Why I Oughta...

The multi-trunk Saucer Magnolia tree is getting ready to put on its annual Spring flower show.  And, after the harsh (at times) Winter, we're seeing a great sign:  pink flower buds have emerged from their fuzzy shells and are putting on size ahead of their full bloom. Below is a photo of one of the pink flower buds on the Saucer Magnolia tree tips.   This is three-and-a-half weeks later than the same pink buds emerged in 2024 - just over a year ago .   That was earlier than normal.  And this year - mid-April - is more in line with historical timing for this flowering tree.   2025 - Flower buds emerged in mid-April.   2024 - Flowers emerged in mid-March.  Peaked first week of April. 2023 - Mid-April peak-Magnolia bloom 2022 - Late-April 2022: Peak-Magnolia at end of month 2021 - Mid-April 2021 : In bloom by mid-month (April). 2020 - Early April 2020 : Blooms began the first week of April. 2019 - The tree did NOT bloom at all. 2...

There's growth on the tips of this Hemlock tree just waiting for Spring to arrive.  

Last month, I posted a couple of photos and details of our new Skylands Spruce tree ( ) in our front yard island bed .  This is a tree that I've looked at for years and finally found one (a small one) that I put in our garden.   I've noted tree buds forming (and setting) on various trees in the Fall/Winter over the years, but the past few years, I've begun to observe conifers a little more closely.   Here's one that is in the middle - the Dawn Redwood - which is a deciduous conifer tree - a conifer that drops its needles.    This post looks at the buds of the Dawn Redwood .   This past August, I posted a photo of the 'buds' being set on the Weeping Norway Spruces that I planted last Fall IB2DWs and how I observed them last season turn into new sets of needles.   I'm learning more and more about the health of conifers and the types of signals they send throughout the growing season - and during dormancy.  This post from the Co...

Yesterday, I shared a look at the long, thin and pink-tipped Spring buds on the lone Pagoda Dogwood tree in our backyard.   A little further back in the yard - behind the Yew Hedge - is one of the Doublefile Viburnum tree-form shrubs that we have in our backyard.   In April 2022, I planted this one (and a few others), so it has had two full growing seasons (2022 and 2023) and is now back for its third growing season.   It has burst its buds and is a little bit ahead of most things in the garden.  Below, is a look at the green tips that have arrived on this treeform Doublefile Viburnum in Zone 6a:

I planted a small, native dogwood - a Pagoda Dogwood - that I bought at a local plant sale back in October of 2021 .   I put it back by the firepit area, in front of the Yew hedge, and left it alone for couple of years.  It was small and I wasn't sure how it was going to grow, so no pruning was done until last Summer ( June 2023) when I took back all the lower branches to just a few pairs of leaves.  The goal was to get it to focus a bit more on the taller/higher section and begin to take on a more tree-form shape (vs a shrub with low, wide branching).   I was out in the garden today taking an inventory and noticed that the Pagoda Dogwood has produced long, thin buds that are beginning to burst.  See below for the current state at the end of March 2024: This tree puts out a lovely-looking foliage - here's last Summer's view of the lined, almost-ribbed leaves that emerge out of these buds . According to the Morton Aboretum, this will eventually get up ...

The pair of Greenspire Linden trees that are in espalier are putting on a 'bud show' this week as their leaves emerge from these pink-hued bud covers.  These trees are interesting when they're naked and dormant.  When they're covered in green, Summer foliage.  They turn golden yellow as they start to go into dormancy in the Fall .  And...also in Spring when they are colorful like in the photo below.   A little over a month ago, I removed the training posts from these horizontal cordon espaliered trees in our backyard .  

Earlier this year, in one of their ordinary monthly email broadcasts, the Morton Arboretum turned me on to something wild.  At least...wild to me.  Who am I?  A tree bud enthusiast.  Turns out, there are lots of us.  And some really special ones.   The newsletter referenced a former Arboretum employee with the title of 'naturalist' named May Theilgaard Watts .  And,  these incredible, illustrated vintage posters in the Arboretum collection that May T. Watts created.  First...a look at the posters below.   All of these are sourced from ACORN - Sterling Morton's Library that includes online images.   Some May T Watts archives in ACORN can be found here .   Fascinating stuff in there.  I've only scratched the VERY thin surface.  Have a look at these beauties.  Source ...again... from ACORN .  The ACORN listing here states these were created in the 1940's.   Hard to believe that I'...

A couple of days ago, I posted a photo of the Magnolia tree fuzzy flower bud that I spotted on the tree this Winter and talked about how observing tree buds has really shifted my mental gardening model from a Spring start and Winter finish --> Early Winter start and Fall Dormancy finish.  That means, after the trees shed the leaves, they start to set next-year's buds.  And, *that's* when the season starts (for me, now).  On the same day that I took the photo of the Saucer Magnolia tree, I wandered by the pair of early-espalier Sugar Tyme Crabapple trees that are planted on the south wall of our house.   I planted the pair of these trees in September of 2021 , so this was the first FULL growing season.  They bloomed white flowers this Spring - for their first set of flowers .  And set their first fruit (for us) this Fall .   I've begun to train and prune these trees this season into an (eventual) Palmette Verrier espalier shape  with ...

Tree buds are some of the stars of our Winter garden here in Northern Illinois - Zone 5B.  As I've continued to grow as a gardener and observed the natural rhythm of our garden, I've come to really appreciate buds.    I used to think about the garden season cycle as something that starts with Spring and ends with Winter, but as I've watched our garden more, I've now come to the realization the garden growing season actually starts - for many things - in the fall.  That's when trees set their buds before they head into dormancy.   Tree buds are all unique and tell a story.  One of the sets of buds that I've been following for a number of years is the Saucer Magnolia tree that we planted in our front yard in 2017.  I posted some photos of the Saucer Magnolia buds last year - in February .    Here's how it looks right now - in early January. This tree continues to grow up and out.  And, it appears that the aphid and/or scale problem th...

A couple of weeks ago, we had a 3.5" caliper Triumph Elm - Ulmus Morton Glossy - to our front porch beds.  At the time the tree arrived it has *some* leaves on it with some branches already bare having dropped their leaves.  Today - just two-or-so-weeks after planting, the tree has dropped ALL of its leaves and has a set of roundish, brown buds all over the limbs.  Below, is a look at the buds that have set on our new Triumph Elm tree: Over the years, I've documented in the [garden diary] a look at some of the tree buds in our yard - including these Exclamation London Planetree that I planted during the pandemic .  I'll go out and try to capture some photos of this year's tree buds in the Fall/Winter garden in the coming weeks.  

Last week, I posted a couple of photos showing the timing of the Cherry Blossoms in our backyard on on small Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Tree .  This was the fifth of six growing seasons where we able to experience Cherry Blossom season.  Kinda nice.    Before we get too far into the Summer, I wanted to post a few photos in the [ tree diary ] showing the timing of some of our trees breaking bud this year.  These photos were all taken on Monday, May 9th.  So, we can call that early/mid May, right? First up - Dawn Redwood.  By May 9th this year, the needles were beginning to show up.  See below: Here's another look at the Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Tree.  Leaves and flowers by early/mid May: Below is the "Grampy Tree" - the first London Planetree in the far back of the yard .   The three smaller ones I planted at the end of last season that I'm planning on PLEACHING aren't this far advanced.  That has me a bit concerned.  Below ...

Day three of the front-yard tree buds in Winter - first with the Saucer Magnolia fuzzy flower buds and then yesterday with the Red Fox Katsura .   Today, is the Chanticleer Pear flowering tree that is in the 'in between two driveways' island and planted pretty close to the Katsura.  This was a replacement tree that was planted in 2018 after our first one died.  This one STRUGGLED.  By October of 2018 (four months after planting), it was in bad shape .  Turns out, it was planted in a 'clay bowl' and the roots were drowning in what is called the ' bathtub effect ' where water had no where to go.   It seemed to continue to decline in 2019 - but by Spring 2020, I was seeing the very FIRST flower buds .  Not everywhere.  But, some flowers.   Then, last Spring - 2021 - we seemed to have a big part of the tree that had died back.  And a bunch of the tree that looked to be back on track - and flowering .    I ended up ...

Yesterday, I started with the first of the late-Winter tree bud photos.  I like to document these things throughout the year so I get an understanding of how things are going and what is struggling to return from dormancy (and which trees I shouldn't worry about because they're right on schedule).    I posted the current state of the buds on the vase-like Saucer Magnolia tree in our front yard .   Medium-sized, fuzzy and starting to crack open.  They're fun to look at right now. One of the other front-yard trees that I haven't tracked the buds and their setting/swelling/opening series on in the diary here is the Red Fox Katsura.  Planted in the Fall of 2020 , this is a tiny, whip-like tree that hasn't grown much at all and has very few limbs.  It suffered a bit from heat and drought stress last year, but it has - as of now - set some buds on the limbs that *do* exist.  Below you can see them.  To me...they kinda look like buckthorn tips ...

Late February and Early March is usually the time when I start to get a little garden-stir-crazy and begin to get back out to examine the winter damage and build up my hopes for the coming growing season.  It is when the tree and shrub buds begin to swell and we can start to see what is going to pop.  It is also a sloppy, wet and muddy time of year.  Or, a frozen-solid, snow-covered time of year.  This past week, it was a mix of both.  We had some warming temperatures with snow melting and some rains which made the ground soggy and saturated.  They say you're supposed to stay out of your garden beds during the wet season of Spring to keep the ground from compacting too much, so I've mostly tooled around the lawn this week.   It is a good time to document in the [tree diary] and [garden diary] the state of some of the buds that are beef'ing up and getting ready to put on a show.  I'll start where I have typically started before:  with our...

Yesterday, I posted a terminal bud of our small Harry Lauder Walkingstick tree and talked about how Rutherford Platt was fascinated by tree buds and said they were as varied as jewels.  The next up in my [Winter tree buds] series is a revisit to where I started (last year) with the London Planetree that I planted in 2020.  Here's last year's post showing the buds .  Below, you can see some other looks at the buds including terminal and lateral buds.  They're pointy and red.  And look good for this time of year, don't they? This tree has been (somewhat) temperamental.  It reacts poorly if it is neglected in any way, but then responds really well when water is given to it in any way.  You could say that it is both needy and resilient.  It is planted in the back of the yard and is in a gap in between the scrub shrub and the largest tree we have - the hackberry tree that is covered in galls every Summer .   It will provide a lot of shade fo...

The photo in this post is featuring the leaf bud of a small Harry Lauder contorted Walking Stick tree that we bought back in 2020 and was DIRECTLY inspired by our trip to Disneyland Paris and the landscaping around their Haunted Mansion called Phantom Manor .  I planted it in the backyard in the Summer of 2020 and have had it wired up with some bamboo poles ever since.  Early this Spring, I moved around the poles and wires because the growth was causing a little damage due to the pole locations .   Most every Winter, I try to include some updates and photos of the various leaf buds from some of the trees that I've planted, but in looking back through the [buds] archives , I don't seem to have included this particular tree and bud in the catalog.  The most recent buds that I posted a photo of were the damaged Ginko tree from this Fall .   Here, below, is a look at a couple of the Harry Lauder Walkingstick tree buds: Buds of our trees that get set in Fa...

At the beginning of the month, I posted a couple of photos showing off the pair of VERY SMALL Ginkgo trees that we planted this Fall .  The reason we planted TWO of these trees was because the first one that was delivered 1 was damaged and basically cracked in half.   In that post, I talked about how the damaged tree was aging different from the replacement tree that I planted in front .  The one in front (which wasn't damaged) had leaves that were turning yellow (like Ginkos are known to do), while the damaged tree in back was drooping and had more brownish leaves.   My belief then - and still today - is that the damaged tree in back is unlikely to make it and leaf-out next Spring.  But....but...but...what do I see on the tree this week?  It appears that this tiny, thin Ginkgo tree has set some buds as it headed to dormancy.  See below for a peek at one of the buds that is near the top of the small tree. These are kind of interesting shaped...

 I titled this post April/May because I'm posting it in May, but I took this photo in April of 2021.  April 24th, to be precise.  Those are the beautiful, exciting tree buds of one of our espaliered Greenspire Linden trees that are ready to burst open.  I posted a photo of these very same buds that were setting last Fall .  I planted these trees back in our first Summer here (2017) and set up the wire system that year, too .   I posted a similar photo EXACTLY one year ago today (May 4, 2020) with the buds showing a similar green and pink hue .   Last Summer - in year four of training (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), I made the decision about the final form and pruned off a bunch of the limbs to leave just a four-tiered horizontal cordon espalier.   Also, last year this tree was infested with Yellow Jackets that were feasting on an aphid infestation .  Before all the leaves fell, I applied in two rounds some insecticide on the limbs i...

I've been worrying about our Dawn Redwood tree for the past four weeks.  I use the traditional fingernail scrape method on tree bark to see if trees are healthy and showing green right under the bark.  Our Dawn Redwood tree seemed to be very slow to start this Spring.  I was seeing other trees have buds set and begin to leaf out in some ways while this tree was seemingly stuck in neutral.  Making matters worse, my fingernail test wasn't showing any green on the trunk.  It wasn't brown.  And the limbs weren't cracking.  But, I wasn't seeing green like I was on our other young trees.   But, I don't have a Spring 2020 post in the garden diary here to show WHEN this tree needle'd out, so that gave me concern.  What was making me relax (a bit) was this post from 2019 when I show it being 'needle'd out' in early June of 2019 .  So, imagine my delight (and, frankly RELIEF!) when I walked out in the backyard and noticed the buds swelling an...

In the Winters since we moved in (and after we planted our Saucer Magnolia tree in our front yard), I've looked at the buds as they are set to burst ahead of Spring.  It started in our first Winter with this post in February of 2018 .  In January of 2019, I posted a series of photos with all of the different front yard tree buds.  And last Winter (January), I decided to wire-up one of the trunks (this is a multi-trunk tree) and posted about that decision and included photos of the buds .  With all of the DEEP snow in our yard, I haven't been able to get close enough to this tree to catch some photos.  But, now, with the temperatures rising and the snow melting, I wandered out to check in on the tree.  And, the fuzzy buds are big and bulbous.  And about the burst.  This tree has, seemingly, grown in height.  Being planted in 2017, it navigated that initial transplant stress.  Then, entering the second and third year of the cycle , I'm th...