Why I Oughta...

#3 and #4 on my Summer to-do list for 2026 focused on adding plants to the Pizza Oven Bed that I created last year.  That meant finishing up a garden edit and adding some Hakonechloa Macra grasses to the front of the border.  And, adding some flowering perennials amongst the three existing Wichita Blue Spruce trees in the middle of the bed.  Here is the post showing the blue junipers without much planted around them (in Winter) .  And, here is a post showing the original inspiration for the blue juniper + stachys inspiration .   When I came across this sign for Stachys 'Summer Crush' at Roy Diblik's Northwind Perennial Farm, I thought these would work well in this spot: The description reads: 'Summer Crush' has a summer dispaly of wand-like inflorescenses with pink and white bi-color flowers that stand above dense, green foliage.   I ended up buying only three of these because I've been using up the space in front of the blue Junipers with dahlias...

I have a pair of Chicago Lustre Arrowwood Viburnum flowering shrubs that I planted in Fall of 2021 along the north fenceline in the backyard.  These are in the understory of the Tree Swing Oak Tree and home (now) to a pretty large (and...expanding) naturalized drift of Ostrich Ferns.  The Arrowwood Viburnums were spec'd as part of our landscape plan that called for them to be repeated in a number of spots.  I only planted two of these, but looking back at the posts, I probably should try to find some more of these and plant them around the back of the property.   They were IMMEDIATELY attacked by the (dang) rabbits, so I started to protect them with some chicken wire cages .  Those cages remain today.   These have bloomed the past few Summers, but I seem to have only documented them last June in a roundup post .   Last month (May 2026), I noted that these shrubs had shot up and have (after five years) have some vertical-ness to them ....

Back in the Summer of 2023, I began to discover (and plant) sedges.  One of them that has performed pretty well in the shade of our fence and Linden espalier has been Montana Sedge.  I planted three of them at first .  In the Fall of 2024, I divided some of them to add even more small groundcover plants along the fence .  On a recent trip to Northwind Perennial Farm, I came home with seven more plugs of Carex Montana: I planned on putting them in/around the existing colony of Carex Montana in the backyard. I previously planted 36 groundcover plants - all Ajuga.  These seven Montana Sedges gets me to 43 groundcover plants - a new high-planting mark.  Here, below, is a look at the area showing the small White Polka Dot annuals on the right.  In the middle, you can see the three existing Carex Montana right up against the flagstone path. These are small (right now), but they'll spread out a bit.  I opted to put one on the left side of the flagstone p...

I have Allium Summer Beauty and Allium Serendipity in the garden as clumping alliums.  I also have some random (now random) allium bulbs in Christophii and Gladiator, too.  So, when I saw a tray of plugs of a new (to me) Allium at Roy Diblik's Northwind Perennial Farm up in Wisconsin, I stopped and read the sign.   Here it is - below.  Allium cernuum.  "Nodding Onion". I grabbed two plugs and found a home for them in the pizza oven bed - tucked in between the Chartreuse on the Loose Nepeta and Lady's Mantle. Planting up the pizza oven bed was on my to-do list for this year and while these two allium are small, they're part of the puzzle.

While most of my priority to-do items on my annual list involve horticulture, a few of them are different type of projects.  #5 is to "Finish the Pizza Oven".  Finishing it means the finish materials:  exterior cladding with brick veneer, trim around the roof and covering the roof.   Late last year, I began to play around with brick veneer. I started along the backside (just to get the hang of the materials) before Winter arrived .  But, one of the things I've been watching is the temperature tolerances of the veneer mortar.  I wrote about the temperature requirements earlier this Spring .  With the temps (finally) rising, we're in the window to work on the veneer. After getting the hang of the material on the back and one of the sides (Note:  I didn't complete either, just did a couple of rows.), I have moved to the front.  I'm using two types of brick veneer - one is about half the price of the other, but I prefer (surprise, surprise)...

I have planted up a number of various sizes and a couple of types of eucalyptus in a couple of settings to try to grow as cut-flower accent plants.  First up is Silver Dollar Eucalyptus.  I bought three pint-sized plants from the nursery on the IL/Wisconsin stateline back on Memorial Day weekend.  I have put them in three different spots to see how they do:  First is in the raised bed on our patio with our tomatoes.  This is in mushroom compost: The other two pint-sized eucalyptus went in the ground.  First up is adjacent to the pizza oven bed.  This gets some good sun and I planted it with municipal biosolids: The last one (of these three) is in the corner patio bed.  This went in with the native soil/loam. I also previously bought six Silver Dollar plugs from Garden Club. Those arrived back in early April and I up-potted them into small pots.  As soon as I could (with the last frost), I moved them outside and put six in one of the Greensta...

Back in May, I posted the details of a new (to me) Korean Maple tree that I planted in our backyard:  Alpenglow Korean Maple from Iseli Nursery and their Jack Frost Collection .   Previously, I have planted a pair of Korean Maples in the garden:  A Northern Glow Korean Maple in the Island Bed up front .  And an Arctic Jade Korean Maple in the backyard along the southside border . Despite having a great first season ( and fall show ), that tree suffered something and didn't come back this year .  Good to their Warranty, the fine folks at The Growing Place in Naperville honored their one-year guarantee and let me bring back the Arctic Jade carcass.  More on that tree in a future post. They didn't have any Arctic Jade trees in their inventory, so I decided to try something else as a replacement:  North Wind Korean Maple. That name sounds familiar, right?  (at least it did to me.) And that's because last November, I wrote a "Getting to Know" post...

I planted three All Gold Hakonehloa Macra Grasses from the Morton Arboretum Plant Sale last month where I filled in a couple of spots in the long border of existing All Gold grasses in the backyard .  I was at Home Depot and saw on their racks something familiar recently:  they were selling All Gold Japanese Forest Grasses.  $13 for a one-gallon container.  That's $7 cheaper per plant than at the Morton Sale .  But...see below.  It is about half-way filled with grass.  (It appears that these were divided this year/late last year) and didn't fill-out the container just yet.  And, they couldn't even be bothered to fill out the rest of the nursery pot with potting mix.   Never-the-less...I bought one.  Just one.  (I know....I broke one of my own rules .) I decided to plant it at the closest edge of the row (closest to our house) and planted it far enough away from the edge to allow for some groundcover to sneak in there, too....

Yesterday, I started the posting series about planting out my cut flower plugs with the first eight Didiscus Lacy Blue in the front yard Island Bed .  Today, I'm showing the six Plectranthus Silver Shield plugs in the corner bed in our backyard near the patio.  These are going where I planted a mix of Dusty Miller and border Dahlias last year, but in a newly expanded bed.   These plugs also came from Garden Club and because I ordered them for too-early of a delivery , I had to pot them up into something larger.  Of all the varieties that came from Garden Club, these Silver Shields did BY FAR the best.  All eight of them were happy two months later.   Overall, I've been really happy with the Garden Club plug order - from the greenhouses they came in to the vibrancy of the tiny plants.  A positive experience.  I'm trying something different with these:  no rabbit cages.  Instead, I'm applying Liquid Fence.  *Fingers Crossed...

Dahlia season has begun here.  With the initial planting of seventeen dahlias.  That was day one of planting the tubers that I started out in the garden.  I made this annotated map to show (mostly myself) where everything is planted because I'm growing many new (to me) varieties for the first time and have a much more diverse lineup than in previous seasons.  Note:  this post is going live in early June, but I planted these on May 20th.  Last year, I planted them in the first week of June , so this is almost three weeks earlier.  Here, below is that map.  So far, I've put six in the "Pizza Oven West" bed, seven along the side of the house in the "South Sun Wall" bed and four "Under the Elm".  You can see them numbered in red: Pizza Oven East 1.  Crichton Honey 2.  Cafe Au Lait 3.  Creme de Cognac 4.  Blue Wish 5.  Milena Fleur 6.  Jowie Winnie Here (below) is a photo below of these plantings.  Note that I pu...