It's My Garden!

Spring is All About Change -Right?

2010-04-29T07:22:00.007-04:00

Everywhere you look, everyday things are changing in the garden right now. Yesterday the the lilac bloomed - Syringa patula 'Miss Kim'. It is truly a love in the garden. It blooms later than other lilacs, extending their season. It's compact - 6-8 feet at maturity and easily trimmed to stay shorter, so you can use it as a foundation plant. We put it at the foot of the steps from our deck to the yard. The moment you step onto the deck - from the house or from the yard - you get the wonderful fragrance.

And, it's a beautiful color. The buds are pinker, but the flowers are more ice blue-violet. Oh, and it doesn't mind our climate. A winner all around! This is one of my "memory plants". I planted it in memory of a dear friend's mother.

Another beauty that came into full bloom this week is a weigela - Weigela florida 'Java Red'. It's a smaller variety - not really small enough to be considered a dwarf - but better for smaller spaces. This one is going to get a major pruning after it finishes blooming in the hope of improving its shape. The side that you cannot see is nearly flat because there was a huge clump of sea grass behind it until last fall. I finally decided that the sea grass was way too invasive and dug it up, but it had really hurt the shape of this shrub. I hope that by cutting it way back, it will grow out all the way around and even out in the next couple of years.

And, then if you truly want to see what an early spring we have had, here's my best proof.

A water lily bloomed this week! This is one that Mother gave me a couple of years ago. We didn't have room for it in the fish pond, so we got a small pond liner and created a lily (only) pond. I don't give it an annual cleaning (since fish are not dependent on it), so I don't cut back the plant in the fall, and the result is this! Turns out the frogs have the prettiest spot in the garden right now!

More Change in the Air.

In the spirit of spring, I have decided to make a change in my blogging, too. For about 18 months I have maintained two sites - this one which has been wholly about the garden and my first site - From the Garden Bench - which was planned to be insightful comments on my life and the world. I find that I have much more to say about the garden, and this topic is the one that draws me most of the time, but I still want to write about other things from time to time - without needing to maintain a presence at both locations. So, starting May 1st I shall combine the two blogs - but over at the other site. This one will remain up in case anyone is just dying to look up something in an old post - and so I can link back to it - but all the new stuff will be other "there". And, gardening will still be the main focus of what I write.

I will leave a link here, but hope you will come find me next month "on the bench" as well as "in the garden".

Too Early for Iris!

2010-04-24T11:51:00.002-04:00

Iris bloom in May and June. Any gardener can tell you that. Apparently someone forgot to tell the iris that this year. This beauty opened this morning - at least two weeks early.

Mother gave me this one for Christmas about three years ago and I neglected to save its tag, so haven't a clue what it is... except huge. It's about eight inches "tall" and about four inches "across" the main part of the flower and a delicious pink. Fortunately, it is also pretty happy with its conditions. There were originally two rhizones, and now I have at least four fairly large clumps - enough that I gave some away last year.

At one time I had some plants that were descended from my grandmother's favorite iris. They were a small yellow flower that succumbed to an overly wet winter several years ago. While this one can't replace that family heirloom, it certainly has made a place for itself - both in my garden and in my heart.

Longfellows in the Garden

2010-04-23T20:27:00.006-04:00

Our local botanical garden - Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden - is a whole mile away - close enough to walk on a pretty spring day. I love to drop in frequently to see what's looking good in their plantings and to consider things to add to mine. Someday soon I will take you there to see some of the pretty things they have and to tell you about it. But not today. Instead we have a special event.

Currently they have a fun exhibit of glass sculptures by Hans Godo Frabel. The pieces are placed throughout the property and among the plants all over the garden. Last weekend we saw about half the exhibit, which was either geometric glass sculpture like this fountain or his more whimsical "longfellows" and clowns.

These are longfellows. As you can see, they are like stick figures in glass, but have elongated legs and arms. Their heads are tiny, but yet they have faces. This is my favorite group. They are settled in among the Japanese maples and junipers in the Asian Garden. There is a stream that flows from the Tea House above, down the hill and then behind this group. The columns are glass and reflect the water, the sky and the plants all around the figures. The sun was bouncing off the figures and sparkling so that they seemed to be moving.

Another fun group is a dozen clowns who are balanced on floating glass balls in the lily pond that surrounds the children's garden. There are about a dozen of them on brightly colored balls.

This group of the longfellows was riding a turn of the century bicycle. At one time this property was the location of a bicycling club and they would have ridden high wheelers like this.

We hope to go back this weekend to see the rest of the glass exhibit ... and to see what's bloomed this week!

New Blooms

2010-04-21T19:05:00.008-04:00

It's a lovely evening in the garden. We had a full day of beneficial rain. As difficult as it is to believe we are in a rain deficit right now. After the wettest winter in memory, we have had nothing during April and yesterday were an inch behind. I would guess we got about 1/3 inch today, so everything is perking up and saying, "thank you!" this evening. So much is blooming now.

Always my favorite, the clematis are starting to climb everywhere. The first two to bloom, tho, are 'Marie Louise Jensen' and 'H.F. Young'. This is Marie.

"She" is part of the renovation I did last year to the front corner near the porch. You can see that she has already reached the top of her trellis and will soon be making her way up the porch railing. My hope is that she will grow across the top of the railing and on up the corner post before the end of the summer. (We had hoped to get the railing painted this spring, but are running behind. We may delay until fall to let Marie have her way with it! Do you like that excuse?)

'H.F. Young' is growing up the mailbox post:

Unfortunately, in the photos they look similar in color - but they are not. You can see tht H.F. is a much lighter, but it is also a much more pink shade than Marie. See the flower on the lower left, that is not quite open yet? That's more the true color. I have taken a bunch of photos, but they all come out more blue-purple than life. Weird.

A lovely surprise today is this tiarella - 'Sugar and Spice'. I planted it years ago - maybe five - and it has struggled and struggled, but never bloomed. And all of a sudden here it is.

I think it was all the winter rain, but don't really know. This is a part of the garden that needs more water, but I have not found a way to really provide it on a consistent basis. If we ever put in the irrigation system, this spot is number one on my list of places that need help. It's a tiny plant, but with a lovely cluster of pink petals at the tip of each bloom cluster.

The most exciting thing I found tonight is a mistake. About five years ago we visited Longwood Gardens and Brandywine Museum (of the Wyeth family painters). There was a perennial sale at Brandywine and on pure impulse I bought three trilliums - heritage unknown. For the most part, that was the last I saw of them. A couple of springs I have gotten a couple of leaves, but never any sort of bloom. But suddenly I have this:

I think you will agree with me that this is not a trillium, but a Jack in the Pulpit. Either way, I love it and am thrilled that it decided to bloom. I'm guessing it's the wet winter again.

And finally, varigated Solomon's Seal. I really love this plant. We brought a potful from the "old" house (and from my mother-in-law's garden). It has filled in a huge area of [too] dry shade, and provides a lovely pop of light under our elm tree. It is truly one of my favorite plants.

There are plenty of things ready to pop open, so there should be lots more to show you by the weekend.

April 15, 2010 - Something Other Than Taxes

2010-04-16T15:09:00.009-04:00

Things are blooming so fast that it's almost impossible to keep up. A stroll yesterday uncovered these little beauties.

A miniature iris - it's only four inches tall. It's best quality, tho, is that it grows in dry shade (as well as partial sun). It was a pass-along from Garland.

Wood Hyacinths. I have pink and white, as well as the blue, but clearly the blue color is genetically dominant. There must be 1,000 times as many blue flowers. These came from our old home 10 years ago and grows all over the yard - wherever I need a blue filler.

A lovely white viburnum. I cannot find the tag for this and am so sorry! It is lovely, altho it has no fragrance, which is a disappointment. To get a size perspective, it's in the final picture.

A cheap little dianthus from the Big Blue Box last summer. I used it as filler in the xeri-garden, but it came back this spring big and luscious, so I left it. I love the hot pink color!

Calycanthus floridus, aka Carolina Allspice. In the sun this would be a big full shrub, but it's in pretty deep shade, so it's an open - not all that pretty - one instead. Last year it had only three blooms and this year about ten times that. The fragrance is like pineapple with something else sweet - maybe vanilla - mixed in. I wanted it next to the deck so that we could enjoy the fragrance with a glass of wine. Maybe next year. You can smell it, but you have to be this close!

Spring Came While I was Busy Working

2010-04-10T21:03:00.009-04:00

In the past ten days things have changed in the garden. I hardly know the place.

Planted these anemones - Anemene ciribarua 'Lord Lieutenant' last year and only two or fifteen came up, but they are both back this year and much bigger. There is hope.

A native honeysuckle. I love the color! it grows over a piece of lattice and used to hide the trash cans. It's big enough and thick enough that some years we have a bird's nest in it. Nothing so far this year, but there's still time.

An early azalea that is nearly open (left) and a lungwort (right) - Pulmonaria cevennensis . The latter came from Andre Viette two years ago. It struggled last year and has never bloomed before, but this year popped up early and has been in bloom for two weeks. Don't know if it's because of all the rain, or if it just finally got old enough but either way, it's lovely.

Not actually mine. This lovely lilac is my neighbor's and lives on the lot line. It smells heavenly and is just gorgeous! I look forward to it's blooming every spring.

Fothergilla gardenii 'Mt. Airy'. A lovely foundation shrub. It was scraggly last year, but came back full and pretty this year, like just about everything else in the yard. I hate to think that it was all the extra rain that resulted in the beautiful flowers we are having this year.

And Carolina jasmine. This is one of Mitchell's favorites. We have it growing on a big trellis supported by the house, so it looks like a shrub, when it is actually a vine. Unfortunately, he decided that it needed to be cut back - he was right - so he did it in February when we trimmed some of the shrubs - that was wrong. He cut off more than half of the buds, but it is still blooming and pretty - and much smaller than last year.

A gorgeous spring day in central Virginia. Wish you were here, too.

Spring To Do List

2010-03-21T20:17:00.005-04:00

There's always so much to do in the spring that it's easy to just move along doing "stuff" without setting any real goals. Two years ago when I was laid off, I learned that I needed to set real goals to keep moving forward and so that I could accomplish something - even if I did not have a real job. I found that I liked having the list and taking the opportunity each day to look at the list and decide what to work on next. At the end of the day it was lovely to cross something off the list. So here is the spring list for 2010:

1. Renovate the bed around the oak tree. Actually, there is no oak tree. It died last year and we cut it down. Sadly, we killed the oak when we moved into this house. They put the driveway right over half of its root area and therefore deprived it of water. It was fine for a couple of years, but over the past five years struggled and finally we had to have it taken down. Now, what used to be a shady area is a sunny area. It needs additional shrubs and a general re-working of the plants.

2. Remove the sweetspire and renovate that part of the back garden. Sweetspire is a lovely three season shrub that we had in a very shady spot at our "old" house. When we moved here I knew it needed more light, so put it in full sun where it went wild. It became aggressive and was taking over the hibiscus bed. Last fall we decided it had to go, so I used a generous amount of Round-up to start killing it. Now I need to clear out the space and find something to put there.

3. Fix up the entry to the garden shed. It's difficult to get the mover and other big tools out of the shed. I need to take out the grass and put in some kind of pavers to make it easier.

4. Revitalize the veggie garden. Mitchell built a wonderful pair of boxes for square-foot gardening two years ago. He really enjoyed them the first year, but lost interest last year. I really enjoyed the fresh food, so want to grow some more things this year, but it needs more soil and a plan.

In addition to the cleaning that still needs to be done, this list should keep me busy for a good while.

Phirst the Phlox!

2010-03-20T13:43:00.004-04:00

Mother Nature has started her daily distribution new wonders - and how wonderful it is! In the past couple of days the creeping phlox [Phlox subulata 'Emerald Blue'] has started to bloom. At one time I had much more of it and in several colors, but this lovely purple has been the survivor. It probably needs more water over the summer - but, in my climate, what doesn't? It still makes a pretty bed, especially with the mini-daffodils peeking thru and around it. I'm going to add to the little bulbs as I can, probably with some wood hyacinths [Hyacinthoises hispanica], also known as English bells or Spanish hyacinths. I have lots - all over the yard - and they bloom much later than the daffodils, so I can extend the bloom in this bed with them.

The other big bloomer I have this week is Harry Lauder's Walking stick [Corylus avellana 'Contorta')]. It's a deciduous member of the hazelnut family and considered a dwarf tree. Mostly, it's an interesting addition to the garden in all seasons. Its blooms - called catkins [really!] - are just a cascade of little yellow flowers. They're called "insignificant" in the trade. En masse, however, it's quite pretty. It will be a full of lush green leaves all summer, but then it will leave me the most interesting architecture to observe all winter. Truly a year-round plant!

Tomorrow - forsythia and hyacinths!

It's Here - It's Finally Here!

2010-03-16T16:14:00.007-04:00

Today I believe that Mother Nature is finally stirring! Last Thursday I saw the first tiny yellow daffodils starting to bloom, but it has rained four of the last five days and I could not get out to see them up close [and personal] until this afternoon. Even with the bright and rather warm sun, tho, it was difficult. With nearly three more inches of rain in those four days, the ground is saturated again and one has to pick carefully from high spot to high spot to walk into the yard. Fortunately these pretty little ones were in a bed next to the driveway, so I had asphalt for support.

You can't tell without something for perspective, but they are only five inches tall and the flowers are less that an inch in diameter. The original bulbs were a gift from Mitchell nearly fifteen years ago. When the local botanical garden opened, he bought me a membership for my birthday and it came with a bag of ten [I think] little mini-daffodil bulbs. I have moved these with us from the "old house" and as they multiply have started moving them around the yard. Someday they will be everywhere!

If you look carefully, tho, there are two more important things to see in that photo. The bit of lavender is creeping phlox that will be glorious in another week or so, and the yucca at the top is one of the red yuccas that bloomed for the first time last year. This is the smaller one that did not bloom, but I am hopeful. Will show you those in a few days.

I did a bit of weeding in this bed while I was there. Spring weeds are looking good and healthy, but they have not yet set any seeds so it's a great time to pull them out and avoid this year's growth and next year's new ones. Since they are small and the ground is - did I already mention this? - wet, they were easy to pull and the work went quickly. It is so much easier to do now. If one waits, then the ground will dry out and get hard, so that the roots break off more and leave little ones to come back next year. If one waits way too long, then they will set seeds and when you pull each one out the seeds will fly. It's a funny experience at the time, but disastrous for flower beds! [Can you tell that I have experience with that!]

The helebores are lovely. About ten days ago I waded in and cut back all the big, old leaf clusters around the plants, and got all the vegetation that had been crushed by the snow in January and February. With a few days of sun they have perked up and opened prolifically. If you look carefully in the photo above you will see a red flower peeking thru - right in the center. That is the camellia!

Normally it blooms in late November and on thru December. I have used blossoms on the Christmas table several years, but this year the cold hit us hard and early and I figured I wouldn't get anything. It has been covered with buds for months, but suddenly last week it, too, began to look promising. This is still a small shrub - only about three feet tall and less than three feet in diameter. It's nearly nine years old, but we started with a tiny little one.

Now you can see how lovely it is. This is the first year that we have had more than 10 - 12 blooms, and they are not as cold-damaged as I had feared. They are a truly double flower and dark red. So pretty that I cut some for the house. I guess they will be just as nice for St. Pat's Day as for Christmas!

Yes, indeed. Spring is finally coming to zone 7! Join me next week to see what else is waking up.

It's Time To...

2010-03-06T09:35:00.009-05:00

Along with sunshine and a bit of warmth, spring brings a lot of responsibility for those of us who love the garden! In zone 7 the first of March means an end to sitting in the chair thinking about how much we hate winter. (If you are in a colder zone [2-6] , you will need to do these things, but later in the year. I think it's 2-4 weeks later per zone. If you live in zone 8, you should have already started in February, and if you live in zones 9-10, you never stopped working in your garden and you grow different plants!)

Zone 7 is the pink zone. I'm in the light pink part - 7a - so I am 5-10 degrees on average cooler than dark pink - 7b. The greens - zone 6 - are 10 -20 degrees cooler than the pinks, an so on. The other things one has to consider are type of soil and PH. Central Virginia is highly acid and has heavy clay soil. If you move to the coast of Virginia, where the soil is sandy and they have more ocean warming, you are in zone 8.

It's time to get moving and start doing! So, here's a short list of things you need to start working on this month:

Cut back the liriope. Doesn't matter what variety of Monkey Grass you have, it needs to be cut back. The easiest way is to drag out your lawn mover, set it at three inches and just mow the liriope. The goal is to cut off the old growth to allow the new growth to come up and not be all choked in last year's leaves. It will start growing by the middle of the month, so you need to do this soon. If you wait until later, you may end up with the new grown all being cut straight across the ends. Not a tragedy, but it will look a little hinky.

Finish your fall clean-up. You know you didn't finish! We got snow early and then rain, rain, rain, so everyone has more clean-up to do. I still need to cut back the dead growth from last summer on many perennials - some of the Shasta daisies, sedum, and asters for sure. And, some cleaning up in the xeri-garden.

Plant cold weather veggies. Technically, around here one should plant the peas by George Washington's birthday - now nearly two weeks ago. I have dug the bed and bought the seeds, so today will plant them. The next step will be to put up something to support them as they grown up, and a fence to keep out the rabbits. Other cold weather veggies you might want to consider are spinach, any of the "kole" family - broccoli, Brussels sprouts - or other leafy greens.

Prune your shrubs. Most of your deciduous shrubs will start leafing out by the end of the month, or by mid-April - so now is the time to do whatever light pruning you need to do. Never, never, never take off more than one-third of the plant! Never! But if you need to shape up plants it's easy to do now while you can see the structure. If you have branches that grow into the plant instead of outward, you want to remove them as close the the branch as possible. This will provide air and light into the center of the shrub and promote more growth and a healthier plant. For plants that grow from canes (Nandinas, for example) you want to keep them from looking too leggy, so cut one-third of the canes back to the ground, one-third about a foot shorter than you want the top of the plant to be and one-third in between these two. As the plant fills out this summer you will get growth at all three levels and end up with a fuller plant. Evergreen shrubs - boxwood or arborvitae - only need to be selectively trimmed for "wild hairs" or lightly sheared. Flowering shrubs should not be trimmed until after they have bloomed.

Start planning your spring and summer projects. You have probably been doing some of this over the winter as you looked at catalogs. Your plans might change based on what winter damage you have gotten. At the moment, I don't have but one small project. Am really waiting to see how bad the damage is from the standing water. Be sure to make a list. You know it won't get done if you don't write it down.

The important thing about March is not to do too much. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the "need to do's" that we forget to really enjoy the first stirrings of life in the garden. March is the time to enjoy the rebirth that happens every day!

After weeks hidden under snow
and ice the hellebores have gone
crazy with blooms.

The First Hints of Spring

2010-03-02T14:55:00.009-05:00

Finally some progress! the first little peeks of spring showed up this week. This is a clump of Stokesia laevis 'Mary Gregory' that won't bloom until June, but suddenly it's come up and appears to be growing well.

In the xeri-garden I was surprised to find the first basal growth of the sedum "Brilliant" coming up. I had not expect that for at least four to six more weeks. The rest of the bed looks awful, but there certainly is hope.

Tucked away in odd spaces all over the yard are little bulbs coming up. These are mini-daffodils next to the drive way. Mitchell gave me the original corms at least 15 years ago. He gave me a membership in the nearby botanical gardens and they came with the membership. We moved them from our old house and they are always the first thing to bloom in our yard. It will still be weeks, but at least I know they survived the monsoon rains, heavier than usual snow, and all the standing water. It gives me hope for other things surviving.

A sure harbinger of spring is this dogwood tree. We transplanted it two years ago and this will be the first time it has bloomed. A poor photo, but you can see the little buds that are ready to go... soon.

But best of all, the hellebores have finally bloomed. In a normal winter, they start blooming in mid-December and last until June. This year we got our first heavy snow on December 18th. It weighed them down - smashed, actually! In January they were pancake flat and no buds or blooms visible. Suddenly this week here they are!

In another two or three weeks much will change. I can hardly wait!

Harry Leu Gardens

2010-02-20T10:32:00.011-05:00

The third garden of our recent trip was the Harry P. Leu Garden in downtown Orlando. We chose a sunny, but windy day and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. This garden and estate were donated to the city of Orlando about 40 years ago by the Leus after they spent another 40 years developing it. Earlier owners had built much of the house and landscaped a bit, but it was Harry Leu's love of camellias that led to this lovely oasis in the city. The grounds are an interesting mix of styles with about three miles of paved walkways to make access easy. The property also has a lake down one whole side, so there are some lovely vistas out over the lake, and at one point a walkway over the water. When we arrived a wedding was just ending in the rose garden, with the guests moving inside for the reception, and there were fairly many visitors in the garden.

Located on 50 acres this garden combines a somewhat traditional southern garden with the natural flora of central Florida. There is the largest camellia garden outside of California - developed over years as the Leus traveled abroad and brought back specimen plants. The house is now a museum furnished mostly in possessions of the Leus and surrounded by kitchen gardens of herbs and annuals, and a huge rose garden. There is also a natural area of native Florida plants and an educational garden where they grow "idea gardens" designed to give recreational gardeners ideas of things to try at home. The camellias were almost finished blooming, but the area was filled with mature shrubs - many 10 feet or more tall and in diameter - and covered with their final blooms of the season. I particularly liked this flower, that was a very dark coral color.

Another thing I liked was that they painted with their bromiliads. At the garden in Naples the designers have used huge swaths of the same variety of bromiliad. When they are older/larger it will create large drifts of the same plant. Here they have mixed plants of the same size, but different colors to create a different, softer look that I liked a lot. In a way it's more natural looking like a rock garden, but also charming - at least to me.

In the educational "idea" garden, there were many small planting areas more like we have at home, than those normally found in a large scale garden like this. There is also a series of delightful sculptures of people having fun and playing together. As you can see from the photo, there was not much going on in the plantings, but it was early February after all! In some beds there were "leftover" annuals - things that we wouldn't consider trying to grow this time of year in Central Virginia - and clear signs that they are getting ready to start a new round of planting for their upcoming season.

There were many plants that were not familiar to me. One I particularly liked was this "orchid tree". A young man passing by was also intrigued with it. He was pretty sure it is actually a legume of some sort. The tree was probably 20 feet tall with a very open growth habit and covered with these gorgeous dark purple flowers. They were not true orchids at all, but certainly gave the general impression of orchids. They actually remind me more of hibiscus flowers with five major petals and a few insignificant ones with a prominent pistil.

Another spot that we particularly liked was the pond walk were we could see hundreds of water lilies just waiting for a bit more sun and warmth to open. We walked all the way to the end of the pond walkway - past all the "do not feed the alligators" signs - to see the lilies. You can see how hard the wind was blowing by the raised leaves in the water.

All around the pond were huge water oaks and palms and many philodendron vines climbing both. For those of us who are used to philodendron as part of a dish garden, or perhaps working its way across our desk and up over the door to our office, this was the most steroidal plant ever. The leaves on this plant ranged from two to three FEET long and the vine was as large as my wrist.

The final fun thing in this garden is the flower clock. I have never seen one, but apparently this one is patterned after one the Leus saw in their travels. It will be gorgeous in the later spring when it really fills out in annual blooms. In case you are wondering.... the time was correct!

Harry P. Leu Gardens is definitely worth the time to visit. On a prettier day we could have spent three or four hours wandering. We didn't really see as much of the camellias or the natural areas as I wanted, but the wind was cool and we decided to move on to a warm bowl of Pho in the nearby Vietnamese section of Orlando. The arts district was also close by, so if you find yourself in Orlando and looking for an alternative to the Mouse, head over to northwest of downtown and visit some different things. This one was fun and interesting.

Bok Tower and Gardens

2010-02-13T08:49:00.016-05:00

Can you believe we had the opportunity to visit not one, but three, botanical gardens in our 10-day trip to Florida? The second on our list was the Bok Tower and Garden - a national historical site - in Lake Wales, Florida.

Although we went on a cool, overcast day it was a delightful place to be. Built originally in the late 1920's the trees and shrubs are mature and full - a big contrast to the newly opened Naples Botanical Garden that we saw earlier in the week. Designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., this garden has the feel of the big stately garden grounds - like the Biltmore Estate or Central Park - but in this setting a very different sort of vegetation. It does come complete, though, with sculpture and a moat with swans - as any proper formal garden should.

We were there in Camellia season, but it was also interesting to see azaleas in bloom. In Central Virginia we get camellias in November through March, but the azaleas don't start blooming until April, so the two don't normally overlap. In this setting, tho, they are very complementary. And I loved the juxtaposition of the deciduous shrubs with palm trees and Spanish Moss.

As you can see from the map, there are large lawns and planted areas surrounding a lake and the tower itself. The tower is located on the highest point in Central Florida. It is situated in such a way that it is completely reflected in the lake at its feet. [I suspect that has more to do with the way the lake was sited, but they describe it in terms of the tower. Good PR there.] The elevation here is actually something near 300 feet - which for most of us is nothing, but in Florida is quite remarkable. The gardens spread around it on three sides, but on the fourth side the land actually falls away sharply creating a shelf only a few hundred feet behind the tower and giving the visitor the impression of standing on a cliff looking down on the town far below. It's an optical illusion, but a nice one.

The large planting areas included many camellias and azaleas, but also orange trees and various palms and Youpon holly. But there were also beds of annuals [well, at least where I live] and some gorgeous big agaves. These do not grow at all in my zone, so I am always fascinated by them.

There was also a variety of statuary. Some if it was "traditional" bronze figures, but the best, to my eye, were modernistic sculptures of flowers. These were scattered around the flowering beds that surround the education center.

The Tower itself is interesting. Over 200 feet tall, it is built of native stone and marble with gorgeous mosaic windows at the top. It contains a wonderful carillon, which is played frequently. When we were there they were celebrating its anniversary, so there were live concerts every afternoon and we were there in time to hear one. Other days they have recorded concerts. And, when the days are longer they have them in the evening as well. We did not stay to meet the carilloneur, but we could have! [They are doing some repair and renovation, so you can see scaffolding at the top.] If one has the appropriate level of membership (financial support), one can go into the Tower, but we were only poor travelers on the road, so we were satisfied with an exterior viewing.

An historical note here. Mitchell remembers his grandparents and aunt driving from Virginia to Florida in the 1940's to visit the Tower and Gardens. They made many trips to visit gardens, so this is not a big surprise. It was a surprise, however, that as we were driving from Naples to Orlando, when he spotted the sign he started looking for the tower. And, it was he who pushed to go see it.

One final note. I think it's always wonderful to find an idea that one might use in one's own garden and I found a great one at Bok Tower. It's not one I can use in my climate, but Elizabeth has a new house and is working on her landscaping, so I think she might want to give this a try. At the entrance/education building there is an enclosed courtyard with sidewalks around it and a garden in the center. Along the walks - and I suspect to dissuade walking into the garden - are "walls" made of plants. They have strung "air plants" together with wire and suspended them at one-foot intervals along the walk. The plants are staggered and they have used several different types of plant. I actually didn't know that air plants came in so many varieties, or grew so large. That's one of those zone things again! If you live far enough south (or perhaps west) that bromiliads will make it through the winter, or if you can figure out a way to shelter them, this might be a good idea for you, too.

Guest Garden - A Baby Bot!

2010-02-07T20:48:00.021-05:00

Do you ever tour a house that is under construction? You know, you walk thru the studded walls and see where the tub is and look at the rest of the plumbing - "here's the master bath" - or "look at the view where these windows are going!"

Touring the newly opened Botanical Garden in Naples, Florida is a lot like that. Open less than three months, it is easy to see the potential and it's very pleasing in its current state. The bones are great and some parts are already spectacular.

In a very smart move, they have put the children's garden at the front of the garden. You enter thru that tunnel of sawpalms into a fun and interesting area with a tree house, silly gardens, a butterfly house, waterfall and a winding path that takes one thru areas that represent both geological history and the various environments of Florida. [A little learning stuck in with the fun.]

The path winds thru little gardens and ends at this little "cracker" house, which represents the one-room homes of the early 1900's. In January all the blooms happened to be pink and lavender - to match the paint job! It was charming. Behind the house is a garden full of everyday items used as planters - wading boots, a toilet, a sewing machine and all manner of yard junque. All sure to engage and please the younger set, and in many ways this is already the most "finished" part of the entire project. A smart way to draw the younger set, who will bring their children and stay to enjoy the rest of the garden.

The "big" areas right now are the Brazilian Garden, which is filled with bromiliads - literally thousands of them - from Brazil and the Caribbean Garden with plants from other South American countries and islands. Here one can see how young this garden is. All of the trees (palms) and plants are small. In a year when they have grown and filled in, the area will be drop dead gorgeous, whereas right now it's only interesting. Unfortunately, I did not have a way to collect the botanical names, so you either have to go yourself if you see something that you really like, or contact Marie over at 66 Square Feet for help [she is great on proper names!] I can only show you a few that I found particularly nice.

As you can see, the variety is endless. There were only a few in "bloom", but imagine it in a couple of years. It will be marvelous!

The centerpiece of the Brazilian Garden is a large water feature, complete with tropical water lilies. They were not in bloom yet, but also show a lot of promise for the future. You can see in the distance a lovely mosiac at the top of the waterfalls.

The final area that is currently open is a pavilion and walkway out into a swamp - remember that we are only a few miles from the Everglades here. Along with the "Beware of Alligators" signs are native grasses and bog plants. There is also a bocce court - perhaps in acknowledgment to early Italian settlers to this area.

Two new areas that are still under construction will showcase plants from tropical and sub-tropical Asia and native plants for Florida - including demonstration gardens. They will continue into the water plants and wetland areas that fill the southern half of the state and much of Collier County.

You can see here how sparse the growth is right now. In a city where palms and native grasses grow wild and thick, there is too much open ground here. In a year, it will be filled in and the plantings lush like they are in their natural habitat. I can hardly wait to go back in a few years and see how this garden grows!!

Water, water everywhere!

2009-12-26T08:25:00.005-05:00

The poor garden! It's standing in snow and water - again... still. To recap, we returned from a Thanksgiving trip to find the back yard and garden waterlogged - literally so wet that I could not cut the grass. We got significant additional rain that week and the next, and now we have gotten more than 12 inches of snow. I've been in the garden exactly twice since before Thanksgiving - once to check on the fish nearly three weeks ago and again on Christmas Day in search for rosemary! I made a quick check on the fish then, too. They seem to be fine.

Now the concern is root rot.

Whereas, plants look terrible when they dry out, the reality is that they sacrifice their leaves to save their core. So, when you water them they perk up quickly and go back to looking great.

Too much water is a whole different issue. Plants need oxygen, too. When their roots stand in water, they cannot pull any oxygen out of the soil and they can die quickly - a house plant in just a day or two. Our soil is full of clay - and what are pots made of? and what do they hold? One of our first experiences with this yard was a tree that Mitchell watered and watered and watered as it looked worse and worse and worse. When we finally gave up and dug it up, it was standing in a clay bowl of water and had died of root rot. We have spent the past nine years amending the soil, adding humus and gypsum and generally trying to change to composition and it has worked well.

But I am not at all sure that all our best efforts have been enough for this. The magnolia we planted 18 months ago is literally standing in water this morning. Its hole is filled with a special gravel-like substance that is supposed to help, but is it enough?

The xeri-garden is still covered in snow. I know it hates that! I did put nearly 10 inches of gravel and sand in the bottom of that bed and it is built into a slope so that water can drain off and down the hill, but will it work fast enough? Only time will tell.

There are good things to focus on, tho. I won't have to worry about watering for the next month or two. Often that is a hassle in the winter when it's cold and I have to carry water back and forth. We are really replenishing the underground water supply, so the trees and grass will be healthier this summer. We didn't lose a lot of shrubbery in the snow. I was able to get out and uncover a lot of smaller things the first day. We have a lot of breakage in the nandinas, but they can be cut back hard in February and will fill out again quickly. And, it will be in the 50's again today so most of the rest of the snow should met, freeing us from an icy deck. And, I nearly forgot, I still have not had to cut the grass in the back yard!

So all we can do now is wait. Things will either recover or not. And that's the way it is in the garden. We do the best we can, when we can and trust Mother Nature to look after the rest.

Water, Water Everywhere!

2009-12-18T07:33:00.005-05:00

It's been very quiet in the garden for the past three weeks... because I cannot get there! After three years of official drought and one year that was "normal" rainfall-wise, 2009 has decided to be a wet year here in Central Virginia. I can't tell you how much we have gotten in the past three weeks - because I cannot walk into the yard (seriously!) to see the rain gauge. In November we had 8 inches before we left for Thanksgiving.

It rained while we were gone, but I was able to cut the front yard (which slopes more, so had more runoff), but I still cannot cut the back. In fact, we have had so much rain that water is still standing - after three, count them, three weeks. We have gone to the shed a couple of times where there was just no other choice, but we have left little foot sized ponds with every step! Every time it almost dries out, we get more rain. Tonight we are supposed to get freezing rain and snow. Normally snow is a good thing (for the garden) because it melts slowly and the ground is able to absorb a bigger percentage (not much runoff), but I am guessing that we are wet all the way thru the good dirt and down to the clay, so now I am worried about root rot!

Most plants can go two to three weeks without watering - they look pretty bad, but they sacrifice their leaves to save their structure and with a bit of water come right back. But wet ground is a "whole nuther" thing. Plants can only stand in water so long before they, too, drown. They need oxygen exchange in their roots and if the ground is just too wet, they cannot get it. The danger in my garden is exactly that. I have built up about eight inches of good rich humusy growing dirt over the native clay. Normally water fills in that eight inches of good dirt and then evaporates off. In these conditions it can't evaporate enough and the water may be standing underground on top of that clay causing root rot. Unfortunately, I won't know until spring.

So, all I can do is hope for sunshine soon and hope that most things have sufficient root structure to hold them thru this "crisis". So all of the photos are from prettier days! The one day I was able to get out to check on the pond, frogger was still there, so thought you might like to meet him. He still looks the same, only larger! Must have been a good summer for bugs.

Guest Garden - Even in Winter

2009-12-06T09:24:00.009-05:00

As the first [very] light snow hit Central Virginia yesterday, I needed to think of warmer places and one of my favorites is Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. We have been spending Thanksgiving there for the past ten or so years. Some years we get balmy 70's and some years it's not quite so nice, but usually warmer and sunnier than here.

This year we were not lucky. A low pressure cell was hanging just out to sea, and the entire mid-Atlantic coast - even as far south as South Carolina - was cool and rainy. We had good enough weather to play tennis every morning, but never set foot on the beach - not even to walk - because it just wasn't nice enough. However, in visiting all our favorite places on the island, we found a new one - the Compass Rose park.

Apparently the original development company for the island was named Compass Rose, and this new "green space" is named in honor of that founding presence. [See logo design above.] We saw the park under construction last fall and it will be several years before the vegetation is mature and full-sized, but it has interesting bones and will be lovely in a couple of years - and on a sunny day!!

The park is an interesting blend of hard scape and water features (ponds, falls, bubblers and sprinklers with wide walkways that are easily accessible to handicapped individuals) and areas planted with native plants. In late November there was little in bloom, but one can easily see how pretty it will be "in season" and how easy to maintain it is.

The water features are filled with taro, dwarf papyrus and pickerel rush. I was a bit surprised not to see lotus or water lilies, but they may have chosen plants with less summer spread, since they have such a long growing season. There is also an interesting blend of natural beds with the very "constructed" waterways that are concrete and stone and all very "straight-lined". When it's mature I think the plants will soften the harsh edges in a very nice way and create a neat contrast.

As you can see, the main thing blooming right now is pansies. [What would we do in the south without our pansies for color in the late fall and early spring?] I did find one azalea with a few blooms and one day lily what clearly had lost track of the seasons, but otherwise, it was purple and white pansies. But look at all that white concrete wall and all that water and imagine first hawthorn and then azaleas in bloom next spring - gorgeous!

*****

There is one other Hilton Head sight that I want to share with you. Like other places in the deep south decorating for Christmas creates a fun juxtaposition. Many of the developments had not started their decorating yet, so I had to look for a place to take this photo to share with you. How can you not love blooming spring flowers (see the pink begonias in the foreground and the dusty miller in the middle) and the ribboned Christmas garland? By now many of the entrances have added lights, wreathes and candles - wish I were there to see it!

Winter's First Kiss

2009-12-01T18:38:00.006-05:00

The chilly kiss of winter finally touched the garden last night - about two weeks later than usual. We normally have our first heavy frost around the middle of November, but even with the recent cooler temperatures and rainy days, the real cold has held off for a while this year. Early this morning I found frosty grass and pansies with white-painted edges for the first time. The last tomatoes and the mandevilla are definitely gone now.

But there are other blooms still holding their own. We were gone last week and returned to find even more blooms on the sassanquas and two surprises - one of the hydrangeas put out a small, but pretty mophead, and my miniature white rose has bloomed one last time. Both are special plants: mother gave us the hydrangea our first Christmas in this house, and the rose came from my Aunt Agnes' garden. I consider it my inheritance from her.

There's still lots of fall deadheading left to do, and I am falling behind. The obstacle, tho, is wet ground. Two weeks ago we got 5.5 inches of rain and last week at least 3 more, so the ground is sodden. It's so wet that we are walking around the outside edges as best we can to avoid creating "holes" by stepping into the wet, wet ground. I cut the grass in the front and on the side on Sunday, but couldn't even try to cut the back yard because of the standing water in some places.

When I can get back outside to work - after a couple of days of sun and hopefully a bit more warmth - I should be able to catch up in a couple of afternoons. Meanwhile, I am enjoying just looking at the changes. All the leaves are down and the structure of the trees and larger shrubs is showing. The evergreens have come into their own as their deciduous friends have shed their leaves and color.

There's a peace about the winter garden, that's due in part to its emptiness. In two more weeks all signs of the summer abundance of bloom will be gone and we will do the holiday decorating with greenery and berries. After that we'll have the real cold - maybe even some snow. Then the solitary stars of the garden will begin doing their thing. In just six weeks there will be a few camellias, followed by the hellebores, and then the earliest bulbs. Heck, spring is almost on its way!

The Last Little Project of the Fall

2009-11-22T08:09:00.008-05:00

A ton of rain fell ten days ago (seriously, more than 6 inches in three days) and left the yard and garden a sodden mess. The only walking we did across the yard for the next three days was to feed the fish! But once it dried out a good bit, I was able to dive into the one remaining fall project - making a new bed for the nandina hedge at the back of the lot. Our back boundary is partly fenced, partly filled with a euonomous hedge and partly open. About 18 months ago I started moving volunteers of Nandina domestica into a line (or sorts) to start completing the existing hedge with nandinas. We already have nandinas around the front porch and they produce a lot of volunteers so it was the perfect way to thin the existing growth and at the same time provide plants for a new area.

In order to control the grass and provide a better growing situation I took edging and laid out a bed around the plants that I had already planted. But here's where my problem began. There are many types of edging one can use in the garden and I made a bad choice. Well, at least I installed it poorly. I used a plastic edging that came in six-inch pieces that are pointed on one edge. You pound them into the ground and then hook the next one in as you pound it. The problem was that I did not keep them straight. The resulting bed was a double S-curve. It was difficult to cut the grass beside it, and it looked stupid!

So, my final project of the fall was to pull out the old edging and replace it with a new straight edging. After all that rain the ground was softer than normal, so last Saturday I dove in. I had previously done the homework: measured the length of the bed (20 feet long) and calculated how many feet of material I would need. And I bought the material several weeks ago. This time I chose a steel edging that comes in 8-foot lengths which interlock and are stabilized by driving spikes thru tabs built into the strips. In order to install this edging you must either have soft enough ground to drive it down, or you have to cut a slit for it. With the softer ground, there were only a couple of places that I had to cut a slit with my root knife and those places were where I was going thru heavy grass and having to cut the roots out.

First, I laid out a straight line. Using two iron bars that I drove into the ground at each end of the proposed bed, I ran a rope line and used it to keep my edging straight. Now, if it were my father-in-law doing this project, the edging would have been measured up and down and sideways. For purposes of my boundary, I did not feel the need to do that. I simply used the line to keep the steel strips "mostly straight" over the eight-foot run. The final result is that the bed looks fine, because no one can see the small deviations that exist. The only hard part of this whole project was turning the corners. The steel is bendable, but it's hard to do. I could have enlisted help and used a vice to make exactly straight square corners, but my bed is not that formal and I preferred a softer, rounder corner; so I simply measured where to bend it and then stood on the strip and pulled it up until it was bent about 90 degrees. I have previously used this type of educing and found that if I hammered directly on the edge, some of the epoxy coating chipped off, so this time I placed a board over the edge and hammered on the board. For the corners, I put the board diagonally across the corner so that I could sink the two sides at the same time, and more evenly. I started on the "back" side of the bed - the side that abutts the neighboring property. I wanted this side to be the most straight and look the best - just as one puts the "pretty" side of the fence facing the neighbors.

There was one final problem, of course. I was about 18 inches short on material. It comes in a number of short pieces, as well as the 8-foot lengths, but nothing that really fit well with what I was doing, so I did not close the rectangle on the final side. Instead I used a couple of the old plastic pieces from the former edging. The result is fine and no one will really notice - if I don't point it out to them.

This new bed is slightly wider than the old bed and because it's straight, it now includes some areas that were previously planted in grass, so the next-to-final step was to stray the grass and weeds that are now inside the bed. As soon as they die, I will do one final weeding and put in some mulch for the winter. So now it's Mother Nature's turn. I have straightened out the bed and will have a good mulch done next weekend, so now I need the shrubs to grow.

[A couple of notes:

First, the gorgeous flowers at the top of the post are Camellia sassanqua. Altho I am not sure of the variety, I think it's 'Merry Christmas'. This is a member of the camellia family that blooms a bit earlier in the year than the "regular" camillias. My sister-in-law gave me two last year for Christmas, so this is their first time to bloom in the ground. They are covered with buds and if we don't have a long and really cold spell of weather, they will bloom thru Christmas and maybe into January. My "regular"camillia doesn't normally bloom until the week before Christmas and by then if it often frost damaged. These blooms are particularly pretty with the bright yellow stamins. I was thrilled when it popped into bloom the middle of November.

I am planning a series of posts during the dead of winter on various how-to gardening topics. How to choose the right edging for your location will be one of them. ]

Out From Under my Rock!

2009-11-15T11:55:00.008-05:00

[Note: the following was written October 23. Same excuse as last time!]

Sometimes work just completely interferes with life. For the past three weeks I have hardly lifted my eyes from my desk, and yesterday when I finally had a few minutes I discovered fall is arriving.

When last I looked around me the Bradford pears looked like some flamboyant Marilyn wannabee had roamed through the neighborhood smooching them randomly and leaving her lipstick on their tips. Suddenly I saw trees in all shades of red, and started looking around to see what was happening. The maples run from their normal green through yellows and oranges and into reds, while the evergreens provide their steady background of green needles. Everywhere I look are the beginnings of the gorgeous season of trees. As much as one loves Spring's rebirth and the first glimpses of willow green, Fall brings her own exuberant color and that last gasp of excitement before the calm sleep of Winter.

A walk through the garden and I find that the chrysanthemums are starting to bloom, with the promise of many more to come. The pale coral ones - whose names I have lost - are in full bloom and the pink ones that came from Mitchell's mother's garden are full of buds. They are the old fashioned naturalizing type of flower, so will make a blanket of subtle color in another couple of weeks. And the "pacific daisies" - which are really chrysanthemums, too - are on track to bloom about the same time and will make a lovely ground cover for us.

And, there is always a treasure or two if one looks for it. Right now it's the Monk's Hood. Although totally poisonous (and therefore a terrible choice for a garden where there are children or pets around), it is a lovely purple spire standing high above the rest of the plants. Monk's Hood is a challenge for me. I have tried it in three different locations and still have not found the right spot. I suspect it may be an issue of water, not sunlight.

Of course, though, all this beauty reminds me of the work that lies ahead. It's time to start the serious deadheading for the end of the year. That's the kind of thing that can be done broadstroke, but there is plenty of it to do. The silver lining of this particular cloud is that it will all go in the compost pile and by spring we will have new humus to top dress the garden.

It's especially nice to live in a place where we have bloom about 10 months out of the year, and where we will continue to enjoy a flowering yard until Thanksgiving.

Return to The Project

2009-11-15T11:50:00.005-05:00

[Note:When I was suffering my writer's block over at the Garden Bench, I did continue to write about the garden, but fell way behind with uploading photos. And, this blog needs pictures! So, I have updated and uploaded. This was originally written on September 25th.]

As I told you last time, I need to re-do the xeri-garden. I have loved it all summer, but if it's going to be really great in the future, I need to stop and smell the catmint and fix some things.

Too wide. Altho it is a great size for its site, I lost track of one of the big rules of laying out a garden. It is too wide and I cannot reach to the back to weed and to work on the plants. The
landscape timbers that I used come in 8-foot lengths, so it seemed simple to just cut them in half and make the bed four feet across. If I were eight feet tall, that would be fine, but at 5'3", I can just barely reach three feet effectively. So, I need a way to make it easier to get into the bed so I can reach across it. The answer is to install some pavers so that I can kneel on them and extend my reach.

Too shallow. I admitted earlier that I didn't put enough dirt in the bed. In my heart of hearts I knew that when I put in the original dirt, but I was so tired that I did not want to deal with it then. I just wanted to finish the bed. So now I need to add dirt.

Too long. Altho I had no real understanding of how large the xeri-plants would be, I still did not buy enough plants to fill the final space. So, I have bought additional plants and need to move some others around to use the space to a better effect. The agastache 'Ava' and the catmint nepenta 'Walker's Low' are both more than twice as large as I had expected, so they are planted too close together. By spreading them out a bit, I can fill more space and they will have more room to expand some more. I want the bed to look full, but the plants don't have to tumble on top of each other to be pretty, and look full.

I have spent the past two weekends fixing the xeri-garden and am finally happy with the current state. Last weekend I mixed growing medium - hereinafter "dirt". Mitchell needed additional dirt for his square-foot-gardens. There is a specific recipe for that, so I just bought extra ingredients and tried to make enough for my bed, too. Remember that I need 5-6 inches more dirt over 32 square feet. I estimate that at 16 cubit feet of dirt!

Mixing dirt on that scale is hard work. First one dumps all the ingredients onto a large tarp. For me it was three different types of humus, vermiculite, and peat moss. To mix them together you first rake them together and then "tumble" the pile by pulling the tarp from one side to the other in both directions. The goal is to get the mixture to look the same throughout the pile. I made enough to top off Mitchell's bed and started to fill mine - when the rain came! I put what was left back into the big bags and stored it for later use.

It was clear to me that I did not have enough to fill the whole bed, so this weekend I bought some pre-mixed gardening soil, more peat moss and some perlite. I was not able to find vermiculite, so substituted perlite. It tends to clump a bit more than vermiculite, but when used in a fairly small amount, it does fine. So this morning I dumped all the soil I made last week back onto the tarp and added new ingredients. More mixing, more tumbling and I had enough new dirt to finish filling my bed.

Now the hard part. I had to dig up all the plants, add the dirt and replant everything. I emailed the nursery where I bought most of the plants and asked what I should do about the broken agastache 'Ava'. Their recommendation was that I "cut it back hard" since I have nearly 60 days until the first hard frost. In our area that is around November 15, so I am cutting it close, but I have hope.

By day's end I had a new bed. I added five new plants: Three Beard Tongues and two Evening Primroses. Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red' will be the new "big plant" in the far corner. It should be three feet tall at maturity. Two Penstemon mexicali 'Miniature Bells' will fill the mid-space and the primrose Oenothera fucticosa'Youngii-lapsley' are in the front. Under all the catmint and 'Ava' I found three of the small penstemons that had disappeared. I think they are 'Elfin Pink' and 'Violet Dusk' but will not know until spring. I moved them much closer to the front of the bed to give them more room and some sun!

I also moved all of the sedum 'Neon'. It was also too far back in the bed and hidden under the spreading xeri-plants. When I transplanted it in the spring it was not strong enough to hold up its stems, so they flopped this year and were buried under other foliage. I cut everything back this time, so that they should grow up strong and tall next spring and stand above the surrounding plants.

And finally, you will notice a path of small pavers down the length of the bed. These are for kneeling on so that I can reach the back of the bed to work in it. They are close enough together to put my kneeling pad over two, or I can use them "as is". It will make my work easier, but once spring comes and the plants start new growth they will pretty much disappear from sight.

New Rules... and a Personal Note or Two

2009-11-12T20:22:00.006-05:00

For the past seven months I have written this blog as well as another one. In this one I planned to follow the progress of my garden in Central Virginia and try to offer insight and advice to newer gardeners. Altho I have only worked my current garden for ten years, and it is the first one that I have developed myself from scratch, I have worked for many years in other folks' gardens - my mother's, my grandmother's, my aunt's, and my father-in-law's. I have learned from all of them, but have enjoyed going my own way with this garden.

It was my intention that the other blog would be a place where I would comment on the world and current events, and whatever caught my fancy. Unfortunately, I have recently found that I have had extensive writer's block for the other blog ... absolutely nothing has caught my fancy! Altho I had plenty to say here, I have not posted in nearly two months because I was so consumed with trying to figure out what to do "over there". Finally, sanity prevailed. I realized that I truly enjoy writing this blog; that this one has the focus that the other has lacked. So, I have decided to let the other blog lie fallow for a while and work here.

Since it's the fall, with winter well on the way, it may be difficult, but it's the right decision. For the next few months we will look at more guest gardens when we can. I have a number of ideas for a "how to" series to help newer gardeners get ready for spring, or to just give basic information. I may do some surfing and see what's going on in the gardening world elsewhere. And, we can't forget the pond - it's an important part of the garden. In other words, I am not quite sure what I'll write about, but I know that it will be related to the garden. I am also committing to at least one post a week thru February. There may be more than that, but I promise at least one.

I hope you will enjoy this blog and will stay with me. If you are not interested, I understand. Gardening is not for everyone. But what I finally realized is that it is for me!

Guest Garden - Urban Style

2009-11-12T19:55:00.006-05:00

It's a lovely, crisp fall day in downtown D.C. and nestled among government office buildings and national museums we found the perfect urban garden!

In one of the many triangles formed when "state" streets cross the numbered and lettered streets is a marvelous urban garden plot. The land is owned by the National Park Service and will someday be the home of a monument to Dwight David Eisenhower - president, general, and cold war leader - but for now it is the home of about twenty garden plots.

The lone gardener that morning was a lady who has held onto her plot for years, she told us, and who admitted that although she and a friend have the rights to two plots, she has squatted on half a dozen others as their "owners" have deserted them. Apparently it is difficult to locate the coordinator, so the plots don't turn over very efficiently. When an owner loses interest or gets too busy to keep up with the work, she takes a little piece here and a little piece there to plant a little something more.

On the morning we met she was pulling up veggies that had suffered from the frost last week, and clearing out the last of the summer weeds. She had already cleared most of her two "legal" plots where she grows mostly vegetables and a few summer annuals. In an adjacent space she has some peonies that are buried too deep and need some attention. In another plot she has some Brussels sprouts and in a fourth, winter greens. She showed us several of her neighbors' plots where we found everything from tomatoes to exotic greens and from roses to masses of overgrown.... whatever! Unfortunately, most of the whole plot was in the sort of disarray that happens in the fall when the gardener loses interest, or it gets too cold to get outside.

In some ways this is the Cadillac of garden plots. Much of it is fenced and there is water available. [The killer for so many urban gardens is the need to carry in water. Most people just can't bring in enough water often enough to keep gardens going in the heat of a city.] There are also a couple of lean-to sheds for storing small equipment.

We promised not to tell the exact location of this garden, since the gardener hopes to gather up some more space and doesn't want the competition! She also doesn't want the park service to get the money for the Eisenhower monument any time soon! It was a lovely place to spend a few minutes and to make a new acquaintance!

Fall Projects

2009-09-19T06:48:00.003-04:00

It's funny that just two weeks ago I couldn't get any energy or enthusiasm about working in the garden. It was the end of the dog days and both the garden and I had a bad case of the blahs. It's amazing what two weeks of cooler weather can do! Now I have fall projects and am excited to get started!

One: To improve the xeri-garden I started this spring. I've already admitted to you that I didn't let the soil settle before I planted this garden, with the result that now it's settled several inches and I need to add more soil. This week I bought most of the components for Mitchell's square foot garden, so I bought double and will use many gallons of this mix to add to the xeri-garden. I have also done some thinking about plants and have purchased several to finish filling out the box. A recent heavy rain and wind smashed one of the agastache 'Ada' plants, so I also need to do some trimming to get it back into better shape to withstand the winter.

Two: Plant fall asters and other perennials. I picked up five cerise asters to put in the back garden for some additional fall color. There are already some white ones starting to bloom, and some lavender and pink coming along so these will help bridge the bloom gap before the chrysanthemums open.

Three: "Fix" the nandina hedge's "bed". This one takes some 'splaining. Our neighbors at the back are nice people, but their yard is a bit junky for our taste. Fortunately, they have a euonomis hedge about 30 feet long that provides a nice backdrop for my garden across about two-thirds of our lot. It is taller than it needs to be, but I keep our side sheared pretty well, and have used it in my color planning. The hybiscus look great against it all summer as the the fall mums. Two falls ago I took all the little volunteer nandinas we had and started a nandina hedge to fill in the remaining one-third of the lot line. Unfortunately, I laid out the bed by eye, but while sitting on the ground. I used plastic edging pieces to enclose it and when I finished I discovered that it is nearly an s-curve - not at all straight. It is makes life difficult when I am cutting the grass and basically looks stupid! So, my plan is to put in steel edging and square up the bed. Some of the nandinas are now waist-high, so by this time next fall I will actually have a decent hedge back there and I want it to look less amateur.

Four: Irrigation. This is a tough problem. We desperately need to run some sort of irrigation to several parts of the yard, especially those with a lot of shade. I would like to add to our shade gardens, but none of them gets sufficient water to grow the things I would like to add. In all of them the plants have to compete too much with the trees that are creating the shade and there is no natural source of water. Whatever we do will be a big project, so I hope to do a couple of stop-gap things for the winter and then plan out something more permanent. Fortunately, most irrigation systems today can be installed "by the homeowner" and no longer require hiring a lot of expensive work done. I may need to get a plumber to run another outside faucet, but I hope that is all.

I cannot tell a lie. I wrote this two weeks ago and intended to give you some photos, but have just not had the time or energy. Am posting so that I can move on!

Betsy's Garden - Revisited

2009-09-19T06:41:00.007-04:00

Early this summer I took you to see Betsy's garden - a wonderful round veggie garden that's pretty much right in the middle of her front yard in a very yuppy west end neighborhood - one where I have not seen any other veggies growing and certainly not in the front yard. Thought you might like to see an update.

Here's what it looks like now. That's okra in the center which is filled with pretty yellow flowers as it continues to provide okra. [We have had two dinners from it this week! - yum!] All around the outside are pepper plants of all sorts - bells of several colors, jalapenos, and dozens that are completely unknown to me. There are some annual flowers mixed in, altho the veggies have pretty much taken over the flowers. In all it's just a riot of happy, healthy plants. Close up it looks like this:

I don't know if she plans to do it again next year, or if she is planning to put in more normal front yard landscaping, but it has been fun watching it grown this summer. Kudos to Betsy for trying something new!

So... Neon is Joyful, too!

2009-09-18T17:31:00.007-04:00

Fall is such an interesting time in the garden. It's a time when we say goodbye to our special flower friends, but we also look forward to the new blooms that only come at the end of the year. I have spent a bit of time recently deadheading - cutting back the stalks of shasta daisies, yarrow, monarda and other summer perennials.

While I miss the lushness of the mid-summer garden, there is something special about the transition that is going on now. It's nice to see the last day lilies, the last garden phlox and another flush of blooms on the clematis - even the new ones I planted this spring. But at the same time, there are the transitional flowers - especially the sedum and the very first blooms of the asters. One special plant that bloomed for the first time this year is a perennial begonia. My friend Muzzy gave it to me a couple of years ago, but it doesn't really like our conditions. It would prefer a wetter shade than I can give it, so while it has come up every year, this is the first time it has bloomed. When I transplanted a nandina this spring, apparently I brought a rhizome of the begonia with me and it liked the spot. It started blooming about two weeks ago and has stayed pretty without any additional rain.

I have bought several new asters that I plan to plant this weekend. They will provide both instant color and a bigger drift for next year. These are pink/cerise and will go nicely with the white and lavendar that I already have. I hope to show you the asters in a week or two when they are in full splendor. The chrysanthemums are really not ready to bloom yet. I don't expect them to open until early or maybe mid-October. I did update the planter in the front yard with forced chrysanthemums to replace the summer annuals. [Note in the picture how much the dogwood has grown this summer. It got a small amount of mildew on one side, but seems not to be affected by it. There is a smaller tree that was heavily damaged by mildew, so I am going to take it out in an attempt to stop the spread of it.]

In a recent post I mentioned my sedum 'Autumn Joy' and how much I like it. Well, it turns out that it isn't 'Autumn Joy" at all. It's 'Neon'. While shopping yesterday I found plants marked 'Autumn Joy' that were quite different from mine. They are less brightly colored, and not flat - which mine definitely are. I looked around and found "mine" and they are clearly 'Neon'. I don't love them a bit less, but now I want some "real" 'Autumn Joy' to add to my sedum collection. One of the reasons that I like this flower so much is its source.

Many years ago I went to the bank one day and the teller had a vase filled with sedum on her counter. I complimented her on the flower and she insisted I take one and root it at home. She was a lady whom I judged to be in her late '60's or '70's, so I took it to not offend her. I stuck it in a vase and soon it had roots, so I planted it. I now have three decent-sized clumps that grew from that single little flower. I did not know her name but wrote down the plant name she gave me. I won't be able to go back and tell her that she was incorrect, but I can love it under the right name now.

Pass along plants are the very best!

Transition Time

2009-09-05T11:48:00.012-04:00

It's been that time in the late summer when I just cannot get excited about the garden. When we returned from vacation it was the hazy, hot and humid part of the Central Virginia summer and I just could not drag myself out to do anything. Fortunately, we have had a very wet summer and it has grown beautifully, so didn't need much from me except some spot watering - mostly the pots - and some weeding. I have managed a couple of early mornings at that, altho there is plenty left to do!

But there is something about the first of September and Labor Day that changes everything. Mitchell has said for years that fall may begin on the 21st, but the weather changes on Labor Day. More and more I think he's right. The last week has been in the low to mid-80's, which is a few degrees cooler than average, but we should remain in the mid-80's thru the end of the month, and the humidity has dropped noticibly in the past couple of days.

All of a sudden I'm starting to get in the mood to work outside again, and I find all sorts of signs of the fall plants getting ready to make their appearances. So, here's what's happening:

Sedum: There are two of the "tall" varieties blooming right now. 'Autumn Joy' (right) is one of the most familiar and found in many gardens. I transplanted mine to the xeri-garden I created this spring, so altho it is just starting to pink-up, it is not standing up. Normally, it would be 12 - 15 inches tall, but it is still lying down from the transplant. Next year, it will be fine, but this is a floppy year for it. As you can see, it's mostly still green, but there are a few pink petals already.

I discovered 'Madrona' (at the top) a few years ago and love it. The flower heads are a bit more rounded than 'Autumn Joy' which is rather flat, and it is currently a lovely pale rose color. As it matures it will darken and finally become a deep, dark rose that will eventually dry on the plant if I leave it that long. It provides good fall food for the birds, too.

The third sedum is 'Dragon's Blood' which is sort of tall and sort of creeping. Technically it's a "spreading" sedum, but its growth habit is very different from others. The plant has a basal growth habit like 'Madrona' and 'Autumn Joy', but the stems lie down and only the flower sits up. It makes a sort of circular mat overall. This one started blooming about a month ago, and is in its second flush of blooms. You can see how the new blooms are bright pink, while the older ones have already darkened.

We also have three creeping varieties of sedum, but only one is doing well right now. The 'Sea Stars' have struggled for years. They do not like wet feet, and since they are way less than an inch tall, that's tough when we have heavy rain. I have tried to move them to higher ground but, with basically a clay soil type, they are still struggling.

I have replaced most of my 'Sea Stars' with either 'John Creech' or 'Angelina' - both of which were gifts from Garland. When she moved to North Carolina three years ago, I got some 'John Creech' (right) that piggybacked with the many perennials that she gave me. I really love the way it grows in whorls around a main stem, and it makes a great groundcover than can take being walked on. I have put it among stepping stones and it is beautiful. We lost a big patch of it while we were gone in August - so it either got way too dry, or more likely way too wet. The 'Angelina' was a gift this spring, and is a lovely new addition. It is a bit taller and looks a bit like an evergreen with tiny needles, and has a golden cast to the leaves. It didn't bloom this year, but it's still getting over the transplant, too. On the left you can see 'Angelina' in front of 'Sea Stars'.

I have read that there are more than 400 varieties of sedum, so I hope to explore a few more of them someday. I love the ones I have and they help bridge the gap from summer flowers to fall flowers. And, of course, so many of them are pink!

Xeri-garden: I could not have asked for a better result the first year of this garden - I love it. The agastache 'Ada' is magnificent, and it is not quite its full height this year! It is filled with bees and butterflies all day long and looks great against the fence. The evening primrose 'Shimmer' has started blooming again this week, and overall, the whole bed has filled in well. The white salvia has bloomed all summer long, and so has the catmint. There are disappointments, of course. I lost two of the three creeping thymes and the sedum are still lying down, but there is so much promise for next year. I need to do some work on it this fall once everything dies back, tho.

The biggest mistake I made was in rushing to plant. I did not wait long enough for the soil to settle. [If you recall, I put the dirt in and planted the same day.] I should have let the soil sit for at least a week to compact. Unfortunately, it compacted after I planted, so now it has settled about six inches and I need to add soil to the entire bed. I am out of home-grown soil, so will need to buy a couple of bags of top soil and then add a couple of bags of organic matter. Then I will need to top dress around all the plants. Fortunately, most perennials will do okay with this treatment. Worst case, I will have to replant everything this fall. Either way, I should have a good result for next year.

This bed has been a great addition to the yard, tho. You see it as you come in the driveway and when you walk out either the side or back door, so we can enjoy it from many places.

And, a surprise: This is what gardening is all about. Many years ago I fell in love with alstroemeria. They are the backbone of flower arrangements all year long, and actually come from Africa [or so I have been told]. You often see the variety 'Laura' for sale, but few others. I have 'Laura' which is a good solid yellow with darker markings, as well as 'Merry Christmas' which is green with red markings [duh!], but have looked pretty much in vain for other varieties for my garden. Two summers ago I discovered a pot of "Oxana Princess Lilies" at the big blue box store. Clearly they were alstromeria - Alstroemeria hybrid 'Staprioxa' to be exact - so I snarfed them up and planted them. And, they immediately died.

Well, all but one. This morning I discovered one little stem of the most gorgeous deep pink flowers. They live a long time indoors, so I believe that as soon as the sun is off of it, I shall cut it and bring it in to enjoy. Here it is for you to enjoy, too.

A Treaure Re-Found

2009-08-12T12:21:00.006-04:00

Meet Plantathera x canbyi a new resident of the Nassawango Creek Preserve on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

My good friend JC in Albuquerque sent me a neat link today to the Washington Post article about its discovery. Seems this is a naturally occurring hybrid of the white fringed orchid (white, duh!) and the crested yellow orchid (orange). Both of its parents are considered rare and are protected, and this offspring has only been found once before in Maryland - and that was nearly 20 years ago.

Can you imagine having a job in which you go out and look for rare plants? Doesn't that sound like fun? Actually, it was a little more trouble than that. Apparently they burned some 10,000 acres this spring in an attempt to clear out opportunistic and invasive species and to see what native species would then have the opportunity to re-emerge. In addition to this pretty little orchid, there were several species of spurge.

In case you would like to see Canbyi's parents, here they are, too:

"mom" and "dad"

Enjoy!

Nil, nada, nothing!

2009-08-05T14:45:00.003-04:00

This is the only garden in Columbia, North Carolina! Seriously. I walked around one evening and half a day and this is all that I could find. There are a number of small homes in town and a number of small businesses, but apparently no one has time, energy, or perhaps interest to create anything else that approaches the status of "garden" - and you know I ain't too picky! This was a fountain just off the downtown warf that was planted in red annuals [name escapes me at the moment], but which was in poor health.

Gardens in Edenton

2009-08-02T14:43:00.009-04:00

If Albemarle Plantation was a dearth of gardens, Edenton is an ample sufficiency! Nearly every yard has a little spot tucked in next to a fence, or a porch, or down the driveway. If I had felt comfortable tramping thru lots of backyards I could have filled an album. Since I was not happy with that behavior, I'll show you some and tell you about others.

Since this is initially an English colony town, there are many formal plantings. The most interesting (and easiest to photograph) was the Cupola House. This is a 1780's house being restored, but someone has taken pretty good care of the gardens - both front and back. From the front it's a series of fenced in sections. The first one is mostly lawn with planting around the edges at the fence - mostly boxwood and crepe myrtles. I'm sure there are azaleas mixed in, too. The second one is a formal garden of triangles and squares, planted in a typical English manner of annuals and perennials. It's a bit over-grown, but clearly someone is taking care of it while the building is undergoing a face lift.

In the back is a mixture of formal and informal. Can you see the lovely arbor on the far side? It is nearly hidden under the vine that lives there. As much as the formal is not my cup of tea, this has a nice feel. I think the crepe myrtles help soften the formal feel. They have not done crepe murder here, so the trees are soft and vase-shaped. They have also trimmed many of the boxwood as cones, instead of balls as we normally see in Virginia. I wonder if they are creating "conifers"? Whatever the reason, I liked the result.

A block or two away I found this pretty fence row (right). It was a planting that appears to separate two properties. The white picket fence ran the full length from house to house, but about half way there was this planting that juts out at 90 degrees and is filled on both sides with exuberant perennials. There is a yucca near the sidewalk and then something fluffy and white that I did not know. The border on this side is hosta with blooming flowers behind it. The trees to the right are actually behind the fence on the "near" property. This is the type of planting I saw lots of places nestled up against whatever was available. There are many Queen Anne style homes with big porches and the hexagonal pavilions on the corners, so there were lots of spots to tuck a little planting.

But my favorite planting was along the street by a bed and breakfast. This is clearly a work of love. The street side of this raised bed is granite blocks that look like those used in the foundation of the building. The ends and inside of the bed are brick. It it about four feet wide [but unlike my new bed, can be worked from both sides!] and runs the entire length of the side of the building. There were three sections, and the plants seemed to vary according to light. Garland would have loved the section that was all white blooms - impatiens, white Gerbera daisies, baby's breath, and several things that I did not recognize. A second section had hosta, lavendar angelonia, heliotrope [ah, the smell!] and a gorgeous coleus. The final third was the sunniest and had multicolored flowers including daisies, more Gerberas, black-eyed susans, and more hosta. I find it interesting that there are hostas planted lots of places that are very sunny.

The "mound" of green about midway in the photo is actually a small arbor over the B&B sign that is covered with the fall blooming clematis that is just starting to bloom. The whole effect was lovely. I kept hoping the gardener would come out of the house so I could ask about the planting, but I finally had to move on to keep from loitering.

Overall, this is a lovely little town. Lots of old buildings from the 1700's, 1800's, and some interesting one from the early 1900's. It's a great place to dawdle.

Albemarle Plantation

2009-08-02T11:15:00.006-04:00

As gardens go Albemarle Plantation was a disappointment. It was all so "groomed" - every blade of Bermuda grass [you already know my feelings on that] cut to 3/4-inch, and native grasses everywhere, with a crepe myrtle every 27 feet to break it up. It was pleasant to look at, but no imagination anywhere, and apparently no "personal" gardens at any of the homes.

The setting, tho, was another story. This is water cypress territory. Along all the swampy edges one could see cypress knees and here and there an intrepid tree growing out of the water like a triumphant king of some lost civilization of trees. The cattails were beautiful and often filled with birds. Mitchell saw two deer early one morning, and we saw a raccoon one afternoon. There were plenty of shore and sea birds, too, of course.

In Hertford I did not not many gardens accessible to us along the main streets, but the tea room did have a pretty little one. On a cooler day one could have eaten breakfast of lunch at a little table "out back" in a pretty setting.

Let's hope for more in Edenton - it's not named for the garden, but one can hope.

PS: About that mystery plant from Eastville Inn. I found another quite like it in Manteo. Beverly - the shop owner - said it was an "old rose" with a heavenly scent. I forgot to ask what color it bloomed, so am not sure it was exactly the same variety as the mystery plant, but it did have similar crinkly leaves and similar - altho smaller - hips.

Elizabethan Gardens - Manteo, NC

2009-07-29T19:32:00.011-04:00

Had a fun adventure today - all by myself - at the Elizabethan Gardens. The Garden Club of North Carolina built this garden some years ago to commemorate the English women who came to the New World and brought with them their love of gardens. As I expected it had some very formal gardens, but there were also lots of natural areas and unexpected touches.

The Gardens are located about 3.5 miles from the Town Dock Marina where we are staying. We had hoped to rent bikes and ride up there, but there is no bike rental in town! so, I decided to walk. No one else was particularly interested or able, so I did it alone. With water and a snack packed I started out about 8:30 this morning - at a very slow pace. There is a fine walking/riding path all the way and I encountered only a few bikers along the way. There are several resting places with benches and [mostly working] water fountains, so I had several stops. I made two mistakes in my preparations - forgot to take a sweat towel and bug spray. Fortunately, I was able to remedy both once I arrived at the Gardens. It took me about two hours, but I really enjoyed the walk.

Altho the path was only a couple hundred yards from the water, I could not see it except occasionally down a street end. I passed old cottages - some lovingly fixed up and some falling down - a working farm, new developments and even some undeveloped land. Altho one has the feeling that there is not square inch of undeveloped water front, there still is plenty of space on this island once you get a block off the water.

The Gardens were very interesting. The formal center garden was the typical English manor garden with boxwood shapes filled with summer flowers - a lot of pentas in different colors. There was also a rose garden that was pretty disappointing. It has only six or eight plants, altho all are special in some way, but nothing was thriving. This time of summer it should be full of blooms, but all the plants appeared to be struggling. The natural walkways were more interesting to me than the formal spaces. There were hydrangeas of many varieties and types, as well as many azaleas (the former in bloom and the latter not, of course!) This oak leaf hydrangea was easily ten feet tall. Lots of shade loving perennials and annual bloomers for filler in the sunny spots. There are also several overlooks onto the Roanoke Sound where historians believe the Roanoke Colony was located.

The most interesting things, tho, were the sculpture. All of it has been donated, and I am sure the donors gave for specific reasons, which were not well explained. There is a huge - like 20 feet tall - bronze statue of Elizabeth. Ok, I got that one. The bronze work is spectacular, with the lace around the bottom of her dress showing intricate detail, and the rose in her hand is just perfect. There are many cairns and basins - most with water in them - which help with the peaceful feeling one finds there. And, then there were little surprises hidden away - some water features, some elves and other story book characters and some more formal pieces. I really enjoyed them all.

But by far the most interesting piece of sculpture was a full life size sculpture of Virginia Dare. It's carara marble, carved by an American artist in Rome and very pretty. You all know that history is not my strong point, altho I do usually muddle thru American history fairly well....but, I thought that Virginia Dare was the first child born in the Roanoke Colony and disappeared along with the entire colony when she was a toddler. Are you with me there? I am asking because the statue is of a full grown woman - a nude wrapped in a piece of fishing seine. Like Elizabeth, it is a gorgeous carving with lots of attention to detail, but I keep wondering if it is Virginia Wolff or Daisy Fitzgerald, or one of Max Parrish's models. I think it it's Virginia Dare then the artist used up a lifetime of "artistic license"!

Since we are traveling, I did not purchase a plant, but believe me.... I looked and considered. I am not convinced that I need to find a way to irrigate so that I can have some bear's britches!

I decided to fore go the two-hour walk back to the marina, so called a cab. But that is a story for another time. This is a really pretty place and I highly recommend it as a way to spend a couple of hours. The Lost Colony is next door and there is an historical part, but I didn't really feel like doing both, so that is a trip for another time. Stay tuned.

Eastville Inn

2009-07-28T14:57:00.004-04:00

On Friday a group of us visited Chatham Vineyards near Eastville and then had lunch in the Eastville Inn. The vinery was interesting, altho not as big or busy as others I have seen, but a wine tasting is always nice! We did get the chance to drive out into the vineyards to see the grapes up close and personal - ripening on the vine. While I did not taste any, those who did reported that they were very bitter – duh! they are mostly green still.

At the Eastville Inn there was a pretty little kitchen garden that I liked. It had some herbs, but mostly was locally native plants – Joe Pye weed, grasses, Russian sage, and daylilies. There was one plant that no one could identify. [There was am etymologist with us who said this was way outside her sphere of reference, but she did not know the plant either.] So here it is:

It was a shrub-like plant with very thorny trunk and stems and the red fruit you can see. The leaves were “wrinkled” looking and grew very close together. There was one ruffled bud (purple) that I did not get in a photo. We think it might have been a heritage rose of some sort – and those are the “hips” that are left on it. Anyone got an idea? [Written Saturday, uploaded Tuesday!]

What's New in Bloom?

2009-07-19T10:54:00.005-04:00

This has been a wonderful summer in Central Virginia - it's a few degrees cooler than usual, we have consistently gotten 3/4 inch of rain weekly, and the humidity has not yet rolled in. It's made mornings working in the garden just lovely and more fun than usual, and - way more importantly - it's perfect for sitting on the porch in the late afternoon just enjoying the view.... and the delightful smell!

And that's the news. The new bloom is the Clethra alnifolia 'Ruby Spice'. It's the shrub at the corner of the shed beyond the pond. It is covered with little coral "candles" that smell heavenly. The nickname of this shrub is "summersweet" and for good reason. If the breeze is coming from that direction, we can smell it on the deck! The hummers and butterflies are doing battle with the bees for the nectar.

Clethra is an easy shrub to grow. This one is about five years old and probably 90% full grown. It likes our acid soil, but will do fine in a sweeter site. It does like water, so I have redirected the splash pan at the bottom of the corner downspout to redirect the water comes toward the clethra, instead of into the yard. This area also gets watered when I do the whole back garden, but this summer I have only done it three times - and one of those was an accident! In other words, I am not giving it extra water.

And, clethra comes in three colors: white ('Hummingbird'), a pale pink ('Rosea'), and this darker pink ('Ruby Spice'). The "candles" are actually called "racemes" and are made up of hundreds of time flowers which open making the candle fuzzy as it matures. I think the fragrance comes as each little bud "pops".

Most of my time this week has been spent with weeding and deadheading in preparation for going on vacation next week. I have set up the sprinklers in front and back so that they will automatically come on - weekly in the front and every four days in the back (hence the accidental watering this morning!). Thursday morning I will cut the lawn - shorter than normal - and then we have hired someone to cut it while we are gone. If the rain keeps up, we will need it!

My hope for vacation is that I will have the opportunity to visit some small gardens, or perhaps community gardens, and bring them to you over the next two weeks [you will have to read the other blog to find out what we are doing], but I am not sure what I will find.... so have a good two weeks and check in occasionally!

Betsy's Garden

2009-07-16T20:00:00.003-04:00

Betsy lost a big oak tree in a storm last winter. It was in her front yard but near the far left side of her property. Once all the removal work was done and carted away she was left with a bare circle 20 feet in diameter. Rather than try to plant grass and make it match, she took advantage of the nearly full sun and planted a vegetable garden.

Around the near edge is a thick row of basil - enough for all the tomatoes in Hanover! Around the rest of the perimeter is a row of peppers. They are all different kinds and fun to see. She is my kind of plant shopper. She hit a local garden center on the day the reduced the early veggies and she bought them for about 20% of their normal price... so she got lots! She has also planted nasturtiums and marigolds among the plants to help keep away some of the bugs and critters. I don't know enough about organic gardening to know if this will help, but they sure are pretty.

In the center of the garden is okra! The plant itself is pretty and Betsy has been eating from it for at least three weeks. She gives lots of stuff to her neighbors and it just keeps growing.

There is a small planter on the far left edge of this plot. It is filled with tiny radish plants that the neighboring children planted. Radishes are ready to eat in 21 days, so this is a great project for kids. The plants are large enough that they need to be thinned soon, but the kids are on vacation until next week, so that job will have to wait a while.

Betsy has other vegetables inter-planted in her back yard, too. Melon vines grow over boxwood along one fence and tomatoes are planted next to her brick house in the back (for additional heat) and behind a row of perennials. She truly makes creative use of the space she has. These are ideas that lots of folks could use.

Meet the Boomerang

2009-07-12T09:39:00.010-04:00

I realized this morning that I have talked several times about the boomerang, but have not really shown it to you. So today's the day.

First the history. When we bought the house nine years ago we made an agreement with the builder that he would put in grass seed (as required by law) but no landscaping at all. We wanted to do it ourselves. The front yard is fairly flat with a gentle slope toward the street that ends in a utility ditch at the edge of the street. There were two established trees - a silver maple on the right [as viewed from the street] and an oak on the left next to the driveway. Each was set in about 1/4 of the width of the lot, leaving about 50% open in the middle of the yard. They provided a good bit of shade all day for the house, but left the front of the property quite sunny. There is shade there only in the morning from the trees next door. [There is also a utility easement that requires that all trees be cut to 25 feet tall, or "side-walled" to keep them out of the electrical lines that parallel the street.]

One of the first things that we planted was a weeping cherry at the front right corner. We chose it because it would not exceed 25 feet tall and we thought it would be lovely. Mitchell watered it carefully every week and it died. When we pulled it up in the fall, we found that the heavy clay of our land had basically formed a clay pot around the roots and had filled with water - effectively drowning the tree. We knew we had a problem. Wanting to landscape the front of our yard tho, we bought a load of topsoil and laid out a bed that would mark the corner of the yard, while leaving room between the bed and the lot line to drive the pickup truck to the back. Essentially, we made a raised bed, but without any sides to hold it up. We tilled the existing soil and mixed the better soil into it and formed a bed - which ended up looking like a boomerang!

Instead of another tree, we picked shrubs and perennials that love the sun: plumbago, garden phlox, clematis, sedum, and weigelia 'Wine and Roses'. Initially there was also a beauty berry that was gorgeous, but which quickly got entirely too large, so we removed it about five years ago. The plumbago came from Garland's garden, and the other plants from Big Blue.

The photo above is the view from the house side. From left to right are sedum 'Madrona', a dogwood, garden phlox, cone flower, and the weigelia. The weigelia has grown well, altho you can see how very one-sided it is. We put a clump of sea oats behind it when they both were small. The sea oats became a bully, so I dug it up last fall and found that the weigelia had grown all of it's branches to the front to get out of the way of the sea oats. I did a fairly severe pruning this spring and am now seeing new branches coming on the house side of the plant. In a few years, it should round out for us. It is gorgeous in the early spring, tho, when it is covered with bright pink flowers. Out of the photo on the left end is the plumbago and on the right end more plumbago and some new phlox I planted this spring.

The photo on the right was taken from the street, so you cannot see all of the bed, but this is what passersby see. That huge clump of phlox started as three plants - dark and light pink. I have divided the clumps over the years and they have grown taller and stronger. There is a small clump of monk's hood hidden in the middle that blooms dark purple in the center of all that pink. I have finally learned to cut more phlox to get additional bloom later into the summer. It's so pretty tho, that I do hate to cut it.

There is a dogwood in this planting now. It started life as a volunteer that sprouted right next to the house. Last fall we decided that it could not possible stay where it was and the only chance of saving it was to move it. There was a gap where the beauty berry came out, so we planted it there. Dogwoods can be iffy. Their taproot does not go straight down, so you cannot be sure that you have dug up enough of it, but it appears that we were lucky with this one. It is now nearly five feet tall. You can see it in the both the photos. I think it will be two or three years before it blooms, but it will be lovely. I have been spraying it weekly for powdery mildew, which can be bad for young trees.

You may also have noticed that we have a "garden feature" in this bed. Just left of the phlox (see top photo and look right of the phlox) is a wrought iron support for a clematis that is long gone - needed more water. It is a pyramid with a pretty filial on top. We decided to leave it when the clematis died, because it looks great peaking out above the rest of the flowers.

The Project - Up Close and Personal

2009-07-11T14:06:00.005-04:00

Last week I gave you an update on the xeri-garden, but in retrospect the photo did not do it justice. While I wanted you to see the whole thing, it was too small to see the real detail of what's growing. So we're back to take a closer look.

This is the left end of the bed. Before we look at the plants, take a quick look at the far left corner of the box. When I filled it originally, the dirt was up to the bottom of the top rail. In six weeks it has settled a bit more than two inches completely uncovering the second rail. One thing that I will have to do this fall and perhaps again next spring is to top dress the entire bed with more dirt. I will have to do it carefully to not smother the plants, but if I add it slowly I will be able to build up the level of the dirt as the plants grow taller crowns and keep themselves up and out of the dirt.

Now to the plants. You can easily see the salvia 'Snowhill' that dominates this end of the bed. It has grown and bloomed steadily since the second week after planting. There are only two plants here, but they have already reached 75% of their full grown size, and the butterflies love them. The thyme is just starting to bloom and the two remaining plants are spreading nicely, as are the two remaining evening primroses 'Shimmer' that are the gray-green foliage in the front of this photo.

The most interesting thing, tho, is the penstemon 'Elfin Pink' which is also blooming. Look closely at the right side of this grouping and you can find a tall, slender plant with coral pink flowers. It has bloomed for several weeks and altho it is small, seems well established. I have high hopes for next year. At the far right rear you can see the agastache 'Ava'. It is growing well and has some tall spikes of dark pink flowers that you just can see against the fence. It should at least double in size in a year or two.

In the right hand photo you can see the other half of the xeri-garden and some of the annual flowers that I added for color. At the extreme left is the 'Ava' mentioned above and just past the empty space is the second one. If you look carefully you can see some flowers on that one, too. The big open space is there because I wanted to leave plenty of room for them to grow. Eventually they should fill that space and have hundreds of flower spikes. The big surprise is the cat mint - it has gone wild! See all those pale lavendar fluffy-looking blooms behind and mixed into the petunias? That's cat mint. It smells wonderful (same family as "cat nip") and the butterflies spend whole days in it. You cannot see them, but there are also two penstemon "Violet Dusk' blooming in all that cat mint. They are a bit shorter than the 'Elfin Pink' in the first photo, but eventually I hope they will tower over the cat mint. They are lavendar, but otherwise look just like the 'Elfin Pink'.

When I planted all the petunias, I really was just trying to provide a pop of color to keep this new bed from looking too bad this first year. Well, they love it there and have spread like Topsy! I mixed the purple and pink just for fun, but ended up with a great view as you pull into the driveway - an unintended surprise! My long term plan is to use the far end of that bed as a cutting garden. I have already planted hollyhocks for next year, but will add zennias, stock and other annuals that are good for cutting.

Since it is a bed made entirely from composted dirt, I have had to struggle with weeding - not the usual garden weeds, but odd things from the compost like tomatoes! I have probably pulled 50 tomato plants so far, as well as hundreds of little Queen Anne's Lace plants, and the prize this week goes to a cucumber that is growing just behind the right-most 'Ada'. These all came from seeds of plants that were thrown in the compost heap. Unfortunately the heat in the deteriorating compost was not high enough to kill all the seeds. It makes for an interesting bed!

So, that's a better look at the xeri-garden six weeks later. I should note that I only watered the xeri-part for two weeks after first planting and have relied on nature ever since. [I have watered the petunia-filled end, where the plants are not intended to be water-wise, at least weekly depending on the amount of rain.] So far, they are doing fine and the drainage seems to be working as I planned. Altho I have lost two plants, that's not bad for a new bed and I lost things that are easily replaced. So far, so good.....

Update on the Garden

2009-07-05T20:01:00.000-04:00

There are two projects that have been growing along quietly with no fanfare, so it's time to let you see what's happened recently.

Mitchell's vegetable garden:

We have been picking lettuce for several weeks now and it is great. It was supposed to "head up" but did not seem to have the genetic message. We did get one nice head, but the rest of it came out as leaf lettuce - albeit curling leaves. It is delicious, tho, and we may well plant it again next year. It's like a cross between green leaf lettuce and Romaine. It's more crisp than green leaf, but more curly than Romaine. But, like all good things, it's time to come to an end. The lettuce is starting to bolt, so I will cut it all tomorrow.

We have had a decent growth of cilantro, but it as already gone to seed. I would leave it, but Mitchell doesn't want the new cilantro growing everywhere in the bed, so I will pull it tomorrow, too.

He has planted a variety of peppers - bell and hot of various types - but they are struggling. I think they were planted late, but may not like the humus soil in the boxes. We have a few small peppers on the bells, and one very nice hot pepper - New Mexico # something - but not really much to show for six weeks of growth. The cabbage are another matter tho. They are huge and have finally started growing heads. They are really pretty, but we will be happy in another couple of months when they are edible.

The tomatoes are a success story. He planted two cherry tomatoes and two Better Boy (or maybe Girl). We have been picking cherries for a couple of weeks and two "big" tomatoes are ripening on the window sill right now. There are many, many coming so we should have tomatoes for the next month or so. You can see them growing UP the netting at the back of the box on the left. All in all, I think this is a successful garden this year.

The Project

It's been just over a month since I "finished" the xeri-garden. [We all understand that "finished" and "garden" do not exist in the world as we know it.] You got your last look on May 25th, so here's what it looks like today.

I've lost two plants already - one of the thymes and one of the evening primroses. Everything else is doing very well. The salvia 'Snow Hill' has bloomed almost constantly since the garden was planted and the evening primrose 'Shimmer' has come and gone. One of the agastache "Ava" is in bloom now, as well as one of the penstemon 'Elfin Pink'. The four clumps of sedum "Autumn Joy" have recovered and are growing altho none is standing upright - that will come next year. But all in all, it's in good shape. The exubertant color you see at the right end of the box is a mass of petunias that I planted for fast color. They have bloomed constantly and look great. I think that in the spring I will plant cutting flowers there for the house next summer.

The native honeysuckle seems to be ok. I disturbed its roots pretty much in digging the box, but then put a good heavy covering of mulch over them and watered well, so they seem to have survived all right.

So, I am pleased. In mid-April next year when I see what's come back and where I have holes, I'll look at some other salvias or perhaps a penstemon - if I can find one locally - to fill in. I think it's a success overall.

There is one major mistake - rookie mistake - that I made. The bed is too wide to work easily. I made it 16 feet by 4 feet, which is a lovely proportion and looks really nice, but I cannot reach over four feet. I should have made it only three feet deep. I never really thought about it when I was planning. It just seemed like the right thing to do - to cut the landscaping timbers in half. So learn from my mistake. Remember that weeding is a major activity and you need to be able to reach across the bed to do it.

A Stately Lady

2009-07-03T20:05:00.002-04:00

Four or five weeks ago the garden was like an exuberant teenager - bursting with color and new flowers in bloom nearly every day, going every which way, growing lush and never the same from day to day or hour to hour. Today it's a much more sedate lady - content to settle into a mid-summer routine, still elegant and colorful, but resting. In her own way she is just as lovely - perhaps more so - but more calm and comfortable. We've gone from Bridgit Bardot to Catherine Deneuve, so come look.

The first rush of daylilies is nearly over. The minis - 'Happy Returns' - are done for now. I deadheaded them this morning so that they will set new blooms and continue to bloom for the rest of the summer - just smaller blooms and fewer of them. The big daylilies are also slowing down. There are some gorgeous tall yellows still coming on. The 'Richmond Spiders' will be done by the end of next week, but they have been just gorgeous. [I will need to divide them this fall - if you are within a reasonable distance and want some, just ask.] The deep purple ones from Andre Viette is still blooming - and actually I did not expect this many blooms the first year - but on its last buds, too. So there will be fewer lilies soon, but still plenty of color to attract the butterflies and hummers.

The monarda is full and lush and the shasta daisies 'Becky' came into bloom this week. They are your run-of-the-mill white shastas, but my granddad always said you need a few white flowers to set off the color of the others.... and he was right. They are mixed in with the monarda, so it looks great together. There are gladiolas sprinkled throughout the bed adding accent color here and there, too, along with the yarrow.

The hibiscus 'Lord Baltimore' and 'Texas Husky Honey' both started blooming this week, along with two shorter [un-named] varieties - one white and one purple. And there is one pink hollyhock that came up near the 'Harry Lauter'. It appeared suddenly thru the branches looking like a pink bloom on the shrub. It's actually very pretty. All of that is in the major garden out back. Actually, that's what I think of as "the garden". The rest are just "planting areas" even if they are sometimes lovely, too.

Out front in the boomerang the garden phlox started blooming this week, along with the plumbago. The phlox is two shades of lavendar - one dark and one light. I'm sure they have names, but don't recall what they are. The plumbago came from Garland's garden several years ago - maybe nine! It has struggled and struggled, and suddenly this year it's gone wild. It doubled in size and has bloomed merrily. I want to treat it nicely and hope for more spread for next year.

Guest Garden

You may remember that in May I brought you pictures of Garland's garden in Brevard, North Carolina. I did not know it then, but her's was the first "guest garden" I featured. Today I visited another - very different - garden. I hope to get back with a camera next week and share that with you soon.

There's Lots More

2009-07-02T20:40:00.003-04:00

Note: I wrote the following two posts in mid-June, but failed to publish them. They are a bit out of date - see tomorrow's NEW post - but the pictures are good. Enjoy!

I wasn't kidding yesterday that it's more than I can share. We now have thousands of yellow daylilies, Monarda, hydrangeas, clematis, mandavilla, Asian lilies and even calla lilies in bloom - and that's just the back yard. The purple river looks like it may re-emerge as the perennials re-bloom, and the Shatsa daisies are ready to pop.

Monarda - These were a gift from a former boss of Mitchell's. They are a lovely shade of purple - more like cerise - and the bees and hummers love them. There common name is Bee Balm. Apparently the smell is a sort of bee tranquilizer and calms them down. I've never been stung around them and they are usually filled with bees... so maybe that's correct.

Mandavilla - of course this is an annual, but one Mitchell particularly loves. Mother gave us the plant in May and it is flourishing. We have used this same obelisk for several years. This variety is a velvetty deep pink, not really red as I first thought.

Clematis - This is the oldest and most established clematis we have - and we have lots. It has grown on this iron trellis for about five years. The flowers are a dull orchid, so not the prettiest we have, but them come back year after year in a larger clump.

Asian lilies - Some years ago I planted many, many Asian lilies - I just love them. They first summer they were lovely, and the second year the rabbits ate 90% of them. This is one that survived. this year it has nine buds on a five-foot stalk. It's just gorgeous. Next year I'm going to plant more - rabbits or not rabbits.

Calla lilies - These are special. If you check the books, you will see that callas don't winter here - but these do. I bought a package at Big Blue Box about five years ago and they have made it thru all those winters. Now I have ten clumps of callas. Not all of them will bloom this year, but maybe next year... They are a prettier shade of pink than this photo really shows. I cut these and brought them into the house today.

What's Up in the Garden

2009-07-02T20:35:00.000-04:00

Note: I wrote the following in mid-June and didn't post it. Even tho it's a bit out of date now, the pictures are pretty.

It's that Gemini part of the summer - just hot enough that some days you just don't feel like doing anything but sitting on the bench to enjoy the lushness, and not yet so hot that you have the blahs.

It's also the time when something blooms daily. I hardly know where to start to show or tell. Today, let's just stick to the pond. I planted a number of iris last summer and had one little bloom, but this year they just keep coming. More open daily in two shades of purple - that was a freebie since I didn't have a clue what color they were when I planted them.

The water lilies bloom periodically - both yellow and pink - and the best part.... the Richmond Spider daylily started blooming this week. It is the most gorgeous daylily that I have ever seen. Technically, it's a "red" flower, altho it's really orange. Even I can't call it "red", as much as I would like to. There are big clumps on both sides of the pond. For the next couple of months they will bloom prolifically with seven-inch blossoms. What a gorgeous sight.

2009-06-21T17:38:00.005-04:00

This has been an odd weather week for gardening. Monday thru Wednesday we had 80's and scattered showers all day - more scattered some days than others - and about 1/4 inch of rain each day. Thursday it started to warm up and was major league humid and by Friday we were in the upper 90's. In other words feast or famine for both water and sunshine. Hard on the gardener, but not so bad for the garden.

The monarda 'Raspberry Wine' is gorgeous and way tall! The butterflies are everywhere and we keep looking for a hummer or two. Haven't seen any in our yard yet, but are told that others have. The feeder has been up for several weeks, but only the downy woodpeckers and chickadees are drinking there so far.

While the river of purple is currently between bloom flushes, we had a lake of yellow all week - the miniature day lilies 'Happy Returns' - bloomed like troopers everywhere and by the end of the week we had completely bloomed out. Sometime this coming week I have several hours of deadheading to do to get the old stems cut back for the next flush of blooms to start. The 'Richmond Spider' lilies continue to bloom and will be with us for several weeks. There are miscellaneous tall yellow daylilies starting to bloom all over and a couple of neat "black" daylilies I picked up from Andre Viette last summer. They are a deep, deep purple and an interesting contrast to all the yellow. Makes me wish that one could bring daylilies into the house, but unfortunately they live up to their names - even when they are not cut.

A lovely clematis 'Jackmanii' made its first appearance this week, too. It grows on a trellis on the side of my garden shed. Of all the clematis varieties we have, it is really my favorite. The cone flowers are coming into bloom, and the alstroemeria - another love - have started, too. Most of them are a dark yellow 'Sweet Laura', but this morning I found one little clump of a gorgeous cerise, named Staprioxa' (sold as Oxana Princess Lilies).

The big job this weekend has been spreading mulch. I should have done this in April for several reasons: 1) It would have been easier when all the perennials were just little fellows peeking out of the ground. Now I have to do it all by hand and move everything aside as I go. 2) It was hot this weekend and I have had to do it in little bits, so it's not done. 3) It would have been better for the plants to have had the mulch earlier to help shade out the weeds, and I would not have had to pull so many. In other words, if I had done it on time, it would have been easier and better.

I am generally happy with the garden and the weather, tho. We've only had a few really humid days and so far none that were hazy, hot and humid. We're getting enough rain that I have only watered twice which is nice, so let's hope it holds!

You Say Tomato, I Say Tomaato

2009-06-14T16:42:00.004-04:00

Well, actually you say Bermuda Grass and I say wire grass. The local gardening guy in the RTD often says that if you love the way your lawn looks with this southern bent grass, you call it Bermuda, but if you hate having to constantly pull it out of your flower beds, you call it wire grass. I would be the latter.

One of the few garden jobs that I truly hate is weeding out the wire grass. I have worked diligently to get good quality ground covers established in nearly all our beds so that they will make it unpleasant for the wire grass. You do know, don't you, that part of the role of ground covers is shading out the weeds and making it easier for them to just go somewhere else. Most of the beds are in pretty good shape, but the large bed in front where the oak used to rule is the worst one I have. Last week I sprayed with Round-up, so that this morning I tackled the remaining grass. There's only one way to do it - hands and knees with a good digging tool and lots of elbow grease. Fortunately, I had less than a quarter of it to do, and two hours later it looked really good.

That's the sort of maintenance that can make gardening less fun, but then one has to look on the good side. It looks great when it's done and I normally only do it once a year. That particular bed is in bad shape now because of taking down the oak. The falling branches and pieces of trunk made holes in the ground and gouged out small plants, so I have a bit of clean up to do, but by spring it will look much better.

The new plan for this space is to encourage the mini-St. John's Wort to fill in to cover the rest of the ground. There are two volunteer dogwoods already growing there - one nearly in the center and one more toward the center of the yard - which we are leaving. [If you look carefully, you can see the larger one "above" and just to the right of the planter in the photo.] Our experience at the old house was that in five years we had a decent-sized, blooming dogwood, so we hope to be as successful with these two. The one we transplanted into the boomerang last September has grown nearly a foot already, so we have reason to be hopeful. For the short term I am planning to put some good dirt from the compost pile in the gouges and then get a small load of mulch to cover. That will help impede the grass.

For the very short term, I've put a huge urn on the tree stump and filled it with summer blooming flowers. This one was actually in the back yard, but not getting enough sun. Did a bit of damage to the fox glove when I moved it - hence the drooping stems. I keep hoping they will straighten up, but they'll be pretty when they bloom anyway.

One other small problem we are watching: both dogwoods have mildew. I have already started a weekly spraying with copper sulfate (Andre Viette says that is the way to go.) It is only in recent years that dogwoods have gotten mildew, and the younger ones can be killed by it. Ours are only two years old, so I am watching them. Am also spraying all the garden phlox. It's also very susceptible.

Status Update

2009-06-02T19:26:00.005-04:00

Thought it would be interesting to see what six weeks of work, rain and sun can do to the garden. If you were around on April 14 you saw a very different view of the garden [above]. I was pleased with the good shape the garden was in - in general - but as you can see, it was just beginning to grow. Perennials were starting to come up and shrubs were greening up, but you can clearly see the paths and the structure of the space. The grass looked good, that not much else.

Now add some good, rainy growing season and this afternoon it looked like this:

Unfortunately, I took this photo a good bit later in the day than the first, so the shadows are very different but you can see how lush everything has become - and we are just beginning to get blooms. Look how full the crabapple tree is, and the hedge at the back - you can hardly see the shed and house behind us now. The tower for the watering stand is nearly hidden by the Virginia Sweetspire. The round lily pond in the front is completely hidden behind daylilies now and Agnes appears to be hiding, too. The semi-circle path is still obvious, but there's lots more growing there. I moved the gazing ball to the front because it had gotten completely hidden.

After a hot humid day, it suddenly cooled off a bit late this afternoon and I was able to sit out by the fish pond and read - for the first time in weeks. It was cool and calm and a place to rest. That's the payoff for all the hard work.

On Saturday we had our extended family for a cookout on the deck - eight adults and four children; the latter ages one to five. It was delightful to see the children playing in both the yard and garden. The pond was a draw for them, especially at fish feeding time, but they ran in the grass and hid in the garden. The best part of all, tho, was the three year old boy running back and forth down the paths - in his diaper! He was just tall enough that his head would pop up from time to time as he ran, as if a mini-streaker had arrived. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing him, and delighted to watch the little ones entertain themselves with next to nothing but their imaginations. Another reason for the garden: It's a place for children to play.

Hope you've had the opportunity to work in your garden and are starting to reap the rewards. Happy digging!

And that's what the garden is really for - the enjoy.

What's in Bloom?

2009-05-31T20:12:00.011-04:00

I've been so busy with the Big Project that stuff has burst into bloom and I've not been updating you. It seems like everything is blooming at once.

First, the "red" yucca finally bloomed. Altho it had a lovely red streaked stem, the flower is just as creamy white as any other yucca. It is an unusually pretty plant, tho, with the variegated leaves and the red-striped stem. We have a second one that continues to struggle, but at least with this one blooming, there is hope for the other one - next year.

The small day lilies are bursting. We have 'Happy Returns' which is a butter yellow, rather than the more popular 'Stella d'Oro' which is a gold. These are about half the size of "normal" day lilies and are rebloomers, so we will have them thru the summer.

The yarrow is starting to bloom. We have a pastel mix, rather than the more familiar gold. We've naturalized them around the pond and used them as filler wherever I need some additional color. Altho there are pale yellow, cream and pink, there is also a dark pink that provides a nice pop of color in many places.

Today I cut the first bloom off one of the hydrangeas. It's also a rebloomer that Mother gave us for Christmas one year. We also have a spirea that has lovely pink blossoms. It looks like a cloud of pink all around the shrub.

Most of the pots of annuals are doing pretty well, except that the (!$&^*#@ chipmunks keep digging up some of the plants. I put back two or three every day, so they are not growing very fast. And the waterlilies are all blooming. We have a pink one and a yellow one in the fish pond and another yellow in a small round lily pond. The latter is blooming like crazy. It's out in the middle of the yard, so I think it gets more sun than the fish pond, and the flowers seem to like it.

Like all good gardens there are some surprises, tho. Apparently the birds planted these hollyhocks by the mailbox. I suspect the paper delivery man is not too thrilled with them, but they came as a lovely surprise when they popped up this spring. These were originally planted at the very back of the back garden and mostly were two shades of pink. Somehow one of the white ones managed to plant itself here - in practically no dirt, but a perfect spot.

Basically, it's lush and growing beautifully. With all rain in March and April, everything has come to full life a little bit earlier than usual. Part of it is the maturity of the plants, or course, but it already looks like it normally does in mid-June, so I guess we are about two weeks ahead. Today I've given you a look at the individual stars. Maybe tomorrow, I can give you the big picture. Happy digging!

ps: Mitchell's vegetable garden is also thriving. The lettuce is exploding, but everything else is just growing normally. He has also put in one of those upside down tomato plants. He has many little tomatoes - both on the regular plants and on the upside down one. I think we could begin harvesting lettuce any time now.

Let There be Xeri!

2009-05-24T15:21:00.007-04:00

Well, it's done. After two weekends of hard - and I do mean difficult and heavy duty - work, I have my xeri-garden. As you can see, it doesn't look like much ... yet. I have been telling you not to get too excited, because now the plants need to grow. I hope I have given them a good start. So, here's the last step, which I finished this morning.

Fortunately, it was a pretty day with very overcast skies. Altho the temperature was already 70 degrees at 6:15, the cloud cover kept it cool to work. Last night I laid out the bed on paper. This is always a good idea when you are working either with lots of different kinds of plants, or when you are working with a big bed. I had both. I had 22 pots including nine varieties, plus ground cover to fill a space that is 64 square feet. To lay out the space I used graph paper and the tags from the plants. The way I do it is to make a list of the plants including their height, width and color [from the tags]. Obviously, you want the shorter plants in the front - duh - but the width determines how close together or far apart you want to put them. A plant that is 8 inches tall x 10 inches "wide" will fill a circle with a 10-inch diameter. So, if you want your plants to fill in the space fairly tightly when they are mature, you need to figure out how far apart to put them. I like about two inches of "overlap", so for those 8 x 10 plants I would put them 8 inches apart instead of ten (10 - 2 = 8). And, of course, you want to consider color. My bed is primarily blue, violet and pink, but with white and a soft yellow to break up the pastels.

I started by setting the pots out according to the plan. You will always want to move a few around when you see how they look. Then I started at the left end at the back and moved left to right and back to front digging and planting. It is very easy with a new bed like this. All the dirt is soft and easy to dig. I waited until they were all in place before watering the bed. I watered twice and will do it again this evening. In addition to the plants I have bought, I pulled a Sedum telephium 'Autum Joy' out of my existing garden and divided it into four clumps for this garden, as well as six or seven clumps of Sedum spurium 'John Creech'. The latter came from Garland's garden nearly 10 years ago and is all over my garden. It's probably my favorite sedum.

If you look at my plan (at the bottom of the post) you might notice that there is about a third of the bed that is mysteriously "blank". That's because I over-built! Truth be told I really didn't realize how big this bed would be. The part that is now filled is about what I had in mind, but I built it much larger, so what to do? Eventually I know that there will be plenty of volunteers and other plants to add, but for now I have filled it with annual plants for color. I may use it next year for a cutting garden, or let Mitchell use it to augment his vegetables.

So, what did I plant? I keep saying this is a xeri-garden, but it is also a hummingbird and butterfly magnet as well. All of the plants can get by just fine on small amounts of water and none of them like to stand in water - hence all the sand and gravel in the bottom of the box to help the water run thru and off down the slope of the yard. Working from the tallest in the back to the front, here's what you will find:

Agastache x 'Ava' - Ava Hummingbird Mint. This grows up to 4 feet tall (so it's next to the fence for support if it needs it). It's a rose pink and will be covered with blossoms from mid-summer until fall.

Penstemon barbatus 'Elfin Pink'. Two feet tall and a bright pink, this is reportedly one of the easiest beardtongues to grow and a hummingbird favorite, and it's next to:

Penstemon smallii 'Violet Dusk', which is also two feet tall and pale purple. It is already in bloom.

Oenothera fremontii 'Shimmer' and Penstemon 'Blue Lips' are at the front. The former is a pale yellow and the latter is ..... pale blue. They are only 10-12 inches tall, so nice for the front. Blue Lips should bloom in June and Shimmer much of the summer.

Thymus serpyllum 'Coccineum', Red Mother-of-Thyme is the ground cover for the left front corner. It will form a carpet and trail over the edge of the box.

Salvia 'Snowhill' fills in behind the Elfin Pink. It is a little taller and white. This, too, is already in bloom, so I get some more instant color from it. The white looks good against the grey fence.

Sedum 'Autum Joy'. I put two clumps in the back left corner. The greyish color will be nice with all these pastel flowers, and the bloom is a bright, bright pink that fades to a pretty brown in the late fall. These plants look terrible at the moment. They would have done better to have been transplanted in the early spring - like early April - when they were short. I think they will eventually make it, but they will not be much to look at this year. There are two more at the far right end of the planting.

Nepeta Walkers Low - Catmint. There is one plant tucked in between the Violet Dark and the sedum at the far right end. This is a clear violet with a slightly grey foliage, so another nice combination with my pinks and purples. It is already 15 inches tall.

Sedum 'John Creech'. As an after thought I added this groundcover along the front of the bed. It forms a lovely two-inch tall mat and will trail over the front of the box.

The last plant that went in was gift from my next door neighbor - a passalong plant. It's an annual or biennial that grows "wild" in her yard, and before weed killer grew wild in my yard. Remember that many "flowers" are simply domesticated weeds! It's in the lamb's ear family and has a lovely deep cerise flower. It will self seed, so will make a good filler in this bed and help with the wild look that I hope to have in a couple of years. When I remember it's name I will tell you!

So, that's the Big Project - all done, except the growing. I feel happy to be finished, but a little let down not to have something on the horizon. Unfortunately, the next project is more in the keeping-up-the-house variety. I'll take some pictures in a few weeks to see if we are making any progress. Happy Gardening!

It's Still Coming Along....

2009-05-23T21:07:00.006-04:00

It seems like I have deserted the Big Project, but I have not. I've just been too tired at night to journal what's happening. So here's where we stand as of tonight:

Tuesday - bought and spread 10 bags of gravel. The "buying" part wasn't too bad, but by the time I loaded the sacks on a cart at the store and pushed them thru check-out, I had sense enough to ask for help loading them into my car! At home, I had to unload onto a garden cart and then dump the gravel into the box - not too hard actually, just lots of pounds of rocks!

Thursday - the plants arrived from Santa Fe! High Country Gardens is a class act. Everything arrived in excellent shape - via three day delivery. Nothing was dried out and there was zero damage to the plants. I watered everything and put all the plants in a shady spot to wait. I also picked up 16 bags of sand at the garden center. I was smart enough to get two carts this time, and again, I got help from the nice folks at the garden center loading the car.

Friday - spread the sand. At the right hand end of the box it's about two inches deep and at the left it's four inches. The plants that need the best drainage will go at the left of the box. Once the sand was spread, I started moving dirt from the compost pile. Remember the three wheelbarrow loads of "good" dirt I removed from the site? Well, that was a drop in the bucket to refilling the box. Remember, I built it up 15 inches at one end and six at the other. I am estimating that I have 75 cubic feet inside the box! After dinner [when it cooled off] I loaded more dirt for a total of 17 wheelbarrow-fuls and had the box about half filled.

Saturday - early this morning I started again on the dirt. Six more loads and the right compost pile was empty - actually I dug down about 8 inches below grade before hitting clay again. Fortunately, I had a Plan B. Under the left compost pile was another pile of dirt. I flipped the pile from left to right, moving all the loose and dry material over into the hole on the right side and started digging on the left. Many more loads and I finally filled the box. Unfortunately, I lost count of the loads this morning, but am guessing that it was a total of 35 or so. Remember that this are "girl loads".

The only excitement of the morning was the discovery of a black snake in the dirt under the left compost pile. I dug into him and scared him way more than he scared me, so I gave him a few minutes of privacy to disappear. When I returned to digging, tho, I kept plenty of distance from that part of the pile and kept my feet well away from the shovel. Lesson in composting: there may be snakes in your pile. Chances are they are not dangerous, but keep an eye out!

This afternoon we did a bit more shopping for plants to fill the space. Orange had a great sale on perennials and I got five more that I had not planned on having. Tomorrow we will have the big reveal. Don't get too excited yet, tho. I am planting perennials, so I am planning for the future. It will look sparce for at least a year, and won't be gorgeous until two years from now.

Progress Report

2009-05-17T15:59:00.012-04:00

Hard to believe it's been just over a month since I started this blog. Somehow it seems like much longer. I went back today to look at the goals I shared in the beginning and thought you would want a progress report.

1) The purple river. Overall, I am pleased with how this is coming, but it will be the middle of the summer before we will be able to see it all and next year before it will be really pretty - such is the reality of the garden. The salvia 'May Night' that I planted last fall are looking really good (center back and far right back), as are the geraniums (left front). The hydrangea has buds, but will not bloom until mid-to-late June, so it will look better later. The new perennials I added this spring are growing - well, some of them - and will hopefully look better as they get larger. It appears that fewer than half of the bulbs I planted last month are coming up. Perhaps the rest are just slow, but I fear they are not going to make it. I hadn't used this nursery before, so doubt that I will use them again.

I need to continue to work on this area. I need to look at different shades of purple, as well as different heights and textures to make it more interesting. I have seen some small iris in the neighborhood that are very dark in color. I need to see if I can barter for some to add both height and contrast. When the aquilegia [columbine] spreads that will help, too, since they are quite dark.

2) Planting around the pond: I haven't done much, but it does look better anyway. The ground covers I planted last fall have spread, as has the yarrow and the large clump of daylilies at the far right edge of the pond [see below]. These are a locally propagated lily 'Richmond Spider' that is considered "red". You will see later in the summer that it's in the orange family, but definitely to the red end of the spectrum. I added several verbinas [Homestead Purple and an annual variety] and cut back the buddelia. The latter has really filled out and thickened up. It should be pretty when it blooms. In the pond itself, the iris have about doubled in size, so hopefully will provide more blooms this year. I also added a varigated water parsley. The varigation is both cream and pink. The water lilies are getting ready to bloom and are already as full as they got last year over the whole summer. The pond is a perfect example of how well benign neglect works in the garden.

3) The shrub rose is long gone and replaced by an Emerald Arborvitae. I love the height it brings to back of the border.

4) The raised area in the corner. I planted a new clematis on the wrought iron gate (center of photo, it's not up enough to see), but that's all I've added. I didn't really have a plan for this area, but as I look at it now perhaps it planned itself. The shrubs are going well and provide a background for that end of the garden; we pruned out all the dead branches of the weigelia and trimmed back the flowering almonds this spring. They are all full grown now and all blossomed well this year.

The pink iris were pretty, but looked skimpy. I think when the clematis matures a bit (two years) and I add a few more iris, it will look fine. When I get iris for the river, I will get extras to put here to pull the two areas together color-wise. There is an amsonia to the right that I have pulled out twice, but keeps coming back. I think I will maintain that strategy to keep it small. [This is a plant that was way bigger than advertised and I have to really keep working to keep it small. It's gorgeous in the fall when it turns gold - really ! - and pretty now with pale blue blooms, but it's branchy and grows too fast for me.] In the far left you can just see a tall planter. It has a mini-rose bush that was a birthday gift a couple of years ago and blooms almost non-stop all summer.

5) The seating area by the pond is just great. We use it nearly every evening when we feed the fish. It's a great place to relax at the end of the day. Mitchell found two small tables - just in case someone needs a place to put a glass... or a cereal bowl. It's one of my favorite places to sit early in the morning to think or read. Right now the fragrance of the peonies makes it especially nice, but I think that even when all the flowers are gone the foliage will continue to provide a nice shady nook for us to enjoy.

So, in only a month two goals are completely met and three well under way. And the big project - which is not even on the list - is also well underway. I don't think of myself as a goal-setting person, but maybe I am. I saw these more as projects I wanted to complete this summer, and not as high-faluting as "goals".

Maybe that is a lesson for life; that goals don't have to be lofty. They can be little projects that we want to accomplish.

Project # 1 - Rain Delay!

2009-05-17T15:44:00.004-04:00

No work today. A slow drizzly overnight rain was still hanging around this morning, along with a cool front that dropped the temperature but left a yucky-stay-inside kind of day. To be truthful, I was glad. With every muscle and joint in my body aching from yesterday, I was glad for the day off!

It is giving me a chance to see if I am right about the natural drainage of the raised bed. So far, water does not stand, but we have only gotten a half inch of rain, so I need to see how it does with a true downpour. Hopefully, we will have some nicer weather this week and I can finish shoveling out the rest of the dirt and start putting in the gravel. Time will tell.

Lessons learned: One - I'm not as young as I wish I were and need to take heavy work a bit slower - if I wish to walk the next day. And, two: wear more sunscreen. The new Neutrogena 70+ works great, but you need to put it everywhere!

Project #1 - It's Underway!

2009-05-16T21:19:00.008-04:00

A good day in the garden - at least in the building part of it. I actually got farther than I had hoped. The day went something like this.

7:00 a.m. Working on the raised bed. All the materials were laid out in the carport - landscape timbers cut to length and holes drilled last night. It was a great morning for a project like this - overcast and cool and just the birds to keep me company. By 7:30 the first corner is in. Digging is less hard than I had feared. Fortunately The Tree Man's son had dug up a large section when he grubbed out the stump two weeks ago. I quickly found that I was digging out too much dirt and not too little, as I assumed I would do.

The big challenge was getting it level, the ends perpendicular and the sides parallel. If I could get the first row in properly, the rest would be easy. My father and brother would have measured and drawn plans. I, on the other hand, had spent the past year contemplating. So what does a girl do when she has grown up in a family of engineers? She plans it in her head and then wings it on the installation - and it worked just fine.

10:30 a.m. The entire back wall is built and the lower (left) end. Now I am ready for the hard part. I had assumed that the front would be harder to dig out since that part of the yard had been all in grass, whereas the back part had been a flower bed and therefore previously tilled. What I had not anticipated was that I had guessed exactly right on the amount of rise in the land - from left to right. The timbers I had cut fit exactly right. I only had to dig out a shallow trench for each new timber across the front and the rise worked out just right.

12:00 noon - The box is complete up to the first full four-sided row. And it looks good. Along the way I have hauled out three wheelbarrows of good dirt, two of bad dirt - mostly clay - and one load of grass and root scraps. The latter look like chunks of old decaying bone. It occurs to me, tho, that in a way they were the bones of the tree, so maybe it is a fitting image for them. I was able to leave more than a foot of space for the native honeysuckle, altho I did have to cut several of the ground level roots, and was able to make a small swale to carry any extra water away rather than letting it stand.

Time to take a break for things like food and regular garden maintenance - deadheading, cleaning around the pond, and cutting flowers for the house. Also a nap would be nice!

4:00 p.m. - Look out Laura Ingalls Wilder! I have a mini-cabin - at least that is what Mitchell thinks. He keeps looking for the door. I did have to make a trip to Big Blue for four more landscaping timbers to complete one more row than I had planned, but that was a nice break in the work. While there I picked up some gravel - well 750 pounds of gravel - for the bottom of the box.

Drainage is the crucial element in this project. The plants that I want are xeriscape plants - agastache, penstemon, and salvia. They need for the water to run thru the soil and then drain away - and not stand around their roots. I'll accomplish this two ways: first there will be a couple of inches of gravel and a couple inches of sand in the bottom of the box, and secondly, I'll take advantage of the natural drainage of the site. The land slopes from right to left and from the fence into the yard. So water will naturally run away from this raised bed. By putting in plenty of stone and sand I'll be able to take advantage of and encourage the natural run off.

8:30 p.m. - One last thing to do today. I ordered the plants! Agastache 'Ava' is a dark cerise that could go four feet tall - wow! With the fence as a background it will look great. Penstemon 'Elfin pink' is a clear pink about two feet tall. Penstemon 'Blue Lips' is a clear blue beardtongue with a lavendar throat. It's only 10 inches so will go near the front, along with Shimmer Evening Primrose (Oenothera fremontii 'Shimmer'). At the very front will be Red Mother of Thyme - a three-inch creeping thyme that will spill over the edges of the box - someday. I don't know how quickly they will ship out, so doubt that I will have them for next weekend, but surely in two weeks I'll have it up and running! I will also be moving some plants from my garden - some sea oats for sure, and probably some salvia 'May Night'.

If I can still walk and lift my arms, I'll get the gravel in tomorrow and look for sand.

Project #1 - Step One

2009-05-15T21:10:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow's the day. Barring heavy rain tonight I am starting on the new raised bed. Mitchell went with me this afternoon to get the lumber - landscaping timbers - and spikes to hold it together. Then he cut the shorter pieces I will need, and helped me to drill holes in most of the pieces. I may have bought one round too many so don't want to drill the holes until I am sure I will use them.

I've spent several weeks looking and thinking and I know how I am going to do it. A good plan will surely help! I hope to get started early in the morning before it gets too hot. Last summer I successfully put this project off on the grounds that it was too hot, so I need to finish this time before the heat rolls in. I think I am ready to go, but time will tell.

My plan is to build and dig simultaneously. Since the yard slopes, I will start at the lower end and dig in each piece of timber as I go up. We have a good long level that I can use to keep it all level together. As I get the first couple of rows dug in, I will be taking out most of the dirt. There is about 10 inches of good dirt on top of heavy clay, so I will only take the good stuff and just rough up the clay. Once the box is built I will be putting in several inches of rock and then sand for good drainage, so the clay on the bottom won't matter. I'll take the good dirt and mix it with the great dirt that Mitchell has been composting for me and have a good growing medium with excellent drainage. The natural slope of the land will help the water run out at the bottom of the box. If necessary, I can drill a couple of extra holes at the lower end.

Which brings me to my little helper. The last two times I have gotten the wheelbarrow I have found a little snake underneath. Technically he's a "common ribbon snake" - a form of garter snake - and appears to be about three feet long and the diameter of my thumb. The first time I saw him, tho, I did not think he was so "common". While I did not scream or go "eek" , I was startled to find him there. He froze and played invisible. When I went back a few minutes later he was long gone.

He's actually quite pretty - with stripes of several shades of brown and tan... like ribbons. I knew immediately that he was not poisonous; I do have sense enough to know what they look like! He has taken refuge in one of the compost piles. I normally keep the wheelbarrow upside down on the newer pile, so it provides a warm, dry spot for my little friend. Now that I know he hangs out there, maybe I can get his photo! I'll need to borrow his roof tomorrow, so will probably see him for a few minutes early in the day.

I would love to get the box built this weekend and then get the gravel and sand in over the next week. I have a few plants in the yard that I am going to transplant there, but mostly I need to order the plants. This is truly a long term project and won't be pretty until the middle of next summer, but the gardening game is not for the instant gratification crowd.... you have to plan ahead and then enjoy the wait.

What's Blooming Today

2009-05-14T21:38:00.006-04:00

I've been too busy at work to get anything done in the garden except a bit of clean up this week. But it does not need me right now as it continues to come into its own.

The geraniums bloomed yesterday - not the annuals that we call geraniums, but the domesticated "field" geraniums. I brought them from the old house, where they were a great groundcover in a shady area. I have them in a sunnier spot now and they are not as prolific, but I am really liking the way they have filled in. They have also spread themselves around a bit - as flowers tend to do! - and I have a small clump growing among the Pacific daisies. The contrast between the pink geraniums and the silvery foliage is just lovely. I want to move a few more into that bed to encourage that combination.

The evening primrose also bloomed yesterday. It's a lovely pale pink and I think I need more somewhere. And the Japanese iris are blooming, too. They are the lavender and would be prettier is there were some variety of color. I need to get some dark purple and some white to mix in with them.

But the big news is the peonies - they are gorgeous. Last fall I gathered all the plants I had into one spot to make a big bed. I did it partly to fill a corner and partly because I thought it would make a better presentation in a big drift. I was so right. I have mostly pale pink, but one white with a red fleck and one dark pink. I truly do want a "red" plant, so will try to add one this fall. I pinched out the side buds as the peonies grew to get bigger blooms and it really worked - I have many that are 8 - 10 inches across. It's a truly lovely corner. Of course, the Murphy's Law of peonies is that it will pour down rain this weekend and beat them down. It always happens. I brought a big vaseful into the house today so that I can enjoy them. They remind me of Grandmother. She loved them and I always took her a vase for Mother's Day - and they bloomed right on time for me this year.

Garland's Gardens

2009-05-12T21:47:00.006-04:00

For the past four days I've been visiting gardens. Got a lot of ideas and thoroughly enjoyed myself. First kudos to the NCDOT for their continuing program of planting wildflowers on the highway right-of-way. There are huge swaths of red, purple, blue, pink, white and yellow flowers all along I-85 thru the central part of North Carolina and on into the foothills of western North Carolina. In addition there are nice plantings of shrubs at most of the interchanges. But it is the wildflowers that are breath-taking in many spots. Let's hope that by good cutting practices - that is, not cutting until the wildflowers have seeded annually - that they will continue to spread. I wish I could have taken a good photo to share with you.

The big gardens that we visited were at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville. There are all sorts of gardens - from the most formal English-type planned garden, to kitchen gardens, to shrubbery, to seemingly "natural" hills and valleys of native plants, trees and shrubs. All of it planned to the ninth degree and all lovely. I found that while I really liked the formal gardens and enjoyed seeing them, it was the open areas and natural glens and hillsides that really spoke to me. Somehow the planned, measured formal gardens seemed too perfect, too planned and lacked the fun and spontaneity that I really like. There were no surprises. Instead, I found the banks of native shrubs - azalea, rhododendron, and mountain laurel - just gorgeous. A bank of bamboo appearing around a bend, perennials blooming among the rocks along the bass pond, and mounds of perennials at the winery all made me happy - even on a rainy day.

But the finest garden I saw belongs to my friend, Garland. She moved home to western North Carolina nearly five years ago and started renovating the property to create the kind of garden she loves. She has cleared out old dying trees and acres of brambles in the fences, pulled weeds and poison ivy. She has cleaned out and restored the vegetable garden. But mostly she has added new beds and greatly enlarged the existing beds while planting hundreds, perhaps thousands, of flowering shrubs and perennials in colorful swaths on all sides of the house. Wherever one looks out, there are beautiful flowers to see.

Step out of the front door and there are shady beds filled with helebores, ferns, and hosta, and a sunny spot with herbs planted among the patio blocks. Look down from the porch and there are sunny beds with iris, peonies, and sedum. Many plants she moved with her from her Richmond garden, and many are native to Translyvania County. There are evergreens, rose beds, and even a 90-foot asparagus bed - all laid out in a pleasing way, each with a little surprise to be found as you wonder around the nearly seven-acre yard. Right now the rhododendron are in full bloom along with many azaleas, so it is a riot of pinks and purples with the occasional bank of white, and way over "there" a patch of bright orange as a surprise.

I took her some variegated Solomon's Seal and she sent me home with a sedum, so a bit more of her will grow here with me and a bit of me will grow in her garden - if the deer don't eat it all!

Mitchell's Plants

2009-05-11T08:00:00.004-04:00

Today is the day to celebrate those things in the garden that are there because Mitchell loves them. He is first and foremost a fan of foliage that is anything except green! He loves coleus and crotan and all those red/brown plants, so over the years we have worked them into the landscape as fillers. Fortunately, they are lovely with the blues, purples and pinks that I love so much. And then there are a variety of plants that he just likes.

Like the little dogwood in the front yard. It is currently growing in what we call the "boomerang". When we first moved in we planted a weeping cherry tree in the front corner of the yard. He watered it devotedly as it got sicker and sicker. Finally after a full summer of dying, it was gone. When we pulled it out we discovered that it was sitting in the equivalent of a terra cotta bowl filled with water. That was how we learned that it's impossible to plant anything in our yard without first amending the dirt - and I do mean amend! We decided that we needed the equivalent of a raised bed, but we did not want the obvious raised border. So, we got a load of topsoil delivered and shaped it into a boomerang and left it higher than the yard. We amended the heck out of it and over the years it has sunk some into the yard, but remains an excellent place to plant. Last fall we moved a small dogwood there. It had been growing too close to the house, so we took a chance and dug it up. We watered loyally over the winter and it is growing like topsy this spring. I believe it will be a keeper.

Mitchell's red tree tho is a beautiful plum [Thundercloud] that shades the back deck. After the disaster of the weeping cherry we got another load of topsoil and dumped it on the west side of the deck before we planted another tree. The plum was the tree equivalent of a 98-pound weakling when we planted it - about five feet tall with skinny little no-nothing twig branches. Today it is 25 feet tall and shades the entire deck all summer. Mitchell has kept it well pruned, so it has a beautiful vase shape and when it blooms it is covered with tiny pink flowers. It's truly a gem.

Underneath is a field of Ajuga reptans 'Burgundy Glow' - another non-green plant. It actually changes from more greenish to more redish over the growing season, and blooms with a pretty purple flower on a stalk in the spring - like now. In addition to the field under this tree, we have used it wherever we need a little filler, like around the pond. It is helping to fill in among the stones that surround the pond. It likes a bit of shade, so it has not done as well as other ground covers in some of our sunnier spots.

Around the side is a Japanese maple. In twenty years it will be stunning! Since we bought it, it has filled out and now has a lovely fountain shape and the leaves are that beautiful red that one expects, but there are two things that we did not know about Japanese maples when we added it. First, they grow incredibly slowly - like an inch a year or less. Ours is still less than three feet tall, so we have lots of shrubs that would kick it's derrierre in a fight, and 2) in our climate it turns green! Apparently it is not fond of our hot, humid summers, so by August every year it is a lovely green maple! Then from November to June it's red again, before starting its color change. We love it, but will probably not live to see it full grown.

I've mentioned the Harry Lauter's walking stick [Corylus avellana 'Contorta'] before, but it is another of Mitchell's interesting choices. In the summer it is a pretty screen of bright green leaves - like now - but in the winter it is one of the most interesting specimens in the garden. It loses its leaves, but keeps its catkins all winter among its twisted branches. It's large enough now that I could use some of its branches for flower arrangements, but I have not touched it yet. I think it is about three-quarters full grown. The birds love it and so do we.

Finally, I always make him at least one planter with shade plants including coleus. Am running a bit behind this summer, and do not really have the planters done yet, so that is yet to come. We have a bench in the shady part of the garden that nicely holds two or three large pots, and I like to put a variety of coleus there along with some annual flowers. From that garden bench one can see both down the side - the bowling alley - to the street and back up the hill to the main garden. It's a lovely place to read.

So Mitchell, it's all about your plants today - happy anniversary!

The Stump Gets Company

2009-05-10T13:59:00.000-04:00

After nine years I finally have the emerald arbovitae I have always wanted. As you know - oh, too well - I had to cut down a Green Giant arbovitae that I thought was an emerald, and lo and behold I found an emerald at a good price. Big Blue had a huge selection of seven-gallon plants at an excellent price, so I shopped around and bought the tallest of the lot. It actually has two main stems and a very nice growth habit. I put it - as promised - right behind the stump that we recently put in the back garden for the birds. In my shopping frenzy last weekend I bought two clematis and planted one on each side of the stump. The idea is that the clematis will grow together and mix it up over the top of the stump and then spread out almost like a ground cover around the stump. I used two shades. Since I bought four different clematis, I am not 100% sure what went where - except for the one that went in the front - so what I think will be growing over the stump are Clementis 'Kivihu' and Clematis 'Kongiskind'. The former is a bright magenta and the latter is a medium lavendar - both with yellow centers.

The arborvitae is Thuja occidentalis 'Smaragd' aka Emerald Beauty, which may be the only variety of emerald. It's already more than five feet tall and should grow to 12 - 15 feet in ten years. I love the way it looks behind the stump and I think the birds will love it. Come Christmas, tho, the solar lights will be on it. I have two strings and will need at least one more, but it will be perfect. In the photo you can just barely see Mitchell's Henry Lauter's walking stick at the right edge, with day lilies and fall anemones in front of it. On the left is actually the top of something that is growing in the foreground - perhaps monarda. At the extreme rear is a euonomous hedge that actually belongs to the backdoor neighbor, but which I try to keep trimmed as a background to my garden.

All in all, I am very pleased with these new additions to the back of the garden.

What's Blooming!

2009-05-09T10:43:00.002-04:00

This is that part of the spring when something bursts open every day, and after three days of rain when the sun came out yesterday the yard filled with flowers. Two pretty additions are weigelas - one is 'Wine and Roses', but I don't recall the name of the other. While they are gorgeous from afar, pictures don't do that justice, so here's a close up of the flowers [not Wine and Roses] - just gorgeous!

Another new addition today is the miniature white rose that came from Aunt Agnes' garden. It's another plant that is gorgeous from afar, but the pictures don't do it justice.

The red yucca continues to grow. I have no idea what it will do next, but surely we will get some blooms in a few days - who knows. Will keep you posted.

A Little Project

2009-05-08T10:25:00.004-04:00

One of the "problems" or perhaps it's just a reality of the garden is that you can make all the lists you want of the things that need to be done, but little projects jump into your path all the time. The front corner of the house is one of those little projects. Last week we unexpectedly took down two trees - the dying oak in the front yard and an arbovitae that was too big for its location. Unfortunately, both were in the same corner of the yard, and the result of taking them out was to leave a big hole in the landscaping.

It will take a couple of years to replace the oak, altho there is already a group of dogwoods taking on that project. Replacing the arborvitea will be easier - and I mostly did it yesterday. It's rained all week, so when the sun peeked out after lunch I dashed outside and started digging holes. The result is that by dark I had replaced the tree with two holly bushes [Ilex crenata 'Helleri'], two nandina and an assortment of perennials. The hollies are a dwarf variety that is reported to grow 3 x 4 at maturity, with a pretty open and branching growth habit. I used it to continue the line of the existing hawthorns on around the corner to meet the existing nandinas on the side. Then I put two volunteer nandinas behind them on either side of the corner. They will fill in the upper level with fluffy growth - and quickly. At the very corner I planted a clematis [Marie Louise Jensen] with a wire trellis to help if get started up the corner post of the porch. It is a deep purple, so should be very pretty in a couple of summers.

The perennials are a variety of bellis [perennis 'Habanera'], salvia [nemorosa "Marcus"] and Forget-me-Not [Myosotis sylvatica 'Bobo Blue'] all of which grow 6-8 inches tall and a Bugloss [Anchusa capensis 'Blue Angel'] which will grow about 10 inches tall and help hide the old stump. Altogether I put in about 10 small plants which should fill the space by fall - if I keep them watered!

So now the corner looks much better - still way more open than originally, but by this time next year it should be nicely filled in.

Shopping for the Garden

2009-05-03T18:09:00.007-04:00

Spent part of both yesterday and today shopping for the garden. Mother and I had a "girls day out" yesterday and ended it by shopping for plants for both our gardens, which are very different. If you have been following It's My Garden you have figured out that we have more square feet in garden than in grass - Mitchell keeps suggesting new spots for flowering plants! But Mother's situation is quite different. She lives in an apartment in a retirement village and has only a balcony for growing space. She keeps a dozen or so orchids - phals, paphs, and oncidiums mostly - so that she has something in bloom about 10 months a year, but has settled on a large planter on the balcony for her outdoor garden.

She once did cymbidiums, major climbing plants up the porch railing and posts, as well as summer annuals and a few veggies, but now finds that to be too much work, so she has planted a combination of tomatoes and perennials to give her some summer color and a tomato sandwich or two. I took her a mini-rose yesterday as part of her Mother's Day gift. It was a deep, but pale, pink. I knew she already had a cerise mini-rose and thought they would look good together. She also has two mini-daylilies. One is "Happy Returns" and the other is a "red" whose name escapes me - if I ever knew. They are both rebloomers so she gets plenty of blooms all summer.

She has a major Big Box store nearby that has a wonderful garden center, so we ended our day of shopping there. The tomato was pretty easy, since she likes Big Girl. Flowers took a lot longer. We looked at lots of things and ended up with a mini-dalia for her [the rest of her Mother's Day] and a lovely red mandavilla for Mitchell and me - her anniversary gift to us. But I found the prices impossible to ignore and also brought home three campanulas [purple, of course, for the river] and a pretty evening primrose, which is pale pink. It will make a nice accent along the river. Mitchell was a bit appalled when I show up with a car filled with plants - mainly, I think, because it was his car!

Today he and I went garden shopping with different goals. Since we cut down the arborvitae last week at the corner of the front porch, we wanted to get some replacement shrubs so that I can get started with the re-do on that corner. I had wanted some dwarf Indian Hawthorn, but could not find them so we chose a holly that will go about three feet tall by five feet wide. It has a loose growth habit and tiny leaves, and it will only take two to fill the space. I also bought several clematis - two to grow over the stump we just put in the back, one for a trellis in the back corner, and one to grow up the porch railing on the front porch.

We also stopped at the Big Box ourselves. I was so encouraged by the prices I saw yesterday at Mother's store that I wanted to see if I could get some more deals for myself. And, I did. With the oak tree gone in the front, it looks very bare. We decided that we wanted to put a large planter on the tree stump to pull in some color once the azaleas are gone. I found a large plastic pot that looks like terra cotta and was big enough to show up. I filled it with flowering annuals - Gerbera daisies, snapdragons, and other summer flowers. It is supposed to rain tonight, so we hope get the planter watered in well and place it tomorrow. I will probably need to be leveled, so I will need Mitchell's help moving it.

What's blooming today? Two nice surprises. First, some gorgeous pink Dutch iris. Mother gave them to me several years ago for Christmas, but they have finally come into their own. They are the largest iris blooms I have ever had and a nice clear pink. Secondly, a "red" yucca. It has variegated foliage and has begun to put up a "spike" that is a medium pink color. It has never bloomed before, so we don't exactly know what to expect, but this is clearly the beginning of blooms. Will keep you posted.

Something Borrowed....

2009-05-02T12:02:00.003-04:00

The Tree Man gave me a good idea the other day. When he and his son finished dragging the stump out of the raised bed, he suggested that rather than putting it in the trash, I put it back into the garden. And I did.

Recently I pulled out a dying shrub rose and I plan to put an Emerald Arborvitae in the gap it left, but there is plenty of room to do more. So we moved the stump there, turned it upside down, and voila - an interesting item, a place for the birds, and some structure to grow vining ground cover. Eventually it will be rustic, but right now it's just a mess of roots and mud. Mitchell has offered to powerwash the worst of the mud and to help me stabilize it if we need to add dirt underneath for support. It will bleach out in the sun this summer and will be very pretty this time next summer.

I had wanted to do something like this for the birds for some time now. They need the shelter on the ground. We've always provided food and water, but not shelter. Hopefully this will make us even more appetizing to our winged friends. It'll be interesting to see how this progresses.

Memorial Plants

2009-05-01T12:02:00.001-04:00

One of the nicest things that has bloomed this week is a lilac "Miss Kim" that is growing next to the back deck. I planted it three years ago in memory of an old friend's mother. When Mitchell and I were married she painted us a watercolor picture of a lovely lavender lilac. Maybe it was a lilac lilac; I never thought of it that way before. I don't recall if she particularly liked the flowers, or if she even had one in her yard, but I always loved the picture and especially appreciated her taking the time and effort to paint it for us. So, when she died I wanted something tangible in the garden as a memorial to her - what else but a lilac? And, "Miss Kim" is a dwarf that fit the scale of the plantings around the deck. I have thoroughly enjoyed her the past two years, but this year she came into her own - covered with panicles and so fragrant! I love to walk up and down the steps to disturb the air and release the fragrance.

We have several other memorial plants. The first was a miniature rose from my aunt Agnes' garden. It is a small white white blossom, but with a tiny fleck of dark red on the bud. It never goes all the way into the flower - only on one or two outside petals - very unusual.

The old fashioned chrysanthemums came from Mitchell's mother's garden and always remind me of her. They are covered with tiny pink flowers - each only half an inch in diameter - and are nearly a ground cover most of the year. Only in the fall do they get tall before they flower.

I planted peonies to remind myself of grandmother. She adored them. I had them in our old garden and would always take her a big bouquet of them on Mother's Day. When we moved I immediately put in two and later moved them to a bigger bed where I now have about a dozen. Grandmother loved the pink ones, but I love the darker colors. Since all but two are new this year, I don't know what colors the rest will be when they bloom.

My friend Garland gave me many plants when she lived nearby. I didn't plant anything especially to remember her, but then I didn't know she would move away. I especially think of her when the white iris bloom - which was today. There are some mini ones that thrive in dry shade, so I have a lot of them, and there are some medium sized that look like Japanese iris blooms, but have a totally different foliage, so I haven't a clue what they are. I should ask her!

When Dad died I planted a Mahonia in his memory. He really loved that shrub and had offered me a "baby" off one of his several times. We had never had the opportunity to bring one of his home, so I found one. It is not doing all that well, but is hanging in for now.

Somehow memorial plants make those people seem a little closer to me. I can talk to the plants without a soul thinking that I am crazy. Odd how one can talk to one's plants and be considered "normal", but not talk to oneself - think about that for a while. If you haven't tried memorial plants, I highly recommend them - even for the living. It's a nice way to hold those you love close.

And Old Friend and a Mistake

2009-04-30T19:48:00.005-04:00

We lost an old friend yesterday. A lovely pin oak that had shaded our front porch for the past nine years finally was felled by the Tree Man. What was once a full, round, towering tree had become reduced to something resembling a stick figure in the past three years. What was originally a ball of fire in the fall leaf season, had become a mass of sticks. We have long believed that when the driveway was paved it cut off the major source of water to this tree's root system. It may have been something else, but this tree had certainly failed to thrive the past few years. This year less than a third of the branches leafed out and it didn't even produce any "fuzzies", so we knew it was finally time to go.

Yesterday, when the Tree Man came to talk about removing the stump for my raised bed, we also had him look at the oak and all agreed that the time had come. "If it had been my tree, it would have come out a couple of years ago," said the Tree Man. Since we had asked him repeatedly about it, we found that answer a bit odd, but gave him the green light to come back at his convenience and take it out.

His convenience turned out to be six hours later. When we returned to the house around five the cherry picker was in our driveway and the Tree Man's son was in the basket cutting down the truck of the oak. I was a bit sorry not to have the opportunity to take a few photos before they started and formally bid it farewell, but progress had moved on past me. And maybe it was easier to arrive too late and not have second thoughts.

Of course, there is good news, too. Very near the center of this bed is a nice looking volunteer dogwood. Given a couple of years and more sun, it should become just the thing to fill this spot. So, we will add a couple of azaleas to fill in the void and let the periwinkle grow over the stump and in five years, a stranger will never guess that a beautiful oak once graced that spot.

A Mistake: Those of you who are eagle-eyed will notice that there is also a conifer missing at the corner of the porch. It was one of the first trees I bought and I got fooled. It was sold as an Emerald Arborvitae (15 feet tall in 15 years), but it turns out to have been a Green Giant Arbovitae (60 feet eventually). I had imagined a nice mini-Christmas tree at the corner that I could decorate annually - leaning off the porch to reach the top as it grew. Instead it rapidly outgrew any ladder I had and we had started trying to control its breadth by shearing the sides until it looked like soup can with a pointy top - not a pretty sight!

We had decided to take it down ourselves this week - in time for the neighborhood cleanup this weekend. But in the end we got the Tree Man to do that, too, so it will soon be nice mulch for some other tree. There is a pair of mourning doves, however, that keep walking up and down the porch railing looking for it. We had waited until their brood fledged and flew away, but apparently they had plans for reusing the nest.

Plans: For now that side is pretty bare looking, and sun will certainly be a factor in the living room this summer. We plan to clean the porch well and then paint the posts and railings - with a mildew retardant added to the paint - before we do too much more landscaping. But my plan is to continue the nandinas and hawthorns on around the corner in a curve, with something low to fill in the point of the corner. And then a purple clematis - Jackmanii, I think - to grow up the corner and on up the post. Let's check that out in two years!

Roadblock!

2009-04-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

This is the weekend that I was really hoping to get started on the Big Project, but the tree trunk has intervened. Turns out it is still much too solid to work around and we will need to get it ground out before I can start building.

I took an adze to it today and had little success. The parts that were completely underground for the past five years are partly decomposed, but even some of them are very solid. The stump itself is still very solid and won't even break up around the edges, so it won't be possible to build around it. Fortunately we know a tree man and will call him Monday. With luck he will be able to come soon and grind it up.

So, for this project there are two things I can do this weekend. First, I can is go look at landscaping timber choices. I would really prefer something that is more square - like railroad ties - than the ones with two curved sides, but that will work if that is all that's available. And secondly, I can pull up the timbers that are there and till the area around the outer perimeter of the space. I may reuse the timbers in the new box, so will keep them until I decide on materials.

Otherwise, looks like it will be a weekend of clean-up. I need to clear a foot on either side of the main path thru the garden, and that will include using Round-Up on a large area where sea oats have colonized all over the path, as well is clearing back the Shasta Daisies and more Monarda and a bit of the chrysanthemum patch. It is easy to see this week how much the maurading monarda did to that patch. Where there was no interferance, the chrysanthemums are about four inches taller than in the area I cleared last week.

Had hoped to receive my order of plants for the purple river today. The nursery sent an email on Wednesday that they were shipped, but now they will sit in the post office all weekend - hopefully not in a truck! I would love to get these plants in the ground soon. We are expecting heat in the low 90's this weekend, so I may have to water on Sunday or Monday.

What's blooming this week: The Fothergilla is in full bloom and prettier this year than last. I really tried to water it periodically this past winter. More azaleas, too, and the woods hyacinths have come into full bloom. The prettiest thing is a white Viburnum, which is nearly full size now and covered with blooms. The groundcover around it is a purple vinca, so the contrast is nice.

The Big Project

2009-04-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

A week or so when I listed the projects I wanted to complete this year, I hinted that I had a big project in mind, and I do. Several years ago, I planted several big clumps of decorative grass along the fence that divides us from our neighbor. Mainly it was a place to put some miscanthus grass that I had and did not want to just throw away. When the grass died we tried sunflowers there, but nothing has ever really worked well. Then about two years ago we visited friends in New Mexico and got interested in xeriscape gardening - gardening with minimal water - and some of the plants that will do well in our climate, but which hate our clay-rich soil. Because the fence is at the extreme of our yard it is hard to water and would lend itself to a garden that needs less water, so here's the project: I want to build a raised bed and plant it with bee and hummingbird attracting plants that don't need much water.

There are several challenges: 1) the yard slopes about 8 inches from right to left; 2) the native honeysuckle on the trellis is well established and we want to keep it; 3) there is a rotting tree stump in the middle of the space; and 4) this is Central Virginia and our soil holds water like a sponge. So, here's the plan:

First, I'm going to use timbers of some sort to build a box for the garden. They will have to stair step up from left to right. I will have to level each row until I get out of the ground. Overall, I think I want it about 12 inches tall at the right end.

Secondly, it will have to end about 12 inches from the trellis and honeysuckle. That will create a "well" for the honeysuckle, so I will need to create a swale to run off the water.

Thirdly, I need to try to break up the old stump as much as possible. It can be buried in soil and will not matter, but I would like to clear it away from the fence enough to place the landscape timber between it and the fence. It's been rotting for about five years, so I may be able to take an ax to it and do pretty much damage now.

And finally, I will have to measure carefully since I have to build it from the left end up toward the trellis and that's the hard way! Once I build the box I will put in several inches of gravel and then several inches of sand. I'll top it with several inches of enriched dirt - Mitchell makes great dirt in his composter - and then the plants will be those that like a drenching, but good drainage. I will need to put weep holes of some sort in the downhill end of the box so that the water can get out.

I already have a catalog from High Country Gardens marked and ready to order - penstemon, evening primrose, salvia, creeping thyme, and agastache. I also plan to transplant some sea oats that are spreading where I don't want them, and maybe a varigated yucca that is not doing well where it's currently planted.

With luck I can build it in three weekends. I have a Mantis tiller that will break up the dirt, but I will still have to place the timbers individually and attach them somehow so they can't fall down. I will see what Mitchell can suggest for that. Then it's simply a matter of carrying in bags of gravel and sand. Stay tuned for progress reports.

Mitchell's Vegetable Garden

2009-04-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

Lest you think that I am the only gardener in the family, you need to meet Mitchell's veggies. He got interested in "square foot gardening" last summer and built two four-by-four boxes, complete with wire-frame tops to keep the critters out. He planted fall veggies and we enjoyed radishes, beets, lettuce and spinach. In fact we have been eating his spinach again for the past month.

This spring he decided to branch out and try a few more things. With a little digging help from a friend he has planted four tomatoes, five peppers of various colors and tastes, a patch of onions and some head lettuce. He is currently soaking spinach seed to add a row of new spinach. He has ordered a lattice to support his tomatoes as they grow, so that will be an interesting new part of the project.

We have neighbors who started this trend last spring. They had a lovely garden with excellent tomatoes growing on a similar lattice, and tons of other veggies. They were his inspiration. Unfortunately, we cannot keep up with the Jones on this, as they have already added two more 4 x 4's this spring.

SFG is a real theory of gardening, complete with a book and website, so if you want to really learn the principles I'd refer you to the expert - Mel Bartholomew at http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

Mitchell has found it to be an easy plan to follow and we got good results last year. We planted the beets too close together and did not thin them properly, so that was a bit of a disappointment, but the mistakes were all ours. We will do them again this fall, 'cause we really like them! The weeds are kept to a minimum by the raised bed, and it's easy to take care of, so works well for us. I'll keep you posted on his progress.

Bullies in the Garden

2009-04-19T14:24:00.003-04:00

Altho much of the weekend was spent working on the patio, there was still plenty else to do. Remember the plants I picked up along the way while I was getting supplies for the patio? - well they all needed to be planted. Most went somewhere in the purple river bed - either as accents or as purple plants, but in clearing space I found myself battling a bully - monarda.

About five years ago Mitchell's boss gave me three small pots of dark purple Monarda. It's a beautiful shade and the bees fight with the hummingbirds to get to the nectar, so it is a garden favorite. I love the smell of it, and the square stems, and the way it fills with bees. I love the color and the way it looks nestled in with the white Shasta Daisies. It's a favorite plant, and like most perennials it moves around a bit and the clump increases in size each year, but that's one of the joys of perennials. I like having extra plants to give away or to try somewhere else in the garden.

Apparently, tho, while I have been thinking of pavers and ponds, the bee balm brigade has tried to take the entire beach head of my garden. In short - it was everywhere! The river of purple was well on its way to being a river of bee balm. I had to dig out every single salvia, and the lilies and day lilies, and the hydrangea. Most of all I had to rescue the chrysanthemums, which were absolutely overgrown. I'm guessing I pulled a mile of monarda roots! It smelled great and I had all sorts of bees for company, but it had to come out. I suspect that I will need to give it some attention for the rest of the summer to keep the chrysanthemums clear.

One of the hard parts of gardening is deciding who's a bully. For five years monarda was a hero, filling in the blank spaces and providing great color and fragrance all summer long, and suddenly I have proclaimed it a menace. The shasta daisies could go that way any time. They spread more slowly, but their clumps are larger every year. The Obedient Plant is the same. It's currently in a place that's shadier than it really likes, so it isn't spreading at full speed, but it could go bully at any time. It's all a matter of context. As my garden changes and my plan matures, I suspect many old friends will have to be reigned in.

About the third year we were here and I had finished digging up the entire width of the backyard, and had a good many plants in place, Mitchell asked what I would do "now that the garden is finished". My reply as something like, "start moving things around". And now that's what it's all about.

I'm even more excited about my purple river now that I am beginning to see it - the salvia all came back and I have added some things this weekend and ordered a few more plants that should arrive soon, so it may be a reality by the middle of June. Then I will look around and see what I want to plan for next year.

Coming later this week: Mitchell's vegetable garden and The Big Project.

Let There Be Patio!

2009-04-19T11:40:00.001-04:00

Creating - ok, building - the sitting place was not nearly as hard as I had feared. I was able to create the solid walkway with a matching paver and then it just grew from there. Because of the curve in the walkway, I had to play a bit with curve, but even that worked out well. I used the six slate squares to create a bit of design on either side of the walkway, which - I hope - draws the eye to the pond, and then filled in the rest as I went.

The hardest part was keeping it level. There is an incline from the front of the bed toward the back that rises about 2.5 inches overall. I decided to make the sitting area higher so that water would run off of it, rather than standing on it, so I had to add soil underneath the pavers nearer the front, but even that worked out ok. Approaching the sitting area from the front, there is a small step up - but it's clearly seen, so should not be a hazard for tripping. I ended up getting some half bricks and burying them under the very front edge of the front step. That gave it the stability it needed and let me get it settled well and level without the front tilting.

Around the pond I planted some sedum to help hold the soil and soften the edges and where the stones created "holes" around the edges I put groundcovers and small plants. I had to pull up a good bit of ground cover - mostly a creaping euonomyous, which will come back and help soften the edges.

The only potential problem child that I see so far is an iris at the front corner of the new space. I am afraid that water coming off the sitting area may stand there and - well, drown it. I will keep an eye on it this spring and try to move any standing water away and then transplant it in July to higher ground just in case. It's a huge pink iris that mother gave me, so I want to take good care of it.

The final step was to take some construction sand to fill the spaces between the pavers. I like the orangy color - which emphasizes the slight "sunray" effect that is caused by the curve of the walkway - and it's more course than play sand. I filled the spaces by hand and then watered it. Should have swept it first because the washing was too hard and moved a lot of the sand around. Once it dried I swept it back into the spaces and it looked fine. Will probably have to add more sand in a few days. We are due to have rain tonight, so that will help settle both the sand and the dirt under it, and I may need to fill a bit more.

Overall it took me 8 - 10 hours of work, and not too hard, plus about $25 in materials. Since I had about half of the stones to begin with, I saved a lot there. Of course, I spent it on other plants for the garden. But now I am ready to all it a patio!

What's new in blooms today?

Spring is coming on so fast, that it will soon be hard to keep up. The first (dark, dark pink) azaleas bloomed Saturday, and the first lavendar bloomed today. The woods hyacinths bloomed Saturday, too.

A word to the novice: This is not the way to set a patio to last forever. To do that one must dig out the space, fill with construction sand, level and then set the stones. I have done it the cheap and easy way and will pay for it over the years with heaving. I will have to relevel some of the stones every year. Since we will only use this patio for sitting and it will not get much foot traffic, I decided it was worth the risk.

Hoop Those Peonies!

2009-04-16T19:46:00.008-04:00

While I was holed up in the house lamenting three days of cold and rain, the peonies grew - and I mean a lot! This afternoon I had to go digging in the garden shed for the hoops to get them supported before it was too late. Don't think I broke any; I was very careful and I even pinched out a few double buds. I've never actually done that before, altho I know you should if you want larger blooms. I've noticed that the side blooms are never as nice anyway and frequently they don't even bloom, so I thought I might as well spend a couple minutes pinching in hopes of a nicer display this spring.

I have a small stand of peonies in the back next to the path. The first one came from my aunt's garden after her death, so it is special. Unfortunately, it's not particularly pretty - a pale, pale pink - nearly white and I would like it better with more color. It means a lot, tho, since it was "family". I bought a variety of small, end-of-the-season sale plants two falls ago and they make up the rest of the bed. Most have not bloomed yet, so it will be interesting to see what I get this year - both in terms of color and time of bloom. I had them scattered all over the garden, but transplanted them all to one bed to maximize their bloom. You can see them in this photo, just beyond the glider.

The only reason that I noticed the peonies today was that I was working on Project #5 - the sitting area. After all the rain, it was sunny and much warmer today, but the ground is so wet that I didn't want to even try to work out there. Instead I made my first real trip to the garden center to look at pavers for the sitting area. "Look at" being synonymous with "buy", I came home with 10 pavers - and a few posies. My plan is to use the large pavers in the path as the starting point of the sitting area. I have some more of those stones, so will try to add one to the path to make a solid stretch of walk and then use the new brick pavers, plus the old brick and slate pavers I already have. Don't really have a plan; will just start laying them and see what happens.

You did want to know what flowers I brought home today, didn't you? First, I picked up a couple of bright pink dianthus to add to some boxes on the deck. The old dianthus are looking pretty ragged and can use the help. Also, two sweet basils for the herb barrel. Then the treasures: a lovely blue columbine - Aquileiga vulgaris 'Clemintine Blue' - that I will use as an accent in the purple river; an interesting Jacob's Ladder - Polemonium yezoense 'Purple Rain Strain' - that has small blossoms and dark (purple) leaves and stems in the colder months that will apparently turn more green as the weather heats up; and a beautiful bright yellow Iceland Poppy 'Champagne Bubbles'. It is much to bright for me - usually - but it will be gorgeous nestled down on the edge of the river with all the blues and purples. I have wanted a poppy for a while, and hope I can make this one live!!

So, I will try to finish the sitting area tomorrow or over the weekend. In the meantime, enjoy your garden, too.

Starting Point

2009-04-14T14:23:00.006-04:00

It's a rainy day and not good for working outside, so instead let me share more information about where we stand right now in the garden. [I'm not happy with the quality of this photo, but you can get the idea. I'll show you closer photos later.] This was taken from the deck so it looks down a bit and gives you a better view of the "plan" of this space.

From left to right there's the shed/workshop with the fish pond and then a path that leads back to the compost pile and the boundary fence. On to the right is a small crabapple tree. Also notice a path that leads to the right and ends up at the semi-circular path - which is actually at the right corner where the "L" attaches. There is also a small path that leads off the back side of the semi-circle to the corner of the lot.

There are several planting areas created by the paths. Beyond the pond and left of the first path is a small area with iris for early color and a Clethera in the corner - it blooms mid to late summer.

Across the back behind the crabapple: a group of peonies - various shades of pink, then a trellis for a lavendar clematis vine, then a clump of Virginia Summersweet, a big clump of four hybiscus (two red, a lavendar, and a white), a Rosa Orientalis mutabilis [which is coming out this weekend], a Harry Lauter's Walking Stick and then a mini-rose in a tall planter.

The right hand corner is slightly raised - see the low wall I built? - and has shrubs around the outside [flowering almonds and a weigelia] and some perennials in front. In front of the low wall are chrysanthemums, iris, echinacea and Happy Returns day lilies.

Inside the semi-circle walk are mini-jonquils and some summer bulbs [It will be interesting to see what comes up this year.] and more Happy Returns. Beyond the semi-circle walk are some smaller shrubs [a Pink Pizzazz and a Shiboni] and alstroemeria - then a natural area of old fashioned chrysanthemums, obedient plant, English bells, and Jacob's Ladder. The latter are too far to the right to show in the photo.

Across the front in front of the main path are many Shastia Daisies and dark pink Monarda, as well as Japanese iris, a repeating hydrangea, a variety of daylilies, salvia and more of the old fashioned chrysanthemums. Also some geraniums, sedum and carnations. This is the area where I try new things and where the purple river will run from uphill on the right [behind the black obolisk and down to the right ending at the low planter near the left had path - pretty much right thru the middle of this photo].

Around the pond are some ground covers - ajuga, verbena, and yarrow with a buddelia next to the shed. In front of the shed are two Otto Lukens and another reblooming hydrangea.

Goals for this space: 1) the purple river; 2) improve the planting around the pond; 3) replace the shrub rose with an evergreen - something pyramidal and 8 - 10 feet tall at maturity; 4) improve the planting in the raised area at the right corner, and 5) create a sitting area between the pond and the crabapple tree.

Welcome to My Garden!

2009-04-13T15:15:00.000-04:00

Gardening in Central Virginia can be a lot of fun. We have nice springs and falls, with fairly moderate winters. The summers can be blazing hot - periodically - but the bigger problem is the humidity which is hard on lots of plants. We are in the southern part of zone 7, but only 100 miles from the Atlantic coast where it's zone 8. If you're lucky and your micro-climate is just right you can grow things that are either "too hot" or "too cool" for our zone. We have clay soil that runs to the acid side, so you have to mulch and amend your soil, but overall it's a pretty good place to garden. So meet my garden.

Nine summers ago I started from scratch. This lot had been vacant, so I began with a blank slate with a newly built house in the middle. I had experience working in my mother's beds, my aunt's garden, and in a very formal rose garden created originally by my father-in-law, but had never been "in charge" of starting from scratch. I knew I didn't like orange flowers and am not all that fond of red or yellow, and had no clue about garden design. I dived in anyway. The first summer we put in a 12 x 12 vegetable garden, but I spent the winter thinking - and thinking big.

In nine years I have expanded the back garden to 70 x 25 with another 25 x 10 L-shaped addition, and have added beds along all four sides of the house - mostly curved because I love curves! And we have three islands in the front yard. We also added a small (1oo gallon) pond two years ago. In the future, I'll show you the rest of the yard, but for now let's concentrate on the big garden in the back - where I actually spend most of my time. The photo above left is a mid-summer picture of the main garden looking from the L to the left toward our garden shed/workshop. You can see a small crabapple tree nearly in the center. The photo below is the opposite view, with my neighbor's crepe myrtle at the right side and a garden shed in the distance. You can see that it is full of plants and lush with growth, but not a strong plan.

Most of my plants are perennials, altho I do add annuals for color, and most are shades of pink, purple and white. [Specifically many Shasta Daisies and dark pink Monarda, with Happy Returns daylilies.] I have learned to love the right shades of yellow especially mixed with the purples, so my colors are becoming more interesting. My goal for this garden is to plant in a river of purple to run from a high point just left of the garden shed in the photo to the right and winding down to the extreme left edge of that photo. Last year I planted some salvias and lavendar (which did not survive) in addition to the Japanese iris and older salvias that were already there, so I have a start. It will end in a puddle of Homestead Purple verbena. This spring I plan to shop for a variety of plants and shades of purple to fill in about thirty linear feet of space and [hopefully] to bloom most of the summer. That's project number 1.

Project number 2 is more ambitious. I'll share it with you next time. Happy gardening!