Perennial Chatter from Wisconsin

A Trip To Maryland

In early June I made a trip to Maryland to see friends, gardens, and to attend the Celebration of Life for Sonja Behnke Festerling.  My wife and I moved to Wisconsin a year and a half ago after five years in Dallas and 35 years in Maryland.  (Wisconsin; that state between Chicago and Minneapolis; Cheese and Packers?). This moved us close to family but far from friends, and I thought I had better get back to Maryland while people still missed me, or at least didn’t run when they saw me coming.

 

We had a cool, wet spring in Middleton up until May, at which time it got sunny and dry, with daytime temperatures higher than DC, which is unusual.  With little rain for the last six weeks, the lawn is turning an August golden color in June. We have had some of the Canadian forest fire smoke, but not as thick as it was the week that I was in Maryland.

 

Having lost the desire to drive in the heavy, miserable DC area traffic, I relied on friends and the Metro to get me around.  Our former home was in Bethesda, north of the Beltway, and my friend Nancy and I did a slow drive past to see what the gardens looked like after two springs without my care. I was pleased that the new owners had: a) not ripped the house down and rebuilt; and b) not bulldozed the gardens and planted grass. In fact, it looked well-maintained and weed free.  So often gardens die when the gardener moves on, so I was pleased that my garden continues to give pleasure to the new owners.

Visiting Gardens And Friends

I spent some time in the private garden of Alfred Millard, former President of Behnke Nurseries. He has a restful shade garden–restful enough that a pair of red-shouldered hawks are nesting in one of his old oak trees.  The adult-sized baby was nearly ready to fly, hopping around in the branches and entertaining the local crows and mockingbirds which were united in a chorus of “Jump! Jump!”

 

I also got to the Mall to see the gardens at the Smithsonian. I spent most of my time at the National Museum of American History, where former Behnke employee Alex Dencker is Horticulturist. Having volunteered with Alex as a garden-helper at Air and Space and American History before Covid shut everything down, it was exciting to see the changes Alex and the other Horticulturists are making at the Smithsonian gardens. A big challenge for them is the remodeling/repairs at the various museums (like Air and Space), which results in entire gardens disappearing.

Middleton, Wisconsin Garden

Meanwhile, back here in Middleton my own gardens are taking shape. I seldom see deer, but rabbits are a real nuisance, and have restricted my plant selections. I have taken to putting wire fencing around the new plants so they can get established. Rabbits seem to like plants fresh from the garden center, I think because they are juicy and high in nutrition, having had a steady regimen of fertilizing. So, they don’t touch the wild Oxeye Daisies, but ate two newly-planted Shasta Daisies down to the ground. Same with the annual Euphorbia “Diamond Frost,” Spiderwort (Tradescantia), Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida), and False Indigo (Baptisia). They are even browsing Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) which “everyone knows” that only Monarch Butterfly caterpillars crave. Some plants, like bush Serviceberry (Amelanchier) and Black Chokeberry (Aronia) will probably always have their nether regions girdled in hardware cloth. The others might be okay once they make it through the first season.  Trial and Error.

Wildlife in Middleton

On the bright side, we have the occasional wild turkey (which are plentiful in town), and since I don’t plant anything from seed, they haven’t been an issue. And: a pair of sandhill cranes.  The cranes are large, the size of great blue herons. They come into the yard, preen, sit in the shade, and dig around for seeds or grubs. This is like free aeration for the lawn.  We have ground level windows, and one of the cranes taps at his reflection in the glass.  They are wary of me but not afraid, and I can work in the garden without disturbing them. They have a loud, distinctive call, that can be heard from blocks away.  They also stare at two large decorative brass cranes, occasionally leaping up with wings extended, which I think may be an invitation to date.

Middleton, Wisconsin Garden Centers

I have six garden centers that I visit. One, Fitchburg Farms, has an annual selection rivaling Behnke’s, with well-maintained plants. No one has a perennial selection that comes close to what we had at Behnke’s. Maybe 5% of what we stocked at our Beltsville garden center.  None of them post any sort of signage/care information, so I expect that it’s a challenge for people to select perennials. Since labels in the pots are the same all over the country, at Behnke’s we felt that if we produced our own care signs to be placed in our displays, that we could tailor them for the mid-Atlantic region and add some of our own observations.  That worked well until we got busy, when actually getting the signs up in the displays proved a challenge.  It was expensive to write, print and post the signs but it was one of the things that brought customers to our store.

 

What can’t I find? How about a standard, pink-flowered Purple Coneflower (Echinacea)? Plenty of golds and reds.  Dwarf Turtlehead (Chelone ‘Tiny Tortuga.’) Phlox paniculata ‘Jeana.’ Maybe as we get further into the summer season these summer-bloomers will appear for sale.

Larry’s Recommendations

Recommendations based on my experience here: native ornamental grass Panicum virgatum ‘Northwind,’ which in its second year is still a tight clump and remains upright even going into winter. Penstemon digitalis (Beardtongue) and the hybrid Penstemon ‘Dark Towers.’  They maintain foliage above ground in the winter here, which is unusual, and the ‘Dark Towers’ foliage is red. Rabbits for the most part left it alone even in the depths of winter.  A downside for ‘Dark Towers’ is a heavy infestation of rust fungus on the foliage, but it hasn’t affected the outstanding flower display.  Penstemon digitalis is native to most of the central and eastern United States and is used a lot here in prairie-style plantings.

 

Another winner is Pale Coneflower, Echinacea pallida, native to much of the eastern USA. Alex has a nice planting of it at the National Museum of American History, and it does well here in median strips and road-shoulder prairie plantings. It’s graceful and subtle. I planted six of those this spring.

 

Allium—Ornamental Onion. Cultivar ‘Millennium,’ which was the Perennial Plant Association Perennial of the Year in 2018. I bought one last spring, divided it in thirds. It flowered nicely and each clump has grown impressively for this season and is in bud.  My rabbits don’t like Allium.  I planted the native Nodding Onion, Allium cernuum, this spring to thumb my nose at them.

 

The P.P.A. is a professional trade group, and they have designated a Plant of the Year since 1991.  Here’s a complete list with photos, from the Walters Gardens website.  https://www.waltersgardens.com/photo_essay.php?ID=95  Walters is a wholesale breeder and grower of starter plants for commercial perennial nurseries, located in Michigan. Michigan is on the east side of Lake Michigan from Wisconsin. We send a lot of our snow there each winter.  Oh, and part of it is attached to Wisconsin on the north; can’t forget about the Yoopers.

 

I hope you all are having a most excellent summer and are keeping busy planting perennials.