Black-Eyed Susans, Summer 1991

Some of my mother's favorite flowers were Black-Eyed Susans—Rudbeckia hirta. I tried to have at least one of those plants in each of our perennial gardens at her home. This is a group just off the brick patio during the summer of 1991. Other flowers seen are Mullein Pink—Lychnis coronaria, edible common Tawny Day lilies, white Yarrow—Achillea millefolium and a pot of chives, which are still going twenty years later. You can also see a perennial variety of Dusty Miller, which was much finer and more delicate than the annual variety mostly seen today.

I miss this yard, which was virtually all flower gardens, with barely more than paths in between them that needed to be mowed. We had blooms from very early spring until the first frost. It got to the point where people would stop while driving by to look at the gardens. Frequently we'd find beautiful old-stock perennials sitting on newspapers in our driveway, thinned out from other people's gardens, because they knew we'd take care of them and love them. We probably had more than one -hundred old-stock perennials, including very rare native early spring flowers almost extinct in Connecticut. When the house was sold after my mother's death, the new owners bulldozed the yards, front and back, and put in "easy-to-keep up" grass. If they only realized that established perennial gardens actually need less care than cutting the grass!