Saugus Gardens in the Fall

Here’s what’s blooming in town this week to make your walks more enjoyable

By Laura Eisener

Fall is here, and the harvest moon shone down on our gardens at 5:57 a.m., although it will still look full tonight. Plenty of flowers continue to bloom in our gardens, including roses and phlox and many annuals, and many fall flowers, such as asters and chrysanthemums, can be seen around town this week.

I have nine amaryllis bulbs (Hippeastrum spp.) out on my porch, where they have been all summer, letting their leaves soak up the sun so they will, hopefully, produce flowers during the winter and early spring. I will bring them in before frost and check them regularly for buds, but I was very surprised to see that one has a bud pushing up from the pot right now – it still has leaves, and has not gone through the dormant period normally expected.

The beautiful purple asters (Symphiotrichum novi-belgii ‘Woods Purple’ or Aster dumosus ‘Woods Purple’) at St. Margaret’s in Cliftondale are a sight to behold. They are a long-lasting compact aster variety – a very reliable fall bloomer – which has been growing for several years near the Japanese maple on the front lawn of the church. These cultivars of native plants have a compact growth habit without the gardener having to pinch them back in summer, and they have a reputation for being very disease resistant. Carol Nadeau, the church secretary, is very pleased with how well these have grown from a small plant several years ago.

An especially intriguing variety of black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida) is ‘Cappuccino,’ which has dark brown disk flowers, and ray florets that may combine golds, reds, oranges and browns. It looks like a hybrid between two species, one of which, black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida), is usually a fairly long-lived perennial, while the other (Rudbeckia hirta) is often a biennial, which means it lives only two years. Biennials do tend to produce a lot of seeds, which means that this plant’s offspring are likely to appear somewhere in your garden, even if not in the place originally planted!

Among the interesting insects to be found in our gardens is the praying mantis. Three mantid species may be found in our gardens. The Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) is more common in the South, but does occur throughout eastern U.S. Most commonly we see the European praying mantis (Mantis religiosa) and the larger Chinese praying mantis (Tenodera aridifolia chinensis), both introduced. All three are carnivores and are usually considered beneficial since they eat large numbers of garden pests, but they do also sometimes eat beneficial insects (including other mantids), small birds, fish and lizards.

When harvesting at the St. John’s community garden, Dee LeMay and I were surprised by a green darner (Anax junius) resting on an eggplant leaf. Its wings are transparent, and water droplets on them made them sparkle. This is one of the largest dragonflies, with a wingspan nearly 4″ across and body length of 3-3 1/2″. A distinguishing feature is a marking on the back of the head, often described as a bulls-eye or target pattern – I would describe it as a “false eye.” The body (thorax) is green with a reddish brown narrower “tail” (actually abdomen) section in females and a more purplish abdomen in males. I think the one in the garden was a female. They travel long distances to migrate: from Canada and New England down to Mexico and Panama. Their diet consists primarily of insects, such as mosquitoes, small moths and flies. Eggs are laid in water plants, and nymphs feed on tadpoles as well as aquatic insects.

  Editor’s Note: Laura Eisener is a landscape design consultant who helps homeowners with landscape design, plant selection and placement of trees and shrubs, as well as perennials. She is a member of the Saugus Garden Club and offered to write a series of articles about “what’s blooming in town” shortly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. She was inspired after seeing so many people taking up walking.