A Note From Rick | June - A Rewarding Time in the Garden

Cabbage and other cole crops will be ready in a couple of weeks and summer crops like tomatoes and summer squash are growing, offering the promise of more to come.

As crops are harvested, new plantings go in, like plugs of summer lettuce and additional sowings of beets and carrots.

It’s time to plant, weed, and mulch everywhere. And then start all over again. That’s certainly true in the herb garden, now in full early summer bloom and full of foxgloves, roses, valerian, poppies, all beautiful single and together, and all with a story to tell about the long history of plants and humans.

Roses are fast reaching peak display. Thanks to volunteers Heidi Rain, Tom Oleszczuk and Paul Wagner, they stay deadheaded, clean, fertilized and managed with organic treatments. Visit now to see the many hybrid tea and shrub roses showing their best color.

June is the month to start trimming hedges. At Bridge Gardens, Shawn usually waits until after the privet hedges have bloomed before trimming, as he tackles the boxwood, holly and osage orange.

If you like alliums, now is the time to visit and enjoy the ones in the sunny mixed border. They look great with the purple-leaved loosestrife (the native Lysimachia ciliata var. atropurpurea) and the newly planted birch-leaved spiraea, a near native from the central United States.

The border is transitioning from a mostly herbaceous border to a shrub border, planted with natives and near natives like the spiraea, winterberry hollies and bladder-nut. Existing perennials will remain, with some editing, until shrubs attain full growth and crowd them out.

There’s lots to see here, so join our many other visitors who come to enjoy and learn at Bridge Gardens. I look forward to seeing you soon.

~~~ Rick