rising up through any garden structure. The shrubby butterfly rose, Rosa mutabalis, is covered with single blossoms in a mix of hot and cool shades of red. As new flowers open, the old ones fade from bright cerise pink to a pastel buff and all the colors in-between. The yellow groundcover rose “Sun Runner” is never without a fresh batch of quarter-sized, single blooms.
Certain perennials will reseed themselves and return each year as loyally as the birds returning to nest in your garden. The simple daisy is a prolific reseeder that I encourage in any garden. This could be the bane of the neat gardener’s existence or the blessing of the naturalist. Since I had a large garden with areas of natural woods, I learned to let them flower wherever they would grow. Then, as they died back, I pulled them out by the roots. With this method, they filled the empty spaces early in the season and once pulled out of the ground gave established, newly emerging perennials room to open up and spread out.
