Smooth Hydrangea Note the size of the petals. They are small, much smaller than the hydrangeas you will find in most garden stores. The large petaled hydrangeas are not native to Maryland.
This summer has been busy and hot, and I did not get as much done with my garden as I wanted. I have been at war with some kind of insect (not any of the usual suspects with the usual solutions, I’m afraid) that is eating my roses to death. That rose garden has been nothing but trouble for me since I moved in, to be frank. There’s the insect infestation that will not be subdued, and then the crab grass and weeds are effluvient and eternal. I direct my attention away from it for as little as three days in a row and it’s as if a horticultural apocalypse occurred. But I digress.
Despite the rose/insect/weed problem and the heat (and all the other personal stuff that has no place on my garden blog), I was able to work on three sections of my garden since my last post. My biggest success, however, was finding a wonderful native plant nursery only 30 minutes away from my house. Last month I visited the nursery, and $245 later, well, I had to get these beauties in the ground before they dried up or blew away (weird weather this year, amiright?).
Hydrangea Butterfly Garden The big white puffy flowers are smooth hydrangeas (the hydrangea species native to Maryland). Swamp milkweed and butterfly weed (difficult to see here) are interspersed between them.
You might notice that the hydrangeas are not evenly spaced. This was neither by design nor carelessness. It is due of the presence of large tree roots, the great challenge of planting in a mature landscape. I did not wish to harm any of the nearby trees by damaging their roots, so I had to dig around them and modify my planting schema accordingly. I did say I was going for a natural look, though, right? So this lay-out is, uh, part of that aesthetic. Yeah.
Hydrangea Butterfly Garden
The purpose of this mini garden is to attract butterflies, so I planted three kinds of flowers that should do the job: white smooth hydrangeas, swamp milkweed, and butterfly weed. Though the hydrangeas are already large, the smaller milkweed and butterfly weed should grow to match the hydrangeas’ size in a couple of years.
Since planting this garden a few weeks ago we have had many butterfly visitors. Eastern tiger swallowtail, monarchs, and black swallowtails are the ones I know the names of, but there have been others as well. Three days ago I spotted two monarch caterpillars on the milkweeds, so it looks like the next generation will have a home here as well. 🙂
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail perches on a hydrangea blossom.
Two Other Garden Areas
I was also able to plant up two other garden areas, but I don’t have any pictures of them yet. Hopefully I’ll be able to update with pictures in a few days.
In one of these garden beds I’m going for a red and yellow theme, so I planted eastern columbines and cardinal flowers. These flowers are spring bloomers, however, so they are uninteresting at the moment. The other garden bed is where I’m putting my pinks, purples, and blues, so I planted blue flag iris (also a spring bloomer) and gayfeathers (Liatris). The gayfeathers are in bloom and look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, so I really need to get pictures of them before their bloom season is over.
I like a natural looking garden. I’ve said it before; I’m sure I’ll say it again. I have several garden beds that reflect this love of the wild and untamed beauty of Nature’s own design.
Take this iris bed, for example:
Irises growing with wild strawberries and Virginia creeper. I call this type of mixed garden bed a wilderbed.
The wild strawberries moved in among the irises, and the bright red berries entice the eye in a sea of green foliage that might otherwise be boring. Even though this bed is a bit crowded and in need of thinning, the overall aesthetic of the wilderbed is one I enjoy and admire. The juxtaposition of Order (the green lawn) and Chaos (the wilderbed) offers a high contrast viewing experience. It is to me both visually exquisite and viscerally resonant. To wit:
Order is boring. Chaos is confusing. The two together are magic.
So perhaps you can understand my disappointment when the beautiful vines I found growing up my trees and around my pond and through my wilderbeds were a native nasty that could not be allowed to stay.
Its name?
Poison Ivy
Poison Ivy Oh why, oh why-vy Are you so itchy and so slivy? Did you have to come to my hive-y? Oh, poison ivy. I can’t let you stay alive-y. For your death I must strive-y. Now it’s time to say good-bye-vy, Poison ivy.
Poison Ivy is a woody vine with smooth OR slightly scalloped dark green leaves that grow in bunches of three (trifoliate) with a dollop of deep red where the leaflets connect. That red is a sign of things to come, for when the autumn sun shines, these leaves turn a brilliant scarlet. Poison ivy is a beautiful plant. Ah, cruel beauty! It’s a shame it’s also hazardous to humans.
Urushiol, a skin-irritating oil, is the culprit. It causes a severe allergic reaction in most people, though about 15 percent of the population are resistant to it. Resistant, not immune. An important distinction. Even if one falls into the lucky 15 percent, repeated exposure to urushiol can weaken that resistance, so it is always beneficial to tread carefully when dealing with poison ivy.
Poison Ivy Disposal
Getting rid of poison ivy is tricky. You don’t want the poison ivy to make contact with any part of yourself. I wore long pants and a sweatshirt (which was too hot for this time of year, but whatever) and latex gloves to pull the devil vine out, roots and all.
Poison Ivy removal get-up
The other aspect that makes removing poison ivy tricky is that it has three highly effective survival properties. Poison ivy 1) spreads by rhizomes (subterranean stems, or creepers); 2) regrows from root clusters (roots that transform into stems, basically); and 3) is propagated by seed. This means that:
1) Poison ivy rhizomes spread everywhere, underneath the soil, so even if you think you got all of it, there is probably more several feet away (ad nauseam). 2) If you do not pull out or kill the entire root, poison ivy will grow back. 3) Even if by some miracle you are able to remove or kill the poison ivy plants in their entirety, a bird could eat poison ivy berries from somewhere else and poop the seeds back into your yard and infect your garden once more. So much fun.
Poison ivy rhizome. Only the bits with leaves were above ground. This was not the longest thread of poison ivy I removed either. I pulled others that were easily three times this length.
So I decided to brute-force pull up all the poison ivy in my garden. That means I located all the visible leaves; followed the maze of rhizomes and pulled them up; dug around the roots for purchase and pulled them up; and then tossed the remains into a garbage bag because that’s what poison ivy is: garbage. (And because the garbage bag will protect anyone else who comes in contact with it.)
It went to the landfill (vs yard waste pick-up or composting) because I did not want even a whiff of a possibility that the poison ivy will grow back from these cast-offs. I would normally advocate for options that keep landfill waste to a minimum, but this I don’t feel too bad about because poison ivy is organic matter and will decompose in the landfill.
Garbage bag of poison ivy
Chemical cures for (killing) poison ivy are available. I chose to stay away from chemical solutions, however, because of the inevitable collateral damage. Poison ivy likes to grow in areas like the one pictured below, and because of the twining, twisty, tricky, sticky way poison ivy grows, I did not have confidence that the killing agent would affect ONLY its intended target and NOT KILL the plants I wanted to keep.
One of the wilderbeds where I found and removed mounds of poison ivy that had sinuously infiltrated every square foot.
Creepers Worth Keeping
Poison ivy is not the only creeper found in gardens, and some of them are worth keeping. Wild strawberries are one. I’ve mentioned them already. I love wild strawberries and encourage them to grow throughout my garden.
Virginia creeper and wild raspberry are others. Both are often mistaken for poison ivy, and many a gardener ends up pulling them out too. If you are going for a cleaner, more controlled aesthetic, or you have some plantings that can’t be crowded, then sure, pull them out when you find them. But if, like me, you want that natural look and are inclined to vines, then you can’t go wrong with Virginia creeper and wild raspberry. They make great additions to the garden and provide that hint of chaotic interest that I am so fond of. They do require thinning from time to time, however. Otherwise they might choke out anything less robust than themselves.
Virginia Creeper
Growing on the side of the moss covered trunk of a sweet gum.
Note the shape and color of the leaves. They are almost identical to poison ivy, and it is easy to see how Virginia creeper could be mistaken for its more toxic cousin. However, Virginia creeper leaves grow in groups of five (quinquefoliate), which makes it easy to distinguish between the trifoliate poison ivy. Like poison ivy, Virginia creeper’s autumn transformation is quite stunning, going from green to bright red.
Now a small word of warning; Virginia creeper is part of the grape family and does produce berries that are harmful if ingested. Likewise, the rest of the plant contains raphides, which can irritate the skin for some people.
Wild Raspberries
Wild Raspberry Leaves
Cluster of three leaves: check. Creeper: check. Green: check. Grew out of nowhere: check.
The similarities to poison ivy are many. However, wild raspberries are usually a lighter green than poison ivy (though young poison ivy leaves are lighter than their mature counterparts). Wild raspberries can have clusters of three or five leaves, and those leaves are toothed, or serrated, unlike the smoother scallop of poison ivy. The biggest difference between the two, however, is that wild raspberries have what most people refer to as thorns.
Botanically, pedantically, these “thorns” are really prickles and are differentiated from proper thorns in that prickles sit on the surface and are a feature of the plant’s epidermis or bark whereas thorns are modified stems.
TANGENT: Raspberries and roses are in the same family (Rosaceae). That means (you guessed it) that roses don’t have thorns either. That’s right, roses have prickles. But for practical purposes, it’s okay to call them thorns. We all do, even those who know better.
The berries each produce are also quite different from each other. Wild raspberries can range in color from white to yellow to red to black. They look plump and inviting. Poison ivy berries are small, gnarly, dumpy whitish, and look disgusting.
I’m looking forward to autumn. I can’t wait to enjoy the fruits of the wild raspberries and the bright red bursts of the Virginia creepers. But for now, I’m happy with the wilderbed Mother Nature and I created. It has a summer woodland glade aesthetic that is free from poison ivy. For now.
The BEFORE PICTURE: The backyard as I bought it, reflecting only minor changes that I made to it.
This is my backyard. It’s got some good bones. The mature trees are, for the most part, quite lovely. There are several maples, a sweet gum (my children love collecting the spiky seed pods, they refer to them as korok seeds from playing Zelda: A Breath of the Wild), a few pines and other conifers, and a tree with compound pinnate leaves that I don’t know the name of. In the far back there are some nice red cedars as well. I’m trying to forget about the ugly scraggly bushes in the center. They will be coming out anyway.
Please forgive my lack of photography skills. This picture was taken at the wrong time of day. Even I can see that. However, this photo is one of three (the other two will appear shortly) that I took before I started working on the garden. It reflects, for the most part, the starting point of my garden. It was taken in February of this year
I should mention that last October I planted over 100 spring bulbs. If you look in the leafy mulch area under the trees on the right hand side of the picture, you can see some of the green tips of the daffodils emerging from their winter slumber. Unfortunately the squirrels dug up the hyacinth, tulips, and most of the crocuses. Daffodils might be the only spring bulbs I get in the back.
Here are the daffodils now. Six weeks makes a big difference.
Back to the starting garden photos: I have two more areas to show you, the back-left and back-right.
Back-Left SideBack-Right Side
The tree you see in the foreground of the back-right side picture is a juniper bush, which I trimmed. I wanted to open up the center a bit so that birds could perch there. It’s right outside my window, and I like to see the cardinals, nuthatches, and mourning doves that are regular visitors. I also prefer the tree shape to the bush shape, and the branches no longer scratch the siding on my house, so win-win-win.
The juniper tree beyond it (well-lit) is also in need of trimming, which I plan to do soon. In fact, every tree is in need of trimming, and I have spent a goodly amount of time working on that. I don’t have all the safety equipment to do the really tall stuff myself, however, so I might have outsource some of the tree care. I plan to do as much work as possible myself so I can save my budget for the plants themselves, but even I can’t do everything.
I have my work cut out for me, but I like outdoor work. It reminds me of my wild childhood, and it feels more like play than chores. Perhaps that is why I love gardening so much. Nature is calming, and I take joy, not only from the end result, but from the process as well.
