Park Seed Garden Journal

You are certainly welcome to spend the rest of your life mulching.  I love the look of freshly-spread mulch, and it is satisfying work.  However, it can also be an exercise in deep frustration, especially if your area is prone to heavy, sudden rain or if you have animals that like to redistribute your mulch.  That level of upkeep is a big part of why I try to avoid having more mulch than is necessary, especially in areas in which it is more difficult to spread and keep mulch.  My preferred alternative, of course, is ground cover perennials. 

Ground covers have a lot of advantages.  The most obvious is beauty, of course.  A swath of foliage or flowers can create a stunning effect.  It is the much lower maintenance that we are less likely to consider when we’re thinking of planting ground cover.  They help to maintain soil and prevent erosion, and are much easier to grow on hills than grass (they usually require less water, too).  Ground covers can also be planted around larger plants to help keep the soil cool, meaning less evaporation and less watering.

There are ground cover perennials available for almost any purpose.  Check out our collection of sun-loving ground covers, such as Blue Star Creeper or Wild Sweet William, as well as our ground covers for shade.

I’m a huge believer in how gardening can make life better for many people, especially for those who don’t have such easy access to wilder landscapes.  This is why it warms my heart so much to see that more and more people in American cities are growing their own little bits of nature.  Rooftop and window gardening are part of this, and are taking off for a variety of reasons.  Roofscaping or "Green Roofs" are also becoming a real part of the cityscape in many places, which is great for residents, the infrastructure, and the environment. 

Even more encouraging, though, is how community gardens are popping up all over the place.  Some of these are simply vegetable gardens that residents put in on vacant lots that would otherwise be going to waste.  Many are established by the city.  Some of the most successful, though, come from philanthropists.  Nonprofits such as Urban Farming have found that getting the community to band together to grow things helps out in many ways, both expected and not.  Many of these gardens are unfenced and encourage locals to simply come and take what they need.  They have found that greed really hasn’t been a problem, and it helps families to eat a much healthier diet in areas where affordable fresh produce is scarce.  It brings the community together and beautifies their surroundings.  It gives businesses more opportunity to reach out to the community, which many are taking great advantage of.  In Detroit, where Urban Farming started, they have found that crime is dropping in neighborhoods that have these gardens.  It is extremely encouraging to see how, by working together with nature, we can really make a difference in the world around us.

As hybridization techniques get more advanced every year, it seems that we are constantly deluged with new varieties of nearly every plant in the garden.  In this context, it seems difficult to imagine that not that long ago much of what is relatively commonplace today was considered impossible.  Such is the case with the Itoh Peonies.  Because of their different flowering times and distant relationship within the genus, interbreeding Tree Peonies and Herbaceous Peonies was thought impossible until 1948, when Japanese breeder Toichi Itoh did it.  It is said that he had tried tens of thousands of crosses before succeeding.  Now these Intersectional Peonies (so called because they are between the two major Peony sections, or groups) are commonly called Itoh Peonies in his honor.

Sadly, Itoh passed away before seeing any of his creations bloom.  He almost certainly would have been very pleased with the results, though.  Itoh hybrids are just as he'd hoped, having the best characteristics of both herbaceous and tree peonies.  They are vigorous, easy to grow, and very long-lived.  They are relatively low plants, rarely growing taller than 45 inches, but they feature the large blooms of tree peonies held up on sturdy stems.  The flowers of Itohs are often in more vibrant colors even than the plants from which they are bred.

Intersectional Peonies are still rather uncommon in gardens.  Because they are difficult to breed and perform exceptionally, they are highly sought-after in many gardening communities, and in many cases cost hundreds of dollars.  We are extremely pleased to have a supply of Itoh hybrids available from Park Seed this fall, including the Itoh Peony 'First Arrival,' which is more tolerant of heat than most other peonies, and the Peony Kopper Kettle, which features blooms of a stunning coppery tone.

Purple Coneflowers are some of the best flowering perennials out there.  They bring in the pollinators and butterflies all summer, and birds love the seeds come autumn.  Those flowers come heavily, too, and don’t require a lot of effort on your part to keep them coming.  The biggest downsides that I find with Echinacea is that they very often tend to grow a little over-sized and get rangy and unkempt-seeming. 

That’s why the new Echinacea ‘Meringue’ impresses me so much.  Sure, the huge number of blooms is marvelous, and they’re gorgeous and interesting pom-poms, but it’s the compact, easily controlled habit that really takes it for me.  These plants only get to around 15 to 18 inches high and wide, so they won’t spread out like crazy.  It also features more flower stems, which creates a much denser, fuller look. 

And those flowers really are quite impressive.  They open as flat daisies, and as they mature the center cone grows upward and develops short, puffy petals that give it that gumdrop look.  These cheerful little flowers are tough, too.  The shorter stems are even sturdier than other Echinacea, which helps them to hold up well in weather or in a vase.  Plus, this heavy-flowering Coneflower will only produce more blooms the more you cut for inside!  So, if you’re looking for loads of flowers from a tidy, low-maintenance plant, give ‘Meringue’ a try.

We are in the midst of yet another food safety scare.  This time it is a batch of tomatoes somewhere that has gotten tainted.  We hear about these events more and more often.  Part of this is simply that these things are getting more news coverage than they once did.  The bigger reason, though, is that our food distribution system is increasingly centralized, with foodstuffs coming in from all over the country and world.  It is difficult in such a complex system to figure out where anything is coming from or going to.  In some ways this is good: it helps to keep food costs down and increases the availability of produce outside of the normal season.  It is also partly bad, though, as it means that your food is less fresh and requires more energy to get to you.

As this system becomes bigger and bigger, more and more complicated, the benefits of growing your own vegetables when you can become greater and greater.  If you control your food supply, you control your food safety.  You can also be sure that your food is truly grown organically (and even use certified organic seeds), or at least know exactly what pesticides and how much are being used on your food.  You’re also decreasing your impact on our delicate environment by reducing the amount of energy used to get your food to you (driving a tomato across the country to you vs. a walk to the garden?  No contest).  Plus, food grown in your garden is more satisfying, healthier, and far, far tastier than anything you could buy.  Even buying locally grown produce at the farmer’s market (a much better choice than the grocery store) doesn’t have as much of these benefits as does your very own back yard (or front yard, or side yard, or windowsill, or rooftop, or fire escape, or. . . .). 

So why mention this now, at not exactly the best time for starting a vegetable garden?  Well, it’s partly because I’ve had killer tomatoes and energy costs on my mind.  But also it’s because, if you’re going to start a new veggie garden come Spring, if you start thinking about it now, it will all go much more smoothly when you do start actually working on it.  Plus, it’s almost always a good thing to start mentally planning garden changes as close to in context as you can.  As you spend your summer weekends out in the yard, grilling, playing with the kids, or just enjoying an evening glass of wine, look around and start thinking about such things as light conditions and how to most easily get water to your plants.  I find that the more I plan things in my head, the more excited I get about them, and thus I’m more likely to actually put in the work and reap the benefits.  Plus, the time to get your veggie garden may be coming sooner than you think.  A lot of the preparations in the garden can be started once the weather cools down.  If you clean up your garden in preparation for incoming veggie plants in fall, you’ll have a nicer garden to look at all winter and a much easier job come spring.  The time to order seeds, too, seems to sneak up on me every year, so I like to start getting an idea of what I’ll want as early as possible.