What’s Happening in the Garden?
There are so many things happening in our garden in June. It is hard to believe the year is nearly half over. In the late winter and early spring, you think things are taking forever and then June hits and the garden explodes, the days are as long as they’ll get, and you can hardly keep track of all that is happening. I wanted to keep a record of where we are in the garden’s journey and encourage you all to take a closer look at your own gardens and the visitors that come and go throughout the season!
Right now, in the middle of June, we have a few different flowers ready to pop and a handful that have already started blooming. Our salvia comes back year after year without much worry or fuss. In fact, our neighbor tried to replace a beautiful patch of perennials with a sterile rock garden and a few sad looking rose bushes and the old salvia came back with a vengeance. While I have nothing in particular against rock gardens or roses, it was nice to see the old natural garden return for one last victorious flush of purple flowers. The bees love these — as my picture shows! Honeybees are usually one of the first visitors to the garden and salvia is there waiting for them starting early.
Next, we have had several bunches of German chamomile crop up from one seeding several years ago. They are tremendously hardy and self-seed better than other chamomile varieties we have grown. I always appreciate volunteer plants and try my best to protect them and keep them going until they get strong enough to do their own thing. These are usually the plants that end up doing the best in our garden each year.
As a bonus, some lovely ladybugs decided to make our garden their home this year and laid some eggs in our chamomile. We got to see them hatch and the little black larvae crawled all over the garden for a few days. Now they are in chrysalis and soon our garden will be filled with ladybugs (we hope). We think the presence of aphids on our Sedum Autumn Joy may have attracted them.
Then we have our Black-Eyed Susans and our Purple Coneflower (Echinacea) which have returned from last year’s garden, even with the devastatingly dry winter we have had this past year. It just goes to show how resilient and robust these native wildflowers are and what an integral part of any low-effort garden they can be. They have not bloomed yet but the flowers have formed and are just about to open any day now. I cannot wait to see what kind of visitors these flowers bring to the garden. They often attract pollinators of many different types, but more on that later.
In addition to these beauties, we have also had a couple star players return in spite of my almost having killed them (several times). We tried to transplant a few Yarrow plants into our container garden last year and then proceeded to not water them for six months. There was also so little rain or snow this winter, I thought they were dead for sure. Then they came sprouting up with the first wet days of April and May and now they are just about to start blooming. Keep hope alive!
There were also a few sprouts coming up in April that I misidentified as Milkweed but which turned out to be Goldenrod. This was an absolute shock and joy to discover because I must have done everything I could to kill them last season. I transplanted them late and they shriveled up and died where I planted them — their little brown twig bodies reminded me of my failure each day I passed them. Then, this spring when I thought they were Milkweed, I tried to transplant them into a larger container and they soon looked quite sad on our first few hot days in May. Now they are continuing to surprise me and prove their resilience, as they have taken off and look like they are going to be fascinating plants to watch. I have never grown them myself but I am excited to see them. Goldenrod are known to be host plants for a huge variety of insects and wildlife so I will keep my eye on these superstars!
Goldenrod is on the left, Yarrow in the middle, and our Milkweed plants are on the right in this gallery above. Milkweed is known as the sole host plant and food source of the monarch butterfly. I would not hold out hope that a monarch would use our milkweed as their home but that would be high up on my wish list for garden visitors.
Then we have a few of my favorite flowers that I love to see come up each year. They are known to be aggressive self-seeders, and are probably deemed a weed by most people, but I love the Prairie Sunflower. So many insects come to our garden just for these sunflowers and in the later summer I have even seen Goldfinches come to perch on them and feast on their seedheads. It is a lovely sight to behold at the end of the garden season and really connects you to the cycle of the year and the beginning of autumn.
We are also trying Marigold, Nasturtium, Calendula, and native Purple Clover (not a true clover, I believe). These will be beautiful summer and autumn blossoms if the grasshoppers don’t get to them first. I am looking forward to a long season of growing!
I thought I would include in this post a “Garden’s Most Wanted” list as a way to track the garden visitors we get this year. It’s a fun way to stay involved in your garden throughout the year and a reminder that we are part of nature and can make welcoming homes for all sorts of critters without trying very hard. If you’d like to, make your own wish list for garden critters and see what you can find throughout the season — this also makes an enjoyable activity for kids and gets them outside in the dirt. Think of it as a nature-themed scavenger hunt.
GARDEN VISITORS (no particular order)
Monarch Butterfly
Toad or Frog
Bumble Bees
Praying Mantis
Goldfinch bird
Ladybug (check!)
Lacewing
Dragonflies/Damsel Flies
Yellow Garden Spider
Orb Weaver Spider
I’ll leave this list at 10 for now and see how many we can spot in the next few months. Of course I will update with pictures if I spot any and this list is not definitive so I am sure there will be many more entries to make that I am not even thinking of right now. I hope you’ll join me in this fun garden activity and share whatever you find with me.
Thanks for reading!
Goodwork Almanac 