Why I Oughta...

A change of scenery comes with a change in the material that is used in home landscapes.  That means (for me...at least), a look (and appreciation) of new (to me) things like glossy Magnolia trees, interesting ferns, ornamental grasses and even palms - but not palm trees.  Posting these photos just as a reminder of the things others can grow - in USDA Growing Zone 8.

Here, below, is a look at the pair of Little Henry Sweetspire (Itea virginica 'Sprich') that was planted back in the Summer of 2017 when our house was built.  This shrub puts off these lovely, white flowers that have a really nice smell and the foliage puts on a show all year long.   This sits in a bed tucked in between our front walk and the driveway and just kind of keeps performing without much care. The last time I posted about these Little Henry's was back in September of 2019 here . I water the front yard during the Summer heat, so this shrub likely gets a little bit of that benefit, but I haven't fed it directly - to date.  But, I've noticed that the foliage is a little bit light green - not dark green currently.   I mentioned on Monday that the Rhododendrons seemed to need a little bit of iron , so I went out and picked up a bag of  this fast-acting Iron soil supplement from Menards  to see if it will make it happy and darken things up....

Back in 2017, I showed part of our landscape plant that was just outside of our kitchen window that called for a variety of perennials and some shrubs including Green Velvet Boxwoods.  You can see the plan here in this post from October 2017 .  Here's a look at that portion of the plan : The plan called for four Green Velvet Boxwood plants.  You can see in the photo at the top of this post that we indeed, planted four of them.  I ended up staggering them a little differently than the plan called for, but they're mostly in the same spot.  The reason for clustering them more closely to the window well is to fit in a spot for our grill.  This [ Garden Diary ] post can be found in the feed over on Hornbeam Hill .  This post is to talk about shaping of these boxwoods.  We have a set of these in our front yard beds directly in front of our porch that you can see in this post that we're trying to let grow a bit.  I'd like them to get l...

Up top is the 'before' photo of one of the window wells on the southside of our house.  We had some work done to it and the landscaping required restoration.  This is technically the 'in the middle of' photo as the landscapers had already done some cleaning up. Below is the after.  They laid some sod, straightened things out and put mulch down.  Now we just have to babysit the sod with a soaker hose while it gets established.

I came across this Lemon Coral Sedum from Proven Winners in this video from Garden Answer.  I really liked the way it looked in her video, so when I came across it (at the garden center at the Jewel of all places), I had to bring it home.  I put it in a few spots including this wine barrel planter that we have set on our patio.  Like a lot of other sedums, it is drought tolerant, but this one has a neat chartreuse-y color along with those pretty yellow flowers.  I planted this one and it immediately began to establish itself, stretch out and put on this show.  Tucked right in next to the Night Sky Petunia that continues to bloom all Summer long, this part of the pot is doing exactly what I was hoping for in this spot.  The only *miss* in this pot is any sort of mid-level structure/height, but it is getting close to time to rip out those Pansies and replace them with something more fit for the heat of Summer.  Opportunity, right??? This wine barre...

This is the third in the series of posts updating some plants that Nat's Mom gifted us late last fall.  Yesterday, I posted about the Tuff Stuff Red Hydrangea that is doing really well .   Today, I'm sharing the photo you see above to show the current state of the Everlasting Revolution hydrangea that isn't doing *as well*.  You can see that it is much smaller than the Tuff Stuff and the foliage is barely emerging from the mulch.  In fact, I had to kind of carve out a little hole/trench for this thing to even have a chance.  It is located about eight feet from the Tuff Stuff variety, so they're getting basically the same support - sun, water, soil.  But the difference is stark.  I've actually babied this one a bit more this late Spring and hope that it continues to establish itself a bit so we head into the Winter with a strong base/root system. I'll try to revisit this plant later this Summer/Fall to see how it has grown when the heat of the...

Back in October of last year, Nat's Mom gave us a couple of plants that I immediately stuck in the ground and then nursed through the balance of the growing season in the hope that, despite planting them so late, they would survive the winter and come back.  I recently covered how one of these plants - the Disneyland Rose - is ready to bloom this Summer here on the blog .  The other two plants included in the series were hydrangeas.  The first one I'll post here is the Tuff Stuff Red Hydrangea .  Above you'll see a happy and healthy hydrangea that is quite small (like 6" tall and 8" wide), but has more growth on it than when I put it in the ground in October.  I didn't cut it down at all this Spring and that's because, according to this Proven Winner item description , it will bloom on *both* old growth and new growth.  From PW : This re-blooming hydrangea begins blooming in early summer on old wood and continues to produce flowers on new wood throu...

Back in January, I posted a little snapshot of another part of our landscape plan that was of the far, southwest corner of our property .  That corner included the addition of three Canadian Hemlock trees.  In that post, I mentioned that the plan actually calls for nine of these Hemlocks and at the time, I had not planted any of them.   Here, today, is a look at another slice/section of our landscape plan.  There are multiple elements in this little image, but I want to focus on what is in green: three Canadian Hemlocks.  This is about 2/3rds of the way back between our house and the property line and as you can see they're tucked in against the northern fence line.   Those of you following along know that I've posted these in a series. The other plan sections that I've shared include: southern fence line with Hydrangeas and allium , one of our rear foundation beds outside of our kitchen , the north fence line that we put the Fr...

Back in May, I posted about the first peony plant that we put in our backyard - a variety called Sarah Bernhardt .  Despite the fact that peonies are Nat's absolute favorite flower, we had gone almost a year without planting one.  (We did, however, have a foster peony at Nat's Mom's house .) I put this particular peony near the north fence line and after burying the tuber, I covered the area with mulch and marked it with a stick and then a stone ring.  We were putting together Fairy Gardens with the kids recently and I noticed that the peony shoots and broken through the mulch and we had some actual growth.  These are way, way behind what most normal, established peony plants look like by June.  This is normally the time we're cutting the blooms and bringing them indoors.  Since this was planted as a tuber this year, I was just hoping that we'd get these to emerge this year and that they'll have enough time to establish their root system before the...

Back in April, I shared a small look at the landscape plan that was specified for either side of our rear stoop .  These are the stairs that come out of our family room and lead to our patio.  That plan called for a pair of rhododendrons that flank each side of the stoop.  Earlier this Spring, I picked up the plants and got them in the ground before the mulch arrived.  After a bit of acclimating, they seem to have stabilized and have begun to throw off a series of beautiful, almost out-of-this-world blooms.  The photo above is one of them.  And you can see both of them in the image below. (pay no attention to the hose or shoes or sidewalk chalk in the photo!  We live in a perfect backyard, folks!) One other thing to note in that photo:  the pot on the stoop contains the dahlias that I planted inside earlier this Spring .  Look how big and happy they are!?!?

Back one month ago, I shared a photo of the Sarah Berhhardt peony tuber that I planted in our backyard and talked about how peonies are Nat's favorite flowers.  Unfortunately, before that one, we didn't have any peonies in our entire yard.  But, we *are* fostering one at Nat's mom's house out in Naperville and I plan on bringing that over to Hornbeam Hill early this Summer.  For Mother's Day this year, the kids all decided to buy a few bulbs/tubers for Nat and one of them is this Karl Rosenfield Peony  - which is a double bloom variety.  Around the side of our front porch, we have a couple of hydrangeas, but then a lot of blank, naked beds.  There is literally NOTHING in this spot on our landscape plan, so I decided to wing it.  It is south-facing, so peonies planted here would be getting some good sun and due to the downspouts and grading, this area gets a good amount of water.  So, just in front of the downspout off the porch is a spot ...

These three Karl Forester Reed Grasses were planted by the landscaper by the builder before we moved in.  They're placed in a small bed that is sandwiched between the front stairs on our porch and front walk and our driveway.  I didn't document them last season here on the blog, but due to their location, they didn't have an easy time.  (I *did* document other things in the front like our Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangeas .)  Based on where our hose bib in front is located, our hose ended up living in this area a lot last year and as such these things were trampled/smashed pretty regularly.  That meant that come late Summer/early Fall, they were looking shabby.  I wasn't sure what the Winter would hold, but I crossed my fingers.  Earlier this Spring, I cut back all the winter show and now look at them!  They're doing quite well and have tons of growth.  The same can't be said about the grasses we bought from Costco last fall .  They didn...

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. 

The anticipation has been killing me.  I've been waiting for six weeks for this day:  when our Frans Fontaine Columnar Hornbeam trees arrive.  That's the pile of eight of them after they had been delivered by the landscaper and before they were hauled into position.  These are 2.5" caliper trees and they are about 12' tall and - at their widest - about 30" wide.  Up near the top, where they will be showing over the fence, they're about 10" to 12" wide currently. I posted a bit ago showing the markings on the ground where these trees are going including the spacing - which is about 6' apart .  And here's a look from the other direction (looking from front to rear yard). The trees are just starting to leaf out, but are already capable of screening somewhat.  Look at this photo below that shows how when looking 'through' them, you can see how they screen our house.  Also, you'll note that these have limbs about two-to-three f...

Here is the third of three Earth Day 2018 trees, but this one, while bought on Earth Day, wasn't planted on Earth Day.  The Babe picked this one (for reasons I'll describe), but couldn't decide on the location at first.  So it sat on our patio, in the pot for a couple of weeks.  Reminder...the other two Earth Day trees from this year are 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 .  This tree is a flowering cherry, but different than our Kwanzan flowering Cherry as this one is a grafted tree that weeps.  Pretty sure that this is a tree that - if not for a nursery - wouldn't exist normally.  (Who knows...maybe no trees would??)  It is smallish and will only get between eight and twelve feet tall and about six feet of spread.  Here's the tag that shows the name Prunus x 'Snofozam' PPAF .  Also note that it says "attracts butterflies".  A...

I've documented quite a bit of the new trees that we've planted over the past year of living in Downers, but I haven't really documented in my [ garden diary ] any of the existing trees that we inherited with the property.  I'd consider the lot we're living on to be 'wooded', so it would be a mistake - in terms of garden diary-ing -  to document only the eleven little, young ones I've planted in the past twelve months .  One of the trees we inherited is this three trunk River Birch - which according to the Missouri Botanical Garden  Plant Finder  is "generally considered to be the superior growth habit for this species."  This tree is located on the north side of our lot, about ten feet from the fence, right where the six-foot-fence section transitions down to the four-foot section.  You can see the Mason Bee House that I hung on the fence in the background and like many of the other existing trees that aren't clinging to the fence lin...

Spring flowers have hit our yard.  And also our flowering trees.  That includes our Kwanzan Flowering Cherry tree that is planted in our backyard.  The photo above is of some of the blooms that have emerged recently on the upper branches.  The history of this tree starts in March of 2017 when we bought it after a trip to Tokyo where I took in the Cherry Blossoms.  It lived on the driveway for a few months while we built our #newoldfarmhouse and we finally planted it at the end of June .  It survived the Winter and this Spring, buds started to open - despite the brutally long cold weather.  And now, it seems like it is on a good trajectory with new growth and seemingly happy in terms of sun/location in the yard.  Even after we added the one new bed to the south fence line, this tree is still kind of out on an island.  We laid down a ring of mulch ( but not a volcano !) around the tree and so it feels anchored, but will have to wait...

Our old neighbor Greg had these really amazing (and massive) Lilac bushes back between our playground and his garage.  Nat always admired them and their quite large blooms that not only looked great, but put out a pretty good scent each season.  We planted two different varieties at our old place - both larger Lilac and a dwarf Lilac.  Each of them took, but they served different purposes - with the larger one being what Nat wanted and the dwarf version fitting into a specific spot in our beds in Elmhurst.  Despite there not being any Lilac called for on our plan design, adding these were on Nat's 'wish list', so when I came across these little "Common Lilac Purples", I grabbed them and planted them.  You can see in the photo above, that I planted them pretty close together - closer than they are supposed to be, but that's on purpose because I'd like to see them grow into a little hedge of sorts right to the left of the small flowering pear tree that ...

There's this house in Nat's parent's neighborhood that has a really well-manicured landscape out front.  And that's due to the owner (I think?) of the house that seems to be tending to the yard, plants and landscape almost constantly.  The reality of it is that we mostly go by Nat's parent's house on weekends so it might just *seem* like he's constantly in his yard because that's how he likes to spend his weekends.  Either way, he does an incredible job.  He has topiary'd evergreens (junipers, I think?) and he also has quite a bit of what appear to be tropicals outside.  But, upon closer inspection, I think A LOT of what I've thought to be tropicals are giant elephant ears.  And, so those have been on my mind and when I was at Menards earlier this Spring, I came across a couple of different varieties and - of course - snapped them up. I posted late in March the "Black Magic" bulb that I started in a pot inside .  That has moved o...

Mulch delivered, installed and spread for the year:  Done and Done.  Here's the post (with the same title) from 2011 including a video of the steaming pile being dumped on our driveway in Elmhurst.  Here's the post from 2013 showing our (then) beds being freshly mulched.  And here's the post from 2015 .  Weird that I posted them every two years, despite mulch being applied every year.   But, in that post from 2015 , you can see some of yard that I had worked at for six years to get it to a place that I was starting to be happy with in terms of plants and landscape.  We had daylilies, some HUGE stands of Ostrich Ferns, a happy bunch of variegated hostas, a really beautiful (if just for a week or so) crabapple tree, a Ginko tree, an out-of-control Pussy Willow and even a fruiting Pear tree all in that one shot .  I took the photo above in this post from our front porch and it shows three of our Strawberry Vanilla Hydrangeas and six of...