Each Little World

Garden visits: Pots empty and overflowing

A few more scenes from the garden of Bruce and Linda Christensen. As someone whose garden features large, unplanted pots you can imagine how taken I was with these dramatic containers.  

When you treat pots like sculpture, the surrounding plants can be subtle like evergreen shrubs and solid green Hostas. The Hosta in the photo below looks like the so-called "August lily," a variety whose fragrant white flowers will completely change this scene late in the summer. 

The rippling grasses and Hosta foliage emphasizes the movement on this pot to me. 

Not all the containers in the garden were empty. 

Most of them were filled with annuals which made for bright spots of color amidst the greenery. 

I am a big fan of this Begonia and keep intending to grow it.

Though it is a drama queen from some views, in other directions it merely provides an additional bit of color. 

Winter foliage color

From the window above my kitchen sink my eye was recently caught by two foliage plants growing on either side of a large boulder. While their color is noticeable in the summer, it is at this moment with no snow and mostly brown surroundings that they are especially striking.

The temperature today — Dec. 29 — is also striking: 54°F. at 8:00 a.m. this morning and a balmy 56°F. at 2 p.m. as I write this.  

Carex platyphylla, a sedge with distinctly blue foliage.

Lizula sylvatica 'Solar Flare' is a woodrush, not a sedge. 

Carex plantaginea is growing across the driveway from C. platyphylla so it is easy to see how blue that sedge is compared to this variety. 

Wordless Wednesday

Boo!

Looks like we are going to get the full 5 inches of snow that was predicted. Still snowing and below freezing temperatures. I would not mind if this were the end of November, but October?!! No thanks.

Took these through the living room window as it is too cold to even step out the back door. At least the trees that still have all their foliage have not lost any branches that I can see. They are definitely bowing lower and lower as the snow continues to fall. Tuesday this paperbark maple was dragging on the bench and the deck so this is an improvement, I guess.

I thought I would go out today and try to clear up the leaves that fell in the first snow and serious cold. This is what things looked like yesterday morning. All buried under snow today.

For the second year in a row, all the Ginkgoes in our garden dropped their leaves before they quite turned yellow. 

Wordless Wednesday

Fall color makes its appearance

IVON: Bathroom bouquets

This little bouquet in Mark's bathroom is on its second week. I removed the faded flowers but the foliage is attractive enough to stand on its own.

I went out Friday afternoon as the temperatures were falling and the wind was rising to make a few bouquets before our anticipated first frost of the season. It got quite cold Friday night but most things were still standing Saturday morning. I couldn't resist this last stem of hardy Begonia, though I believe these are seed capsules and not flowers.

I moved this vase from my bathroom to the living room mantle for better light. Plus we just redid all the artwork in that room and I thought my bouquet would work with the infusion of red art. 

Mark bought this little folk art figure last year. He's perfect for Halloween.

The last Heuchera flowers added a lighter note.

The Begonia leaves are dramatic even without the sun shining through them to highlight the red underside.

Visit Cathy at Rambling in the Gard who hosts this Monday meme to see what other gardeners have put in a vase today.

Out with the old; in with the old

I planted this Actaea pachypoda rubrocarpa in 2006 because I fell in love with its magnetic pink seeds and it did not spread like my native Actea pachypoda.

Last year I thought this plant had made a breakthrough: It was more substantial with more berry stalks than ever before when I took this picture on July 30. Usually I only get two or three berry stems. But still, the color was not as good as the plant produced in in 2011 (above) and it's always caged because the bunnies like to eat it when it first appears. 

Over the years this plant seems to have gone downhill. It's never increased much in size and rarely has been as substantial as last year. its foliage starts to look ratty by mid-August. Not long after I took the picture below on August 12th, I dug this Actea out. I had located it at the edge of a main garden path and it was no longer worth such prime real estate. 

I decided to repeat part of the planting I'd done earlier in the season along the same fence; namely I put in a pair of Cimicifugas with those lovely purple-toned leaves. The Cimicifugas look beautiful from the moment they appear in the spring.

They are just now moving from bud to bloom.

In front of them I planted two teeny tiny seedlings of Paeonia obvata var. alba. They look inconsequential but I am hoping they will perform like their sibling across the path. Those equally small seedlings have turned into a substantial shrub that flowered beautifully in only three years. Here's what I expect to see in the near future. 

I love the idea of a pair of species Peonies blooming on either side of this path in early spring. Stay tuned to see if it happens!

Inspiration: Nori Pope

Just read that the great garden designer Nori Pope has died. Fergus Garrett showed some stunning color combinations in his talk in Madison last week but they were tame compared to the stunning color-themed garden the Popes created at Hadspen House. Luckily they wrote a book on the subject of color in the garden as their work at Hadspen no longer exists. Here's an article from Gardens Illustrated on Nori.

Nori and Sandra Pope

Success at last

You don't have to garden very long before someone tells you not to give up on a plant until you've failed with it three times. I planted Begonia grandiflora, the only variety that is outdoor hardy here, in 2001 and 2006. I wouldn't exactly say I killed it those two times. I don't think it lasted long enough for any blame to attach to me. 

I decided to try again in 2017, mainly because this is a plant that does not make its presence known until midsummer — right when my Trillium grandiflorum gives up the ghost. This Begonia is one of the plants that is recommend to fill those empty spots in the garden left by spring ephemerals. 

TOM SCHMOCK PHOTOS

Last year to my surprise Begonia grandiflora appeared right on cue. It wasn't all that big but it looked like it was on its way to surviving. This year the plant is at its mature size of about 18" x 18" and glowing. The red on the stems and underside of its leaves is its other great advantage as these photos prove.