Why I Oughta...

A few weeks back (this post is going live on July 1st, but these photos are from mid/late June), a stretch of our backyard was covered in white flowers.  On the lawn.  On top of shrubs.  On our little, hidden picnic table.  A carpet of white flower heads.  It looks like this: That means it is Northern Catalpa season.  We have two mature Catalpa trees - native trees.  (We have a small one growing near our patio, but it is still a twig.). They both bloomed this year in a prolific manner.  In mid-to-late June these trees put on a show.  The flowers stay on the trees for a while, then fall.  The week the trees were in bloom, we experienced a couple of days of heavy rain.  I'm thinking that caused the blooms to fall-off faster than normal. I posted about these flowers in a similar way in June of 2023 .  In that post, I also included a shot of the tree.  Here's the current state of this large Catalpa tree in our yard: In looking...

Just like yesterday's post showing our Indiana Street Iris in bloom, this post uses photos that are about a month old.  Below are some shots showing the Pagoda Dogwood tree (a native dogwood) in bloom.  These are from late May of this year and it was in peak-bloom around May 25, 2025.  We planted this as a tiny tree back in 2021 .  It has grown up and out since then and is now about head-high in terms of height.  It was covered in white blooms this Spring: The past two seasons, I've lightly pruned this tree - to help shorten some of the lower limbs and to help push it taller into more of a tree-form shape.  I'm planning on doing that again this year now that the blooms have passed.  

The treeform Doublefile Viburnums that we have in our backyard are in their full, Spring-blooming glory this week.  At least one of them, that is.  The shrubs have a layered set of branches that are home to clusters of white flowers that spread out from these little green dots.  The result is dramatic pop of white.  Below are a few photos - showing the full treeform viburnum and some close-ups of the white Doublefile Viburnum flowers.   Here's a post from a year-ago that shows the blooms on these same shrubs in Spring 2024 .  They were a few weeks ahead of this year.   A couple weeks ago, I added two more Doublefile Viburnums to the backyard - Pink Beauty .  They are shrubs - not treeform - versions that (I hope) will provide some pink-hued blooms in the coming years.  

At the end of March, I posted a photo of a clump of closed-up buds that were emerging from the soil and talked about how we've 'inherited' these Virginia Bluebells from our neighbor - both by division/sharing and by naturalization and spreading under the fence.  Now, three-plus weeks later, the Virginia Bluebells have leaf'd out and showing their green-and-light-purple foliage while we wait for the little blue and pink flowers to arrive.   Below is a look at the same clump of native Virginia Bluebell - ahead of its flower arriving - that I showed in March.   And, in the photo below, you can see this same clump on the bottom right of the photo.  But, you can also see the other, smaller plants that have naturalized from under the fence.  There's that one random tulip bulb back there, but otherwise, just these Spring Ephemerals.   The other Spring Ephemeral that is naturlizing via our neighbor's garden is Bloodroot .  She was nice enough t...

I planted a full packet of Nicotiana Jasmine seeds - direct sown - in a new bed on the southside of my house this Summer.  The seeds came from Nat's Mom; who grows Nicotiana in a couple of varieties each year.  The seeds are tiny specs and they don't need to be buried very deep.  So...I sprinkled them, put a little bit of soil on top and walked away.  What happened next was, well, surprising.  After planting the seeds, I quickly saw a huge number of seedlings pop up .  "Great!", I thought.   Weeks went on and the seedlings kept getting taller.  But...something was off.  The foliage was NOT matching the other Nicotiana that I had in the garden.   After looking at it for a couple of days, I realized I didn't have Nicotiana Jasmine.  I had a HUGE MESS OF POKEWEED .  I chopped, yanked and pulled every bit of it.  And discovered that I had - after all - a couple of Nicotiana Jasmine seedlings buried in the mess....

The road from direct sowing Nicotiana Jasmine seeds in a new 'cut flower' bed to seeing actual plants has been long and winding.  In May, I scattered a few packets of seeds.  And, then sat back and admired my seedlings .  But...it turns out... they weren't seedlings .  It was full of WEEDS.  TONS OF THEM.  All the way up to my head in height.  I got busy ripping those out and trying to leave the small, emerging Nicotiana plants in place.  Three weeks later...I'm showing the very first flowers have emerged.   These things are *supposed* to reseed, so here's hoping that this plant grows and throws down a lot of seeds.

Last Spring, my neighbor to the south shared a couple of native Spring Ephemerals that live in her garden - Virginia Bluebells and Bloodroot - or Sanguinaria canadensis .  They grow in a woodland part of her backyard garden and arrive in early Spring and depart before everything else comes alive.  She gave me a clump of each and I dug them into the bed that is right across the fence from where they came from - my thought was if they were happy on one side of the fence, they'll be happy on the other.  The conditions are virtually identical. The Virginia Bluebells came back earlier this month.  That's nice to see.  But, the Bloodroot just arrived.  See below for a look at the current state of this native Spring ephemeral: Nice to see this one come back for another year - as the transplanting process last year was stressful. These naturalize and spread out to create a little colony or drift (if conditions are right).  The idea of " Spring ephemerals " i...

Last Spring, I took a shot on a couple of primroses at an early-in-the-season garden show.  I was pretty unfamiliar with them - hence this post titled: " Giving Primrose A Shot " from March 2023 where I figured I was lulled into a false belief that these early-blooming flowers would work in our Zone 5b (at that time, now Zone 6a) garden. We're suckers for blue blooms and the three Primula belarina 'Blue Champion' that I bought were pretty close to blue.  I seem to have ONLY posted about the blue ones, but if you look back at the photos in this post , you can clearly see that we brought home four Primulas that day;  three blue and one white one.   They went in and seemed to manage their first growing season without much drama.  By the very early days of 2024, I posted about seeing some of their foliage - despite the harsh Winter temps in the garden.   Today - about 90 days since then, they're in bloom.  And they're quite nice.  Below i...

On a recent visit to Northwind Perennial Farm in Wisconsin, I found myself face-to-face with a table of Sedum plants.  Stonecrop is what some may call them.  They're NOT new plants in general and not necessarily new to me, either.  I had some inherited Sedum in our house in Elmhurst that seemed to do just fine along the driveway.  Didn't think about them much then.  And haven't thought about them much now.   We also have some Angelina Sedum that I really like in a few spots.  But, these more upright sedum?   Don't have them in our garden, but that doesn't mean I can't 'get to know' them a little bit, right? Below are signs for three:  Neon, Karl and Stardust.  The sign for the Neon variety says a lot (to me):  We've been buying Sedum since the 1970's.   Lol.  The Stardust sign is even better:  This is an upright sedum with white flowers.  Go find a spot.  Another LOL. For me, the Neon and Star...

Last year, we had just ONE tiny, white bloom on ALL of our Oakleaf Hydrangeas .  It was a bloom on one of the dwarf Munchkin varieties.  The other ones?  All taken by the dang rabbits the previous Winter.   In Summer 2021, we had our first REAL set of blooms on these things (that were planted in Summer 2020).    That makes this our fourth growing season (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023) and the plants ( knock wood ) have rebounded from a tough battle with the dang rabbits.   Over those years, I've been able to 'get to know' these and the kind of care they need - at least when they're young.  As many people know, Oakleaf Hydrangeas bloom on 'old wood' - which means that THIS SEASON - after these blooms decline, the shrub will put up some new stem growth.  It is THOSE STEMS (from this year) that will lead to blooms NEXT YEAR.   How did I help keep those important stems in tact all year?  With Chicken Wire cages starting last Fa...

This is the first true Spring for the treeform Doublefile Viburnum shrubs that I planted early last Spring.  I say "first true" Spring because I planted these when they were *mostly* still dormant last year and they leaf'd out post-planting.  I planted four of these and three have made it through the first year.  The best of the bunch is along the northside and that's the one that has been the most prolific early bloomer.  Below are a couple of photos showing the blooms in mid-May.  They're really quite nice as they sit - sort-of - on 'top' of the shrub.   I didn't have treeform on my radar when I bought these, but I'm sure glad that I pulled the trigger and brought these home.  The treeform Viburnum provides two great benefits (for me...at least):  Instant height and maturity coupled with ability to underplant with perennials.  

A few days ago, I posted a couple of photos showing off some new (to me) Spring Ephemerals that my neighbor dug up and shared over the fence:  Virginia Bluebells .  But, she also shared another small clump of other Spring Ephemeral native flowers:  Bloodroot.   Bloodroot - or Sanguinaria canadensis - is new to me, but has a pretty unique habit:  It emerges in Spring, opens up during the day and then curls up at night.  This post by the Wisconsin Extension details them .  They say : The flowers open up in sun but close at night or on very cloudy days (when their bee and fly pollinators are not active). The flowers are ephemeral, with the petals falling within a day or two of pollination. The phot at the top and the one below - are from early in the morning when these have NOT opened yet.  Both the petals of the flower AND the foliage curl up.  That's kinda neat, isn't it? I planted the two little flowers (and their rhizomes) next to the V...

This Spring, I planted a pair of Ruby Slippers Oakleaf Hydrangeas in our backyard in the north bed, behind the Weeping Nootka Cypress and right in a colony with a dwarf Alice Oakleaf Hydrangea that I moved over there a couple of seasons ago.  These two small Oakleaf Hydrangeas were from the Morton Arboretum Plant Sale this year .  As soon as I planted them , the dang rabbits started attacking them, so I kept a little ring of chicken wire around each of them.  That seemed to keep the foliage going and now we're seeing the first blooms.  See below for a photo of the two Ruby Slippers (in the back) showing their first, tall white blooms.  Each of these get four-to-five feet wide, so they have quite a bit of spread yet to come.  But, I'm excited to see these first flowers.  I'm pretty sure that these are far earlier than they'll be in the coming years - and maybe that's due to the flush of growth ahead of the Morton Aboretum Sale has quickened their cycle...