Operation: Flora Rescue

Last fall, my husband and daughter and I moved from our decidedly suburban house with it's small but decent yard, out to our 1940's brick farm house with it's 1/2 acre of "oh holy cow, what did we get ourselves into" yard. (And secretly, both my husband and I would have liked to have actual acreage, but this was a great compromise between being near town and out in the toolies, between being in the "suburbs" and in the country, and between having more house and less land or less house and more land.)

Anyway, our former house is now owned by my parents. Through a series of events, it's been occupied for several months by someone who had good intentions with the yard, but little knowledge of how to care for plants. Perennials were pulled up as weeds. Plants were left unwatered. Things were trimmed at the worst times and in ways that caused more harm than good. The vegetable garden looks great, but the ornamentals and herb garden are sad. While the occupant was out of town today, my mother and husband and I went over to dig up some of my more special plants and move them out to my house. (Bear in mind, it is my parents' house, and the current occupant will probably be vacating in a month or so...we fully intend to return in the fall and actually clean up and stage the yard. It wasn't a run-by decimating!)

Out of this, I wound up with several plants I'd gone to rescue, as well as several unexpected bonuses. I went in search of:

* Many tiger lilies
* Asiatic lilies
* A Rose of Sharon (hardy hibiscus variety)
* Several goldenseal plants
* A mayapple (gone. Dead. Suffocated under a barrel.)
* Wolfsbane (all six varieties pulled up as weeds.)
* Belladonna (either suffocated, pulled up as a weed, or gone unwatered and then pulled out. Vanished, in any event.)

I also came home with:

* A beautiful pink hydrangea. One of several that had been in the back yard.
* A hellebore
* A large and apparently not-flowered delphinium protesting a lack of water
* Several horseradishes that had apparently volunteered in the garden
* A rhubarb that volunteered from a chunk of severed root when we moved the big ones
* Several borage (which hate to be transplanted - waiting to see if they survive)
* My little, severely butchered and nearly dead, olive tree
* A stunted and sad calla lily in need of much more water and a little more sun
* A handful of crocosmia (if you've ever had these, you know you only need a handful...)
* Several starts off our luscious boysenberry plant. Thornless and prolific!
* A purple spiderwort
* A strange weird bulby plant with a spiral top. No idea, but I remember Mom giving it to me.
* My almost-dead but valiantly fighting valerian

So, I brought them home and spent the evening transplanting most of them. I also moved around some other plants and starts and formed a little flowering garden area near where I have most of the birdfeeders and birdbath. I cleared the debris away from the base of our pink flowering dogwood and created a little shade garden too. Hadn't really intended to plant along that side of the driveway, but hey, free plants! Something nice about having an entire truck bed full of plants that you didn't have to buy. Well, okay, I did buy them at some point in the past, so they weren't technically free, but it's not often you get to take so many with you when you move!

Note to anyone who is not a gardener who moves into a new house: look before you pull or dig. Learn what bulbs look like. (My beautiful hyacinth bulbs are all tragic victims too. Shoulda taken them with me when I moved out!) Watch as things come up in the spring. Know that perennials including bulb plants may die back completely in the fall and winter and leave no evidence above ground, and then sprout in the spring or early summer, or even late summer. That's normal, doesn't mean it's a weed! When in doubt, grab a gardener friend, or join one of the million gardening groups on the Internet and post pictures of things for people to identify. Learn to prune properly...you're better off letting something go wild than cutting a woody plant up improperly, as you can actually kill a tree or woody shrub with the wrong cuts. And if there are plants in your yard you don't want, contact the local Extension office at your state university, as they might come out and dig them up for you to sell in their fundraisers. Barring that, advertise on Craigslist "free plants, you haul" and you will have no shortage of takers! Stop senseless flora slaughter!