As autumn begins and cooler temperatures arrive there are fewer blooms, and foliage shows signs of the imminent change to dormancy. With a relatively cool and wet summer, fewer plants have been stressed by heat, but several shrubs and trees have reacted to damper than usual conditions by dropping foliage early so that the garden’s…
Month: September 2013
Little harm is done
Scattered leaves and branches of two ‘Silver Cloud’ redbuds (Cercis canadensis ‘Silver Cloud’) and a blackgum (Nyssa sylvatica, below) are covered by the finely spun webs of fall webworms. Every day the webs grow, and the tiny worms devour leaves as they progress through the tree. Commonly available insecticides provide immediate control of the worms,…
Ignoring the obvious
I’ve been warned. Never, ever plant mint in your garden. Never. It’s too aggressive, I’m told, and once it’s planted it’s impossible to keep in bounds. Planting mint is an invitation to disaster. I have little doubt that this is sound advice, but either I’m a skeptic or not a good listener (or a slow…
Fewer bees and butterflies? Not here
The Seven Son tree (Heptacodium miconioides, below) was a favorite of pollinators (mostly bumblebees and wasps), and it is unfortunate that it was destroyed in a storm a year ago. I’m mostly satisfied with the red horsechestnut (Aesculus x carnea) planted in its place, but it is not a suitable replacement as far as the…
Forest grass
A friend tells me she has had a horrible time getting Japanese Forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, below) to live in her garden, and she wonders how it is possible that mine flourishes. I’m reluctant to tell her that I’ve done nothing special to encourage it. It just grows, though it takes a few years…
The overflowing garden
Understandably, many gardeners prefer a large measure of order and tidiness in their gardens, even if their shrubs are not pruned into a variety of geometric shapes. Not that I refer to my wife as a gardener, but that’s her preference. She will mostly tolerate wide spreading shrubs and perennials that flop over one another,…
Subtle charms
There is a place in the garden for extravagant masses of blooms that can be appreciated by neighbors zooming past in their cars, though to my thinking these displays are best suited to commercial properties and entrances to communities. Many homeowners take pride in planting masses of petunias and impatiens that flower without interruption for…
A horticultural adventure
I can’t help it! My wife and I hosted our two sons and their wife and girlfriend over the weekend for a hike of Old Rag Mountain. This was a fairly ambitious undertaking for mom and dad who suffer from a variety of minor infirmities (mostly getting older), but we survived the ordeal without too…
Blue Mist in September
More than once I’ve been stunned to walk into a garden to suddenly come upon a mass planting of Blue Mist shrubs (Caryopteris) in full bloom. I’m too much of collector to expend so much space in my garden on such a large grouping of any one plant, but the mass of blue flowers is…
End of summer blooms
Gardeners and non-gardeners ask, “what happened to our summer?” And, it’s true that we’ve experienced little of the heat and humidity that so often encourages local residents to head for higher (and cooler) ground in July and August. My garden has both profited and suffered from the unusual weather, but as the season nears its…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 