Why I Oughta...

The Anemone Lucky Charm (from Northwind Perennial Farm) are just beginning to pop-off with their bloom cycle.  These are, I suppose "Late Bloomers".  This post from 2023 includes the description of this 'Lucky Charm' variety .  It also shows a similar late-August bloom time.  Here's a post from 2022 that includes the nursery sign when we bought them .  I've used these as filler/accent flowers in arrangements the past few seasons and I'll likely do the same this year.  Here, below, is the first cut of the year.  I like the closed-up buds better than I like the actual flowers in arrangements. Here below, is how they look on the plant: And, here below, is how the plants have filled-in and recovered from the planting of that Blue Spruce (on Standard).   They've filled-in the entire space and have created a living mulch of sorts with their spreading habit: I took a couple of divisions from this plant and put them near the pizza oven.  They're...

I saw this DIY fountain project featuring an Alpine trough and pondless setup on Instagram recently and it stuck with me so much that I've gone back to it a few times.  It is a small concrete (or stone or faux, I have no idea) trough, a simple copper faucet and an underground storage chamber that creates a pondless fountain situation.  Very European garden-feeling.  (To me, at least.)  Here it is embedded below:  View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sebastian Streich (@my.garden.life.and.home) It is small but pretty striking.  I've talked about upgrading our water-feature situation over the years and even included an upgrade on my 2026 to-do list (#23) .   I've read and watched a ton of stories/videos about hypertufa and have recently poked around on DIY'ing an Alpine trough.  It seems that one of the ways forward is using a foam chassis that you wrap in concrete to create a lightweight tub.  That seems......

Back a few years back, I was on a real "dark foliage" kick.  I was seeking out "dark foliage" plants like Dark Side of the Moon Astilbe.  And... I ended up planting a pair of Eiffel Tower Elderberries in the backyard, under the secondary Oak tree along the south fence line .  The plant tags showed JET BLACK foliage.  The description said that the leaves emerge green and age to a dark black.   I don't think I've gotten black foliage.  Yet.  I posted photos in October 2024 (their second growing season) and they were...well...green .   What about now?  Below is a photo showing this pair of plants.  They're supposed to be 'upright', but mine are kind of lingering.   One thing that I just revisited is this little tid-bit of maintenance.  From my original planting post : Black Tower Elderberry is excellent for the back of the border and adds some textural drama to tight spaces. Plant in full coastal sun or partial shad...

One of the things that I wanted to try this year was growing some accent or filler plants (for cut flower arrangements) in the vertical planter (Greenstalk) that we keep on the patio.  Last year, I grew some herbs, veggies and Zinnias.  This year, I put that very thing on my 2026 to-do list at #9.  Here's what I wrote : 9. Accents, too. Speaking of adding variety to cut flower arrangements, we can do better job of growing accent plants for foliage. Plan to use the Greenstalk Vertical Garden for these cut flower accent plants this year. Instead of growing vegetables. Do a row of herbs and then load up the vertical garden pockets with accent plants like the Eucalyptus that I grew last year . Well...I didn't end up planting a 'row of herbs', but I did use one layer of the Greenstalk for accent plants.  And, I did use Eucalyptus, in fact.     I started with plugs from The Garden Club.  Eight Silver Dollar Eucalptus plugs.  Six of those went int...

There is too much going on in the garden to break everything down into an individual post in the [garden diary].  Some of the more meaningful things that I'd like to track get their own posts, but other things that I just want to note are going to be included here in this round-up.  Calling it "A Look Around the Garden Beds".   Start with the Garden Edit under the tree swing tree.  The Summer Beauty Alium are in bloom, but starting to fade.  They're doing great here.  Makes me remember why I liked them out of the gate. One of the climbing hydrangeas that I planted on that same tree swing tree is growing.  See the vine climbing up the trunk: A little bit behind these Allium is a layered look of ornamental grasses and Little Lime Hydrangeas. And Three Miscanthus sinensis 'Adagio' Maiden Grasses. The grasses are "dwarf" grasses, so they're staying shorter than most grasses, allowing the blooms of the (also dwarf) Hydrangea show through. I've ...

It might be August, but I'm starting to think about firewood.  And, putting together my order for the year.  Like I've done in the past few years, I wanted to take an inventory of what we have on-hand (and what we've burned thru) and get an idea of how much we need to order.   I did this type of post last year and showed that I had about 150 pieces left .  And, I ended up ordering three facecords (Birch, Oak, Cherry).  Most estimates say that a Full Facecord has between 200 and 275 pieces.  Let's call it 250 for easy math.  That means that I started with 150.  Added 750.  Ended up with 900 pieces of firewood. I stashed them on the various racks.  Inside the screened porch.  Out on the side stoop.  Under the cover in the sideyard.  And, a new place for last year:  under the pizza oven.   Here's how the racks look today.  After a full Winter of burning indoors.  And, a bunch of pizza oven burnin...

Back in July, I posted a photo or two about how I had to prune back some of the lower limbs on some of our Frans Fontaine European (Columnar) Hornebeam trees to make traversing the sideyard boardwalk a little bit easier.  They were encroaching on the pathway.   That is part of the collection of posts about these trees that you can find here:  [ Frans Fontaine European Hornbeam Trees ].   2026 marks their eight season in the garden and you can go all the way back to when I was first researching the trees and when eight 2" caliper Frans Fontaine European Hornbeam trees were planted in May 2018.  They were planted 6-feet trunk-to-trunk .   Over the years, I've documented their growth, leaf-fall, bud setting and opening in Spring. Here's what they look like right now - after eight seasons: They're big, and leafy.  But, they're starting to show some holes.   I haven't pruned these at all.  But, the neighbor to the north has pr...

Back in the Fall of 2023, I planted three Ruby Muhly Grasses - Muhlenbergia reverchonii 'Undaunted' - at the edge of the boardwalk in our backyard .  They were a deal on the 'end of the season' sale at The Growing Place.  But, they were also a grass that I had read about/come across them and thought their 'cloud-like' seedheads are something I'd like to have in the garden.   They went in very late in the season, but came back just fine their first year.  Here they are in mid-August 2024 prior to putting on any seed-head growth .  They were snug in their bed that I have subsequently expanded a little bit (and should expand more this Fall).   By September that first year, they had some seedheads .  But...not the 'clouds' that these grasses are famous for, at least.   Fast-forward to now.  This is their third growing season and they seem to have established themselves.  I don't pay much attention to them in terms of watering/...

Seven years ago, I planted a hedge.  Or, what was (hopefully) something that was going to grow INTO a hedge.  Of Hicks (upright) Yews.  I bought 15 (fifteen) very small, one-gallon pots of the evergreen columnar shrub and planted them on about 30" centers across the back of our yard .  When I say "very small", I mean "very small".   The last time that I looked at this hedge was in January, when everything in the garden was dormant and the green needles of the Yews stood out .   Below are a few photos showing the current state of this hedge.  Is it a hedge, yet?  Well...not quite.  But, we're getting close. They're filling in the gaps (not totally) and growing up (in an uneven fashion).  The inspiration for using these (well...) yews was an undulating hedge that I found on Instagram .  I also found " Wirtz hedges " that are sort-of cloud-pruned.   So, that means that the 'uneven-ness' isn't a bug.  It is (pot...

A little over a month ago, I planted seven Montana Sedge plugs in and around the little path on the southside of our backyard that takes you from the yard to the cut flower sideyard garden.  There are some flagstone steppers that define the path and there were some existing Carex Montana in this area from a few years ago.  I tucked the seven new plugs in along the path in June .   Today, they've grown and put out their full flush of blades (is that what sedges have?  blades?  like grass?)  Below are a few photos showing the blend of old and new groundcover along the path.   I put one on the 'other side' of the path, but it lives under some hosta foliage.  It is persisting, but not thriving here.   And, below, you can see a couple of the existing sedges.  These are further back from the yard, but since they've been around for a while, they're bigger. As we get past the heat of August and I start thinking about some 'fall p...

In the Spring of 2023, I ripped out a pair of Rhododendron from either side of our back stoop and replaced them with a pair of Spring Grove (dwarf) Ginkgo trees .  They were in larger nursery containers at the time I bought them, but they were small.  Short.  Well...dwarf.  Which usually means they're very slow-growing.  I wrote this 'getting to know' post about Spring Grove Ginkgo and talked about how they were discovered as a Witch's Broom in Ohio.   That first Summer, they were stressed.  This is a sunny location and the hot afternoon sun beat them up.  So, I put up some shade cloth to try to get them through August.  That worked and by September, they were leafy and (mostly) green .  Ever since, they haven't looked back.  And are growing faster than I thought they would.   Here they are in October 2024 .   Over the years, I've posted Wintertime photos showing their 'frames'.   Today, despi...

I have a mixed record with house plants.  I am (usually) pretty good with what I'll call 'project house plants'.  Those are things like Amaryllis that I can grow from a bulb for Christmas that have a defined season and duration.  I've tried other houseplants and I usually get bored of them.  Nat, on the other hand, maintains a number of her own houseplants and she's been a good steward of the ones she's grown.  That includes some good runs with Orchids that she's nurtured into re-blooming.  But, I *do* have one houseplant that I've kept alive for a while.  In fact, I call this the eighth year of growing it:  my firesticks cactus.  Planted in a small orange pot back in the Spring of 2018.  It was small, green and maybe five inches tall .   Today, it is taller.  Fuller.  And more well-branched.    Below is a photo showing the current state of my Firesticks cactus as it lives out on our back stoop during the S...

Over the past few growing seasons, I've become a coleus-as-bedding-plant believer.  I 'praised' it in Fall of 2024 .  And, called growing three Inferno Coleus at the corner of our patio a ' garden win ' at the end of the growing season (October) last year.  This year, I didn't plant any Inferno Coleus, which...in retrospect was a mistake.  I've been unhappy with the coleus up front, but I can't say the same about the coleus I planted in our backyard - in the same spot as Inferno last year.  This year, I planted three Talevera Moondust Coleus in that spot.  I found them at Wannemaker's and they jumped off the nursery table with their speckles of paint on the foliage.   If you go back to the planting post , you'll see that they're described this way by the grower: Sun-tolerant varieties maintain color and foliage patterns in both sun and shade conditions. These late-flowering selections are tidy, non-bolting plants in the garden. The plant tag...

Back around the border of the fire pit is a Redbud Tree.  I originally planted a weeping Lavender Twist Redbud tree in 2020, but it came cracked-in-half .  It came back alive, but I'm not sure if the tree was grafted or not, which means that the trunk was some other kind of tree.  I also sort-of lost track of where this tree was planted, because back in 2020, I planted it along the fence .    But...today....as I mentioned in the first sentence, we have a Redbud tree around the firepit.   I also have a memory of this tree getting stomped by some tree guys. However, it has persisted.  And, grown.   And, it *is* weeping.   But, now it is a multi-trunk tree. However, it is arching up and out (over the lawn and the firepit) and has taken on a nice shape.   I haven't documented this tree in the [tree diary], so I thought it was about time.    

We had a pretty big rain storm a week or so ago that brought with it some welcomed precipitation.  It also battered some of my plants and trees.  Downed branches and (in a couple of cases) bent-over dahlias and other plants.  I scurried around and straightened everything out and found the dahlias that weren't staked (enough) and tried to provide some support.   I also cut a bunch of things and brought them in for an arrangement for one of Nat's friends.  The Saint Martin dahlias are on very long, thin stems while the Melina Fleur dahlias (decorative) are (for now) on short, stubby ones.  And, the Plectranthus Silver Shield is plentiful.  But, I still don't quite know the best way to use it in an arrangement.  The underside of the foliage is (to me) the star, but when I tuck some of it in the vase, the underside sort-of disappears.  There's also a spring of Silver Dollar Eucalyptus in here that I'm still learning about how best to cut to...