Why I Oughta...

 I bought a total of eleven All Gold Japanese Grasses from the Fall Plant Sale and put them in the ground in two locations with the aim of making two distinct masses of these grasses.  I put five in the front yard - and I'll post about that shortly.  And, I put six in the ground in the backyard - in between the largest Flowering Pear tree and the 31" Red Oak Tree on the north side.  These are in 'front' of the Apple Tree Belgian Fence .  You can see that location in the photo below: The grasses might be hard to pick out, so below, you can find an annotated version of that photo showing the location of these six grasses interplanted with some hostas and our lone Azalea.  This is a brand new - this year - bed.  You can see it as bare mulch here .   I supplemented the soil around these six with a couple of bags of composted manure to try to enrich the soil and give the grasses a good headstart.  I'm going to water these in every few days this Fall to keep them establ

This post is about the 10th variety or cultivar of plants/trees that we bought at the Morton Arobretum Fall Plant Sale .  At the very bottom of this post, you can see a list of all ten of them - including one tree, two varieties of grasses and a some shade-tolerant plants.  That list now includes another shade-tolerant plant called Amber Queen Barrenwort.   This is an Epimedium - the first we have in our garden - that is described at Walter's Garden like this : A dazzling unique Epimedium that will catch your eye-it certainly caught ours! Epimediums are uncommon in the market and in high demand. The airy, delicate-looking flowers have bright yellow spurs with orange-red centers, looking light orange from a distance. Flowers are produced along the length of the flower stems, which are up to 24" long. Bright green leaves have a blush red color close to the crown. ...Epimedium are one of the few plants capable of surviving in dry shade. Although slow to establish, mature plants

Yesterday, I posted a photo of one of the Hostas that I bought at the Fall Plant Sale (Praying Hands ) and talked about how I studied the shade to try to pick the right spot that provided the conditions while also placing it so I could enjoy looking at the plant.  Today, I wanted to add to the garden diary the other hosta - Waterslide.  This is the ruffled one that I posted about earlier this month when I bought i t. I ended up planting the Waterslide hosta adjacent to the three Japanese Evercolor Everillo Sedges that are planted at the base of our Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Tree .  You can see the Waterslide hosta on the left of the photo below. Just like the Sedges, I mulched the Waterslide hosta in with wood chips and have been trying to water it to get it established this Fall.   The plan in this area calls for the inclusion of Ostrich Ferns, so if you recall the back of the tag of this Waterslide Hosta , you'll see that both Sedges and Ferns are listed as companions.  And... 

 A couple of weeks back, I posted a photo of a pretty unique hosta - called Praying Hands - that I bought at the Morton Arboretum Fall Plant Sale.  Praying Hands is 'unlike any other hosta' and was named "Hosta of the Year in 2011".  When I bought it, I wasn't sure where I was going to plant it, but new it needed shade and I wanted to put it in the spot where I could enjoy it.  I thought about planting it close to our house.  In this post showing off our Linden Cordon Espalier trees , you can see that I was thinking of planting it beneath those trees.   In fact, I did a 'shade study' of that location.  Here, below, is a photo from 1 pm when I was trying to see if the spot stayed in shade during the middle of the day.  You can see that it is, indeed, in the shade.  But, I'm pretty sure that the sun is in a lot lower spot (already) than it is during the heat of the Summer.  So, while the Lindens are in shade in September....I'm not sure they are in

 Yesterday, I posted how I planted 57 new tulip bulbs (yellow, orange and white ones) in our front yard bed outside of our front porch.  The yellow was added to balance the color, the orange was planted to bring the count of orange ones up to par and I added a little white - just because.  Today, I'm sharing the rest of the tulip bulbs that I picked up for the backyard.  I decided to go with a purple and yellow (and a little white) color combination for the backyard.  In doing a little bit of digging around, I've found that tulips and hostas are good companion plants.  I've (mostly) planted my hostas in shaded areas - shaded by decidious trees that gain their leaves in Spring - and the tulips will come out early and the hostas, when they emerge, will hide the declining foliage of the tulips.   In late June, I dug up, divided and transplanted about a dozen variegated hostas in and around the large 31" Red Oak tree in our backyard .   First is 30 Queen of Night Single L

  Over the weekend, I planted these 57 tulip bulbs in the front bed - underneath the Norway Maple tree outside of our front porch.  This post shows the location of the current tulips from this Spring.  The important bulbs to note in this post are the yellow ones in the middle.  If you recall this post from back in May of 2019, I mentioned how Amy @ Pretty Purple Door said that adding yellow will balance out the red/orange combo .   The tulips that I added are: 28 Yokohama Single Early Yellow Tulips . 15 Darwin Oxford Elite Orange Tulips .  These remind me of the Disneyland Rose. And 14 white (first time adding white to this bed) Purissima (Emperor) Tulips . I originally planted 50 tulip bulbs in this bed.  30 pink/red Crystal Beauty bulbs.  And 20 orange Double Princess tulips. The counts now are: 25 red/pink bulbs 35 orange bulbs 28 yellow bulbs 14 white bulbs 107 total bulbs planted.  But, I know not all of them are still there - due to critters digging things up and seeing some of

  The last time I posted a photo in the garden diary of these four boxwoods was 11 months ago in October of 2019 when I showed off some new growth from the season.  The photo above shows even more growth this year as they've started to fill in the gaps.  I planted these in Fall of 2017 and they were small.  I shaped them in Spring of 2019 - which was the last time they had a haircut.  And that's because I found this boxwood hedge at the entrance to Fedex's Worldwide Headquarters campus down in Memphis where they have an amazing, wavy block of boxwoods.   I don't own hedge trimmers, but Martha Stewart has been pushing these battery-operated handheld ones from Stihl.   View this post on Instagram @stihlusa @stihl makes this little super battery powerful tool for giving haircuts to overgrown soft patches like lawn edges, herbs, lettuces, even spinach and mache. And change the blade and it trims woody shrubs like boxwood and privet. Versatile. Useful