Better Late Than Never: Why you should still plant a garden, even in the middle of summer.

The Heat Makes You Crazy

Imagine an early July day in Georgia. It was hot, oppressively hot, the humidity was insufferable,and there were so many bugs. A terrible time to put new plants in the ground. But I had just moved into a new home with my fiance and we couldn’t wait to plant a flower garden. Our new home featured a sprawling garden bed that spanned the length of the house filled with thorny barberry and common azaleas but we wanted FLOWERS. We knew it would be a gamble to plant a flower bed in the middle of July but with effective soil prep, careful species selection, and a commitment to almost daily watering, our garden bed successfully transformed into a flourishing flower garden we enjoyed well into autumn.
We decided to fill this bed with native wildflowers for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, we want to support our local ecology and attract oodles of pollinators for our future vegetable garden that would be planted nearby. This bed would be in full sun all day and planting in the middle of summer meant selecting hardy plants that could withstand the heat must be prioritized, and we wanted a perennial garden that would flourish with relatively low maintenance for years to come.

Death by Clay

Before we could put any plants in the ground, we needed to prep the bed – ugh.We pulled out the barberry and most of the azaleas, some of which were already dead, and we learned a couple things right off the bat. The rootballs on these plants had not grown at all since they were planted. Presumably, the existing landscaping had been installed earlier in the year as preparation for selling the house, but inadequate soil prep had prevented these plants from growing any roots at all. Heavy, red clay filled the bed and we needed to fix that if we wanted a successful flower garden. My fiance loves any excuse to use the tiller, so I let him take over this phase. He tilled the whole bed, carefully avoiding the azaleas we kept, and loosened up the hard, dense clay. Then we added tremendous amounts of peat moss and compost and tilled again to mix. Now we had a clean slate and the fun part could begin – plant shopping!

Hot Shot Flowers

At our local nurseries we looked for hardy plants and selected as many natives as we could find. As any gardener knows native plant selections can be slim at many nurseries, so we settled for a few truly native species and some varieties that were related to natives. We picked up every variety of Echinacea (cone flower) we could find, several Gaillardia (blanket flower), a few Coreopsis (tickseed), perennial Rudbeckia (black-eyed susan) varieties, Asclepias (milkweed) and, although they aren’t native, I just couldn’t resist zinnias. Once we were home, we watered all of our plants and set them in the shade under some trees so we could get an early start planting the next day. In the morning I laid out the plants where I wanted them planted and, hoping to get them in the ground as quickly as possible, the whole family helped out. We all started on one end of the bed, my fiance dug holes and sprinkled fertilizer, my daughter lightly watered the holes, and I brought up the rear, dropping the plants in the holes and packing dirt
around them. Then we absolutely soaked the whole bed hoping to keep the plants as cool as possible for the long, hot July day ahead.

Water Worshiping

Then our ritualistic watering began. We watered every single morning for the first few weeks and for the first 7-10 days we often watered in the afternoon too. We knew the soil was staying moist but many plants suffered from heat wilt in the afternoon so we would give them a second light watering just to cool everybody down a bit. Before long, our carefully selected plants began to acclimate to the long sunny days and in just two weeks some of the plants were showing signs of new growth. We very gradually tapered our watering off to about every other day in early August and, to a great degree, the plants were doing well! We lost one or two plants, and a few plants weren’t growing much or hadn’t put on any new blooms, but most of our plants were doing their thing!

October Encore

We continued to slow down our watering schedule and by September we were really only watering when the soil dried out substantially, then as the temperature cooled off just a smidge our flower garden truly started to flourish. Plants that had just been surviving started growing and blooming, the spaces between plants started filling in, and we were treated to a spectacular show of color all the way through October.
Despite planting in peak Georgia summer heat, our flower garden was a total success! The effort we put in ensured that our plants established healthy, deep root systems and will come back bigger and better next spring. Now we can focus on planning our veggie garden knowing our native flowers will attract the pollinators we need. Planting in the spring and fall is certainly preferable for most plants, but even if you get a late start, you can achieve gorgeous results in your garden with native plants and a little extra care.