The Circle

One of my favorite gardens, really isn't mine, at least the ground isn't. We live on a short cul-de-sac, and we were the first house built on the street. There was a grassy circle with a fireplug in the middle of it, in the center of the cul-de-sac. Once I got interested (obsessed) with gardening, I quickly started running out of room in my own yard for new beds. Over time, I started planting in the circle. The soil was awful, clay and dry as a bone with full sun. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on plants for a garden that wasn’t really mine, so I started experimenting with buying inexpensive plants and seeds and seeing what would survive in such conditions.
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I have killed a lot of plants in this bed over the years. Gaillardia ‘Goblin’ actually grew for several years in the circle but as it is relatively short lived, it did eventually start dying out. I didn’t replace it because I always found it a pain to deadhead. Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’ did relatively well but was also very tedious to deadhead, so as it passed on, I moved onto other plants. Veronica ‘Sunny Border Blue’ a 1993 Perennial Plant of the Year winner, always got mildew so badly, I eventually pulled it out. I tried a couple of Campanulas; ‘Superba’, Chettle Charm and ‘Blue Clips’. The ‘Superba’ would look really ratty after blooming and the low growing Campanulas were again hard to deadhead. I had several Coreopsis grandiflora selections ‘Early Sunrise’ and others but they got mildew and tended to die out.

So what have I grown that has worked? I have many reseeders, which I grew from seed that have been great plants. Probably the #1 plant, at least in the spring is Linum lewisii, Blue Flax. The bed is a sea of blue in the spring as the flax has reseeded all through out the bed. After a few months, I simply shear the plants back in half to get rid of the seed heads and I still get sporadic rebloom during the summer. Oenothera missouriensis, Evening Primrose is another great plant that spills over the edge of the circle onto the pavement.(Click on the photo of the circle at the top of this post, to see it as the yellow blooming plants around the edges.) It forms these ridiculously huge seed pods and I wouldn’t really want it in the beds in my yard but it is great plant for the circle. Nigella reseeds all over but I have a love, hate relationship with it. Lovely when it blooms, but then the whole plant dies and has to be pulled out. Verbena bonariensis is a graceful, tall plant but it seeds around like crazy and I usually try and remove as many of the plants as I can in the fall to cut down on its world domination. It's seen in the picture above in the foreground. And even though it is tall, it can be used in the front of beds as it is called a see-thru type plant. Aquilegia ‘Biedermeyer’, Columbine has done well in the circle and reseeds well and there are lots of different colors that come and go from year to year.

Another pretty prolific reseeder is Asclepias tuberosa, Butterfly weed. I didn't really know that about the plant before I grew it, but I love the orange color and other than trying to keep up with removing the seed heads to help it rebloom, it is pretty carefree. To be continued....