So I had the good fortune to meet a fellow avid gardener recently. His name is Mike Miller and he lives in the adjacent town of Wilmette. He was nice enough to invite Judy and me to visit his garden. As soon as we pulled up to the curb, I could see that it was …
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Notes from a wildlife-friendly cottage garden
Turns out that Long-Beaked Sedge (Carex sprengelii) has all the qualities I am looking for in a grass-like plant for the shade garden. Some may ask, how is a sedge different from a grass? The short answer is that sedges are like grasses, but different. A longer answer is that Sedges belong to a different …
It’s late autumn, and you know what that means: raking leaves, cutting back plants, and stuffing the resulting plant debris into giant brown paper bags. But does it have to mean that? In my case, for the most part, it does not.
Here we are in the second half of October and the normal fall color is still slow to set in. Most of the street trees are still green, but some of the Maples have turned orange and red.
I’m not one of those people who say that seedheads are just as good as flowers. They’re not. But in the absence of flowers, seedheads can be pretty nice to have around.
Oh, Shenandoah
This is the time of year when the ‘Shenandoah’ Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) really starts to shine. The leaves take on more burgundy color and the airy flower panicles take on a purplish hue.
This past Saturday, Judy and I picked up Beckee and Daniel to go see the trolls at the Morton Arboretum. The trolls, up to 30′ tall, are creations of the Danish artist Thomas Dambo. However, when we got off at our exit, we discovered a long line of cars stretching down the road waiting to …
My So-Called Meadow
There is a part of the back garden where grass did not grow well, or at all. So I came up with the bright idea of turning it into what I called a “pocket meadow” consisting primarily of Pennsylvania Sedge (Carex pennsylvanica). My thought was that it would look like this, but it hasn’t worked …
Some Grasses in Winter
Northern Sea Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium), does keep its handsome looks in winter. The seedheads seem to shatter over a long period.
Switchgrass and River Oats
In Autumn grasses take a more prominent place in the garden. In our garden, there are two grasses that do really well: Sea Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) and Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). There are also sedges (Carex sp.) that do well, but that’s a different story.
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