Tap Roots

Tap Roots, a raingarden initiative, kicks off Monday, June 8, with a gathering at the Hamline United Methodist Church raingarden, at the corner of Minnehaha Avenue and Simpson Avenue. Directions

Snacks will be provided, ideas will be exchanged, and we'll see what a ragtag bunch of neighbors/gardeners can do to promote raingardens and native plants.

Natives, with their deep root structures, are ideal for raingardens. Jonathan Dregni, the spark behind this meeting, has more to say about the benefits of natives in home gardens.

Raingardens don't have to be elaborate. I've found that there are some simple things we can do when designing a boulevard garden to capture rainwater and slow runoff.

Hello Lily

This lily emerges from the soil looking like a blossom.

I was overrun with lily bulbs last fall, so I put some of them on the boulevard to see how they stand up to the conditions right next to the curb. So far, so good.

I've put up a Flickr set for this plant.

4th of July

It was a fabulous Fourth. The weather was warm and sunny, with low humidity.

I got to work in my garden nearly the whole day. Divided, potted, uprooted, created a new bed, planted, weeded, watered, and turned compost. The pursuit of happiness, as I see it.

Sometime in the late morning, I waved to my neighbor as he drove past. A few hours later, I saw him again. He called out, "When I left, you were working in the garden, and when I came back you're still working in the garden. I played 18 holes of golf. I sure hope you are having as much fun as I did."

Yep. I sure did.

I took a break in the evening for brats on the grill and baseball on the radio. The kids each went with friends to see fireworks. I got to garden into the twilight, listening to all the neighborhood fireworks going off. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it seemed that I could see a little haze in the streetlights from all the smoke. Small fireworks are okay, until you compare them to the big ones. We live about a mile from the St. Paul Saints stadium, and they put on a nice fireworks show that makes the small stuff seem really small.

I didn't finish putting my tools away until 10:30.

Poppies!

Individual poppy blossoms don't last more than a couple of days, but with new blooms appearing every day, the show goes on for a fortnight.

These grow along the curb, facing south. They seem to like the hot, dry location. Each year, the poppy patch expands a bit.

Boulevard Beauty

Portulaca grandiflora, brightening my boulevard. These flourish where most other plants struggle, and unlike the sedums, they offer bright, showy flowers.

I usually get a flat or two of these annuals. They are usually spent by the end of summer, just as the self-seeded ones are hitting their stride.

Why do the commercially grown annuals sometimes run out before the season? Don Engebretson explains it in his article, "Annual Disasters," which can be found under the "Plants" link on his site, the Renegade Gardener.

Poppies Pop!

Showy, tall blossoms on my boulevard, growing right next to the curb. Always a sure-fire way to attract attention. Right behind them grow another crowd pleaser, Globe Allium, which show up as the purple blobs in this photo.

Instant Garden

I like being on a corner lot. It gives me more opportunity for boulevard gardening. (Boulevard has many meanings. Here in the Twin Cities, we use the word to denote the strip of soil between the sidewalk and the curb. These are wider here than in some other parts of the country, in part to provide space to hold the snow when the streets are plowed.)

It's not a place for delicate plants. People will step into and through boulevard beds, especially when it's not clear that plants are growing there. Fences are not an option. Some boulevard gardeners use raised beds to get around this problem. I prefer to keep my boulevard garden at sidewalk level.

Certain plants have enough dried foliage over the winter to help identify their beds. I have a new boulevard bed right on the corner, where kids would walk across to get to their school bus. Because of winter die back, it looks barren right now. To help protect those plants, I took dried stalks from the backyard and stuck them in to create an "instant garden."

That's aster on the left, German statice in the middle front, and Rudbeckia on the right.

So far, I've had a few broken stalks, but no footsteps in the corner bed.