Good grief, ninety degrees! In early April. Two weeks of warm, but pleasant weather has passed, and now it’s just hot. Too hot! The spring bulbs are fading quickly in the heat, as are the flowering cherries, peach, and magnolias. Royal Star magnolia and Dr. Merrill are more accustomed to winter’s cold than summer, so they…
Category: landscaping
Scraped, scratched, bloodied, and bruised
I’m in bad shape, broke down, beaten, and bewildered! One minute I’m feeling hopelessly behind in my garden, the next that I’m nearly caught up. Then I walk around any corner, and I have a lot of corners, and there’s lots more to do. There’s no fooling myself, I have a lot of chores ahead. After…
My dependably deer proof garden
Now I’m convinced! Sitting for lunch on a dreary weekend day in February five or six deer wandered single file through the wooded area bordering my back garden, never stopping for a moment to take a sniff or munch on the camellias (below) or aucubas that had suffered such damage the previous winter. I felt…
Ugly landscapes
As part of promotions to celebrate its fifty year anniversary Meadows Farms has asked for entries to determine the “Ugliest Landscapes in the Washington D.C. area”. There are a lot of them, and no doubt there are many other “needy” gardens that haven’t been submitted. I have seen that many of the entries suffer from…
March in bloom – trees
The Cherry Blossom Festival has begun on the Tidal Basin in Washington and the flowering Japanese cherries are nearing peak bloom, but fifty miles to the west Yoshino and Kwanzan cherries remain in tight bud, still a week or two from blooming. In my garden the early flowering Okame (below) is blooming, and Snow Fountain,…
March in bloom – shrubs
The shrub stands tall above the snow with yellow blooms that herald spring’s arrival. No, not forsythia, but witch hazel ‘Arnold’s Promise’ (Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Arnold’s Promise’, below), with fragrant, ribbon-like flowers unfurling in late February’s frigid temperatures. I have a poor nose for such things, but walking through the garden on a late winter’s…
Bulbs are blooming in March
To the gardener winter is long, dull, and gray, a time for planning, ordering seeds, and dreaming of gardens bursting with blooms. The past winter was an exception, it wasn’t gray, but white, dreary, and seemingly endless. Thankfully it’s over, by the calendar and weather! The spring blooming bulbs have survived their extended period hidden…
Always late
No more than a mile from my home two star magnolias against a brick wall in full sun are in full bloom. In my garden Royal Star magnolia (Magnolia stellata ‘Royal Star’) remains in bud, though I can feel the tightness of the bud expanding, and if temperatures remain so warm as today’s seventy degrees…
March madness
There’s so much to do, and so little time. The winter’s heavy snow is a memory (even the parking lot mountains have melted), but left behind are broken and bent branches, uprooted evergreens, and snapped trunks as reminders. Now that temperatures have warmed the time is upon us to begin the clean up, in addition…
Split and splayed
Undeniably, spring has arrived! Helleborus and snowdrops (below) have emerged from their snowy blanket to burst into bloom, yet much damage from the winter storms remains (though considerably less than many gardeners feared). In the past weeks we’ve addressed how to prune the broken and split branches, what to to do with the large evergreens that are leaning, or…
What’s wrong with “The Outdoor Room”
Finally, HGTV is bringing a bit of the G (garden) back into its prime time with “The Outdoor Room” starring the charismatic Jamie Durie. I’ve been involved with HGTV’s home makeover show “Curb Appeal” and have witnessed the made-for-TV dramatic embelishments involved, but I have reservations about this new show from a landscape design and business…
Signs of life
Finally, signs that this long winter is fading. Today there was barely a chill in the air, and warmer temperatures are forecast for the next week. The snow on my neighbors’ lawns has melted, and parts of my garden are reappearing, though the sliver of mature maples and poplars that lines the southern edge of…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 