Garden: Today's Photo(s)

This garden is planted in the small strip of land located to the north of our driveway.  Fall is undoubtedly its best season.

Cut-leaf Sumac and Aster "Wood's Blue" (I think) looking down our sloped driveway to the sidewalk.

Reverse view of the same Sumac and Asters.

Similar view--looking towards the house with the carport in the background.

Sumac with Calamagrostis "Karl Foerster" and my neighbor's oak tree in the background.  A beautiful, sunny moment.

Bugs.  Once I spotted one, I started seeing them everywhere.

Enjoying the intermittent, bright, sunshine.

Garden: Today's Photos--Lilies!

I spent a bit of time today addressing the necessities of gardening:  weeding the patio, raking alder leaves, pruning the neighbor's rampant and invading ivy, and watering thirsty potted plants.  Heck, every plant was thirsty today--it rained a few nights ago, but apparently not enough to yield much accumulation.  I really should buy a rain gauge so I'm not so hit-and-miss about these things.

Anyway, there was just enough time this evening to run around the front garden with my camera.  A few hot days brought out the lilies and the Digitalis parviflora are also blooming:  it's one of my favorite combinations.

Lilium "Landini", Digitalis parviflora "Hot Chocolate", Clematis chiisanensis "Lemon Bells", and Geranium "Jolly Bee" with my neighbor's ancient cherry tree providing a backdrop.

Lilium "Landini" with Geranium "Jolly Bee" and Actaea simplex.

A big mess of stuff, very different from my garden of a few years ago.

The Reverse View--taken from my neighbor's property and facing North.
"Quick Fire" Hydrangea is pinkening already!

Garden: Today's Photo from the Carport Bed

I wonder if this will be the height of the bloom for plants in the Carport Bed?  While this planting will be less floriferous in Summer and Fall than it is at present, I hope it will  continue look nice as the grasses predominate and the Sweet Cicely and "Jolly Bee" geranium come into flower.  Here's a photo taken today from a bee's ankles point of view:

Lots of bee-food in the Carport Bed.

Garden: Today in Photos

I spent this morning in the garden just pottering around--picking fallen leaves off the low plants that don't appreciate being smothered, plucking out the Shot Weed (Cardamine hirsuta, Hairy Bittercress) seedlings wherever I saw them,  and cutting down some of the more wretched-looking perennials.  While doing so, I was delighted to find some things looking especially fresh and full of life.  First up is this Lobelia seedling which sprouted in water collected in the cup of a Darmera leaf.

And then I checked on the Asarum europaeum.  These plants have taken a while to settle in, but they look like they'll grow into healthy clumps next year--lots of new buds at the crown.  They'll look lush and full with a new crop of shiny, dark green leaves, but they'll never look as fecund as they do right now.

Next to the Asarum is planted Chrysosplenium alternifolia, a small, evergreen, groundcover plant that was an impulse purchase from Far Reaches Farm.  This little plant has earned a warm spot in my heart.  At first, I sited it badly in an area that (I'm sure) was too wet and too shady.   The poor little thing just sat there dwindling slowly for months.  That's what happens with impulse purchases :-(  Eventually, I moved it to its current location and it perked up and started growing right away.  Then I discovered it unearthed and tossed aside, roots up--dug up by squirrels, probably.  I pushed it back in the ground and it took off growing again. I admire the tenacious survivors in my garden and this one certainly has proven itself. It is described in the Far Reaches Farm catalog as being about 6 inches tall, of indefinite spread, evergreen, and hardy to zone 5a.  This will be its first winter in my garden, so I can't attest to its winter hardiness, but it's more than quadrupled in size since I planted it in the current spot.  This little plant seems always to look tidy and fresh.  It is my hope that the Asarum and the Chrysosplenium (the leaves of the one--shiny, dark green, and round--contrasting with the hairy, lobed leaves of the other) will knit together into a low ground cover under a planting of ferns, hostas, and Arisaema in this woodland-y area of the garden.

Chrysosplenium alternifolia is tidy and fresh looking in all seasons.

Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata) is another plant that always looks fresh.  Its ferny, bright green foliage emerges early in the year to be followed by white umbels.  The umbels are not super impressive--they are more like irregular tufts of blossoms as opposed the the architectural flower heads of Sellenium or Ammi--and the foliage is less architectural overall, but I appreciate the way its fresh green mound of foliage fills in early and lingers late.  I've got a couple of sizable clumps of Sweet Cicely growing in either side of the front garden.

An out-of-season bloom on Sweet Cicely with spent foliage of Chasmanthium latifolium.  Isn't that spring-green foliage fresh looking?

Also in the front garden, the self-seeded white Borage is still pumping out flowers.  I've no idea where this white Borage came from as none of my neighbors grow borage (white or otherwise), but I recognized early last spring that the seedlings were something different and possibly worth saving.  I'm glad I preserved them.  I've enjoyed the Borage this year and I'm interested to see if it makes a return appearance next spring.  The flowers have been a nice addition to the garden and the woeful foliage has not been an issue as it has been disguised/obscured behind the other plantings.  (Although I know that the foliage is typically kind of sparse, maybe it won't look quite as woeful if I don't attempt to transplant the plants in mid-season.)

Around to the side of the house, the espaliered Camellia is blooming.  I moved it from the front of the house to the north side of the carport/garbage enclosure and I think it's pleased with the new location.

So that's a quick look at what is going on in my garden--a few fresh moments amid the senescence of Fall...

Garden: Thoughts on (My) Garden Color

I recently read a web article entitled Color: dense vs diffuse, by Michael McCoy of The Gardenist.  In it, he explored the different effects achieved by using vibrant, solid blocks of dense, hurts-your-eyes color (like the solid, hot pink of a Karume Azalea in bloom) vs the same color sprinkled among greens (as, for example, Knautia blooms).  He explained how using diffuse color (like the Knautia) can make an effective transition to a more solid block of color that would otherwise stand alone in a landscape.  The Knautia example was mine--and I totally mashed-up the author's Azalea example--but he shared several fantastic visual examples of plant combinations featuring dense/diffuse plant pairings.  His article is well worth reading--it's just a page long--and can be found here.  I've always been a fan of gentle transitions in the garden, so the general concept of stepping-down from an intense block of color to a graduated or diffuse version was not new to me but this eloquent essay got inside my head and it has been rattling around in there ever since.  

While I don't consider my garden to be a colorist garden, it is too small to leave color unconsidered. When I remodeled the front beds last year, one of my goals was to create a somber or dusky color palette. In addition to plants with dark or dusky flowers, I incorporated plants with dark foliage.  But I have been unsatisfied with the result despite continued tweaking.  One source of dissatisfaction has been the way in which plants with dark foliage tend to stick out like blobs within the big picture.  Having read Michael McCoy's article, I suddenly realized that non-green foliage functions like dense floral color in the landscape:  It needs to be stepped-down with a more diluted version.  D'oh!  I am not sure why that was not immediately obvious to me.

So, while I am still looking for more dusky options to strengthen my color palette, I realize that I need to look for wispy plants or plants having dark stems instead of focusing on big, dense, dark foliage plants like Sambucus nigra "Black Lace" or Sedum "Black Jack".  I'm having a bit of difficulty building that list:  I think that Pennisetum setaceum rubrum accomplishes the task; and I thought about blood grass although it is (probably) too bright red; Clematis recta purpurea would be OK if it vined instead of clumping strongly; maybe there's a really vining dark leafed geranium?--I have "Samobor" but it does not read "dark" to me.  Hmmm...this is not easy...

Here, for the purpose of critiquing the color palette, are some pictures of my garden taken during the past couple of days.  

I call this view the "reverse view" because the photo is taken from my neighbor's property looking parallel to the street--the opposite view from the one you'd get if you were approaching the house on the entry path.  

Reverse view. Everybody asks about the tall, skinny trees--
they are "North Pole" columnar apples.

Plants in this grouping that contribute to the dusky color palette are the Cimicifuga and the Digitalis parviflora "Milk Chocolate".  I didn't plan it, but I like how the Heuchera blooms in the background echo the color and form the Digitalis spikes.  The Cimicifuga seems like a pretty good choice for dark foliage in that it's rather ferny and not too dense.

...And a closer look at the Digitalis and lily "Landini".  Last year when the Digitalis was blooming, I'd just planted the Geranium and I admired the color echo between the brownish Digitalis spikes and the browned-off stems of the Geranium. (Last year's post about Digitalis.)  Fortunately, I still like the combo even though the geraniums are not brown but blooming.

Lily "Landini", Digitalis parviflora "Milk Chocolate", Cimicifuga, Geranium "Jolly Bee"

Here's another picture of the same plants but the viewpoint is shifted around to the street.  This view features a lot of deep reds contributed by the chocolate cosmos and the Sanguisorba "Red Thunder".  There's a Pennisetum setaceum "Rubrum" tucked in behind the Sanguisorba.

Chasmanthium latifolium, Cimicifuga, Digitalis parviflora, Geranium "Jolly Bee", 
Sanguisorba "Red Thunder", chocolate cosmos, Adenophora Tashiroi

...And a little closer.  

I think I made something pretty, but I'm still chasing the moodiness that I'd hoped to create.  In fact, I made a couple of changes just after I took these pictures.  I dug out all three clumps of Adenophora Tashiroi and two big, established sedums.  I took the Adenophora out because they flopped and their clear, light violet color just wasn't adding to the moodiness.  I'm not sure how I will replace them, but I'm leaning towards annual  larkspur "Blue Spires".  I like the darker blue color of the larkspur and I think I will prefer their single stems.  I also planted two Penstemon "Dark Towers" which, with their darker (but not too dark) foliage, should add to the moodiness.  I hope they do not clump up too vigorously--a narrow clump will suit my needs much better.

I am definitely not satisfied (or finished) with this garden bed.  At least, though, I have come closer to the solution.  Now I just need to research, research, research to find the plants which will help my vision come to fruition.

Garden: A Dark and Stormy Morning

We're having a pretty wintery storm right now--driving rain and gusty winds.  Most of the leaves (and a few smaller branches) are off the trees.  I also noticed that one of our neighbor's fences blew down.  Earlier today I went out to remove two black Hefty bags that had blown and caught in one of our trees--they look suspiciously like the bags that a neighbor filled with leaves and sat next to her house to await yard-waste collection.  

**And with a long hiatus while waiting for power to be restored...the rest of the post.

Espaliered camellia--blooming a month early?

Fothergilla gardenii "Mt. Airy"--a new addition to the garden this year.

Front garden on this stormy day.

Garden: Today's Photo(s)

A new day brings a new color scheme for the front garden...and, for someone who "doesn't like pink", a lot of pink. A lot of umbellifers, too, but I'm OK with that.   Although, you'll see why I made an effort to add more "spires" and "bobbles" during the great spring makeover.  

Sedum "Autumn Joy" with spent Queen Anne's Lace blooms.

Same plants with a bit of white coming from Gaura and some Joe Pye looming in the shady background.

Same plants, again, with an annual pennisetum to the left--I love this plant close-up, but it doesn't show well from a distance.

Garden: Today's Photo

Signs of fall are creeping into the garden--Eutrochium (Eupatorium) dubium "Phantom" with the ripening seedheads of Chasmanthium latifolium.

Garden: Today's Photo

The front border, planted this Spring, is finally starting to fill in.