Why I Oughta...

We have two Wizard of Oz Dahlia plants in the front yard.  One IB2DWs and the other in the back of the Island Bed in the middle of the front yard.  Despite the one IB2DWs starting off much stronger, it has peter'ed out with tiny blooms that are (mostly) white.  The Island Bed Wizard of Oz Dahlia, on the other hand, is LOADED with pink ball dahlia blooms.  That, the bees are loving.  If you look closely at the photo below, you'll see bees all over the center of these dahlia blooms: The quality of the soil is very different in these two spots:  the Island bed is rich and full of compost and biosolids.  The IB2DWs bed is always 'hard to grow', full of clay and shallow with just a few inches of soil before you get to gravel.  

Having done a similar post last year and in 2022, I thought it was a good time to revisit the "State of the Original IB2DWs bed".  That's the original bed in between two driveways.  Here is the post and photos from 2022 .  And, here is the post and photos from last year .  Looking back at 2022 - three years ago - a lot has changed.  Everything was immature, but 'bones' were there.  The All Gold Hakonechloa grasses, the Karl Foerster Grasses in back and a couple of Serendipity Alliums.  All were present. But by 2024, they were joined by other things . Including the (gasp!) Creeping Jenny Groundcover. And other perennials including Cat's Pajamas Nepeta, some Elijah Blue Fescue clumps, a red sedums, a couple of Agastache Blue Fortune , a Prairie Dropseed, some Peonies, a couple of conifers, some boxwoods, a Cardoon and a couple of trees. The Cardoon ran for two years and hasn't come back. But, I've also added a few things.  Including a trio of L...

As I wandered around the tables at Northwind Perennial Farm, I was stopped-in-my-tracks by this silver foliage plant.  It was new (to me) and named "Garden Ghost" Artimisa.   Here's how they look in their nursery pots below: Here's a closer look at the sign below that highlights it's short height (just a foot tall) and color (silver): I tucked the three plants into the back corner of the Island Bed - behind the Medusa Allium (more on them tomorrow).

I've posted a number of times about groundcover and how I've evolved as a gardener when it comes to planting groundcover.  It was (for me) an afterthought.  (Unfortunately...the same could be said about conifers, but I've begun to change that fact).   The first groundcover that I 'got to know' and planted was Ajuga 'chocolate chip'.  I've planted it in a number of spots and will continue to add it when I can find it.  Over the years, I've added some sedums ( Angelina, a variegated variety and something that I've grown to love: John Creech Sedum .   But, I've also begun to get smarter about using annuals as bedding plants over the years.  And, thanks to some of the garden tours I've watched on YouTube has lead me to think about annuals as groundcover.  I've done *some* of that with Coleus.  And...  #6 on my 2025 to-do list was to use more coleus as a bedding plant.   And, #16 on my list was to 'keep going on groundcover'...

One of the best decisions we made when we installed our initial landscaping was the planting of a multi-trunk Saucer Magnolia tree in the center of our front yard .   That was Summer of 2017 and now eight growing seasons later ('17, '18, '19, '20, '21, '22, '23, '24), the tree has grown to be a Spring-time standout.  But, just briefly.   The crown of the tree has taken on a globe-like shape - and I've never pruned any part of the tree.  And, thanks to the maturity of the tree combined with a seemingly not-to-harsh Winter (and in particular...late Winter), that crown is now littered with pink blooms.  Below is the view from our front porch: I posted about the pink buds swelling and starting to open a week ago and this show will last for a few more days.   Then, the pink and white petals will scatter across the lawn before the green foliage emerges and this flowering tree transforms into a shade tree for the rest of the season.  

Last week, I pulled out a small London Planetree that we had planted in our parkway .  The tree suffered from drought last year and didn't come back this Spring.  No buds set, no green under the bark.   Replacing it was a no-brainer when I came across that Black Tupelo tree that I posted about yesterday .   Just because this Black Tupelo was a $20 tree - sold by a Big Box store, I'm one to follow the advice of Ralph Snodsmith and gave this 50-cent plant tree a $5 hole .  Because I dug up the dead London Planetree, the digging here was easy. I dug a wide and deep hole and then backfilled it in to make sure the rootball was placed not-too low.  These big box store trees always have their root-flare buried.  So, it is easy to plant them too low.  Right now, the root-flare is under some soil.  But....in terms of position the ball, I kept this one up 'high enough' to where - if/when the trunk develops, the rootflare will be 'above' the ...

Two days ago, I posted some photos showing the first step in the 'lazy bed extension' around our island bed in the front yard .  This was one of my priority projects for the year - #3.  I started with laying down cardboard to smother out the grass along the driveway.  That section went about twelve feet by three-feet wide.   For step two in this process, I went with filling-in the stretch of grass between the sidewalk back to the (current) island bed.  This section is about five-feet deep by twelve feet long.  I laid down two layers of cardboard with a slight overlap (both overlapped between the two of them and overlapped with the first layer on the driveway side).  I wet it down with the hose.  Then, topped with municipal biosolids.  And, finally...a layer of other organic yard material (leaves, grass clippings, etc) on top.  I mixed those together and used my hose again to wet it all together.   Below are a couple of sho...

Yesterday, I shared the overview of my third priority for 2025 - expanding the front yard island bed .  These first three ( Pizza Oven MVP , Renovation of the bluestone chips gravel path and this island bed) were pulled from my initial 'early look' list .   We caught a little bit of a run of decent weather this past weekend, so I opted to start the island bed expansion/extension.   Remember....I talked about one of the most critical components to this project:  time.  I need time to smother out the turf grass.  And time for the biosolids to 'mellow' out a little bit.   This bed started back in Summer last year when I dug up and created a kidney-bean-shaped island bed with a Korean Maple tree (Northern Glow) and a dwarf (Spring Grove) Ginkgo tree .   In the post yesterday, I showed the size (12x12) of the extensions and looked at some potential plantings.  This bed, when complete (at more than 150ish square feet) will be ...

My list of potential projects is now posted and includes a couple that I've already posted about and one this one - that I'm going to call number three for the year.   My 'early look' list is here.  Priority 1 - the renovation of the bluestone chip gravel garden path is here .  And, Priority 2 - the minimum viable product on the pizza oven project is here .   My third project is in the front yard - the island bed.   I created this bed in mid-Summer 2024 when I planted the Korean Maple (Northern Glow) and cut out a kidney-bean-shaped bed in the 'front-ish' of our front yard.  Kind-of in the corner between our sidewalk and driveway.  I added a Spring Grove dwarf Ginkgo tree next to the Korean Maple a couple days later.  I also planted some Inferno coleus as an annual  and an October Daphne sedum (that the rabbits ate up all Summer...).  In the Fall, I added even more to this bed - three dwarf Seslarias (John Greenlee) , ...

I managed to plant a couple more things this weekend after finding these at The Growing Place end-of-the-season sale.  There are now two Stachys monnieri 'Hummelo' planted right at the feet of the Ginkgo tree that is growing IB2DWs.    I have a pair of these same Stachys Hummelos already in the front yard that I planted last Fall (Fall Planting, ftw).   This was their first season and they put on a nice colorful show this Summer - which reinforced why I wanted them in our garden.  As I mentioned in the original post, these are on Roy Diblik's 'appropriate plant list' , so you can't go wrong with having a few of these in your beds.   I've posted a few times about repetition and mass plantings and how I've grown to appreciate (and be drawn to) those concepts.  I've swapped out a few things in my backyard (via Garden Edits) to bring some of that repetition and mass planting to life.   One of the postings - about mass plantings - was b...