June 2024

Yes, I still garden.

I have no space. I will admit my garden is over-planted. I have a serious issue with having to have "all the plants". My veg garden is off-site (not at my house), which is fraught with things I can not control. And, it's clay. My home garden is sand. There is an adjustment there! But it does get me strawberries. And in time, peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes.

This view of my garden seems so sedate. (I think this was pre-injury.)

Not so the picture I titled, "Welcome to the Jungle" recently.

Handsome son has married. Beautiful Daughter-in-law is fast becoming a good gardener. She says she wants to be a Dahlia Farmer when she grows up. Last Christmas we built a grow room and light rack set-up for her so she can prestart Dahias and seeds. Her front porch pots:

I have adjusted my gardening style to my infirmaties and work schedule. Although, I technically retired, and may be you could consider I have been retired since moving here in 2003. I do quite a bit of social media for things I am involved with or work at. WHen I pulled up my blog, I realized I have 3 unfinished posts I should probably upload covering the last 2 years! I have gone crazy starting annuals and perennials from seed. I am not sure where I am going with that. I do know the weather seems to be just crazy and the way I hunt for plants has also changed.It has given me some unusual plants.

The Gardening Twins and Baby Gardener have been joined by the Protector of the Frogs. But they have grown!

I have started growing more roses again.

I often look back to this blog to find the right picture of a plant for reference. I am amazed at the change in my garden. I grow a lot of Clematis.

My hedge still looks good as does the scree garden off my deck. ANd the peonies and lilacs are magical in their own special way.

The rain has stopped. It is out to weed. That hasn't changed.

Lady's Mantle in the Rain, and Other Garden Notes

I don't think you can get enough Lady's Mantle in a garden.  I have only a couple tiny clumps of it.  I realize this year I need to encourage a lot more.  It is like clematis, they need a year or so to establish themselves, but are probably worth the wait.

I am going to have to dig for the tag on this clematis.  It is a pale pink mauve with deep purple stamens.  It is pumping out the blooms in this, it's second year.

Clematis 'Blue Dancer' with its seed heads and very decorative maroon stems, both are added benefits long after the petals have dropped on this one.

Don't you love how the moisture beads up on these leaves.

This is rose 'Belinda's Dream', the only rose I have seen in my garden with a couple of rose chaffers.  I have it planted in a large pot and placed it in my box planter, which I moved to full sun.  I bought it as an own root, bare root rose before the ground was unfrozen here  (something that did not happen until May 5 here).  (I may need to move it to a special spot by the house.  The fragrance is very charming and very sweet.  

This is the corner everything was hastily heeled into after my fall late last summer.  Now that my commitment to summer school is over, I seriously can think over what this spot should contain.  I haven't been able to put my left foot on a shovel and apply any sort of force, yet, nor support myself on the left and dig with my right foot.  Moving plants has been problematic.  Handsome Son transplants like a person using a chainsaw to carve a turkey.  If I simply want something big and dead removed, he's the man...

After cutting this to the ground last year, and our bad winter, the smoke and size on my smokebush is remarkable and very dramatic.

This is a cute veronica, I think 'Sonja'.

Clematis texensis, 'Diana' always seems to hide its few blooms behind the honeysuckle.  The vine is enormous, the ratio of flowers not so much.

I have not been able to capture how pretty this really is.  The native blue spiderwort couple with the very tame 'Concord Grape' and Stella is nice.  I have  a large drift of native pale lilac beebalm preparing to flower here as well.  Maybe that will add the photogenic tough this spot craves.  A peculiar note, I typically pinch my beebalms.  I pinched the native, too, and the result was no flowers.  This is a first for me and beebalm.  I can't imagine there might be a dramatic cultural difference between it and the cultivars, but I can't discount that.

This annual iberis has been about the best and nicest surprise in my garden this year.  I grew it from seed quite late, in late April.

Cinnamon is back from her nearly year-long stay in Illinois when I could not care for her.  Having her on a lead is still problematic for me, but I can attach her to an overhead guide wire now, so she can't pull me down stairs.

Now that the yews have been removed from behind the 'Crimson Frost' birch I am quite liking there absence.  I had a pink Knockout rose die here this winter.  This is another spot needing some serious redesign.

Heartbreaking, my privet hedge died to the ground this spring.  I waited until mid-June and noticed growth coming (finally).  It will be a year at least until it regains its glory, but replacing it and waiting would have taken much longer and I liked how it looked, shown here in front of the dappled willow.

So, on this 4th of July, I am finally ready to attempt to get my garden ship-shape...So glad it is not on a garden walk this year!

Decisions...Cut Where? Or When?

Clematis 'Blue Dancer'

C. 'Blue Dancer' is putting on quite a show.  It's nice to have something blue in bloom.  This clematis is almost other worldly.  It certainly looks foreign to my zone.  However, it is decidedly hardy after this past brutally cold and long winter. This clematis alpina blooms on old wood.  Don't prune!

The blue color is spot on.  Amazing, huh?

Other things in the garden are still struggling.  After a rain last week, and the slightly more humid nearly 80 degree (F) temperatures perennials are starting to pop.  What looks the worse for the winter are my shrubs, the bones of my garden.

View of a Different Garden

View of a garden taken through the glass

This is my new garden view. It is a garden I drew up a plan for over five years ago.  It is a very formal parterre, 30' wide by 90' deep.  It has a diamond in the center with a fountain and pea gravel walks leading from each point and around the center diamond.  On the longitudinal sides are privet, which if maintained as I do in my yard could be a nice privatizing element, but is overgrown even with my impromptu hedging efforts taking it back a foot or so about once a year.  The differences with this privet hedge and my own show the need for constant pruning of privet used in this way.

There were several poor plant choices made in the lay out of this garden, however there are also a couple plant choices which have been excellent.  Lining the pea gravel paths is Autumn Joy sedum backed with shades of blue iris.  I would say the first 3-4 years this was an incredibly good choice.  It always showed to advantage.  At this point being perennial, desperately needs to be re-divided widening the path.

Pointing up each of the centers of the corner rhomboid shapes are Alberta spruce.  The original thought was to clip them into a formal spiral.  Clipping is, however, a time-consuming activity, and has not been done.  Running parallel to the center diamond are bands of yew clipped flat in a wide curled double "S".  There are some good bones here.

Plants were massed in the planted areas.  Still, there are a large number of interesting plants here:  the large large-leaved rhododendron which bloom in large balls of bloom in the spring, the Annabelle hydrangea, sundrops, allium glaucum, pink and white bleeding heart, masses of Asiatic and Orienpet lilies, various other species alliums.  There are also pedestrian things like rudbeckia which, however, is a good choice interplanted with the sundrops providing a continuously blooming triangle.

As the long view of this garden positions the sunrise behind the fountain from my window and the fall fog will hang like a mist above this garden at sunrise it provide a view of a garden in transitional light with the dew hanging heavy on the fall-colored foliage.  The fall colors backlit in the morning sunlight is something not present in my home garden.  It is an aspect of the light I have been admiring here, however over-run "my" new garden is.

It brings me joy.

Pruning a Hedge

Hedges are the way we gardeners establish our boundaries. For me, establishing some sort of boundary between my property and the gravel public alleyways that abut my property on two sides has been a challenge.

When I bought the property it had two massive, hollow widowmaker type boxelders at each of the back corners of my lot. I had them taken down. Boxelders are very much a weed tree and do not serve any sort of esoteric function for my gardener's soul. At the one outside corner I put a couple balsam firs. These became the anchors for what has become a fairly deciduous hedge of shrubs and fruit trees.

Along two sections of these length of the alley I planted privet cuttings, which has served very well as a hedge. Instead of trimming them into rectangular boxes that do not serve the growth of the plant, I trim them narrower at the top and wider closer to ground, giving them a rounded shape. You can see their structure during the winter and early spring.

This cultivar of privet has a glossier green sheen to the leaf, holds its leaves until almost the beginning of December here, and leafs out fairly early, in April. I took these cuttings from a branch of privet that acted differently in my yard in Elgin, IL. This hedge is about four years old. It is about 2 feet tall and 2 1/2 feet wide.