It’s the first weekend in May, and in Illinois, that means we’re still waiting for Mother’s Day weekend to start planting seedlings. It also means starting to do some major yard and garden clean-up. We’ve got to get the gardens ready for the season, right?!

I’ve heard it’s best to not touch anything until mid-May, but it has been relatively warm for a couple of weeks now, and I’m confident that my removal of leaf debris won’t harm any bees or other insects; in fact, I’ve noticed that the moist dead leaf piles may be hindering some growth of perennials (the new growth looks yellowish-white instead of green). This tells me that I’m on schedule, if not a touch behind.

While I could spend this whole entry talking about leaf piles and garden cleanup – potentially a topic for another time – I’m more interested in sharing the too-much-of-a-good thing overgrowth of certain perennial plants. The garden gifts that won’t stop giving, you might say. Please, before more idioms fly from my fingertips, take a look at where my gardening cup (plant) runneth over:

Cup Plant

The lovely Cup plant is a member of the sunflower family, and passerby always assume its big, yellow late summer blooms are sunflowers. I’ve found them to be a favorite of birds – the seeds must be delicious! The seeds are also prolific, and the number of mini cup plants around my house is amazing. I’m trying to share as many as I can with friends and neighbors before trashing the rest. (Sorry, extraneous cup plants, but I know there’s more of you coming next season!)

New England Aster

The New England Aster is one of my favorites because it promises a gorgeous, dependable, late-summer extravaganza of pollinators. Aside from more bees than I could ever hope to count, I’ve also seen garter snakes and praying mantises hanging out on its bush-like, snugly packed stalks.

Somewhat annoyingly, mother nature has made the New England Aster a very ambitious self-propagator, as there are mini plants everywhere – repeat, everywhere – in the side and front gardens. Ever the optimist, I look at this as an opportunity to share the love and get other people going with New England Aster gardens…even though I’ll surely be tugging several plants out of the ground to throw away.

I’ll write more in future posts about the New England Aster, so stay tuned!

White Panicle Aster

The White Panicle Aster, I’ve found, spreads through underground rhizomes and seeds, explaining why I get more of these plants each year. The plants look a little like weeds, I must admit, but they bear the tiniest white flowers that attract pollinators, making them a welcome addition to my garden!

Goldenrod

I’m relatively new to the bright yellow Goldenrod plant, and there are many varieties. Pictured here is Giant Goldenrod, but I have a couple more varieties in the garden (including a native IL variety) that will be featured in a future post. These Giants have grown in a big, seemingly random clump in a sidewalk crack. Its seeds likely spread through the wind (from where?!), dropped en masse, and I’m transplanting them to see where they might complement other plants!

Oxeye Daisy

A classic daisy, the Oxeye Daisy, returns year after year, filling up as many nooks and crannies as it can. While I hate tugging new growth out of the ground (I swear, I hear it cry!), I think that “less is more” with these beauties, as they complement the colorful blooms around it. Again, I share them with enthusiasm!

Black-Eyed Susan

Black-eyed Susan is one of the neighborhood’s favorite gals. She gets planted somewhere, stays for a long time, and then returns with gusto! Everywhere the eye can see, it seems. While there’s some confusion around black-eyed vs. brown-eyed Susans (they’re sisters, after all), I believe the former variety is my annual visitor. This metaphor can easily take a sharp turn, so we’ll leave it there.

Spring Blooms to Enjoy

We’ve been looking at new growth that will yield blooms later in the season, so let’s take a peek at a couple of beauties that are ripe for the picking! (Not that I’m picking them, but I needed another idiom today.)

Until next time…enjoy the merry month of May!