When we moved here in 2012 I was oddly drawn to a granite outcropping in the featureless center of the backyard. There is something deeply appealing about massive, half-buried rock lying around like a geological shipwreck, and I wanted to “do something with it”.
Inauspicious beginnings:
(L-R above): November 2012, three months after we moved in. A flat grey rock that marks the barely-visible start point of the ledge in the middle of the first photo. In the second, the drop from the rock ledge is visible when we first looked at the house in the spring of that year. (We had the swimming pool removed; it’s now the kitchen garden area.) In the last photo, my father watches as I try to sustain a thought in May 2014. I don’t think any of the plants in that image stood the test of time; all I remember is bearded irises, which eventually found a home elsewhere.
The panicky years: 2015-2019
(L-R above): First and second photo: mostly half-thoughts by 2015! The only survivors from those images are the Full Moon maple, barely visible in the bottom of the image, and the Siberian iris in the background, another warrior against erosion. By August 2019 and increasingly so each year, the New York Ironweed on the right takes center stage.
I grow two kinds of New York Ironweed – Vernonia gigantea (pictured, young, on the rock ledge, and more impressively at the bottom of this post) and V.noveboracensis. I don’t see much of a difference in height to be honest though I think color is slightly better on noveboracensis and utterly unscientifically think the pollinators are more taken by gigantea. That could be due to other factors though (the gigantea is in an elevated spot and may be a bit warmer.)
To add to that confusion, Ironweed seeds around and may have been hybridizing.
In short: I dunno, but endorse this plant – statuesque and dramatic (7′-8′ or more in the right place). Lovely color. Easy. Native. Pollinators line up for blocks. In the winter, birds eat the seedheads and the structure holds up very well under snow and frost (a bit reminiscent of Joe Pye weed). If the seediness is a problem, one could cut off the seed heads and leave the stalks, or take down most of the seedheads and leave just a couple. We have so much poison ivy that anything that seeds around intrusively is an ally. (I don’t hate poison ivy; I’ll do a post on it sometime….it’s just a lot.)
Lightening up: 2019
(L-R above): By 2019 things were getting a bit playful, taking full advantage of light from the setting sun and the incongruity of elephant ears in New England. In the second image, I had started to use pavers to define edging. The bed is on a downward slope and it makes definition/highlighting critical so the thing has some weight to it. I am moving away from this in favor of “plants that are clearly not green or grass-shaped and therefore not part of the lawn”, one I’ve used repeatedly is a native coral bells, Heuchera villosa ‘Purpurea’ which grows enthusiastically and and is only occasionally eaten by rabbits. In the last image, Millie and Merlin demonstrate the importance of backlighting and dramatic contrasts and being dogs as apparently that year they missed the thrill of eating the Karl Foerster grass in June. No worries, they were back for more salad the next year. (September 2019). (Also I know people think KF is supermarket parking lot grass and very boring but I think it is gorgeous and those people don’t have the confidence to stand up to dismissive public opinion whereas I’m resigned to it.
Colorwork: 2019 – 2022
(L-R above): The soft colors of the Full Moon maple were the inspiration for the bed’s color palette (June 2020). Embarrassingly weedy! Heuchera, Russian kale, Hakone grass, hosta (September 2022). And finally, bones identified and establishing – cotoneaster horizontalis and ‘lo-gro’ fragrant sumac (Also September 2022).
No such thing as a final draft: 2022 and onward…
The sumac and cotoneaster will continue spreading and choking out neighbors which are largely hakone grass and heuchera with some Red Russian kale thrown in for good measure (it gets wormy late in the season but looks good most of the time.) As the sumac and cotoneaster weave together will be pulling the heuchera forward to establish a defined line along the front of that bed, hoping to move away from pavers.
Detail of New York Ironweed and Black Eyed Susans at the edge of the rock ledge garden (August 2024):
…just because I love the look.