Each Little World

Wordless Wednesday

June is busting' out all over

I did not publish this yesterday on June Bloom Day as I took these photos a week ago. Hot weather, wind and rain has brought an end to most of what you see here. Our late frosts seem to have put an end to the buds of many of my lilies, so the garden is not as floriferous as I was expecting it to be. 

Roses and no bugs so far. I grow this mainly for the foliage, but it will be fun to have rose hips come autumn. 

 A once in a life time event: Flowers on my Helleborus foetidus. Not as dramatic as the photos I always see; but I'm not complaining. 

Alliums under a golden Dawn Redwood. These have unexpectedly reappeared after an absence of many years. 

This Iris was planted by the family that built our house in the 1950s.

An Iris that doesn't mind its feet getting wet. 

Clelmatis 'Guernsey Cream'

Peony 'Golden Angel' has golden early foliage and pale yellow flowers but these have faded to white. 

Peony 'Burnished Bronze' had a record number of buds which opened in 24 very hot hours. And then were dispatched by heavy rains. 

We had a bout of cooler weather so I have been digging up, moving, adding and rearranging in the garden. Lots of fun and a great way to take a break from the world. 

Don't blink or you'll miss it

The extremely hot and sunny weather we've been having has pushed flowers into — and quickly out of — their bloom cycle. From hour to hour I keep discovering something has suddenly opened. So here's a look at what I've been enjoying in the garden recently. 

. . .

This spring I cut Clematis 'Guernsey Cream' way back as I wanted to add a cylinder of chicken wire around the upper part of the wooden post that supports the climber. It doesn't have as many blossoms as in past years, but it has many more on the back side that I can see from inside the house. So I am happy with my handiwork.

The view west over the upper pool with lots of lovely new growth on the Serbian spruce and a clump of pale yellow iris that blossomed for the first time this year. The tiny green plant in the bare space by the iris is a baby species peony. In a few years it will entirely fill that area. 

The iris and spruce tree from the above view are in the back right of this image with an old Rodgersia enveloping its rocky neighbors. 

Lilies and Astrantia awaiting their moment to shine in the Sacred Grove. The old trees that inspired the name for this area of the garden, alas, are almost all gone now; victims of age.

Directly across the pine-needle path is Cyprepedium 'Aki Pastel.' This lady slipper orchid is finally settling in and giving me more than one flower. Quite exciting. 

Still trying to decide exactly which Trillium this is. Anyone know? Looks very nice with Hosta 'El Nino'.

Trillum luteum is always the last one to bloom for me. It held up to the intense heat amazingly well. You can tell how late this blooms because that is an Autumn fern coming up behind it. That fern is so late I mark it so I don't think something has died and left a hole to fill.

Nectaroscordum tripedale aka honey garlic! Absolutely adore these beauties. The only ones that have succeeded out of the 5 I've planted so far are these two. This is their 3rd year so maybe I should stop looking for the others. 

Lilium mackliniae, pink form, just planted this spring. It arrived from Far Reaches Farm in full bud.

I caged Geranium phaeum var. lividum 'Joan Baker' after I discovered the first flush of buds had been nibbled away. Geranium phaeum varieties seed a lot if you don't cut them back after flowering. But they are among my favorite plants, so I let 'em rip and pull out unwanted seedlings later. 

When I went out in the early morning last Thursday (5/24) the huge flowers on my rockii-type Peony had closed overnight. 

This is what they looked like later in the morning once the heat and light increased.

The last flower bloomed Sunday (5/27).

Lots of lilies are reaching skyward and should soon present a completely different scene in this area of the garden.

The white garden

I love this moment when the garden switches from the blues and yellows of early spring to myriad white blooms. Next up will be Lilies saturated with color. I'm trying to celebrate this calm moment and hoping the weather stays quiet and cool so I can enjoy these plants a bit longer. 

THE BIG WHITES:

Trillium grandiflorum

Rhododendron yedoense poukahanense

Rhododendron yakushimanum 'Yaku Angel'

Clematis 'Guernsey Cream'

THE LITTLE WHITES:

Gallium odoratum

Epimedium x youngianum 'Niveum'

Tiarella 'Crow Feather'

Tiarella x cordifolia 'Running Tapestry'

 

Pure pleasure

I don't think I planned it intentionally but I seem to have a lot of white flowers in the garden as it transitions from May to June. It's nothing like Vita Sackville-West's famous white garden at Sissinghurst, and yet there are little hidden gardens here and there mainly composed of whites — and green, of course.

Malus sargentii 'Tina'

Rhododendron yedoense poukhanense 'Alba'

Convallaria majalis 'Hardwick Hall' with large leaves edged in gold

Trillium grandiflorum a week ago.

You can just glimpse the Trillium still going strong behind this clump of Dodecatheon media. 

The daffs bow out: Narcissus 'Dreamlight'

Gallium odoratum (rear) with Polygonatum humile.

Primula sieboldii with red candelabra Primroses and a Digitalis pushing forward.

Tiarella cordifolia 'Running Tapestry' edging Toad lilies, Cimicifuga, Hosta and a fern.

A great year for Clematis 'Guernsey Cream'

Our neighbor's Kiwi vine has colonized the fence between our gardens.

The Silverbell tree (Halesia tetraptera) has charming blooms which make a spring snowstorm when they fall, a sure sign that June is almost here. 

The Driveway Border

Hot sunny weather, followed by a little rain and the acquisition of new camera lenses sent Mark on a walking tour of our garden. Here's the long driveway border (about 60' long x 10' wide / 18.3m x 3.05m). Originally I called it the "Hendrix border" because my idea was to create a purple haze. There are still a number of plants from that plan like dark red 'Claude Shride' martagon lilies, red barberries, the 'Forest Pansy' redbud and dark Heucheras and Heucherellas. But the addition of a Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Gold Rush') shifted the balance toward ochre, yellow and chartreuse. This spring we finally took out our 'Royal Purple' smoke bush to give the redwood the room it needs.

Epimedium rubrum (above) is filling in nicely along the front of the border along with a broad-leaved yellow sedge (Carex siderosta 'Lemon Zest'). This is the area with the Claude Shride martagons, also Heucherella 'Sweet Tea" and two ferns: Athyrium hybrida 'Ghost' and Dryopteris felix-mas 'Linearis Polydactyla'.

The large ceramic pot holds a dwarf waterlily. The bare space behind it is the home of the former smokebush. We will replace it with a 'Green Mountain' boxwood that is currently in a planter on the deck.

The standard tree in the angle of the zigzag stone wall is my "lollipop lilac." 

This sloping stone path is the wheelbarrow route to the back garden. You can also see some of the peeled trunks from the Arbor Vitae that Mark removed 14 years ago when we began the garden. We are still using them in a number of projects, including as a support for a red clematis that is visible (the support, not the clematis) in the 4th image.

Post post

Some garden projects take days or weeks, or even years, to accomplish. But every now and then an idea comes to fruition while you wait. Or rather, Mark solves a garden problem while I watch and wait. Case in point: some kind of support for the 'Guernsey Cream' Clematis to climb. This is actually an old wood fence post with an acorn finial on top. We bought three of them and used them as abstract sculptures for a long time. But it seemed perfect for the clematis.

 

However, the climber was already up and growing fast when we came up with this idea. We needed a quick solution; no time or room to dig a big hole and pour a cement foundation. Instead Mark drilled inside the post and inserted a metal rod that was long enough to shove a couple of feet of it in the ground, leaving the bottom of the wood post just above the soil. A thirty minute project from start to finish.

 

We left the old apple prunings in place as the Clematis had already twined itself around them and anything else in sight. We discovered that this wood column will be perfect — next year. This year, it was already too late when we put it in place. The Clematis had set lots of fat buds but they were all down at ground level where it grew rapidly before it had anything to climb up. Luckily the flowers are so big and dramatic that you don't really need to bend down to see them.

 

And once the flowers have finished blooming, we'll figure out how to permanently support the post, so it can support the Clematis when it's in full growth mode. Alas, I'm guessing it will take more than thirty minutes to solve that problem — and do it without harming the Clematis roots.

Intergalactic gardening

Though I've come to appreciate the presence of dried grasses and seedheads in the garden, I've rarely planted anything with that effect in mind. And yet, I find two plants in particular — Clematis 'Guernsey Cream' and Carex grayii — most interesting in their later stages. 

Gray's sedge (Carex grayii) is only one of a baker's dozen of sedges that I grow; but it's the one that always elicits comments and questions. It seed pods look like medieval maces: a sphere covered with pointed protrusions. 

Whether green and growing or dried and brown and poking out of the snow, it looks like a plant from another planet. But it's quite happy in my Zone 4-5 garden, growing at the foot of a Witch Hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) and a huge Silver Maple tree in very dry shade.

On the other side of the house, is my other favorite seed pod from outer space: Clematis 'Guernsey Cream.' I had a chance to meet Raymond J. Evison, the breeder of this plant who has introduced over 100 clematis species cultivars during his lifetime, which gives it a certain cachet. 'Guernsey Cream' is actually one of only two Clematis that I grow. But it is the most prolific and the most visible as it is planted right off our deck.  

This year, it exploded with a record number of flowers, which then morphed into a mass of seedheads that are so graphic and metallic they hardly look real. But unlike the Carex grayii, the Clematis seedheads continue to change; eventually those metallic coils give way to soft fuzz, equally endearing and strange.