Garden: Rain Drop Dash!

Well--as the title suggests, I dashed out between rain squalls to grab a few photos of the garden.  I'd been hoping to capture some evocative, richly tinted photos of the garden bathed in golden, afternoon sun--but that ain't going to happen!  At the moment, I predict that even if the sun makes a reappearance, all the leaves will have rotted or been driven to the ground by the heavy rains.  Already, I'm seeing a lot of decomposition and leaf drop even before the leaves have had a chance to color.  Maybe we haven't had the cold snap that we need to help develop leaf color?  Maybe this is the legacy of a rather droughty summer that stressed many of the plants? Truth be told, autumn color is a bit scarce everywhere in my neighborhood.

So, here's what we have in the garden today:

Front garden taken from the entry path (looking south, towards my neighbor's ancient cherry tree).  

"Long view" of the front garden taken from the carport.  Did anyone notice?--the unhappy Chasmanthiums are missing...an improvement already, I think.  The bright yellow plant is Amsonia "Blue Ice"  I moved it during the summer and it colored brilliantly.  The other plants won't achieve this fall coloration.

Some of the denizens of the "Carport Garden" located to the right of the path.  I think this planting will prove to be successful--I like the combination of the dark foliage (Ajuga "Mahogany and Salvia lyrata "Purple Volcano") with the other low, green groundcovers.  That's an Allium "Summer Beauty" in the foreground.

Cut Leaf Sumac with Calamagrostis "Karl Foerster" behind--in the bed to the north of the driveway.  I recently planted some asters ("Wood's Blue", I think) near the Sumac and, even though the camera cannot capture both plants at once, the fall color of the Sumac adjacent to the blue aster flowers is a really nice combination right now.

A little Halloween spirit and the Japanese anemones still making a bit of a display.

The walk around the side of the house to the backyard.

Rain-beaten Ageratina altissima "Chocolate" in the shady backyard with Hydrangea "Bombshell" and Darmera peltata.  Last year I wondered about the fall color of the "Bombshell" hydrangeas--the one most recently planted colored up a brilliant flame hue while the remainder showed peachy and pale yellow colors.  Well, this year I think they won't be able to hold onto their leaves long enough to achieve much color.  All the plants look like this and there are already quite a few leaves on the ground.

Still a few blooms on the Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum "Watanabe"  I think I'm going to like this shrub!  It's a more-dwarf form of V. plicatum which flowers heavily in late spring and repeats off-and-on throughout the summer and fall. This, after I almost killed it by letting it bake in its nursery pot on a super-hot afternoon.

Yep.  It's different this year.  This is a picture of the front garden taken on October 20, 2013.  Definitely more lush and colorful, fresher, and greener.

So.  That's what is going on in my garden at the moment.  It's currently raining cats and dogs, so I'm happy to stay indoors working on craft projects and finishing my son's Halloween costume.

Garden: Photos of Early Fall

Well, Fall sure announced itself dramatically!  Last week, the television news coverage was all about "Storm Watch" and the "Weather Tracker".  In fact, we did see almost a week of rain, heavy at times, and accumulated (I'm told) about 3 inches of precipitation.  Usually, our rains are pretty gentle so that's a lot of rain from a single storm system.  The garden soaked it all up, though, and I think the plants were happy finally to quench their thirst.

It's bright, sunny, and pleasant now, so I wandered around the garden for a while with my camera.

Lacey textures in the front garden:  Pennisetum "Hameln", Ammi visnaga "Green Mist" and spent Allium "Summer Beauty" (which would, maybe, have held-up better if I hadn't transplanted it in mid-summer)

Dried stems of Salvia lyrata "Purple Volcano" in the carport bed with coloring Geum in the background (I transplanted the Geum during mid-summer, too--anybody see a pattern developing?)

Assortment of ground covers in the carport bed--Ajuga "Mahogany", Ajuga genevensis, and hardy Geranium "Jolly Bee" with Hakonechloa behind.  Next year, I am prepared for this Geranium to go on a rampage and consume the entire planting bed--this is an aggressive one!

The wider view of the carport bed with Allium "Summer Beauty" visible in the background

Driveway bed with a variety of plants coming up through a matrix planting of Nassella tenuissima:  Geranium macrorrhizum, dwarf leucanthemums, Calico Aster, white Guara, bearded iris, and annual salvia.  I'm trying to treat the Nassella right so it will thicken up and (finally) look good next year.

'Round back in the Arbor bed--Darmera peltata, Hakonechloa, and Astilbe.

Declining Darmera (ravaged by snails--what's up with that?  I never used to have a problem with snails!)  with self-seeded fern, moss, and sedums

Spidery!  Really spidery!

Garden: The Front Garden Slides Towards Fall

Just a quick post to share a couple of photos I took today.  The garden looks to have begun its slow (maybe not so slow...I don't know?) slide towards fall.  Drought stress and uneven watering may have hastened this progression.  I see room for improvement in my watering technologies, that's for sure.  But, then again, maybe I can just heap the lion's share of the "blame" on the change of seasons. It is, after all, nearly October already.

"Reverse View" taken from my neighbor's property, perpendicular to our front walk.  This would be opposite to the view you'd see if you approached our front door on the path. I've got my game-day flag out--go Seahawks!

The Cimicifuga seems to have faded/suffered sun scald practically overnight.  Did I let it dry out or is it just that time of year?  Its rich aubergine tones have been replaced by ochres and russets.  One of my favorite combinations in this part of the garden is the Cimicifuga with the spikes of Digitalis parviflora "Hot Chocolate".  It pleases me in Spring when the plants are fresh but also now, in shades of brown.  This year, in fact, having given voice to this sentiment on multiple occasions, I decided to to double-up on a feature I like and filled a gap in the garden with another Cimicifuga and more Digitalis seedlings.  So (yea!)  you will now be treated to even more pictures of my favorite plant combo!

Close-up of the corner grouping.

The Sedum "Autumn Joy" is coming into full bloom, much to the delight of honey bees.  There are 8-9 plants in this swath and I've been toying with the  idea of replacing a few of them with a duskier Sedum variety.  This year I planted a couple of Penstemon "Dark Towers" to fill holes and to weave dark foliage throughout the border.  I like the contribution their dark seed heads make to this scene (below). 

A different view of the corner.

So that's the state of the front garden.  Soon (next time, maybe) I'll have some pictures of the back yard.

Happy early fall!

Garden: GBBD--September 2014

I'm late with this post, so I stole out for a few minutes to try and capture some blooms in the late afternoon sunlight.  

The "Autumn Joy" sedums are absolutely seething with bees.  I cut them back in early June, so they are just coming into bloom now.  One of the things I like best about this sedum is the range of soft colors mingling across the umbels.  Mine are mostly soft green, now, with light pinks and deeper rose hues advancing daily.

I enjoy the blooms on this Ammi visnaga "Green Mist"--they draw up into little balls as they age as do those of Daucus carota which are also called Queen Anne's Lace. Last year I was disappointed to find out that the blooms of Ammi majus "Graceland" don't do this.

Chasmanthium latifolium "Northern Sea Oats" is coming into its prime.  

In addition to these blooms, I have blooms on:  Rosa mutabilis, Lobelia siphilitica, Eutrochium dubium "Phantom" (also cut back hard in early June), Japanese anemone "Whirlwind", hardy geranium "Jolly Bee", Weigela "Sonic Bloom (TM) Pearl", Honeysuckle "Sweet Tea", Gaura, Alyssum, hardy fuchsias, Cyclamen hederifolium, and some re-bloom on Campanula poscharskyana "Blue Waterfall" and Alchemilla mollis.  

I'm still waiting for bloom on my newly planted Aster lateriflorus "Prince" and newly planted Ageratina altissima "Chocolate".  

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day is a monthly link party hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens.  Take a moment to head on over there to see what is blooming in others' gardens around the world.

Garden: A Difficult Area

There's a difficult area in my garden that rarely features in photos.  It's a strip of land on the north side of my driveway that measures about 7 feet wide by a 25 feet long.  It slopes pretty dramatically in two directions, both down to the street and down onto my driveway.  And the soil is awful--clay over hardpan.  It's really difficult to know how much water this area receives.  On one hand, it usually seems dry which is consistent with shallow soil.  On the other hand, there's a lot of groundwater making its way down the slope and I have a feeling that this water (which derives both from rainfall and from springs in the area) percolates down to the hardpan and then sheets across it.  So, shallow-rooted plants might experience summer-dry conditions while deeper rooted plants might (for better or worse) find their roots dipping into flowing groundwater year-round.  All this is just a guess, though.  To know what is really happening I think I'd have to dig down to the hardpan layer many times during the growing season just to look at and to feel the soil for moisture.  I've had good intentions, but I've not done this. Yet.

When we purchased the house, the slope was covered with ancient junipers.  A sea of woody and overgrown juniper is not my favorite look.  It was so uninspiring, in fact, that I don't have a single picture of this area as it was when we moved in. No one needs help visualizing a hillside covered with juniper, right?  If you do, here's a photo of the hillside behind our house:

Our back yard, 2007

After clearing out the juniper and amending the soil generously, I planted a mixture of grasses (Calamagrostis x acutiflora "Karl Foerster" and Nassella tenuissima), bearded iris, and a couple of small vine maples (Acer circinatum).  The planting scheme was consistent with what I was trying to achieve at the time, which was distinct clumps and drifts of unfussy, prairie-style plants.  I also wanted the plantings to evoke a dry environment.  It looked like this:

North side of the driveway--May, 2010

How sad and empty that newly planted area looks!  I tried to wait patiently for it to grow up and fill in.  In April, 2013, it still looked like this:

Driveway Bed, April, 2013

The Iris were a highlight and yielded many nice photo opportunities (when I cropped out all the more unfortunate parts of the scene.)

Iris in Driveway Bed, 2013

The "Karl Foerster" feather reed grasses grew substantially and the Nassella filled in a little bit, but the poor vine maple was not making any headway at all.  Since the area was first planted, I'd added a few new plants including Rubus pentalobus and several varieties of dwarf shasta daisies.  But the area remained an eyesore.  It was not as full and lush as I wanted it to be and and did not coordinate well with the gardens on the other side of the property.  So, late last year I tore it all apart and remixed it.  I replaced the unhappy vine maple with a cut leaf sumac--I know that they live in areas with shallow soil, so I hoped that it would have the opportunity to make the best use of the shallow soil in this area AND be able to choose whether or not to send its roots down to the groundwater that I think flows just on top of the hardpan.  I moved all the plants around to try and achieve a more "meadowy" look.  Finally, in an effort to integrate the appearance of the two sides of the garden, I've added some additional plants:  Gaura, a couple of calico asters (Aster laterifolius "Prince"), hardy geranium (Geranium macrorrhizum "Ingwersen's Variety"), and a Japanese anemone.  So now it looks like this:

Driveway Bed, late-August, 2014.  

New additions -- calico aster and Gaura

Cut leaf sumac among grasses--"Karl Foerster" behind and Nassella in the foreground.

And that is how it looks today.  I'll give it another year to see if it will grow together and achieve the look that I have in my mind's eye.  I'll commit fully to the Nassella as a matrix plant and buy a couple more to fill the existing gaps.  And I'll do my absolute best with care and pruning of the Nassella--always a challenge.  If next spring/summer rolls around and I'm still singing this same song...well, I guess another garden remodel will be in my future.