Why I Oughta...

#13 on my 2026 to-do list was to do something that I used to do regularly:  plant some Fall bulbs. Here's how I described it when I drafted my list : 13. Plant fall bulbs. For my first few gardening seasons, I was pretty good about planting fall bulbs. Alliums and tulips, mostly. But, I got away from it. Get back to it this Fall. And…Try a bulb lawn in front. Yes…a bulb lawn. Or, at least a patch of bulb lawn as an experiment. When I posted my mid-Summer check-in on my list , I marked this   Incomplete. Since then, I planted 95 crocus corms .  And 14 dwarf daffodil bulbs .  And six bulbs of (gifted) hardneck garlic .   One of the plants that I took note of this season and told myself (self...you should plant more of these) were the Sicilian Honey Garlic (alliums) that I have in a few places in the backyard.  It looks like I planted 15 of these bulbs in 2021 .  And, mostly forgot about them.  Here it is in bloom  in 2023.  I found a...

We're officially in Fall.  Calendar-wise, at least.   We have football on the tv.  The temperatures are dropping.  And, the stores already have their Christmas stuff out.  So, it was time to transition our front porch container into Fall. One of my annual to-do list goals (#16) is to do 'better containers'.   Our Wintertime container is done by a porch professional:  Churchill Garden Design .  And Elise Churchill (of Churchill Garden Design ) does a GREAT job.  MUCH, MUCH better than I could ever do with these containers.   Here's our 2025 version  featuring evergreens.  We've had her do a Fall container before and it looks so good.  Here is her 2024 version that featured some kales, an ivy, some mums and I think some hot pepper plants.  Like I said...she has such a good eye and a nice touch with porch containers.   Using her Winter 2025 container as inspiration and recycling some of the thi...

Two days ago, I posted photos and details of the six Ajuga 'Chocolate Chip' plugs I planted in the sideyard along our property line in an attempt to help with some erosion control that is needed due to a couple of downspout pop-ups that bring a lot of surface water to this area.   When I bought Chocolate Chip, I also bought a six-pack of Ajuga Burgundy Glow.  I've planted this Ajuga before ( here this year in May ) and it is larger-leaf'd than Chocolate Chip and brighter in color.  The tray was full of healthy plants.  Here's a couple of photos showing the six-pack and the root system that has been created this growing season: These being bigger than the Chocolate Chip and having this large, seemingly healthy root system means that I can put them a little bit more 'upstream' where the water seems to be running stronger.  This area below shows the location:  right in front of the grown-from-cutting Limelight Hydrangea.  (we should talk about that,...

Back at the beginning of September, I posted some details about planting a bulb lawn and took a photo of a set of bulbs at Menards that included some short-stature (in height) crocus flowers and other Fall-planting bulbs/corms.  I'm looking for short early-bloomers and after doing a little bit of research, I found that three crocus flowers were right for me.   I ended up buying one package of Ruby Giant, King of the Striped and Romance.  Here, below, is a photo of the bags.  35 + 25 + 35 = 95 crocus corms. #13 on my 2026 to-do list was to get some bulbs in the ground : 13. Plant fall bulbs. For my first few gardening seasons, I was pretty good about planting fall bulbs. Alliums and tulips, mostly. But, I got away from it. Get back to it this Fall. And…Try a bulb lawn in front. Yes…a bulb lawn. Or, at least a patch of bulb lawn as an experiment. A bulb lawn.  Doing one would require WAY, WAY, WAY more bulbs (corms).  Less than 100 is like dipping my to...

I've been working on a wasserspiel (water feature) that includes a DIY Alpine trough that can be part of an upgraded water feature in the backyard.  The current water feature is a half-barrel with an insert that is stuck about half-way back in the garden and it is mostly a sound-feature.   The inspiration for the new feature is in this post (via Instagram) and includes a basin dug into the ground, covered in gravel with a stone trough on top that empties into the gravel and then recirculates.   That means that I have to identify a spot that I can dig out for a basin, cover it with gravel and set the DIY Alpine trough on top.  Oh...I also have to make the LARGER trough, as my current one is simply proof-of-concept.   I've been thinking about water features around the patio for years.  This post from 2017 (almost 10 years ago, eeek) shows a waterfall/creek that I fell in love with and talked about how it could work around the steps to the pat...

The overnights are cooler.  And, as I've posted about recently, that seems to mean that the dahlias are happy.  Warm, sunny days.  And cool(er) nights = blooms popping off.  And, it also means that the dahlias begin to change colors.   That's one of the things that I've been learning over the years is that dahlias don't stay the same color over the full season from start-to-finish.  They shift and change how the colors appear.  Some get darker.  Some get lighter.  And, they change as they mature on the stems over time, too. One of the new (to me) dahlias this year is Peaches 'N Cream.  I bought two tubers from Bonny Blooms of this variety after seeing them show up on so many cut flower creators/influencers 'must grow' lists at the end of last year.  Here's my post from November 2025 where I showed a small roundup of what I was seeing in those kind of lists .   When my tubers arrived from Bonny Blooms, a few things we...

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...

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...