By late in the past year the passageway from the driveway to the rear garden had deteriorated into a muddy mess. What was once lawn, though hardly a good one, had become mostly shallow rooted clover with the slope becoming increasingly slick when wet. More than a few times I slipped with an armload of…

Recent thunderstorms have rescued the garden, at least for the moment, from the start of its typical slow fade into summer. The contrast between the garden in late spring and early summer is rarely drastic, but without irrigation the garden is dependent upon regular rainfall to look its best. While gardens in some parts of…

The stewartia’s (Stewartia pseudocamellia, below) flowers do not open all at once, but over a two week period, though I make this claim for the tree in this garden only. With a large section of this garden shaded (with the large stewartia partially to blame), flowers here appear later than in nearby gardens. Careful placement…

A single white flowered coneflower (Echinacea purpurea ‘White Swan’, below) has parented a dozen or more seedlings that squeeze between a wide spreading sedge (Carex ‘Evergold’) and an aged hellebore. Seedheads tossed behind the tall sedge in autumn have germinated, but these are still youngsters and not yet with flowers. A year ago most seedlings…

Stone paths in the sloped, upper third of the rear garden meander along and across a stream and three small ponds, converging at a boulder bordered, circular, slate patio where parts of the three ponds can be seen and heard. The ponds were constructed twenty or more years ago, one after the other over several…

Last evening I returned home from a week in Oregon on business travel. In recent years I’ve gone out a day early to hike coastal mountains and to visit gardens, but Covid closures nixed those plans. Next year I’ll go out two days early. There have been several inches of rain over the past few…

I realize that I diminish the effort required to maintain this acre and a quarter garden, but I intend to counter writings I regularly see that add long monthly lists of garden chores to already busy lives. My weekends are occupied by long hikes in our nearby mountains, not by hours of labor in the…

Despite considerable optimism with a good start a year ago, two young trees have made disappointing progress this spring. The Wheel tree (Trochodendron aralioides) and Korean Sweetheart tree (Euscaphis japonica, below) both suffered minor injury in late freezes, and I am hopeful this setback is temporary. The Sweetheart tree grew considerably in the second half…

Flowers of the Bigleaf magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla, below) are ten inches across (at least), though I could not possibly hold the branch and measure at the same time. Unfortunately, only two branches of this very tall tree remain low enough that I can reach overhead to pull down to see and smell the flowers close…