Wild by Design

A week of farm work last week. The garden has perked up after a couple of welcome, desperately needed rains, just in time for fall planting season.

Continuing to edit the meadow gardens by de-grassing some areas to create a more visually open, undulating and texturally varied planting. I want the Molinia and Panicums to read as punctuation points, with air space around them. Calamagrostis brachytricha has been removed completely. Not because it was unhappy here, but visually it occupied the same layer in the planting and the overall effect had become an impenetrable wall of grass. Now there’s space to play and add new things that weren’t on my radar when these gardens were planted 5+ years ago.

The woodland garden ticks along happily. Green and calm and serene.

I’m forever grateful for being able to learn, experiment and play in this garden for over a decade. Reminded of this after showing around this week. I’ll be sharing more about what I’ve learned, and continue to learn, at the farm in a webinar later this fall for the (link in bio).

The Echinacea variations at the Community Living gravel garden. Generations of hybrid seedlings from the originally planted species, appearing in random places, mostly at the edges. All complemented by the glorious fluff from Cotinus ‘Young Lady’, an amazingly drought tolerant plant in this hot dry summer.