Category Archives: My Garden

Fairy Crown 18-Russian Sage & Blazing Stars

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My 18th fairy crown for August 7th features a strange, wild creature having a seriously bad hair day.  All right…. it just contains a lot of spike flowers and I ran out of horizontal room on the tiara so it looks like I’ve endured a shock. These are flowers and leaves from my Toronto garden. The lavender-blue spikes are Russian sage (formerly Perovskia atriplicifolia, now called Salvia yangii after DNA analysis proved it was in the sage family).  The fuzzy dark-mauve spikes are Liatris spicata ‘Kobold’, aka blazing star or gayfeather.  The stem with wine-red leaves and flower clusters is Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’. The chartreuse flowers cascading over my forehead are Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) – at least, a few stems that I didn’t tear out to try to prevent it from spreading (which it will do anyway). The dissected leaves come from my Tiger Eye sumac shrub (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) and the vine falling over my right shoulder is Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata).  Those little, pale-pink bottlebrush flowers on my left cheek are ‘Pink Tanna’ burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis) at the end of its season.  Finally, tucked into a corner on my forehead are a few red flowers of Petunia exserta that I forgot I’d thrown into my sundeck containers and they emerged in the midst of self-seeding oakleaf lettuce.

With its airy wands of long-lasting, light-blue flowers, the sub-shrub Russian sage is a big presence in my pollinator garden…..

…..and it offers nectar to bees for many weeks.

But it is sometimes short-lived and does not take kindly in our cold climate to being cut back in autumn. Much better to wait until spring when new growth has started.  

It flowers at the same time as violet-purple dense blazing star (Liatris spicata ‘Kobold’)….

…. which is also a wonderful pollinator lure.

I adore the burnets and was able to source Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Pink Tanna’, which has interesting little “scrim” flowers. But I’m still on the lookout for the big, dark-red species which add such a zingy note to a meadow-style planting.

The Tiger Eyes sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) is a favourite…..

…… and it retains its chartreuse colour well into summer, before turning a beautiful apricot in fall.  

I forgive it its suckering-wandering ways because the birds absolutely adore it throughout winter.

As for the Boston ivy, well it’s pretty much a given in my garden… on my gate, below, and on my fence, and it would climb the house if I let it, but I don’t.

The little red petunias (P. exserta) were a seed-starting project a few years back and are quite rare and not found in garden centres.  I wrote about them extensively in my 2020 blog My Motley Pots.  This one managed to thrive in a container of self-seeding oakleaf lettuce on my deck.

As I wrote back then, my youngest son’s girlfriend Marta Motti did a painting of this petunia being visited by the hummingbird which she gave to me as a gift. I am delighted to say that she is marrying Jon on September 10th in Tuscany – and we will be there for the ceremony!

Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’ is in my backyard deck pots where it partners with the tough native grass sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula).  It’s very drought-resistant, given that these pots get watered very rarely, except by mother nature.

A few plants that are flowering now or in the next few weeks missed being in a fairy crown, so I’d like to say a few words about them now. The first is hoary or downy skullcap (Scutellaria incana), a native northeastern North America plant that I’m trialling in my front pollinator garden, where I’m hopeful it will be able to fend off the lily-of-the-valley groundcover.

Lastly, I’d like to give a nod to my favourite blazing star or gayfeather, Liatris aspera, aka rough blazing star.  Though endangered, this is our regional native.  Drought tolerant, it reaches 90-120 cm (3-4 feet) in height; it will start to flower in the next few weeks and is a superb, late-summer pollinator plant. 

As for the Canada goldenrod….. well, it’s a useful weed but if you turn your back you’ll have a forest. So don’t turn your back!

Fairy Crown #17 – Beebalm & Yellow Daisies at the Lake

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This is truly my favourite time of year in the meadows at our cottage on Lake Muskoka. Why?  Because the flower variety is at peak and the bees are at their most plentiful and buzzy. So my 17th fairy crown for August 5th celebrates the pollinator favourites here, including the champion, pink-flowered wild beebalm or bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), as well as yellow false oxeye (Heliopsis helianthoides), biennial blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta), grey-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) with its dark cones, mauve hoary vervain (Verbena stricta), oregano (Origanum vulgare) and a few of my weedy Queen Anne’s lace flowers (Dauca carota).  

I call my wild places on either side of the cottage ‘Monarda Meadows’ because wild beebalm (M. fistulosa) is the principal perennial there and in all the beds and wild places around our house, where it grows as a companion to Heliopsis helianthoides, below.

There’s a reason wild beebalm is called that; it’s a literal balm for the bees, specifically bumble bees whose tongues can easily probe the florets! 

Another frequent visitor to wild beebalm flowers is the clearwing hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe).

False oxeye (Heliopsis helianthoides) is one of the most aggressive natives I grow. I’m happy to leave it where it lands, but it often sulks in very sandy, sunny spots when summers are hot and dry.  It’s much better in the rich soil at the bottom of my west meadow, and I try to ignore all the red aphids that line the stems in certain summers.

But heliopsis also attracts its share of native bees, including tiny Augochlora pura, below.

Unlike the blackeyed susan I wrote about in my last blog, R. fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’, the ones I have at the lake are all the drought-tolerant native Rudbeckia hirta, below, with a long-horned Melissodes bee.  Biennials, they have seeded themselves around generously since 2003, when I first sowed masses of seed (along with red fescue grass) on the bare soil of the meadows surrounding our new house.

Sometimes they manage to arrange themselves very fetchingly, as with the perfumed Orienpet lily ‘Conca d’Or’, below.

Other times, they hang with the other tough native in my crown, hoary vervain (Verbena stricta).  Both are happy in the driest places on our property where they flower for an exceedingly long time….

…… as you can see from this impromptu bouquet handful featuring the vervain with earlier bloomers, coreopsis, butterfly milkweed and oxeye daisy.

Bumble bees love Verbena stricta.

The other yellow daisy in flower now — hiding at the top of my fairy crown — is grey-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata), also a favourite of bumble bees and small native bees in the meadows.  A vigorous self-seeder, it nevertheless does not always land in soil that is moisture-retentive enough for its needs; in that case, like heliopsis above, it wilts badly. But I love its tall stems bending like willows in the breeze.

Also in my fairy crown is a familiar hardy herb that fell from a pot on my deck long ago and found a happy spot in the garden bed below:  Greek oregano (Origanum vulgare var. hirtum).  

Its tiny flowers are also favoured by small pollinators.

The last component of my midsummer fairy crown is the common umbellifer Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota).  As much as we think of this as an unwanted invasive weed in North America, it was reassuring to see a native potter wasp, Ancistrocerus, making use of its small flowers.

As always, my fairy crown has a lovely second act as a bouquet.

Finally, I made a 2-minute musical video that celebrates these plants that form such an important ecological chapter in my summer on Lake Muskoka.

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Are you new to my fairy crowns?  Here are the links to my previous 15 blogs:
#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees
#12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis in Muskoka
#13 – Ditch Lilies & Serviceberries
#14 – Golden Yarrow & Orange Milkweed
#15 – Echinacea & Clematis
#16 – A Czech-German-All American Blackeyed Susan

Fairy Crown 16 – A Czech-German-All American Blackeyed Susan

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My 16th Fairy Crown for August 1st is a simple affair featuring just one plant:  Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’.  If it looks a little lonely, it’s because its normal garden partners had either already been fairy crown ingredients (hello, purple coneflower) or weren’t quite in flower yet (liatris and perovskia).  But I think it gives a rather regal impression, as if a fairy queen had landed near a midwest cornfield and tried on the local wildflowers for size.

Speaking of American wildflowers, this particular blackeyed susan – or shining coneflower, as it is also known – is possibly the most widely-grown species of any North American taxon, given that it made its way back to our shores via the kind of circuitous route that features botanical discoveries, far-flung horticultural relationships, European plant propagation and the success of the American public relations machine.   

I don’t always look at nomenclature, but since my fairy crown only has one ingredient, let’s explore this one.  Rudbeckia.  Even though it is a North American genus in the Asteraceae family, Carl Linnaeus – who in 1753 in his Species Plantarum assigned binomial names to all known plants — knew of it from the earliest plant explorers to leave Europe and gather new world seeds, cuttings and herbarium specimens. He named the genus after his Swedish mentor and patron, Olof Rudbeck the Younger (1860-1740), professor of botany at Uppsala University whose children he had also tutored. 

In his dedication, Linnaeus wrote:  “So long as the earth shall survive and as each spring shall see it covered with flowers, the Rudbeckia will preserve your glorious name. I have chosen a noble plant in order to recall your merits and the services you have rendered, a tall one to give an idea of your stature, and I wanted it to be one which branched and which flowered and fruited freely, to show that you cultivated not only the sciences but also the humanities. Its rayed flowers will bear witness that you shone among savants like the sun among the stars; its perennial roots will remind us that each year sees you live again through new works. Pride of our gardens, the Rudbeckia will be cultivated throughout Europe and in distant lands where your revered name must long have been known. Accept this plant, not for what it is but for what it will become when it bears your name.”  The “type species” representing the genus is biennial blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta), below, which I wrote about in my “songscape” blog Brown Eyed Girl(s), honouring Van Morrison.  The other two species named by Linnaeus are Rudbeckia laciniata and R. triloba. The remaining 22 species had other authors, with R. fulgida, i.e. orange coneflower being described by the Kew-based English botanist William Aiton (1731-1793).

But back to my crown now; the correct Latin name of the species is Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii. Sullivant’s coneflower, native from New Jersey west to Illinois and south to North Carolina and Missouri.  The taxon rank “var.” indicates a variation of orange coneflower that was either described by or honoured Ohio-based botanist William S. Sullivant (1803-73), below.  He later became a renowned bryologist, or moss expert.  Another popular native variant of orange coneflower is R. fulgida var. deamii.

At some point, seed of Sullivant’s coneflower made its way to Europe and the botanical garden of Austria’s University Graz.  From there, it was distributed to Gebrueder Schütz who grew the plants at his nursery in the Czech Republic. In 1937, Heinrich Hagemann saw the “a glorious stand of the plants” there and brought them back to his boss, Karl Foerster, below, at his nursery in Potsdam, Germany. Foerster was so impressed with the plant’s floriferous nature that he gave it the cultivar name ‘Goldsturm’ (German for “gold storm”).  World War II delayed its introduction to commerce until 1949 and by the 1970s it was being grown widely in Europe and North America.

Erich Braun – Scan von einem Mittelformat-Negativ 6 x 6
Karl Foerster in his garden 28. September 1967

By the late 1970s, the German-born landscape architect Wolfgang Oehme and his partner James Van Sweden would use ‘Goldsturm’ along with ornamental grasses in large masses for their renowned “new American landscapes” inspired by the Great Plains.  It was pictured with them on the cover of their 1997 book, ‘Gardening with Nature’.

Its popularity with American garden centres would result in it being named the 1999 Perennial Plant of the Year by the Perennial Plant Association (PPA).   And many gardeners did what I have done, which is to mix it with purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea).

It is prominent in my front yard pollinator garden in Toronto…

…. where it is only moderately successful at attracting bees, including honey bees, because when echinacea is in flower, it plays second fiddle in the pollinator department.

Unlike biennial blackeyed susans (R. hirta) which flowers on single stems (and is in my next fairy crown!) the stems of  ‘Goldsturm’ clump together and function as a mass of flowers 36 inches (90 cm) in height and 24 inches (60 cm) in width.  It also likes richer soil and more moisture than than R. hirta.

In my garden it starts flowering soon after the echinacea begings to bloom and when the sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ is still green….

…… and continues flowering along with blue perovskia and other plants until the sedum turns red.  

The Hummingbird Photo Studio

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Here’s a little story about hummingbird photography. You see, my deck pots at the cottage here on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto are not intended to be beautiful. If they were, I’d buy some of the spectacular hanging baskets that the garden centres sell, plop them in and just enjoy the colour and texture. That way, I’d have more time to swim, read, write and drink wine. No, instead I use my containers to lure hummingbirds in order to photograph them on favourite flowers for the stock photo library that is my business. That’s why I call the containers my “motley pots”. They don’t match – in fact they’re a bit ugly – but they do the job.

For many years, I’ve been buying “hummingbird groceries” in spring, i.e. food for the ruby-throated hummingbird. I don’t have a sugar feeder, but my lake neighbours do, so my groceries are plants. I’ve learned which species they like (purple lantana, cuphea), which they love (agastaches), and which they prefer above all others (most tender sages).

Their favourite would be Salvia guaranitica ‘Black & Blooms’ (or the similar ‘Black & Blue’). This tender sage is not easy to find in Toronto so I’ve been digging it up in autumn and taking it to the city, where it spends winter in pots in my basement laundry tubs under a window, dreaming of Argentina. I water it occasionally and it sends up growth all winter. In mid-spring, I cut it back to the new sprouts and bring it back to the cottage. Provided it gets watered and no frost occurs, it’s raring to go again by July.

Other hummingbird favourites in my pots this year are Cuphea Funny Face, below, and some Agastache aurantiaca cultivars in pink, apricot and yellow that I seeded myself in the city rather late in spring, so they’re still small but will be good by mid-August. I will leave these to drop seed, because they’re excellent self-seeders, even in pots. And when I was at the garden centre in May, I bought some red petunias (Supertunia Really Red). I didn’t think they’d be good for hummingbirds but as a plant photographer, a new plant purchase is never a waste for me. Surprisingly, the hummingbirds seem to appreciate them too!

And I tucked in a few plants of Verbena bonariensis Meteor Shower for their airy blossoms which the bumble bees adore, but it’s not a great hummingbird plant. Here it is with a compact form of S. guaranitica, Bodacious Rhythm & Blues that I bought this spring at the Toronto Botanical Garden’s plant sale.

But the big score this summer are my plants of the biennial standing cypress, Ipomopsis rubra (so-called because its ferny leaves resemble those of cypress trees). I had photographed this plant, a native of the U.S. in the alpine garden at the Montreal Botanical Garden, below, so I knew I could grow it.

But seed I’d purchased from a seedhouse did not germinate; it took fresh seed donated by my friend, seed maven Kristl Walek in Brockville, Ontario to do the trick. I sowed the seed in 2020, and last summer (2021) there were lots of little ferny rosettes here and there in my sandy, granitic soil. Kristl warned me they’re very hard to transplant when bigger, so I dug up a few of the small rosettes and carefully put them in 6-inch pots filled with gravelly soil, below. In late autumn before the ground froze, I dug a hole behind the cottage and placed the pots inside, surrounding them with pine needles and mulching the tops with pine needles, too. We had a cold, cold winter (it even killed the spongy/gypsy moth eggs) but lots of snow cover – perfect for insulating the plants.

This spring after the soil thawed, I dug up the pots and very carefully transplanted the little plants into my deck pots in soil amended with sand and gravel. I watered them in and away they went. This morning, the tallest is 54 inches high and 4 inches wide, much bigger than those in the dry meadows. I call them my Dr. Seuss plants. I even staked them so they wouldn’t break in our summer storms!

And the hummingbird loves them! Yesterday, I managed to do some still photos with my camera…..

….. but I wanted a little video too. After sitting for more than an hour and having the hummingbird fly in, spot me, then fly away, I decided to set up my camera on a tripod. Then I went in and made coffee. I went outside periodically and turned off the video and started a new one. Finally, five videos in, I spotted her from the kitchen. I went to the door with my cell phone to watch and after drinking her fill of Ipomopsis, she moved on to the red petunias and cuphea. I videotaped that part with my phone! (I’ll get closer with my zoom lens later this summer.)

The camera video of the standing cypress isn’t spectacular, but it will do. (I will increase the frames-per-second in the settings for future videos). I actually saved it first as a high-res movie, then as a smaller computer-resolution video. The original had the happy screams of the kids across the bay swimming and also a few wind gusts. In the second, I ditched the kids and the wind and added some music by TRG Banks. It’s not perfect — I’m a photographer, not a videographer — but it’s a good start!

All in all, a good morning in the hummingbird studio. Oh, and here’s an older video of my hummingbirds from previous years!

Fairy Crown #15-Echinacea & Clematis

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It’s summertime in the city! The days are warm and the garden is abuzz with insects. My 15th fairy crown for July 18th features the romantic hues of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), Clematis viticella ‘Polish Spirit’, drumstick alliums (Allium sphaerocephalon), anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) and pink Veronica longifolia.

If you say you’re designing a garden for pollinators in the northeast and you haven’t included purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)….

….. your bees and butterflies are missing out on a lot of good pollen and nectar. Native to the mid-central United States, it is easily grown in well-drained, adequately moist soil in full sun.

The insects are attracted to the tiny, yellow disc flowers in the central cone, which open sequentially from outside in over a long period in July-August.

In my long career photographing flora, purple coneflower has always been dependable for capturing bumble bees, because they tend to move slowly across the cone. Bumble bees, honey bees and butterflies with long tongues are especially drawn to purple coneflower. Sometimes I’ll find two or three bumble bees sharing the cone, occasionally with a butterfly

In fact, my business card from the 1990s features Bombus impatiens, the common eastern bumble bee, patiently working the tiny flowers. But not all coneflowers are alike: those with doubled petals or hybrids with the less hardy, yellow-flowered E. paradoxa that produce the apricot, orange and red flowers are not nearly as attractive to pollinators. Stick with the straight species, or with older cultivars like ‘Magnus’ and ‘Rubinstern’ (Ruby Star), both 3-4 feet (90-120 cm) tall.

If purple coneflower likes your garden, it will spread easily… perhaps a little too easily, but seedlings are easy to remove.

You should know, however, that once the bees have finished pollinating the flowers, the nutritious seeds are food for hungry goldfinches in autumn. I have even filmed a downy woodpecker hammering on an echinacea to get at the seeds. That’s why I never cut down my purple coneflowers until late winter and little seedlings everywhere are the result. In my front garden, that hasn’t been a problem, since other perennials and shrubs are well-established, but thinning out the population periodically is necessary. 

Here’s a little video I made a few years ago, illustrating why it’s important not to deadhead your purple coneflowers.

I love anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) for its long-lasting, pale-lavender flower spikes….

…..and its superb appeal to butterflies and bees, especially bumble bees. Ultra-hardy and native to much of the north-central U.S. and southern Canada, it is a short-lived perennial but will usually self-seed.

Tucked into my crown are a few dark-mauve drumstick alliums (Allium sphaerocephalon). Native to the UK, southern Europe and north Africa, their egg-shaped inflorescences add a punctuation note to my July pollinator garden, where they attract butterflies and bees.

Over the decades, I’ve watched many clematis vines come and go in my garden, especially the large-flowered hybrids which can develop clematis wilt, leading to their demise. The plants I grow need to be fairly self-reliant and that isn’t always the case with clematis, which also have varied pruning needs according to their flowering type. But among the survivors is a favorite, Clematis viticella ‘Polish Spirit’. Bred in Warsaw in 1984 by the Jesuit priest Stefan Franczak, its name honors the resilient spirit of the Polish people following World War II. 

Masses of velvety, purple flowers appear on twining 8-foot (2.4 m) vines in July and August. My plant is trained on a metal obelisk and flowers appear all the way to the top, where they spill through a reproduction sphere armillary or astrolabe. Like all clematis that flower on new growth (Group C), Clematis viticella and its cultivars should be pruned back hard to just above the third set of plump buds in early spring.

With such a profusion, I never mind cutting a few clematis stems for small nosegays.

Although it doesn’t play a big role in my garden, there are always a few veronicas here and there. Drought-tolerant, low-maintenance and popular with bees, they are durable plants for early summer and make beautiful cut flowers. In my crown is a pale pink sport of V. longifolia ‘Eveline’ that seeded itself, but division of veronicas is a more reliable means of propagation.