Refueled and ready to go

Oct8

I got a good dose of the tropics last Saturday. The Mid Atlantic group of the Hardy Plant Society organized a tour of the Michael Bowell garden down near Philadelphia. Michael is the owner of Create-a-Scene, a florist/indoor-outdoor landscaping/container planting/nursery owning/seasonal decorating service which is well known around the country, and in addition to the business Michael is both a long-time Philadelphia Flower Show fixture and an in-demand speaker on all sorts of plant topics. My intro may be somewhat lacking and vague but hopefully the garden pictures tell a better story.

Not your average porch plantings, this one comes with a ton of tropicals, fancy pottery, and random art. The hanging baskets are filled with what I think are those odd tropical pitchers (nepanthes) which end each leaf with a bug-unfriendly pitcher trap.

The focus of the visit was Michael’s extensive (addictive maybe?) collection of tropical plants which are arranged throughout the gardens. All of them out for the summer and then in for the winter, and even with Michael’s four greenhouses the task seems overwhelming. Plus on top of that it’s not just a handful of coleus and a potted mandevilla, it’s all kinds of species and families and rare cultivars….

The sheltered side garden of Michael Bowell’s garden. Art, ponds, fountains, arbors, pergolas, and plants… lots of plants. I think most of this garden around the house is mobile and the plants will soon be trimmed and the pots moved back under shelter.

This autumn garden visit by the HPS seems to be an annual tradition and is the setting for an informal cutting swap of whatever members bring along. The icing on the cake however was Michael’s generosity with his own cuttings. As long as care was taken, members were allowed to take cuttings of any particularly irresistible plants they came across along the way. I tried to show restraint but then as soon as the formal tour ended I had to run around one last time to snip a few begonia, geranium, and coleus cuttings. I’ll let you know how I make out 🙂

I felt like it was a garden that almost required entertaining. Seating areas and enclosed spaces really defined the different parts of the garden.

For as interesting as I found the garden, it took me a few minutes to work through my anger issues before I could really enjoy the garden visit. I was a little irritated with that the powers that be for sending rain showers on the one morning I wanted to do an outdoor tour. Nearly three months without any serious rain and there we were driving an hour and a half through steady rainfall and then later dodging puddles and soggy lawn. Luckily we only dealt with one brief shower during the tour and then clear skies thereafter (of course my own garden received nothing more than a light drizzle all day).

I think I should finally get myself a lacebark pine (pinus bungeana). My garden is short on evergreens and I love this bark. It’s a clumsy looking tree though and might need quite a bit of pruning and training….

My pictures really don’t do the garden justice and the recent downpour had plenty of autumn leaves falling down on everything, but I hope you can get a good impression of the plants and plantings. My impression of it all has inspired me to evict the sunflowers and bring the tropical garden back to its full gaudy lushness next year!

I resisted taking any flowering maple (abutilon) cuttings since I have no faith in my ability to overwinter them…. but this tall, red veined flower was delicious and when it showed up in front of a purple ornamental grass I knew I’d need something similar next year!

The tour doesn’t end with the garden, Michael is also an expert on orchids and has a couple greenhouses set up to entertain this passion. Oh and did I mention the two story high greenhouse which abuts the house?

How cool is an outdoor deck enclosed by the greenhouse? A dinner out on the deck in January amongst the tree ferns and palms sounds like a good antidote to snow.

The garden is a treasure chest of ideas and creativity. To me it seems like someone came up with an idea and then ran with it, whether that meant carving out a new garden, training a new plant, or scaling a 60 foot tree to hang a little sculpture. Most of the sculpture is metal and neon art by Simple and it’s hung throughout the gardens. I bet it gives off an awesome atmosphere at night when all lit up.

I think this is my first garden tour where an invite was extended to go out through a window onto the roof (future enclosed sunporch) in order to get a nice overview of the gardens. An in-training weeping katsura (Cercidiphyllum) dominates and encloses the far end of the garden.

Oh and dogs, fish, parrots, and poultry also share the garden. What better construction to place at the end of the vegetable garden than a poultry house?

A real beauty or plain ugly? Regardless of your opinion I’m sure this display would melt the heart of any turkey hen.

The majority of my photos were out of focus, overexposed poo-poo, so I’ve got nothing on the vegetable and fruit gardens, but let me slip in one last picture which shows some of the main tropical beds. These included several areas of full and lush plantings, stuffed with all sorts of exotic goodies… I thought they were perfect 🙂

I need to give my own variegated miscanthus more room next year to develop, and definitely put it close to some dark leaved cannas and elephant ears. Cool.

All this tropical inspiration gives me plenty of ideas for next year. I think it’s time again to pack a bed full of completely unreasonable, inappropriate, overblown leaves and flowers. I’ll ignore the amount of work it takes until it’s too late and see what happens.

These are the dreams which will keep me going until we finally get some nice rains and good planting weather. I’m sick of this dry, dusty crust that passes for soil and it’s a shame to be thinking next summer when I should be excited about tulip planting and perennial dividing. I’m sure it will come soon enough though!

The beat goes on

Sep28

From seven in the morning to about four in the afternoon all we hear is the thump thump thump of bulldozers…. six days a week. Oh, and the dust too.

I have to admit I find the earthmoving, rock crushing, and site grading to be fascinating. I think it’s me who actually comes closest to being a kid in this family… and then my daughter throws a fit to prove me wrong 🙂

Of course things could be worse, but the steady beat of the steel bulldozer treads has been relentless all summer and I hope it’s finished soon. Also I hope it’s not replaced by something more annoying!

The above picture is of the dried up vegetable beds with construction in the back, and as you might be able to see I’ve given up on the garden and it’s slowly dying without water. Earlier in the week when it was cooler I was inspired and planted out a small bed of lettuce transplants, dutifully watering them in, but today as the temperatures climbed to 87F (30C) with bone dry soil, I’ve given up in disgust.

When all else fails I take a look at my cyclamen hederifolium seedlings. How can you stay grumpy with leaves like this sprouting up?

The fall rains will come some day and I’ll complain about the damp I’m sure, but right now I could go for a nice soaking. I want the rain so I can get transplanting, there’s just no joy in it when the soil is so dry you need a pickaxe. Fortunately I at least got the compost pile turned, and although it’s also a dry fungal mess there was some good stuff at the bottom. In another week or two my new bulbs will appreciate that!

I’m pretty sure there’s fiber in icecream

Sep7

Many people wax poetic on the joys of homegrown produce. The flavor, the nutrients, the connection with the earth…. all good things and all good for you (and deep down inside I agree) but on the shallow outside I’d still rather reach for a donut or chocolate bar rather than a carrot stick. Vegetables just don’t make my heart go pitter pat.

Because of that the vegetable garden always walks a fine line between productivity and extinction. I love the look of vegetables bursting from the soil, but the newly dug beds and open ground are just too tempting to keep free of flowers. At this time of year it’s more of a flower harvest.

Oddly enough a sunflower has come up in exactly the same spot as one grew last year. It’s the perfect spot actually, and I’m glad to have it!

The season starts innocently enough, and with a strong will I turn under all the persicaria and daisies and whatever else tries to sneak in. I need room for delicious lettuce seedlings and broccoli transplants and the flowers just throw off my industrially neat rows. Things go downhill from there.

Dahlias always seem to grow best in a vegetable plot and when you’ve got one or two extra roots it seems perfectly logical to sneak them in between the chard. This is dahlia “Tanjoh” which I barely noticed last year as it suffered under the shade of a wayward sunflower.

Harvest time is always a problem. If the broccoli is ready it needs to be picked, and there are only so many broccoli-cheese omelets you can reasonably fit into a weekend. Things go to seed and I’m strangely amused to see weeds such as lettuce, pumpkins, and chard popping up the next year.

When you lose control the broccoli turns into a froth of yellow blooms and green rattail seedpods. Several of these plants were self-sown seedlings which just showed up from last year’s patch.

One of the sore points this summer was how often the sweet corn needed watering in our pancake-thin topsoil. It seemed like every other day I’d look out there and see dry curled leaves begging for a little moisture. Shockingly enough even after giving up in disgust the patch managed to produce a few deliciously sweet and flavorful ears.

A space, water and fertilizer hog, freshly picked sweet corn is still worth the trouble (I guess). But it’s a tough argument when the supermarket has 6 perfect ears for $2.50 and mine probably cost me that much just for the seeds!

Another producer was a trellis of pole beans (which called it a year after being blown over in August). Beans are nice on a trellis, but the kids appreciate “love in a Puffs” much more than bean salad.

The pale green balloons of love in a puff (Cardiospermum halicacabum) with the ferny green leaves and red flowers of cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit). Both conveniently reseeded here at the base of the trellis from last year, something to keep in mind if you don’t like volunteer plants.

The kids share the love by picking the puffs and having a puff-fight but the real reason behind the name is found inside the puff on each of the vine’s black seeds.

A white heart forms on each seed, a kind of ‘belly button’ from where the seed was attached to the plant. Glad my hands were clean for this one 🙂

There is plenty of ‘real’ harvest that comes from the patch. Tomatoes never fail, even the fussier heirlooms, and here is a huge cluster of “Kellogg’s Breakfast”. In a rare second appearance in a single blog post (I hate having myself show up in any pictures), I left my hand in there to show just how big the fruits are. 2 lbs, 14 oz for the pair in case you’re interested.

Kellogg’s Breakfast tomato

When I finished planting the tomatoes I couldn’t resist adding a border of “Moldavian” marigolds (from Nan at Hayefield) and a few stray salvia and leftover zinnia seedlings. Might as well since the other side of the bed is edged in hellebore seedlings.

A vegetable garden is the perfect place for bunches of annuals that might not find a place in the rest of the garden. The brownish orange of these “Moldova” marigolds might be hard to fit in somewhere else.

And did I mention I like phlox? When you’re faced with a few new ones to plant and you’ve given absolutely no forethought to where they’ll go the vegetable garden makes everything better again.

Just coming into bloom now, phlox “Kirmeslander” seems almost too summery a color for the autumn-golds and yellows which are starting to appear.

With the season winding down one would think the vegetable patch would be safe, but fall is actually the most dangerous time of year for vegetable space. After you pull up a dead, mildewed patch of zucchini the vacant spot almost begs for a few tulips or daffodils which you can’t find a space for elsewhere. No worries though, I’m sure they’ll die down before I need the room for peppers!

Oh and I think the colchicums look nice blooming between the sweet corn stalks 🙂

Garden Bloggers Foliage Day -Aug.2014

Aug22

For nearly three years Christina of Creating my own garden of the Hesperides has been hosting the meme which focuses on foliage in the garden. I believe her intention was to explore the important role which foliage plays in the garden, and remind everyone that although flowers often steal the stage, foliage remains to carry the show. Going out this week with the intention of focusing on foliage surprised me in two ways. First of all I always assumed I was one of those “immature” gardeners who always falls for the flash of flowers and doesn’t have much foliage interest. That was wrong…. apparently nearly all flowers come with some kind of foliage (who knew!) and even the most flower blinded gardener will have foliage. Secondly I learned another important revelation…. my garden looks much, much better in close-ups!

Powis castle Artemisia, snow on the mountain, nicotina, and Echinacea

I’ve grown Artemisia “Powis Castle” before, but never here in Pennsylvania. It was planted this spring and I love the gray foliage mixed with all the other stuff that seeded in with the compost. (fennel, nicotina, Echinacea, snow on the mountain)

Starting with A and Artemisia is as good place as any, and while we’re here I guess we’ll just keep going along the front street border. Soil improvement this spring and moving things around brought in plenty of seed-laced compost, and “Hopi Red Dye” amaranthus is easy to spot with its dark red leaves.

Amaranthus “Hopi Red Dye”, as easy to grow as its more weedy relatives.

I like purple leaves, but I don’t think I can resist a plant with yellow foliage, and this “Golden Sunshine” willow was an impulse buy last year. Rabbits mowed it down last winter but willows don’t sulk and this one bounced right back. Actually I think cutting this one back to the ground each spring would probably be the best way to keep the bright new foliage coming.

Salix “Golden Sunshine”… or at least I think that’s what this willow goes by. I really need to have a better recording system for my plant IDs.

If pushed I might even admit to having too much yellow foliage around the yard.

arundo donax variegata in perennial border

Arundo donax “variegata” in the front perennial border. An explosion of color with “Black Knight” buddleia, pink agastache, and yellow fennel blossoms. Btw, the arundo is probably 8 feet tall and the butterfly bush 6. Also it’s unusual for the grass to have this much color so late in the summer. Usually the heat makes it go all green.

Here’s a little blue in the blue spruce I moved last spring…. and more yellow.

Have I ever mentioned my love for the foliage of “Tiger Eyes” sumac? It suckers around a bit, but in my mess of a garden that’s no big deal. I haven’t yet decided if this is a formal enough planting for the front of the house though.

A foliage post without mentioning a cyclamen is just crazy, so here’s my little c. purpurascens plant (probably two or three plants since I see at least two leaf forms).

Good things come in little packages, this cyclamen purpurascens is a baby at only maybe 5 inches across but it might be my favorite cyclamen right now…. I’m sure that will change as others appear 🙂

I took a lot of pictures so this may be all over the place, but I’ll try to finish up the front yard first. Sometimes people think of hosta when they hear the word foliage, and I’ve seen them in a few gardens here and there (just a few!). Here’s “August Moon” a favorite old variety which lightens to nearly white when in full sun.

Hosta “August Moon” in one of my few shady areas.

Moving into the back near the (another yellow) sunflowers is the new heuchera patch. Someday you’ll suffer through an all out heuchera post, but until they grow in a bit I’ll let you off with just one.

One of several new heuchera plants, heuchera “Circus Clown” is off to a good start with a nice mulch and some much needed rain. It’s amazing how the colors on these plants change throughout the year.

The reason the heuchera can survive here is from the shade of a Seven Sons shrub/tree (heptacodium miconioides). My plant gets cankers and loses trunks every now and then but I hope it someday gets past that. Right now I’m enjoying the rich green of the curled stiff leaves. Kind of a coarse look, but for a guy with so many cannas and dahlias refinement isn’t one of my strong points.

Heptacodium miconioides leaves against a perfectly clear blue sky.

Enough with the babbling. Look but don’t touch.

Ptilostemon diacantha with verbena bonariensis blossoms. Of course this is where all the missed baseballs end up rolling.

Almost good enough to eat, plants in the vegetable garden (or potager when I’m feeling fancy) also can put on a good show.

Red cabbage and fig leaves, the fig would be happier in Christina’s Mediterranean garden but it hangs on here and the perfectly cut leaves make up for not getting any actual figs 🙂

Not all the foliage news is good. Miscanthus giganteus was off to a good start but our dry spell threw it for a loop and killed off all the lower leaves.

Miscanthus giganteus wants the steady moisture which I’m too frugal to supply. It might be easier to get something else for this spot.

Back by the house is a panicum “Cloud Nine” which is much more comfortable with drought. I hate this bed and constantly neglect it, but nature did its own thing and filled the gaps with rudbeckia, phlox, and patrina scabiosifolia seedlings. Sure beats the boring mulch I had there before.

The stepchild bed with Patrina, panicum, rudbeckia, and phlox.

So much for anything that even approaches subtlety. My tropicals come next, and first off are the geraniums (pelargoniums) which in my delusion and denial I have added to the overwinter and collect list.

I have to dig up the name for this one, it’s in its second or third year with me and keeps looking better.

A scented leaved geranium (pelargonium actually) with cut leaves, variegation and scent. Too much or something for everyone?

This scented geranium is another plant who’s ID is lost in the pot-full-o-tags database. I should probably work on that.

Another one to overwinter in the garage, my first aeonium is looking well. Hopefully it can handle the high-water location I planted it in -a pot with a variegated hebe and cape fuschia (phygelia).

This one’s label must still be near the top of the tag bucket since it’s a new purchase. A good gardener would go out there, find it and label it…. but all I’ve got for you is it’s not “Schwarzkopf”.

Now to wrap things up (so I can finally get to work on the stupid basement tiling job I started) here are my foliage stars.

Canna “Tropicana” might be the most obscene show of gaudy color in my garden. I love it with the dahlias and rudbeckia. Good thing there’s some green nearby to calm things down.

Morning light on the sunflower patch.

My ‘Polish cannas’ were a gift which traces it’s history back to a friend’s old Polish neighbor. It’s probably really canna indica “purpurea” or “Russian red”.

And same cannas at noon. A sculptural plant I think.

The small blooms aren’t much for a flower lover, but they have a graceful look and the hummingbirds appreciate them.

So that’s my foliage, thanks for sticking it out. I did manage to keep all the coleus out (but of course there’s still all of September for that) and I hope that gave a little relief, but I was really surprised by how much color and interest I get from foliage. Maybe I am growing up and my tastes are maturing…. but I hope not. I like my messes of color too much!

Thanks Christina for hosting and thanks for opening my eyes to all that foliage does in the garden.

And the clouds opened

Aug17

For some reason my little valley has been missing all the rains again, and up until last week it’s just been dry, dry, dry…. until Tuesday. The cold front came through and we enjoyed two days of on and off rain, and the garden just soaked it all up. It reminded me of one of those nature specials out of the Serengeti.

You can’t even weed this rock hard “topsoil”. My new heucheras are toughing it out, but this bed sure won’t make it onto a postcard any time soon!

The grass dried up, the trees started dropping leaves, the waterhole pulled in all the wildlife, and animals were on the move. Anything not within hose range shriveled up, but at least the temperatures were low. Last year we had a hot baking which killed off the weak, this year I think everyone should recover.

Asclepias tuberosa is a tough one. I planted these seedlings out last summer and after a few weeks they shriveled up and died due to neglect. Spring resurrected them and they are now trying so hard…. but they’re not cacti!

It looks horrible though. The front yard had two sprinkler days and just looks dry, the back looks dead! Here’s the director of cinematography following me around getting the shots that I missed.

I would call this dormant. The weeds even gave up.

But just like in the nature specials, when the rains return the landscape springs back into life. I took a couple pictures at the end of the two days and although a few things look a bit battered, even the dead back lawn is giving out a sigh of relief.

The front street border starts to put on its best show at this time of year, and although polite people would refer to its plantings as “a riot of color” others would call it a mess. Suits me just fine though!

The front foundation bed is a much calmer mix this year. No bright oranges or over-bright coleus, but all my good intentions from last year of removing the overgrown evergreen and NOT letting any sunflowers grow up kinda fell to the wayside.

I don’t think I can physically pull and compost a sunflower, it’s just unethical to me…. sunflowers and dogwood seedlings, can’t pull either one.

I spend way too much time admiring the “Limelight” hydrangea. It’s just about at full bloom now and I love its green going into white phase and the way its heavy flower heads are held up on strong stems. It’s the only white plant out there, and it does stick out, but each spring I look proudly at its buds and imagine how much bigger the show will be!

“Limelight” hydrangea nearly overwhelming the border….More of a purple-yellow theme going on here, but none of my planting plans are ever set in stone.

For some reason prior to the rain the yard was overrun with birds. Flocks of starlings, catbirds, sparrows, house finches, hummingbirds, goldfinches, cardinals, doves, robins and mockingbirds would swarm each morning. A large cherry and staghorn sumac berries brought in the fruit eaters, but the others were just all milling about looking for what-nots. With all those hungry eyes it’s no wonder I’ve seen so few butterflies.

The day after the rain the back lawn was riddled with all these bill holes. I don’t know what they found in the freshly wetted grass, but there was a flock of around 50 who kept milling around going from lawn to cherry to sumac to lawn.

Strangely enough since the rains came there seem to be far fewer birds. I need to get out there and explain why their straying from script is throwing off the documentary. On TV the return of the rains always brings on the migrating hordes!

The rains were just in time for the former tropical bed. Leaves were starting to wilt and I just didn’t have it in me to add another bed to the water-triage list.

So we are back in business. I hate drought and I hate watering and between the two of them dry spells always get ugly. Now if it can only get a little warmer again this could have the makings of a great end of summer rally.

Maybe the birds can stop pecking off the tips of the cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit) long enough for it to scale the arbor. It’s heading for the top but the birds are relentless. Good thing it’s not a bunny though, the other side for some reason is abused daily by our single resident baby bunny, and can’t even start climbing.

I should be thinking fall garden but I’m going to hide behind denial for a few more days. The cool weather is supposed to warm up again and hopefully summer will stay strong for another couple weeks. It’s hard to deny though as the cyclamen sprout and the corn ripens. Go away autumn, I’m not a fall person!

A summertime stroll with a couple surprises

Jul27

I think I’ve been pretty good this summer keeping up with the garden. Usually I have so many more weed patches and unplanted pots, but this year things look a little better. I know, I know…. prep soil first, have a plan, buy new plant with a spot in mind, don’t plant more than you can take care of, keep low maintainence in mind…. but that’s not how I roll 🙂

I finally cut, bent, and put together the rebar arbor I’ve pictured in my head for the last two years. Last summer it was a single span, this year I doubled it for more stability and wired in a few cross braces. I really should throw a little concrete around the base…. but I’ll wait till it blows over this autumn before I learn that lesson (again).

Arbor going into the vegetable garden. The rebar alone looked a little bare, so I went out back and ripped down a few grape vines to bulk it up, and give the vines a little something to hold on to.

Since we’re in the vegetable garden, here’s the early garlic harvest. This is the first year I managed to plant it properly (in October), and I’m pleased. I’m even more pleased since these were stray, sprouting cloves I found in the bottom of the vegetable crisper which were planted out rather than thrown away.

Garlic harvest. The ones I actually bought from the garden center specifically for planting are a later variety and yet to be harvested.

Last winter was one of the coldest, snowiest ones I’ve experienced living here, so you can imagine my surprise to find some gladiolus overwintered. I vaguely remember there being a few thin little wisps of gladiolus leaves here last summer (I must have missed some of the tiny cormlets when the mother bulbs were lifted) but never gave them much thought. This year they’re back, and voila, the little things surprised me even more by blooming!

Not only was the gladiolus a surprise, but the color coordination with the phlox, verbena and pole bean blooms is better than anything I could plan!

I only finished laying out and digging up the vegetable garden last summer, prior to that it was lawn and a holding bed for some of the plants brought up from the old house. One of those plants was a wisteria vine, and when I moved it the remaining roots put up a couple suckers. Surprise again when one of the suckers actually put out a bloom!

Not many gardeners are avant-garde enough to combine sweet corn with wisteria, and the fact that I’m considering building another arbor or tuteur in order for this guy to stay here says a lot about the haphazard design of my garden.

It surprises me that I would actually post a photo of this mess. It’s the unfinished steps to the deck, and it’s were I like to sit with a drink thinking about all the tasks I should be finishing up instead.

Tropicals in pots, geraniums on the steps, and plenty of weeds. I actually did trim them all back yesterday but I’m sure they’ll have rebounded by the time I take another picture.

From the steps I get a good view of the vegetable patch -I like to call it the farm 🙂 , and the sunflower patch. Last week I noticed this quilled version in with the others. The rolled up petals are different enough to be interesting.

In the center is the quilled version of the regular sunflowers. The flowers are nice enough, but it’s the coming and going of the goldfinches and sparrows that keeps things busy around here… as well as the angry little hummingbird who tries to chase everyone away.

I’m getting the feeling yellow is a little passé as far as being a fashionable color -if it ever was- but I clearly have a problem with “acquiring” yellow leaved plants. “Isla Gold” Tansy is one of my favorites with its finely cut foliage and drought tolerance.

‘Isla Gold’ Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) in front of ‘Bon Bon’ sedum. Don’t let the stupid name throw you off, the sedum is also a great plant.

Around the house in the front yard I finally gave up on the way-too-dry-and-hard-to-water spot by the lamppost. I trimmed the ‘Tiger Eyes’ staghorn sumac back to the ground and let it and its suckers fill in the bed. Too much yellow? I don’t think so, and I no longer have to water this spot.

I hope the plant police don’t find me. ‘Tiger Eyes’ cutleaf sumac (Rhus typhina “Bailtiger”) is a patent protected plant, and here it is propagating itself without corporate approval.

Another weedy spot has been the front street border. I should probably do something about this since it’s a slightly prominent location which everyone who passes sees… but I’m a little bored with it right now. Maybe once this bright red standing cypress (Ipomopsis rubra) blooms and some of the other annuals take off I’ll like it again. I wish I had some nice mulch for it though. I’m constantly jealous of compost rich gardeners and the ones who flaunt their piles of aged leaf mould, and I think I’m close to breaking down and raiding the yard waste dumped by my neighbors in the nearby woods. I’m sure my mother in law will be horribly embarrassed.

More golden yellow in the form of rudbeckias, this time tastefully paired with red standing cypress -which almost has a touch of orange in the blooms. If people complain I’ll remind them the ipomopsis is a southeast native plant and hummingbird friendly, hopefully that will distract them from judging my trailer park color combos too harshly.

“Blue Satin” -or maybe ‘Blue Bird’, I forget- rose of sharon (hibiscus syriacus) always looks a little out of place or a little weedy to me, but the color is interesting and it just laughs off drought and abuse. The white variety “Diana” (a sterile variety) still needs to be acquired, I keep forgetting to take a cutting of my mother’s bush in NY.

As close to blue as you get in rose of Sharon, “Blue Satin” is a cool color but reseeds freely, and the seedlings though nice enough are all more purplish.

You can’t help but notice the big clump of arundo donax ‘variegata’ (variegated giant reed) growing at the end of the bed. Wow, I love it. It will easily reach 10+ feet by autumn and if frost holds off we’ll even see the seed plumes. This variety will begin the season with a crisp white/green variegation, mellow to yellow around now, and then go green as soon as temperatures peak for the summer. It’s invasive down south, so keep that in mind, but the huge clumps I used to see down in Texas were quite impressive.

Still bright, this clump should ‘green out’ in the next few weeks if temps go up… the cool summer has kept it brighter for longer than usual.

A few pennisetum “Karley Rose” divisions (also patented, so please don’t tell anyone I split my clump) are still gaining momentum here amongst the black eyed susans. They would have done better without all the company but I just couldn’t rip out the daisies. I’m sure by next year the grass will just muscle it’s way through and form a big clump to hopefully balance out the big hydrangea.

karley rose pennisetum with black eyed susans

Pennesitum ‘Karley Rose’, rudbeckia hirta seedlings, and erynginum in the shadow of the almost blooming ‘Limelight’ hydrangea.

I’ll end with a non yellow. Verbena bonariensis is starting to open up all over the borders and I wish I had more! Serves me right for having ripped so much out this spring.

Finally something to balance out all the yellow, but is that a prickly thistle coming up through the middle of the clump!? Who missed that weed?

You might notice in the last picture that there’s a mild green tint to the lawn. I’m afraid I’ve gone over to the dark side, and have begun to water the lawn. The brown straw mat I looked at all last July and August was just too depressing, and if I can just get it to the next thunderstorm (tonight I hope), things should stay green for at least another week or two. Honestly I only ran the sprinkler one day, and the back lawn is responsibly dead….. but I may or may not have also fertilized the day before I watered…. sometimes even good people stray.

Have a great week!

Innocent until proven guilty

Jun22

Last week the usual garden inspection turned up a massacre in the broccoli patch. My luck had run out and the rabbits had finally found the tender lettuce and cole crops… just when they were finally settling in. All the tender lush growth from the cool, damp weather has been nipped back, and I’m left with these leafless stalks.

The day before yesterday would have been the perfect time to fence off the vegetable garden….

What a setback! Of course it’s my own fault since even with the local stray cats, rabbits are still in and out of the garden, but I like to think the bunnies won’t take advantage of me and a nibble here and there is no big deal….. so I didn’t bother with a fence. That of course changed, and the fence is up again.

A little chicken wire to keep the bunnies out. Rabbits around here tend to be lazy, so a weak fence or even a few brushy twigs will keep them off my delicious ‘Matina Sweet’ lettuce.

Something was different though. The onslaught of damage was pretty severe for a stray rabbit finding a tender bit of broccoli, and the lettuce and cauliflower were also sampled. That’s a lot of nibbling for one or two rabbits on one or two nights. I began to wonder if a groundhog had returned….. a little plant leveling, bulldozing, little garden pig, who eats everything in sight…. but no, the damage wasn’t that bad.

I found my answer the next morning. Two young bucks were on the other side of the fence plotting their return. I knew they were around -three weeks ago a doe bounded over the fence while the kids and I were playing back there- but now I know they’re moving in. Deer are something I don’t want. Where are all the hunters when you need them?

Barbarians at the gate

Figures they would go straight for the broccoli and lettuce, they’re two of the only vegetables I actually eat. Why couldn’t they start with the chard?

Rumor has it vegetables make for healthy eating. I like to think of these unpicked and uneaten ‘bright lights’ swiss chard as being good food for the soul.

We’re not exactly country around here, but we do have our share of wildlife drama. Snakes and toads come and go, bugs abound, and all kinds of birds stop by to eat and drink and sometimes set up house. I finally found the tiny field sparrow nest (or at least I think that’s what they are) in the small blue spruce by the sandbox. Two chicks have hatched and it amuses me that they spring to life begging for food the second I tap the nest.

I’m not a good nest finder, and the only reason I found this one (after three tries -and the spruce is barely three feet around!) is that I noticed a female cowbird staking out the bush. Cowbirds will sneak in and remove an egg from an unguarded nest and replace it with one of their own, and this is what they did here. When I found the nest there were two white speckled eggs alongside the three blue speckled. I may or may not have removed the cowbird eggs.

Cowbirds are a native species and as such are protected under the Migratory Bird Act, so tampering with their eggs would be illegal…. but I also may at times roll through stop signs and push the speed limit, so I’m not sure where this puts me on the spectrum of criminal activity. All I’ll add is that cowbird chicks will usually outgrow their nestmates and end up displacing them, so I’m glad these parents won’t be stuffing food into a chick which grows to be twice their size.

Another thing which borders on illegal is the number of weeds and out of control plantings in this wanna-be iris border. It’s almost criminal how the campanula took over and the daisies moved in…. not to mention the clover.

Still on the to-do list is the iris bed. I think it needs a complete overhaul to get rid of the beautiful purple campanula glomerata which has taken over. The only legitimate planting here is the yellow variegated iris which is still just barely hanging on.

The iris bed is just one of many yet-to-be-done projects. I’m still getting the last of the seedling out from under the glow lights in the garage, and the overwintered geraniums are still sitting outside the garage, making quite the colorful accent on the driveway 🙂

All in due time they say, but I suspect due time might have passed along with the summer solstice. Instead of humming along, the garden is still taking form. Someday I hope to have things together but I suspect I just might not be that kind of gardener. It would help if a simple planting up of the deck pots didn’t turn into a table refinishing, light fixture replacing, porch chair repainting, trim rebuilding… .kind of project, but such is life!

Enjoy the first days of summer 🙂

All work and no play….

Jun17

There comes a time each spring when the rush and excitement of the new growing season wears off and the realities from the previous year come back to haunt you. There will be bugs, there will be snapped stems, the rabbits will eat the lettuce, and you will get hot and sweaty mowing the lawn. It all seems like a lot of work and all the while the weeds keep growing. But there’s plenty of magic. Onions have been entertaining me lately and I’ll start with allium moly “Jeannine”.

allium moly “Jeannine” with sedum “Angelina” and a few perovskia seedlings. I like how the one perovskia has much fernier leaves than the other.

For some reason I used to dislike most of the flowering onions and only just recently let a few into the garden. They seemed kind of weedy and never wowed me…. but I’ve been dabbling. The big purple ones are a no brainer, and last fall I cracked open the wallet for this one (who’s name I can’t recall at the moment). Surely a half dozen would have been nicer but gardening funds were short after snowdrop ‘dabbling’.

The front border is just coming out of a lull as the daisies and roses fire up. Allium “Pinball Wizard” (I looked it up) has large blooms on short stems, all out of what I consider the “globemaster” family since they all seem similar to me.

Also new this year is allium nigrum, a ridiculously cheap white allium with good sized blooms on nice stems. I like it! The only complaint I have is the season falls right into oxeye daisy season, and the allium blooms are lost among the ‘common’ daisies.

allium nigrum Less impressive is my neglected allium karataviense “ivory queen”. I like the foliage as much as the actual flowers since they have a cool pleated gray look that reminds me of some fancy South African bulb.

You’ll have to trust me on the foliage, it looks better in the weeks coming up to flowering. Plus this little “ivory queen” is just praying for someone to take it away from all this weedy mess.

Not an allium anymore (it’s been reclassified as nectaroscordum siculum) the Sicilian honey garlic is a bit of a floppy mess in my yard. The stems twist around and then put up these ‘interesting’ blooms for a week or so before dropping back down into flopdom.

nectaroscordium siculum -Sicilian honey garlic- this glamour shot pulls out many of the subtle highlights of the blooms. The actual garden presence might be a little less than overwhelming…

Can I finish off with an onion from the vegetable patch? This is allium fistulosum, nebuka evergreen bunching onion. Supposedly it’s a tasty onion, but I have yet to give it a try. Instead I’m enjoying the long lasting, fat bloom heads.

Nebuka onion, another subtle effect but it’s carefree, edible, and fuzzy!

There are a few more onions yet to come, but the lawn still needs mowing and it’s now or never, so off I go. So much to do, so little time…. and sometimes so little energy 🙂

Uh Hello Spring?

Mar26

Spring will start Thursday. Technically it should take off with the spring equinox, but around here Thursday will be the first day. I’m sure of that.

Today’s high just barely reached the freezing point and yesterday didn’t quite make it, but the forecast shows warming and I’m 100% positive spring will come Thursday and stay….. unless it doesn’t. The first winter aconite opened so that’s a hopeful sign, but to see the snowdrops all flat and frozen this morning didn’t warm my heart any.

First blooms of winter aconite (eranthis)

I’d been hoping to get a better picture of the snow crocus in the meadow, but the two warm days were only enough to bring out a few and these quickly became the spring tonic for our local rabbits. There will be secondary buds coming up, so fingers crossed, but how can I resent the little bunnies for their springtime snacking after the winter they’ve had? Look at that dead grass…. no vision of spring there.

snow crocus (almost) blooming out in the meadow

The new snowdrops are also just waiting…… This planting of galanthus viridapice (a green tipped snowdrop) has one bulb that is just a little earlier and looks just a little bit off, I suspect it’s mislabeled, perhaps it’s “sharlockii”.

galanthus viridapice? just waiting for warmer weather to open

Also on my mislabeled snowdrop list is this galanthus “Sam Arnott”. It’s not supposed to be double or green tipped…. also there’s not supposed to be a tulip sprouting there just in front, maybe I was a little hasty in throwing all the moldy bulbs into the compost… and then using the compost too soon. Oh the stuff that never gets mentioned in the gardening books 🙂

galanthus “Sam Arnott” and not galanthus “Sam Arnott”

But until Thursday rolls around, there’s not much else to look at. I did turn an optimistic corner and started the winter garden changeover. All the snowdrops and cyclamen were replaced with seedlings of lettuce and broccoli and hopefully by the time they’re a decent size it will be time to go outside. For now the highlight is a potful of muscari “Valerie Finnis”. I surprised myself by getting this one chilled and through the winter and then into bloom. It’s a nice look, too much foliage for my taste, but remember beggars can’t be choosers.

Muscari “Valerie Finnis” forced indoors under lights

Here’s another reason spring will come Thursday. My “in the green” snowdrops from Carolyn’s Shade Garden have arrived all safe and sound and need to go outside in the garden (“in the green” because they’re bareroot, actively growing, not dormant bulbs). They can handle plenty of frost, but the next two nights of 16F (-9C) lows might be too much of an insult for these city drops (Carolyn is located outside of Philadelphia). I’ll leave them to sit like this on a windowsill for the next two nights with just enough water to keep them wet, but not enough to have them sitting in water. I’m excited to have them and the plus side to this treatment is I get to admire them close up for a couple days. The blooming one is “Straffan”.

Snowdrops in the green from Carolyn’s Shade Gardens

So wish me luck. I don’t often complain about winter but I think I’m done with this one. The clock’s ticking and I’d like at least three weeks before people start complaining about the heat!

Welcome to Fall

Sep29

Now that autumn is here I have officially given up on watering the garden. The cooler temperatures are not as deadly as the summertime heat, and the rain we had a week ago should be enough to keep things alive. So things are on their own for a while.

Most of the vegetable garden is done anyway. Yesterday I let the kids pick the pumpkins and decorate the porch for Halloween.

The ‘Red Wing’ onions were also harvested as well as the last of the eggplant. This pretty much finishes up the garden for the year (with the exception of a few peppers and a single brussel sprout plant). It’s a shame the dry weather sapped all my enthusiasm for a fall planting, the idea of a fresh lettuce harvest right about now sounds very nice.

Despite the end of regular watering, the dahlias continue to put out flowers and carry on. But they are beginning to look tired, and anytime the sun gets strong the leaves wilt. Just about everything looks tired. dahlias in the vegetable garden

The only dahlia that actually looks better now is this one. I need to look up the name, but the color that looked awful in July shines in autumn.

In case you haven’t already picked up on it, the vegetable garden tends to become a flower garden as the season progresses. Any gap in the plantings quickly fills with self sown verbena, Persicaria orientalis, and amaranthus ‘hot biscuits’. The amaranthus has a weedy look that not everyone appreciates, but I like it, and have been very generous with spreading the seedlings throughout the yard. At this time the seedheads seem to glow in the autumn sun. the late summer vegetable garden

The glow of autumn light is a signal to start thinking about protecting the tender plants for winter. My fig has had a troubled season. It spent the winter in the dark of the garage and began sprouting in January. The sprouts dried off by March but then a few pots of water brought some new shoots for April. By May I decided to use its pot for other, healthier looking plants, and while the fig waited for a new home (perched with rootball exposed on a spare saucer) it died again, this time I thought for good… on to the compost pile it went. But like cats, apparently figs have several lives. Around July I noticed a few sprouts coming up out of the compost and upon investigation found the fig root ball to be the source. Finally it was given a decent home, and it’s grown this year without any resentment. Now what to do this winter…..

Also needing a winter home are the tropicals on the deck. Even though I only paid three dollars for this red dipladenia, I can’t let it die! So either the dipladenia or the pansies will need to be repotted and brought in. I would have never thought of this combo, but pansy seeds do their own thing.

I don’t even want to think about the rest of the non-hardy deck plants. They’re growing and blooming and doing well in general even though I never got around to any of the summertime repotting or transplanting I had planned. blooming succulents on deck

The geranium should hang on in the dark of the garage, maybe the rosemary, but I’ll need someplace warmer for the coleus.

Fortunately the tropical garden survives the winter by seed or stored tuber. No windowsills needed for this end of the garden.

…and I’m finally getting some work done instead of just sipping drinks in the shade. The compost pile was turned and a bonanza of “god enough” compost was found underneath. It’s as dry as a bone in the pile, so I’m surprised there was any decay going on at all, but the plants will love it and I’m grateful for any scraps I find. the question will be “who gets it?”

Actually there’s no question, my favorite new bulbs always get the scarce compost. Here’s the newest bed in the back of the meadow. A privet hedge (luckily privet isn’t invasive here) is planned for along the fence, and a snowdrop (galanthus) bed will get its start here. I’ll bore you with the varieties next spring but for now here’s a picture of my usual low work (ie lazy) bed preparations.A couple inches of topsoil from elsewhere in the garden is spread out, bulbs are pressed down into the raked surface, a few inches of compost is used to top off and cover. The compost I used has a good amount of soil mixed in, but if it was more organic I’d cover the bulbs with a layer of garden soil too. They should be just fine here, and I’ll give them a good mulch of chopped autumn leaves once they come down.

I celebrate fall with bulb planting, I love getting the bulbs nestled down into the earth for next spring, I just wish the soil wasn’t so unfriendly and dry.

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: garden