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I love to read articles in gardening magazines with titles like “How to create a complete backyard in a weekend,” or “This front yard in just one year.” If you’re like me, you think “Can I really do that?”
Well, there are some shortcuts that can make this happen, and fall is the perfect time to try them out.
Start by making sure you have paths where you need them. Simple flagstone set in sand or soil work fine for meandering through the garden. A more formal and permanent path is needed to lead guests to the front door, but stepping stones are quick and easy in other areas. Hardscaping like paths, walks and fences establish the framework for everything else to build off.
If you want your garden to fill in quickly, choose key plants that grow fast and are suited to your conditions: sun exposure, soil type and water availability. Plants given their preferred conditions will grow and flourish more quickly. Designate irrigated areas for must-have plants and use plants that like it dry in your other areas.
Most importantly, if you are going for high impact quickly, choose plants that perform right away instead of those that need a few growing seasons.
Begin your planting by choosing trees and shrubs for structure, especially in the winter. Fast-growing trees include chitalpa, red maples, mimosa, birch, raywood ash, flowering cherry and purple robe locust. Shrubs that fill in quickly are butterfly bush, bottlebrush, choisya, rockrose, escallonia, hydrangea, philadelphus, plumbago and weigela.
Next come perennials — ones that mature quickly and make your garden look like it’s been growing for years. East Friesland salvia is one such plant and blooms summer through fall if spent stems are removed. Their intense violet-blue flower spikes cover plants 18 inches tall spreading up to 3 feet in diameter. They look great in wide swaths across the garden or along the border of a path and attract hummingbirds, butterflies and bees.
Walkers Low catmint is another perennial that keeps going and growing. This vigorous member of the mint family blooms profusely with little spikes of half-inch periwinkle flowers from late spring through fall. Catmints are easy to care for. Shear plants back by half at the beginning of the season and after flowers fade. They are drought tolerant, too.
Where you need a big clump of color to fill in a space, turn to penstemon, crocosmia, cardinal flower, mondarda, purple coneflower and yarrow — they all put down deep roots and mature quickly. Be sure to include combinations that bloom in different months.
Yes, creating a garden slowly over many years is satisfying, but if you need to fill a new area fast, draw on some of these tips and your bare dirt will be full and beautiful in no time.
Early October to-do’s
If you have planted cool-season veggies like cabbage, cauliflower, kale, broccoli or brussels sprouts, be on the lookout for small holes in the leaves, signs of cabbage worms or diamondback moth larvae.
Cabbage worm adults are the white butterflies frequently seen around cabbage plants in the daytime. Their yellow, bullet-shaped eggs, attached to the undersides of leaves, hatch into 1½-inch long green worms with a light stripe down the back.
Diamondback moths fly in the evening. Their larvae are tiny quarter-inch long green worms that feed on the undersides of leaves and, when disturbed, wriggle rapidly and often drop from the plant on a silk thread. Adult moths spend the winter hidden under plant debris.
Clean up after harvest and cultivate the soil thoroughly to expose and destroy overwintering moths and the pupae of cabbage worms. In the meantime, treat your crops when leaves show feeding damage with organic BT (bacillus thuringiensis, a bacteria that acts as pest control) while the worms are still small.
Happy October.
Jan Nelson, a California certified nursery professional at Plant Works in Ben Lomond, will answer questions about gardening in the Santa Cruz Mountains. E-mail her at
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