Mid month, I was able to get some maintenance work done in the SHIP gardens over at Jake’s Branch County Park. I took some video and a few photos. The status of the gardens are as follows:
Wet Garden
I always seem to start here because it’s closest to the parking lot on the plant discovery trail. There are some persistent weeds that pop through the mulch here. It may be because I didn’t lay the mulch down thick enough, but also because conditions are JUST RIGHT for everything to sprout and grow. The soil is always moist here – even when it hasn’t rained in a while. Albeit, we haven’t had any drought conditions this year at all. There has been lots of rain at the Jersey Shore.
I corralled the hibiscus to a few designated spots since it wants to reseed itself everywhere. I also added a few new plugs of wild bergamot, white woodland aster and some blue lobelia to fill in a few holes. The red twig dogwoods have been trimmed back just a bit for the 2nd time this season to allow access underneath.
Woodland/Shade Garden
Formerly referred to as the Shade Garden. Plugs of both seaside and early solidago (golden rod) as well as black eyed susans. The mountain laurel in the back center of the garden was struggling last year and seemed to die back quite a lot, but it’s filling in again beautifully. I haven’t seen the foam flower bloom this year, but I do see the foliage. The penstemon is doing well and the columbine has seeded itself all around the bed.
Pollinator Garden
This bed has been re-established in a new location along the plant discovery trail. We built it as a sheet mulched bed last fall and planted it this spring. The sheet mulching was done using a 4″ layer of hay, topped with a layer of flattened cardboard and then coated with a thin layer of wood chip mulch. More woodchip mulch was added in spring once the layers had settled.
This bed has evolved successfully and I’m so pleased with the way the turf below was smothered by the organic matter we piled on top. Also, when you dig through to plant, the layers are so moist and the soil below is nice and loose. The hay has not decomposed much yet, but it is smothering the weeds and preventing evaporation which is allowing the plants to establish themselves very well.
The deer are chomping down the liatris and sedum that have been planted here, but the lavender bee balm and mountain mint are thriving!
Sun Garden
I should have taken a before picture! Ouch! The sun garden became completely over run with an invasive silver leafed nightshade – also known as white horse nettle. The yellow tomato looking berries are poisonous and the wildlife in the park don’t bother them (darn)! This was the 2nd time they needed to be pulled out of the sun garden this year so I expect to have to do it again a couple of more times before frost.
Plugs of common milkweed, blackeyed susan and solidago were added to this garden, but a few have already died. I have replacements ready and suspect that when I plant more this fall, they will have a better chance of coming back strong in spring. The more mature sweet fern plants installed a couple of weeks before seem to be doing well. I will keep planting good natives and keep pulling the invasives… It’s going to be beautiful!
Rain Garden
The fence is being installed around this garden, but I haven’t even touched this one yet in terms of maintenance, weeding, mulching or planting. Getting this garden in shape will be my focus in August!
Speaking of rain, we have a rain barrel ready to install over at Jake’s Branch for these gardens. We intend to construct a small roof with a gutter to collect water and direct it into the barrel and intend to make it a small shelter over an existing park bench.
So far, I’m not sure if there has been any progress in getting someone to actually get started on this project. A couple of weeks ago, when there had been no rain for a while, I put the barrel in the back of my truck, filled it about 1/4 of the way and drove it over to the park.
I used watering cans to irrigate the garden this way, but it was a clumsy and inefficient solution because of limited access to the spigot in my truck bed.
