Normally I would have waited a few weeks to tear up and renovate a flowerbed. But something had to be done about a goldenrod that overran a 5-by-8-foot area next to the patio. Although I had removed a wheelbarrow full of stems earlier in the season, this goldenrod had run amok and choked out every one of its neighbors.
Occasionally a monoculture (or a near monoculture) of one flower variety can be effective in a garden. I recently visited a garden in Black Forest north of Colorado Springs where a mass planting of lavender sleepy poppies was quite attractive. These are big, impressive flowers, each easily 4 inches across.
But goldenrod is a better support player, not showy enough to stand on its own. Its yellow flowers are tiny and last, at the most, for only two to three weeks. A bed devoted exclusively to goldenrod promises to be only green for the remainder of the gardening season.
Earlier this year, I made a vow that the minute this plant finished blooming, it would be out of there. When I finished yanking out the hundred or so stems, I discovered things were worse than I had feared. Tulips and daffodils may have endured below ground but little else survived the goldenrod’s siege.
At one time, there were other nice things in this flowerbed. Gone were pitcher’s sage, a particularly pretty prairie coneflower Ratibida pinnata, Coreopsis “Moonbeam,” several daylilies and holy clover. Barely hanging on are a well-behaved goldenrod Solidago caesia and a variegated feather reed grass “Overdam.” I hadn’t realized I had been countenancing such horticultural mayhem.
August is not really an ideal time for transplanting, but rather than look at dirt for another month, I decided to risk it. The first thing to go in was a large daisy from the eastern plains, the compassplant Silphium lacinatum. At 10 feet tall, this yellow daisy will be my anchor. On either side I placed 4-foot-tall lavender Verbascum bonariensis, sometimes called verbena-on-a-stick.
The soil here is dry and well drained, which should also suit a pretty little shrub, New Jersey tea Ceanothus americanus. It looks something like a small, white-flowered lilac that blooms in midsummer. I plan to replant the pitcher sage, one of the prettiest of the sages, with spikes of bright blue in late summer.
Perfect here would be self-sowing biennial dotted mint Monarda punctata, with white bracts flushed pink, so I’ll look for seed to get those started. This might also be the right spot for rough blazing star Liatris aspera, a plant I’ve killed before with too much pampering.
The goldenrod is not likely to give up without a fight. I expect to be pulling it out for years to come. In the meantime I’m reminded the gardener has a responsibility to act as intermediary. The plants I bring home rely on me to prevent survival-of-the-fittest from being taken to its ultimate extreme.
Marcia Tatroe is a garden writer and lecturer. E-mail her at rltaurora@aol.com.
