Why I Oughta...

Earlier this month, I posted a couple of things that I'd like to reference here.  First...was the post talking about 2022 Garden Trends and how - like high fashion - the trends we see in the garden center or local nursery emerge years prior at places like the Chelsea Flower Show .  In that recap post about trends, one of the design direction that was a big takeaway from Chelsea this year was the idea of 'organic ovals'.  It is one of the big, macro trends mentioned in this piece cover last year's Chelsea show .   The other thread I'm pulling at is the idea of a ' Getting to Know ' plant series that is part of my ongoing self-education.  I started by talking about Eucomis (Pineapple Lillies) and how I ordered a handful of bulbs to try in containers this Summer.   Part of these "Getting to Know X" posts is about getting myself a little more familiar with unique plants and cultivars.  Things that not everyone has in their garden or yard.   When you c

When I put together my 2021 to-do list , I included as #3 the idea of working the 'in between two driveways' area.  I mentioned that I needed to add a layer of mulch and think about doing even more.  I did some of that - mulched AND added a trio of Serendipity Allium to the bed .  And, the Chanticleer Pear Tree (after some hard pruning) seems to be on track.  (I'm not sure that's a good thing...but that's for another day.) But that's the extent of the work over there so far. Revisiting what I wrote back in late February about this area, I mentioned doing more: Later on (after I published my list), I wrote a post expounding on this area and even had some thinking about the area and converting it from turf grass .  But, I never got around to doing that very thing. Why post about it now?  Because, after a hard Summer of sun beating down on it, I am reminded why this area is so problematic.  See below for what it looks like right now:  Hard, dry, brittle and brown. 

The tulip bulbs that I planted last Fall in the front yard ( I planted 57 of them last Fall ) have really come up this Spring.  I'll take a proper photo of all of them - from the front - when they are all flowering.  But, for now, I wanted to document the location of the bulbs and where I can add even more this Fall.  From the front porch, this is the view of the stand of tulips around the Norway Maple tree: I wanted to post this on the blog in the Garden Diary so I remember WHERE to plant this Fall's bulbs to really fill in this area with tulips - so I circled these areas in the photo below.  I can see surrounding this tree with even more bulbs. I've posted about these tulips this Spring - first when they came up .  And then again, when they were covered in snow .  

Yesterday, I shared a post talking about the concept of creating curvilinear flower beds in landscape design and how one of my initial backyard projects is to move towards a final shape with our beds.  That requires us to carve up a bunch of the current lawn and creating new beds that jut out into the grass.  But, before I can even begin to think about how to make those swoop'ing, curved beds, there is some thinking that I have to do in in order to get both ready for the days of sod removal AND what has to happen AFTER the creation of the new beds to get them ready and dressed for the season.   To arrange my thinking - and to pressure test on what I want to do - I thought I'd create an individual (for me) order of operations document that details the steps in the order I need to take in order to make this all work.  So, let's go. 1.  Remove our Automower wire.   Around the entire perimeter of our backyard, we have a low-voltage green wire buried about 3" or so from th

I've talked and talked and talked about our backyard landscape plan on the blog over the years and I've made a lot of progress towards realizing the vision laid out there.  But, because I'm doing things myself, my best laid plans don't always work out.  And, one of the ways where I've been having trouble is in laying out the beds in the back.  You look at these ideal woodland gardens and any backyard garden of note, one of the things that you often see are beautiful, graceful, swooping curves that mark the edges of the beds .   In poking around the Web, I found this post from Sue at Not Another Gardening Blog that was part of her " Good Lines Mean Good Designs " series titled: Curves Wonderful Curves .  Those posts are almost ten years old, but they're just as valid as today.  And, for a beginner gardener like me?  They are *just* what I needed for where I am on my gardening journey right NOW. In the  post , Sue introduces (to me) Curviliear Form for

This is the third year of publishing these yard and garden to-do lists here on the blog. This is an attempt to FORCE myself into focusing and prioritizing my approach to the yard and garden in terms of what I buy, where I work, what I do in terms of the yard and garden. In 2019, I published my initial list on February 23rd and an addendum in April . In 2020, I published my list on February 22nd . As recently as February 6th of this year, I published a "draft" list that had 15 items on it and just last week - in a post about bonsai - I created a second list of eight items related to bonsai. Just between those two lists, I'm already at 23 items. And, I try to keep my list to 25 items, so I have some, ummm, pruning to do. My 2019 list started at 10 items. I added 7 with the addendum. That was 17 total items for 2019. Last year, I had 25. And I didn't get them all done. Some of the already identified 23 items are on not up for debate. But you'll see t

I've done this before on the blog - where I put out a plan for future tree planting locations - mostly as a way to guide my planning, but also marking down a place for when I buy a tree on impulse and provide it a place to grow.  For this post, I wanted to specifically think about trees as they relate to the patio area and rear of the house.  I've identified five spots to plant trees that you can see in the plan below. I'll quickly mention each of these - but note, they're NOT in priority order.  But, they each are likely deserving of a specific tree type/variety/caliper.  So, let's consider this a macro list (for now). 1.  Backyard - focal on southside.  Across from large Oak.   This is what I think needs to be a substantial tree - something on the order of 2" caliper.  And, likely a shade tree. 2.  Outside of Kitchen window, patio shade tree.   This one, too, should be a more mature tree.  It is in a vulnerable position in terms of being out in the open, but

Looking back on my 2020 gardening season, one of the things that was a success was determining some of the 'priority areas' in the yard that I wanted to address.  Last year, I picked three areas ( Area 1 , Area 2 , Area 3 ) and that forced me to be selective in the materials we bought and what I added around the yard.   In terms of success, I feel like I moved things forward in Area 1 and Area 2 quite a bit.  Area 3, not so much .  That seems like an area to revisit, but before I do that, I'm going to lay down a little marker on a 2021 Priority Area - let's call this one 2021 Area #1:  Behind The South White Oak Tree.  (That's the big dot on the far right of the plan you see below.) The planting area that is called for in the plan is quite simple.  Just 15 total plants of two varieties: 7 Ostrich Ferns 8 Summer Beauty Ornamental Onions (Alliums) We have a series of BOTH of those plants already in our yard currently, so adding these will be a natural extension of the

Our front yard is pitched from the house down to the street.  There's a significant grade difference between where our house sits and the curb such that our yard is on a slope and parts of our parkway are on a pretty severe slope.  But, so, too, are the beds in front and on side of our front porch.  You can kind of see/appreciate the grade difference in the photo above in this post. This is a profile view of the area that you can see in the photo on this tulip post from last year .  In that photo/post, you can see how the grade from about halfway back on the house all the way to the front of this bed is downhill.  But, it also slopes away from the foundation, too. This area is where I get the most erosion in any of the beds around our property.  We get rainwater erosion and plenty of floating mulch.  A couple of times a year, I break out the rake and pull the mulch back into the bed. Here's a post showing all the mulch in place .  If you look at the white boards on the

Welp, here we go with even more backyard planning and dreaming.  It was just a couple of days ago that I posted my 2020 to-do list with 25 things that I'd like to prioritize .  And then just yesterday, I went ahead and posted my initial findings about Japanese Maples - which weren't even on that list.  In a few posts talking about the priority areas for the yard, I mentioned that the hardest part I have with gardening right now is STICKING WITH MY PLAN.  I'm like a bug drawn to the bright light of garden centers and see plants and trees that are NOT in my initial plan.  I have to remind myself:  prioritize and stick to the plan.  Once that is done, we can explore enhancements. Welp...this post is all about what I'd call a major 'enhancement'.  And how I got here was the whole research about Japanese Maples .  And thinking about their placement.  I started to think about our patio and the patio trees that I've been thinking about since we moved in.  R

Since the new year, I've posted about a couple of spots that I'm thinking about for trees in 2020.  That started with the five trees that I want to plant in the front yard ( including five new trees ) and a small section between the espalier Linden trees and a Cleveland Pear along the southern fence line.  In both of those pieces, I talked quite a bit about columnar trees.  At this point, you're probably like:  we get it, Jake.  You like columnar form. Yes indeed.  But, because this is *my* blog, you're going to have to bear with me.  Over the course of the next few days and weeks, I'm going to use this space as a reference guide for some columnar trees that I've come across that are work referencing back as I add more inventory. This post is about a pair of what I'm calling 'white trees'.  Birch and Aspen. First up is this Dakota Pinnacle Birch Tree . The folks at  Fast Growing Trees are currently selling a 5-6' version for $99 right no

A couple of weeks ago, I posted some photos of the newly bloomed tulips that came up in our front yard bed right in front of the large Maple tree.  Go see that photo here .  They look - to me at least - to be orange and red.  I say that because the reds were *supposed* to be pink, but they came out much more like a true red.  They looked great.  Or at least I thought they did.  That was, until I came across this ebook from Pretty Purple Door .  It is called " 7 questions to ask yourself to choose the right plants for your garden " and you can get it by giving her your name and email address here on her site .  I'm not going to link directly to the .pdf because she is running a biz, but I do want to show one little nugget that is in that guide.  She talks about color palette and then lists a few of her favorites and a few to avoid.  To be respectful, here's a screenshot, but I've blurred out the parts that aren't relevant here.  (Again...if you want the fu

A few weeks back, we had a few days of very heavy rain.  It came down in the morning, afternoon and evening.  For like three of four days straight.  The ability to work in the yard was almost zero because of how saturated the ground was in the yard and the beds.  But that rain event also exposed to me a few areas in the far reaches of our yard that I think are worth documenting here in order to be sure that as I begin to address the far back yard that these spots are giving proper consideration. Due to their location and distance for the existing water mitigation tools (Dry well, etc), I am thinking that the only way to really address some of these is through a combination of improving the soil's ability to absorb water (aeration, de-thatching) and through the changing of the grade. First up is this linear puddle that is maybe twenty feet long and sits between a rough (eventual!) bed and the yard from the trampoline to the neighbor gate on the southside.   The second

Back in the Fall of 2017 (our first fall), I planted 30 tulip bulbs along the fenceline in our backyard in between the section where our espalier system is set up and where we are growing a series of hydrangeas.  They popped up for the first time in March of 2018 and I documented that here .  And by Mid-May they had bloomed in a beautiful combination of orange and yellow .  I mentioned last year that I thought it was going to be best to relocate these bulbs, but guess what?  I never got around to moving them.  This post claims that the *best* time to transplant tulip bulbs is the late Fall - about the same time that I put these in the ground.  From the post : The best time to transplant tulips is in the late fall, according to Ron Smith, Horticulturist at the North Dakota State University Extension Service. In the fall, bulbs have completed their growing cycle and lie dormant. Moving dormant tulips doesn't interrupt the growing cycle and makes the bulbs less susceptible to

Just five days ago, I posted for all to see my top 10 to-do items for our yard and garden in 2019 .  There were some significant items on there like dealing with trees and adding another espalier, but item #10 talked about planning for the 'outer walking path'.  I posted about considering a path like that in August of last year and then also discussed the idea of what material is right:  decomposed granite .   That path would wind all the way to the back rear portion of our yard.  And that's where this post comes in.  To get my head wrapped around some items in the yard this Spring, I pulled out the landscape plan and revisited parts of it.  Our plan was drafted by our landscape designer and I've shared portions of it here on the blog.  Here's the links to the various snapshots: Our southern fence line with Hydrangeas and allium One of our rear foundation beds outside of our kitchen A look at the north fence line that we put the Frans Fontaine Europea