Why I Oughta...

Last year, we filled our cast iron urn that is out front adjacent to our driveway with a variety of annuals and perennials including a purple Coral Bells or heuchera plant .   In our zone, Coral Bells - which prefers part shade - is typically a perennial, so when I was cleaning out the urn at the end of the gardening season (before we swapped it out for Mums), I stuck it in the bed next to our garage on the north side of our house.  This area is - almost entirely - shade, so I figured it might be something that could grow there. Fast forward to this Summer and have a look at the maroon/purple Coral Bells that you see in the photo at the top of this post.  It seems that the plant made it through the Winter and has come out the other side with some new growth and even some tiny flower stems that have shot out the top. I actually am NOT sure what the specific name is, but I bought it at a big box garden center - and I'm guessing it is this Purple Palace variety that Monrovia l

Yesterday, I posted photos of both of the Munchkin Oakleaf Hydrangeas flowering and today I have a couple of photos of the traditional variety that are also flowering in their first year.   There are five of these 'traditional' (aka. non-Munchkin) Oakleaf Hydrangeas that I planted in early June 2020 .  Those seven are the most important aspect of solving for - and planting out - " Priority Area #1 " in our backyard.  In the photo at the top of this post, you can see one of the conical flowers from one of these hydrangeas.  Lime green small flowers followed by bright-white blooms.  Below, you can see two of the five traditional shrubs.  (are these shrubs?)  On the left is one with multiple flowers.  On the right, the foliage is a little bit lighter color, but you can see a couple of flowers starting to emerge.  Here's a closeup of one of the flowers.  Also note, the brown spots on the bottom leaf - that was present when they arrived (these were a bday p

Over the years, we've tried different annuals in front of our boxwoods in our front yard bed.  Our first full year - in 2018 - we planted some Ranunculuses - about eight of them.  Last year - in 2019 - we planted 16 orange marigolds.  Neither set of those did very well.  The marigolds were better than the Ranunculuses, but they didn't spread and some did better than others.  When we started with this bed, it was about 2" of mulch and then backfilled clay.  Not a ton of organic material to deal with beyond the mulch.  Over the years, I dug up spots and added pelletized gypsum a few inches down in an attempt to loosen up the clay soils.  (speaking of which...I should probably add some gypsum to my lawn this Summer) and tried to amend the soil to improve the conditions. Last year, I used a bulb auger to dig out the holes for marigolds, planted them and covered with cocoa bean mulch.  I read somewhere that the BEST way to loosen up clay soils is to actually plant in them

When we moved in, we had three Hadspen hostas planted in our front landscape bed in front of the large Maple tree as part of our initial installation.  I've subsequently added some tulip bulbs to complement the boxwoods and hostas and have been laying down cocoa bean hull mulch over the years .   As part of buying some of the nursery stock for my Priority Area #2 , we acquired six Guacamole Hostas.  Three of them you can see in the photo at the top.  Obviously, this isn't in the backyard and isn't in Priority Area #2, but Nat has been commenting on our front yard and our need to add some additional plants.  I've placed these three Guacamole Hostas (they're big - and came from Hinsdale Nursery) alternating between the smaller Hadspen Blue hostas that are there already. Here's a wider view of the front bed including these three new Guacamole hostas placed. Three of the six are going to go in that front bed and that means that other three are destined f

Yesterday, I posted a photo of a miniature hosta that I transplanted from the far back part of our yard to underneath the Oak tree swing trunk and mentioned that I was watching it to see if it was healthy enough to divide into multiple plants.  While I wait for that....I wanted to post about a few other hostas that were certainly *healthy enough* to divide.  You see them above in the photo.  These are all "teardown hostas" that I grabbed in the Fall of 2017 and was surprised in 2018 when they all emerged.  Hostas, are indeed, hearty perennials. This post shows the location in question and the landscape plan that was drafted :  it includes 4 Hadspen Hostas that wrap around the corner of our house.  If you look at the photo at the top of this post, you'll count five (5) hostas.  And...in the middle of that photo, you can see one of them is bigger than the rest. I'm thinking my plan is to dig out the two 'middle ones'.  That would be the largest one and t

A couple of days ago, I posted photos of the new growth on our tiny Canadian Hemlock trees .  Today is another conifer - the Weeping White Spruce tree that I planted last year.  It has put on some Spring growth, too.  The new, bright green tips are clearly visible in the image above.  On the far left of the photo in this post, you'll see one of the Summer Beauty Allium that we planted last month .  The last time that this tree was featured in a post in the [ garden diary ] was last Fall when it had not put on any new growth , but seemed to have gotten through the hot Summer.   It was coming in at 47" tall in November, but you can see some of the new growth is right.on.top, so it is a little taller today.  If you look back at the photos from May 2019 when I bought the tree , it had green tips, then, too.  In that post , you can also see what the mature tree will look like as it continues to climb upwards and stays columnar in form. One other note:  I sprayed this tre

After taking a full year off, our back stoop rhododendrons are blooming again this year with beautiful purple flowers. Both shrubs (these are evergreen...which always amazes me) are pictured side-by-side above, and there are individual (slightly larger) individual photos below in this post. The last time these flowered was when they were planted in May of 2018 .  In 2019, like all of our flowering trees/shrubs, the buds appear to have been killed by a cold Winter. On the left (above), is the Southern one.  On the right (above), is the one to the North of the stoop.  The southern one is larger in both dimensions - taller and seemingly wider as it has some branches that are spreading out a bit more.  It has taller blooms and - at this point - more of them.  The northern one is more compact, but has what seems like deeper green foliage.    I applied Wilt-Pruf to both of these last Winter and...frankly....I'm not sure if it helps.  Seems like it is one of those things

When we had our house built back in 2016/2017, one of the steps was the digging and installation of new sewer and water lines.  That required some serious digging from the center of the street all the way up to our house.  That digging was located fairly close to our large parkway tree - in fact it was so close that when we came to see the hole, we could see that the sewer guys had cut some of the roots.   Ever since then, I've been holding my breath with concern that the tree had suffered some damage.   I'm posting this in the [ garden dairy ] so I remember both what the canopy looks like in Spring but also what the color of the leaves look like, too.   Here, below, is the tree.  It is orange-ish/brown-ish.  Certainly NOT green like the rest of the maple trees around our neighborhood.   And, I'm content this year because I noticed the same thing last year.  This tree isn't suffering/stressed (at least I'm pretty sure it isn't), rather this is *

A couple of weeks ago, we planted a fast-growing Lombardy Poplar tree in our far backyard and had high hopes that it would provide a little bit of screening in a quick way.  But, today I went by to inspect the tree a little and was surprised to see it was having some trouble.  Look at the photo above to see the leaves that are wilting and browning out.  This is certainly NOT a good sign, but I'm not calling it yet with this tree and I hope it can bounce back.  I'm pretty certain that this was a recently-planted bareroot tree that came in a burlap sack.  This was the first tree that we received in one of those burlap sacks and I decided to NOT plant the sack.  I think that was a mistake.  It *could* be frost damage like what we've seen on some of our ferns , but I'm not sure.  On the next tree - which I'll post about soon, I trimmed the burlap sack down to be pretty small and planted the sack to try to keep the soil around the tree roots a bit more.  I'

Back in March, I posted about Lenten Roses (or..Hellebores / Helleborus) and how our plan called for a few of them in parts of the yard.  On the same trip that we bought the Summer Beauty Allium, we also bought ONE (1) Hellebores (or...I think Helleborus).  It is called "Sally's Shell" and you can see it below:  I planted it in the bed on the northside of our backyard - and since there is just one, it is standing alone.  For now.    Here's a little bit wider of a shot - that shows the larger tree trunk that is set a little bit 'in' the yard that shows this is planted about six feet to the West of that tree.  (also note...that at the time of this photo, I had pulled up our Automower boundary wire and spooled it here while I remade some of the contours of the beds.   The plan calls for ten (10) of these - from this one and to the left - that I'll add over time.   But, since this area falls just outside of Priority Area #2 , this

Back in February, I outlined my #1 priority area for our backyard landscape to be addressed this year - the area to the south in between the espaliered Lindens and the large Oak tree.  That part of the plan called for a series of Oakleaf Hydrangeas, Fanal Astilbes, some ferns, a couple of columnar trees and a number of Summer Beauty Ornamental Alliums.  A couple of weeks ago, we went out to The Growing Place headquarters location in Aurora where they had setup a 'drive thru' situation where you could shop from your car.  This was the same trip that we bought the Harry Lauder's Walking stick contorted tree .   As we drove through the perennial section, we saw these Summer Beauty Allium.  Our plan calls for 12 of them.  But, we bought four to start.  You can see them in their nursery pots below.        Here's the tag - below - that calls out the name Allium tanguticum 'Summer Beauty'.   And here, below, is the back of the tag.  The plan

For the first time since 2018, we have some Cherry Blossoms in our yard.  And it is so nice to see them appear on our Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Tree that was inspired by my first trip to Tokyo .  Back in the Spring of 2017, I was able to see some of the famed Cherry Blossom trees in Japan and when I came back home, I sought out a tree.  I found one at Menards in May of 2017 .  We were in the midst of building our new house, so my plan was to plant it in our new backyard.    It was flowering when I bought it and the next Spring - May of 2018 - it flowered .  Last Spring - 2019 - it seemed like it wanted to flower , but it never did.  It wasn't alone - as our Saucer Magnolia and Rhododendrons didn't flower, either last year.    I posted a photo of some Winter damage on this tree in January of this year . And today?  It is starting to show some blossoms.  Less than ten so far, but I'm hopeful for a full tree of pretty pink blossoms.  They remind me of peony flowers - Nat

Yesterday, I posted a photo of a few of the teardown hostas that I divided and transplanted underneath the Hornbeam hedge and talked about how it was getting me closer to fulfilling my goal on " Priority Area #2 ".  I mentioned that I planted a few more as part of this set around the Oak and flowering Pear tree in that area.  In the photo above, you can see an existing hosta in the blue circle that I *think* is one of these Bessingham Blue hostas that I planted a few years ago as a bareroot plant .  On the backside of this Oak tree is this miniature variegated hosta that I transplanted last year .  It has started to pop through the mulch.  The hosta that you see in the middle of the photo at the top is one of the hostas that I dug up from in front of the house that was on our property before we tore it down.  I stuck it back by the Dawn Redwood for a few years.  Now, it is here.  And, below, you'll see three more clumps of that same hosta around the larger Chant

A series of garden diary posts that I've been sharing for ten years now features the moment when our peony plants emerge from the mulch each Spring.  The first time I posted photos of the redish buds was all the way back in 2010 here .  From then, I've posted about this: 2011 peony post 2012 peony post 2013 peony post 2014 peony post 2015 peony post 2016 - doesn't appear that I posted 2017 - one of our foster peony plants in Naperville 2018 - one of our *new* Downers peony post 2019 peony post   And another one here . That's 9 of the past 10 years.  Including this year, that makes 10 of 11 years. This peony in the photo is located back by our Dawn Redwood - it is a 'teardown peony' - either from our house before they tore it down or from The Fox Family Den's yard before they built their own house.

Over the past few years, I've posted a few times about Japanese-inspired gardening and how I'm increasingly drawn to it for various reasons.  I spent a bit of time walking around Gotenyama Gardens in Tokyo and as I walked down the steps into the kind-of sunken garden, I was surrounded by a lush garden in the middle of a metropolitan city.   And that fascination with Japanese gardens has manifested itself in a couple of things, but mostly columnar trees .  But, there are other elements that I've talked about including ferns and this Japanese Forest Grass , too.  One of the types of tree that I don't seem to have covered at all here on the blog is a Japanese Maple tree.  I've seen them at the garden center over the past few years and they're always tempting (and pricey), but I didn't know too much about them to ever make a decision on them.  This Winter, I started to poke around them as thinking about this part of our yard and wanted to get a little bit smar

Just took one day for me to have to add other items to my 'backyard dream' list.  Yesterday, I posted my 2020 to-do list and today, I'm talking about adding something to our yard that WAS NOT on that list.  I supposed that's ok, because this isn't something that I am going to add THIS YEAR.  I suppose this could be something that I'd put on my 2021 or beyond to-do-list.  Let's call this just simply a [ backyard dreaming ] post. In yesterday' post, I included #11 which calls for me to "build something" and I mentioned a couple of ideas including a  garden chair , a  Versailles box , a Raised bed, some Insect houses, a  Wattle Fence .  and finally a  bird nesting box/platform .  Today, I'm adding to that potential 'build list' with a Bocce Ball Court. I came across this post on the Landscaping Network site that lays out the details of adding a Bocce Ball Court to your backyard .   They talk about the materials, the dimensions/spa

The time has come to call my shot on the yard and garden plan and overall priorities for the year.  I've done enough thinking and planning and dreaming and posting.  Walt Disney has said that "Everyone needs deadlines" .  This is my version of creating a deadline.  By creating a list of projects/items that I want to tackle this year.   In what has become the second annual version, I did this, for the first time, last year when I posted my inaugural list in February of 2019  - one year ago tomorrow. This is intended to provide focus for me as we enter the Spring frenzy. That initial list from last year had ten items on it. Then, in April (when Spring had actually sprung), I added seven items to the list in an addendum . When the season wound down, I graded myself at the end of October 2019 .  12 of 17.  C-. But, in that same scorecard post, I also began to turn the wheels on what my 2020 list would look like.  I mentioned (at the time) 19 things I thought shou

Back in the Fall, the KotBT had a birthday and one of the gifts that we gave him was a window bird feeder.  The kind that use suction cups to attach to the window.  The one we have is this one from Amazon that they say is their #1 best seller in the category .  We have a variety feeders already - including a fly-through , a couple of suet cages , one of the smaller Squirrel Busters  and a squirrel 'big ole' cob' bungee feeder .  But, those are all set out in the yard a bit.  In a spot where we can see them and observe the critters/birds, but also far enough to have any critters not want to make a home close to our house/patio. These window feeders have been around forever and I've been skeptical of them.  I mean...birds get spooked by people.  And...from what I know, they don't love windows and the reflections off of them.  So, mounting a feeder on the window seems like a long shot in terms of getting any action on it. We talked about putting it in various pl

Back in Elmhurst, we planted a Pussy Willow (Salix Caprea) in our backyard next to our outdoor fireplace. I first came across it at Menards in 2011 .  Bought and planted in 2011.  One year later, it was going crazy.  Here's how it looked in Summer 2012 .  I liked the coverage the plant gave us, but we haven't planted one in our new yard despite seeing them at the garden centers the past few years.  But, this post about gardening New Year's Resolutions from the University of Minnesota Extension includes (as one of their recommended resolutions): " Plant pussy willows, a pollinator-friendly, eco-friendly and energy-producing shrub ". From the U of M post : Pussy willows (Salix discolor), a large 15-20 foot shrub native to Minnesota and much of northern U.S. is one of the first plants to bloom in the spring. Pussy willows provide some of the earliest flowers and pollen for honey and other native bees. The foliage also supports native butterfly caterpil