RDG Spring 2022 Summary

Tweet

The RainyDayGarden is pretty established at this point, and much to the delight of the interns, the work required to maintain it leans mainly toward trimming, pruning, and cleanup (and then lunch).

As always, the guiding principle of RainyDayGarden is and will always will be: “If you grow, you stay. If you want to stay, you have to fight for your spot.”

Jan/Feb/March

Most RainyDayGarden readers know that we don’t dig things up to over-winter in the cellar. Why? Because that feels like “work.” With global temperatures getting warmer, and having been “gifted” some dahlias last year, we decided to see if they would survive the winter. We will see what April brings.

We had a few small snow storms in January, but the month closed out with an absolute whopper: one of those bombogenesis situations dumped close to two feet of snow in the Boston area, and mostly—it felt like—in the RainyDaygarden.

We were working at home because of Covid, so we weren’t going anywhere, but still…it was nothing but snow as far as the eye could see, and then some!!!

We dug ourselves out because we needed the exercise. As an added bonus, we also got to create a maze for our RainyDayInterns. They appreciated the effort, but opted to spend most of their time inside.

February in New England is always expected to be brutal, but climate change has made it unpredictable as well. This year we experienced pretty dramatic swings in week-to-week temperatures. How the plants in the RainyDayGarden would respond in the Spring was anyone’s guess.

We noticed when cleaning up in late March that certain plants budded later than usual. Some crocuses appeared in late March, but many of the others were no shows. The trench lilies were, of course, coming up everywhere—can’t keep those guys down, climate change or not!!!

All the house plants that spent part of their time outside in the Summer months made it through the Winter fine. Some got a little leggy, and trees like the ficus dropped a ton of leaves, but in general, everyone seemed to be in good health and on track to be good-to-go come May.

April

Unlike previous years, we didn’t do a fall cleanup, partly to give the insects plenty of leaf litter for shelter (and partly because we didn’t want to), but that meant we had a bit more to do this year. We started in late March and did a final cleanup in April before the emerging plants got to a size where they would interfere with raking.

Of course, it wouldn’t be April in New England if we didn’t get some kind of odd “weather event” (which in New England we just call “the weather”). This year it was a freak hail storm, with hail in sizes from BB to marble bouncing off the roof, making a racket, and freaking out the cats.

The forsythias came to life, right on time, in mid-April. The flowers, unlike last year, covered the entire bush.

Also right on time were the violets and poet’s daffodils. Unfortunately for us the violets have started to take over. While they make great ground cover, they choke out other plantings. We may have to do something about them this year…

A few years ago, we rescued a bunch of orchids, and have been rewarded ever since by their blooms from April to July. This year was the same. They started budding in late February and opening up in April. We’ll see if they make it all the way to July again this year!!!

May

We really believe in the saying “April showers bring May flowers,” and since we don’t water the plants in the RainyDayGarden, those showers are really necessary. The amount of rain for Boston was 2.32″ in April. It was lower this year compared to the average of 3.63″.

The Lily Of The Valley came up just fine, but the amount of flowers were noticeably fewer than in previous years…they still provided quite the heady scent, though.

All of the irises bloomed, but similar to the Lilies of the Vally, there were fewer blooms than we thought we’d get. We also noticed…we have a lot of purple in the RainyDayGarden!!!

The irises’ reduced numbers didn’t mean that they were any less showy. Those that did open—just like previous years—were spectacular!

The peonies behaved very differently this year as well. There were only three red blooms, less than 1/2 dozen of the white ones, and only two pink buds on a bush that had dozens last year. Fortunately, other bushes were more productive.

The big lilac bush, which was covered in flowers last year, was definitely a lot less bloom-y this year. In the end, we counted only about a dozen clusters of flowers…about an 80% drop from the previous year. We are blaming it on the freak cold/warm cycle in February.

June

There was one peony bush which did not suffer any ill effects from February’s temperature swings and April’s dryness. This bush offered up dozens of flowers for over two weeks! The other peony bushes, however, had close to a 75-80% drop in productivity. We’ll add some compost to the soil at the end of this season and the beginning of next to see if we can bring things back to vibrancy.

The spiderworts, between the invasion of the violets and the lower rainfall, absolutely got hammered. While not a complete no-show, they were definitely way off their game. A few popped up here and there, but nothing like the years prior. We hope they will make a strong return in 2023.

The spirea did OK. The flowers hung around, but weren’t covered in bees like in previous years.

The spurless columbines did pretty good. A few clusters popped up in their old spots, and some appeared in new ones!!!

Did we mention that the daylilies weren’t phased by either the temperature swing or the lack of rain? In fact, this was one of their more vigorous displays ever…perhaps due to the lack of competition! Anyway, whatever the reason, the trench lilies put on an absolute show during the first few weeks of June.

Along with the trench lilies, the RainyDayLilies (a self-crossed hybrid between the large banana yellow daylilies and the orange trench lilies) also made a strong showing. We worried that they might “disappear,” so last year we spread them around the garden. We are happy to report that all the new plantings of the RainyDayLilies have returned!!!

New to the RainyDayGarden for 2022 was the expanded herb garden. We are hopeful that these new additions will make it through the winter. If they do, then we’ll tell you more about them next year.