Disappointments This Year

A cool, breezy fall day in the low 60s. The season is ending, and it's time to take stock.

There were many highlights, but today I'll list the disappointments of the year in the perennial garden.

Geranium wlassovianum has never had the clear sparkly red fall color that it did in 2010. The past few autumns it has looked brown and tired and bedraggled, and this year is no exception.




















Iris 'Immortality' did not rebloom at all this fall. Disappointing.

No shows this year included the pink evening primrose, Oenothera berlandieri, all but gone entirely.

Physostegia Miss Manners did not appear, despite forming such a big lovely stand in earlier years.

Chocolate Joe Pye Weed never turned up. It was there in spring, but failed to grow or bulk up, and never flowered.

I tried growing clematis 'Niobe' up the Austrian pine, and watered it faithfully and tended it, but it failed to grow. I am hoping the roots survive and it will take off next year. I did get a bloom before it started to melt away -- more magenta than red.

I've tried for a number of years now to grow ornamental oregano 'Kent Beauty' in pots. I loved it in 2010, but in the past couple years it just sulks. The hops form but they are brown and dusty, not pink. The foliage can be silver-veined and nice, but this year it seemed to shrivel and disappear, so the whole plant just looks brown and small. It isn't doing at all well for me. It once looked like this, but sure doesn't any more.

Of the annuals I tried this year, the small marigolds, Signet Lemon and Signet Tangerine, were too insignificant. Pretty enough I guess, and they did flower, but I was not a fan.

I was also not a fan of Blushing Susie thunbergia. The one trailing in the pot by the patio wall finally flowered in very late summer and looks nice enough, but the one growing on a tower never flowered.  The flowers were pale and washed out, only occasionally looking soft rose or peach.

Nasturtium 'Variegated Queen' started off very, very slowly, and did not climb the twig towers until very late in the season, around September. The leaves are huge and mottled, the plant more bushy than vining. One tower seems to have yellow flowers, the other orange.  I think I liked 'Gleam' and 'Moonlight' from last year better.

Dichondra 'Silver Falls' did well enough in a big urn by the front walk, but I was not a fan of its stringy dangling look. I like licorice plant better, it's fuller and just as silver and draping.

There were plenty of great successes in summer of 2013 to offset these few disappointments. But these annuals are not plants I would try again, and the perennials may or may not come back with any satisfaction in coming years.

Oh well.

Gusty and Showery

We got an inch of rain yesterday and today is gusty, windy, warm and showery. Very unsettled.

Despite the conditions I was able to finish planting the 150 or so daffodil bulbs. It was much harder work than I had expected.

I thought I could dig a big pit, throw a dozen in and then cover with dirt. Then dig another wide hole, etc.  But the asters and brambles and grasses and weeds made scrabbling around to even get to the dirt a real hassle.

Then clawing out a hole was hard -- easier today since the ground was wet, but still hard work. All of it on hands and knees, all of it in the mud and dirt.

Ah, but it is finished now.

I do hope the sight of yellow daffodils thickly planted, tumbling down the little slope will be pleasing in spring.

Roses and Daffodils

Muggy today and overcast, in the 70s. Damp, but no rain, and we need it badly now. It has been two weeks since we got rain while we were away in N. Carolina.

Yesterday I moved the carpet roses. I like them, and I loved their delicate scent as I went by so close on the walk. But they were too close, encroaching on the walkway despite frequent pruning.  They look manageable here, but I am after them all season long, and the fronts were getting too flat-shaped from all the pruning.

And they want to be 4 feet tall, maybe more. Too much for this space, and the thorns were a snag hazard rounding the bend. These are sharply thorny roses.

The weigela on the left has room and sun now to fill out. The sparse clump of Green Spice heuchera will bulk up now also. And the tiarellas at the foot of the sweetbay magnolia have some room and some sun too. I like the openness below the tree -- you can see its shape.

For the time being I stuck a white flowered vinca in there. I'll put in brighter annuals in summer next year.

The roses are now at the back of the Drive By Garden. They will be background shrubs, with a pop of color from a distance. I'll have to make a point of going around behind that strip to get a whiff of their scent.

Here's the thing with roses. They don't dig up with any kind of root ball and soil. The same thing happened with the rosa glauca I just moved -- after hacking off the long running roots, the remaining roots near the stem are paltry and don't hold soil when dug up.

The rosebush gets wrested out of the ground as a bare root plant, with no soil at the roots at all. But easy to carry to its new site that way. I hope the transplants take.

After the roses, it was time to plant more daffodils. This is what is still left to plant -- a bucket of bulbs -- but I only got about 20 in the ground today. Still more to do.

It has been so dry, and the compacted horrid soil on the slope where these are being planted is cement hard. All the asters and brambles and deep rooted grasses need to be clawed away, a small hole hacked out, dirt added, and then the bulb. Takes a lot of time and wrist strength.

So, more to do. Time to stop and admire the coloring foliage for now.

I love my blueberry farm at this time of year.

The funny orange sassafras, right in front of its still green partner.

The back hill, screening the road behind.

Red maples on the hill. They're not scarlet, not wine red, but rather a pinky blue red.

Looking east, from the dining room window, a lot of russet and gold.

Staghorn sumac turns clear red and shows a neat kind of shape.

You need a blue sky, not an overcast day, to show the reds at their best.

I've Decided

Summery today, humid. In the high 70s, sunny, and dry. It felt very much like an Indian Summer day. The trees have started to color and fall is in the air but it was warm.

The view from in back of the spruce berm is awesome. I was out by the compost pile, digging up a bucket of dirt, and looked up. This is what I saw.

Color all along the edge of the road. The red maples are turning and that one odd sassafras, with its tiered branches, is turning orange on the right.

The Alba Luxurians clematis is prettier than ever. The hummers are gone, so they don't even get to see how nicely the clematis is reblooming.

I've decided I will take out the Swiss Stone Pine. It just is too big to fit where I want it. The only reason I got one was for dense, tall screening -- first at the back of Meadow's Edge, and then thinking it would block the neighbor's house, that ugly oddly shaped side.

But there just isn't room at the back of this border. If I move the pine back further, cutting the back side of this garden into a wider arc right up to the property line, the tree will eventually grow into their yard. By quite a bit. By a lot. And still be crowding my side.

Behind the panicle hydrangea is the parrotia -- a narrow, tall, and elegant tree some day.  The sweetgum in the center will also be tall and fill out, although it too will stay narrower. Putting a big dense evergreen so very close to both of those specimen trees will be too much.

The Swiss Stone Pine goes. I will move both the red carpet roses there, and that will give a sense of definition at the back, a pop of color almost all summer, and  . . . . well.  That's what I've decided.

I spent the morning planting daffodil bulbs on the back hill. I got 100 from Whiteflower Farm ("The Works") but almost all had bulblet offsets that I broke off, so I really have 150 bulbs or more to plant. I got about 50 or 60 in the ground before it was too hot and humid to do more.

I really hope it will be worth it next spring!

It was hard work to claw out a depression in the powdery hard cement-dirt using the Cobrahead, and pop a bulb in the shallow hole. Then cover with fresh dirt from our stone wall excavation.

Very hard work!

Instead of spreading them out in the meadow where the damp wet rots them, I am planting only on the small sandy slope off to the right. I hope I am planting densely enough.  I have at least 100 more to go!

In more fall news, the spicebushes on the back of the berm are bright lemony yellow. It helps that I have been pruning them to control their size and encroachment on the spruces.

Yesterday we went to NYC and visited Wave Hill Gardens. I love that place.

The day was a top 10. A cool breeze, warm sun, blue sky, just beautiful. I think I was meant to live in an arboretum.

Second Thoughts!

The Swiss Stone Pine is too close to everything. I was blinded by the gnats, couldn't see for the sweat streaming in my eyes when I put it in yesterday. What was I thinking? Too, too close.

I need to cut out a wider arc on the back side of the Drive By Garden, move the pine back further, and then still hope I can keep everything around it narrow and tidy.

Easy enough to do. But should I?

Do I really want this large dense pine at the back of the Drive By Garden? Too much?

It's already looking quite wild and overgrown with the witch hazels and the sweetgum and eventually the parrotia there. And the Mariesii doublefile viburnum hasn't even begun to fill up its spot just to the right of the pine.

Maybe just take the Stone Pine out? It was dug up with few roots, is listing already, and may not make it anyway. I don't mind sacrificing it, and I am not crazy about expanding the back edge of this garden any more than it is.

But what would I put in that empty space if I forego the big, tall Stone Pine?

Something with a dense structure, but not so big.

Gnatty Day

Another beautiful sunny day, but this time it actually got quite hot, up to 80 degrees, and a little humid.

I have been on such a roll this past week getting major jobs done while the weather has been so nice, that I plunged into some big tasks today, not realizing how hot it was getting.

I was moving and transplanting, and soon sweat was dripping miserably into my eyes. The air was still, no breeze at all, and gnats were bothering me. They harass the eyes and my ears.

By lunch I was very uncomfortable. When I came in I found that I had a bite right at the inside corner of my eye, and the whole under-eye area was red and swollen.

I look punched. It's puffy and discolored and kind of itchy.

Damn gnats.

But here is what I got done:

I dug up the rosa glauca (after cutting off about a third of the longest arching canes) and moved it to the dry creek bed. I like it much better in this site, with some structure and other plants around it.

The orange hips compete with the red winterberries, but only a little. There is almost no foliage left on the rose now. I hope it lives through this transplant.

Then I dug up the poor Swiss Stone Pine. You couldn't even see it at the back of Meadow's Edge. It had gotten all shaded and overgrown, tall and sparse.

In winter and early spring it has plenty of light, but the grasses at the back, the leaves from the birch above, and the winterberry shrubs crowd it in summer. Here it was last April, enjoying some space.

Here is the transplanted Swiss Stone Pine, now in open sun, close to the little juniper on its left and near the tallish sweet gum on its right. A few more feet away is the parrotia, which I will limb up as it gets big enough.

I transplanted the little blue juniper over a few inches. Really. I had already moved it about two feet over from the growing ninebark earlier in the summer, now I moved it back a few inches. I may kill it yet.

The whole back edge is going to be dominated by that Swiss Stone Pine eventually. Here is a mature one at Tower Hill. Narrow, dense, sort of like a giant dwarf Alberta spruce in shape.

And here it is again, for scale, next to a Norway Spruce, showing how it is combined with other plants. It fits well in tight quarters, so I hope my nearby 'Vanessa' parrotia will grow tall and upright right next to it, the sweetgum in front will be narrow and back right up to the pine, and the juniper will stay small and is far enough over . . . have I really left anywhere near enough room?

Time will tell.

A Jog in the Wall

Another dry, sunny, cool autumn day. Lovely. Temperatures were in the 70s, too cool in the shade and a little hot in the sun.

I made a mistake with the low stone wall (edging) along the east side. It runs right over a sprinkler head, and this morning, after the sprinklers went off, there was the plastic head popped up tall, with rocks canting to either side.

It had simply popped up, displaced the rocks and knocked them to either side.  So I made a jog in the wall.

Then I put down 3 bags of mulch (3 cu. feet each, so it took a third of a cubic yard to cover this border).

I also took out the Korean spirea 'Pink Parasols' that was crowded under the Rose of Sharon. I liked it more in theory than in practice.

It had pretty flowers, but they were brief, and the rest of the time it was nondescript. It was probably too shady on this side of the house under the Rose of Sharon, so its foliage never colored well in fall and it flopped.

I thought about moving it, but in the end I took it out. The roots went everywhere. Long snaky stretches of roots had to be ripped up. Now the area looks cleaner and more open, and the brick wall is visible. I'll let the deutzia fill in where the empty space is.

I did love this spirea and am sorry to have it gone.  It had pretty flowers, and the leaves held water droplets like St. Johnswort does.

It was pretty, but had outgrown the space, and was flopping. Too bad.

I think I will miss it.

Sense of Accomplishment

Another beautiful fall day. In the low 70s, still and sunny.

How much I am getting done! So far, since late August I have built a stone wall, moved the fothergillas in the gravel garden, expanded the east side border, built a stone edging wall there, planted new abelias, mukdenias, and now the dwarf deutzias.

I planted the three I had ordered from Lazy S and the two I had potted up from my own plants. But in the end I could have filled this whole area with layered cuttings from my mature Nikko deutzia gracilis plants nearby. There were many rooted cuttings to be had -- just dig them up and transplant! So I added several from my own plants and eventually they will fill this area as a mounding groundcover.

They will take several years. They are not fast growing, but when they fill in, they are dense and smother all weeds.

This east side has been a challenge from the beginning. All I want to do is hide the black waterproofing along the foundation (and bits of orange insulation that stick up too, and the black hose that runs along the house).

But every solution has been trouble. The area immediately slopes away steeply, and I need a lot of fill to grade this border up to cover the black waterrproofing. Added dirt and mulch just melt into the ground and never cover enough.

But this time I think the arching, foot tall deutzia will at least be tall enough to hide that edge of the foundation. And with the wider, stone edged border now, I was able to add 4 cartloads of soil to bring the level up a little more.

I think this looks more proportional and when the deutzia fills in it will hide what I want it to cover.

Now, here is what I still have left to do:

• Plant 100 Whiteflower Farm daffodil bulbs on the back hill
• Take out the Pink Parasols spirea that is crowding the Rose of Sharon -- you can see it here, not adding anything, and hiding the nice brick wall.

• Move the carpet roses to that empty area, under the side of the deck.  

The roses reach out over the walk and are getting bigger and bigger. I prune them every week, and can't really keep them from eating the walkway. They need to be moved.

• Move the rosa glauca to the dry creek bed.
• Move the Swiss Stone pine to Drive By garden (where the rosa glauca is now)
• Plant the additional rhus aromaticas (4) in Drive By garden.
• Move the large rhus aromatica that is crowding the doublefile viburnum.

So much to do yet, but what a sense of accomplishment already.

Here are some happy pictures to end with today:

Nice. Really nice.