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Summer Plant Survivors

© Emily Levitt

Much of my time in the garden this year was spent just trying to keep specimen plants alive (through the "triage" method of gardening; treating the serious victims first, writing off those without a prayer of survival). Prarie plants didn't make it. I lost a filipendula 'rubra' which was just getting tall enough to look like it actually belonged here. It gave up the ghost in mid-July.

The only new material I worked hard to keep alive are three pieris 'andromeda' shrubs. I paid a lot for them, I need them where I put them, and it would be a big pain to pull them up and replace them. So there.

Meanwhile, on the battle field...

Three healthy newly planted 'Milky Way' pulmonaria melted away, victims of heat exhaustion---or that weird bacterial rot They lingered for about six weeks, rallying and fading. By August, they were gone.

Also missing in action are some hosta cuttings (not rooted well, by yours truly,
I suspect). Other hostas in the garden are alive, although I must admit that they're not....beautiful. But they made it through the season and will return to flourish in another year.

Hydrangeas were among the more pitiful of my staple plantings. Every time we had enough days to water them, they would bud up, only to brown out when water cutbacks hit them. During our vacation up north in Maine, there were articles in the local newspapers about thieves making off with masses of hydrangea blooms. Flowers from heavily blooming plants were being stolen during the week from vacation homes. There is, apparently, a hot black (or blue?) market for dried hydrangeas in Boston. Somehow, I didn't feel very sorry for those folks with second homes and healthy plants after painstakingly watering my own green things with leftover bath water.

Hydrangea petiolaris--that climbing vaiety--was most unhappy here. One of the three in the garden died out completely; the others are just barely hanging on, despite recent efforts to revive them.

Old-fashioned pink oenothera (sundrop) is making a comeback, in small form appropriate to the fall. Spiderwort, or trandescantia, is another oldie but goodie, rising from its' crunchy feet and establishing itself again.It's responding to cooler days and more water by sending up spikes of green foliage to let me know it's not dead yet!

Native ferns, which were lifted and moved out of the woods several years ago never made a real show, but they too are perking up in the cooler days of fall.

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