Front Yard Bog Garden – Spring Cleaning — 2016-02-19

With Spring approaching but not yet here, I figured it was time to think about Spring-cleaning my front yard bog garden. Normally, I wait until early March, but when I checked on it a few days ago, I noticed that some of my pitcher plants were already sending up buds. Because I needed to trim the old, dead pitchers, I didn’t want to have to trim around taller buds and perhaps damage them. The main consideration for waiting until the last-minute is the danger of late frosts. A late cold snap has the ability to seriously damage the tender buds. This has happened to me in the past, so I am vigilant in my awareness of weather forecasts.

Here are two views of how the bog garden appeared just before I began Spring maintenance:

Bog Garden before annual Maintenance

Bog Garden before annual Maintenance

Last year’s pitcher growth was quite dense, and required slow going when trimming close to the growth points. So I set up a tarp next to the landscape timbers and opened a garbage bag for the trimmings. Here is where I should add that I really wanted to burn the garden. In nature, the plants grow with savannah grasses which are burned periodically for the purpose of woody plant removal. This burning removes the dead pitchers and opens the area up to sunshine. In addition, it adds minerals and nutrients via the burning. Under ideal conditions, burning the bog garden should take just a few minutes and would be safe to conduct in the front yard. However, there is a city ordinance which prohibits open fires… Drats! I’ve thought of burning the refuse in my charcoal grill, then scattering the ashes on the garden, but I’ve yet to do this. I’m guessing the smoke created by burning the pitchers would not be welcome in the neighborhood and may bring on the wrath of the open-fire police.

So, another year goes by without replenishing the minerals and nutrients. Perhaps I’ll burn and scatter the refuse next year.

Here are a couple of close-ups of portions of the bog garden showing the dense nature of some of the pitcher plants:

That compact, bushy plant in the lower right is a Xyris or Yellow-eyed Grass species. It will also get a good trim. The pitcher plants are a variety of Sarracenia species native to the Southeast as well as a hybrid or two. Yeah, I admit that it looks rather sad in this winter, dormant stage.

It took me almost four hours to complete the trim and haul away the clippings. Here is the result:

I believe you will be able to see the green, wire frames which I put there above the larger, more robust pitcher plant groups to support the pitchers as they grow.

Yep, that’s a smooth river rock that I placed there when I built the bog garden 10 years ago. It really does not belong in the natural system of Southeastern pitcher plants, but I thought it would add a pleasing touch to the bog garden. I’ve never taken it out, so there it is…

The final part of the process was to replace the rotted landscaping timbers with fresh ones. It required cutting them to size (the bog garden is more or less 10 feet (3 meters) by 3 feet (1 meter). Once measured and trimmed to size, I drilled a hole at either end and drove 12-inch (30-cm) spikes through the holes to secure the timbers to the ground. Here are a couple of views of the completed project:

Here is a shot of the budding Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpa pitcher plant group. The buds are approximately 2 inches (5 cm) tall:

Once the bright yellow, foul-smelling (they smell like cat urine) flowers come into bloom, they will put on a good show:

This is what the pitchers of this plant look like when they are sprouted and mature:

One final shot which shows the sprouting plants of Spiranthes odorata or Fragrant Ladies’-tresses orchids growing in an open section of the bog garden:

Here are the flowers of Spiranthes odorata as seen in late September:

One last shot showing the garden in its full splendor a couple of years ago:

Having a bog garden has brought me much pleasure. It is not without its troubling moments, though. Before I built the gated fence surrounding the front yard, the garden was vandalized on several occasions — especially when it was in full bloom. I guess passersby just couldn’t help themselves. In addition, droughts, hailstorms, and late freezes often make me very anxious. But, it requires very little attention during the year except that it be kept wet. I have two, 65-gallon rain barrels fed by rooftop runoff that I can use during dry spells. All of these things taken into consideration, I am very happy to have a bit of the coastal plain flora in my upstate South Carolina front yard.

–Jim