The Allegheny Understory

The Allegheny Understory This page belongs to our yard! We are transforming our yard into a habitat of mostly natives.

Despite cutting this back a couple of times this spring, the tall coreopsis is out of control, too tall, and flopping al...
08/25/2025

Despite cutting this back a couple of times this spring, the tall coreopsis is out of control, too tall, and flopping all over the place. I wouldn’t care that much if it were in the back yard, but the front bed by the road is not a place for tall, sprawling, flopping plants. I always put a fence around it and the bee balm, and it’s always been sufficient - until this year. I’m going to guess the tropical rainforest weather we had for the spring and first part of summer is responsible.
In case you’re wondering why I care about this, there are a couple of reasons:
1. Large, aggressive plants can smother out smaller, less assertive plants.
2. I don’t like how tall, gangly plants look when they’re sprawling all over in a cultivated garden.
3. The bed out front is supposed to be an ambassador for people who are new to the idea of native plant gardens, and I don’t want it to look “weedy.”

Arcadia is open again!!
08/23/2025

Arcadia is open again!!

Vines! The Virgin’s Bower (Clematis virginiana) and Purple Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) are going crazy, and the...
08/23/2025

Vines! The Virgin’s Bower (Clematis virginiana) and Purple Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) are going crazy, and the passionflower has its first fruit! No sign of flowers on the clematis yet, but it blooms July - September, so I still have hope.

The tall coreopsis (Coreopsis tripteris) is gigantic this year. Despite cutting them back multiple times, they are a cou...
08/21/2025

The tall coreopsis (Coreopsis tripteris) is gigantic this year. Despite cutting them back multiple times, they are a couple of feet taller than I am!

Phlox maculata ‘Jeana’ - meadow phlox ‘Jeana’ cultivar and spotted bee balm (Monarda punctata).
08/20/2025

Phlox maculata ‘Jeana’ - meadow phlox ‘Jeana’ cultivar and spotted bee balm (Monarda punctata).

I got these Helianthus tuberosa (Jerusalem Artichoke) seedlings a couple of years ago in a swap, and this spring they ha...
08/10/2025

I got these Helianthus tuberosa (Jerusalem Artichoke) seedlings a couple of years ago in a swap, and this spring they had suddenly created a large patch in my test bed. I gave a bunch away, and now the remaining ones are blooming. These are native to neighboring states like Ohio, but not to Allegheny County.

This week was the first time I have had to water the garden all summer - it’s been so wet that I haven’t had to worry ab...
08/05/2025

This week was the first time I have had to water the garden all summer - it’s been so wet that I haven’t had to worry about it. As a result of all of the rain, most of my work this summer has been cutting things back and propping things up. Some of these plants have been cut back as many as three times, and they’re still gigantic. In the front bed I also cut back some of the bee balm after it stopped blooming. Normally I leave stems and spent flowers so the seed heads can feed birds and the stems can shelter over wintering insects. In this front bed along the road, however, I cut back a lot of the bee balm for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted a tidier appearance along the road. We have many walkers who go past our garden and I want it to be appealing to them. Second, I had planted a number of new plants in the bed and the monarda had really taken over and was shading out the smaller plants. The bee balm had reseeded prolifically and I left a lot of them as an experiment. I plan to pull them and give them away this fall as I don’t think it was a particularly successful experiment. There were other plants you couldn’t see because they crowded everything else out.
The other thing I’ve been doing is moving supports from one area to another as one species completes its flowering, gets a haircut, and other species mature. I don’t want them laying over on other plants, and I also don’t want them leaning into paths and across borders.
Surprisingly, with all this rain, I haven’t had to pull many weeds. That’s because the matrix of plants is so full there isn’t room for weeds!

Last fall I got a bunch of blue mist flower (Conoclinium coelestinum) babies at the native plant swap and planted them i...
08/04/2025

Last fall I got a bunch of blue mist flower (Conoclinium coelestinum) babies at the native plant swap and planted them in both my back test bed and in a blank spot out front. The ones in the back are starting to bloom, and they are lovely.

I have had very little luck getting Passiflora incarnata (purple passionflower) to grow for me. The last two springs oth...
08/02/2025

I have had very little luck getting Passiflora incarnata (purple passionflower) to grow for me. The last two springs other gardeners have given me many starts, and I faithfully watered and cared for them, only to have them die. One of the ones from last year came back and is thriving, though! It was late to emerge and I had given up on it, when suddenly shoots appeared. It has been an energetic climber, and today I saw the first blooms.
I love how exotic it looks - you would think it’s a tropical plant, but it’s not. While not native here in Allegheny County, it is native nearby in West Virginia as well as some Midwest states and many southern states.
I can’t wait to see if it sets fruit.

I love the bright purple blue of great blue lobelia. It’s a short-lived perennial, so don’t be surprised if it dies out ...
07/31/2025

I love the bright purple blue of great blue lobelia. It’s a short-lived perennial, so don’t be surprised if it dies out after a couple of years. The way to keep a patch going is to leave some bare ground around the plants so the bountiful seeds can germinate for a succession of blooms over time. You can also collect the seeds and winter sow them in case your plants don’t self-sow the way you hope. I had a group of five of these on the bed along the road, and they eventually died out, despite my leaving bare soil for them. Great blue and scarlet lobelia both prefer consistently moist soil, and that spot can get pretty dry. After they died out they somehow appeared in my back yard last year at the edge of my test bed, which does have fairly moist soil. Like many perennials, they didn’t bloom in their first year last year, but they are starting to bloom now. I did plant them in two other spaces in the back yard: one of them is next to our bird bath, which we refill every day, so they get watered by the water we dump out. And the others are in a place where they haven’t thrived in the past, but this year’s wet weather has helped them thrive and flower.

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