As summer turns to autumn, flowers are conspicuous in the garden, but this is not the only color. While native dogwoods are beginning to show autumn foliage color, it will be weeks before the swamp maples and tulip poplars in the forest, and the garden’s Japanese maples, show their autumn colors. Several weeks ago, a…

Cattails that have invaded the koi pond from a nearby wetland are limited to a small section of the shallows by more vigorous pickerrel weed (Pontederia cordata), yellow flag iris (Iris pseudacorus), and less aggressive variegated leaf cattails planted in this bog area (below) of the pond years ago. The native cattails are on the…

I do not intend to be discouraging, but flowering of mophead hydrangeas has been quite disappointing in recent years. Not for a year, but three. Early springs and late frosts have been to blame a few times, but I think this spring should have been ideal. Yet, there were few spring flowers and only a…

I suspect that I might overreact a bit when patches of weeds jump up to get ahead of me. Most often, I quietly cuss the labor to dig out stubborn nutsedge, but I’ve been known occasionally to moan aloud over the messy state of the garden. Really, it’s not so bad, even when spotted spurge…

After thirty years, the rhymes and reasons of this garden are occasionally garbled. Please excuse my faulty recollection if timelines are muddled. It’s a flub, not a fib, though I’m not above an innocent embellishment when the details are foggy. Several trees have been here for the duration. I know, I dug every hole, five…

Three toad lilies (Tricyrtis, of unknown variety, as is so often the case in these parts), planted in ground that proved to be too damp, were recently transplanted to drier and sunnier spots. One was single stemmed and quite tall, the second clearly a dwarf, with the third in between. I presume that I will…

It pains me to admit that a ‘Summer Ice’ daphne (Daphne x transatlatica ‘Summer Ice’, below) planted early in the spring was lost a few weeks ago, almost certainly due to my inattention and not catching the first signs of wilt in this period of summer heat and little rain. One day it was fine,…

Now is the time, not next week when both of us will have forgotten, to check for next spring’s flower buds. Dogwoods, spring flowering camellias, rhododendron, paperbush, and pieris have already started budding in this garden. Actually, several weeks ago, but now most buds are large enough to see. Azaleas have set buds, but most…

I am endlessly entertained (perhaps writing too frequently) by seedlings in the garden. No, I am not enthused by weed seedlings, their removal the reason for much of the garden’s labor, but I am often fascinated with the unusual places that seedlings and sporelings (ferns) pop up. Most seedlings must be weeded out and discarded…

Despite recent dryness, I’ve been tinkering in the garden, probably too much, digging and moving seedlings and planting a few newcomers. No doubt, this would best be done two weeks from now with cooler and hopefully damper conditions, but some things can’t be helped. Today I’m motivated, who knows next week. Several deliveries have been…