The past few weeks have been hot, real hot! In only a few weeks lawn grasses turned from lush green to straw colored, and the deep greens of the garden faded a few shades. Some plants pay no attention, and even thrive in the heat. Plume poppy (Macleaya cordata, above) grows exuberantly to fill whatever space…
Tag: native plants
Wet feet
The back half of the rear garden is prone to wet soils through the spring, or in any period with an inch or more rainfall in a week. In September last year there was more than a foot of rain from various hurricanes and tropical storms, and this part of the garden stayed waterlogged into…
The last dogwood blooms
Chinese dogwood (Cornus kousa) is the latest of the dogwoods to flower in my garden. The dogwood season began this year as the native dogwood (Cornus florida) began to bloom the last week of March, two to three weeks earlier than is typical. Hybrid dogwoods introduced by Rutgers University that combine the native American and…
It’s not New Orleans
My wife was in New Orleans over the weekend to visit an old friend. I was invited, but of course she and her buddy were just being polite, and didn’t really want me intruding on their time to visit. New Orleans isn’t my kind of town, but it has some great gardens in public spaces…
Sweetshrub and other April flowering shrubs
Sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus, below) is native to much of the eastern United States. It’s not commonly found in gardens due to its unremarkable form and foliage, but I’m certain that it deserves greater consideration for shrub borders, and particularly for plantings at the partially shaded edge of wooded spaces. Sweetshrub’s April flowers are distinctive, though…
More flowers this year?
There are many more flowers this year on the Carolina silverbell (Halesia carolina, below). I don’t see any reason that warm winter temperatures would have resulted in more blooms. I don’t expect that the buds are killed off in a normal winter, so it’s more likely that some weather phenomena at the time the flower…
Flowering trees for the native garden
I grow a bit sad when the rosy-pink blooms of redbuds (Cercis canadensis, below) along the highway finally fade and disappear. Left behind is the lush green of the forest’s edge, occasionally punctuated by tangled masses of floriferous, but invasive Japanese honeysuckle. In some years, dogwood’s flowers will persist for a week or two longer…
Native shrubs and evergreens
Along local roadsides and in open fields that are no longer maintained as farmland the Eastern Red cedar is found in abundance. In a field of hundreds of these evergreens there will be significant differences in color of needles, shape, and size, so that no two plants appear identical. This is a notable example of…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 