The garden moves in cycles – drifts and bounty one week, droughts and drawbacks the next – and it ebbs and flows like so much of life. If you’ve come to gardening seeking perfect satisfaction, precise schedules, and predictable outcomes, you are probably in the wrong hobby. That said, there are incredibly consistent things, even when growing seasons start in cold and wet fashion, as this spring did. Nature caught up to herself and things are generally on their usual track.
At around this time, there is usually the first of what will be several lulls in flowering sessions. We had a nice long extended first flush of floral fireworks, aided and abetted by the cool and moist weather. That soon subsided for a stretch of hot and dry days, and it’s that which brings about a floral lull. The trick to getting through it and maintaining color throughout the season (if such is your wish) is to supplement a garden with annuals or long-blooming perennials. Rudbeckia and echinacea work wonderfully for this. Our cup plants have a pretty lengthy showing as well. Hydrangeas, particularly the ones that bloom on new wood as well as old, also throw off flowers pretty regularly. These are the backbone champions that see the garden through the tough high-heat/high-sun times.
Personally, I’m grateful and appreciate these little lulls. They are a pause in the boisterous riot of color the summer season produces, a chance to ease the eyes with the sumptuousness of green before it begins to yellow and brown off. That’s why I rarely bother with annuals. I don’t need the constant cacophony of blooms to reveal the beauty of the garden. It’s there in its structure, in its leafy canopies, in the long-forming buds of the sedum or the fountain-like grace of the grasses. A summer lull is a pleasant reminder that it is, still, summer.
