As the final day of the gardening blog, I leave you all with some fun plant quotes and trivia…

Happy gardening to all!

* Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his cap to keep cool. He changed it every two innings.

* A tick can live a year without a meal.

* At one point, all of the plants in Tomorrowland at Disneyland were edible.

* Snails can sleep for three years.

* “The garden that is finished is dead.”(H. E. Bates)

* “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” (Abraham Lincoln)

* Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backward.

* Daisies get their name from “day’s eyes” because they look like the sun.

* Some 90% of home gardeners plant tomatoes.

* “A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.” (Doug Larson)

* Oak trees don’t produce acorns until they are 50 and the saguaro cactus doesn’t produce branches until it’s 75.

* Mosquitoes are most attracted to the color blue.

* “Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. “ (Lou Erickson)

With the city of Bellingham asking residents to conserve water, those of us hoping to add yet more summer color to the garden might be feeling a bit dismayed. However, there are lots of great plants that are drought tolerant and still provide lots of interest.

1. Sedums. Commonly known as the stonecrops, these succulents conserve their water much the way cacti do. Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ (mentioned in an earlier post) is a great choice for year-round interest and fall color.

Plant bluebeard as a backdrop shrub that adds height to a perennial bed.

2. Bluebeard (Caryopteris). This deciduous shrub (about 3 feet at maturity) has beautiful silvery foliage and lavender colored flowers. Its blooms, starting in late summer, attract lots of pollinators, particularly butterflies.

3. Lamb’s ear (Stachys). Use it as a drought-tolerant groundcover. It makes itself at home quite quickly and the charming foliage will create a fuzzy blanket in a sunny spot.

4. Potentilla. A member of the rose family, many of these little shrubs are native to Western Washington. They produce white, pink or yellow flowers and require little care.

One more note about conserving water: If you enrich your garden soil with mulch and/or do a top-dressing, the soil will retain more water and you won’t need to water as frequently. Your plants — and the city — will thank you!

Note to readers: Tomorrow is the final day for this gardening blog, so please get in any last questions by tomorrow evening. Thanks!

On Sunday we were doing a bit of clean-up in the yard and I noticed all my bluebells were going to seed. I quickly ran in the house and grabbed a plastic baggie lest a gust of wind toppled the papery stalks.

Bluebell seeds form in capsules, which are held upright, a perk because the seed doesn’t scatter all at once into the soil, giving the busy gardener time to notice it and still collect quite a bit.

I’ve never sown bluebells from seed, but I knew I wanted to move the bulbs to a new place in my yard anyway, so I decided to take some seed while I was at it.

If you haven’t sown many plants from seed, there’s a sweet little video of a British gardener explaining the basics of bluebell seeding (it’s actually a good primer on seed sowing in general) HERE.

His key points are to 1.) Plant bluebell seed in pots (rather than directly into the soil where the tiny leaves look remarkably like grass) and 2.) Enrich the potting soil with a bit of compost.

Feel free to post updates on other plants that are going to seed in your own gardens.

It’s a rookie mistake that we’ve all made: Planting slow-growing perennials too close together.

Especially if you try to be economical and grow your plants from trays or 4″ pots, it’s easy to set up a garden bed that will be crowded and overgrown at maturity.

To avoid mass transplanting in a few years, read labels and plant with room to spare. To avoid sparse looking beds, intersperse colorful annuals the first couple years. You’ll be rewarded with healthier perennials that will flourish at maturity and fill out their intended home.

One way to help your lawn survive the heat of mid- to late-summer is to raise your mower blades a notch.

That extra half inch can really make a difference in holding in moisture and will help your lawn from drying out as quickly.

Now is a great time to break out the catalogs and start thinking about which tulip bulbs to order for your fall plantings.

The tulip show at Roozengaarde in Skagit County. Browsing for bulbs early may help you design a planting scheme that will bring a little bit of the tulip show to your own yard.

Bulbs can be planted in late fall to early winter, so now is a great time to start making your selections.

Roozengaarde, famous for their spring tulip shows in Skagit County, has a nice Web site with tulip planting tips and, of course, their own catalog. Find it HERE.

I stumbled across a great insect-identification Web site today called BugGuide.com. Actually, the site is devoted to arthropods in general, but I happened to be trying to key out a species of sweat bee and was really impressed with the photographs helping to differentiate the Hymenoptera (bee, ant and wasp) families.

I thought I’d pass it along in case any of you were interested in keying out some of the insects, spiders and various centipedes and millipedes in your yards. Enjoy!

Visit the site HERE.

Two more great choices for early to mid-fall color…

Salvia ‘Blue Angel’: I love, love, love this plant. Very few flowers can truly be called “blue” and this is one of them. No hint of green or purple here. Just a sweet, deep blue.

Salvia 'Blue Angel' is a precious addition to the garden. Plant it near red or gold flowers to really make the blue pop.

Helianthus: A sunflower relative, these flowers can be a multitude of reds, oranges and golds. Keep cutting the spent blooms to prolong the display. Wonderful fall color if you like the warmer tones.

From MJ: Can you give us some ideas for what to plant for fall color? I’m finally getting the spring/summer blooms right, but I’m not sure about fall. I do like to concentrate on native plants, but not exclusively. Thanks. I enjoy your column.

Thanks for the timely question. Now is a great time to get some fall perennials in the ground so they have time to develop their roots and bring you a lot of color.

Pineapple sage blooms in late summer to early fall. Its fiery, trumpet-shaped flowers are great for cut-flower arrangements, too.

My favorites…

Yellow monkey flower: These little guys start blooming in spring and will truck on through the fall. They are a native to Western Washington and they establish well with little care.

Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’: This is the ideal fall-color plant. It’s a succulent, so it doesn’t require a lot of water and it establishes well in our climate. In the spring and summer the foliage is lime green and very pretty. Come fall the flowers turn pink, then rose then burgundy. Give it lots of sun.

Black-eyed Susans: These daisy-like flowers are bright yellow with dark centers.

Echinacea: The classic purple is always a favorite or look for a variety called ‘Sunset’ which is a breathtaking purple-red.

Pineapple sage: I love this plant. The foliage smells like the fruit from its moniker and the flowers are a deep scarlet red. It was the last flower in bloom in my garden last year, surviving our first really chilly night. This herb grows tall — about 5 feet — so give it lots of space.

For great ideas on landscaping with native plants, visit the Western Washington Native Plant Society page on landscaping. You can find it HERE.

They even have a page just for native plants that bloom in the fall, HERE.

As gardeners, we appreciate the value of earthworms. They turn and mix the soil layers, aerate and increase drainage in clay and help speed our compost piles.

But did you know that garden earthworms are not native to the Pacific Northwest? During the last glacial period, almost all worms were completely wiped out of this area. The vegetation — the hemlocks, Douglas firs and cedar forests we hold so dear in the Pacific NW — evolved in the absence of worms. (There are a few exceptions in Washington, including the giant Palouse earthworm on the East side of the Cascades.)

All our garden worms (common night crawlers, red wigglers, etc.) were imported from Europe.

Why is any of this important?

It’s relevant for us to know we shouldn’t dump garden/yard soil in natural areas, or we’ll encourage the spread of worms where they don’t belong. When worms “escape” into natural areas, they change the composition of the soil, making it hard for native plants to germinate and thrive. Entire forest understories can be disrupted and ferns and wildflowers lost.

It’s just one more way to be environmentally conscious gardeners.