Why I Oughta...

 A week or so ago, I posted some photos showing how I'm trying to protect some of our smaller Canadian Hemlock trees from rabbits this Winter .  I originally planted six of those small trees.  One of them died that first year.  But, last Winter, two of them were devoured by something.  I'm assuming it was a rabbit.   So, this year, I'm being more proactive in trying to protect some of our evergreens from being eaten by those rabbits who are looking for a winter meal. That means that in addition to the Hemlocks, I've taken the same approach with poultry fencing with our Weeping White Spruce tree.  You can see that fencing set up in a ring below: The goal here is to keep the rabbits from being able to really go at this thing - but I know it won't be fool-proof.  I'm going to ring the exterior of the fencing with some wood chips to try to make it 'burrow-proof', too.  

Back in the Spring, I bought this tiny Horstmann's Recursive Contorted Larch Tree from an online nursery and planted it in the front/sideyard.  I watered it in and have been trying to baby it during the heat.  Today, posting this in the [garden diary] so I know what it looks like in the Summer of season one.  It has added some length to the tree, but due to it's weeping habit, it is hard to tell how much.  I'll add some measurements to this as I do a season-ending caliper reading later this Summer/early Fall. I also didn't get around to adding this tree to the 'inventory', so I'm correcting that now. This is tree #51 that I've planted and BY FAR the smallest one. The previous one was last week when we planted the other contorted tree -the Harry Lauder's Walking Stick  - which I mentioned was the "last tree" we had this year, but I stand corrected. 51 trees across four planting seasons. (For now...) 45 of those trees still ali

Back in February, I posted about a tree that I came across that had a lot of the features that I desired in a tree: the Diana Weeping Japanese Larch .  It is a narrow tree (columnar), is contorted, has a weeping habit and is a deciduous conifer.  I have yet to see a  Diana Weeping Larch, but I did come across a similar tree from an online nursery named Kigi Nursery called: The Horstmann's Recurved Contorted Larch Tree . I read the description and thought this was a good fit for our yard: LARIX DECIDUA 'HORSTMANN'S RECURVED' CONTORTED LARCH IS AN UPRIGHT DECIDUOUS CONIFER WITH TWISTING, TURNING BRANCHLETS. NEEDLES ARE GREEN IN SUMMER AND GOLDEN IN AUTUMN BEFORE FALLING. PREFERS ORGANIC RICH WELL DRAINED SOIL. Sounds perfect, right?  I went on the site and they were offering only a 0-1 year old tree for $40 .  I don't know what I thought it was going to look like when it arrived, but when I opened the package, I felt surprised.  Here's a look at the tree

Over the past few years, I've posted a few times about Japanese-inspired gardening and how I'm increasingly drawn to it for various reasons.  I spent a bit of time walking around Gotenyama Gardens in Tokyo and as I walked down the steps into the kind-of sunken garden, I was surrounded by a lush garden in the middle of a metropolitan city.   And that fascination with Japanese gardens has manifested itself in a couple of things, but mostly columnar trees .  But, there are other elements that I've talked about including ferns and this Japanese Forest Grass , too.  One of the types of tree that I don't seem to have covered at all here on the blog is a Japanese Maple tree.  I've seen them at the garden center over the past few years and they're always tempting (and pricey), but I didn't know too much about them to ever make a decision on them.  This Winter, I started to poke around them as thinking about this part of our yard and wanted to get a little bit smar

Two days ago was the latest in the run of [ tree dreaming ] posts featuring this columnar Japanese Larch called "Paper Lanterns" that throws off these beautiful - and delicate - paper-y cones .  In that post, I mentioned that I while I haven't covered Larch trees before, in looking at columnar Larches, I came across a tree that checks a couple of really desirable boxes for my tastes in trees. Is there a tree that is: a deciduous conifer.   Puts on a 'Fall show'. Is Japanese-inspired. Grows in a narrow, columnar form. Displays a weeping branching structure. And...is considered contorted.   Turns out, there's a tree that checks all six of those boxes.  It is called the Diana Weeping Larch .  I found it when I was looking around at columnar larches and found this story on FineGardening about trees in tight spaces .  They showed this photo (below) of the Diana Weeping Japanese Larch.  This is a special tree, isn't it: This is not my photo.  Fo

Another day, another columnar tree that I've come across that is worth documenting here on the blog.  This time, it is from a different source.  I've posted about the list from Amy @ Pretty Purple Door in the past, but I recently came across this list from Savvy Gardening that lists a series of "Narrow Trees for tight spaces" .  On the list are some of the trees I've covered before including the Sky Pencil Holly and the Amanogawa Japanese Flowering Cherry .  But, there are also a couple of new (to me) trees that I think are worth documenting here in my [ tree dreaming ] file. I'll post one today and cover the other one in a separate post. The tree that I'm documenting today is the "Van Den Aker" Narrow Alaska Cedar.   It is a narrow (very narrow!) columnar conifer that Savvy Gardening has at #10 on their list . From SavvyGardening.com comes this description : "Skinny" is how they describe it in their piece and talk about ho

I bought this small Weeping White Spruce in the end of May this year and planted it on the southside of our property close to the fenceline here (it is a columnar, very narrow tree !) at the beginning of June .  I seem to have failed to measure it and include it in my annual yard tree inventory post this year , so I thought it would be worth sharing this thing as it goes into Winter. I don't have the best luck with Winter conifers.  This past season, I lost my other weeping tree - the Alaskan Weeping Cedar - even though I tried to protect it with Wilt-Pruf.  Welp, actually, I don't have much luck with conifers anytime as I also lost my first Fraser Fir last season . I'm torn as to if I should apply the Wilt-Pruf to this Weeping White Spruce, but I'm thinking that it can't hurt.  Last Winter was brutal and the Cedar Tree was just a casualty of it - like the buds on all of my flowering trees and the Wilt-Pruf didn't seem to help on the Cedar.  If I mix up

Early Fall brings sad news in the backyard:  my little Emerald Falls Weeping Cedar is gone.  I can comfortably call it now.  Planted in May of 2018 , it was a tree that I'd been dreaming about for a while.  I baby'd it all last Summer and by the end of August of 2018, it was looking plump and happy .  Then we had a hard Winter.  And the tree was stressed this Spring.  I was looking for any positive sign - even thinking that young, immature cedar trees occasionally turn brown - but that ended up being a true sign of stress.    But by May, it was fighting on: showing signs of new growth and pushing the brown out to the extremities.  Alas, after watering it with a soaker hose this Summer, you can see the pile of needles laying on the ground there.  This one is dead.  And in the tracking of things, this Weeping Cedar is the third tree I've lost this season.  Other ones are:  a small Canadian Hemlock and the Weeping Flowering Cherry tree .  And eighth total tree tha

I'm calling this one:  our Snow Fountains Weeping Cherry tree is dead.  Didn't make it to year two.  I planted this tree on Earth Day 2018 , so it is just outside of the one-year warranty window.    And the tree was looking good in April as it had set buds last Fall.    I wasn't ever really satisfied with the location, so having it die isn't the end of the world. Using the list from my most recent Weeping White Spruce post , this is the sixth tree that I've lost since we started planting and the first one lost this season. Other "Lost" trees include:  a Chanticleer Pear, a Dawn Redwood, a Corkscrew Willow, a Fraser Fir, a Canadian Hemlock and now this Weeping Flowering Cherry. Here's the full list of trees that we've put into the yard since we bought the property in 2016 and moved in during the Summer of 2017. 35 trees planted. 29 trees currently alive and adding to our landscape. 2017 (9 planted. 3 Died. 6 of the original annual to

The last time I posted about this Weeping Cherry tree in the far reaches of our yard was back in April when I showed the buds that had set the previous Fall .  Today, it is struggling.  Not dead yet, but on the way to being put on the "LOST" list.  You can see a few green leaves on some of the limbs, but most of them are bare.  Some of the limbs have dried leaves on them.  Perhaps overwatered?  I'd be surprised if it was because the tree didn't get enough water.  Polar Vortex, maybe?  Not sure. This was one of our Earth Day Trees from 2018 and it seemed to be doing just fine last year.  However, it *did* have a shoot come off of the trunk - below the graft - that I thought was an indication of a totally healthy tree.  However, now... in retrospect, it might have been a sign that the tree was struggling for life and it sent out the shoot to ensure that it has enough energy to survive.