Fall is a Texture and Colour
Article and photo by Monika Smith
With our very warm October (and when did we have serious frost?), it’s been quite a stately progression of changing colours and textures to the winter palette.
In my grove, I found the change from summer colours to fall shades: golds, pale yellows, deeper reds, oranges, and browns, a luscious parade of changing colours. Green leaves and plants gradually gave up their verdancy for spectacular golds and burgundies. The pale green sage was particularly stunning with its leaves offering contrast in the fall canvas. The sun shining through the native grasses, such as the blue gama (Bouteloua gracilis) has been spectacular. Those seed heads are magnificent.
Everything was left for critters. That makes a winter haven for pollinators and other critters. Cleanup is gentle and I’m keeping my leaves for mulch. The initial planting is now very different as the plants grew well this summer. In fact, I had to move a few when it was obvious that they were overtaken, overshadowed, and overcrowded by a neighbouring mega shrub. I’m learning some lessons, albeit slowly. Native gardening is a marathon, not a sprint.
As it gets colder, I expect our winter birds to pick away at the seedheads for nourishment. Sadly, I didn’t see a lot of butterflies or moths, which means no caterpillars. Nesting birds need them as highly nutritious food for their chicks. While a couple of probably cabbage butterflies (Pieris rapae) flew around, a bona fide beauty hovered nearby, wings open for seconds. Did I have my smartphone in hand? No, of course not.
If you have visited the community grounds, you would have seen a bamboo stake corral, delineating the native flower garden on the slopes near the community garden. That decent-sized patch was first covered in soil right on top of the mowed grass. A neighbour, doing extensive landscaping, donated and dropped off a couple of yards of soil. The patch was big enough to allow the 160-plus plugs. A great crew helped put them in and, with the water hoses from the community garden, have been given a great start for the spring. Leta van Duin, Laura Nixon, Markus Saayman, and I were the do-crew for phase 1.
As I have plants that are going into the native garden at the community grounds next spring, plugs were potted and the bigger potted plants were trenched, watered, straw put on top, then left alone. Do you have some native plants that need homes? Check with me.
In the meantime, I’m setting up a Naturally Glendale website to support native plants and critters and encourage people to add a native plant or two in their plans for next year.
Until next time,
Monika’s Grove
A fall canvas of colours! Various native flowering plants gone to seed, sage bush, and a towering Amur maple (Acer ginnala) in shrub form starting to hit its maximum height, and this fall, showing a lot of crimson colour.
