At summer’s end, one of the loveliest spots in my garden is under the redbud tree. Redbuds, Cercis canadensis, are easy keepers, justly appreciated for their spring blooms. Come summer, they are garden stars for the dense shade cast by their pendulous branches thickly covered with pretty, heart-shaped leaves. My little tree, planted six years ago, has reached the grand height of perhaps 15 feet and equal width; its canopy provides a shady pocket of relief on sultry summer afternoons.
There are sedges for nearly every garden location, all of them unfazed by the dog days of summer. Sedges are supporting players, often used as grown covers, filling gaps between larger perennials. In the dry shade of my garden. Appalachian sedge, Carex appalachica, is thriving. Its pillowy mounds of narrow green blades are luxurious, you want to run your fingers through them. Pennsylvania sedge, C. pensylvanica, which has a similar habit and appearance, is also doing well, blithely ignoring the worst that summer doles out.
Ferns are the embodiment of calmness and cool temperatures. We look at them and feel soothed, just what a body needs when the temperature and the humidity are in the 90s. Christmas fern, Polysticum acrostichoides, happily embraces that role. An evergreen clumping fern which prefers dry shade (a bonus for our rain starved gardens) Christmas ferns have sturdy fronds that are so dark green they almost look like shadows. Any other time of year, those leathery, deep green fronds are not among my favorites. But at summer’s end their rugged presence has a calm appeal, and they do not wilt, despite the heat, nor do they get beaten down by heavy rain.
Hayscented fern, Dennstaedtia punctilobula, is lovely all season long, but its beauty is especially appreciated, and most surprising, in late summer, particularly when it is flourishing in a sunny spot, never flagging in the heat. With airy, pale green foliage in the classic tapering triangle, hayscented fern looks like something a florist would use to fill out a bouquet. Don’t let that delicate appearance fool you, hayscented fern can take everything summer throws at it and then some. Left to its own devices, it will spread to form billowing swathes of greenery. Walking along a path edged by rolling waves of delicate green fronds makes you believe you can get through another stultifying day.
An August stalwart, Joe Pye weed, Eutrochoeum pupureums, is slow to get started in spring and has coarse, not especially attractive, foliage. But it earns end-of-season accolades by faithfully, profusely, flowering from mid-summer into early fall. The large purple domes of bloom carried on magenta stems (honestly they look a bit like feather dusters) are long lasting and wonderfully fragrant. Butterflies and other pollinators absolutely love them.
Spotted jewelweed, Impatiens capensis, has something for everyone, including the transcendentalists and history buffs among you. A late blooming annual, jewelweed’s blue green leaves set off trumpet-shaped flowers of apricot dotted with deep rusty orange, very pretty altogether. The flowers are quite attractive to pollinators, including, so they say, hummingbirds. I have yet to see a hummingbird at my patch, but I have enjoyed watching small bumblebees wiggle their way inside the trumpets, completely disappearing for a moment. The highlight of this plant for many people, especially children, is the seed pods. At the faintest touch, ripe seed pods spring open, shooting the seeds away from the parent plant and nicely illustrating another common name, touch-me-not. Jewelweed prefers consistent moisture and part shade to shade but will adapt to drier sites. A prolific self-sower, jewelweed may pop up all over your garden. Have no fear, it is easy to curate. You do not even need to pull it, simply snap the fragile stem and it will give up the ghost. But you may like to keep some in your garden, that way you will share a bit of gardening heritage with Henry David Thoreau, who wrote, “Touch-me-not seed vessels, as all know, go off like pistols on the slightest touch, and so suddenly and energetically that they always startle you, though you are expecting it. They shoot their seed like shot. They even explode in my hat as I am bringing them home.”
