Ed. — From the Sunday, Nov. 5, print edition.
VIRGINIA BEACH — As the growing season winds to a close, many people are taking advantage of our sun-drenched fall days to get in some last minute gardening. I’ve added a few more flowers to my perennial garden. I have also, regretfully, been dealing with past mistakes.
First, I was thrilled to find some native bleeding heart, or dicentra eximia, at Southern Branch Nursery in Chesapeake. Of all the spring ephemerals, I love this plant, with its feathery leaves and delicate pink blossoms. The best. I’ve resisted buying the cultivated species, and I was ecstatic to find the native variety.
Bleeding heart is a very early bloomer and produces clusters of heart-shaped pink and white flowers from late winter through mid or late spring. It dislikes heat and the foliage can die back to the ground in summer but re-emerge in the fall or next spring. It prefers shade or partial shade, and it’s a great way to brighten up dark, shady corners on late February days.
For fall blooms, I bought lobelia siphilitica, or great blue lobelia, sometimes called blue cardinal flower. It’s a spiky plant that can grow to about three feet. It produces lavender-blue blooms in late summer and fall and prefers rich soil but tolerates some moisture. A good choice for Virginia Beach.
While the blooms are lovely, the best thing about this native plant is that it provides nectar for bees, hummingbirds and butterflies. That’s particularly crucial during the fall migration season. When it’s planted with other late-blooming natives, including goldenrod, asters and black-eyed Susans, it makes a great addition to a showy, very colorful fall garden.
So hopefully both my spring and fall garden will be enhanced next year by new additions, but I’d also like to share a couple of plants you might want to avoid. First and foremost is four o’clock. If anyone ever offers you some volunteer four o’clocks, turn and run the other way.
Sometimes called the marvel of Peru or mirabilis jalapa, the four o’clock is native to South America but seems to love Virginia Beach. It grows like no weed I know. It produces red blooms that only open at about four or five o’clock in the afternoon. It’s easy to love on first sight, but it won’t be long before it may make you crazy. It spreads through tuberous roots and seeds, and young plants can spring up overnight.
I’ve cleared seedlings in an afternoon only to find more in the same spot the next morning. The large, tough roots are almost impossible to dig out once established. Next summer, I swear I will get it all.
Another plant that becomes a nuisance is the day lily, which has become trendy in the last several years. I have to admit that some cultivars are beautiful, but you might want to think long and hard before you get any. Cat owners, beware. They are toxic to cats, and they’re also very aggressive and difficult to remove once established.
A neighbor recently asked me for advice on getting rid of an irksome patch of lilies planted in his yard by a previous owner. I’m afraid I didn’t have good answers for him. He’d cut them back to the ground and tried digging them out, but that proved to be futile. They seemingly popped up faster than he could dig them out.
I suggested trying to cover the area in a heavy cardboard, then placing topsoil and mulch over the cardboard. This smothers the roots and eventually kills the plant, but, like the digging, it’s labor-intensive, and topsoil can become expensive. It’s also possible to try a plastic covering, but that can also be costly and unsightly. If an area can be mowed and mulched repeatedly, the plants get discouraged and give up. But there are no perfect solutions. Like four o’clocks, day lilies keep reappearing.
There are no quick fixes for some challenges, but I hope my neighbor can be rid of the day lilies. I hope I can defeat those pesky four o’clocks and have an enhanced fall wildflower garden bloom instead.
The author is a contributor to The Independent News. Her journalism has also appeared in The Virginian-Pilot.
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