The economics of beauty

We've finished dividing the front bed and potted up lots of Stella d'Oro daylilies to sell, as well as some of the gorgeous red Asiatic lilies. We also potted up three gallon pots with shoots from the Anabelle hydrangea that was encroaching too far toward one of the rose bushes. A few plants are to be given to friends, and the others we'll try to sell. By trying to sell, I mean simply that we put out a sign that says "Plants for Sale" whenever we're putzing in the yard... it's fairly haphazard and only intermittently effective.

That said, we have managed to sell a few Stellas and Asiatics, so since we had "free money" we went to Fairview Nursery to buy two fancy perennials that I've wanted for quite a while, Brunnera "Looking Glass" and a Siberian iris called "Butter and Sugar".

This is a weird quirk of mine: I'll happily lay out around $30 for each truck load of compost from Mississippi Topsoils, and every year we fork over funds for the tomatoes and peppers, as well as pretty annuals for pots. While I'll happily buy several of these little plants at $2.50 to $3.00 each, the thought of buying one gallon-sized hybrid perennial for $17 makes me shudder, sigh resignedly, and turn away empty-handed.

I've never seen the salvia so big and healthy before...
they are loving all the rain and the cooler days we're having this June.

Instead, over the years I have I purchased biennial campanula, false dragonhead, and other nuisance perennials in pint-containers at end-of-season sales for $2.50 each. Now I rip them from the beds and throw them away as weeds, unwilling to even pot them up to try to sell them for a buck or 50 cents, grumbling as I go that these fairly pretty but generally horrible plants should come with warning labels.

Ten (!!?!) years ago when we began planting the garden beds, we had lots of vision, a seemingly endless supply of lawn waiting to be converted into garden beds, and very little money. Accordingly, we started many of our perennials from seed. Coreopsis, salvia, rudbeckia, blue flax, gallardia... all of these came from seed, and so for the first few years our garden beds looked like neatly tilled soil with pin-pricks of tiny plants.

Around the same time, a neighbor hired a professional landscaper and had beautifully symmetrical beds laid out with lovely, flowering plants from gallon-pots. The beds looked mature from the moment the mulch was put down. We were so envious! However, we knew that we had invested in the soil, and so our tender little seedlings would grow well. They did. It only took a couple of years for the beds to fill in and the flowers to come in profusion. Our beds looked established as well.

And then the deadheading began in earnest both to keep the beds looking neat and pretty and to control the rampant explosion of "volunteers."

I can't remember consciously planting chives in the garden,
yet we have oodles. I deadhead scrupulously to keep
the numbers within reason ~ chives are so hard to weed out.
That said, they're pretty this time of year. That's
blue flax right above the date ~ almost ready to bloom.

We also started our garden with many, many pass-along plants. My mom sent us dozens of fancy bearded iris, of which unfortunately a good portion just weren't cut out for our specific growing conditions. We don't have enough room to devote a whole bed just to iris, so to survive in our garden the plants have to be strong enough to compete for space and sunshine with other perennials. Not all can. Oddly enough, it's the yellow and pink varieties that died out. We have lots of blues and purples left.

"Winner's Circle" is one of the iris from my mom that bloomed for us this year after
an absence of several seasons. It's a very pretty flower and looks great
with the lighter blues and purples of the other perennials blooming right now.

We lost several iris one year when we were plagued with a winter that oscillated between freezing and thawing. Those that did survive the winter were then killed by an unusually wet and cold spring. The rhizomes turned to mush. In frustration, I decided that I needed to augment the beds with something that could stand up better to a wet spring. Daylilies to the rescue. They are bloody hard to kill. And, they are stunning. So for a few years we invested in one then another lovely specimen, showering each with compost and the unlovely, wafting odor of milorganite fertilizer. (It smells like poo... because it is.)

So now, we have huge clumps of daylilies, with a few iris varieties valiantly demanding their place in the sunshine.

But back to the passalongs... We rescued dozens of peonies, roses and other perennials from some friends' garden when they had to move. All of the hybrid tea roses succumbed eventually to the Minnesota winter, but most of the hosta, astilbe and other perennials are still growing happily, as are the peonies. It was these same friends who gave us our first Asiatic lilies... huge, stunning white lilies, others with a gorgeous deep red color, and sprightly little yellow and white stargazers.

Oh, and the orange, species tiger lilies.

I now pull out tiger lilies like weeds. I do try to strip them of their seeds every summer. However, I believe that like the hydra, for every fifty seeds I strip somehow a hundred reach the ground. And every one of them sprouts. They are relentless in their plundering of unlilied garden bed, popping up in the middle of mature plants with astounding tenacity. They're like the tufts of grass you find growing on rocky cliffs in California and Nevada. All each seed needs is a tablespoon full of soil to call its own and it throws down roots, logic be damned.

None of the tiger lilies in this corner were planted here... they just
showed up (as did the milkweed). I actually weeded out several last year,
from this same corner. Yet the few that I left have come back, and after all the
rain we've had this year they are growing like gangbusters..

It's a good thing that the tiger lilies are lovely. Actually, they're more than lovely. They are tall and stately, impressive backdrops to the lush profusion of echinacea, liatris, scabiosa and coreopsis at their feet. And their bloom time is complementary to the daylilies and Asiatics, keeping the color going all summer long...

What am I saying... unlike the biennial campanula, I couldn't eradicate the tiger lilies from my garden if I tried. I am forced to love them. Call it a special form of denial.