Garden Share Bristol

Finally, we are getting a long, soaking rain! It will do wonders for our plants as we head into winter. The moisture intensifies the beautiful foliage colors of the Autumn Purple ash (Fraxinus Americana ‘Autumn Purple’) and the prairie grasses beyond it.

This is a recent view of my meadow garden. The grasses are in full bloom/seed now and at their peak. It’s kind of a mish-mash of tall grasses and short grasses, many native to our area. Here you can see the reddish little bluestem (Schizachrium scoparium), switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) and Indian grass (Sorgastrum nutans). These tall prairie grasses are underplanted with very low buffalo grass (Buchloe dachtiloides). There are also a number of perennials and species tulips planted with the grasses to add color and interest in the spring and summer, but this is definitely the time of year when I like this garden the most!

These big beauties are our pet koi. Several of them have been with us since they were only about 4” long, some 15 years! Many of them are now in the 20”-24” range, and we love to watch them slowly cruise around the pond. As the water temperatures cool they will stop feeding and slowly go into hibernation mode. They’ll spend the winter resting near the bottom of the pond, where the water is the warmest. We’ve already stopped giving them any supplemental feed and they’re now on a strictly vegetarian diet.

As the water plants also start their decline into dormancy we have more open water surface area---the better to view our fish and their babies! We don’t get them every year; I think all the big guys cannibalize them. At this point I’ve spotted about 5 little 1 ½ inchers darting around. Right now they all look very different---reds, oranges, blacks, spotted. It will be great fun to watch them grow and develop their mature coloration!