Why I Oughta...

Last week, I shared my Front Porch Bed plan that included a mix of evergreen shrubs, grasses, roses, bulbs and some perennials and talked about how I was hoping that the combination of soil improvement AND the removal of the Norway Maple will allow for some vigorous growth of the new (and existing) plant material.  This post is showing the area to the 'left' (or south) of the Triumph Elm.  I have five existing Green Velvet boxwoods on the other side of the tree.  So, I opted to carry on that planting with four Green Velvet boxwoods on the other side of the Elm to sort of 'match' the bed.  Below, you can see the small, one-gallon Boxwoods planted in the bed.  With the tulip foliage still around, the boxwoods are hard to see.  Below is an annotated version of the photo.  Green Velvet Boxwoods in the green circles below.  Disneyland Roses in the orange circles: From my planning post, I listed the plant material required. Here's where it stands after these Boxwoods:

Back in early 2018, one of the initial moves we made in developing our garden and landscape was to add a pair of rhododendrons on either side of our back stoop.  Why rhododendrons?  Because the plan called for them .  PJM Rhododendrons to be precise.  They were planted in summer.  They bloomed and looked great .  A tropical-looking evergreen that is cold hardy to Zone 5b?  What's not to like.   It was a couple of years that I mostly ignored them.  They were watered and fed.  But, that's it.  At some point, they started to turn.  And they started to deteriorate. By last summer, they looked shabby . What do the pair of Rhododendrons look like this Spring?  Not great.  See below for the evergreen shrub to the north of the stoop: And...here below is the other one - to the north.  This one looks *better*, but not awesome. We've had a chipmunk that lived in these beds over the years.  Or...maybe more than one Chipmunk?  I am pretty sure that their burrows and/or munching on the r

Listed at number 3 on my 2023 to-do list , figuring out the newly configured front porch bed is a pretty significant planting priority for me, but one that I've done the least posting about in the garden diary.  That lack of posting on a 'plan' for the bed, doesn't mean that I haven't been busy working the bed already by moving some things around, adding some things and thinking a lot about what we want up there. The season started with some vertical mulching of biosolids to try to improve the soil overall - that was after some topdressing of biosolids last Fall around the hydrangeas.   Then, just recently, I did three things:  first... I dug-up and transplanted the Green Velvet Boxwood that was left orphaned once we planted the Triumph Elm tree.   I moved around three Karl Foerster Grasses (see below for placement) and then just this past week, I planted three bareroot Disneyland Roses in the bed where the old Norway Maple tree was situated.    The other thing t

Number 3 on my 2023 to-do list is to plant out the front porch bed .  In that listing, I talked about planting some color in the form of Disneyland Roses that I received as a Christmas present from Nat's mom.  She ordered us three bareroot roses from Jackson and Perkins - which is where she had purchased our three previous floribunda roses.   These three arrived in a cardboard box with instructions to first re-hydrate the roots by soaking them in a bucket of water for anywhere from two hours to a full day.  I opted for what I'd call 'most' of a day.  I put them in the bucket one evening, then planted them the next afternoon in the bed. Below is a look at these as they are soaking in water to rehydrate. They came with these little metal tags: As they were soaking, I dug out the three holes.   And watered the holes in to get them wet.   Then I placed each of the bareroot roses in their hole - see below. And applied a little bit of Rooting Powder to the bases of each of t

Last Spring, I found and brought home four good-sized Viburnum shrubs that were 'treeform ' - in that they had single trunks and the shrub was sort-of placed ON TOP.  I planted two of them on the northside , one in the far back and the last one as a Hydrangea replacement out front . Welp...that one out front died.  Didn't make it.  I shouldn't have planted it there, but the Norway Maple and the mat of roots, combined with hydrophobic soil helped out and killed it.   The other three?  They're all back for year two.  I'd say that these had just about a full growing season last year, so this is their second full season in my mind.  The two on the northside are further along that the one out back.  They both have more foliage across the tips. First...below you can see one of the northside Viburnum.  This one is planted further West.   And here below, is the other one - planted closer to the house.  It is full of newly emerged foliage. Below is a photo showing the di

When we planted the new Triumph Elm tree last Fall , I had to relocate one of the original boxwoods that were planted in that bed.  As a temporary measure, I had the guys who planted the Elm dig up the boxwood and just put it further back in the bed.  If you look at the photos here and here , you can see the lone boxwood that was moved out from the front line to the back of the bed.   As part of the shaping-up of the front porch bed, it was time to move that boxwood out of there and find it a new home.  With it being mature and larger than anything I can buy at the store, I decided to plant it as a stand alone in the back beds vs....say...the IB2DWs area (where I want to plant boxwoods this year).   Here, below, is a photo showing the front porch bed.  On the right is the Triumph Elm that was planted last Fall.  On the left is the dug-up and moved Boxwood in question.    It is a big, heavy clump, so I dug it out and used my wheelbarrow to load it up for the backyard. I opted for a mid

Five and a half years.  That's how long the three posts have been installed in our backyard as a training device for the pair of Greenspire Linden trees that have been pruned in an horizontal cordon espalier.  This past weekend, I disconnected all of the wire and pulled the three posts down.  I put the posts in the ground in September of 2017 - look how NEW everything looks here .   Over the years, I've worked these trees to be a four-level espalier and it had matured (enough) to no-longer require the heavy-hand of a post and wire system.  See below for the pre-removal state:  And....below...are the trees with the posts and wires removed.  Feels VERY DIFFERENT over there (to me, at least) now. The top row of the cordon is thick and strong and vibrant.  Each layer down gets thinner, but the bottom layer has finally reached the fully-mature length.  I'll work to keep that bottom row horizontal with a bamboo pole.   #9 on my 2023 to-do list was to 'keep working the espalie

As a sort-of tip of my cap to the plantsman Roy Diblik, I've started to document some of my own self-guided education with new plants and trees that I've come across in a tiny series of posts all called " getting to know ".  The most recent one of these was Primrose a couple of weeks ago.  Before that, I've tried to learn about everything from Pineapple Lily to the Thai Giant to the Siberian Larch .   The latest entry in this series is a Ginkgo 1 tree that is new (to me).   I came across it in the place that I've found other, surprisingly unique species: at the Home Depot on Butterfield.  The nursery manager seems like they take the biggest risks with inventory of any of the Home Depots around us.  They have - on occasion - things you won't find at the other stores.   So, what was this unique species?  I'd describe it as odd.  It is also small.  And sitting on a pallet next to a couple of contorted Harry Lauder Walkingstick trees.  See below for th

This is the way.  My 2023 yard and garden to-do list is the way that I set-up some guardrails on my activies in the garden this year.  This is something that I've done over the years - starting in 2019 .  Here is 2022's version - which included 25 items .  That (25 items) is where I've seemed to settle the past few years.   Earlier this year, I started to collect my thoughts and published a 'potential projects' post in late January that unpacked some priorities that I could work through this year.   Without further preamble, let's turn to the 2023 to-do list. 1. Evergreens. Like last year, where I listed 'shrubs' as my #1 item, this ye ar, I want to think about having a focus on evergreens. That means...trees and shrubs. For now, that means adding boxwoods under the Lindens , thinking about more upright evergreens in other places in the back and using them to create some Winter structure in the beds.  And, adding dwarf varieties (staggered) to the

Last week, I came across the initial delivery of some common trees in nursery containers at the orange big box store .  These trees were the first real sign of Spring in terms of plant material that arrived, but I knew that more was on the way.  This past week, I wandered out to the parking-lot nursery and saw a few boxwoods in various sizes.  Knowing that I want to add A LOT of boxwoods to a few spots this year, I figured I'd see what they have on hand. First up is Green Gem.  I have a trio of these in the back .  They also have a variety of Green Mountain boxwoods in 3, 2, and 1 gallon sizes.  I have one of these.  At least... I thought I had one of these .  But, it bronzed up pretty good, so I'm not sure if it was mislabeled.  This year, they have a larger one - 3 gallon. The third variety that they had (on-hand) is Green Mound.  That's new (to me).  See below for the one gallon nursery container for $10.98. Green Mound stays pretty small - two-to-three feet all and wid

On Monday, I posted a series of photos showing how I had used my post-hole digger to excavate holes - getting into the clay layer below my topsoil - in our front porch bed.  I ended up with more than a dozen of them in various spots around the bed including up front.  My goal was to help improve the soil conditions, break up that bathtub effect and try to make the area a little bit more hospitable to plants and roots .   I called it 'vertical mulching' in Monday's post, but today is a little bit more about that process and how I filled the holes. I recently removed the chicken-wire rings around our Disneyland Roses to prepare them for Spring.  In each of those three rings was a heavy bed of mulched-up leaves that I collected last year.  Since Fall, there had been a tiny bit of decomposition, but A LOT of the leaves that I used to protect the roses were Oak leaves and those are VERY.SLOW to decompose.  So, I went over to the roses and filled up my trug with some leaf litter

How old are our pair of Greenspire Linden trees that are in our yard? I'm NOT sure.  But, I know that we have them in our yard for  (coming up on) six full years - and this will be our seventh growing season.  Planted in the Summer of 2017, the have grown into their own across those six growing seasons.    The last time I showed these trees was in October when they were putting on a fall show with orange and yellow foliage .   This past September, I documented via caliper sizing the overall growth of these trees:  they are both greater than 3" calipers now.  They went from a little bit over 1.5" to more than 3" - doubling in size since 2020.   My plan for this year is to plant underneath these and remove the frames.  But, before I do that, I went out this weekend and began to prune some of the tops of these trees.  That top layer of the espalier is thick and full of new growth.  What kind of growth?  What would appear to be something like a waterspout that sends s

Over the past week or so, I've been working on - and posting about - the front yard beds.  Mostly, I've been working on - and thinking about the soil conditions.  Since we moved in - Summer of 2017 - I haven't had much luck at all up there.  That's six growing seasons (well...five full ones at least) and I've lost things, have had other things not grow so well and removed the biggest plant in this bed last Fall:  the large Norway Maple tree.   I started last week doing some vertical boring of holes using my post hole digger .  Both, to get a real look at the soil conditions, understand how deep the clay lies under the topsoil and to (maybe?) help improve the conditions by cutting through some of that bathtub effect that takes place in clay soils.  After I dug a hole about 12" around and 24-or-so-inches deep, I proceeded to fill it up with some leaves and a big helping of biosolids to top it off.  My thought is that this 'vertical mulching' will improve