Why I Oughta...

My middle child is my gardening partner.  She has created a little garden of her own in the backyard and each time I take her to the nursery, she's picking up a plant or two to add to her little patch.  She's 'getting to know' some of these plants.  Some work, some won't.  The last time we went to Northwind Perennial Farm up in Wisconsin, she came home with this cool Lamb's ear .  This trip, she bought a few different things including this Spike Speedwell below.  The sign - you can see it in the photo below- calls this Veronica 'White Wanda' Spike Speedwell.  But....I can't find anything called White Wanda out there on the Web.  Plenty of 'White Wands' like this one at Walter's Garden .  But...maybe this is a Northwind creation - they named themselves?  ( Being a Marvel family, I'm not going to lie:  the name White Wanda kinda was a draw here... ) The sign above talks about this being a 'perfect height' for behind low-growing

I've planted a few different sedges in our garden in the past few years as I've become more aware of them and how they can work in various spots in the garden.  I have a few Everillo Sedges planted in a little colony and some OG's of the Sedge world: C arex Pensylvanica planted as a test .  There doesn't seem to be a bigger booster of Sedges in the gardening world than Roy Diblik from Northwind Perennial Farm.  He's actually where I've 'gotten to know' anything about sedges.  From his YouTube videos.  He posted a short video where he named his '3 favorite Carex' (embeded below), where he detailed what he likes about all three - bromoides, muehlenbergii & muskingumensis. Well...that means I have to try ALL of them, right?  I'm starting with one of them:   .  Below is the sign from Roy's nursery. The description on the sign reads:  Too nice, a good looking soft foliage grass-like plant that adds contrast to all types of shade plantings

Back in late April, I brought home two Prairie Dropseeds - a native grass - from the Morton Arboretum Arbor Day Plant Sale.  I first 'got to know' Prairie Dropseed from Roy Diblik's YouTube videos where he calls it both by the trade name (Prairie Dropseed) but also the formal name of Sporobolus heterolepis.  I decided to NOT plant the two grasses together - despite knowing that's one of the 'gardening mistakes' that I've made over time.  I decided to stick one in the front yard (more on that later) and one in the backyard bed that you can see below.  I planted it between the border and the urn in a spot that is mostly bare right now. I'd like to plant MORE of these in a little colony here, but my thought is to try with one, see how it responds to this bed this Spring/early Summer and then buy more (hopefully...in plug form) up at Northwind this Summer.   I'm considering this as a version of groundcover, so that helps me continue to check the box on

Last year, I planted a few Carex Pensylvanica in our backyard (under the Frans Fontain European Hornbeam trees) that I brought home from Northwinds Perennial Farm up in Wisconsin.  It doesn't look like I planted anything about these being in the garden last growing season.  These were the the pilot plantings of Carex under these trees and they seemed to do fine last year.   Carex Pennsylvania can be planted as close as 1' centers where they'll knit together to create a carpet.  Mine are planted 10-plus feet apart, so there's, ummm, no 'knitting' going on.   But what *is* going on?  A really lovely Spring seed head show.  See below for a look at one of these Carex showing off dark colored, almost-black, seed heads with the flush of new Spring growth. I've taken different approaches with all three of these sedges in terms of Spring cleanup.  This one (above), I've left as-is.  No trimming at all.  One of the other ones I ran over with the lawn mower and

When I did the series of posts showing off the various plant materials that I brought home from the annual Morton Arboretum Arbor Day Plant Sale, I forgot to include a couple of plants that I bought.  I showed the Little Honey Hydrangeas , Ruby Slippers Oakleaf Hydrangeas and the three Ivory Prince Hellebores .  But, I also brought home two grasses:  Prairie dropseed - Sporobolus heterolepis.  Here (below) is a look at the two grasses: And, here below, is the sign from the Morton Arboretum Plant Sale where they describe Prairie Dropseed - Sporobolus heterolepis as "Prairie native grasss that is extremely tough. Makes a great natural addition to the home landscape with beautiful, dense and arching clumps of fine textured leaves.  Flowers have a unique fragrance." The University of Wisconsin Horticulture Extension Office has a page on Prairie Dropseed that provides a few more details : It was was named a Plant of Merit by the Missouri Botanical Garden in 2005 and was selected

I've been giving the " in between two driveways " strip some thinking lately - how to edge it ( boulders ), how to extend the beds to have them make more sense, looking at what worked/didn't work there since last year and what a color palette for this area could/should be. Frankly....I don't have a TON of flowers in any of my beds - as I've been MOSTLY a foliage gardener up there up to this point.    It is #4 on my 2022 to-do list:  "Enhance the IB2DWs Strip" .    I already have some purples with the Serendipity Allium and the five BIG Pinball Wizard bulbs that I planted last year .  And, taking what I've learned from Amy at Pretty Purple Door about color combinations, one path forward is what she calls an 'analogous color scheme' - that includes three adjacent colors on the color wheel.  In this case, it would be using the three colors of:  purple, violet and blue in those front beds.  And, maybe beyond - like under the Norway Maple -

Last year, I started a series of posts that I tagged as part of my 2022 garden planning something I've been calling my 2022 plant wish list.  I suppose that's not entirely an accurate way to describe things, as they're not wished-for plants as much as the beginnings of a plant buying prioritization process.  In this post showing the four-season interest of these Autumn Ferns , I mentioned that I should add more.  Same with this post showing a few Arrowwood Viburnum that I picked up late in the season - and mentioned that I needed to find more.  But, the way I'm thinking about what I want to add to the garden this year isn't about wishing as much as it is about going through some logical progression of identifiying needs and prioritizing.  So, I think a better way for me to start thinking about this is more akin to the notion of 'getting to know' some plants for 2022.  That's a clear 'tip of the cap' to Roy Diblik from Northwind Perennial Farm wh

What an upgrade.  Or, at least it SEEMS like an upgrade vs my normal small spade.  This was a gift (birthday), but since COVID, the folks at Sneeboer were behind. I have just learned about their tools this season and have quickly become enamored with their garden tools.  Why?  Here's what Garden Tools Co has to say about Sneeboer : Sneeboer hand forged Dutch garden tools have been handcrafted in Holland since 1913 and are considered the finest quality garden tools available anywhere in the world. Sneeboer...the best garden tools you'll ever own! Where did I come across Sneeboer?  Consider me 'influenced' by the Impatient Gardener.  Erin, in this post, calls this shovel the "tool that changed everything about gardening for me."   Big boast, right?  You can go read her whole post to learn about how she noticed in British gardening shows use a tool that doesn't look like our traditional gardening spade that we have here in the US.   Here, below, is mine: The

I somehow (somehow!) have really failed to post about my visit(s) - yes...multiple visits this year - to Northwind Perennial Farm in Wisconsin.  Home nursery to Roy Diblik - who I've posted about before here on the blog.  I have a tag up for the place, but when I was taking about some hostas this past week, I mentioned that I planted some Japanese Forest Grasses - Hakonechloa Macra Hakone Grass - and realized I never got around to posting some photos of those visits.   Well, today, I correct that miss. Starting with a photo of a display of something people call Scottish Lovage - but is exclusive to Northwind in Wisconsin.  That photo is below - showing off a couple dozen 1# containers of Ligusticum scoticum.   The sign reads:  "Compact, upright, clump-forming perennial.  Glossy leaves with umbels of tiny, white flowers.  Beautiful seed heads." The second sign provides the pedigree:  "This plant is highly regarded at the Chicago Art Institute.  Northwind is the only

We have twelve clumps of Summer Beauty Allium ( Allium angulosum 'Summer Beauty' ) in our backyard that were planted in 2020.  In two batches:  first a group of four , then eight more .  They're now placed in a colony of five and a colony of seven.  Odd numbers is what other gardeners always recommend. All of them have done well this year and I'm happy to see them about to burst open and put on their mid-Summer show.  They disappear over Winter, but put out this lovely dark green foliage that stays green at the tips.  Here's a look at them emerging from the mulch in late March of this year .   The drift of five is planted at the base of the Greenspire Linden horizontal cordon espalier - you can see them below.  The photo looks like there is four, but there's one behind #3 (from the left) in the back row against the fence.  Head here and scroll to the bottom of the post to see the original four plantings with one kind of 'behind' the others.  In the pho