Smithsonian Gardens, part 1: National Museum of Natural History

Monarda fistulosa, Butterfly Habitat Garden

[This is the first in a series of posts about Smithsonian Gardens.  Please see my introductory post here.]

The National Museum of Natural History is one of the Smithsonian Institution's largest and most popular museums, vying with the National Air and Space Museum as the most-visited Smithsonian museum.  But many visitors overlook the gardens around the building, including the Butterfly Habitat Garden and Urban Bird Habitat Garden.  These gardens deserve more attention; not only are they beautiful, but they are AAM (American Alliance of Museums) accredited and have been designated as wildlife sanctuaries by the National Audubon Society.

Lazy summer days

Temperatures cooled down a bit this evening--meaning around 80 degrees (27 C)--so I thought I would do some light garden work after dinner.  There's a reason why this is such an uncharacteristic thing for me to do.  The temperature was deceptive and an hour later I was drenched in sweat, but at least I got some begonias planted (yes, I'm still planting begonias, and still have a few more to go!) and Vitex agnus-castus deadheaded.  The plant was just about finished blooming and trimming it back now will give me a good second bloom in a few weeks.  I'm already seeing a second bloom on my butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), which I deadheaded just two weeks ago.

Throwback Thursday: ghosts of July past

For Throwback Thursday I'm going through my photo albums, looking at plants that I photographed in early July in past years but are in my garden no longer.  Some of these were lost just recently, after our coldest winter in 20 years, but some of them died from poor growing conditions, neglect, or simply because I lost interest and removed them to try something new.  As I like to tell people, the secret to being a successful gardener is to keep killing plants.