Grasses shines in autumn and winter

Molinia arundinacea 'Cordoba' in the citypark of Laholm in November

Autumn is the time when grasses step up and outshines all withered perennials and former blooming companions in the border. Whenever you place a plant in the garden, you should always think about how the sunlight wanders around during the day. Almost all plants are most beautiful when they get the sun's rays from behind, but the grasses shines more than any others when backlit.

Plant thus the ornamental grasses where you can see them illuminated from the place where you usually find yourself in the garden, for example from your patio.

Here are some good grasses for autumn color, but there are plenty of others too. The Tussock grass, Deschampsia cespitosa, is one of the best grasses to capture the sun's glowing rays; however this grass needs heavy soils with a good water storage capacity to survive more than some few years.

Molinia arundinacea can withstand drought better, but prefers moist soils. Andropogon gerardii and Schizachyrium are drought specialists and can handle very difficult situations without any rain if they are well established.

Molinia arundinacea in Sichtungsgarten Weihenstephan, Germany

Deschampsia cespitosa in München in October

Little Bluestem, Schzachyrium scoparium, in Lahom, Sweden, in late November 

Little Bluestem backlit in November, Laholm Citypark

Big Bluestem, Andropogon gerardii, Westpark, München, Germany

Big Bluestem in Sichtungsgarten Herrmannshof, Weinheim, in early October

Switch Grass, Panicum virgatum, in Laholm in late November 

Miscanthus sinensis 'Purpurascens' in Westpark in München 



The Yellow Coneflower rules in Laholm

Yellow Coneflower, Ratibida pinnata, at the savanna in Laholm

Last weekend I first visited the plantings in the city park of Laholm and then continued to the Prairie Junction in Mariestad. That is a prairie planting we are making together with the garden students at the DaCapo School belonging to the University of Gothenburg. Today it is 1 500 sqm in size, but already next month we'll plant another additional 500 sqm.

Here are some pictures from the savanna in Laholm to start with. This time of the year there are many different species in bloom, but the dominating plants now are the Yellow Coneflower, Ratibida pinnata, and Coreopsis lanceolata.

Echinacea purpurea, Coreopsis and Ratibida

Clouds of Perfume

The Shooting Star, Dodecatheon meadia,  grows among the Phlox

While the Prairie Smoke makes the savanna, the Phlox rules in the Woodland in Laholm and turn it into a spectacular color satisfied place. There are two different species of Phlox in the woodland, Phlox divaricata, the Blue Woodland Phlox, also known as Wild Sweet William and Phlox stolonifera, Creeping Phlox, both native to rich woodlands in the Appalachian Mountains in Eastern USA.

Phlox divaricata grows with upright stems crowned by scented flowers in pale blue or white. Phlox stolonifera does not smell much, but it covers the ground well with creeping sterile shots. There are many named cultivars with different shades from bright pink, soft lilac, deep violet to pure white.

Shooting Star, Phlox stolonifera and Phlox divaricata in harmony

Planted in masses the scent from the blue Phlox divaricata is overwhelming

Fothergilla major flowers with its cute whitish wads

Osmunda cinnamomea is in my opinion maybe the most beautiful of all hardy ferns you can grow in your garden. It prefers a moist site in shade or dappled sunlight. Slightly acid to acid conditions and a soil with some organic matter is best.

If you can also find a sheltered place in the woodland with high humidity you have made the best situation for this green fellow. The sterile foliage makes a nice, open wreath and in the middle of it the erect fertile leaves emerges. In the autumn this fertile leaves turn into a striking cinnamon brown shade. Also the sterile leaves have reddish brown fall colors.

Osmunda cinnamomea is shoting in late spring and early summer

Smoke on the Savanna

Geum triflorum in the beginning of the smoke stage

In the end of May the students at the course in garden design at the University in Alnarp visited the new plantings in the city park of Laholm. The savanna has its best development during summer and early autumn with a beautiful display of Coneflowers, Echinacea and Ratibida, and of course all colorful grasses.

At this time of the year some parts of the savanna are dominated by the Prairie Smoke, Geum triflorum. It is a delicious little plant with deep brownish red flowers followed by mauve seed heads resembling soft, smoky feathers. The plant is creeping slowly by runners and will build up small colonies after some few years. Hopefully they will also be able to spread by seeds.

There are some other plants at the savanna in bloom during late May and early June and the brightest among them is the Golden Alexanders, Zizia aurea. The Canadian Columbine, Aquilegia canadensis is already coloring the savanna red, soon also the flax open its pale blue flowers and then the early summer blooming has started.

Prairie Smoke, Geum triflorum

Zizia aurea is flowering in May at the savanna in Laholm

The Canadian Columbine has hanging flowers in red and yellow

Wonderful trunk design

Later this year both the Wild Forest and the Foggy Forest will be created in the city park of Laholm. For that purpose I yesterday visited Laholm and my aim this time was to find suitable trunks of old trees to "decorate" the park with. Together with the city gardener Stefan Persson and his staff I went to a local wood artist in Ränneslöv.

The artist's garden appeared to be a gorgeous place on Earth! It was literally crowded with wonderful old logs and other big wooden parts from a wide range of tree species and in different stages ot decay.

Here we later will pick out wood for the construction of a Nature Tower in the Wild Forest and chiefly find big trunks to dig down into the ground or even just drop around in the future forests as dead wooden monuments. Close to the trunks it will be planted climbing plants as Schizophragma, Schisandra and Celastrus.

The dead wood is very important for many different species of insects as discussed earlier on this blog, see Living dead wood from February. The wood will be an appreciated playground for many larvae inside the trunks and of great pleasure for woodpeckers hunting them from the outside.

The artist Anders Ölund and his storage of wood in the small village of Ränneslöv 

The woodland is turning color

The woodland in Laholm is now changing from dull green to bright fall colors and most trees and shrubs are turning yellow, red and orange. Even the perennials want to join the color parade. The Foam flowers, Tiarella, goes brownish orange and so does the Gillenia, while the Geranium maculatum 'Vickie Lynn' turns more bright orange red.

Nyssa sylvatica, the Tulepo tree

At the moment one small Tulepo tree, Nyssa sylvatica, is glowing clear red while others just started to convert. The Honey locusts, Gleditsia triacanthos, have already dropped most of their bright yellow leaves and the Red maples, Acer rubrum, are only in the early stage of the color explosion.

The woodland in Laholm was planted in 2008 and is a part of the city park under development. New exciting departments are added constantly, now latest an amazing spring bulb planting and next spring we are creating a European meadow with both acid and more calcareous habitats with a huge diversity of meadow plants.

Tiarella, Gillenia and Acer rubrum

Acer rubrum 'Scanlon' just outside the woodland



 

The Spring Slope

The Spring Slope starts here and follows the pathway to the left

Next week it's time for the first part of the Spring Slope in the city park of Laholm to be created. This is an area in the park there it formerly was a rough lawn beneath old beech trees. When next spring is here it instead has turned into a wonderful carpet of blooming bulbs and other spring flowers in white, blue and violet shades.

As dominating bulb for the slope we have chosen the dark blue Siberian squill, Scilla siberica. She will be accompanied by many other bulbs and corms like the true wild form of the italian Spring crocus Crocus vernus v. albiflorus, the Grecian windflower, Anemone blanda, many different cultivars of the Wood anemone, Anemone nemorosa, the Striped squill, Puschkinia scilloides and a lot of other lovely spring flowering plants.

I'm already longing for next spring.

Monarda for dry sites

Today I again visited Laholm and the famous citypark to discuss its continuing development. Later this year we are going to create a meadow for biodiversity and a planting beneath big beech trees with great spring aspects from bulbs and other early flowering perennials. Two amazing plantings for the future.

At the savanna in Laholm now the Wild Bergamot, Monarda fistulosa, recently has began to bloom. This Monarda is suitable for dry sites and tolerates water stress much better then the common garden cultivars. They belong all to the Monarda didyma-group or are hybrids between these two species. Monarda didyma prefer instead moist or even wet conditions.

The Pale Coneflower, Echinacea pallida, thrives well together with the Wild Bergamot

The Honey Locust Savanna

In 2008 we created two biotope plantings in the city park of Laholm inspired by the biomes from North Eastern North America. The Honey Locust Savanna with sparse groves of trees and a understory of savanna and prairie forbs is located on a west facing slope in the park.

Linum perenne and Coreopsis lanceolata

Penstemon smalli and Coreopsis lanceolata

All pictures above are from last year, 2009

This year the flax is overwhelming