The Bloom Blog: Late Summer Edition!

3rd generation Capon family member and Grounds Manager, Ginny Brill, shares tips, tricks and information about Capon’s flowering plants…

So many Capon guests have gone out of their way to tell me that the gardens seem even more beautiful — mentioning the abundance of colorful blooms and all the butterflies and other beneficial insects they have seen.

I must give credit where credit is due: my grounds crew – Paul, Susan and Irvin, plus our early spring help, Dana, (who you see at the spa through the season) and our summer help: Aaron and Noah. Each have their areas of expertise which combined, produces what you see. Dana helps get the gardens and boxes ready in the spring, Irvin, Aaron and Noah handle the mowing and trimming and have been doing more of the hardscaping and mulching lately.   Susan plants, feeds and waters the boxes, barrels and gardens and is getting to be an expert at seeds.  We have more annuals in the gardens this year thanks to her.  More blooms equal more bees, butterflies, moths and hummingbirds!  And Paul, as grounds supervisor, keeps on top of what is most important to take care of that day, while patiently listening to my dreams for the next project.

Most of the annuals we have are not ones you will find at your local garden store because they don’t do well in pots or don’t transplant easily.  The good news though: they are easy to grow from seed!  Susan started many of them in our greenhouse and transplanted them when they were a few inches tall.  Some of our annuals are sowed directly into the garden in the spring, once the ground warms up. With other varieties, we just allow the plants go to seed, (tolerating a week or two of less than beautiful plants!) and collecting seed or letting the plants just drop seed and not weeding too heavily in the spring to allow the seeds to sprout!  For example: the spring to early summer blooming larkspur and the mid-summer to fall blooming cleome. The tall pink, white or light purple cleome, (or “Spider Flower”), is now blooming in the garden across from the lower parking lot and in the Tennis Court Garden.

I am a fan of zinnias- there are lots of different varieties to choose from, they tend to survive the hot summer and keep blooming into fall and they are relatively pest and disease-free.  The tall showy “Cut and Come Again Zinnias” are blooming in the Tennis Court Garden and the garden by the pool.  There are also “Zahara” and “Profusion” zinnias, that look nothing like their tall cousin. They are short and bushy and have a more daisy looking bloom. They attract butterflies, especially swallowtails, spangled fritillaries and even monarchs.  Bees have been enjoying the prickly Eryngium, Blue Sea Holly, growing in the Tennis Court Garden.  And of course, there have been plenty of hummingbirds around the feeders hanging on the Spa porch and occasionally around other porch and window boxes. If you look carefully, there is something that can be seen around the grounds enjoying our blooms that looks like a hummingbird with its rapidly beating wings and furry body, but it is actually a moth! A member of the Sphinx Moth family, instead of the long slender beak of a hummingbird, its tongue-like proboscis is about twice the length of its body, enabling it to reach the nectar deep inside the flowers.

The iridescent pink lilies on their tall slender stalks are beginning to fade. Known as “Surprise Lilies”, “Resurrection Lilies” or “Naked Ladies”, they are actually not lilies at all, but are bulbs, part of the Lycoris family (think amaryllis).  In the Spring, green strap-like bunches of leaves pop up giving the bare spring garden some much needed color.  In addition to these wonderful clumps of green, at the same time, clumps of wider leaves also appear.  Soon those flowers will be poking their heads up through the soil. Known as Fall Crocuses, or Colchicums, they let us know fall is not too far away.  Look for pictures of these unique flowers in our next Bloom Blog!