If our three week period with little rainfall in August could be called a drought, there’s no doubt it has ended. A storm several days ago, and a monster that’s just passed through have dumped a month’s rain. Today, the rain came by the bucket load, probably a few inches in an hour and anything…

I don’t mind summer’s heat too much, but relish the start of September with the promise of cooler temperatures, though frosts and freezes are not far off. Then, of course, there’s the long wait until spring, but there’s much to treasure in the early autumn garden, so I’ll try not to think about what comes…

In case my impatience with the garden might be forgotten, I remind that new plantings in this garden must be crammed too tightly for the long term to satisfy my eye, or temporary placeholders must fill spaces. While many gardeners choose zinnias or dahlias, my choice to fill a void is often a canna with…

While she’s away Just as with many of the garden’s major additions, several tons of boulders and new plantings along the southern border of forest were recently undertaken while my wife was traveling, first to Canada and then to France. She says the nearly back-to-back trips were making up for missed vacations the past few…

Begrudgingly, I admit that my enthusiasm for planting and for creating boulder edged gardens has run up against physical limitations. From here on out this could be a moot point since I’ve now run out of spaces to add granite boulders (my wife hopes this is true), but I’ve said that before. If an understanding…

With limited spaces available in this thirty-three year old garden, finding appropriate locations for new plantings is often a challenge. A Seven Son tree (Heptacodium miconioides) was lost in a storm several years ago with no identical replacement available at the time. A red horse chestnut (Aesculus x carnea, a marvelous tree) was planted instead,…

My wife and I visited our youngest son’s garden a few days ago, and in contrast to mine, his is filled with sunlight and a succession of perennial blooms rather than my emphasis on woody trees and shrubs with flowers jammed into the gaps. I noticed that rising above his splendid blooms in one area…

While mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum, below) is a marvelous native for pollinators, the gardener must be prepared to occasionally tame its relentless advance into open ground. The mint doesn’t spread overnight, but steadily, and a watchful eye is necessary by midsummer to protect shorter neighbors as tall, outermost stems flop after rain showers. This taming…

While many gardens dominated by flowers reach a peak in midsummer, this garden is mostly woodies, trees and shrubs, a combination of foliage texture and floral color, so there is seasonal color but fewer blooms that persist through the heat of the season. Yes, there are hydrangeas and other scattered flowers through the early summer,…

Yes, there are a few rough spots in the garden, certainly more than in May and June, but that’s not a fair comparison. The August garden will never match the lushness of late spring, but today it’s looking pretty good, I think, and soon there will be lots of late summer flowers coming on. I…

Today, in this first week of August I’ve just planted a handful of hostas, several red hot pokers (Kniphofia, below), and a few ferns. Thunder rumbles in the distance, with the promise that a soaking storm might get the new plantings off to a splendid start. I’ll water this evening if the rain doesn’t amount…

I returned from two weeks of plant shopping inspired and ready to plant. Within days a redbud was planted to replace a failing hydrangea, and a section of lawn bordering the forest was cut out, then widened to accommodate a wall of granite boulders backfilled with excavation and added soil. Then the heat hit, and…