Last time I wrote, I was pondering a mini-remodel of the front garden. I'd decided to swap out some grasses and replace the orange-ish geums with another color. It took a while to marshall my forces, but I've done it. Where craft is concerned, I make no idle threats--if I see something that doesn't work or doesn't fulfill my vision, I ruminate on it (in a frantic, obsessive, not altogether pleasant fashion) until I find a solution and then I get it done.
So, I decided to swap out the three Pennisetum "Hameln" for Melica uniflora f. albida. Far Reaches Farm sells Melica, but their website showed "Out of Stock." No problem! I sent an email asking if they had any plants that would soon be ready to ship and they rounded up enough plants to fill my entire order. I really like ordering from Far Reaches Farm! The people are always nice, the plants are always healthy, and the packaging is amazing. See for yourself:
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| Big box of plants arrives via overnight. |
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| Each individual plant is lovingly wrapped. |
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| Plant Number One |
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| Soon, there were twelve happy plants (and a GIANT pile of recyclable packaging materials). |
This is what the front garden looked like before I dug into it:
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| Front garden (photo taken a couple of weeks ago). |
And here (below) is the "After". I've removed one of the big sedums and three Pennisetum and replanted with the baby Melica. I also cut back the spent geraniums with the hope that they'd send up a fresh flush of leaves. It looks a little choppy now, but I think the change will prove to have been a good one. I love the airy spangles of the Melica seed heads and I think the Melica will make a nice continuity between the two Calamagrostis brachytricha that also share the space.
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| Garden after removing the Pennisetum and one Sedum "Autumn Joy" and replanting with Melica. |
On the other side of the entry path, I swapped out the Geum "Flames of Passion" for "Banana Daiquiri". "Flames of Passion" was a nice plant--eager and trouble-free-- but it wasn't quite the color that I'd wanted. I replaced it with "Banana Daiquiri". (I'd been looking for Gimlet, another yellow Geum in the "Cocktail series", but Gimlet is unavailable locally and I decided to compromise for the locally available plant.) "Banana Daiquiri" opens to a more sulphery yellow than I like, but it ages to a pleasant margarine yellow. The yellow is picked up in the back of the planting bed by a Kirengeshoma koreana which will bloom with bell-shaped yellow flowers. And the yellow is echoed across the path in the flowers of the Clematis chiisanensis "Lemon Bells". I also prefer the way in which the yellow Geum flowers interact with the spring-green and coral new growth of the Vine Maples planted adjacent.
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| Geum "Banana Daiquiri" |
Well, that's all I've got at the present. We are enjoying warm, dry weather, so I'm spending a lot of time hand watering the new transplants and water-thirsty specimens throughout the garden. I'm also working on a totally different, non-gardening project, Maybe (fingers crossed) I can share soon a finished product post on that project. :-) On to those tasks!
