Rolling with the punches

With rainfall in Massachusetts staying about three inches below average for the year, gardeners are bracing for another summer drought. It’s worrying, but I’m impressed with how some of my established perennials are holding up.

A clematis is blooming well despite dry weather

    We often read that new plants need regular watering while they settle in. After the first season or two, they’ve established networks of roots and recruited fungal helpers (mycorrhizae) to collect water from the soil. When I started my garden, I wasn’t thinking about choosing drought tolerant plants. Now I try to avoid native perennials whose native habitat is described as a moist streamside. But some are more adaptable than you might expect. 

    Two areas of established plants look surprisingly lush despite the dry weather. Off the back deck, yarrow (Achillea ‘Coronation Gold’) is covered with flat yellow flowers. Nearby a bushy St. John’s wort (Hypericum ‘Universe’) is opening yellow blooms. A sneezeweed (Helenium ‘Short ‘n Sassy’) is coming into its own this year, putting out lots of foliage and numerous buds that promise an excellent display.

 

Bright yarrow blooms suit hot, dry weather

 

     In the insectary bed swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) and ox-eye sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides) are going great guns. This is an area of the fenced vegetable plot that I’ve devoted to planting for native insects. I call it an insectary bed instead of a pollinator garden, because it’s intended to benefit not just pollinators but also leaf-eaters and beneficial insects (the predators that keep the herbivores in check). 

    Swamp milkweed sounds like one of those moisture-lovers. Indeed, it grows naturally in wet meadows. But it’s doing fine for me in a rather dry situation. I like to think it’s providing larval food for migrating monarch butterflies. Another milkweed, butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) is having a very good year in the same bed. That one took years to establish itself, but now it’s unfazed by the sparse rainfall. Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is taking hold there too.

 

Swamp milkweed

    I’ve tried for years to grow common sunflowers (Helianthus annuus), but something always eats the seedlings before their stems get woody enough to support big flower heads. Ox-eye sunflower, which comes from a different genus, seems to have no problem coping with dry conditions. Instead of plate-sized sunflowers, I’ve got multiple yellow flowers attracting lots of insects.

 

Ox-eye sunflower attracts native insects

    I’ve been trying to establish some Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium spp.). These are billed as moisture lovers. One I planted last year had completely died back by the end of the summer after lackadaisical watering, and I wrote it off as a failure. This spring, though, it sent up new growth and seems to be thriving. I planted a group of Joe Pye weeds in a low-lying area where I hope they’ll benefit from water pooling when it rains. That’s a transitory event in our yard because our sandy soil drains rapidly. So far they’re bulking up surprisingly, considering that they’re regularly trampled by romping dogs.

 

Lavender and alyssum thrive in dry summer weather

    With dogs charging around the yard and rainfall infrequent, it’s nice to see some perennials rising to the challenge.

Gardening with dogs

Last fall we joined our yard to two others as a dog play area. We put gates in the fences that we share with our neighbors. Three of their dogs now join our hound Lola in sniffing, running, and tussling from early morning to after sundown. We’ve got some really happy dogs.

Lola surveys her domain

    With this open gate policy, Lola gets more exercise than I could ever give her and all the companionship she needs. For the garden, though, it’s been a big change.

    For one thing, that pesky lawn I used to complain about is pretty much gone. We might have a total of 200 square feet of turf grass left. All the rest has been worn away by running dog feet. I arranged for a load of wood chips to cover the bare ground where the lawn used to be.

Wood chips have replaced most of the lawn

    The lawn was relatively easy to lose. What hurts is seeing perennials shredded and shrub branches torn off by exuberant dogs. New paths have been cut through the borders where dogs charge through the plantings on their straightest line from A to B. They don’t care where I thought the paths should lie. 

 

New paths have appeared

    It’s worth it to let the dogs have their way with the garden, at least for a few years, for the sake of seeing them romping so happily. I’m hoping the destruction is something they’ll outgrow as they get older and more sedate. Then I can restore and replant.

    Meanwhile, I’ve had to make some choices about what to protect. I worried about it all winter, and in March I went outside to stake out the areas I’d defend for new plantings. Established plants can fend for themselves fairly well. Even decapitated perennials may grow back from their roots. 

 

Maybe this hosta will bounce back

But if the dogs dig up new plants and throw them out of their holes, they won’t have a chance.

    I started by enclosing a long, narrow bed in wire fencing supported by metal snow fence posts. This was the section I’d carved out from a patch of lawn and covered with sheet compost two years before. 

    It’s hard to drive those posts into our rocky soil, but once they’re in deep enough, they keep the fencing in place. I tacked down the bottom edge of the fencing with earth staples.

Earth staples from Gardener's Supply

I’d learned from last year’s experience that the dogs would nose their way under the fence if they could.  Last week I installed a new collection of native perennials inside this enclosure. Three carabiner-like hooks allow me to open the “gate”—a flap of fencing—to get inside if I have to.

 

Newly planted native perennials inside the fenced enclosure

 
    For the existing beds near the house, I took a different approach. Before the perennials started to emerge, I laid down fencing flat on the soil and pinned it down. My idea was that this would keep the dogs from digging. To add new plants, I cut openings in the wire.

Fencing tacked flat on the ground to protect bearberry

    So far these desperate measures are working, but determined dogs may foil me yet.