Resetting the Border

Kathy Schreurs in Sheldon, Iowa, is sharing her garden with us today. She wrote in right before the change from daylight savings time, and had this to say:

It’s that time again. This weekend we’ll be resetting our clocks, and we’ll be “resetting” this border too. Last week—after a long, slow, frost-free fall (unusual for our Zone 4b Iowa location)—a killing frost and snowfall pushed us toward fall cleanup. This week has been dedicated to removing annuals and cutting back perennials.

Next week we’ll be planting bulbs. I hope I’m not the only gardener who orders tulips in August with a clear mental picture of where each color and variety is going to be placed, and then when planting time arrives looks in puzzlement at the invoice, wondering, “What was I thinking?”

I looked to the photo below, taken last spring (May 12), in hopes that it would help me. (It didn’t. Apparently I’m going mostly with shades of purple for next season!)

But it did inspire me to submit photos of our “path garden,” all taken from the same vantage point, with a few details along the way.

This peony-flowering tulip (Tulipa ‘Charming Beauty’, Zones 3–7) showed up in my bulb order again for 2024. Behind it, to the left, our ‘Sun King’ aralia (Aralia cordata ‘Sun King’, Zones 4–8) is emerging. By midsummer it will be a monster, and impossible to ignore, even in the middle of vibrant annuals. They’re on the right toward the end of the path in the long view.

By June 19 the tulips were gone and the perennials were filling in. The penstemon (Penstemon digitalis, Zones 3–8) and phlox (Phlox‘Opening Act Pink-a-Dot’, Zones 4–8) on the left were playing nicely together, I thought. I deadheaded the phlox later, and it gave back some color on and off all