The road behind, and a glimpse of what’s ahead for the 2024 garden

I am approaching the second season in my new garden, after a very hectic first year.

In the first year, we had to remove a lot of invasive species, including: Knotweed, running Bamboo, Pachysandra, lesser celandine (aka ficaria, fig buttercup), Japanese barberry, Burning Bush, English Ivy, Chinese wisteria, Vinca vine, along with many other plants. We wanted to remove these invasive non-natives because they are aggressive and crowd out native plants, and because non-native plants do not support native insects, bees, and birds. This loss of habitat has led to significant declines in native butterflies and birds.

Lesser celandine is a terrible invasive, introduced to this country around 1867. It emerges very early in the Spring and crowds out native plants. It spreads rapidly, and can take over large areas.

We are still not done removing all of the invasives; we have whole patches of bamboo and pachysandra to eliminate. The running bamboo has been so painful to try and remove, and while the above ground poles (culms) are mostly gone (cut with a chainsaw, then chopped down further into 6 foot lengths, then burned in a firepit) we still have underground runners which are extremely difficult to dig up but it must be done.

I should also add that everything we are doing on the property, we are doing with our own hands. That’s two adults, no outside help. It’s amazing to me that we were able to get as far as we did.

In addition to the removal of all these non-natives, we carefully selected native shrubs and plants to add to our landscape in places where we were able to successfully clear the land sufficiently enough to enable new plant material to thrive. That included three new Mountain Laurel, new Rhododendron including two Chionoides and a Rhododendron Maximum (aka Bay Laurel), along with ten different varieties of native and native cultivar deciduous azaleas too, like Pinxter, Swamp Azalea and many more. Beyond those shrubs, we also added Virginia Sweetspire, Button Bush, Chokeberry, New Jersey Tea, and male and female Winterberry bushes.

Beautiful white blossoms on the Chionoides Rhododendron

That probably seems like a lot, which it was, but we went well beyond those plantings in year one. We added herbaceous perennials, and native grasses and bulbs, including a patch of Virginial Bluebells, Astilbe, native Violets, Coneflowers (Echninacea), Geranium Maculatum, Shasta Daisies, Culver Root, Milkweed, Joe Pye Weed, creeping Phlox, crested Dwarf Iris, Blue eyed Grass, Pennsylvania Sedge, Red Ozier Dogwood, Obedient Plant, many varieties of Penstemon, Wild Bergamot (Jacob Cline), New York Ironweed, Asters, Yarrow, Columbine, Coral Bells, Foam Flower, and lots and lots of ferns (Lady Fern, Maidenhair Fern). We also planted some white and purple allium bulbs.

We decided to also add some non-native plants, as long as they were not aggressive or invasive. So we planted Daffodil bulbs, Crocus, Delphinium, Trout Lilies and three white Lilac bushes, including the majestic Madame Lemoine, still known as the best known “double white” lilac in cultivation.

Madame Lemoine Double White Lilac, created by French horticulturalist Victor Lemoine in the 1870’s and named for his wife.

At the end of this past season, in preparation for this coming Spring we also planted a dozen bearded iris bulbs, and three Fritillaria. I can’t wait to see those come up, which will be very exciting!

Frittilaria Imperialis

You are probably getting the right idea if you believe this is a LOT of activity in one year. We were out in the garden every weekend, and many weekdays to make all of this happen. When the garden was in bloom in the Spring and Summer, people who walked past our house walking their dogs, or just out for a stroll with their kids would stop and admire, or ask questions, or make their own notes of what to bring back to their own gardens.

We were so happy that our many neighbors were enjoying our garden changes, especially those people who have lived in the community for decades. The property had fallen into disrepair from a landscaping perspective, and many parts of the property were an impassable bramble. All of that has changed for the better.

You would think, with all of the plants I have mentioned (and many more I did not mention) that we should be able to sit back and just enjoy whatever plants and shrubs come up this season… but NO.

Now we have a daunting task ahead to top what we achieved in year one. In year two we will be growing hundreds of annuals and some new perennials from seed and planting them amongst our existing plants.

In my next post, I will discuss the elaborate plans for Winter sowing of seeds and the dozens of varieties of plants that have been selected for the Spring / Summer 2024 garden.