Sidewalk Greenspace on New York's Upper West Side
Much of the garden’s catnip is now in full flower.
All of this catnip stems from a single small flowerpot I brought home and placed on my windowsill a decade ago — it’s a prolific self-seeder, and has spread itself to multiple nearby containers and treebeds.
The sidewalk planters we added this spring have provided some lovely additional space for these new strawflowers (Bracteantha) to catch the sun.
The burdock flowers also draw a crowd of bees; these ones are European honey bees.
Another reason I like burdock is that it supports a lot of insects. A week ago, I noticed that seemingly overnight, the undersides of the flower clusters had been swarmed by hundreds of aphids. I pulled out the hose and blasted a bunch of them off with a few quick squirts, but that only thins them out, it never gets ’em all, so I was very pleased to find a couple of ladybugs crawling around on it the next day. Although they’re cute, I know they’re fiends for aphids.
And even better, by the end of the week I was seeing ladybug larvae crawling around, clearing out the lingering aphids. A few days later, I can no longer find any aphids at all.
I’ve heard people dismiss burdock as a nuisance weed, and I’m sure there are situations in which it is unwanted, but I love its odd little flowers, and since I’m growing it in a container, the burrs really aren’t a problem.
These wild-strain sunflowers top out at three feet tall, so they aren’t as impressive as the giant forms, but they’re lovely nonetheless, and later in the season the seeds should provide some good eating for the birbs.
The hyacinth flowers from this spring have all died back, leaving stalks of seedpods that are turning translucent and releasing their little black seeds.
You can see why one of the common names for dianthus flowers is “pinks” — some of them are such a hot pink my phone camera doesn’t know what to do with it.
Our little rose bush is going full blast.
This looks like it could be some kind of scary monster, but it’s just the growth tip of a flower emerging in one of my planters.
