What’s in Your Garden?

During the peak of summer, it can be difficult to keep up with all the weeding and maintenance tasks the garden demands.  Even if you need to continue deferring some tasks, it is useful to survey your garden to check if there are any monster weeds or other major detractors taking away from the health or appearance of your garden.

A giant, American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) has grown up among a hydrangea, a potted hibiscus, daylilies, and a butterfly bush.  Granted, pokeweed is a native plant that develops interesting purple berries attractive to a variety of songbirds (e.g., catbird, mockingbird, cardinal, robin, mourning dove), but it was not planted in this garden.  Now, at 8-feet tall and 10-feet wide, it’s half a dozen stalks have completely taken over the garden space and overgrown the rest of the plants.