Why I Oughta...

Yesterday, I mentioned that we don't get A TON of fall colors in our yard - mostly due to the variety of trees that we inherited, but posted a photo of our small Bald Cypress in the front yard that was showing some fall colors .  We have a couple of Chanticleer Pear flowering trees in our yard (I know, I know...) that normally retain their leaves for a good part of Fall - leading into Winter.  There have been a number of years that I've tried to wrap a couple of these trees with Christmas lights to only have to deal with the leaves that have stuck around.  This year, however, two of these trees (We technically have four with two in decline) have decided to put on a really great Fall Show with oranges and reds.  Here is the one on our north fence line you can see below: I'll get out and measure the caliper of this tree this Winter, but I'm thinking this tree has grown just a little bit this year.  

Back at the end of April, we planted a tree on Earth Day outside of our screened porch.  It is a Chanticleer Pear - which, I know....I know...isn't the best tree to be planting in our landscape, but we were facing a set of circumstances that warranted this approach.  Our neighbors to the north were building their house all this calendar year and while we had planted our row of eight Frans Fontaine European Columnar Hornbeams to provide screening from our back patio and screened porch , we planted them without knowing where the house was going to be built.   By Earth Day, the new house next door had the framing done and - much to our surprise - we had *most* of their windows screened with trees.  But, there was ONE new window - closer to the front of the house that was basically unblocked by the Frans Fontaine Hornbeams. Have a look at this post from back in April - where you can see the window I'm talking about . And now, have a look at the same view as it looks...

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 host...

One of the traditions that I've enjoyed keeping up with each year with our kids is the annual Earth Day planting of a tree in our yard.  We started with one - a Dawn Redwood in 2017 - that we planted in our new lot while our house was being built.  This was a few months before the construction was going to be done.   The next year - 2018 - we planted three Earth Day trees. One for each kid.  We did a weeping cherry (that we lost), a Red Maple Sun Valley tree that we planted all the way in the back and a flowering pear tree that we planted on the south fence line .  Those two have survived since then, but they were VERY small trees.  I wasn't measuring them at the time, but when I measured them in January of this year (which would have made these 1.75 years *in the ground* at our house), the maple was just .87" caliper and the Chanticleer Pear was up to 1.20".   They were similar when we put them in, so guess it was something lik...

This troubled tree - in our front yard - appears to finally have overcome transplant shock and a clay bowl to get back on schedule.  At least....that's my hope.  You can see the flower buds that are set to explode in the photo above.  This is the second tree in this location after the first one that was installed when we built the house died.  This one , too, would have died if I didn't intervene.  I'm pretty sure that digging out a little channel that broke up the clay bowl underneath this tree is what saved it from drowning itself. The last time I posted about this pear tree was last Summer when it was leaf'ing out .  It didn't look super healthy and robust, but was green.  I trimmed many of the dead limbs off, but left everything else that was leaf'ing.  Prior to last year, this thing was all out of cycle.  In November of 2018 - YES!  November... it flowered .  In terms of timing, this flowering pear tree is showing buds...

Last week, I shared a couple of photos of our stand of Frans Fontaine Fastigiate Hornbeams and talked about how they were retaining their leaves to provide some Winter screening.  They're not the only trees in the yard that has foliar marcescence occurring.  Above you see one of our three Chanticleer Flowering Pear trees that has almost all of its leaves still on the branches.  This tree grew a ton this year - based on the tree inventory post  - but I'm not sure if this foliar retention took place last year, but I do remember that one of our old flowering pear trees in Elmhurst held on to most of the leaves through Winter because I wrapped lights around it and had to contend with the leaves obscuring the lights shining through.  I planted this tree early in our time here in Downers Grove, but, unfortunately, I don't have a post showing it going in the ground.  It has grown quite a bit and I placed it strategically based on a neighbor a few doors ...

The last time we checked in on this large caliper Chanticleer Flowering Pear tree that is planted close to our front driveway was last Fall when it was totally off-cycle.  It flowered in early November .  But, I took that (oddly-timed) indicator as a potential sign of progress.  Looking back at this same tree in June of last year, I think that this year the tree is healthier.  It isn't perfect as there are still plenty of thin spots and some dead tips.  But, look at the photo from last year .  The leaves are a different color.   Darker green.  Seemingly more healthy, right? The culprit was the clay bowl that this tree was planted in and how it was drowning the tree.  At least...that's what I *think* was happening.  I dug out part of the tree on the low-side of the planting bowl and then used a post-hole digger to dig through the clay layer to make a kind-of drainage spot so the water had a place to run.  After I did this ...

About a month ago, I posted a photo of what appeared to be 'new' growth on our struggling Chanticleer Pear Tree that we had planted out front of our house.  Here's that post that shows new green leaf growth emerging on the tree in early October .    The full history of this tree is long, despite that we've only been in our house a little bit over a year.  It starts with the first tree - a 3" caliper version of this tree - being planted before we moved in our new house in June of 2017.  That tree didn't survive the year and was ripped out and replaced earlier this year .  The new tree struggled, too.  But I worked at it.  I did some radial trenching and used a post hole digger to break down thru the clay layer to allow the tree to breath a bit.  I took a very similar route with the Bald Cypress we planted this Summer - you can see the details here .  And the tree managed to survive all Summer.  I stopped watering it all toget...

We had a large 3" caliper Chanticleer flowering Pear tree planted on the north side of our property kind of close to our garage out in front before we moved in.  It is a fairly columnar, fast-growing tree that while isn't super awesome, does give us some quick growth and a fairly mature tree relatively quickly.  Or so we thought. That tree didn't survive the first year.  It was in trouble last year and didn't come back this Spring . It was removed and replaced this Summer.  Here's the post showing off the newly planted 3" caliper replacement tree from June of this year .  Welp, *that* new tree has had a lot of trouble, too.  Unfortunately, I think that it has been caused by two factors:  1.  I watered the heck out of it. 2.  It is in a clay bowl with questionable soil. Which lead to it being overwatered and drowning while it gasps for oxygen. What lead me to this conclusion was doing a little digging and figuring out that after ...

Right at the end of May, I posted about the 3" caliper Chanticleer Flowering Pear tree that we had installed right outside of our garage didn't make it through the Winter and was slated to be replaced.  Welp...as you can see in the photo above, the new tree arrived and was planted recently.  The initial tree was planted in June of 2018 before we moved in and I did a check-in post on the tree in February of this year when I speculated that the tree didn't make it based on the very few buds being set on the tree in the fall.   Here's a side-by-side comparison of the new tree and the one that they ripped out. I've made no secret about my love/hate relationship with these flowering pears.  They do a really great job of growing fast, providing screening and even a little show in the Spring.  But, I know that they're a cheap/low-cost solution that isn't all that long-lived.  That hasn't stopped me from planting three of these including ...

Welp, it is official:  Our Chanticleer Flowering Pear tree out front by our garage is gone.  I n February of this year, I posted a photo and an update on this tree and speculated that I thought it was dead, but we wanted to wait until Spring arrived to see if it came back.  The bad news is marked with that pink spray paint on the trunk:  marked for removal.  I've had (now) maybe seven or eight of these trees over the years and this is one of three we have here in Downers Grove and this is the only one that gave us any trouble what-so-ever.  This one is a 3" caliper, so it is a more mature tree while the rest of them have been 1" or less caliper versions, so they might have had a better shot at catching on.  It is being replaced like-for-like with another of the same variety.  I'll post photos of the new tree once it goes in the ground. 

For Earth Day last year, we planted a tree:  our Dawn Redwood .  This was while our #newoldfarmhouse was being built, but we still had access to the backyard.  This year, we planted a couple of trees on Earth Day.  This post chronicles the first one:  a Chanticleer Cleveland Select Flowering Pear tree.  I took the kids to Home Depot on Earth Day and had each of them pick out a small tree.  They were running a sale on tiny trees like the one you see above for $15 each.  This is the one that the Bird picked out and that's here in the photo showing off her new tree after she helped me plant it.  We put it on the south fence line in an open spot.  This was a nice Earth Day activity for me and the kids.  The Bird was so excited to help plant the tree.  She's my gardening buddy, so she knows how to get plants (and trees) out of their pots by beating on the pots and then she also helps rough up the roots to help them get starte...

I came across these Sky Pencil Holly at Fast-Growing-Trees.com (that's where the photo above is from) and I found myself going down a Sky-Pencil-Holly-rabbit-hole to figure out if we could grow these in the Chicago Suburbs (Zone 5B).  The folks at Fast Growing Trees list them to be hardy down to zone 5B.  But the team at the Missouri Botanic Garden list them down to Zone 6 .  These things are super narrow and grow perfectly upright, so they have a lot of appeal to me.  But, I'm afraid that multiple sources (besides the folks who are selling them!) are concurring about Zone 6 hardiness.   Check out the video here: In particular, I was thinking about them alongside the north property line, in front of the fence where our (eventual) walkway would direct people back.  Check out this area I've circled in red on our landscape plan.  It is a tight area that would call for something very slender, yet would provide a sense of 'entrance.  ...