A Good Start

Despite trouble posting pictures, which as extinguished my interest in blogging temporarily, I've gotten a lot done in the garden.

Finally took out the Japanese honeysuckle, ready for a rose and a clematis
Refreshed the front of the side front garden, pulling out lots of day lilies and Goldsturm rudbeckia, adding soil conditioner and transplanting the Tomato Soup echinacea
Finally rooted out the last of the barberry
Moved the trellis from the side of the house to the mailbox, and planted morning glories and scarlet runner beans along one side; waiting to see if the cardinal climber vine from last summer starts to pop up in its former location
Best of all, and hardest of all, laid out the new sunny garden in front down from where the dogwood used to be and the butterfly bush is now

Here's a look before the plants went in:


It was incredibly hard to do this the hard way, which is what I chose. I edged the whole thing (8' x 8' plus the existing bed for the butterfly bush), then sliced it into sections and lifted up the sod with a straight-edged spade. When Adrian Higgins refers to "skimming off the sod," he is deluding you. It was backbreaking. Nevertheless...

This new bed is meant to be sunny, high, and wild, attracting butterflies and hummingbirds, and mostly made up of native plants. The color scheme is blue, pink and yellow with just a touch of white. Planted to date are:
Boltonia asteroides 'Snowbank'
Salvia gregii 'ultra violet'
Lavandula media 'grosso'
Helianthis 'Lemon Queen'
Aster laevis 'Blue Bird'
Agastache 'Blue Fortune'
Schizachyrium scoparium 'The blues'
Pennisetum alopecuroides (fountain grass)
Eupatorium purpureum subsp. Maculatum 'Gateway'
tulipa 'General de Wet'
Muscari

(The latter two, by the way, did indeed make a pretty pair, the orange softened by the blue and they bloomed at the same time by some miracle.)

Becky kindly picked up a lot of these at Colesville for me. I was worried about the Joe Pye weed, which was nothing but a dead stick, so I sank the pot into the ground in case I had to return it. But patience is rewarded - it's now got about an inch of new growth. Hard to believe it will grow to six feet, but stranger things have happened.

Garden in the rain

 

I'm not sure how I ended up with only pale yellow irises (I used to have white and pale blue ones handed down from Bob Taylor via Mom), but they are abundant. Here's the first bloom, despite two straight days of rain.

 

Susan Hepler may not know there's a peony named after her, but there is in my garden! She gave me two plants several years ago and one of them has buds for the first time. I can't wait to see what it is - it might be a pale pink?

 

This 'Paul's Glory' hosta is doing just what it's supposed to do - growing up to hide the dying daffodil foliage in front of the trellis.

These next two pictures are exciting because they come close to capturing the blues of the tradescantia and the purples of the columbines and sage. My camera has never done this before, but I've never used the Manual setting before. Maybe one day I will understand... Anyway, the front garden is primarily blue right now, until the irises and peonies take over.

 

 

This and that

Lots of blue in the sunny garden: columbine, nepeta, amsonia just getting started, tradescantia. And then there's the amazing sage, with flowers of pale blue, pale pink and white, all on the same plant.


Ruthlessly tore out the pot on the front steps, saving the bulbs for the cutting garden, and replanted in shades of pink and purple (impatiens, purple sweet potato vine, dusty miller, ivy, petunia). I love the intensity of the purple wave petunia. With any luck the coleus in the middle will add height which is lacking at the moment. But I'm pleased with the colors:


Odds and ends: put in three basil plants, cleome (probably white?), and pale yellow marigolds in the front and worked in a bag of mushroom soil; sowed a mesclun mix from Renee's in the long pot on the steps; pruned the azaleas in the front; planted white impatiens in the white garden; staked the clematis around the mailbox, it's about to pop and I should have done this a month ago; enjoyed the lone yellow iris bloom, the others are all sitting there quietly having been divided last summer but apparently now paralyzed*; tried to pull out as much of the bishop's weed as I could get at, but I fear it's a losing battle.

We had a wild thunderstorm Saturday night that left the garden drenched, thank goodness. I noticed that the dry stream bed I put in place in the new bed was totally ignored by the water, which of course finds its own level and veered across the bed and down. Perhaps the rain barrel from the Friends of the Rappahannock will solve that problem.

*Sue Shackelford, the iris gardener I know from Jazzercise, reassured me that this is expected after division, with the well-known saying, "first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap." Just wait till 2010!!

What's in bloom today

Columbines came out this week, mostly dark blue and purple, but a few white ones, too. I try to scatter the seed of the whites, but they must be less vigorous. Tiarella and sweet woodruff make a soft white edge to the oak tree garden. The Japanese roof iris from Mom is in bloom under the oak tree and just starting in the white garden. The anemones I planted under the oak leaf hydrangea finally came up, looking a bit bare and surprised. Who knows where the Star of Bethlehem came from? Mom guesses the birds brought it. Dianthus may be a garden mistake just because of where it's located. And I love the Solomon's Seal, not so sure the purple Heuchera next to it really works.

Japanese roof iris

Blue columbines

Tiarella and sweet woodruff

Anemone blanda

Star of Bethlehem

Dianthus

Solomon's Seal

And here is a better photo of the white columbine - I think turning off the flash is the trick for not getting those washed-out pictures.