Throughout my adult life I’ve worked to create enjoyable and gratifying arrangements of flowers, fern and foliage in my yard.
The problem, however, is I’ve moved around some, so I end up making impactful yards for other people who come along after I have left.
I sold my house in Waynesville, North Carolina, this summer, and deeded over a yard that I had been working on for eight years.
As much as I love perennials and blooms, I’m not that good at remembering the names of the plants I use, so often I’ve been stymied, standing in my yard trying to tell someone what a particular plant is called.
If the property has shade, I generally start with ferns and hostas and related plants.
I love some of the names I have come across in the garden world. There’s pigsqueak, which grows oversized leathery leaves in low mounds. The foliage turns red in winter.
I like lungwort, which has narrow, dappled leaves that help bring a spark to dark corners, forcing up pink and blue flowers in early spring.
Foamflower is named for its fluffy, feathery spikes of white blooms that look like sea foam blanketing the shaded garden. White turtlehead, also a perennial, generates tight clusters of white flowers that look like the head of a snapping turtle!
The plant memory that generated this column is Solomon’s seal, which is apparently named for how the rhizomes appear when the stem dies back each year. Some say it resembles the wax seals used throughout history by kings.
I was looking out the bedroom window of the house just sold, and noticed that the surveyor or tree cutters had trampled my enormous Solomon’s seal. I had relocated the plant from another side of the yard a few years ago, and it seemed to like the corner where it was planted. In past seasons this Solomon’s seal has towered up to 36 or 40 inches, arching over a bleeding heart that was way past blooming and smaller hostas, all of which I had relocated.
It hurt my heart that that section of the front yard was so disturbed, but, at the same time I knew I was closing the sale the very next day.
“Not my problem,” became an oft-repeated acknowledgement that weekend as I packed out the wheel barrow and dog crates and other final items before signing the papers.
I know I created a welcoming front and back yard for the new owners, with a variety of azaleas—some multiple bloomers—as well as ostrich ferns and gladiolus.
I really hope the new owners maintain the expanding milkweed area in the backyard. I grew these from seed mailed to me by the Live Monarch Foundation, which offers low-cost, high-quality milkweed seeds if you check out their website and make a donation to support their efforts.
I sowed the seed three years ago, and saw the first plants that summer. With an aggressive underground root system the plant spread quickly. By this summer there were nearly 30-some healthy stems with blooms, all available for traveling monarch butterflies.
The plant actually supports a bustling ecosystem of insect species, offering food and shelter for herbivores and for beneficial pollinators that hunt other insects.
The milkweed attracts bumblebees, wasps, aphid eaters, spiders, assassin bugs, and of course, a beautiful variety of butterflies.
Another plant I have spead across the South as I’ve moved around is asparagus. I generally buy year-old plants at a garden shop, meaning I get my first viable harvest in year three.
I like to think that asparagus clumps I planted have provided years of delicious meals for the owners who came after me.
What’s next? My siblings and I have a little cabin in east Asheville, and I’ve begun working to clear some of the small lot, with thoughts of where to position the planned plants. In my mind I see the oak leaf hydrangeas and forsythia along the street edge, the asparagus—I should plant those this summer—and daffodils.
There will be terrific places atop rocks there for Greek oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, and lavender.
I can’t wait to get my hands dirty.
—Jonathan Austin