The Sugar Garden
How many wildflowers—and attendant bees, butterflies, wasps, flies, beetles, etc.—could we cram onto our land? I wanted to find out.
When we moved here the acre around the house was infested with bishop’s weed, an invasive plant that has smothered many nearby woodland understories. So we waged war and routed The Bishop from our land. We then sowed a mix of wildflowers native to eastern North America, and now the former Bishopric brims with color and life throughout the growing season.
Spring starts slow, with a speckling of common violets and wild strawberries—neither of which we seeded, but we welcome their help. Then a few wild columbine bloom, their dangling red flowers inspected by hummingbirds. But these are just a few fragments heard while the orchestra tunes up; the main performance is yet to start.
In late June, hairy and foxglove beardtongue bloom, pale lilac and ghostly white, and the show begins. Bumblebees fill the air with a constant burry hum. In July, purple and pale purple coneflowers bloom, followed by vanilla-scented swamp milkweed and minty wild bergamot. All are smothered with butterflies. In August, giant purple hyssop and Joe-Pye weed rise six-feet high while great blue lobelia, cardinal flower, ox-eye sunflower and sweet black-eyed Susan add a gaudy mix of blue, red and yellow primaries to the pink and purple palette. And by the end of summer the scarlet runner beans, golden sunflowers and orange Tithonias in the vegetable garden shimmer with tropical warmth.
Finally, as Autumn peaks and maples glow, clouds of asters—New England aster, smooth aster, aromatic aster, heart-leaved aster—bloom in all shades of purple, pink, and white. Then all is brown and frosted and subsumed by snow. Underground, buds and bumblebees sleep through the long winter months, dreaming—as we all are—of spring.
