Our Habitat Garden is filled with perennial and native species, but even it has to have at least a little maintenance from time to time. For us, now is one of those times. We left the seed heads up through the winter, but now it’s time to clean up before the new growth gets started.
One of the plants I really like in the garden is Vernonia, or New York ironweed. Its feathery, purple flowers attract butterflies, and with multiple flowers per stem and a height of 6-8’, it gets a lot of attention from our human visitors as well. The stems are fairly sturdy, but the plant will lean into its neighbors a bit, although I don’t consider it enough of an issue to require staking them. You can see what an extensive root system this single plant has developed. Some of the roots are nearly as thick as the stalk itself.
One of the practices that can be used to control size and bloom time of herbaceous perennials is to selectively prune the stalks as they grow. Depending on your area, you can reduce these plants by about a third to one-half, giving them a shortened overall size and potentially later flowers. If you try this, make notes about what you’ve cut and when, to evaluate how well it’s worked for your garden needs, and then adjust accordingly for the following season.
This time, I’ve removed some of the ironweed that was too far forward in the bed and we’re moving them to another space nearby. The soil in their new area is a lot drier, so the experiment continues.
