Where the Wild Things Grow

We got two and a quarter inches of rain from the soaker storm earlier this week. Everything looks so much better. Especially the weeds.

Multiflora roses are blooming now and they are pretty, but they are absolutely everywhere that isn't paved or mowed. They were introduced in this area for use as pasture fences -- no cattle can get through the dense thickets -- and it seems to work; I have not seen any cows in the meadow around our house in all the years we have lived here.

Out in the wild meadow I have been trying to identify the woody volunteers, other than roses, that pop up. There are several that grow taller than the weeds and I try to i.d. what they are.

I posted a week ago about Siberian elm. That's a tree I don't want here, but I am barely controlling all the thickets and saplings that are spreading about.

There are oak tree seedlings anywhere an acorn was dropped or buried, and that's fine. I like oaks, although I move some of the volunteers around so there won't be a massive tree in the wrong spot in a few decades.

I was not sure what these glossy leaved saplings were; they appear in the meadow in a couple spots:

I think they are Prunus serotina, or wild cherry. Shiny leaves, finely toothed margins, and I could even see little shiny lenticels on the stems. We do have cherry trees growing in the woods nearby. This is an aggressive tree that takes over disturbed land. That's our meadow -- a torn up swath of earth ready for anything invasive.

I'm letting them be. Cherry trees in the meadow are okay.

A Chinese mulberry tree, Morus alba, has leaped up out of the tall grass and I see some other seedlings nearby. The leaves are distinct and easy to identify. It's growing like gangbusters, a tall weedy thing. I'll leave it for now, but it is an alien invader that can take over sunny open spots.

There is one woody seedling that has puzzled me. The newest leaves are simple, but older ones develop three lobes, very distinctly shaped and cut at the bottom. These seedlings are reddish purple so they stand out against the green grasses and weeds.

There are actually two plants, and they are woody and tree-like, even though both are only a foot tall right now. One was found on the west side of the meadow, the other growing on the east side, 200 feet away.

I have to assume anything growing easily in disturbed ground is an invasive or aggressive seeder, so this can't be some unusual, unique specimen. It has to be something common or alien.

But . . . . the leaf shape, size, and color, and the alternate arrangement all look exactly like a purple cutleaf crabapple called Malus 'Royal Raindrops'. Can it be? Could birds have dropped crabapples in the meadow from someone's landscape tree nearby?

images of 'Royal Raindrops' look like the leaves on my seedlings

I'll definitely keep growing these two volunteers out in the meadow -- if they really are 'Royal Raindrops' crabapples, they will be lovely trees and I might transplant them to a nice spot.

'Royal Raindrops' crabapple in flower

Wow. After all the unwanted Siberian elms, trashy Ailanthus, nightmare Oriental bittersweet and multiflora roses, and after all the cottonwood volunteers and wild cherries and mulberries overtaking the meadow and hill in back, could it really be that a very nice specimen cultivar is growing where the wild things are?

Into June

Rain finally! Lots of it.

As we round the path into June, dragging spring drought and winter damage behind us, summer is opening up in front of us with much to notice.

First of all, even as June arrives, I am still toting up what winter did here. The redbud (Cercis canadensis) 'Forest Pansy' struggles. This is not the look I want in the center of the garden.

Lots of dieback, few leaves, late emergence. . . .

It barely bloomed, but did put out some pink flowers very late. It did not leaf out at all for ages, then finally tentatively opened some leaves last week but left many branches bare.

Like my Stewartias, redbuds are just not reliably winter hardy here at all. This is my third attempt. A 'Silver Cloud' redbud never made it through even one winter. A small 'Forest Pansy' was simply decapitated one winter, with its top lying on the ground a few feet away. I replaced it with this nice sized 'Forest Pansy' but for two winters in a row this one has struggled.

Does it make sense to keep it? It's potentially beautiful, but not when it looks so scraggly each year.

I dunno. Could you live with this?
Potential for a beautiful tree is there, maybe it will outgrow its winter wimpiness in time?

This past winter was also the first time my Rose of Sharon got zapped. It is one of the latest to leaf out, so just now as June arrives, I can see all the dead twigs at the top. It lives, but is filling out only on its lower branches, leaving a lot of dieback at the top.

The red buckeye, Aesculus pavia, put out one, and only one, bloom this year. Winter zapped all the rest of the buds, just as it did with the flowering dogwood, which had no flowers this year at all.

The lone buckeye flower spike

This buckeye is young, but had been a heavy bloomer even at a young age in past years. I was really looking forward to seeing it covered in red firecrackers to match my new red chairs, but winter got to this tree along with so many others.

Even without blooms though, the little red buckeye is looking okay, all leafed out and growing nicely.

It's little, but it's leafy. Wouldn't that twiggy sapling have looked great dressed in red explosions,
right in front of the red chairs? Yeah, I thought so too.

I am so done with looking at the havoc of last winter in my garden. It's June already. There are summery sights to see, and I am going to go look.

Kintzley's Ghost honeysuckle (Lonicera reticulata)
Later the round bracts turn ghostly silver.

Dwarf deutzia 'Nikko' is stunning, and a workhorse, covering ground, blooming beautifully.
I have it all along the west walk, and planted a big swath along the east side of the house too.

The Birch garden has issues --
I had to lop off much of the sweetspire shrubs (itea virginica) in the center of this garden because of winter dieback.
But "May Night' salvia, 'Blaze' peony and the bright 'Orange Dream' Japanese maple look wonderful!

Amsonias this year were the best I've seen them. The dry spring was to their liking.
Usually they bloom briefly and look washed out.
This year they flowered for a long time, and kept their delicate blue hue.

The amsonias above are A. tabernaemontana and A. hubrichtii, two varieties of bluestar. A low growing cultivar called 'Blue Ice' flowers a week or two later. It's just blooming as June arrives, and has purple, rather than pale blue flowers.

I am absurdly happy with how 'Blue Ice' amsonias flank a yellow creeping sedum called 'Weihenstephaner's Gold'. I like how their shapes and colors go together.

Unfortunately the amsonia and sedum are directly below the struggling redbud, but if I try hard I can ignore the redbud and just see the parts that make me happy.

After all my complaining about winterkill and dieback and trees that are stunted and shrubs that wintered poorly, I have to say some things came through fine. The red maples, the conifers, the river birches and many others shrugged at arctic conditions.

Surprisingly, American holly, Ilex opaca, which is at the very northern fringe of its range here and which is subject to winterburn, came through with absolutely no unsightly leaf issues and not a bit of damage. Really. I did not see that coming, and had prepared for heartbreak this spring, but it looks great.

Ameircan holly - Ilex opaca - showing no damage after this winter.
The big silver maple behind it in the distance didn't make it, though.

The holly has the normal yellowing of last year's leaves that are dropping off now as new growth emerges, but not a bit of browning or desiccation. It's rangy, still in its adolescent shape, but if this holly continues to survive our winters as it has so far, it will be a lovely big shapely tree.

And here's another one that sailed through winter, looking better this year than ever: the paperbark maple.

As we move into June, I am making a pact with myself to stop looking at winter damage. Spring is going by, losses have been noted, pruning surgeries have been conducted, and some damage is just going to have to be tolerated. Okay?

Peony Heaven

I went searching for a peony to add to my garden, and found myself in peony heaven, just a short distance from my house.

Peony heaven is a real place. It is Cricket Hill Garden, in Thomaston, Connecticut. It's a nursery and show garden dedicated to every kind of herbaceous, intersectional and tree peony you could want.

Since it was late May, the herbaceous peonies were blooming, but the intersectionals and the later tree peonies weren't out yet. The herbaceous peonies need umbrellas to keep their heavy blooms out of damaging rain, but we have had so little rain in Connecticut this spring that they really weren't necessary. But they were decorative.

An entire wooded hillside, an area around a pond, and a stretch of stepped terraces had hundreds of peonies growing. There were paths to wander that let you get up close to see each special peony.

Milkweed and clover and dandelions and weeds of every kind were allowed to complement the peonies and I was surprised at how well that worked, growing so closely together. There were alliums and roses and viburnums too. Everything looked naturalized, but of course it was all highly tended.

Scattered among the peonies were glass sculptures by Mundy Hepburn, a nephew of the actress Katherine Hepburn. He makes these Chihuly-type big garden glass shapes, and they are filled with inert gas (like neon) so they must glow at night, although we were only there in the daytime.

Big multi-petal peony bombs in pinks and magentas stole the show. And there were quite a few fried egg peonies -- the clear white ones with egg yolk centers. But my favorites were the demure single blooms in creamy soft colors. Like this delicate yellow single petal variety.

In my own garden I have only one herbaceous peony, a fire engine red one called 'Blaze'. It is open now, but does not bloom for more than a week. It's brief but intense.

At Cricket Hill I picked up another, this time an intersectional called 'Bartzella' that is a lovely upright shape, and has yellow double and semi double blooms that flower in June. It's a popular variety and quite showy.

The staff at Cricket Hill were friendly and informative and I had a long chat with a woman who clearly loves these beautiful plants and thinks she works in a place close to heaven.

Here is what she told me to do with my new 'Bartzella" -- I must not disturb it right now. I am to put the whole pot in the ground now, enjoy it this summer, and then when the leaves turn brown in fall, and only then, I can take it out of the ground, unpot it and plant it in its permanent spot. Peonies don't like disturbance unless they are going dormant for winter.

It won't flower this year, and maybe not next year, but she spent so much time picking out just the right container with the best looking stems and the most promise, that I felt I was adopting a pet and not buying a plant. Her care and concern was touching.

I think I am supposed to send her postcards every year showing its progress as it grows up.

Cricket Hill Garden

Comments

To anyone who reads this diary:

A couple people have noted that I don't have comments enabled on this blog.

Actually, if you click on the title of the post it will bring up the post with the comment field opened at the bottom and you can leave any notes there you would like to -- I do read them.

I am not trying to discourage anyone who is interested in contact, but I am trying to control spam on what is my personal journal.

My other blog (now no longer active) had the title My Weeds Are Very Sorry, and even with word verification and spam filters, I struggled with way too many off topic comments because the word "weed" was searched. Go figure.

At least this journal doesn't have trigger words in the title, but even so, I'm keeping a low profile for random commenters who are not interested in gardening. But for those of you who I follow and those of you who are interested in my garden woes and successes, you can leave a comment if you don't mind clicking the post title to open up the comments section.     

Black Bear

Hot, humid and breezy this Memorial Day Monday. And dry. The story of this spring I guess.

We saw a black bear ambling through the yard behind the Birch Garden this morning. Very big, very black, and unconcerned with us. The GPS radio collar on its neck was visible so it was a bear whose movements the wildlife department tracks, probably because this one is a known nuisance near homes.

Not our bear (camera was not at hand) but this is what our visitor looked like

In the afternoon I went over to water my neighbor's pots, since they are away for Memorial Day weekend. Jim insisted he go with me, and he carried a stick and whistled the theme song from the movie 'Brazil' which he apparently has determined scares bears.

My neighbor's hummingbird feeder was on the ground, the pole was bent at an angle, and it was clearly the work of a black bear with a sweet tooth. Her feeder was at the edge of her patio, just a few feet from the doors that lead from their bedroom onto the patio. That's close.

Should I take down our hummingbird feeder, which is also just feet from our door?

I'm not really afraid of encountering the bear. Black bears are usually not threatening or aggressive, but I don't want it quite so close to the house, and I don't want our hummingbird feeder ruined.

It puts me in mind of a warning found on a park sign in British Columbia that details safety practices around bears. The picture of it is not in great focus, so if you can't read it, scroll below and read the words.

It contains good advice, although it never mentions whistling "Brazil" as a deterrent. The sign says:

Due to the frequency of human-bear encounters, the B.C. Fish and Wildlife Branch is advising hikers, hunters, fishermen and any persons that use the out of doors in a recreational or work related function to take extra precautions while in the field. 

We advise the outdoorsman to wear little noisy bells on clothing so as to give advance warning to any bears that might be close by so you don't take them by surprise. 

We also advise anyone using the out of doors to carry "Pepper Spray" with him in case of an encounter with a bear. 

Outdoorsmen should also be on the watch for fresh bear activity, and be able to tell the difference between black bear feces and grizzly bear feces. Black bear feces is smaller and contains lots of berries and squirrel fur. Grizzly bear shit has bells in it and smells like pepper.

Now I know.

Gladiator Parade

Very cool out. It is sunny but the air is only in the mid 60s with a stiff breeze, so it's sweater weather.

With bright sun and big breezes, the half inch of rain from a few days ago is long gone and we're pretty dry again. I water the new plantings and we're running the sprinklers.

I had very specific design goals for a planting of Alliums along the driveway. The last two autumns I have put in several dozen Allium 'Gladiator' bulbs, a lavender purple globe onion.

I wanted these tall soldiers to march up the length of the driveway garden, right up the middle, forming a parade of striking forms in May.

Mostly that is working although I have to move some bulbs around to get them out from under the doublefile viburnum where they are crowded. And the parade could stretch a little longer through the whole bed. I'll move some bulbs after flowering is done.

They were planted under the branches of fragrant sumac, which leafs out very late, so the design intent was to have the onions featured in May, and have their deteriorating foliage hidden when the sumac's leaves came out.

That's working pretty well as designed, although you can't really hide the crappy foliage completely.

I also included some white globes, to soften the purple parade. I interspersed Allium 'Mt. Everest' among the purple globes. It's a muted creamy white, and not as big or as tall as 'Gladiator'.

That's not really working as I planned. The white ones are lost. They are pale and smaller and hard to even see, so they don't really provide any contrast.

Overall I like the effect, though. I can move a few around and improve the length of the parade, and that will be a little better. Globe alliums are such oddities -- so tall and structural and so much like soldiers marching along in step.

I have my own Memorial Day parade right here in my garden.

Siberian Elm

We ended up with a half inch of soaking rain yesterday. It refreshed things after the long dry, but we need more. It was so welcome, though.

For years I have been finding wild saplings of a tree growing on the back hill in suckering thickets. I try to cut it back so I can encourage the maples and sweetgums and tupelos and oaks I have planted to grow unimpeded, but it is a really tough thing to eliminate.

It can't be dug up no matter how hard I try, and the bendy young stems are tough to cut through with even the sharpest pruners.

I kept wondering what it was. I have never been able to get rid of it. It's everywhere.

Then it started to appear along the edge of the meadow, right where Jim stops mowing and the wild takes over. I've been leaving the young trees, thinking it will be nice to have volunteer saplings there, growing into eventual shade trees at the edge of the lawn.

But what the heck kind of tree are they? The leaves look like elms, or maybe beeches.

I was getting a little uneasy because they're growing in earth that was disturbed when the house was built, they are tenaciously rooted, fast growing, and suckering. And they seem to be everywhere. Their best friends on the hill seem to be Oriental bittersweet, multiflora rose and poison ivy.

I finally decided to do some research before letting them grow any more at the edge of our yard. Pictures / descriptions confirmed this is Siberian elm, Ulmus pumila. The uneven base of the leaf, the way the toothed margins point forward, the leaf shape and the flat green color were matches for Siberian elm.

It's an Asian elm, on Connecticut's invasive threat list. It's aggressive, it grows in poor soils and it is an unattractive and disease prone tree. It should not be planted. Of course it moved into the disturbed earth of the hill and the meadow around our house.

MoBot says:
Siberian elm is not recommended for landscape use today because of its weak, easily damaged limbs and branches, its susceptibility to numerous insect and disease pests, and its general lack of ornamental interest. It could be effectively grown in poor soils, as a windbreak, or along slopes for erosion control where ornamental features are not an issue.

I'll never be able to get rid of it on the hill where thickets keep forming below the maples and other trees. But I'm going to take down those saplings in the meadow right now and paint the cut stems with Brush B Gone so they don't sucker.

On the 29th Day

A gentle deep soaker is underway. After 29 days of zero precipitation, right at the most vulnerable time in spring, it is now finally raining.

Relief.

Heart Shaped Tree

So dry. Too dry. Some trees do not fully leaf out until the third week of May here, and the lack of any rain for 27 days now is keeping everything in check.

A very hard, very bad winter and a very dry, rainless spring are taking a toll. As unhappy as it all makes me and as bad as some things look, there are bright spots.

Like a tree in the shape of a heart. Is this a message to cheer up or what?

It is 'Orange Dream' Acer palmatum and it made it through the winter. I had doubts. It is barely hardy here, a zone 6 plant. It did have a lot of dieback at the top, and it leafed out very late this year -- normally in late April or early May it opens bright orange leaves that blaze from afar, before the leaves turn chartreuse for the summer.

This year it skipped the orange stage, stayed leafless well into May, but eventually opened up with its summer color and only a touch of orange leaves at the top. I trimmed off the dieback twigs.  This shrubby Japanese maple is only five feet tall, so I could trim it pretty easily.

When I finished tidying up, I stood back and noticed the sweet shape of this little tree -- a big heart for me!

Just to the right of the heart tree irises are blooming (sugary white 'Immortality') and columbines are out (all purple now, my cultivars all self seeded to purple).

The camassias have opened their starry flower spikes. They always look so pale and they read lavender gray from a distance. Up close they are actually blue like the pyramid next to them.

The strappy, glossy foliage of the camassias looked very wilted a few days ago. I watered and they perked up little, but the whole stand of them is muted this year.

Wood hyacinths (Scilla) scattered about in the Birch Garden were complete no shows this spring. There are lots of clumps of them and the foliage emerged but then wilted out. Too dry I guess.

Doublefile viburnum never ever disappoints, though. It is reliable and stunning every year and even after a hard winter and no rain, it is flowering on time and beautifully.

Jim calls it the wedding cake shrub, and it is always in bloom for our anniversary.

With heart trees and wedding cake shrubs in the May garden, it's all good. We could use some rain, though.

Possibilities and Potential

After all the heat and humidity we've had, it is now typically cold May weather. Still no rain. There is a possibility of 3/10ths of an inch tomorrow, which is the same as saying no rain in the forecast.

'Forest Pansy' redbud (Cercis canadensis) is utterly unimpressive, and a little worrisome. It blooms, but sparsely. It has a couple leaves emerging, but I'll have to wait til the end of May to see if it comes in at all.

After the discouragement of losing beautiful trees this spring, I don't want Forest Pansy to be a bust. This is one tree that does not look like much until maturity I think. Right now it is just spindles with goofy bits of pink and very little evidence of leaf buds. But the promise of a nice looking tree is there.

The blackhaw (Viburnum prunifolium) next to it is finally blooming well. The flat white flowers cover the front of this small tree, but the back half got frost burnt earlier this spring (on a morning when there was no frost anywhere else -- but in my strange garden temperature anomalies and odd conditions abound).

This border has potential -- when that potential is realized a beautiful magenta redbud will bloom next to a fully flowering viburnum with blue forget me nots in the background. For now it's pathetic looking in spring.

Another pathetic looking border with potential is the top of my rock wall, where I have phlox sublulata clumps that will someday spread and drape over the stones in a thick carpet of pink.

It's not happening, though. I have been at this for three years now, planting moss phlox 'Fort Hill', watching it disappear and then planting more each spring. Nothing spreads, nothing drapes, and the plants I put in shrink each year. The reason there are pink clumps there at all is because I buy new plants annually.

It's time to give up on the moss phlox and just plant bugleweed (Ajuga reptans) at the top of the wall instead. Look how beautifully Ajuga 'Chocolate Chip' has spread and how gloriously it blooms next to the walk leading to the patio.

Ajuga won't drape over the wall with that liquid look that phlox gets, but it will creep to the edge of the stones and it will fill the area under the smokebush. Instead of planting new phlox each year for a clumpy look that never spreads, should I unleash the rampant potential of ajuga to carpet this area?

It's a member of the mint family, which is why it spreads, and also why it gets out of control. Dilemma.

(update: Or how about rock cress? Arabis? A great suggestion from Patty in the comments to this post is making me think that might be a good solution to top the wall. Hmmmm)

Here's a tree whose potential was never realized until now -- the river birch at the end of the berm is no longer stuffed in between two spruces. We took out the spruces last winter, and the birch just spread out and filled in this spring in a way I had not seen before.

I had liked the woodsy look of leafy birch and stiff blue spruce mingled together, but never realized the possibilities of the birch standing by itself.

And here's a little tree that holds some real promise -- between the metal tuteur of clematis and the tree stump there is a rounded leafy little thing.

It is a gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa) which is a suckering shrubby dogwood that I am training into a single trunk tree, much like I did with the blackhaw viburnum. It will be a smallish tree, and I am already pleased to see it take on a potentially graceful form.

It's already mid May and I don't want to deal with winter losses any more. I like dealing with the possibilities of what might be in my garden instead.