Over the fence

Regional picks

Praise for prairie dock The July/August 2022 article “Big and Bold for the Back of the Border” by Irvin Etienne mentioned prairie dock but didn’t include a photo of its huge, sandpaper-rough leaves. Here’s how mine looked at the beginning of June in southwestern Michigan.

It’s a bit slow to emerge and thus is useful for covering fading daffodil foliage. Deer and other critters don’t bother it. It likes full sun but persists in light shade. Yes, the 10-foot flower stalks are floppy and difficult to corral by stakes and twine. Sometimes I remove them. However, where you can keep the flowers, they are indeed glorious. Goldfinches will ride them in the wind. I get a few seedlings, which are best moved to a permanent spot in their first year. The roots of a mature clump are large and 2 to 3 feet deep (a dry spell doesn’t bother this plant), so it’s difficult to remove. Even little scraps of broken roots will sprout.

Thank you for featuring one of my favorites and showing me a few more big plants to try.

—Peg McCann, St. Joseph, Michigan

Questions about containers I’m intrigued by your numerous articles showing glorious mixes of plants in a single container, especially the recent article on pollinator containers (“Pots With Pollinator Power,” July/August 2022). Do the photos of these mixed containers depict the plants at their peak of growth? Related to that, how do you maintain these containers to keep the right proportion of plants? How do you keep them full but not overcrowded to the point of unhealthiness? Are most of these groupings suitable for the long term, or are they meant to be completely taken apart and replanted elsewhere when plants grow too big or overtake others? With so many plants massed together in a small area, are feeding needs increased?

—Lisa Kay Adam, Weslaco, Texas

FG responds: Container designer Sarah Partyka’s elegant and imaginative plant combinations have been featured in several FG articles over the years. Because she owns a garden center, Sarah chooses plants for her mixed pots from the same stock that is available to her customers in early summer. An editor usually arrives to take photos of the containers at least a few weeks after they are assembled, which gives the plants a chance to fill in a bit and acclimate to their new home.

The containers that Sarah used in this article are very large—most are at least 2 feet tall and wide and hold several cubic feet of potting soil. To keep them looking their best, the plants in these containers require more frequent watering, fertilization, and deadheading than similar plants grown in the ground. Because Sarah gardens in Zone 6b, most of her mixed containers will likely be broken down at the end of the growing season, with perennials tucked into garden beds and tropical plants moved to an indoor location over the winter.

Deer-hosta detente Thank you for your stunning May/June 2022 issue. I’d like to add to Danielle Sherry’s lore about hostas and deer (“Editor’s Letter”). Our garden in New Hampshire is rich with hostas (and many other lovely flowering perennials) and has been a joy here for many years. And we’re blessed with a good deer population, as you can see. So far, though, the deer seem to leave the hostas and other perennials alone.

—Allen Hough, Lancaster, New Hampshire