Bloom Time Charts and Filling the August Gap
Okay. This lesson is basically the whole reason I keep a note on my phone titled "bloom times," which sounds obsessive and honestly probably is.
Here's the problem. Anybody can have a nice-looking yard in May. May is easy. It's been raining, it's sixty degrees, everything is putting out new growth and looking hopeful. You could plant a yard full of weeds and dead grass and it would still look decent in May because the whole valley looks decent in May.
August is the test. August is hot, the water bill is climbing, the light is harsh by two in the afternoon, and half the plants people bought at the nursery in April have already done their one big bloom and are just sitting there being green and tired. That's when you find out if you actually planned a yard or just bought a bunch of pretty six-packs in spring and hoped.
I judge a garden plan by what's happening in August. Not May. That's the opinion and I'm not backing off it.
Why this happens to basically everyone
Nurseries stock what's blooming NOW, which in April and May is a lot. By the time August rolls around, the nursery tables have thinned out and so has everybody's yard, because most of what we bought in spring already peaked.
I did this exact thing my first year. Bought a flat of plants that all looked great together at the nursery in May — I've told you about that flat before, it's the one where three plants ate the other nine by the end of summer — and what I didn't notice until later is that almost everything in that flat bloomed in the same six-week window. Come August my whole bed was just leaves. Green, fine, alive, but nothing HAPPENING.
Building your own bloom time chart
This is not complicated and you don't need anything fancy. I use the Notes app on my phone. You could use a index card. Here's the format:
- List the plants you have or are considering. Everything from the last few lessons works for this — yarrow, penstemon, globemallow, blanketflower, rabbitbrush, lavender, whatever grasses you finally figured out the names of.
- Write down the bloom window for each one. Roughly. Nursery tags usually have this, or a quick search will tell you. Don't worry about being precise to the week.
- Lay it out by month, April through October. I do a simple grid. Plant name down the side, months across the top, and I just shade in the months it's actually blooming.
- Look for the gap. For most people around here it's late July into August, sometimes into September if it's a hot year. That's the gap you're filling.
Once you see it on paper it's obvious. You'll have six plants blooming in May and June and maybe one thing carrying August. That one thing needs friends.
What actually blooms in August around here
This is where rabbitbrush earns its keep — it holds off and does its big yellow show right when everything else is done, which is exactly why I don't let anyone skip it just because it's "just a shrub." Globemallow will often rebloom if you deadhead it in July. Some of the taller sedums, if you've got them, are just getting started in August. And I'll be honest, this is where I lean on lavender a little more than I probably should for a "natives" class, because it just keeps going through the heat without complaint.
Grasses help too, even before they're technically "blooming" — the seed heads and movement give you something happening in the bed when the flowers have quit. I still have to look up half their names every time, but I know what they DO for a bed even when I forget what they're called.
A quick caution here
Don't panic-plant in August to fill your own gap. It is genuinely one of the worst times to put new plants in the ground here — the heat stresses them before roots can establish, and you'll end up back on the over-watering problem we've talked about, because a stressed new plant in August looks thirsty every single day. Plan your August bloom now, but plant it in September or next spring. Write it on the chart and wait.
A small aside
Last summer I had a globemallow that made it through its first winter, which for a plant I'd babied and worried over felt like a genuine accomplishment. It bloomed early one morning in June, this soft orange color against the fence, and I was so pleased I took a picture at six in the morning and texted it to my sister. My sister does not garden. She did not care even a little. I sent it anyway, because SOMEBODY needed to see it and I was the only one awake.
That's kind of the whole point of this exercise though. You're not just filling a calendar gap for the neighbors to admire. You're building something that gives you a reason to walk outside in August instead of just watering and going back in where it's cool.
Before next time
Build your own bloom chart for whatever's already in your yard, even if it's mostly blank right now. Bring it next time and we'll talk about where the gaps are and what from this course could fill them.