AN EARLY JUNE GARDEN REPORT

There is so much happening in the garden these day and if I don't show it to you soon there will be something else entirely happening. I've not had time for proper photos, but I did snap a bunch on my phone and I thought phone photos would be better than waiting even longer.

I had such high hopes for this gardening season. With the nice spring I felt like I had a real jump on things but now I feel like I'll never get everything finished and I'm really losing steam. I really wish I could just take a couple days of vacation and just finish it all but that's not in the cards at work right now so I'll just do the best I can.

For now ... here's what's happening.

The Clematis 'Sugar Sweet Lilac' is doing amazingly well for its second year. The climbing rose is doing well too despite all of the canes dying back over the winter. This fall I'll try to protect them more to avoid the cane dieback.

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 The 'Coralburst' crabapple is past its peak bloom time but I sort of love the shaggy look it has right now. It reminds me a little of how all the boxwoods are a little shaggy right now with their new growth. The dame's rocket is growing behind it. I consider it a weed but not a major offender so I pull it when I'm around and leave the rest. I did some weed burning on the edges of things the other night, so things are a bit crispy in the foreground.

The 'Venus' dogwood is blooming for the first time! It only has three flowers, and they are just opening in shades of lime, but I love them.

 Last summer I dug up a lot of Geranium macrorrhizum aka bigroot geranium from my sister-in-law's garden and I stuck it in along the driveway where nothing exciting will grow. I'm so happy with how it has flourished and I can't wait to divide it and really fill in that area. Anything that grows here needs to be able to tolerate shade, dryness, plowing, snow piles and general mistreatment. This fits the bill.

My beloved 'Guernsey Cream' clematis is doing great again. There are so many buds yet to open. It is the perfect white in the garden. Creamy but clean.

When we bought the house, one of the few plants that hadn't been taken over by weeds in the garden was lamb's ear. I detest lamb's ear flowers and I ripped it all out. Fourteen years later, I've invited it back into the garden, this time as a contrast around the 'Orangeola' Japanese maple. I plan to chop off any flowers that try to sneak in there.

Three years ago I volunteered at a garden tour event and the star of the show was a giant Viburnum plicatum tomentosum 'Mariesii' that was laden with blooms. It was the most stunning shrub I'd ever seen and I loved that it shared a name for my grandmother Marie.  I bought one that was no more than 2 feet tall and wide (I think that's being generous) and planted it on the edge of the yard with lots of room to grow, which I know it will). It has grown so much since and this year has lovely blooms. It is starting to show the layered habit that I love.

Until I went to a garden seminar this winter, I'd never heard of night phlox aka Zaluzianskya capensis, but I loved the idea of trying to put more fragrant plants near the back door. I grew a few from seed, not really knowing what to expect, but I'm finding them to be one of the most charming plants I've ever seen. The diminutive flowers pack a huge scent punch in the evening and are just the cutest things ever.

A big project this spring was replanting a large portion of the patio garden that I cleaned out last fall. I still need to fill in quite a few holes with annuals, but the Hydrangea serrata 'Tiny Tuff Stuff' I ordered from Garden Crossings are in (you can see their purple-ish sunburned leaves caused by failing to properly harden them off before planting), Amsonia hubrechtii and 'David Howard' dahlias are all in. A new viburnum is in the back of the bed along with a few other plants that are way too small to see much of these days.

A tree peony that I either never knew the name of or lost track of is blooming its head off with huge frilly-petaled flowers. I don't really love magenta flowers, but it certainly is putting on a show.

I finally found a 'Forest Pansy' redbud, which was no small feat as many nurseries don't like to sell them here because of their questionable branch hardiness. We planted it on the edge of the lawn next to our path through the woods. It's smaller than I would have hoped, but I was happy to take what I could get. May it live long and flourish.

Rain put a kibosh on after-work gardening on Monday, but the pretty double rainbow it left behind made up for it.

And last but not least, a rare garden selfie. We were at our nephew's graduation Sunday (outside ... hence the sunburn) and came home at 8 to find the power out. I went out to do whatever gardening I could since there was no point in being inside with no power and I found myself on the edge of the woods and couldn't believe how quickly the ostrich ferns have shot up. They are officially taller than me now. It feels like quite the jungle over there these days. 

When plants become a collection

Creating a garden starts out as an innocent pursuit. You just want a pretty patch of flower or vegetables that flows and looks beautiful at least three seasons out of four. But there is that one plant that outshines the others. It outperforms them by looking great or by being the big, bold bright spot that everyone comments on. And you start doing a little bit of research on what it really wants, because let's be honest, you got lucky by plunking it in the right place. And the next year it is even more beautiful. And you want more. More. More. More.

You are hooked.

This is how plant collections start. At least this is how mine have started and most of them have snuck up on me. I don't set out to have a "collection" of a specific plant, I just really like them and suddenly have a whole bunch of them (and often, a lot less money in my bank account).

My first plant collection was clematis. The very first clematis I planted was Mrs. N. Thompson and I didn't plant it right. But she defied the odds and was still a looker. The second one was Ken Donson and he was like the crack dealer on the corner: gave me just enough to get me totally hooked.

Mrs. N. Thompson was my first clematis.

 

Guernsey Cream is a favorite that does well for me in a good amount of shade (note the fern and hosta friends it has).

Ken Donson was the clematis that really sucked me in.

 

Once you decide you love a plant you start searching out different cultivars: the usual suspects you can find in your neighbor's garden just won't do. You search out specialty nurseries who will sell those unusual cultivars and, you hope, send you better plants than you can pick up at a local nursery. You're really in trouble when you start buying books on a specific plant and scope out plant-specific online forums.

Since Ken Donson came into my life I've added 12 more clematis. Fourteen plants is a drop in the bucket to collectors of some kinds of plants (talk to the host people who often have more than 1,000 cultivars growing in their yards) but I still think of clematis as my first real fascination. And oh yeah, I have five more ordered for delivery this spring.

The only thing that keeps me from seriously collecting Japanese maples is cost and the fact that many of them are marginally hardy here (see the sad tale of my lovely Kamagata maple). I only have two (Orangeola and Acontifolium), but that doesn't mean I don't scope them out every time I look.

Acer japonicum 'Acontifolium'

 

I probably have more different varieties of heucheras and heucherallas than any other plant, but that's probably more because I just really like trying new ones (and there are a lot available through the Yahoo co-op). I have a lot of hostas for the same reason, a handful of roses (which I should just give up on because I don't do roses well), and I've tried just about every new echinancea that comes on the market (with limited success, by the way; they just seem to lack longevity here).

Echinacea 'Summer Sky'

I might have gotten just a bit carried away with the hostas a few years ago when I had 50-some of them growing out in pots waiting to be planted in the garden.

 

I'm not sure hydrangeas qualify as a collection or fascination for me, but as you know, I do love them. Limelights are, of course, the star here, but I also love my climbing hydrangea, my new Little Limes, Incrediball and even my old-fashioned Annabelle. Oakleaf hydrangeas are stunning shrubs, but not one I've had a great deal of luck with. I also have a Nikko Blue which is a full-on zone 6 plant but she's bloomed for me in the past and I won't give up on her.

Nikko Blue hydrangea

 

I feel the pull of new collections, too. I've recently developed a fascination with tree peonies (again, a plant that requires a great deal of patience. What is with me?) The world of conifers is amazing, but it's one I feel I really need to study before delving into because in many cases it requires a healthy space requirement (and even on 1.3 acres space is a precious commodity). And the charming little Ginko 'Gnome' that I ordered on a whim last year got me totally excited about Gingkos as well. Plus, there's that whole toad lily thing that I learned last week I'm totally missing out on. We'll just have to wait and see where my wandering obsessions lead me to next.

Do you have any plant collections? How did you get started with them?

 

 

How'd I do?

Friday I posted a long list of weekend gardening chores. The weather this weekend was stellar, which we deserved after the previous weekend's 2.5 inches of rain. Here's how I did:

• Edge all beds - DONE. They look great. I don't like edging, but nothing cleans up a garden like fresh edges. (Note: I'm just looking at that picture. It looks like I might have been drunk while edging!)
• Finish weeding beds — Not done. Almost ... but not quite. Plus, there will certainly be more weeds to follow so this isn't really something you can just check off and be done with.
• Plant tree peonies — Done. I planted three: A dark red, a dark pink and a light pink. They came bare root and my understanding is that it's not a great time to plant bare root tree peonies (fall is better), but they were about $7.50 each through the co-op. There's no way I was going to pass that deal up. I hope they do well. I'm guessing if they think about blooming this year (unlikely), I should cut the buds off to focus all the energy into the roots, right?
• Divide daylilies— Nope. But I only have one that needs dividing so this a good after-work project.
• Determine if the Disneyland rose made it through the winter—Well, I didn't pull it out of the ground because I'm hoping for a miracle, but I think it's dead. I don't get what happened. I bought it potted at the nursery and planted it at the level it was in the pot. (Was that correct?) I'm pretty sure it's an own-root rose. This winter I mounded soil around it's crown, caged it and mulched it heavily (as in 18 inches deep) with shredded leaves. Not one stem is alive and there are no signs of life there. This happened with the last floribunda rose I planted too. I think I'm the only person the world who grows roses as annuals. I may very well replace that Disneyland. It was GORGEOUS last summer. And probably worth the $15 it cost even if it only lives one summer. I sure wish someone could tell me what I'm doing wrong though.
• Deal with "The pit of despair"—Nope. Still a pit. Still full of despair.
• Plant peas, lettuce and maybe beets — Check, check and check!
• Hopefully take a trip to Caan's garden center—Done! By about 2:30 p.m. yesterday I was so stiff I could barely move, so even though there was lots left to do in the garden, I ran up there for a bit of a break. Boy was I disappointed. They only had two of the six perennials I was looking for, so I picked up three variegated Solomon's Seal, and a Baptisia, and a hanging plant for my mom for Mother's Day (trust me, you do not want to be at a nursery specializing in hanging containers on Mother's Day weekend).

All in all it was a pretty good gardening weekend. But gardens should come with chiropractors!