Early Summer is the Best Time for Gardening

By Karla A. Dalley

Ioften say that autumn is the best time to plant. But don’t be confused by that. Right now — early summer — is the best time to garden.

What’s the difference? Fall is a good time to add most perennials, shrubs, and trees to your landscape. If you need to renovate your lawn, September is the time for that.

But early summer is a fabulous time to grow anything and everything! Have you been to the garden centers? They are a riot of color! In fact, take a walk around your neighborhood and try not to covet your neighbors’ container plantings, I dare you! If your neighbors are anything like mine, everyone has a great container or two outside their door. Some have multiple containers lining their walks.

Containers are where you can be creative with form, color and plants. And if you don’t like the way the result turns out, try again by planting another. Container plantings are a fun, easy way to show off your artistic flair.

Perennials & ‘Hell Strips’

Then there are those with gardens right down near the road for everyone to enjoy. I have several neighbors who are very thoughtful that way. There are also several great examples around West Hartford of people who have planted in those “hell strips,” the small piece of land between the sidewalk and the curb. It’s notoriously difficult to get grass to grow there but some creative gardeners have lovely perennials growing there!

In early summer, there is a riot of flowers to enjoy, beginning with lilacs. One of my thoughtful neighbors loves lilacs—she planted 10 bushes in her front yard for everyone to enjoy the scent as we walk by! Several of us have roses out in front and we give the neighborhood quite a little rose parade in June. Nothing fussy, since they have to take abuse from the snowplows, but the roses stand up well to our winters and the plows and bloom beautifully each summer for everyone visually to share.

My neighborhood also has an abundance of peonies for everyone to enjoy viewing. And once that early summer show settles down, there’s a more modest summer show of hydrangeas and the traditional summer perennials.

Because I have so little sun, I have been known to have vegetables right out in front of my house as well, and herbs, either in containers or tucked unobtrusively into my gardens. This is what I mean when I say that early summer is so great for gardening. You can have a bowl of leaf lettuces—which are lovely enough to be decorative—on display with your other containers.

Leaf lettuces are decorative enough to put on your patio table to pluck as you dine, in fact.

Exotic Alternatives

Decorative pots of herbs can also tuck in among your container displays. Some herbs can even be used as fillers or spillers in container displays, provided of course that everything you are using in the containers is organic. You want to be able to still harvest and eat the herbs.

Thyme makes a lovely trailing edge plant for containers and it comes in lots of variegated forms. There’s a trailing rosemary as well. There are variegated and purple forms of sage and cute, mounded forms of basil that don’t grow too wild. You could make a whole, decorative herb container pot if you like. Keep it on your patio, next to your grill, for easy harvesting and cooking. I always have herbs near my kitchen door where I can get to them quickly.

Speaking of containers, peppers never mind being in a container. And there are so many varieties of tomatoes for containers now. Again, grow or buy one for your patio to keep next to the grill.

If you’d like something a little more exotic, lots of places now sell fig trees—and the figs will fruit this season. There’s nothing like the taste of a home-grown fig, warm from the sun. They are not truly hardy for us—they have to be protected or brought in. Ask the garden center how best to do that.

Also exotic, and also not hardy in our climate, but great on the patio this time of year, are citrus trees. Garden centers sell them in all sizes. You don’t generally get a lot of fruit, but you will get fruit—and the scent of the flowers is just wonderful. It’s worth growing them for that alone. Just be prepared to either bring them in—or give them to a plant loving friend—when it gets cooler this fall.

I hope this gives you at least some ideas for the many ways that you can enjoy containers, early summer plantings, vegetables and herbs or some tropical plants this summer. Summer is short— get out and enjoy the garden!