Flowers of various beautyberries (Callicarpa, below) are pleasant upon close inspection, though not showy, but delightful bunches of purple or white berries follow in late summer to cover the the long stems. The shrub is unremarkable whenever it is not cloaked in berries, and in most years branches must be chopped back by a foot…

I once thought, in error it seems, that there should be no need for a pollinating male with each cluster of female winterberry hollies (Ilex verticillata). Certainly there must be some native holly nearby, or another pollinator in a neighbors’ garden close by.  My reward for thinking, no berries in two groupings of winterberries. This…

If a verdict must be assessed, I plead guilty to a lack of editing in parts of the garden. Native sporelings of Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis, below) obscure lovely hostas that I am quite certain are seedlings, though my memory is famously unreliable. The ferns are easily removed, but I am reluctant to disturb a…

Certainly, there must be rain any day now as temperatures climb into the mid nineties. Rain is overdue by several days, so I chip out holes in dry ground as a few hostas and ferns are moved to fill open space beneath the bigleaf magnolia’s (Magnolia macrophylla) canopy now that summer snowflakes (Leucojum aestivum) are…

A year ago I could see considerable progress in what is today a garden begun thirty-two years ago. Of course, this sounds absurd, but with yearly changes, long established evergreens that decline and perish, and some that overgrow and must be chopped out, regular additions are required. Yes, the standard changes also. The fullness of…

Two pagoda dogwoods (Cornus alternifolia, below) are blessed by a glimpse of sunlight at high noon, but bright shade (at least as I categorize it) thereafter. I wonder if this is their best place. Both are planted too close to stone paths to account for their eventual growth, but what else is new, and this…

I’ve been warned, but as is too often the case, I plant anyway. Every one who knows better agrees that Pinellia tripartita (below) is aggressive and a nuisance, maybe just short of being invasive, and I was told before planting it, yet I couldn’t resist its narrow jack-in-the-pulpit inflorescence. Fortunately, and for this blind luck…

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…