This Week's Garden Happenings

I made a couple of important discoveries about my landscape situation this week. The first is the pesky row of hydrangeas growing on the north side of my house, against the foundation. There are 10 of them, all planted on top of each other, leafed out with diseased looking yellowish foliage, and reaching about 5-feet tall. I hacked back six of them this morning and found an old tag identifying them as Nikko Blues. They produced no blooms this year (but I didn't prune them at all since we bought the house in November 2007, only fed them). Last year they produced 2 sorry looking blooms. Apparently, Nikko Blue isn't hardy in our zone, so that explains it. I don't have the time or energy to cover them in the winter, so whatever I can't give away is getting dug up and tossed. For now, the north side of the house will be barren except for the wild poppies that have taken up residence there.

The other discovery I made is that 2 hearty but barely flowering perennials in my overgrown island garden appear to be Cinquefoil. I bought a very nice gardening book this week and figured it out right away. I have a yellow and a white flowering variety which will get transplanted in the fall.

I did a bit of damage in preparing for fall planting of the new front beds. Ordered a bunch of bulbs and plants from van Bourgondien including poppies, phlox, lilies, muscari and crocuses. Also ordered some peaches n' cream hollyhock seeds which I'm going to plant in the fall and see if they'll come back.

A few pics of this week's garden happenings are below.

I believe this is Yellow Cinquefoil, in complete shade right now beneath a huge viburnum. It will get moved.



White Cinquefoil, again, I'm guessing.



Black-eyed susans doing well:



One of my 2 pink gladiolas:



The long-awaited first flower on my clematis. I think it's a common Jackmanii clematis. I count 16 buds now, can't wait until it fills up!



I'm really pleased with the echinacea this year:

The Clematis is Budding

I thought I wasn't going to see any action with the clematis this year, but sure enough it started budding this week. Is it just a late bloomer? Or perhaps the flower food I gave it a couple of months ago did the trick. I can't wait to see what color the flowers are and perhaps try to identify it.

Things are looking up in the gardens. The pool bed is in full late summer bloom with coneflowers, bee balm and black-eyed susans. I have some nice red and yellow lilies blooming out front, and my hot pink gladiolas are just coming into bloom. I pulled up a bunch of juniper ground cover as part of the front landscaping project, and freed up Butterfly bush and a sedum. There's also something else in the island bed with lots of light green foliage that doesn't look like it will bloom this year.

I think I've decided on a nova zembla rhododendron for the front garden near the garage. And I'm considering an azalea for the foundation planting, in addition to the boxwood I plan to transplant. I was thinking about a climbing rose as well, but I think that will be too fussy and high maintenance. Also some hollyhocks and other flowering perennials, as well as some existing things I'll be rearranging.

Here are a few pictures, I'll take more of the pool bed once the rudbeckia is at its peak. Still waiting for my Russian sage to do something, but so far no blooms. It looks healthy though. And I think I'm getting slightly better at photographing these flowers, although I still have a long way to go.

Starting this Blog

This really was a crappy year to start a gardening blog, huh? My flowers have mostly gotten pummeled by the rain and we've had some unseasonably cold nights. There's just not much going on out there and I'm definitely disappointed. At least this will give me a record of how things once looked some I'm planning some drastic changes.

My pool bed is finally starting to bloom with late summer color. I'll take pictures this week when everything is in full swing (assuming it doesn't get rained out). Here are the only perennials doing anything out front right now.

A few daylilies. These need to be moved to get better sun:



And a final picture of the foxglove before it got swatted to the ground. In the upper left corner you can see Buddleia Nanho, which hasn't budded yet.

Weeding Nightmare

Well, we've had a few good days of sunshine here. Unfortunately the weeds are out of control, and I haven't had a chance to spend time out there since we were busy over the holiday weekend. Still, I've got a few things flowering now and the next crop is budding and looks healthy. The bee balm, black eyed susans and coneflowers I planted in the back bed should all be flowering soon! I'm not sure what the Russian sage is doing, it seems to be behind the other ones I've seen around here, which are already flowering. I hope it does something.

I also put up a window box with some trailing vinca and purple flowers (whose names I can't remember) on the pool shed. We are in the process of picking a color for it and will be painting it red over the next few weeks. Once it's painted and the flowers have taken off some more I'll take pictures.

Here is what's going on now:

Sugar snap peas are producing well and my tomatoes are flowering, which is a shocker. The strawberries and herbs also look healthy and my lettuce mixes are still producing.

Coleus is one of the few annuals that looks OK. All my flowering ones (except for impatiens and petunias) are in pretty bad shape :(

This sand cherry barely flowered this spring. I pruned out a lot of dead wood and it already looks much better. Now I have to figure out where to transplant a smaller one that is not thriving in its too shady location at the moment.


I thought these were weeds and almost ripped them out! I'm glad I didn't since they look an awful lot like foxglove. I've read that most foxglove (digitalis) is biennial, so that would explain why I didn't notice them last year. When I clear out the front island this fall I may move them to a better location. All the perennials located within that evergreen groundcover (I think it's some kind of creeping juniper) are obscured and look lousy in my opinion.