Why I Oughta...

One not-so-bright-spot in the garden this year is the small London Planetree in our parkway.  I planted it in late 2022 and it has maybe 1/5th the foliage that it had the day it went in the ground .  NOT GOOD.  I did NOT give this tree very much water this year, but once I noticed this thing in decline, I've been watering it daily.  Below is a look at the tree - with a lost leader and some TINY leaves.  Will this pull through?  We need a good Fall season for that to happen:

On a recent afternoon, I went to have a look at some of the garden to see how it was navigating this first part of Winter.  We've had plenty of hard frosts, cold nights and even a little snow.  Most everything has gone dormant, so I was mostly (on this trip) focused on having a look at the evergreens.  I went to the back of the garden to see how the three Green Giant Thujas that I planted this Spring were doing and noticed that one of them is doing...not so well.  See below for the photo of this tree (or shrub??) turning light brown:  This one is the middle of the tree in the back - on the northside.  It was planted in late April.   I'm not calling this thing dead (just yet), but it appears that will be the case come Spring.  

Yesterday, I shared a couple of photos of the very young Japanese White Pine tree that has a ton of brown and orange needles .  The tree is either in severe decline and will be dead soon.  Or, it is going through a normal process of needle drop to get ready for some new Spring growth.  I have no idea.  I *do* know that the tree was stressed before I planted it and the cones were already present at the top - indicating that (I think) the tree was concerned for its own wellbeing, so it threw out a good crop of cones based on the size of the tree.  In that post, I mentioned that the small (and adjacent) Weeping White Spruce appears to have stabilized after suffering some heavy drought damage this Summer.  It seems like the needle loss has stopped and the remaining sections are green and well-connected.  I shared a mid-Summer update on this tree where you can see the needle loss, but when you compare the photos from September to now , it is clear that even more needles were dropped in the

Things aren't looking good for the Pinus Parviflora 'Glauca Nana' - the dwarf Japanese White Pine tree that I picked up at Home Depot in mid-Summer after it had lingered in the lot for quite some time .  I was really excited about the tree and hopeful that it would put down some roots and establish itself this Summer.  But, unfortunately, it seems that it is fading.  And fast.  Here's what it looks like right now - in the photo below.  It is brown, orange and certainly NOT green. But, when I inspect the tree closer, I see tips that are *still* green with small needles.  Like the section you see below: And, using the old 'tree health test' of scraping away some bark with a fingernail to see if the limbs are green underneath reveals (at least *some*) sign(s) of life.  See below for a little spec of green that I revealed under the bark: Could this be normal behavior?  I'm pretty SURE it is not normal and this tree is in decline and will not be green come Spring

My mother always had a dwarf Alberta Spruce in our landscape.  Despite being a shade gardener, I have a memory of her having one of these shrubs/trees in the front yard when I was growing up.  I also remember that my Busia had a couple of these, too. And, that's why I put one in a couple of years ago.  I planted this tree (is it really a tree??) back in late Spring 2018  and it seemed to do well right away.  It put on some new growth in year one and year two.  This year, it was humming along.  But, suddenly, it now looks like this below.  It is in decline:  Back at the beginning of the month, I posted a photo and details of a trio of Twinkle Toes Lungwort that I planted at the base of the Dwarf Alberta Spruce .  In that post , I made mention of the stress this tree was under then.  In the photo above in this post, you can see both the Spruce, but you can also see all three of the Lungwort. At this point, I'm not hopeful.  Needle loss in October isn't a good sign. I lost a

A few days ago, I posted about suckers on some trees in our backyard that were struggling and didn't leaf-out on time that included one of our Chanticleer Pear trees.  At that time, I talked about how each of these trees seemed to be healthy when they went dormant last year, but all had different issues this Spring.  One of them (the Dappled Willow) started and then shut down.  The Chanticleer Pear tree was the most strange - as it was still green (under the bark), but had some suckers show up a foot or so from the root flare.  And, just as I posted that, I noticed some weird activity on that tree.  It seems that *some* of the branches started to leaf out.  Sparse-ly. But, you can see in the photo below that there are SOME leaves and even one white flower. If you look at the photo above, you'll also see the sucker about a foot from the rootflare.  This is the second Chanticleer Pear tree that had trouble like this.  Our driveway tree was troubled and confused and fl

Back in April, I posted some photos of a handful of trees that appeared - at the time - to be late in terms of coming out of dormancy for the year .  They were a Chanticleer Pear tree that was planted on Earth Day 2018.  A small Red Valley Sun Maple planted the same day.  And a Crimson King Maple that I planted in 2017.  Something weird is happening with two of them.  And it is now happening with another tree. First, the bad news.  The Crimson King Maple appears to be lost.  I'll post about it separately.  But, let's look at the other three.  Here, below, is the Red Valley Sun Maple.  The top of the tree never broke bud.  And the limbs became dry and brittle.  But, this Summer, this growth shot out from the base of the trunk.    If the tree was healthy, I'd call these things "suckers". They sure look like "suckers", don't they? From this post,  suckers are normally a sign of stress : Suckers are a tree’s attempt to grow more bra

Yesterday, I posted some photos of the buds on our front-yard Saucer Magnolia here on the blog and talked about how it appears to be quite happy and ready to put on a show once the weather warms up.  Today, I'm sharing a photo of a tree that tells a different story.  A, what I believe is going to turn out to be, a not-so-happy story.  That tree, above, is one of the Chanticleer Pear trees that we planted last year.  This one was planted before we moved in by the builder/landscaper.  It is just to the north of our driveway and right outside of our garage door.  It is a big specimen - more than 3" caliper.  And it didn't do well last year.  At all.  Despite it being drenched pretty regularly - both from watering the grass but also by specific tree water-ers, it continued to turn brown and many of the leaves dropped prematurely.  I've posted about these flowering pear trees (Cleveland Pears, Chanticleer Pears, etc) over the years and had a few of them on our lot b