The foliage of the passion flower vine (Passiflora incarnata, flowering in August, below) has wilted. I can’t imagine that this vigorous native vine is in trouble, but I’ll be certain to give it a sip of water or two through the hot, dry weather that’s expected over the next week. I planted the passion flower…
Month: June 2012
Ready for summer
Over the weekend I noticed that coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea, below) in the neighborhood are flowering, and it hadn’t occurred to me until now that they’ve disappeared from my garden. There are a number of reasons. I’ve planted a handful of newly introduced coneflowers over the past five or six years, and many gardeners have found…
Long overdue
Twenty some years ago I planted three columnar hornbeams and variegated bamboo in the spaces between the trees to screen the neighbor’s property. You’d think I’d know better. I blame it on youthful enthusiasm, but when youth turned to middle age (hopefully I’m still “middle” and not plain old) the bamboo has run amok. Why…
Unintended pruning
A few weeks ago I noticed the toad lilies (Tricyrtis, flowering in September, below) were getting a bit taller than I prefer, though they were not at all leggy. Some years I’ve pruned them to be shorter and more compact, and other times I’ve let them grow. If left unpruned they will bloom a few…
In search of Japanese maples
I’ve been visiting tree and shrub growing nurseries across the country to buy plants for nearly thirty-five years. In the early years my traveling partner and I kept a close watch for Japanese maples as we traveled through neighborhoods visiting nurseries just outside Portland, Oregon (the Japanese maple growing capital of the U.S.). Here were…
Are five ponds too many?
This spring the Japanese irises planted in the shallows of the swimming pond (below) seem to have doubled in size. I know that there is limited room in the gravel filled crevices between boulders that edge the pond, and those spaces have been filled for a few years, but the irises are more robust and…
Cure for the common flop
For whatever reason the oakleaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea quercifolia, below) have decided to explode in growth this spring (in fact, all hydrangeas have grown remarkably). A few were munched by deer in early autumn when I mistakenly decided that it was late enough in the season not to have to spray a repellent, but now the…
More moisture is needed
The foliage of the variegated yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata ‘Alexander’, below) is now green. It doesn’t emerge green and white early in the spring and fade to green, it’s just green. The variegated foliage was once mildly attractive, but now the green is rather plain. It’s not unusual for variegated plants to revert, and I…
Wet feet
The back half of the rear garden is prone to wet soils through the spring, or in any period with an inch or more rainfall in a week. In September last year there was more than a foot of rain from various hurricanes and tropical storms, and this part of the garden stayed waterlogged into…
The last dogwood blooms
Chinese dogwood (Cornus kousa) is the latest of the dogwoods to flower in my garden. The dogwood season began this year as the native dogwood (Cornus florida) began to bloom the last week of March, two to three weeks earlier than is typical. Hybrid dogwoods introduced by Rutgers University that combine the native American and…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 