Dirt Therapy

It took me a while to learn about the advantages of fall planting. Everybody plants in the spring, right? As consumers, especially in the mainstream outlets, like Lowes and Home Depot, fall gardening is touched upon briefly before their inventories are shoved aside to make way for Christmas decorations. The rush of excitement as spring approaches among winter weary gardeners is just not as powerful as the fall season when we are led to believe that our gardens are going into sleep mode. In the South especially, fall planting (of shrubs, trees and perennials) can be very beneficial. The reasoning behind this is that their roots get a head start during the fall and winter months before active growth in the spring begins. As our growing season seems to be increasingly hotter and dryer, the plants don't have to work as much to gain a stronghold. Southern gardeners rarely have to deal with ground heaving and other problems that northern gardeners have so, as long as you can keep critter...

Bloom Day (started by Carol at May Dreams Gardens ) is an invitation for garden bloggers to show what is blooming in their gardens on the 15th of each month. The fall color seems to be sadly lacking this year but maybe it is still just too early. We are still dry, dry, dry. I didn't get a chance to photograph all the blooms in my garden but here is what I have for this month... The roses have a final fling in the fall. The first one is the colorful David Austin rose "Pat Austin" "Gartendirektor Otto Linne" is a wonderful shrub rose This little miniature came from our first garden, almost fifteen years ago. It is called "Rise-N-Shine" This is a hybrid musk rose called "Prosperity" You can always depend on coleus for a strong splash of color The sasanqua camellias are just beginning to bloom. This one is "Hana Jiman" I love Mexican Bush Sage And what would fall be without chrysanthemums?

One of my dreams is to visit the great gardens in England, Italy and France but for now I will have to be an armchair traveler and see these beautiful places in the pages of books. I just finished a wonderful book about a garden that I was not previously familiar with. La Mortella, on a little island called Ischia in the Bay of Naples, is an amazing garden first begun in the 1950s by Susana Walton, the young wife of English composer Sir William Walton. I don't know a great deal about music and I'm embarrassed to say that I had never heard of Sir William either. He died in 1983 and Lady Walton still lives and gardens at La Mortella today. I recently saw a little article in one of my gardening magazines ( Horticulture maybe?) with a profile of her and it mentioned her book, published in 2003, which is a chronicle of their creation. Sir William Walton was smitten with the young Susana when he met her in her home town of Buenos Aires when he was there on a tour. He was 46...

One of my favorite fall plants is Pineapple Sage ( Salvia elegans ). In late September and early October it puts on quite a show with it's ruby red tubular spikes. The hummingbirds, soon to depart, love it and I'm sure they appreciate this last minute nectar source as most other plants are fading away. The fragrance, released when you crush a leaf, is indeed just like crushed pineapple. It needs sun to flower nicely and will form a nice 3'x 3' clump. It has an airy, open-branched habit and will need watering during dry spells. It will wilt when deprived of water but will quickly bounce back after watering. I've grown Pineapple Sage just about every year that I've been gardening. I couldn't find it one year at any of the nurseries and I really missed it that fall. It is not reliably hardy in north Alabama and I only recall one year when it returned after a mild winter. If I were more frugal and had more patience, I would try to root pieces for next year. I...

About a month ago, I was writing about Lycoris squamigera (better known as "Naked Ladies") and now her cousins, Lycoris radiata (also known as Red Spider Lily or Hurricane Lily) is sprinkling the neighborhoods with their bright red flowers. Grown from bulbs, red spider lilies seem to thrive on neglect and the prettiest ones are usually in the poorest soils. Do you have hard red clay? No problems! They thrive in it. The bulbs are hard to find in nurseries and most people get them from friends and trade lists. They multiply rapidly regardless of drought. Like the Naked Ladies, these plants grow in the same manner, appearing out of nowhere in early fall and blooming with no foliage. The foliage appears after the bloom and grows throughout the winter. Shade is not a problem for these bulbs as long as they are planted under deciduous trees because they will get the winter sun to develop the nutrients for next fall's bloom. Although they are usually seen sprinkled here and the...