From the Green House
#2 October 2024 - I Guess I Like Purple

Designing a garden is such a personal thing. It reflects your taste, your style, and your personality. That's why I enjoy walking through someone else's garden. Not only can I gain inspiration from someone else's ideas, but it tells me something about the gardener. Well, when you see my garden on the east side of my house, you will know that I like purple. You will also see that I like plants to intermingle and be a little bit wild. I hope you'll also see something beautiful in it no matter what time of year it is. 

My Instagram feed is full of inspiring gardens from around the world, but the one that I kept going back to is a garden designed by Evely Ustav who lives in Estonia. (I had to look that one up. It's a country in Northern Europe next to Russia.) She posts pictures of this border throughout the year, and it is beautiful in every season. I knew that's what I wanted, too. 

So I began with a list of plants - some that she used in her design, and some that were must-haves for me. I knew purples and whites would play well off of the green color of the house, so that was a given. Then I got a little nerdy and created a mashup of the plants on my list. It's a design trick I passed on to my students when I was teaching Intro to Landscape Design a few years ago.

Shown above are:
top row: Hydrangea 'White Diamond', Nepeta siberica (a tall form of Catmint), Miscanthus gracillimus (the ornamental grass), Perovskia atriplicafolia (Russian Sage)
bottom row: Clematis 'Arabella', Agastache 'Golden Jubilee', Echinacea purpurea 'Ruby Star' (Purple Coneflower), Eryngium yuccifolium (Rattlesnake Master), the existing purple Iris, and Salvia 'Caradonna'. 
​

By the way, a mashup is simply made on Google Slides using images of the plants and mashing them all together on one slide to give you an idea of the colors and textures of the plants in that bed. It's easy and fun to do, and I find it extremely helpful when trying to visualize the plant combinations. 

Ok, here's where I get really nerdy in the details of design, so feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph. The next step was to determine bloom times of the plants, creating a list for each of the seasons as well as a mashup for each season. Then time to draw it out on paper. I must have tossed those initial sketches or they are buried in a pile somewhere, but I remember spending a lot of time on it. I wanted a garden that I can walk through and become immersed in, so I knew there would be a path through this garden. I started with a curving path, then drew nebulous shapes where plants would go. Next step was to think about plant heights placing 12-36" plants in the front part of the border, and 24-60" plants in the back. Using different colored pencils to represent bloom times, I began to fill in plant names, spacing them out to carry the bloom color through the whole bed. 

I planted in groups of threes to create a bigger swath of that color, then repeated it two or three times down the length of the garden. In addition to all of this thought that goes into color, bloom time, and plant height, it's important to think about texture, flower form, and how the plants will grow. It's more complex than you might think.

This garden isn't perfectly designed, and it will continue to evolve. But whether by luck or by all the thought put into it, I'm really pleased with how it has come together. And I guess that's all that matters. It's expression of me, of my style, my favorite colors, and my personality. However, living on a corner lot, I am very aware of the garden being visible to my neighbors, so I also want it to be something they enjoy seeing, too. 
​
How about some plant combinations in this garden? 

Above is Nepeta siberica and Veronica 'Kiss the Sky'. Below is Miscanthus gracillimus, Perovskia (Russian Sage), Echinacea 'Ruby Star', Eryngium (Rattlesnake master), and on the very left is Sanguisorbum 'Plum Drops'. 

The photo below was taken on July 1 this year. I'm still amazed at how quickly the plants filled in. I love how the shorter catmint is so blousy. I repeated the grouping of daisies, catmint, summer alliums, and lavender along the front of the border. The tall upright grasses are Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster' and act as living punctuation marks.​  

There is much more to share, but that's for another time. I'll close with this quote that I heard yesterday and it resonates well with me:
"The pleasure (in gardening) has been the becoming rather than any kind of finite end" - Monty Don
Isn't this why we do it? Isn't this why we love to work the earth, plant a seed, and watch it become something beautiful? The joy is in the becoming, and that goes beyond the garden. 
​Blessings to you, friend. 

​If you are familiar with catmint (Nepeta spp.), then think of calamint as a cousin. It is a member of the mint family with aromatic foliage and square stems, but it does not spread by invasive runners like the mint that comes to mind. It’s white delicate flowers are often touched with blue as they age. Calamint is one of the few perennials that has a long period of bloom - early summer into fall. It grows best in full sun up to 18 inches tall and wide.

Calamint also happens to be one of the most versatile plants when creating perennial combinations in the landscape. It’s bushy habit reminds me of a soft, white, billowy cloud which is the perfect filler plant in the landscape. One combination strategy is to plant it with vertical- growing perennials like purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea), a mix of Betonys (Stachys ‘Summer Romance’ and ‘Summer Crush’), or any of the Salvias. A good partner that offers contrasting texture and will carry the interest into the fall is Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’. My favorite combination is calamint interplanted with the broad leaves of Allium ‘Summer Beauty’  or ‘Windy City’ and the blue grassy foliage of Festuca ‘Cool as Ice’. 

​When shopping for calamint, a word of caution: Be aware that some cultivars can reseed and become a problem in the garden. Look for Calamintha nepeta subsp. nepeta, which has smooth, glossy leaves - not pubescent (soft, fuzzy) ones.
Happy gardening!

Tracy Hankwitz is a Horticulture Adjunct at Gateway Technical College and owner of Bella Botanica, LLC located  at 1787 Walworth Street, Springfield, WI. All photos in this post are compliments of Midwest Groundcovers, LLC.

Species & Hybrid Cultivars

There are over 50 species of Geum. One of the most well-loved one here in Wisconsin is Geum triflorum (Prairie smoke) which is native to the midwest. Although other species originated in Greece and Turkey, the midwest has another claim to the many hybrid cultivars. Since 2006, Brent Horvath at Intrinsic Perennial Gardens in Hebron, IL has been breeding a new series of Geum called the Cocktail series. ‘Cosmopolitan’, ‘Mai Tai’, ‘Tequila Sunrise’, ‘Banana Daiquiri’, just to name a few, vary in colors ranging from yellows, bright orange, and sweet pinks, rose, cream, and peach. Even the creamy white-colored ‘Champagne’ is charming and is more robust than the others in the series. 

How to Care for Geum

Geum make good cut flowers to admire indoors in a vase. They grow 12-18” tall when in bloom and are deer and rabbit resistant. In clay soil, they can be short-lived, so place them in a spot that is well-drained and receives morning sun accompanied by shade in the afternoon. Dividing them every few years can also help prolong their life span. The lovely blooms begin to open as early as late April and can last into June. 

Remove spent flowers to extend the bloom period. In spring, fertilize established Geum lightly once annually with a granular fertilizer (try an organic one by Fox Farm or Espoma). By the way, this is how and when most perennials should be fertilized. When you clean out your beds in spring, apply the fertilizer to slowly feed through the season, then top with mulch. Faded blooms can be deadheaded to prolong bloom time, but leave a few on so you don’t miss their cool wispy seed heads. Don’t be too hasty to deadhead Prairie Smoke, or you will miss why it is so named.  
​

Designing with Geum

Geum are ideal for rock gardens as long as the soil isn’t too dry. Plant them in drifts of 3, 5, or 7 along the front of the border in a staggered manner to create a naturalized look. Remember there are no straight lines in nature!  Plant other spring-bloomers nearby like Polygonatum ’Prince Charming’ and mix in summer bloomers to compliment the Geum foliage. One of my favorite combinations is Geum x ‘Champagne’ planted with Hosta ‘First Frost’ and Geranium ‘Rozanne’ (see above). The effect of the greens, purples and creams is stunning elegance. 

Have you been convinced or at least intrigued? Seek them out - it is worth the effort. 

 - Tracy  ​