Marjorie Rachlin’s Backyard Nature: Garden colors don’t entirely fade in September

by Marjorie Rachlin

Most gardens wind down down in September weather but there’s still colorful bloom in Forest Hills yards. We’ve got everything from “weed” plants native to the Americas to banana “trees” that came here long ago from Asia.

Natives in the back

In my back garden, I grow a number of hardy native plants. They are the kind better known as weeds, since you can find them wild in the woods and fields of the mid-Atlantic states.

Visitors always admire the goldenrod in the back of this photo because of its graceful weeping blooms, but I grow it mainly as a late fall flower for the bees. This goldenrod is one of the 100 species of goldenrod in the United States. When I looked it up on Wiki, I found that goldenrods contain a chemical that anthropologists think was used by the Mayans. They combined it with a chemical from another plant to make the big rubber balls they used in their stone courts for a special ball game.

The lavender-blue shrubby plant is a lovely native aster. These native plants are the preferred food source for our native bees and bumblebees, who will ignore many of the Asian perennials like chrysanthemums. Right now the aster is covered with tiny native bees, a quarter-inch long, gathering pollen and nectar.

We are all familiar with honey bees, but they were not here before the early colonists brought them to Jamestown and elsewhere. Before that native bees and bumblebees were busy pollinating all our native trees and flowers. Now they need the long-time food sources they’re used to.

At the right are the spiky blossoms of blue lobelia syphalitica. I’m using the Latin, because the name reflects the fact that Native American tribes thought it helped cure VD. The European colonists named it and took it back home, but it proved ineffective. However, the Indians also used the roots and leaves for a variety of respiratory and muscle ailments, and there are alternative medicine sites that still sell it. Best to leave it alone – the leaves and roots have a toxic chemical, dangerous in some cases.

Jerusalem artichokes

I grow Jerusalem artichokes in my garden for their bright yellow flowers and tasty tubers. They are a native of the sunflower family. They grow tall – 10 feet. Native Americans cultivated them. Samuel Des Champlain, the French explorer, saw patches cultivated by Native Americans on Cape Cod in 1605 and sent them back to France, saying that they tasted like artichokes, and the name stuck. I dig mine up after a frost – they are sweeter then.

False Dragonhead anyone?

This lovely patch of purple graces a tree lawn on one of our streets. It is false dragonhead, a hardy native weed found all over the eastern United States and used in many gardens.

A view from the street

When there is sun on the front lawn and shade in the back, Forest Hills gardeners plant in the logical spot. Here is a lovely combination, purple false dragonhead, with a pink Japanese anemone, and a pale blue hybrid aster.

A Sweet Autumn Clematis grows rampantly up a tree in front of a nearby home. It has a sweet spicy smell when you get close. This clematis comes from Japan originally — it’s surprising how many of our garden flowers and shrubs come from Asia.

Going bananas in the front yard!

This is the most unusual of our front gardens, and I was surprised to find it, tucked away on a nearby street. It is filled with the color and leaf interest of semi-tropical plants, including the two banana plants on either side of the walk.

Many of these exotic plants can’t stand our winters, but in front, along the curb, is a patch of prickly pear cactus. This is a native plant (with painful prickles) that I have seen growing on dry rocks and beside the Billy Goat Trail along the Potomac River.

Look around as you drive Forest Hills streets – we have some imaginative gardeners beautifying our neighborhood.