Denny’s Gardening Corner

BY DENNY WIGGERS

Hello fellow gardeners and hopeful gardener wanna be’s! I’m Denny and I hope to inspire, chat and glorify the great outdoors with garden and landscaping ideas for you and your world! I hope to pass on bits of gardening info and newsie bits that concern you and Mother Earth. So let’s talk about late season color.

As I write this, I notice the nights are getting shorter and happily we are able to open the windows at night and feel a nice cool breeze. Before I mention the dreaded four letter word…Let’s still enjoy the summer!

Rockland county’s summer weather has been crazy and reeking havoc in all of our gardens. The annuals are getting leggy, plants are getting burned by the sun and getting soggy roots. It’s been either the Mojave desert heat or the Amazon jungle rain. Which leads me to urge you to getting some color out in your yard for the last hurrah of summer and fall time so that you can let nature do it’s thing for the future years to come.

FLOWERING PERENNIALS! Now is a great time to plant them. Enjoy them now and year after year they will come back and greet you like an old friend. A few of my favorites are listed below but go to the garden center and seek out more! A bit of an investment from the pocket but it will also be an investment to your home.

Echinacea- also known as the cone flower because of it’s conical center. Daisy like petals and the varieties are endless as also the colors. Warm Summer and Paradiso are my faves but the colors are dazzling!
Dianthus- A low growing flower (6-7 inches high and spreads to 12-14 inches wide) that looks like a flat carnation and is as hardy. Solids colors to three make this a wonderful border plant.
Golden Rod / Solidago- Bright yellow blossoms on fern like stems make this perennial an easy to grow flower. Splashes of this here and there will accentuate any area you have.
Asters- Another fall favorite! colors galore with a daisy look but thinner petals. Attracts lots of butterflies.Team this up with Lacy Frill Lavender- A White blossom fragrant lavender to scent up your garden.
Russian Sage- A cloud of lavender blue blossoms on green grey stems blowing in the wind. 12-18 inches in height they are a standout for any border or a container. Pair it up with a Moonbeam Coreopsis (yellow) and the results are striking!

These are only a few but there are hundreds of perennials out there for you to choose from. But the idea of having more color and less work sounds good to me!

See you next time around the potting bench and if you have any comments, by all means drop a line here at the Rockland County Times c/o Denny Wiggers or [email protected] or visit www.dennywiggersgardenscapes.com.

  gardening, mother earth, rockland gardening, rockland summer