Despite my wife’s pronouncements, I am somewhat disciplined in my plant purchasing habits. With unlimited space and funds this would not be the case, but the limitations of a reasonable budget and the small spaces open in this thirty-four year old garden demand careful consideration prior to each acquisition. If not careful, at least consideration….

How marvelous if complaining made the lull until spring seem shorter (or ever accomplished a thing)? To minimize whining, I must take the winter months a step at a time. First, I await the first blooms of hellebores (Helleborus), then vernal witch hazels (Hamamelis vernalis, below) and so on, with each new bloom an accomplished…

In early January, thoughts frequently turn to spring, and what’s next? A few acquisitions didn’t quite work out nearing the year’s end, so I still have plans to add a variegated, weeping ‘Whitewater’ redbud (below) and the purple leafed ‘Evening Lights’ styrax. An ‘Autumn Moon’ Japanese maple will be tucked into a partially shaded void…

The pleasures of the garden are many, and while the delights of the warmer seasons garner more attention, I also enjoy the brightly colored red and yellow stems of Japanese maples and shrubby dogwoods in the winter months when there is little foliage and fewer flowers.  A number of Japanese maples offer interesting bark, with…

A handful of hellebores are flowering this first week of January (below), with many others expected in a few days though several will not flower until later in February. With recent mild temperatures bees are out and buzzing, searching for fresh blooms. Flowers of mahonias are fading, and while we’re still a few days early…

This garden diary documents the growth of plants over three decades, but also changes that have expanded the garden to cover most of what was once an acre and a quarter of mowed pasture. Additions were made slowly while our two boys (and dogs) required room to run and budgets were more limited, but planting…

On advice from my wife who is never warm in winter, I refer to winter temperatures as mild rather than warm. Today is mild, at least above our winter average so that ice is melting on the garden’s ponds and perhaps it will be gone before the next spell of cold comes around. Two periods…

As the new year approaches and spring seems so distant I am comforted reflecting on the garden’s successes, and look forward to more in the coming year. Certainly, there were bumps along the way, but I am pleased that none haunt me as plans are made for spring.

Today, temperatures will rise slightly above the freezing mark after two chilly days with nights falling to six and seven degrees (Fahrenheit). Most of the garden’s plants will shrug without a worry, but the cold will test ones marginally cold hardy that have intentionally been left unprotected. Why take the chance that schefflera (Schefflera delavayi,…

Already, I count the days until spring, or at least the time when multitudes of hellebores and snowdrops paint the garden. There is small consolation that the earliest hellebores have begun flowering. One is visible through the front window as I descend the steps from our bedroom (below), and soon others will be coloring the…

I wonder if old foliage covering the trunks of two yuccas (Yucca rostrata ‘Sapphire Skies’, below) should be removed. This is not a plant health question, but an aesthetic one. There’s no right or wrong. I’m certain the preference is completely personal. My thinking is that keeping the browned leaves doesn’t look bad, and in…

Over the weekend I planted a soon to be released introduction, a doghobble (Leucothoe axillaris ‘SR2020’, Bohemian Beauty, below) despite overnight temperatures expected to drop into the low twenties and the plant’s recent home in a nursery just outside Mobile, Alabama. I admit to never calling leucothoe by its common name, doghobble, except to entertain…