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September Serenity

The nursery is bustling with activity this month, with deliveries and pick-ups keeping our loading area packed nearly every moment of the work day, perennials happily pushing their final blooms for the year and pollinators eagerly lapping up their bounties, and deciduous woodies cloaking themselves in their annual fall couture collection of burgundy, maroon, bronze, umber, sienna, crimson, and saffron hues. This is the time when the blues, indigos, and ultraviolets of flowering perennials emerge in full force, contrasting hypnotically against the golden glow of the late afternoon autumn sun.

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Tenacious Tupelo

Tromping through the woods surrounding Pleasant Run the other day, searching for pliable branches and vines for an ongoing exposition structure, I happened to look up towards the canopy and notice twinges of crimson amongst golden yellows and lively greens, glaucous blue jewels dangling surreptitiously below. “Nyssa!”, I proudly thought to myself, admiring its early fall color from the damp forest floor. Noticing its surrounding companions – Acer rubrum, Ilex verticillata, Liquidambar styraciflua – and the moist, heavily saturated, and admittedly iron-riddled soil hosting them, the realization of our humble black tupelo’s true hardiness came to light.

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Sensational Seven-Son Flower

Flowering shrubs and trees in early autumn can be hard to come by, especially ones that boast multiple seasons of interest when not in flower. Heptacodium miconoides is objectively quite the opposite: foliage perfectly designed for providing shade on hot summer days acts as the backdrop for late summer flower buds that emerge chartreuse-tinged-ivory, unfurling to fragrant pollinator magnets in September, transforming to become a lipstick red “second bloom” in mid-autumn, and finally culminating in a fantastical display of exfoliating bark that can sometimes be seen whispering a delicate, papery song in brisk winter breezes. While winter is thankfully still a ways away, let’s bask in the ornamental oddity that is the twice-blooming floral structure of seven-son flower and the pollinators that so graciously enjoy its bounty.

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Summer's Last Symphony

We’re often asked what’s blooming in the heat of the moment, especially at odd times of the year where it often seems the landscape is lacking in color variety. The end of August to the beginning of September can be a confounding time for the uninitiated, those unfamiliar with the bounty of warm jewel tones found in an array of both native and ornamental plant selections. Truthfully, some of these perennials benefit from a Chelsea chop mid-summer to encourage a flush of fall blooms, but that’s not to say that late summer color isn’t possible, or that every plant requires this seasonal maintenance - you just need to know where to look.

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