by Emily Stetson
October has always been a month of change for me. It was October when I stepped off a plane for my first glimpse of Europe, on an October day four years later I got married, and in the wee hours of yet another October morning I gave birth to my daughter. So it seems fitting that this October I'm trying out a new technique in my garden and contemplating some new plantings.
I'm putting in fall potatoes for the first time this year. Since the first crop up in past years has always been the volunteers from spuds I'd missed when harvesting the season before, I figure an intentionally planted crop might work just as well here on the warmer edge of zone 4. The whole tubers -- a variety each of a red, gold, blue and white -- are scheduled to arrive any day now. I'll plant them six to eight inches deep in a raised bed that housed spinach in spring and then beans all summer, and cover them with about a foot of straw mulch. In early spring I'll remove the mulch, and if I'm lucky, I'll be eating new potatoes before summer officially arrives.
And I'm thinking about flowers now, too, so that next year I can have more color in my fall garden. After touring some incredible gardens in Connecticut at the annual Perennial Plant Association meeting in Farmington last August, I've decided it's high time I concentrate more on my perennials. All of the new cultivars -- or in some cases, old plants viewed in a new light -- discussed and shown in the meeting's "New Plant Forum" sounded interesting, but three in particular caught my eye.
They were all part of a grouping by garden designer Lynden B. Miller, director of the Conservatory Garden in New York's Central Park, planted to add color to a full-sun border long after the last blooms are gone. All are hardy to Miller's Connecticut garden.
Sedum x 'Vera Jameson' was first discovered as a chance seedling between the low-growing Sedum 'Ruby Glow' and the taller S. maximum 'Atropurpureum.' It has the same habit of 'Ruby Glow,' making it best for the front of a border, but doesn't tend to part in the middle as the former cultivar does. Its calling card, though, is its purple foliage -- "it's really quite sensational," notes Miller. Dark pink flowers bloom from August through September.
Asteromoea mongolica, which also goes by the name Kalimeris pinnatifida, is a relatively new cultivar in the nursery business, but it's been grown in several private gardens for years. It has very airy, pale green leaves that are only about 1/4-inch long and tiny, semi-double white daisies on a bushy plant that blooms from mid-July to October in New England. At 3 1/2-feet-tall, it's a middle of the border plant. After the first frost, the foliage turns a beautiful honey color, lasting into December. "Because it's a composite, it does increase, but it's not invasive," Miller says. Asteromoea makes a good companion to sedums or phlox.
The last plant in this particular border design was Rudbeckia nitida 'Herbstsonne,' a new German introduction that translates as 'Autumn Sun.' Like other black-eyed Susans, it has pale yellow flowers, but the centers are pale green, rather than black. It reaches eight to 10 feet tall, which means it will require some staking, and blooms from August through September. Don't cut it down after the flowers go, though: the blond, thimble-like seedheads will color the garden all through winter, much like an ornamental grass. By the way, if you're near New York City and would like to see the grouping "in situ," you can visit the Conservatory Garden in Central Park.
This time next year, though, I hope to be looking out on a colorful array of fall textures well into December in my own garden.
Copyright NGA
Reprinted with permission HouseNet, Inc.
New Beginnings, New Plants