Summer Bulbs Are Blooming: DAHLIA, LIATRIS, CROCOSMIA

Welcome to the meadow house. We have not mowed in a long while Unfortunately, so our grass is a little hairy down here We our mowers broken and we're waiting for a part. So we just had to deal with it But it's been hot and all of a sudden this feels like the first day of fall doesn't it really does Anyway, I thought we'd give you an update not on the cottage garden in general, but on some of those Spring-planted bulbs that we were planting for summer blooms and we don't always get a chance to show the updates and Some of them are just starting to bloom now. Some of them are a little bit past bloom You could see that I had the single dahlias with the dark leaves Wow I mean how gorgeous are these just starting to come up and just starting to bloom and Again, these are very short dahlias So not the tall ones that I've planted along the fence line, which I'll show you shortly I also just want to point out this Liatris right here, which is a liatris microcephala and you'll be seeing some of the taller versions. I Absolutely adore this plant for those of you who have small gardens This is such a lovely plant and butterflies and little flies and bees Adore this I'll show you some of the larger liatris. They're just kind of out of bloom You could see these massive spikes. So I planted a number of these. This is liatris spikata and I have also planted some that are the lingua stylus and the Scariosa variation newlandii, which I'll show you shortly, which is really coordinated with the monarchs Flying back south. I mean we had ten monarchs on some of those flowers just in the meadow area. It's amazing to see The I don't think they look so bad as they're going into seed and actually the seeds during the fall months Which you know, they're not in seed quite yet They get little fluffy seeds, but the seeds in the fall months really feed a lot of the birds So I suspect we're gonna see a lot of gold finches and a number of others in here Another flower that's just coming up. You could see there's quite a number that have yet to to bloom this is our Crocosmia lucifer and you could probably tell by the color of the flower that these are hummingbird Magnets, so there's a number of ones that are just starting to break bud Which is interesting because we were just in Frank Bittman's garden gosh about a month ago now and he was the one who had this beautiful suburban garden and he had his Crocosmia is out a month before ours even started to bloom So I could just see the difference in temperature there his of course were really close to the house and it was a brick house So it probably retains a bit more heat But we're in now around mid-august to late august and these are just starting to break bloom Now you could see that the perennial border is still coming along I'm still planting it up and I suspect that next year. This is going to be really full But if I could draw your attention to some of the delias here Which are really filling out because their foliage as well as their flowers really fill out the space which I enjoy Because I kind of want to see this space fill out of course these are not going to come back next year unless I actually dig them out and You know, maybe put their tubers in some sawdust in a cool dark place Which I may do because these are just really exquisite colors. This is the exact Color that I wanted for this border this kind of deep velvety chocolatey purplish red so that one is a real Winner for me and I'm glad I planted them right up against the fence line because they've kind of flattened out and they really put on a show for those folks who maybe Walk by the road or do a slow drive to check out the gardens now this one. I Was not too sure of I mean this one I think is lilac time But you could see that in our garden, maybe it's lilac in some people's eyes or in some people's gardens But this does not look like lilac. It looks like bubblegum pink to me So I would say that's not quite a winner Unfortunately, and I would probably pass that up So if I had to dig out one, it wouldn't be that one This is another one that looks very similar to the one that I had. It's quite it's it's a little shorter It has a bit more of a yellow eye and a little less frills another beautiful one I would say that looks probably great in a vase and then if we go down here some of these I'm just showing the ones That are are starting to flower. There's clearly quite a lot that aren't flowering This one almost looks like it's dip dyed like tie-dye style, which again very beautiful color I love that red purple and this one Wow, I mean what a color on that It has a bit more Magenta, I would say and look at that flower head Yeah, yeah Yeah, either that or Saundra has very tiny hands Yeah, so that's pretty incredible I mean you could see the other colors that I'm going for again that kind of black Reddish purple mix I have this poppy, you know coming in as well You could see what the color of that is going to be So it's kind of on par with the the colors that I wanted here So I'd say that the only one that I feel like I was miss sold was that perhaps like that lilac time color? Let's take a look over at some of the other liatrises here. Now. This is a smaller version so this is cylindracia liatris cylindraciae and This one gets it to about you know, 12 to 18 inches high. So not as small as the microcephala But another good one nonetheless if you have a garden, that's a bit Smaller and you want something that's a bit more compact. This is some of our lingua stylus and Our new landii is also coming out But those are the ones right now that are truly Attracting a lot of the butterflies. So earlier this year the liatris by Kata was in bloom and I saw a lot of swallowtails But it didn't quite coincide with the Monarchs now in August These are the ones that are blooming and you'll see that our new landii are going to be blooming soon as well so I like to plant liatris across many different species and Subspecies so that it really prolongs the bloom of the liatris because as you say spiky tas are kind of just going out of Flower, this is another one that I had planted I didn't plan on planting this but these are ones that you could also plant in springtime And this is one of those pineapple plants. They don't produce pineapples they just kind of look like that and my friend gave them to me you could see that I have a few that I dotted throughout Here and supposedly these are unnamed cultivars that are cold hardy So in our zone of the zone 5-6 these typically do not come up year-over-year So I'm gonna try these and see if these are truly hardy and if they come up next year So again, some of these experiments are longer experiments, unfortunately so these are the things that we're going to Find out I Really love this combination. This is a type of goldenrod. That is very small and short Native to here as well, and it has these really grassy leaves I'm gonna have to get you the name of it because now I'm blanking for a moment here And I think it really works well with this Liatris microcephala and I really like the limonium with it as well So I think as this starts to you know billow out again, all these gardens are so young They're not even a year old. So we're seeing gaps. We're seeing mulch, which is not something that I like But hopefully it's in time I'll take you over to meadow because I have more liatris planted over there And then that will be kind of the the end of the tour, unfortunately So I've already given you an update on this meadow area But and I see the monarchs that are flying there. I'll have to cut to some of those videos of them It's a little less sunny today. So they're not necessarily out It's probably a little bit cooler in the morning for them to actually fly But again, you'll see the spiky does and I also have ones that are white called florist and white and you could get a number of Liatris corms for very affordable prices and I highly recommend it I think they're great landscape plants and I also think they're great garden plants as well the white ones I feel like don't attract the Butterflies in the same way, but they actually might attract like moths like a little bit more at night. For instance when the The moon is shining and they might be more reflective So I'm not always out here at night observing that but that's something that I would guess and then you could see that I have This one kind of coming up. That is a scariosa type probably the variation new landii and That one has a beautiful purple stem and that one's going to start start blooming probably within a week or two and you can see I have all different ones pycnostachya the lingua stylus are the tall ones in the back and you'll see like the monarchs literally just get attracted to the to the plant almost like a magnet and Yeah, so those are some of those really beautiful Tubers and corms and bulbs that I had planted in the springtime and we're now just seeing them Grow up now towards the summer and the fall time So I definitely encourage it because even the dahlias like those will go until first frost and it's very unusual To have those blooms all the way up until like October Maybe even sometimes November and of course like the dahlia is if you're not list lifting them They're not going to come back year-over-year in this kind of climate But the liatris are perennial and so they will come back and they will spread over time Which is I think a real benefit because then that's a little bit more of a the lazy gardening style which I kind of tend to move towards and But yeah, it's just a wonderful experience to be able to see all of the different pollinators and insects interacting with it I mean it is like a ballet of Butterflies above some of these blooms and it's just remarkable to see you're not going to get that if you just have Regular ordinary lawn. All right, that's it for today. I'll see you in the next video