Rogers Garden

2024

Saint Paul, MN

After a couple of years of thinking about it, my in-laws decided they wanted to actually do something about the orange daylily monoculture in their front. I reviewed the site with them, collaborated on a vision of a drought tolerant native garden, and drew up some rough plans. We worked by removing plants and then quickly filling in the space left behind with plugs and repeating this several times. We got plugs from Mother Earth letting the Rogers decide what they wanted, but with me helping to guide some of the decisions (e.g., selecting a higher ratio of grasses for long term maintenance, how to group plants for placement). The planting followed a kind of block planting over matrix grass planting format. This year had some flowers, but did fill in especially on the areas worked on first. Come Spring there are a couple areas they will want to fill in more densely toward the back part of the garden, but it is poised to be quite colorful!

This is how the site looked at the beginning. Totally full of orange daylilies.
We removed the outer perimeter of the daylilies first since those would be getting the most sun and thus grow in the fastest.
After removing the plants, we were ready to transplant plugs to fill in the space. Before transplanting, we arranged them in blocks of similar forbs with grasses thoroughly interspersed.
A closeup of the pre-planted plants
As we planted them, we left behind tags to keep track of what went where
More plants removed! Orange daylilies must be thoroughly removed or any remnants of their roots will regrow. We were being diligent in the way we dug them out to minimize secondary weeding.
Nearly all removed now!
Monarda punctata growing in
The garden filled in quite a bit by fall
Asters starting to bloom around sideoats grams and Coreopsis lanceolata