Tuesday View: The Front Border 5.23.17

May24

So Tuesday is here again and although I just posted the view last week it would be a shame to ignore the irises which have come along since then.

The Tuesday view showing the beginning of iris season. Still lots of green but the iris are peaking!

Bearded iris are a favorite, and the older “historic” types just beg to be planted en masse in this full sun, often dry, and always exposed, location. There’s little I have to do for them other than give them a little attention in June when I remove the spent flower stalks and pull up any borer infested plants I find.

The view from the other end. For now iris ‘ambassadeur’ is center stage, but will soon be swamped by the variegated arundo donax grass which is only just beginning to sprout.

Besides the color these older iris also are also very generous with their lemony and grape fragrances. My favorite is this bitoned iris which was growing in my parent’s garden when they bought their first (and current) house back in the 70’s. After years of wondering, this spring I am officially naming it ‘Folkwang’, a German iris introduced in 1925 by the nursery of Goos & Koenemann.

My newly named iris ‘Folkwang’ plus a lonely little lupine and a few alliums.

To search for a name for years may be a little obsessive, but it’s not like I was at it 24/7. A little looking here, a little looking there until finally I found one which really looked close. To seal the deal I searched high and low for a source, ordered myself a rhizome, planted it out last fall (and a few others of course), and finally this spring got to compare the named one to my own.

I think it’s a match. Iris ‘Folkwang’ on the right and a flower of my unknown to the left.

So maybe naming an unknown iris does border on the obsessive, but in the grand scheme of things it’s nothing when compared to how much time I spent this week planting dahlias and cannas and getting a garden ready for the whole half dozen people who might notice… yet again I digress. It’s iris season, it must be enjoyed.

Iris ‘rhages’ looking a little pale this year. Usually the flowers show much more spotting, but it’s still a beauty.

There are a decent amount of iris around the garden but to be honest I think I could use a few more. In past years I spread iris ‘Rhages’ to the other side of the driveway, and they’re now the more impressive clumps compared to the little batch I have growing next to the mailbox.

Iris ‘rhages’ plus more iris next door in my BIL’s garden. I wonder how he’d feel if I added a few other colors…

I am trying and trying so hard not to give in to the temptations of the newer, bigger, flouncier bearded iris. They’re so much more of everything, but I just don’t find them as carefree and reliable as the older sorts, and in my garden once the pool and lawn chair start calling I need a certain amount of carefree.

An unknown modern iris which a friend forced onto me. I couldn’t just let it die so in an out of the way corner of the garden it flowers and offends only me.

I’m trying to decide which other iris I should add to the front street border. Should I stick with the blue tones or just throw everything out there?

I go back and forth between love and boredom on the mustardy reds of iris ‘Picador’. I’m just not sure if this color will work out front so in the meantime it stays out back near the meadow.

I might have to make an exception for a cousin of my newly named ‘Folkwang’. Iris ‘Vingolf’ is also a product of the breeding program of Goos & Koenemann and was introduced a year earlier in 1924. I’m sure I could fit a clump of these out front.

Iris ‘Vingolf’. A shorter stouter iris, perfect for along the edge of the bed where the foliage will pick up once the flowers fade.

In this dry and sunny bed the foliage of these historic iris usually holds up well and looks decent throughout most of the summer. It reminds me that with all this focus on grass trimming, canna planting, and Tuesday views, I’ve missed another monthly focus on foliage with Christina at Creating My Own Garden of the Hesperides so I’ll try and sneak that mention in as well. Here’s a bed across the lawn from the street border, it’s highlight are a few lusty verbascum ‘Governor Aiken’ seedlings which appeared last year and were just too healthy to pull.

Verbascum and a whole bunch of other things looking Maytime fresh. The ‘Tiger Eye’ sumac suckers look so innocent right now and of course there are more iris, variegated this time.

So there it is, the Tuesday view and a few other things all still posted on the appropriate day… assuming you are visiting from the Atlantic time zone… I suggest you take a look at Words and Herbs and see what others around the world are seeing this week. Maybe it’s iris season there as well and I can’t help but say that’s a good thing.

Tuesday View: The Front Border 5.16.17

May18

The spring bulbs are over. It was up to 92F (33C) today and suddenly the feel of summer is in the air and there’s a new rush on planting and trimming and all the projects which were on the to-do list. I wasn’t going to post this week, but with iris season fast approaching it’s probably better to at least look a little level-headed for another week or so before going completely off the deep end again with the next big flower flood. Right now I think of this as the green phase, and with the lawn freshly cut and the beds not yet overrun with weedlings I think it looks springtime calm.

Not much color. Tulips have faded and been deadheaded but other than that it’s been a no-work week.

I continue to border on sainthood as more and more days go by without any major plant purchases, but make no promises about the next week or two. I do have to confess one moment of weakness though which happened a few weeks ago. It was during pansy season so I don’t think it counts but I am concerned that I would have tried to hide it had I not been busted by a visiting blogger last week. This plant really is an example of giving in to temptation.

Lupine ‘Red Rum’. Perfectly grown, budded, and the tag promised a color which easily breaks through my steeliest resolve. I resisted also buying a purple, but this one was too tempting and even if it does die in another year or less I’m still sure having it here now makes me a better person.

Otherwise nothing else is putting on a show, even though a patch of ‘Gladiator’ alliums looks decent enough.

Allium ‘Gladiator’ and a solitary bee. People are worried about bee populations dropping but I feel like all bugs (other than gnats and mosquitos) are becoming scarcer.

I shouldn’t go on too much in a post about nothing. In an attempt to leave you with a bit of substance, here’s a flashback of last year’s Tuesday view, the tropical border. The bed seems to have picked up a number of perennials and hopefully that’s not a problem now that it’s warm enough for the tropicals to go in again.

With a fresh border of mulch the tropical garden is beginning to get its summer residents. Oranges and yellow zinnias are the first to go in and I guess that means it will be another bright planting 😉

The tropical bed didn’t take nearly as many zinnias as I thought so it looks like we’ll also have a nice orange theme when the extras go into the front street border. I’m not sure how that will work out but as usual I’m not too concerned.

Thanks again to Kathy at Words and Herbs for hosting this weekly view, and please consider giving her blog a visit to see what others are talking about this week. I hear she’s also dealing with the first warm spells of the year and it’s exciting to think summer is just around the corner…

Tuesday View: The Front Border 5.9.17

May11

As usual the Tuesday view has become a Wednesday view and although I’m sure there are a bunch of excuses I could work in, I don’t think anyone is really bothered enough to complain. So lets get right in to it! The view has gone green now that the daffodils have faded but there are still the new tulips showing off towards the middle.

Lush grass and growing perennials. It’s been a decent spring now that the thunderstorms, snow, hail and tornadoes of April have eased off. We didn’t even get a late frost…. yet.

This is the time of year when most of the garden takes a little spring breather, though it’s really more a winding up as the stems and shoots of summer’s flowers expand and grow and get ready to put out the next wave of color. I already overdid the tulips last post so let’s look at a few foliage highlights a’la Christina’s monthly focus on foliage… because you know I’m sure to miss it later in the month when GB Foliage Day comes up!

My second favorite iris, the yellow variegated Iris pallida ‘aureo-variegata’. To do well here this one needs dividing and replanting every three or four years. This one is far past four years and nearly swamped by fennel seedlings and a weedy sedum.

Yellows are my favorite foliage effect and sometimes it takes a lot for me to hold back. In the back of my mind I realize a garden can only hold so many yellow “accents” before it looks like some ’80’s neon flashback but they’re sooooo tempting. This spring I’ve only added two new yellows, a variegated comfrey and a yellow spiderwort, and the restraint this took has me almost at the breaking point. The struggle is real.

Bright yellow with orange tips on the healthier shoots. I think it’s time to spread more of sedum ‘Angelina’ around the edges of the bed, and fortunately it’s as easy as pulling a handful, throwing it into a shallow hole and scraping a little dirt on top.

Here’s a more permanent bit of foliage as well. After two years of growth my newest little conifers from Conifer Kingdom are finally beginning to look like something. They’re destined to be trees but to look at them you’d never guess it. There are still a few more springs before I have to worry about the poorly chosen spots I put them in, but it will come. My kids were never supposed to grow up either and here they are staying after school, taking tests, having drama, and acting all smart when I just wish they’d still need to hold my hand crossing the parking lot.

Picea glauca ‘Pendula’. Still needs a little staking before it commits to growing up and not flopping.

My little blue spruce is a thing which an overly protective parent will be able to hover over for years. Optimistically I’d say it’s nearly tripled in size in the last two years… to be honest it still hasn’t broken the 6 inch barrier so it has a way yet to go. I put it right at the edge for now since an overly lush pansy would probably swamp it at this point.

Picea pungens ‘Walnut Glen’. A blue spruce which stays on the dwarf side and develops (you guessed it) a yellow tint on top of the blue needles.

So I have the twenty year plan down but nothing for this summer. Typical lazy planning, but this spring the annuals from seed and overwintered coleus cutting compulsion just hasn’t kicked in and I’ve got nothing else in the works. Figures this would also be the year there’s a whole new strip of bed to fill and this unfilled bed would be the focus of Cathy’s weekly Tuesday view. Things could get ugly but I have faith. Like manna from heaven I spotted tiny patches of rudbeckia seedlings in one spot and a shimmer of Verbena bonariensis seedlings in another. Purple and yellow are a start and of course I do like my yellows 🙂

Tuesday View: The Street Border 04.11.17

Apr14

Two weeks have passed since the last Tuesday view, so it’s about time we see what the melted snow and furious warm-up have left behind. If I remember correctly this photo was taken in the late afternoon, shortly after our Tuesday high of 86F (30C) had begun to cool off and allow some relief to plants more accustomed to snow flurries and frost.

The early daffodils and hyacinths have sprouted and come into bloom in a matter of days. As recently as three days ago I believe the grass was still brown!

These catapults into warm weather always leave me a little irritated. I’ve got a ton of cleanup to do but the lawn is still a melting-snow-mess of soggy ground and matted leaves. Fortunately the front yard dried out enough for me to get around without making too muddy a mess, and I was able to rob the neighborhood leaf dump for some free leaf mulch to top off the border. The mulch went a long way in covering up all the debris I was too lazy to pick up, and I just managed to get it on in what seemed like the last hours before too many of the spring bulbs had sprouted.

Yellow ‘Tweety Bird’ daffodils with a bunch of hyacinths which need dividing. There’s never enough time to get all these things done.

Besides the daffodils and hyacinths there is also a noticeable increase in the corydalis population. Last summer I managed to find and dig a few dormant bulbs and immediately replanted them along the street. They’re all the pink ‘Beth Evans’ but if I get to it this summer I’ll mix in a few of other spare colors from around the yard… assuming I remember to dig them before they disappear completely in May, they go fast.

I’m aiming for a mix of corydalis, eranthis and snowdrops in this part of the bed. It’s an area which will become a thicket of butterfly bush (buddleia) by August so the bulbs will be able to rest comfortably in the shadows until next spring.

Nothing is ever perfect though, and last spring’s early warmth, late freeze damage, and then relentless cold rain are coming back to haunt the tulips this year. ‘Tulip Fire’ (Botrytis tulipae) is a fungal disease related to the gray molds which thrive in damp, cold weather. It shows as spotted and distorted (or scorched) leaves which will ruin your tulip show. Wise gardeners will dig up and dispose of the infected plants and avoid replanting tulips for about three years and possibly resort to fungicidal sprays, but the less wise gardener might respond differently. He might ignore the problem and hope better tulip weather will bring some relief in future seasons. It’s more of a prayer approach and sometimes this method works out better than you can imagine. Sometimes it doesn’t, and we’ll keep you posted.

The spotting and distorted sprouts of tulip fire infected tulips.

For now though there are plenty of other distractions to keep one from dwelling on the loss of a few tulip blooms. Here’s another view of daffodil ‘Tweety Bird’ and the spreading corydalis. I think it looks very promising.

Early spring color in the front border.

It looks colorful at least, and it’s a welcome relief after all the snow of just a few weeks ago. Let’s hope it lasts for a few days at least.

The Tuesday view is a weekly visit to the same spot each week of the growing season. Cathy of Words and Herbs hosts, and I highly recommend a visit to see what her view looks like and to see what others around the world are enjoying this week. Have a happy Easter!

Tuesday View: The Street Border 3.28.17

Mar29

It’s been two weeks since our big (and I hope final) snow dump and I’m happy to announce most of it has melted away.

The front street border on the verge of spring.

Fortunately other than a few snowdrops and winter aconites, most of the plants were still safely underground when the snow fell. Now if I can just get a nice mulch of chopped leaves down this bed shouldn’t need much attention until May… I hope. One thing which worries me are the large deer tracks and munched tulip sprouts I found Sunday morning. Deer are a new thing here and don’t suspect they’ll move on. Needless to say I’m not excited.

Always a week or two ahead, the bed along the front porch got some attention Sunday afternoon as I removed the last of the snow so I could trim the hellebores of winter damaged leaves and freeze damaged flowers.

It’s that anxious time of year when the gardener is trapped between not being able to do anything and worrying about doing too much too early. I usually opt for doing too much… although it never seems enough 🙂

And so the season begins. This year I’ll try to keep up with this front street view each (or nearly each) Tuesday and join up with Cathy of Words and Herbs as she tracks her own Tuesday views throughout the year. Think about joining in, it’s still a few weeks until the view gets interesting but it’ll be on us before we know it!

Tuesday View: The Street Border

Mar15

It appears this garden and most of the East Coast are still going over one more speedbump on the road to spring. Today we welcomed a little over two feet of snow into the garden, and I suspect it will be a bit before (a) the kids return to school, and (b) I need to fertilize the lawn.

I might be early on this decision but I’m considering this as the 2017 Tuesday view. Under all the snow is the mixed plantings of the street border, a name I came up with all by myself based on the fact it’s a border and it runs along the street 😉

Some might say 2017 has been off to a rough start, and they might be right, but I’m going to try and think about other things such as Cathy’s Tuesday View and consider the border along the street as my entry for this year. Posting every week might be a stretch, but maybe showing this view once every other week will be do-able. We’ll see.

Two feet of March snow is excellent fort building material and the front yard is a battleground of trenches and tunnels… plus buried snowdrops and crocus.

Right now the view doesn’t really matter though. People are still digging out and cars and trucks are being pulled out (as our evening walk down to the main street demonstrated) and we just have to deal with that first. The forecast ahead is cold, but the sun when it comes out will be strong, and hopefully there’s something left to look forward to when all this snow melts… since the snowdrops have already given up on spring.

He Giveth and Taketh Away

Feb27

I guess it was fun while it lasted and I guess you can already see where this is going, but after a balmy stretch of record breaking warmth our week of unusual February weather has come to an end with a bang. It’s bizarre weather for a Pennsylvania winter and almost has me believing those crybaby liberal scientists who keep trying to push the idea of global warming on us. Luckily I ran into CarlB380 on some online political forum and he set me straight by explaining it’s just some normal variations in our global weather cycles. I heard the Chinese are behind it as well, so everyone just needs to relax.

Galanthus ‘Diggory’ sure looks better when you’re not freezing your butt off.

I have to confess that the Chinese may not be entirely to blame. This year I insisted on buying new snowpants for the kids since they were predicting a wetter than usual La Nina winter. Foolishly enough I thought that bonanza would come in the form of snow. Lots of snow means we would finally take advantage of the ski resort just 15 minutes away and all hit the slopes together to shake off rust and learn new skills. That didn’t happen. The only rust shook off was from the rake I used to clean out the front street border… not that the rake had much time to rust-up in our three week winter.

It will take a few more years before those specks of yellow in the center become a sheet of brigh yellow winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis), but it will happen soon enough. You may also notice the bed has crept to the right another few feet…

I admit I’m practically drowning in galanthomania (snowdrop love) these last few days, but in the interest of retaining my last few readers I’ll try and limit myself to just a few. Feel my struggle though. Although last year’s hail, heat, and arctic plunge devastated the season, it appears they loved the damp and drawn out spring which followed all that mess. This year they are coming up bigger than ever, with double stalks where I’ve never seen double stalks, and bulbs which have quadrupled in number… all that and a 70F (21C) sun soaked afternoon to sit on the lawn and admire them. Wow.

Last year’s plunge into frigid cold and winds withered the blooms and foliage on this bunch of ‘Magnet’. This spring it’s bigger than ever!

New favorites have settled in as well, and it’s nice to see what a few years can do to the lonely and sometimes lost single flowers of new snowdrop plantings. Here are two newer favorites, Galanthus ‘Kildare’ and ‘Erway’.

‘Kildare’ is a nice green tipped snowdrop out of Ireland while ‘Erway’ to the right has an interesting olive colored, oddly helmet-shaped ovary on top.

Now for the bad news though. A strong cold front had been working its way across the continent and by mid Saturday afternoon reached this end of Pennsylvania. During the first wave, golfball sized hail rained down out of the sky and a tornado spawned just two miles up the road.

In what might not have been one of my smarter moves I ran out to the street to bring the car up into the garage… too late to save it from a few dents in the hood, but fortunately my head avoided the same fate.

We were safe from the tornado, and although huge, the hailstones were short lived and only a few came down per square foot. Impressive enough on its own, but then the second wave hit. Strong winds, pea and marble sized hail, drenching downpour, and the frightening sound of hail smashing the roof and windows. Oh yeah, thunder and lightning as well, and in a few minutes the garden went from an early blossom of spring to a freakish mid summer smack-down.

Galanthus ‘viridapice’ with a few winter aconite and hardy Cyclamen coum… before and after.

All the early snowdrops are history and I’m crossing my fingers for the few late ones which were still trying to catch up with the weather. Easy come easy go I guess.

Goodbye ‘Bill Bishop’ and ‘Primrose Warburg’. See you in another 12 months.

Btw I’m a little impressed with myself over the merged photos. I’m sure this is old news for anyone even marginally computer literate, but just in case you’re interested it was done here> IMGonline

To wrap up my new-found computer savviness I’m throwing in a few videos as well. Here’s the second part of the storm as it really hit its stride.

…and a little later as the storm winds up. My tech skills only go so far, so unfortunately it’s been filmed in the narrow ‘portrait’ orientation, but hopefully this doesn’t kill my chances of breaking the record 23 views which my last video racked up.

We will see where this winter takes us next. I’m hoping it’s to spring but wherever it goes the ride is always an exciting one and always one which reminds me how grateful I am that I don’t rely on the weather for my livelihood. -and please don’t feel bad for the lost flowers, I’m sure they’ll be back stronger than ever next spring and after soaking them up completely for the last few days I think I’ll be fine until the next page of spring unfolds!

Agriculture in Suburbia

Oct1

This post was mostly finished last weekend but for some reason I never got around to publishing. I wish I had a good excuse, but it might have just been one of those Sunday evening get ready for the workweek make lunches and clean the kids off from the weekend kind of things. In any case here it is and to be honest I have little idea what I was talking about back then with all the design comments and self reflection. Sometimes I really wonder where this stuff comes from, but regardless the pictures have me thinking of last June when the garden looked ready to die so let me just start off with a photo from then 🙂

The beauty of the garden in June. Roadside daisies and dead grass. Fortunately the rains came back in August, but not until all July passed and I reached the “wordless Wednesday: I hate gardening” stage.

It’s always nice to hear compliments about your garden, and I am one who by reflex nearly always shrugs them off or dismisses them. I’m sure there’s some childhood trauma involved which has long been forgotten, but it’s my way and it’s a rare day when I can just accept with a thank you. Now I’m not saying I get a lot of compliments, but I do get a comment every now and then about a nice design touch or a combination which actually worked out. Those are the compliments I always downplay since I rarely (unless I’m doing it subconsciously) put a whole lot of thought into what goes where. With few exceptions my design process revolves around having a new favorite plant in hand and then desperately needing a spot in which to cram it. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.

The front border in mid September. If I had to put a name to this year’s design theory it might be something like ‘neglected agricultural’.

The front border along the street may not look brilliant, but it does look colorful, and with five months of winter breathing down my neck colorful is perfect. Colorful and agricultural I suppose, since this years feature plant seems to be ‘Hot Biscuits’ amaranthus and in my opinion it either looks sort of farmyard weedy or like a particularly bright sorghum crop. Ornamental or not I just can’t look away. It’s big and bright and grainy and between it and the wheat-like feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) and the sugarcane-like giant reed (Arundo Donax) I feel like it’s almost harvest time out there.

The view from the street side. The purple perovskia has seeded around a bit and put out a few runners, the purple coneflowers as well, but I’ve done essentially nothing here since March and I kind of like that.

I owe this year’s crop of ‘Hot Biscuits’ to my friend Paula who surprised me one afternoon with a packet of seeds in the mailbox. I had grown it before and ended up losing it, but fortunately she had a few seeds to spare and sent them my way. That was last year, and I efficiently killed all the seedlings which sprouted, but this year was a different story and I ended up with a few clumps of healthy seedlings.

Just the first of many amaranthus close-ups which will pepper this post. No one could plan this combo since I’m sure it violates numerous design principles, but I just love it.

The amaranthus shows up here and there all along the border, which is probably a good thing since even the simplest design theorist will tell you it repeats and unifies a theme. Repetition is important since this bed frequently suffers from “I always start from the driveway end and use up all the best plants there” syndrome. The far end of the bed gets less weeding, less watering, less tending… it basically gets less of everything, so carrying the amaranthus theme all the way through helps hide the sparseness of the neglected end.

Here in the preferred end of the bed are well tended seedlings of Benary’s Giant wine zinnias and the pink gomphrena ‘fireworks’. These were the seedlings I was most excited about this year, so in they went first 🙂

I did have a few too many zinnias this spring so was pretty generous about placing them in the border, but when the Brenary’s Giant scarlet began to open next to the pink gomphrena I immediately cringed. For about a week I thought it looked awful but now I quite like it. It reminded me of the first time I saw pictures of some of the late Christopher Lloyd’s magenta and pink plantings at Great Dixter. They also bothered me at first and I think my first thought was “grow up Chris and plant some lavender and white and pink instead of that mess”… but look at me now.

Scarlet zinnia with ‘fireworks’ gomphrena. Am I suffering from retinal fatigue or does it actually look nice together?

Maybe the green lawn and the parchment color of the feather reed grass tames it a bit but between this and the orange of the amaranthus I’m just plain pleased.

A very technicolor look with the yellow of the ‘Tiger Eyes’ sumac across the lawn.

Here’s another amaranthus photo-bomb.

Looking down towards the ‘less interesting’ end of the border.

Ok. One last amaranthus photo.

From the neglected, far end of the border, more amaranthus 🙂

You may have noticed a bright golden patch of marigolds in the border. The fall smack dab in the middle of my newfound love for the most offensively bright colors and I’m not sure I can resist planting a whole border of them next year. I had to smuggle these seeds out of my stingy older brother’s garden last year and was lucky that a few sprouted and survived July’s dry spell. He’s been letting them reseed for a couple years now and they still come up in a good range of colors on relatively short and large flowered plants.

A few marigolds putting on a nice end of summer show. More might be nicer, and by more I mean a whole border.

What to plant them with? I think they’ll go at the far end of the border, alongside the bright gold of a juniper, but other than that I have no plans. Should I back them up with some darker foliage plants?

Korean feather grass (Calamagrostis brachytricha) in front and pennisetum ‘Karley Rose’ towards the back. With the ‘Limelight’ hydrangea it all looks very calm and refined, but I think a nice border of marigolds will give it a good jolt of color!

We will see what happens. There’s a good chance it will all come down to whatever seeds sprout the best next spring, but in the meantime it’s nice to dream about having a more plan-comes-together kind of garden. That is until the snowdrops bloom. Once that happens my brain goes to mush and I’m lucky if I get anything planted 😉

A quick August walkabout

Aug14

Although the air practically drips humidity and the the nights are muggy it’s still nothing compared to summers South of the Mason Dixon line. Plus it’s only been a few days, and it’s actually rained regularly for three weeks now and I do love a nice summer thunderstorm so I’m fine with all of it. What a relief from the relentless dry which haunted me all of June and July (and still haunts much of the East Coast) and what a change the gardens have gone through as they try to get all the growing in which didn’t happen during the first half of summer.

I think I show this view every summer as the ‘Limelight’ hydrangea comes into bloom along the street. It’s an awesome plant.

Here’s a quick tour of the good and bad which summer has brought to the rest of the garden… and by ‘rest’ I mean the part which I practically gave up on when the rains stopped.

Ok so I did give this bush some water when it began to wilt and yellow. How could I risk missing these blooms!

Along the street the plants are on their own and most handle drought with style.

‘Karley Rose’ fountain grass, ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass and perovskia. The purple coneflowers didn’t make it this year and their blooms just dried up and wilted without extra watering.

The grasses really are reliable, but without a doubt ‘Karl Foerster’ is my favorite. I think I’ve gone on about it enough in the past but please excuse just one more picture.

Sunflowers have a knack for putting themselves in just the right spot. If I could do a mass planting of this combo with sunflowers, perovskia and Karl I would do it without a second thought.

A few of the annuals planted in June have responded to the rain and are now looking like they want to live after all.

Not sure if my color choices are really on point with the annuals this year, but a zinnia looks great anywhere.

A three year old ‘Dixieland’ miscanthus has finally put its roots down and taken off. Me and variegation are always friends so obviously there was a good chance the two of us would hit it off… and we have 🙂

sedum brilliant and dixieland miscanthus

‘Dixieland’ is a dwarf miscanthus which generally goes against my love of giant plants, but for this one I’ll be glad to avoid the floppiness of its variegated big brother, and for the mailman’s sake this size is far less intimidating.

Things start to go downhill as you look to the house.

Someday I’ll grow up and realize ‘Tiger Eyes’ staghorn sumac is too aggressive a spreader for smaller planting areas and too informal a look for foundation plantings, but that realization may still be decades off.

Once you walk past the tropical bed and head out back it becomes project after project.

Weeds are once again exploding in the bed-which-I-can’t-decide-what-to-do-with. Iris bed fell through, veggie bed fell through, dahlia bed fell through… and still it sits.

At least when it was dry the crabgrass wasn’t a problem.

Most of the iris and daffodils have been dug but just enough remain that I can’t really move on with this bed either. Plus without a lawn worth mowing I don’t have any mulch to smother the crabgrass with and its spontaneous regeneration will make for a horrible mess in another week. But on the bright side I do see the rabbits here all the time nibbling.

The return of rain has brought a sort of second spring to some parts of the garden.

Magnolia ‘Ann’ was yellowing, wilted and dropping leaves and must have been headed towards dormancy, but the rains brought on a flush of excitement in the form of summer blooms.

Even though all the fancier phlox in full sun fried, the phlox ‘weeds’ which I allowed to selfseed in this bed were saved by the shadow of the house. There’s nothing which I like about this bed although my wife “loves!” the grassy clump of Panicum ‘cloud nine’ in the center. I’ve tried mowing everything down and creating a dull bed o’mulch but the minute I turn my head it’s all back.

Blech. Golden yellow with washed out pink in front of the orangey brick of the house. Someone has plans to add a master bedroom to this end of the house and although someone else firmly disagrees, that opinion is usually crushed over time just like anything else which could be planted in the meantime.

To give a final dose of reality to this mess of a post here’s a photo of the roughly graded fill which has been dumped next door and which has also been added to my project list. It sounded like a good idea when my neighbor offered to just keep going with his own fill project, but now I’m faced with digging and raking and seeding. The plan is for a new meadow garden but it sure is an inviting bit of real estate there behind the MIL’s house. Sunflowers would do well there I’m sure, but for now I feel like I’m in a prison chain gang as I break up the fill with a pick so I can shovel it over into the low spots.

My yard used to go across all at nearly the same level, but now the grade has been raised several feet. I wonder how much I could raise my own yard… hmmm.

So I guess if there’s any point to this post it’s that my garden looks much nicer in a cropped closeup rather than the big picture, and that your own garden is probably much nicer than you give it credit for. Don’t feel bad for me though, I’m quite happy in my interesting mess and I (sometimes) do enjoy the journey more than the finished product. Plus we’re off for a few days next week camping so that’s always fun 🙂

Have a great week!

The front border among other things

Jun29

It stopped raining long enough this afternoon for me to get out there and do some watering. The deluge of nearly 1/10 of an inch did little more than dampen the top layer of mulch and cancel a Little League game, but it was enough to cool things down at least. Maybe it also gave the pestering hordes of gnats a nice drink as well, God only knows they must be getting tired of sipping my blood and sweat all month. Here’s how the lawn out front looked yesterday morning.

Needless to say I don’t bother watering the lawn. I feel like watering the lawn is a gateway drug to bagging clippings, spraying for weeds, thatching, aerating, spraying for grubs… all those tedious chores which would ruin this vacation from mowing. On the down side it looks like crap until the rains come back.

I hope my crabbiness about the weather doesn’t come on too thick. Weatherwise I feel like I’m riding one of those shoddy, barely-passed-inspection carnival rides where you get thrown back and forth between burning and freezing, drought and flood, and all you want is Dramamine and a Tylenol when it comes to a stop. Maybe today’s misting and this week’s milder temperatures will improve my outlook. I think it will, especially when there are flowers toughing it out and cheering me up.

A new one this year is Linaria purpurea (toadflax), a hopefully hardy and long blooming airy perennial which was seeded out last year. The seed was supposed to be for ‘Canon Went’, a pink version, but only one or two stalks came true. No big deal as I like it just fine in the regular lilac-blue color.

I’ve done next to nothing on the front border since mulching it with shredded leaves in March… and weeding and deadheading once in May. That’s great because it still looks decent enough, but not so great since I like to add a few patches of hard working annuals and tropicals in there to brighten up the summer months. This pattern of neglect isn’t way out of the ordinary though, so even if it’s getting late for annuals I’m 99% sure that if I finally get it planted there will still be a decent show… but I’m not doing the same for the foundation bed. It’s so dry the majority of the perennials are wilted and dying and I have no desire to even look at it long enough to even consider carving out a few watered spots for annuals. The blue fescue border was de-seeded last weekend and in general it looks good enough, so I’ll leave it at that.

I pulled off all the fescue seed heads and the foundation planting will just have to stay like this for the summer… although I may have to airlift out a few hellebores. They look terrible all flat and yellowing and it may be time to find them a spot in the backyard with a little shade.

It’s curious to me how some years an odd balance tips and suddenly your most reliable standards vanish. This year the front border is missing the hordes of rudbeckia which dominated last summer and in their place is a nice wash of rose campion (Lychnis coronaria). Many people look down on this old fashioned, reseeding, short-lived perennial, but I love it for its tolerance of droughty soils, its soft gray foliage, and its cheerfully bright flowers. It’s a perfect compliment to the nearly-a-weed white of the oxeye daisies.

The front border from the near end. This perspective is perfect for avoiding all the gaps and holes which become apparent when the border is admired head on 🙂

My absolute favorite right now isn’t even a flower though, its the dried round seedheads of allium ‘Pinball Wizard’. Big fluffy spheres which seem to float above the border are just perfect this year and I’m planning on lifting the bulbs this week to spread them out a bit (the original single bulb has split into four now and I don’t want it to have any overcrowding issues.

Rose campion, oxeye daisies, and another view of my lovely allium seed heads. Might as well enjoy the dried stalks since everything else seems to be on its way to drying up completely as well.

Once you move towards the far end of the border things go downhill fast. Everything in this border gets done from the near end to the far, and unless I’m making a strong effort to be fair, all the good plants, best mulch, nicest compost, most delicate pampering…. all that happens at the one end and rarely carries all the way through to the other side. I’m pretty sure that the most obvious solution to this problem is to make the border wider again. More room, more plants, more excitement… the natural choice when faced with a border which might already be a little too much work 🙂

If I can get a shovel down into the rock hard lawn I could easily bring this border out another foot or two without interfering with third base (which is usually located right next to the chartreuse leaves of the ‘Golden Sunshine’ willow). I’ll just need to plant something which can handle a few missed kickballs and base overruns.

Digging will have to wait until August at earliest. Who knows what there will be left to plant in August, but we’re approaching phlox season and no bed digging is worth the risk of interfering with flowering phlox enjoyment. Just today one of my new ones opened and it is so amazing I’m sure you’ll see it here shortly. Wow is all I can say, and to be honest I haven’t been this completely excited about a new flower since at least last week.

The potager in June with its freshly mulched beds, newly concrete-reinforced rebar archway, and the first bright reds and pinks of tall garden phlox (Phlox paniculata). There are even a few vegetables planted (although the boxwood still needs trimming).

With all the work I’ve done recently in weeding and trimming you might be able to tell I’m now trying to catch up on the blogging. Well, blogging and watering of course… but please bear with me as sore muscles recover indoors and I throw out a bunch of posts in what might be too little time, and please feel free to skip commenting or even ‘liking’ since I’d hate to wear out my welcome!

Enjoy your week and I’ll be back Thursday to join up with Kimberley at Cosmos and Cleome for her Thursday Feature. Maybe I’ll even feature the new phlox, although saying that pretty much guarantees a woodchuck or deer attack tonight…

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: front border