African Blue Basil, Ocimum kilimandscharicum x basilicum
Whether you garden in-ground or in a single windowbox, there is a plant that will lure every pollinator in the neighborhood to your green space. African blue basil’s myriad flowers, in bloom for months, guarantee a flurry of constant and diverse pollinator activity from morning until twilight, and from early summer until frost. There is never a dull moment. And with the right plant for pollinators, even a tiny urban space can contribute to a pollinator pathway—a pesticide and herbicide-free corridor of plants that provides food and shelter for pollinating insects, which are in decline due to loss of habitat and to widespread pesticide use.
It doesn’t hurt either that spending ten minutes on a bee safari is a very effective way of disconnecting from digital noise and reconnecting with the small things that matter.
Above: Windowbox-grown African blue basil in late summer on my Brooklyn terrace.
In a small space every inch counts, and the ideal plant has to work hard: It should be low-maintenance, bloom for months, have fragrant and edible leaves, and offer an irresistible nectary for a host of beneficial insects. That’s asking a lot. A very small handful of plants checks all those demanding boxes. African blue basil comes out pretty much at the top.
Above: A native carpenter bee visits African blue basil.
Native plant advocates might frown at a non-native being promoted for pollinators, but there are some mitigating factors to consider. Not everyone has the space for a collection of native perennials chosen for a bloom-sequence staggered for months-long interest (with a couple of exceptions, most perennials tend to flower for just a few weeks). And some perennials, like milkweeds and bee balms, resent being potted and perform best in-ground. City gardeners are often confined to containers, while most urban dwellers have no more than a windowsill to grow anything. African blue basil fits this demographic perfectly.
In general, flowers are probably less important than form. Some have a fleeting season, perhaps blooming just once before doing nothing for the remaining eleven months of the year (I’m looking at you Iris germanica). Others have an important support act, providing an abundance of flowers or beautiful foliage for the majority of the year.
Yes, I want plants that are beautiful (and that work well together), but I also want them not to be too much trouble. So increasingly, as I’ve realized that you can never really fight the existing conditions in your garden, I just plant more of these low-work plants. If something does well, and needs little to no TLC then it’s very welcome in my garden.
Earlier this week I read a quote from the late plantswoman Beth Chatto, about her much-copied borders in Essex, England. “The point I need to stress,” she wrote in her ground-breaking book Drought-Resistant Planting, “is that copies of my gravel garden will not necessarily be successful or suitable if the principles underlying my planting designs are not understood. When visitors to my garden tell me they have attempted to make a gravel garden but the plants don’t look or behave as they do in mine, they wonder what they have done wrong. I ask ‘What type of soil do you have?’, ‘Very good,’ they reply. The amount of rainfall? ‘Twice what we have here,’ they tell me. I laugh and tell them if I had good soil and adequate rainfall I would not be growing drought-resistant plants.”
Favorite plants should always come with this disclaimer—what works in one garden may not work in another, because the soil, moisture, and conditions will vary immeasurably. Some of my most cherished plants will flourish in all conditions, but some do particularly well because they are especially suited to my garden, which has very free-draining sandy soil and is largely in full sun.
With that in mind, here are the plants I would not be without.
Above: I love almost all salvias and they all tend to love my garden, too, so long as I put them in a sunny spot. ‘Caradonna’ has the most intense deep purple flowers that will be smothered in bees for weeks on end. Once it’s finished flowering I cut it back and it will re-flower again, although less prolifically. This is a very upright salvia and looks best softened with hazy grasses or more unruly perennials such as Knautia macedonica.
Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’
Above: Arguably the most prolific, no-trouble plant I grow. Catmint springs into life early in the season, often flowering well before any other herbaceous perennial. It’s healthy, seems to cope with almost any conditions, and is particularly beloved by bees that smother this plant while it’s in flower. As soon as it starts to go over, I cut the whole plant back to a few inches from the base and it will usually regrow and flower again within a few weeks. It’s also very easy to divide and replant and looks fabulous flopping over a pathway.
Verbena bonariensis
Above: All the verbenas work really well in my garden, but the tall, billowing Verbena bonariensis is a brilliant border plant, emerging in mid-summer amongst other perennials and grasses. It’s a favorite of many butterflies and has an extremely long season. It looks wonderful though the autumn and winter as it holds its structure, but it will also happily self-seed so I am normally selective in how much of it I leave standing. Finches love to eat the seeds in winter, too.
This summer has been hot—really hot. Gardeners across the globe have recently experienced the four hottest days ever observed, and by all accounts, this is the new normal. Late last year the U.S.D.A. released their new Plant Hardiness Zone Map, which shifted zones for many locations, including the Midwest and Northeast, into the next warmer half zone. So, what’s a gardener to do? We reached out to a group of garden pros who have experience in gardening in extreme heat to ask them how we can plant and maintain our gardens to better weather hot summers.
Read on for their advice for picking plants, watering plantings, protecting trees, and more.
After a particularly dry, hot summer in 2022, Claire Davis, an ecological garden designer in the Hudson Valley vowed: No more summer planting. “I decided that I wanted a cut-off date for plantings,” she says. “That super-dry, hot summer felt brutal for newly planted areas, and it was pretty miserable as a gardener trying to take care of them.” As a bonus, Davis says that pushing pause on planting has given her much welcome breathing space in her garden maintenance calendar. Instead of giving into the impulse to add annuals for “a little color” in midsummer, make detailed notes about when and where you lacked blooms, so you can make a plan to fill the gaps come fall.
When you do add plants in the fall (or next spring), all the experts we spoke to placed an emphasis on using perennial plants native to your region because they are naturally adapted to the climate there. “For the most resilience in the heat, use mostly perennial native plants instead of seasonal annuals, because their root systems are more extensive,” says Ginny Stibolt, the author of Climate-Wise Landscaping, who gardens in Florida. She notes that forgoing annuals will also result in less disturbance of the soil, which helps build up humus, so that the soil stays moist even when it’s hot.
If you’re a regular Gardenista reader, you’re likely already familiar with Sarah Raven. But if you’re not, here’s the easiest way to describe her: She’s the Martha Stewart of the U.K. A tireless gardener, writer, cook, TV personality, entrepreneur, and general arbiter of good taste, Sarah has spent a lifetime crafting beauty and meaning in the domestic realm. She hosts workshops at her floriferous farm Perch Hill in East Sussex, England. She’s written stacks of gardening books and harvest-focused cookbooks, the latest being an updated version of Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook (with a new cover and introduction). She runs a respected mail-order plant nursery. And she hosts the podcast Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange with colleague Arthur Parkinson.
Despite all her commitments, Sarah found time to answer our Quick Takes questions. Read on for her expert gardening recommendations—including her genius tip for using lemonade to keep cut flowers fresh!
Photography courtesy of Sarah Raven, unless otherwise noted.
Above: Sarah is a master when it comes to container gardening. Photograph by Jonathan Buckley, for A Year Full of Pots. (See our story on her new book here.)
Your first garden memory:
It was picking flowers for my father who was recovering from an operation—a small sherry glass of crocus and iris in February. It’s still one of my favorite ways of having flowers in the house. They’re mini simple jewels.
Garden-related book you return to time and time again:
Giardino_di_hera’s account shows their wonderful garden in southern Italy. It’s just like the garden I dream of and hope to make on a plot of land we’ve just bought in Crete.
Describe in three words your garden aesthetic:
Above: An overhead view of the Oast Garden at Perch Hill in spring. Photograph by Jonathan Buckley, for A Year Full of Pots.
Colorful. Jam-packed. Nature-filled.
Plant that makes you swoon:
There are three: Trachelospermum jasminoides, honeysuckles (many), and Sarcococca.
Plant that makes you run the other way:
They are also a few! Variegated, over-fussy leaves, hugely heavy double begonias with flowers so huge they hang their heads with the weight of petals and double bedding pelargoniums with no nectar or pollen for pollinators.
Favorite go-to plant:
Above: Dahlias at sunset at Perch Hill.
Always the dahlia—no doubt.
Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:
Dead-heading and staking are both essential—no garden can survive looking good until the autumn without quite a bit of both.
Gardening or design trend that needs to go:
Stumperies—they feel too contrived to me!
Old wives’ tale gardening trick that actually works:
You should put flat lemonade in your cut flower water. This has citric acid and carbonic acid (CO2 in liquid forms weak acid). By changing pH you decrease bacterial reproduction and enable the flowers to last longer.
Unpopular gardening opinion:
Above: Her gardens are driven primarily by color.
Color is everything, not architectural and structural plants.
Every garden needs a:
Source of water, even if it’s a shallow plate/tray with stones in. The birds and pollinators need tons of water on a hot day. The plate/tray also needs a lip so the insects don’t drown. Keep it full and keep it clean.
Favorite hardscaping material:
Soft, reclaimed red-bricks.
Tool you can’t live without:
Hori-hori knife. It’s brilliant for weeding, even better for planting, and great for teasing open the structure of the soil
Go-to gardening outfit:
A dress always!
Favorite way to bring the outdoors in:
Above: A freshly picked winter salad from her greenhouse.
To have cut flowers around the house and use cut-and-come-again easy salads and herbs like Salad Rocket and Flat-leaved parsley in recipes.
Favorite nursery, plant shop, or seed company:
Mine!
On your wish list:
Lovely huge citrus trees as much for their winter blossom (and its magnificent, seductive fragrance) as their fruit.
Not-to-be missed public garden/park/botanical garden:
Keeps me happy, content, engaged, calm, centered. I’d be a much lesser person without gardening and nature and walking out into it for an hour or two every morning at 5am in summer.
Any article about Physostegia begins with the acknowledgement that this plant’s most-common common name, obedient plant, is a misnomer: Physostegia is anything but complying. The name obedient plant refers not to its behavior in the garden, but to the nature of the plant’s stems. “You can move the flowers from side to side, and they stay put—a welcome trait making this a fun cut flower,” explains Christina Koether, a garden and floral designer based in Weston, Connecticut.
While obedient plant’s blossoms are snapdragon-like (it’s also known as false dragonhead), it is a member of the mint family, and like mint, it spreads quickly by stolons—hence its reputation for disobedience, something Chris Liloia, the habitat gardens curator and the North Carolina Botanical Garden (NCBG) has experience with. While the plant now grows in NCBG’s Piedmont habitat, Liloia says, “It’s actually a remnant of the perennial border that I can’t get rid of. It has just cropped up in different spaces.”
But Koether says, “Its disobedience, or toughness, is what I love most.” Marissa Angell, a landscape architect based in Brewster, NY agrees, noting, “When I use Physostegia, it’s because I want a more aggressive plant to fill a space quickly, which is ideal for restoration or seeded meadow settings.”
Here’s everything you need to know about this tough and beautiful native:
Photography courtesy of North Carolina Botanical Garden, unless otherwise noted.
Where should you plant obedient plant?
Above: P. angustifolia is seen here in Norris’s prairie garden. He grew the plant from seed, which is available through Prairie Moon and Missouri Wildflowers Nursery. Photograph courtesy of Kelly D. Norris.
All the experts we spoke to say obedient plant does best in a damp, sunny spot in a naturalistic design with other native species.“Like any plant, they require context for maximal appreciation,” says Des Moines-based ecological garden designer Kelly D. Norris, who is the author of New Naturalism. “These plants evolved to compete in grass-dominated environments. You can commonly find P. virginiana in wet ditches growing cheek-to-jowl with cattails, sedges, and tall grasses. Is it any wonder when gardeners remove them from that context that they sprint in every direction?” Place obedient plant in spots with poor drainage, in bioswales, or any place where spongy, absorbent vegetation has value.One place never to use it? In more “curated” gardens where you want plants to stay in one spot, says Angell.
Is obedient plant invasive?
“Tough natives like this are sometimes accidentally called invasive, a term reserved for non-native plants that are monitored by individual states and are bad for biodiversity and pollinators,” says Koether. Physostegia virginiana is, in fact, helpful to pollinators. “Long blooming from summer to frost, the blooms are loved by hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies,” Koether adds. Obedient plant’s thuggishness can also crowd out invasive weeds.
What are the different varieties of obedient plant?
Above: Physostegia virginiana at the North Carolina Botanical Garden.
There are purple, pink, and white-flowered varieties of Physostegia. Physostegia virginiana is the species most commonly available at nurseries, but Liloia notes that there are actually two subspecies of virginiana, a northern and southern one. There are also a few cultivars, including ‘Miss Manners,’ which is advertised as a less aggressive, compact, and white-flowered version of the plant. Koether hasn’t had much luck growing it and Angell notes “it’s not as delicate or nice but you get some of the same feeling as the native, straight species.” Norris has both Physostegia virginiana and P. angustifolia, which is native to the central United States, in his garden and says, “P. angustifolia has been comparatively less aggressive than P. virginiana in my experience, and its paler flowers add an ethereal quality to the garden.” Koether adds, “The renewed interest in this plant is exciting. I’m hoping to try more cultivars soon.
What plants are good to grow next to obedient plant?
Above: Physostegia virginiana grows next to ‘Solidago rugosa ‘Fireworks’ in the Piedmont habitat of North Carolina Botanical Garden.
3. But go with French lavenders for a longer bloom.
If you are trying to chose between English and French, know that while English varieties are more fragrant, French varieties have a longer bloom time.
4. Choose carefully if you’re using lavender as an herb.
Above: Spanish lavender-flavored soda. Photograph by Marla Aufmuth for Gardenista, from DIY: Lavender Soda.
French lavender is not the choice for scented, herbal, or culinary uses because of its low oil content. “I like ‘Provence’, as it’s a favorite savory culinary herb used worldwide, especially in the Mediterranean and Middle East,” says Terry. She also likes ‘Royal Velvet’ for any lavender confectionery or mixology recipes.
5. Lavender can be loved to death.
No need to pamper this drought-tolerant plant; it actually prefers to be ignored. Excess fertilizer, water, and rich soil will eventually kill it. That said, lavender does need irrigation during its early months of root establishment, but once established, it requires only minor supplemental water later during the driest periods.
The fact that the name lavender is derived from the Latin verb lavare—to wash, says it all. The Romans were said to have used this herb to scent their public baths. Also, in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, women who washed clothes were known as “lavenders” because of how they dried the laundry by laying the wet clothes over lavender bushes, which scented the clothes. Royalty, most notably Louis XIV, enjoyed bathing in lavender-scented water.
7. Lavender hates wet feet.
These Mediterranean plants enjoy the hot, dry, rocky slopes of southern France, eastern Spain, and western Italy. What they don’t like is soggy, poorly draining soil. “One thing our customers are surprised to learn is how important it is NOT to use high quality soils and water-retaining compost when planting lavender. Lavender hates to have its roots kept wet,” shares Terry.
“We never mulch or gravel our lavender. Some growers do use gravel, weed cloth, and cover crops, like grass, between rows to help with weed control. But never heavy mulch because lavender likes to breathe!” says Terry.
9. Some lavenders can be grown from seed.
While some lavenders, like lavandin hybrids, can be grown only from cuttings because their seeds are sterile, there are varieties that can be started by seeds. “Some people report great success with seed germination, especially with the Angustifolia varieties. Most commercial farms use plant plugs from rooted plant cuttings.”
While the most common and popular varieties sport purplish hues, lavender flowers also come in white and pink. ‘Little Lottie’ is an English lavender known for its creamy white flowers and Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote Pink’ blooms with delicate pink blooms.
July is the tastiest month of the year. So many delicious crops ripen this month—corn, watermelon, peaches, and the home-garden favorite, tomatoes.
By now your tomatoes are hitting their stride, with the early ones, like ‘Early Girl’, making their debut in that first BLT of the season. They’re followed closely by cherry and grape tomatoes, which provide sweet, refreshing snacks as you tend to your garden beds. After that, the ‘Cherokee Purples’ and ‘Carolina Golds’, perfect for pairing with fresh mozzarella and basil in your Caprese salad, are ready to be harvested. And finally come the heirlooms, which need only to be sliced and sprinkled with salt.
The tomato season sadly doesn’t last forever, but here are five ways to make the most of it, for as long as possible.
N.B.: Featured photograph via White Flower Farm.
1. Prune…carefully.
Above: Indeterminate tomatoes generally need staking or a cage because of its climbing habit. Photograph by Laura Silverman for Gardenista, from Gardening 101: Tomatoes.
Pruning is an art. You need to find the balance between helping and hurting. One of the first things you need to know is what type of tomato you have. Is the plant a determinate or indeterminate variety? Pruning the former may cost you tomatoes, while pruning the latter may encourage fruit production and speed up the ripening process. How can you tell which is which? First, check the seed package, plant tag, or ask the grower. If those aren’t options, generally speaking, a determinate plant (like San Marzano tomato) grows all its fruit at the same time. An indeterminate plant (like ‘Sungold 100’) sets fruit and until the cold weather kills it. Determinates are generally stocky and shorter, and don’t need much, if any, pruning. Indeterminates are more vine-like and may need pruning to remove suckers, and to direct and contain growth. Additionally, prune to remove any yellow leaves and those that have come in contact with the ground. That said, if you do nothing at all, your tomato plant will be fine.
2. Water…regularly.
Above: A split cherry tomato after heavy rains. Photograph by Alpha via Flickr.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing: After you’ve planted, say, a tree in the wrong spot, everything becomes clearer and more crystallized—including where you should have planted it. Making mistakes is a vital part of understanding why a design works, or why a plant will thrive in one place but not in another.
When I started my garden from scratch ten years ago, I knew very little about actual gardening. My experience was limited to arranging a few pretty pots to have around the house, my plantsmanship was near zero, and I had very little funds to throw away on errors. Yet, that didn’t stop me from making them. Here are a few of the bigger mistakes I made when designing and planting a garden from scratch.
Photography by Clare Coulson.
1. Being impatient.
Above: I’ve learned patience the hard way. I can still be impulsive but nowhere near as impulsive as I used to be, when I thought nothing about pulling out shrubs without truly understanding their value—and I removed some real beauties that had been long planted.
Recently I’ve been working on a book, interviewing many landscape designers, and a commonality that emerges is that, in their own gardens, they all watch and wait. The time spent doing nothing more than staring at the garden allows them to observe trees, shrubs, and plants in all seasons. Watching and waiting also allows them to understand how the light falls in the garden at different times of year, how the weather moves through the garden, and how they themselves move through it—all of which will then inform their eventual garden design and planting.
2. Making the beds too narrow.
Above: Narrow borders rarely work—unless they are a neat monoculture that adds a formal note.
Without exception, I’ve made almost all of my borders wider over time where possible, and if I were starting over again, I’d make them even deeper. Generous borders are more impactful and allow bolder views across plantings and more complex compositions.
3. Planting trees too late.
Above: Maturity takes time and while perennials and most shrubs will bulk up fairly quickly, trees will take a decade to really have any presence—and several decades to reach maturity.
If you have space to plant trees, then make this one of your earliest interventions since they take years and years to mature. I wish I’d planted a field of trees or an orchard when I arrived at my garden; instead I procrastinated for years and my field is still a relatively blank canvas.
4. Not prioritizing soil quality.
Above: I had an obsession with flat spaces and neat lines when I started my garden, a habit I’ve since grown out of. But as a result, I moved topsoil from a sloping site to try and correct the slope. What I didn’t realize then was that I was removing the best soil. (See Your First Garden: What You Need to Know About Topsoil.)
Consider carefully your dirt. If you’re moving earth around or taking up turf, keep it in a pile to reincorporate into the garden as topsoil. When creating new borders, add as much humus-rich organic matter as you can into any planting areas—it’s far easier to do this at the outset of your garden-making, when you have room to work and make a mess. And if you are creating paths or borders with straight lines, then take the time to get them truly straight—a wonky straight line will annoy you for years to come.
You’ve pulled your neglected bolted lettuce and harvested your hardneck garlic. You have holes in your garden bed and it seems a waste not to fill them. But with what? July is a great time to sow the same vegetables you planted in the spring, so that you can enjoy a late summer and early fall harvest.
But why plant what appear to be cool season vegetables in the middle of summer? Depending on your garden, planting these is actually a great idea!
First step is to gather information: 1) the first frost date for your area and 2) the days to harvest (the seed packet of the vegetable you want to plant will have that info). Then count backwards from the frost date. If the plant has time to mature before first frost, it’s time to plant! Just keep in mind, the average frost date is just that, an average over many decades. It can be sooner or later and not a hard date on the calendar. Also, remember that some of what you plant may be frost-tolerant and can handle a bit of cold without any harm.
So what can you plant now, in midsummer? We’ll break this down into groups.
Beets, carrots, and turnips can be planted midsummer for a fall harvest. The already warm soil gives these cooler weather vegetables a head start. Beets can be ready within as little as 40 days with the baby varieties, and nearly 60 days with the Bulls Blood variety. If growing carrots, remember to keep the soil consistently moist until they are established; the soil cannot dry out. Radishes can be succession sown monthly as they can be ready in as little as 30 days. Turnips, such as Hakurei, are ready in less than 40 days, whereas the traditional purple-topped variety can take about 50 days.
If greens is what you’re looking to harvest, you’re in luck. Not only do you have a great variety to choose from, but there’s the added benefit of only needing to wait for enough leaves to harvest. There are many types of kale, which you can continue to harvest well into late fall and even winter depending on where you live. Collards also fall into this category but are even hardier than kale and tolerate temperatures in the 20s. Chard is not as hardy but still can survive a light frost.
For spinach and lettuce, you’ll need a slightly different approach, since both tend to bolt in the heat. First choose slow bolting varieties if possible and plant them where they can get some relief from the summer sun—e.g., under your tomatoes, pole beans, or corn. Spinach is cold hardy, and if you have mild winters, you may be able to overwinter it. As for lettuce, consider the Chalupa or Monte Carlo varieties. They are both romaine types that can be sown in summer for an early fall harvest.
More cool-weather suggestions here! Broccoli needs about two months to form heads, and cabbage shares the same cold tolerance as collards but needs up to three months to mature. Why not try Caraflex, an unusual small cone shaped variety that’s ready in 68 days. Brussel sprouts may require up to four months to mature. If you are planning to have sprouts for Thanksgiving, plant now. Cauliflower has a range of colors and days to maturities to choose from. The white Fujiyama can be ready to harvest in about 45 days, the orange Clementine is ready in about 55 days, and Purple Moon is ready in just over 60 days.
I can’t get enough of the blue flax in my yard, but it wasn’t always this way. With most other perennials, it’s a binary case of love or hate. With blue flax, though, it was more complicated.
Above: Blue flax’s five-petaled flowers range from a pale blue to a bright cerulean. Photograph by Debbie Ballentine via Flickr.
I’m newish to Central Oregon, where I relocated after a lifetime of living on the East Coast, and unfamiliar with the plants native to this high desert region. Hydrangeas, a landscape leitmotif on the East, are rarely seen in these parts, but Linum lewisii, another plant with vividly blue flowers, peppers the landscape. I see blue flax thriving in the wild on the trails; swaying in the wind next to the the chain-link fence that surrounds the local high school track; and growing in my own front yard, where it was planted by the previous owners.
Above: Once established, one blue flax plant can generate many, many petite flowers. Photograph by Philip Bouchard via Flickr.
While I was immediately smitten with the delicate blue flowers (measuring just 1 to 1.5 inches across) that float over thin stems, I was less than happy to learn that they wither by day’s end. I have always had a bias for durable, long-lasting blooms, and these ephemeral flowers, with an expiration date that measures in hours (not even days), offended my practical sensibility. The thing is, the spent flowers are replaced the next morning with a flush of new blooms. All summer long, this 24-hour cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is repeated.
Above: This flower will die by the end of the day, but new buds are standing in the wings, ready to bloom the next morning. Photograph by tdlucas5000 via Flickr.
I’ve come to admire blue flax. Every morning, like a child waking up to look for fresh snow, I eagerly grab a cup of coffee and peer out our front window searching for the new blooms. Throughout the day, I check on them. And early evening, I do one last inspection to see if, by some miracle, they’re still around, gently swaying in the breeze. They never are. But come morning, I fill up my cup again—and delight in their rebirth.
Cheat Sheet
Above: Its stems can look messy and leggy, so best to plant them en masse or crowd them next to tall grasses and wildflowers. Photograph by George Wesley and Bonita Dannells via Flickr.
Discovered by Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame) in the Rocky Mountains, Linum lewisii is commonly known as blue flax, wild blue flax, prairie flax, Lewis flax, and Lewis’s flax.
The drought-tolerant, deer-resistant perennial is native to Western North America, growing wild in prairies and mountain trails.
Grows to 18 to 30 inches tall, with needle-like blue-green leaves.
Will readily self seed once established.
Exhibits a clumping habit; looks best en masse or mingling in a dense planting with tall grasses.
The cultivar commercially grown for its fibers, seeds, and oil is common flax (Linum usitatissimum), but blue flax’s seeds are edible, too, as long as you cook it first.
Its bloom period covers a long span, from April to September (though in Central Oregon, where the last frost date was in late spring, mine didn’t start blooming until early June).
Keep It Alive
Above: Blue flax happily mingling with coast sunflower, California fuchsia, Sulphur buckwheat, California sun cup, and ‘Margarita BOP’ penstemon. Photograph by Debbie Ballentine via Flickr.
Hardy from USDA zones 5 – 8.
Extremely easy to grow, the wildflower is both cold-hardy and heat-tolerant.
Fairly shade-tolerant but happiest in full sun.
Drought-tolerant, it has low to medium water needs.
Best planted in well-draining soil; preference for rocky or sandy conditions, dislike of clay soil or wet conditions.
To prevent self seeding, prune almost down to the ground at the end of the growing season; if not a concern, leave them standing for birds to snack on during the winter and cut back in early spring.
In summer our thoughts turn for refuge to cooling streams and pond edges, and to memories of a spring blaze of marsh marigold and moving water. Early to bloom, and in lush leaf through summer, marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) are a cold-hardy and water-loving perennial. They are also a native alternative to their diminutive lookalike, the highly invasive lesser celandine (Ficaria verna). Differentiating between the two plants is helpful to curb the spread of one, and to encourage the cultivation of the other.
Photography by Marie Viljoen.
Above: Marsh marigolds have between 5 to 9 petal-like sepals, and have a mounding habit. Above: Lesser celandine has 8 to 12 petals, and a carpeting habit.
Both marsh marigolds and lesser celandine have buttercup-perfect, iridescent yellow flowers that signal their kinship: they belong to the Ranunculus family. But in North America lesser celandine, a transplant from Europe (it is also occurs natively in North Africa and West Asia), has mastered the insidious creep, smothering regional swathes of riverside and forest floor, altering habitats as it spreads its low but impenetrable canopy. Lesser celandine’s invasive status is mostly associated with the Northeast, but it is moving into the Midwest and occurs in the Pacific Northwest, too. In places where it grows beside moving water, flooding carries parts of the plant downstream, where they take root.
Above: Marsh marigolds at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Marsh marigold’s species name palustris means “of marshes.” Varieties of marsh marigold have an unusually wide native distribution, described as circumboreal: The plants occur across the northern part of the planet (boreal means north), in North America, Europe, and Asia. The plant’s flowers are larger and more showy than lesser celandine’s. In terms of function, marsh marigold can stabilize stream banks, forming mounded, clumping colonies over time. The flowers’ pollen and nectar are a rich food source for native pollinators, and small mammals and ducks eat the seeds.
Above: Lesser celandine is very difficult to remove where it is widespread.
Lesser celandine removal sidebar: The removal of lesser celandine is not easy. If you have a few clumps, remove them at once. By the time a carpet has formed, the task is daunting, and complicated. Methodical mechanical removal, by hand, is best (although difficult), and vigilance is essential. Personally, I cannot recommend glyphosate (usually sold as Roundup).
Why not use glyphosate? There is its implication in the evolution of so-called super-weeds, for one thing. And while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers glyphosate “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) does classify glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Quite the contradiction.
For your own rabbit hole research consider that the studies that the IARC relied on seem more in keeping with real-world situations and exposure than those employed on by the EPA. Glyphosate has been banned by California, and in 2020. New York banned the use of glyphosate on state property. Its use is especially problematic near water, or when associated with water tables (everything lands up in the water table). Glyphosate has been showing up in stream and air samples since 2011, and its knock-on effects on life forms other than the target-plant (from soil microbes to aquatic invertebrates) are being studied.
Above: Marsh marigolds favor flowing or oxygenated water.
One of the realities of enjoying a garden is that there’s not always a lot of time to do so. We work, we commute, we parent, we scroll. By the time we step outside it might be late, so it is with twilight in mind that we bring you the brightness of our 14 favorite white flowers. They are all perennials, and they are all North American. Many of these blooms are pollinator-friendly, and each is easy to care for, so long it’s in the right spot. From petite ephemerals that will appeal to your inner wood sprite, to big-statement drama plants, our list will set you on the path to a soothing evening escape. You might even sneak out to enjoy them in daylight.
The frothy exuberance of aptly named foam flower begins early in spring, the flowers floating above maple-shaped leaves. The blooms last for about two pleasing weeks. This woodland native grows well in full spring sun if it receives some summer shade (under deciduous trees, for example). It naturalizes easily, by sending out questing runners in late spring and summer. Foam flower makes a very low maintenance ground cover and is an effective green mulch, protecting the soil beneath. It is hardy from USDA growing zones 3-9.
2. Canada mayflower, Maianthemum canadense
Above: Tiny Canada mayflower
In shady gardens, diminutive Canada mayflower (or false lily of the valley) will naturalize to form a lush, low green carpet that produces a shower of snowy blossoms in mid-spring. It needs consistent moisture to become established, but will then spread and naturalize via rhizomes. By fall the flowers will have formed red fruits that are attractive to birds. Canada mayflower is hardy from zones 3-6.
3. Starflower, Lysimachia borealis
Above: Starflower growing among Canada mayflower.
Another small jewel for light shade and woodland-friendly gardens is starflower, whose identifying whorl of leaves frames the exquisite bloom, or blooms. This is a good companion plant for Canada mayflower, as it is summer-dormant, and fades from view as nights begin to grow longer after the summer solstice. Starflower is hardy from zones 3-7.
4. False Solomon’s seal, Maianthemum racemosum
Above: False Solomons seal
Unlike its tiny Canada mayflower, false Solomon’s seal grows to about three feet tall, and its plumes of fluffy white flowers can be elegantly dramatic if planted in swathes in dappled shade. It has a very wide native range in North America, and blooms in mid-spring. It, too, will produce attractive, non-toxic red berries in fall that are appealing to migratory and resident birds. False solomon’s seal is hardy from zones 3-8.
5. Doll’s eyes, Actaea pachypoda
Above: The perfumed flowers of doll’s eyes.
Close your eyes and breathe. The sweet, citrus-blossom scent of doll’s eyes is reason enough to plant this shade-loving perennial. Its tall slender stems are topped with perfumed puffs of flowers in mid-spring. By fall, they have morphed into ghoulish white berries that resemble a horror-flick’s idea of a botanical Halloween. They are eye-catching and as toxic as they look. Doll’s eyes are hardy from zones 3-8.
Above: A tick when it’s at nymph stage is teeny-tiny. Photograph by R. Kriatyrr Brosvik via Flickr.
Your most essential line of defense is to check your body every day for ticks, both after gardening and before going to bed. The Wilderness Medical Society recommends that you remove all your clothing and “systematically scan the body for ticks, paying special attention to warm places (armpits, knees, under underwear, around the hairline of neck, ears, and navel).”
Spray insect repellent on exposed skin.
Use bug spray with an E.P.A.-registered product that contains Picaridin or Deet. “Natural” bug sprays might also work, but the CDC notes the efficacy of “natural” ingredients varies wildly, and “moreover, different products based on the same active ingredients (e.g., rosemary and peppermint oils) can have highly variable tick killing efficacy, underscoring the difficulty in making recommendations about unregulated minimum-risk products based solely on the active ingredients they contain.”
Treat your gardening clothes, too.
Another tactic is to spray your gardening clothing with the insecticide permethrin; available as a spray-on treatment, permethrin usually lasts through several washings but needs to be reapplied with some frequency. Zinzi Edmundson, the founder of Treehouse newsletter, who gardens in Maine, suggests spraying your shoes, especially (she uses Sawyer’s permethrin). If you’re unsure about adding permethrin yourself, you can mail your gardening clothes to Insect Shield for professional application, which is supposed to last five times longer.
Wear all white.
You’re familiar with the drill: Light colored clothes make it easier to see ticks. In her Quick Takes interview, Deborah Needleman shared her go-to white garden uniform: A pair of white Dickies or Carhartt pants, a white Hanes Re/done t-shirt, and white slip-on Vans. You could also consider the TickSuit, a full-body white cotton jumpsuit (with hood!) developed by a doctor who had Lyme disease four times.
We’ve all also heard the advice to tuck your pants into your socks, but too often gardeners skip this step. Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station’s Tick Management Handbook (an excellent resource) notes that “surveys show the majority of individuals never tuck their pants into their socks when entering tick-infested areas.” You should also tuck your shirt into your pants, so ticks can’t sneak in at the waistband.
Roll the tape.
For an extra layer of protection, my pal Laura Serino, who lives on North Haven in Maine, where ticks are serious business, came through with two ingenious suggestions. Wrap a ring of double stick tape around your sock-covered ankles to prevent ticks from crawling up your leg. Then when you get inside, use a sticky lint roller to go over all your clothing to (hopefully) remove ticks, including the nymphs which are so hard to see.
Shower after gardening.
Don’t wait to hop in the shower. Make it a habit to rinse off as soon as you get inside.
Launder right away.
To make sure you’re not bringing ticks into your home, put your gardening clothes directly into the washing machine (don’t get a snack or a glass of water first!). Always wash on hot and then dry on high heat, as well. According to the authors of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station’s Tick Management Handbook, “Many blacklegged ticks and lone star ticks can survive a warm or hot water wash, but they cannot withstand one hour in a hot dryer.”
Ever tasted a fresh olive? If you have, then I’m so sorry. Fresh, raw olives are surprisingly very bitter and need to be fermented, cured in a vinegar or salt water brine, or dry-cured with oil in order to be delicious.
When a tree, like an olive, is slow-growing then it pays to buy the largest one you can afford to avoid frustration and disappointment. I usually recommend nothing smaller than a 15-gallon tree.
7. …and slow to fruit, too.
On average, an olive may take four to five years before it fruits. This production is also dependent on whether the growing conditions are warm and sunny enough. If these requirements aren’t met, then fruiting might not occur at all.
Italians say that you should prune the olive tree in such a way that a bird can fly through the middle of it. Pruning is needed to reduce the density of the foliage and allow sunlight to infiltrate every part of the tree. Also, olive trees produce fruit on the previous year’s branches, so in order to have fruit every year you must make sure that adequate growth occurs every year. In general, prune fruiting olives after harvest. If you are growing a non-fruiting olive, proper pruning is still strongly encourage to avoid a gangly or lopsided tree; plus it’s always a good idea to remove dead, diseased, or damaged limbs. This can be done in the spring or early summer. Pro tip: watch out for snacking deer who also like to “prune” young olive trees. You may need to net the lower branches or spray a deer repellent on newly planted trees.
9. Olive trees can be a houseplant.
Above: Olea europaea ‘Arbequina’ is a Spanish olive tree that makes a great indoor specimen. Photograph via Terrain.
Looking to add a little Mediterranean style to your home decor? A potted olive tree might be the addition you need—for a little while at least. Long-term these trees are best grown outside. But a potted olive can thrive for a year or so indoors as long as you make sure it gets lots of light—a south-facing window or under a skylight works. Maintenance-wise, water your indoor olive when the top inch of soil is dry to the touch. If you see leaves yellowing and dropping, then either it is receiving not enough or too much water. Use cacti/palm soil for good drainage, as soggy soil can be detrimental. Pest-wise, be on the lookout for scale invading leaves and stems. Pro tip: An early scale invasion can be handled by simply picking off the critters.
Amazingly, almost all parts of an olive tree have significance. The trees themselves symbolize wisdom, peace, power, fertility, and purity. The branches symbolize peace and abundance and were once ritualistically offered to deities and powerful people as signs of purification and blessings. And olive oil has long been considered sacred and is still used today in many religious ceremonies.
Too bad soil isn’t dazzling like dahlias or sweetly fragrant like freesias, because gardeners then would be gushing over this dirty stuff instead of overlooking its importance. A successful garden starts with healthy soil. Good news is that you can easily buy quality soil at your local nursery or home improvement store; bad news is that even though it comes pre-mixed and bagged, you may find it difficult to figure out exactly which type your garden needs.
To determine which soil is best for your garden, you need to first understand that different plants thrive with different types of soil. Another factor to consider is how you plan to grow the plants—say, in a raised bed versus in a pot. Below, we walk you through some common growing scenarios and the type of soil most appropriate for each:
Use potting soil. This light and airy mix is specifically formulated for container gardening to ensure adequate drainage and space for roots to grow. Simply add potting soil to pots and then plant your annuals, flowers, small trees and shrubs directly into it. Tip: ideally, replace potting soil annually.
Use a soilless mix. These super light blends are perfect for starting delicate seeds and are usually a combination of peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite, and like the name implies, does not contain organic matter (soil) that could harm tender seedlings. A great peat-free option is Plentiful Organic Potting Mix, made from recycled paper, by PittMoss.
Huw Richards has vegetables in his bones. Richards grew up on an 11-acre small farm, and he became well-known in the garden world when he started posting how-to videos on YouTube at 19. The author of three previous books on vegetable gardening, Richards’ latest is TheSelf-Sufficiency Garden: Feed Your Family and Save Money, a uniquely detailed plan for growing vegetables.
“I’ve always been growing my own food, but I’d never actually measured it,” says Richards of his motivation to publish another book on a topic he has explored deeply. “With the cost of living crisis and with more people more concerned about food security, I thought now’s the time to create a project that explores that.”
Richards hatched a plot to see how much food he could grow in the equivalent of a standard half allotment, approximately the size of half a doubles tennis court. (In England, an allotment is a small parcel of land that can be rented to grow food.) To make sure the food would not go to waste and last the whole year, Richards brought on his friend, chef Sam Cooper, to share recipes for preserving the harvest. The Self-Sufficiency Garden is the result: A book-length documentation of the one-year experiment that Richards ran in the 2023 growing season.
About: Richards in his half allotment.
Read from start to finish, the book tells exactly how Richards grew a whopping 1,279 lbs. of vegetables in 1,300 square feet in a single year—which, somewhat remarkably, he did not share on social media while he was in the midst of the project, saving it for the book. Richards lays out what he did when. It is an impressive ballet of seed starting and crop rotation, but Richards doesn’t anticipate his readers will follow his plan to the letter. “I’m not telling people to just copy and paste the exact same layouts,” he says. “It’s a case study: This is what we did, and these are the results.”
Here are some ideas for how you can follow Richards’ lead.
Photography by Huw Richards, from The Self-Sufficiency Garden.
Rethink your definition of “self sufficiency.”
“People think that self-sufficiency means you have to have a homestead. I propose that you could just grow one or two herbs and be self-sufficient in those,” says Richards. “If every day during spring and summer you are eating something from your garden that is not the end goal of self-sufficiency but it’s on the starting steps.”
What native flowering vine is perfumed, profuse, and in bloom in early spring just when we need floral encouragement the most? It’s yellow jessamine, or Carolina jasmine—Gelsemium sempervirens. (Its species name—“always living”—refers to Gelsemium’s glossy, evergreen foliage.) This is a cascading, fast-growing vine that makes a spectacular bower over doorways, softening hard fence edges, and stopping passersby, even in their preoccupied, city tracks. It is also one of the most toxic plants on the planet.
But don’t panic. Unless you’re a Russian whistleblower.
Above: Yellow jessamine might be the ultimate curb appeal.
Growing natively from Guatemala through Virginia, yellow jessamine’s first stop in the US is Texas, where it is often the first flower to bloom in the new year. It is widely distributed in the Southern US but also in the nursery trade, which has spread it beyond its natural range. It shows remarkable cold hardiness for a plant also at home in Central America. (There are three Gelsemium species: the others are G. rankinii, native to Southeastern US, and which has no scent; and G. elegans, native to East and Southeast Asia.)
Above: Packed clusters of flowers are heavily scented.
While European honeybees are drawn to the nectar-rich flowers of Gelsemium, especially if there is no other food source, the nectar in high doses may be toxic to them. At least, this is the chatter in concerned bee-keeping circles, but it is hard to find a study that confirms this—because there is no such study. Still, with ancient, anecdotal stories circulating via cut-and-paste (and cemented into truth by an entry on Wikipedia with a cul-de-sac of a citation), they are hard to dismiss completely.
But what about native pollinators and yellow jessamine?
Above: A bumblebee visiting a flower.
Yellow jessamine might actively benefit native bumble bees: A 2010 study concluded that “gelsemine, a nectar alkaloid found in Gelsemium sempervirens, lessens the severity of gut pathogen infections in bumble bees.” Self-medicating bees. I have seen fat carpenter bees besieging yellow jessamine, and “robbing” the flowers by puncturing the base of their nectaries from the outside, to suck out sweetness, leaving less food for the slimmer Eastern bumble bees that enter politely from the flower’s mouth.
Above: A statement plant for weeks in spring.
Gelsemium Toxicity
The toxic alkaloids in all Gelsemium species include gelsemine, but dozens of other alkaloids have been isolated from the genus, which has been studied extensively, pharmacologically. For humans and other animals, all Gelsemiums are harmful (and may be lethal) if ingested in very high, very unlikely doses. These could be self-administered deliberately. Sometime in the second half of the 18th century, the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle purposefully overdosed on Gelsemium in order to observe its effects in different quantities. He documented his findings and submitted them to the British Medical Journal in 1879.
The poison may also be ingested via foul play: In 2012, after he died unexpectedly in Surrey, at the age of 44, an autopsy report showed that Russian whistleblower Aleksander Perepilicchnyy had traces of Gelsemium elegans in his stomach.
Above: Like a beacon to lead you home on an early spring day.
So you’re finally ready to plant up an area of your garden. How do you ensure you’re giving your plants the best possible start? In part 5 of my series on making A Garden from Scratch (scroll to the bottom for the other installments), I look at one border in my own garden and explain how I prepared it and put it together.
1. Get the timing right.
Above: What I started with. This was a tired lavender walk that needed a lot of plants replaced and was interspersed with climbing roses. I wanted a more substantial border as this was also a key view through the garden, so I removed everything except for the established ‘Blush Noisette’ rose on the right-hand side of the border.
Autumn and spring are perfect times to get a border planted, giving plants a chance to settle and send out roots when soil is likely to be warm and moist. Because I am nearly always running behind, the new border here would eventually go into the ground in early May. It’s not ideal timing as they need a lot more attention and irrigation if there is prolonged hot weather, but in reality it’s feasible to plant perennials at any time the ground is not frozen—just be prepared to keep an eye on them in summer.
Make sure you have all your plants gathered, ready for planting. If you are buying plants and want to keep costs down, know that 9-cm plants will be the most economical, while 1-liter or 2-liter plants will provide more instant impact. That said, those small plants will have caught up with the larger plants within one season and definitely within two seasons. If you’ve got time, growing some of the plants from seeds or cuttings will be the most economical of all. You can also divide plants from elsewhere in the garden, too, creating more plants for free. (See Your First Garden: How to Start a Garden for Practically Free for other ideas.)
2. Enrich the soil.
Above: Preparing the planting area.
I widened the existing border as much as I could while still leaving a path through the middle. At this point it can feel like there’s a lot of space, but once plants mature and grow over the edges this central path will narrow considerably. As this area has poor very free-draining soil, I dug in well-rotted manure through the whole border to prepare it for planting; whatever your soil type, the most beneficial thing you can do at the outset is to add as much compost as you can to enrich the soil.
3. Lay out the plants.
Above: Laying out the plants.
Place all of your plants along the border where you think you’ll want to plant them. Then spend some time considering how the plants will look as they grow. Think about how wide they will spread and allow enough space for plants to grow (check the plant label for approximate dimensions). Group perennials together in threes or loose triangles which will create more impact with blocks and color. What you are trying to create is a naturalistic feeling rather than regimented order. (See A Garden from Scratch: How to Choose Plants and Put Them Together for my tips on plant composition.)
Repeat some plants through the length of the border to help create rhythm. In this border, Alchemilla mollis, Geranium ‘Rozanne’ and Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foester’ are repeated down the length of the bed. And leave space for self seeders—over time, if you prefer a more naturalistic look and you’re happy to encourage self-seeders, your border will fill out with these volunteer plants. This border has several self-seeders, especially Salvia turkestanica, Digitalis parviflora and D. ferruginea gigantea, and occasionally Baptisia australis and Alchemilla mollis, creating free plants and a more abundant and lush border.
Many of us have destructive wildfires on our minds; so it’s smart to think carefully about your mulch choices, especially around your home and other buildings or wood structures. Of course most mulch is made from organic material so it is certainly flammable, but some materials are more so than others. In general, fine or stringy mulches ignite quicker. Pine needles top the list, as do shredded cedar bark and shredded rubber. The most fire-resistant choices are the inorganic types like decomposed granite, rocks and gravel. Pro Tip: Use fire-proof inorganic mulch materials within 5 feet of structures.
3. Mulch can be toxic.
Above: You will almost never go wrong if you use an untreated organic substance, like fallen leaves, as mulch. Caveat: remains of a black walnut tree. See below. Photograph by John Merkl for Gardenista, from Your First Garden: What You Need to Know About Raking Leaves.
No doubt that I love chocolate (maybe you do, too), so when I heard that there was such a thing as cocoa bean mulch I was intrigued—until I learned that this mulch, made from cocoa shells, is especially toxic to dogs. The lesson is to avoid using this mulch if you have curious pets.
Another questionable mulch is rubber mulch, which obviously is not organic so it doesn’t decompose or add anything beneficial to the garden. Plus, it can leach chemicals that can harm plants.
Free mulch can be acquired from tree or utility companies (yeah!), but make sure they’re not giving you the remains of a black walnut tree (boo!) as the toxic chemical called juglone in the tree can damage and even kill plants.
Last, dyed mulch—even that trendy black stuff—can be made with cheap dyes and from recycled treated wood like old decks, pallets, and crates that may contain nasty preservatives like creosote or chromated copper arsenate (CCA). CCA-treated wood can kill earthworms, beneficial insects, good soil bacteria, plus be harmful to people and animals who dig in it.
In place of the annual tulip-mania that strikes at this time each spring, there have been discontented rumblings amongst growers and gardeners this year. All is not well in the world of tulips. Cries of “less is more” from formerly ardent maximalists, whose pots used to be bulging with a kaleidoscopic mix of vibrant tulips, have dotted social media. Why the fuss about this much-loved bulb? Read on to find out.
Photography by Clare Coulson, unless otherwise noted.
Above: The Lime Walk at Sissinghurst Castle, where tulips are the main event in April; here, they are displayed in large pots with a carpet of spring bulbs underneath.
A perfect storm of conditions have lately come to plague the tulip—quite literally in the case of tulip fire, a fungal disease (Botrytis tulipae) that attacks bulbs. The blight causes distorted or spotted leaves and ugly spots on the flowers. And it can go on to contaminate the soil. If your plants have it, it’s important to be rigorous about hygiene: Pull the affected bulbs and do not dispose of them on the compost heap where the fungus can flourish. Gardeners should also avoid replanting tulips in the area for the following three years. Similarly, if potted bulbs have been affected, remove and dispose of the bulbs (and later the compost, too) and make sure that you the clean pots very well at the end of the season.
Above: Tulips and narcissi in pots in the author’s garden.
Climate change is exacerbating the problem—in areas where there are no longer prolonged periods of cold during winter, it’s more likely that disease can flourish. (For tulips proper winter cold is an essential part of the lifecycle.) Very wet springs also contribute to the spread of disease.
Above: No other spring bulbs provide quite the pop of color as the tulip, available in endless colors and shapes. Here ‘Dream Touch’, ‘Copper Image’, ‘Vovos’, and ‘Palmyra’ work well with perennial wallflowers.
It’s not just the fungus. Tulips are a big investment and they’ve gotten more expensive. In my garden my annual spend on bulbs is far, far greater than the total of all other seeds, plants, and any other garden kit throughout the whole year. And in many cases those expensive tulip bulbs will not re-flower after the first season, especially if they’ve been grown in pots. At a time when we are all thinking far more about the choices we make and their impact on the planet, it all feels quite wasteful.
Above: Historic tulips also tend to be more perennial than many of the annual flowering tulips. ‘Malaika’ is a stunning historic tulip that is almost impossible to find for sale.
And then there is the constant threat from wildlife. Friends this spring have had their entire tulip crop dug up by mice, swiped by squirrels, or munched by passing deer, who seem particularly adept at eating just the flower bud and leaving the ugly (and useless) bare stem.
Above: The stunning Tulipa turkestanica photographed by Britt Willoughby Dyer for Polly Nicholson’s The Tulip Garden.
