Why I Oughta...

This four-plant Oklahoma Salmon Zinnia just jumped right off the nursery tables at The Growing Place on my last visit.  It was tall, full of blooms and the colors were just in my wheel-house:  salmon, peachy.  See below for the as-bought state of this colorful cut-flower annual: Floret describes the Oklahoma Salmon Zinnia in a way that made me want to buy even more : This gorgeous novelty is one of the most prolifically blooming zinnias I’ve ever grown. Its petite, double blooms are a warm mix of salmon and peach and combine well with anything. Long, strong stems and small flower size make them a winning summer crop and wonderful bouquet addition. After bringing it home (only one, because that's all they had), I wanted those 'prolific blooms', so I knew that I had to cut it back.  Or...pinch it back - as some people say. This has four stems that were shooting way-up.  I counted up three full-sets of leaves and lop'd off the tops.  Below is a before-and-afte...

I'm not drawn (normally) to pinks in the garden.  Or reds.  But, blues and purples?  They seem to jump off the nursery table when I see them.  At least, recently.    See the photo at the top of this post?  Little purple flowers on a trailing habit annual?  Yes, please.    That is Verbena x Lascar 'Black Velvet'.  And, I bought three of them.  What are they?  From this listing on Magic Valley Gardens : Verbena ‘Lascar™ Black Velvet’ adds rich, velvety drama to your garden with clusters of deep magenta-purple blooms that stand out beautifully against bright green foliage. This early-flowering variety features a mounded to trailing habit, making it perfect for mixed containers, hanging baskets, and sunny borders. With medium vigor and excellent weather tolerance, it delivers consistent color throughout the season. A favorite for gardeners seeking bold color and reliable, low-maintenance performance in summer plantings. Flower...

A couple weeks ago, I read this post on Martha Stewart's blog titled: Staking the Herbaceous Peonies - and realized that we're coming up quickly on peony season in our garden.  Martha uses (of course she does) stakes that she designed herself and has a huge number of peonies on her property.  We, well...don't.   Over the years, we've ended up with five peony plants.  Two in front (IB2DWs) and three in the back (Kitchen curved bed).  After the first five-or-six years in our new garden, we finally had our first *real* peony season back in 2023 .  Why did we finally get blooms?  Because I moved the peony plants we had on-hand from the back of the yard to closer to the sun/patio.  And, I moved a couple up to the front yard where they get full sun.  Last year (2024), we had even more peonies.  Here's a post showing a full vase of Sarah Bernhardt pink peonies that I cut from one of the plants .   However, due to their small-siz...

I haven't planted tulip bulbs in years, but I still have clusters of them in a few spots around the garden.  I've learned over time that tulips need to be interplanted with other things - to sort-of camouflage the foliage as it sticks around and (eventually) dies back.  Once the blooms are gone, bulb foliage NEEDS to stick around to collect energy for the bulb, but it usually looks ratty.   Because of that, I've held off on bulbs for a few Falls, but this year I should put it back my list.  Why am I thinking that?  Because the Spring 'hello' this little cluster of tulips are giving right at the edge of our driveway.  These, below, are IB2DWs, down by the sidewalk.     With all the Springs where we've had tulips, I've never gone out and cut them for a countertop arrangement.  Until this year.  Here, below, is my first Spring-time arrangement featuring tulips and daffodils.    The daffodils are the 'inherited' ones in o...

I started my new garden with Summer Beauty Alliums.  They're really great.  Since then, I've found something I like a tiny-bit better:  Serendipity Alliums.  They bloom later in the year.  And for longer .   (Turns out, there's a third variety - Millenium - that sort-of fits in between these two .) Over the years, I've grown and divided both Summer Beauty and Serendipity and placed them around the garden.  Each of the past few Falls, I've divided the Serendipity clumps.  Starting with two, I now have five .  All IB2DWs.   Now, I'm drawn towards the Serendipity due to the bloom time and length, I still have a bunch of Summer Beauties in the garden.  And, guess what?  They're early Spring stars.  A bunch of my garden hasn't woken-up yet.  Hostas are in the ground.  Peonies are just little red tips.  Astilbes and ferns are showing their first few shoots.   But allium clumps?  Their gree...

Sedum groundcover is something that I've added over the past few years - some of it works, some of it is a work-in-project.  In walking around the beds this weekend, I noticed the pair of Sedum kamtschaticum 'Variegatum' that I planted in Fall 2023 are doing the best of all of the groundcovers.  These are IB2DWs, down by the sidewalk.  You can see them in this post from a year ago .   They're tucked in near some legacy tulips - that you can see both of below.  Tulips on the right - just foliage.  And, right down the middle of the photo, there are two clumps of sedum that are putting on Spring growth: These put on small yellow flowers in mid-Summer.  Here's a photo from June 2024 showing the flowers .    One of the big changes here is the expansion of this bed in the past 12ish months.  These were, when planted, adjacent to lawn.  Now, they're surrounded by mulch.   Groundcover continues to be something I'm going to fo...

Planted in the Fall of 2023 , a pair of Silver Mount Artemisia are emerging for Spring 2025 in the IB2DWs bed right next to the driveway.  This pair of silver-foliage perennials can be seen in this Summer 2024 post about some Zinnias .  They're called 'mound', but I think a better name would be 'cloud'.   Silver foliage is a recent garden trend, with more plants being hybridtized to be white/silver.  These Artemisias stand out in the IB2DWs bed.  According to most sources on the Web, Fall is the best time to divided Artemisia - so if these have a good growing season - these will go on my '2025 Fall Dividing Candidates' list. See below for the greenish-silver tips emerging for Spring:

My experience with clumping Allium started with Roy Diblik's Summer Beauty Allium.  Or...ornamental onion.  I have them planted in a number of spots - in the back and in the front.  But, in 2021, I added a new variety - Serendipity Allium .  They're *very* similar to Summer Beauty, but have a few improvements.   I started with three, but only two came back IB2DWs, and by the Fall of 2023, those two were big enough to begin dividing .   I took the two existing clumps and made five total.  All five came back in the Spring of 2024 .  Three in the original spot - in the initial IB2DWs bed and two more in the IB2DWs extended.  Last Fall, I divided one of the originals again.  And, transplanted the new clump further down the bed.  Leaving me with six Serendipity Alliums before dormancy .   Like other hybrid perennials, these Serendipity Alliums are an improvement over the original.  They bloom a little later and ...

'Tis the season for the start of garden cleanup.  Well...it is probably too early to do MOST of the cleanup, but I did start with a few 'chop and drop' experiments. First, I cleaned up a couple of Autumn Moor Grasses in the new front porch bed extension .  Then, I moved on to the raised vegetable bed on our back patio .   The most recent little slice of the garden that I started clean-up on was hinted in this post showing the tulip tips from earlier this week .  Those tulips are down near the sidewalk in the IB2DWs (extended) bed.  That's also where we have (now) two Panicum grasses ( I divided one that was struggling last Fall ) and the 'mystery' blue-ish Moor Grass that I moved out from the front porch bed .  I clipped off the grasses at the ground and cut them up into smaller pieces.  And, like the other areas of the garden, I left them in place to provide a light mulch layer.  See below for a couple of photos showing this area:  Thi...

The damage from the (dang!) rabbits isn't contained to our backyard.  They're also working on things in our front yard including one of the small conifer trees - a Weeping Norway Spruce - that is planted IB2DWs.  I was out in the garden this past week when I spotted this strange site:  a spruce 'tip' that was laying next to the tree.  See below: One of those (dang!) rabbits gave this tree a try this Winter and it seems didn't care for it that much.  

Down in the IB2DWs bed near the sidewalk are now the home of one of the FIRST signs of Spring.  Some of our tulip bulbs have sprung tips and they've emerged in a purple-ish cone-shape that is peeking through the soil and mulch.  See below for the first couple of these Spring flower bulbs arriving.   Last year, we had a very mild Winter and the tulips emerged in early January .  Yes..January.  We're about a month-or-so behind 2024.   We're CLEARLY NOT done with Winter, so these will stay in this state for a couple more weeks before putting on any vertical growth.  But, seeing these sure warms my gardening heart and makes me remember that the season is right-around-the-corner. 

A few years back, I learned my lesson when it comes to pruning young trees:  don't.  Don't prune them.  Let them go a few years before you touch them at all.  No limb'ing up.  No removing limbs/branches.  If you have to do anything, just clip off the tips of some of the lower branches, but leave them in place - attached to the tree.   In trying to 'hurry the tree up', I thought I could prune off all the lower branches and focus the energy near the top of the tree - to drive the leader UPWARDS.  Turns out, the tree needs limbs and branches and leaves to collect the necessary energy to grow.   That 'leave the tree' advice is what I've followed with the Bald Cypress tree that is planted IB2DWs.    It went in the ground in 2018 .    The Bald Cypress is probably my most 'successful tree'.  I planted it as a tiny, pencil-thin pot-grown tree.  Today, it is probably fifteen feet tall and growing.   Be...

Four-season gardening has been a goal of mine for a number of years.  Or...at least...considering the impact of the four-seasons on the garden vs. thinking *just* about bloom-time and Summer in the garden.  Conifers are a big part of that Winter Interest season and while my garden LACKED them for many years, I've begun to correct that in the past few seasons.  ( I've admitted to making a mistake on conifers and NOW believe in the advice:  "Conifers should come first." ) The original IB2DWs bed (closer to the garage) is a continuous work-in-progress.  I started with some Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grasses and have added things over the years.   This section typically gets piled high with snow during the Winter; as it is a natural place to put snow that is shoveled off the driveway.  I've posted photos of this area piled high with snow before: h ere's a post from one-year-ago (January 2024) showing that the snow was piled to the top of the Weeping N...

Fall Dividing is rolling on with some Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grasses being divided in Fall.   Like most other ornamental grasses, Karl Foerster grasses suffer from center rot and require division every three-or-so years.  I found a large clump that is planted close to the Bald Cypress tree IB2DWs that I dug up and divided into three.  I replaced 1/3rd back into the existing hole.  And then....took the other two divisions and placed them further down IB2DWs along the property line.   See below for the two new grasses - via division.   I have a few more of these that I need to divide that I'll get to this week.  This gave me a +2 plants (or grasses) via division.   #11 on my 2024 to-do was to 'focus on fall planting' .   These two divided clumps of Karl Foerster grasss find me running my total up to 20 'new plants' for 2024.  That feels pretty good.  Here's my math: +2 trees, +2 John Greelee Grasses, +6 Aj...

Back in the Summer of 2022, I picked up and planted three VERY SMALL Green Velvet Boxwoods around the base of a flowering pear tree IB2DWs.  These were right at the break in the bed where our gravel (Bluestone chips) runs from our driveway back to the yard.   When I say 'very small', I mean it:  they were in 1# nursery pots.  I've planted a number of 1# boxwoods over the years and I've been ok with the fact that they take time to mature.   That's the case with these three.  They're not fast-growers, but they sure have grown up.   This post tracks 28-months of growth.  That's 2.5 growing seasons (1/2 of 2022, all of 2023 and 2024).   They grown from about six-inches tall and four-inches around.  To, what you see here, below.  These are now more than a foot tall and close to a foot in diameter.  The first photo shows two of them.  Then second photo shows the third one.  Note all the suckers coming o...

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...

Last year, I bought and planted a number of (what I thought at the time) were Sesleria Autumnalis - Autumn Moor Grasses - across the front of our front porch beds.  I say 'at the time' because I've learned in the time since that ONE of the plants is not like the other.  The Autumn Moor Grasses put on a show the past two Falls and have thin, yellow-ish blades come October.  The other grass is blue-green and doesn't have the fireworks explosion that the others have each Fall. See below for a look at this one mystery blue-green grass in between a volunteer Dusty Miller and an Autumn Moor Grass: The Autumn Moor Grasses are THRIVING, so I figured...why not transplant this mis-label'd 'mystery' grass and replace it with a divided Autumn Moor Grass.  That's what I did - I dug it up and moved it.  Not before dividing it into two good-sized clumps and one HOPEFUL strand.  I put them right against the sidewalk in the hard-to-grow area IB2Dws.  I filled the hole...

In October of 2021, I bought and planted a single Shenandoah Red Switchgrass down by the sidewalk - IB2DWS .  It was an end-of-the-season #FallPlanting purchase and I put it in that spot because the description said that Panicum are well-known for being 'drought tolerant' .  This was a VERY hard-to-grow spot with harsh conditions:  hot concrete on two sides, competitive mature tree roots and gravely soil.   It went in and hasn't done super well, but...persisted.  There's something to be said for persisting in a spot like this was planted.   In the years since, I've left it alone.  But, as I've learned over the years, ornamental grasses need to be tended-to and do well to be divided every few years.  They will end up with 'center rot' and will get rejuvenated when they're divided.  I've typically done my ornamental grass dividing in the Fall, so this past weekend, I decided to divide a few - starting with this Shenandoah Switch Grass...

Six years ago, I planted a tiny Bald Cypress tree .  It was a TINY tree.  I mean...tiny.  Pencil-thin trunk with a leader that was four-feet-tall or less.  If you go look at the photos from this post, you can BARELY make the trunk out.   But, that didn't last long.  This tree has grown and grown and grown.  I'd say that this is probably the BEST OUTCOME of any small tree we've planted over the years - and there's more than 100 of them.  I've chronicled this tree's growth over the years - as recent as last September when I noticed HOW BIG IT HAS GOTTEN .  Two years ago - September of 2022 - the tree was filling out and growing up.   Over the years, I have barely touched this tree.  However...when I planted it, there wasn't a driveway RIGHT NEXT TO IT.  There is one now.  So, starting this past Winter, I gave it its first dormant pruning - limbing it up just a little bit.  But, mostly just 'shortening' the bo...

Late last year, I planted a singular Cardoon IB2DWs after seeing some of them growing in the Fragrance Garden at the Morton Arboretum.  It was eaten a little bit by rabbits, but I ended up protecting it over the winter with a ring of chicken wire.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but it seemed to survive all Winter and then grew in Spring and Summer.  By July, it was good-sized and started to bloom .  The blooms were these out-of-this-world purple-spiked blooms that look like they belong on Pandora (Avatar).   After it bloomed, I decided to cut it back to the ground.  I left just a short segment of the stalk that seemed to die-back to the ground.  That was it, I figured. But...something has happened recently.  Foliage started to emerge from the mulch.  What the what?  Have a look at the current state of my cardoon - coming back in late Summer/early Fall.  Is this thing confused?  Will it survive the winter?  Will it b...