This is how the South Pollinator Garden looked on June 1. The poppies had largely finished flowering, and the Clarkia ‘Farewell to Spring’ was just starting to bloom. Everything was tall and green. But by last week, the Clarkia had begun to brown and topple, and though it still had plenty of flowering left to do, I wanted to do the summer clean-out and turnover, so that I could begin growing the flowers that will bloom all summer and right up to our first frost.

This is a massive project that I do twice a year - once around now, and then again after the first frost. As I have said recently, I’m starting to think about doing something different in this area. I’m still mulling it over, but it will surely be a winter project, so I have some time to think more about it before I make any big changes. Anyway, yesterday I spent the day clearing out the old stuff, everything I didn’t want to keep, all the annuals that were spent as well as some woody perennials that were past their prime. I filled up two green bins (mine and my neighbor’s) and added several feet to the compost pile. This morning, Tom and I went out together and moved the drip lines out of the way, cleared and righted all the stepping stones, and then spread 6 cubic feet of compost over the ground. We replaced the drip lines, made sure they were all working correctly, and then I seeded several different summer/fall annuals: Cosmos (‘Purity’), Zinnia (‘Cut and Come Again’), Cornflowers (mixed colors), Tithonia (Mexican Sunflower), and Rocket Larkspur (blue). I decided to sow these in patches of single species rather than mixing them all up and flinging them everywhere. If it works, we’ll have patches and lines of different flowers for cutting. It’ll be a bare month in this garden, as the plants grow, but the bees have lots of other food to eat right now - the other borders are full of blooms, and the beds are full of squash and pepper and cucumber blossoms.

This is how it looks now.

Quite bare, which is one of the reasons I want to rethink this area.

Meanwhile, here are some photos of the plants that survived and that I love.

Clematis ‘Arabella’ - this is a type 3 clematis which requires cutting back to the ground in winter, so that it blooms on the growth put on in spring.

a Monardella (I don’t know which kind) that reliably comes back year after year

Dahlia - can’t remember which kind, but it has dark foliage. I’m in love with dark-leaved dahlias and have added several more this year in other places.

This was a weekend well spent in the garden, tying up cucumber and bean vines, and adding cross-braces to the squash trellises. Meanwhile we have been getting a few cherry tomatoes a day, and the big ones are starting to break and change color. Tomato season, hooray!