Southern Gardening

We’ve all seen garden gnomes in other people’s yards -- the creatures of woodland legend that represent the spirit of the earth. Maybe it’s time you put one in your own garden.

Gnome is a derivation of the Greek word for “earth dweller.” Garden gnomes were first used in German gardens in the mid-1800s. Made out of terra cotta, they were painted and clothed like miners of the day, with outfits that included the cute little pointed hats.

From railroad ties and landscape timbers to rolls of plastic and metal edging, nothing adds interest to the landscape quite like nice, crisp bed lines.

We have all seen and used many types of landscape edging materials. But why not be a little creative? To get you started, here are some ideas for landscape bed lines between walkways and flowerbeds.

Vintage dinner plates placed in the ground on their edge create a bright garden bed edge. Get some from your local thrift store or stop at yard sales and buy chipped and mismatched plates.

Plant foliage colors tend to come and go in trends, and right now purple-leaved plants are popular. I think one of the best of the newer purple varieties is Mahogany Splendor hibiscus.

In the landscape, this plant provides awesome color. It is a vigorous grower that adds height and excitement.

If you want something besides leaves to provide fall landscape color, take a good look at the American beautyberry. This Mississippi native shrub lives up to its name by putting on quite a show in the fall, with its clusters of bright purple berries.

Known botanically as Callicarpa americana, American beautyberry is frequently found on the edges of woodlands all across Mississippi. It is widely distributed east of the Mississippi River in the mid-Atlantic and Gulf Coast region. American beautyberry is also quite at home in the landscape.

Now is the perfect time to embrace your garden’s ability to support beautiful, colorful fall bedding plants.

The gorgeous colors we are seeing in nature this fall can be repeated in our landscapes with fall combination containers. The warm colors of red, orange, and yellow all add excitement to the cool temperatures.

Creating your own fall combination containers is easy if you follow the thriller, filler and spiller formula. Don’t limit yourself on plant selection -- use annuals, perennials and even tropical houseplants. When cold temperatures are forecast, these combination containers will also look good inside.

Just as the changing colors in nature signal the arrival of autumn, so do the appearance of beautiful, flowering mums at our local garden centers.

Adding fall mums, which is the short name for Chrysanthemums, is a stress-free way to provide color to the fall landscape. It’s easy to see why, as these plants will produce more flowers than you could possibly count. The selection of colors seems limitless, from rustic earth tones to bright and cheery pastels.

Available sizes range from 4-inch pots all the way up to 5-gallon containers and bigger.

Fall has always been one of my favorite times of the year, something that probably has a lot to do with my growing up in Michigan, where I enjoyed cooler temperatures and trees changing colors.

Here in Mississippi, I enjoy waking up in the morning and feeling that chill in the air. I guess I am finally becoming acclimated because even 70 degrees feels chilly after a hot and humid Mississippi summer.

Fall is the perfect time to start on your garden and landscape for next year. Amending the soil with quality, organic material is one of the best gifts you can give your garden soil.

There are quite a few options for gardeners when it comes to soil amendments. In Mississippi, many gardeners use cottonseed meal as an organic source of nutrients. It has a nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium analysis of 6-2-1 and is a good source of trace nutrients.

You don’t have to be a gardener for long before you come across a situation that calls for some garden “surgery” called division. Division is cutting the plant into smaller pieces and replanting.

You see the need for division when you notice a perennial plant no longer looking good. Maybe it hasn't been flowering prolifically, the leaves are getting smaller or the center is opening up. You decide to divide the plant to remedy the situation. Dividing perennial plants is a great way to rejuvenate some of our ornamental garden treasures.

A couple of years ago, I received a call in late summer from a new gardener asking about a plant he had seen at a local golf course. I was interested because he described it as a blue azalea. I visited the golf course and toured until I found the plant. It wasn’t a blue azalea after all, but the familiar Mexican petunia.

Sometimes the most interesting plants in our landscapes are the ones that can’t be predicted. Each year, there is a wonderful, random variety that presents itself in the garden through the mutations that occur in every plant species.

The secret to finding some of these botanical gems is taking a closer look at flowering and evergreen plants. Every once in a while, we are rewarded with garden treasure.

A lot of gardeners are interested in creating a tropical feeling around their homes, and one of the easiest ways to do this is to add banana plants either in the landscape or in large containers.

If you’re about to quit reading because you think bananas can only be grown in coastal Mississippi and you live elsewhere, stick with me. I hope I can change your mind by describing some of the selections that are hardy for all landscapes in Mississippi.

When gardeners want to add color to the landscape, they often reach for flowering annuals and perennials. While these colorful flowers always catch the eye, their selection is usually limited at this point of the summer.

Many gardeners never consider buying colorful foliage plants for anything but shady areas, but let me encourage you to reconsider their usefulness. These plants provide color, and you can still find good selections available in the local garden center that you can plant in the heat of summer.

Gaillardia is a native plant with few pests that can liven up the summer landscape anywhere in Mississippi with its bright, warm colors.

Gaillardia makes a fantastic addition to the summer garden. Many gardeners know Gaillardia as blanket flower, a name that came from the early settlers’ comparing the colors of the flowers to those of the blankets of Native Americans. Gaillardia is named in honor of French botanist Gaillard de Charentonneau.

A favorite flower with almost every Southern gardener is the black-eyed Susan, known botanically as rudbeckia. These plants produce an abundance of bright yellow flowers, each with a dark button-shaped cone in the center.

There are several species for gardeners to choose from. Rudbeckia hirta is a Mississippi native wildflower and is a staple plant in naturalized areas and meadows. Black-eyed Susans are also reliable garden and landscape performers for the butterfly garden.

If I told you about a flowering plant that likes full sun, needs little water and thrives on neglect, wouldn’t you want to go out and buy one? Or several?

A plant with these requirements sounds perfect for our hot Mississippi gardens. Agastache (pronounced ag-ah-STAK-ee) may just be that plant. More commonly known as licorice mint, Mexican hyssop or hummingbird mint, this member of the mint family has -- as you may have already guessed -- a pleasing licorice aroma.

When the heat makes gardeners want to stay indoors, it’s nice to have reliable, flowering plants that keep on looking good even when they don’t get a lot of attention.

The landscape performance of thread-leaf coreopsis, or Coreopsis verticillata, has made these plants outstanding choices for season-long color. And since it is an easy-to-grow, flowering perennial, beginner gardeners can have success almost immediately.

With the temperatures heating up, many landscapers and gardeners are looking for plants that can stand up to the Mississippi summer. Luckily, they don’t have to look any farther than hot summer lantana.

One of the most important factors in choosing flowering annuals is finding one that tolerates the hot Mississippi summers. Many annuals cannot maintain their color in the high temperatures, but the flowering Vinca is one that can.

Flowering Vinca is a versatile, full-sun plant. Known botanically as Catharanthus roseus, flowering Vinca originated in the hot and dry regions of southern Africa. It looks great mass-planted in the landscape or as a flowering ground cover.