Why I Oughta...

Last year, I planted a fountain grass in the big cast iron urn.  It was a Pennisetum - but named 'Fireworks '.  This year, I brought home another purple fountain grass and put it in a container.  Just...it was a different grass AND a different container.  The grass is Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum'.  See below for the nursery container.  And...importantly, you'll see that when it comes to hardiness, it goes down to *just* 30 degrees.  That means...for me (Zone 5b), this is an annual.   I decided to put this in - by itself - a white container that lives on our back stoop.  A full sun spot.  I planted it about three weeks ago. How is it doing?  Seems to be happy.  See below for a look at the first flower plume that has emerged from the crown.  Nice, gently arching stem that I hope more will follow.  

Last year, I planted a series of bareroot astilbes - Gloria purpurea - in our backyard around the base of one of the flowering pear trees.  I stuck them there without much thought and early enough in the growing season that not everything *around* them had grown in just yet.  At the time, it looks like I planted six bareroot plants .   I was out in the garden recently and had a look at these.  See below for a photo showing this little slice of the bed: By my count, I see THREE Astilbes that have made it.  As I think back, I'm *pretty sure* that I recall that some of the bareroot starts were small, so I tucked more than one in the hole.  Perhaps I doubled all of them up and ended up with just three? Whatever the case, I'm now seeing these crammed in amongst the tree trunk and a trio of hostas. Which, leads me to think I need to do something here:  transplant these astilbes to a different location. They need a bit of room to spread out. But, where?  The little slice of Japanese-

Just like yesterday's post showing the mid-Summer view of the three Waterslide hostas in our garden, I wanted to do a similar mid-Summer checkin on the three Crested Surf Japanese Painted Ferns back in a similar spot.  The last time I showed these was back in May when I was happy (and surprised) that all three of these came back for their second growing season .  How are they doing mid-Summer?  Pretty good, I think.  All three are green and doing well.  They're a little delicate and seem to be pretty needy (for now) in terms of water, but they've all put on growth and are filling in together. See below for the Crested Surf ferns with a hosta planted in the middle: I'm not sure the hosta belongs there, but for now...I'll leave it.   These are unique hostas (for me), so I'll keep a close eye on them as they continue to establish themselves.  I'm thinking that if we can get through this full growing season (year two), they'll be more hardy going forward.

It was back at the end of May when I featured a look the little cluster of three Waterslide hostas in our backyard beds where I celebrated how all three had come back for their second full growing season.  See below, they've started to fill in the gaps and get up to their fully-mature size.  The ruffled foliage is a real star in the garden and is something I'll look-to when I bring on more hostas.   Also note - in the photo above - you can see that some of the Everillo sedges are growing at different rates.

We had some (dang) rabbit damage this Winter on most of our young Oakleaf Hydrangeas in our backyard .  They ate away on a bunch of the shoots, stems and limbs.  All of the shrubs made it through and have put on new foliage and growth this season.  The problem?  Oakleaf Hydrangeas flower on what is called 'old wood'.  That means...the growth from 2021 creates the buds for 2022's flowers.   The dang rabbits going hog on these this Winter means that I wasn't planning on seeing any flowers this season from these Alice Oakleaf Hydrangeas.  Last year, they were lovely - see this post from a little bit over a year ago showing tons of flowers .  This year?  Not so much. We have just ONE bloom - on a dwarf Alice Oakleaf Hydrangea - munchkin.  You can see it below: One of the big projects this Fall is going to be protecting these - and others - from those dang rabbits - so we get a full set of blooms next year. 

My number one priority for this gardening season has been to focus on adding shrubs to the garden.  That means both evergreen shrubs as well as deciduous ones that lose their leaves come Fall.   To date, I've planted 15 shrubs in the garden with the last ones being the set of three Little Lime Hydrangeas in the backyard .   When I was at the orange Big Box nursery recently, I found a table of very small (1# nursery pots) Hicks upright Yews.  I've used these all over the place in our garden, so I figured I could pick up another set of these to plant.  I mean...they were $5 each, so what's not to like, right? The question was where to put them.  There are a bunch of places, but one that I've been thinking about is how we add a little bit of structure to the (current) entrance to our fire pit area.  We have this little mulch border that we've placed a couple of small pieces of flagstone that you can use to traverse from the lawn to the fire pit gravel area.  An evergr

I bought and planted a small cluster of three large-scale hostas last Fall in one of the borders around our firepit in the far back of our garden.  They are called Abiqua Drinking Gourd Hostas and were the 2014 Hosta of the Year.  I posted about them here  when I found them in the 50% sale at the orange Big Box nursery.  I planted them in September and they were small at that time .  For comparison's sake, head to this post and quickly look at the photo .  Then come back here.   These did fine in September and October.  And they lasted all the way until mid-November when they started to head into dormancy .   How are they doing today?  Well...all three are back and growing.  Two more than the third, but have a look at the photo below to see how they're all doing by mid-Summer: I spaced these out to allow for their full mature size, so I expect those gaps to fill-in.  I posted about how this spot could use some additional shrubs - including oakleaf and climbing hydrangeas here .