Late-summer glories reign at Mill Pond Garden Sept. 5

Late summer is the garden’s moment of maturity and greatest beauty for annuals, many perennials and large tropical foliage plants, a lush jungle for enjoyment.

Mill Pond Garden will celebrate late-summer garden glories for the Cape Region on its open day from 10 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 5.

Ticket are available at millpondgarden.com. Subscribe free to get first notice of all upcoming events, classes, tours and tickets.

Late summer includes wonderful shade-tolerant ornamental grasses, a rarity, which can be seen at peak of inflorescence. Two that are highly successful locally are diamond grass, the best but least-known of all garden ornamental grasses, and hakonechloa, or forest grass, with its airy flowers and graceful forms.

Diamond grass, calamagrostis brachytricha, with its long, slender flower plumes, sparkles when the dew is still on the flower heads each morning. Among other features, its leaves are not high in silicates so they do not cut skin like most other ornamental grasses, and it only gets about three feet tall, with a graceful, mounding, pendulous form and leaves that move in every breeze.

The hakonechloa grass, favorites being gold or aureola cultivar, grows only two feet high, also mounding and pendulous, tolerates considerable shade and makes a stunning border or potted plant or a solo feature anywhere.

Visitors may also enjoy a late flush of roses and mature annuals - SunPatience, caladium, coleus red head, colocassia esculenta 'Illustris’, Taro elephant ear, cordyline red star spike, little-known gorgeous, fragrant acidanthera (semi-hardy), sweet potato vine, and many more colorful annuals.

One may see hummingbirds visiting the expanded collection of salvias, some of which work in boggy or wet soils, or the cuphea, which is very popular with the hummers. See the rare, everblooming crape myrtles, perennial tall phlox including 'Jeanna' recommended as best disease-resistant by Mount Cuba Center. Guests also will possibly see water lilies.

Ally, the resident baby snapping turtle in the small stream pond, affords huge delight for the many children who visit the garden. All visitors enjoy the beautiful koi and shubunkins, and many garden and water birds. Mill Pond Garden is a Certified Wildlife Habitat featuring both plants and habitats for a holistic garden, the wave of the future for gardens of greatest enjoyment and ecological benefit.

Visitors may also see how well the lawns are coming on from reseeding, which is appropriate in Cape Region gardens at this time of year. Early September is the ideal time to overseed or renovate turf locally. Lawns are the most difficult part of gardening in the Cape Region and throughout horticultural climate Zone 7, in between the cool-season grasses of the north and the warm-climate grasses of the south.

John Emerson, turf grass nutrient management extension agent for Delaware, recommends tall fescues for full-sun lawns. For shade lawns, Emerson recommends the fine fescues such as creeping, sheep, and chewings, rarely available in local stores or most commercial seed mixes. Cultivar names matter for which seeds do best in the area. Emerson only recommends Lesco brand foxfire lacrosse seed blend, which can be purchased online from Amazon.com. Search for Lesco Shady Select Seed Mix.

To prepare bare or weak lawn areas for overseeding, first pull or kill weeds with herbicide and wait two weeks. Seed and fertilize thin or bare areas of lawn followed immediately by using a garden weasel tool to loosen soil easily, and partially bury seeds in those bare areas. Keep newly seeded areas watered once or twice a day until established in a few weeks. Don't mow until grass is at least three inches high, about six weeks.

The fine and shade fescues are slow to germinate and establish, so gardeners must be patient. They are not sturdy enough for heavy traffic or play areas, but they are proof against insects and diseases, and these cultivars tolerate Delaware’s heat and humidity.

For heavy-use areas in full sun, use tall fescue. Avoid using bluegrasses, which are invasive and very vulnerable to fungal disease in heat of summer, rye grasses which are weak and die out in summer, and annual grasses  which are invasive and also die out in summer.

The Bermuda grass and zoysia are invasive locally and, while hardy, are not green in winter but completely straw-colored, which takes some getting used to. Once gardeners have established a quality lawn, they should apply crabgrass preventer or other weed and grass seed germination preventer chemical every mid-September and late March to prevent weed seeds including crabgrass year-round.

Now is the best time to start a new lawn rather than spring when the following heat of summer discourages establishment of good root systems. Fall allows the right temperatures for ideal root systems and mature grass plants to establish before next summer's heat.

Mill Pond Garden is a small, holistic botanical garden on Red Mill Pond, offering inspiring beauty and design as well as professional gardening and horticultural information for the Cape Region and Zone 7 gardeners.