The garden was not dry before the weekend rain, but several inches of rain pushes another spurt of growth and adds a bit of depth to its color. With damp ground, recently weeded beds look as if they have been long neglected, and I hope that an additional burst of growth from hostas will cover…

Today is the reward for a long winter with few blooms. The garden starts slowly, with scattered flowers through the winter months that increase in March, and then April, but the garden is incomplete until trees and shrubs come into leaf and hostas fill the open spaces. Beginning the second week of May a few…

From our kitchen window, a mass of white blooms shows from behind three huge maples at the forest’s edge. This is the old, dependable Delaware Valley White azalea (below) planted thirty years ago, and now it spreads ten feet or more in deep shade. Through most of the year it is hardly noticed except that…

The Japanese maples planted in the garden thirty or more years ago were basics, beautiful trees but only the most common that were the only ones to be found at a time when maples were quite expensive and not the staples of the garden that they are today. Somewhere along the way the gardening industry…

I am hoping for a bit more growth from the Wheel tree (Trochodendron aralioides, below) this spring. In its first spring a year ago growth was minimal, and while Wheel tree is reputed as slow, I look forward to more than a few inches of growth now that its roots are more established. But, already…

Leisure hours not spent in the garden often find my wife and I stumbling down nearby mountain trails (she walks gracefully, I stumble), with many trails selected for their botanical interest in addition to views of the valleys below. Several local treasures are hiked multiple times each year, and of course the glorious, native flora…

The weather rollercoaster is not unusual for spring, though a recent coating of snow is out of the ordinary for mid April. Periods of mild temperatures have been interrupted by scattered freezes, and it is fortunate none have dropped low enough to do much damage to emerging leaves. Yes, every new set of camellias flowers…

I am uncertain of the cultivar name of the red leafed Japanese maple that borders the driveway. Certainly, it is a dissectum type, and taking a guess from the time it was purchased thirty three years ago when there were many fewer varieties available, it is most likely ‘Crimson Queen’ or ‘Ever Red’ (Acer palmatum…

At best I’m neglectful of the two small remaining parcels of lawn. My preference would be to turn every inch of the property to garden, but that’s at least a bit impractical, and mostly my wife has forbidden another inch of grass be removed. Sometimes, I must cooperate. I don’t fertilize the lawn or garden,…

Again I am disappointed by the failure of another of the garden’s daphnes. Just when I think I’ve figured them out, wrong again, as a long established ‘Eternal Fragrance’ fades and finally is dug out and hauled to the compost heap. No doubt the garden evolves, shade and root competition increases, so what works one…

Flowers of ‘Jane’ magnolia (below) are disappointing, and the few buds on the recently planted ‘Yellow Bird’ were damaged by a freeze a week ago. I hoped that unopened flower buds would have adequate protection, but many were close enough to opening that they were damaged by a twenty-three degree (Fahrenheit) nighttime freeze. About half…

While a scattered few flowers must satisfy the gardener in the winter months, April is glorious in its abundance. With many dozens of hellebores in the garden the slowly fading flowers remain the most obvious presence in early spring, but other flowers are now too numerous to count. While hellebores (above) were late starting after…