Each Little World

Wordy Wednesday

Epimedium rubrum is the first of dozens of Epimediums I've purchased. I probably bought it in the early 1990s which explains why I have two large sweeps of it along both sides of my driveway.

Last year I dug out a big clump in the back garden when I decided to redo a bed. I've you've ever tried to dig out an established Epimedium you may already know that it is not an easy job. 

The plant was big, healthy and blooming its head off, meaning there was strong growth underground. When I dug down I kept finding a web of old rhizomatous systems that were rock hard and prickly. 

I removed them in big horizontal chunks. They were such a surprise to me that I had to take a picture — or two. Epimedium rubrum and E. 'Lilac Fairy' are my only two plants that spread out rather than staying as a clump

I've divided and moved 'Lilac Fairy' often enough that its never developed an underground structure like this. I've no idea if this is typical for Epimediums or if it takes 20 years to get to this stage. 

The art of transition

We're staying in place, but our art is transitioning. Most of the time it merely moves from wall to wall and room to room. Sometimes it gets sent back to storage in the basement. But last week we transitioned this verdigris finial from indoors to out. For a number of years, it was nestled next to our Craftsman-style buffet in the living room.  

Then it moved into a corner of the bedroom adjacent to this chair by textile artist, Rumi O'Brien. You can sit in it but I tend to regard it as sculpture. 

We took everything out of our bedroom last week in preparation for painting the ceiling and walls. As we hauled the finial into the living room, we decided it was time to move it outdoors after fifteen years of living out of the ravages of the weather. 

We snugged it in the long driveway border where it is visible to visitors coming to the house, but not to passersby. Given that we've never had a Tulip stolen from the curbside garden, we're not really concerned that anyone is going to liberate this piece of architectural art.

We found the finial at the Unearthed store on Old University Avenue near the Blue Moon. They did not know where it had originally come from or what kind of building it had graced. But we fell in love with its quirky "flame" and floppy bow. 

Once our repainting project is complete, I'm sure we'll easily fill the space the finial used to occupy in the bedroom. I'm looking forward to the new color scheme which will definitely require new art.

Front garden vignettes

This lovely Lilium (probably L. mackliniae) would not show her face to me.  

Geranium wlassovianum is just starting to creep down the wall. I am curious to see if it will make to the Japanese painted fern and Allium 'Summer Beauty' that is just peeking in. The Alliums in this shady location are just starting to bloom. 

Just before the tour: The Driveway Borders and The Moon Garden

The group from Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College was not scheduled to arrive at our garden until 5 p.m. That meant we could set up the Tea House, blow the paths clear of leaves and rake the gravel easily during the day of the tour. When everything was ready, Mark went out and took almost 200 photos of the garden and our visitors.

I've grouped the best images into individual posts concentrating on a particular area of the garden: the Tea House, the ponds and stream, the driveway and Moon Garden, the Tsukubai and planting around the house and deck. Let's start out front.

Me, in my glory, on the bench by our front door waiting for the visitors to arrive.

To the left of the house at the very end of the driveway is this de-accessioned grave marker under our Forest Pansy Redbud. The backside of this border is a grassy path between our driveway planting and our neighbor's.

I know you want to know what the marker says: "Mary / Wife of / William Lavin / Died / April 5, 1868 / 84 years / Native of Co. Sligo / Ireland / May She Rest in Peace. It's almost impossible to imagine her life. She would've been born in 1784, came across the sea and lived through the Civil War. 

The east side of the driveway garden is a mix of trees and shrubs that are mostly evergreen underplanted with Epimediums and Hakonechloa grass. 

The opposite side of the drive is the stone wall that was done in 2015. The planting here is fairly low maintenance with a number of shrubs and plants that I know will survive. At the end of the wall just past the Orange Rocket barberry are the stone steps up into this garden. 

This is the view from the top of the steps, looking at the back of our symbolic stone lantern and the circular "Moon Garden' whose two halves are yin and yang. 

Mark raked the gravel into a pattern suggesting raindrops as that's how the day of the tour began.

Hostas, Hellebores, ferns, Epimediums and drooping Tricyrtis macrantha (yellow-belled Toad Lily) are planted above the wall. 

The Hostas in this bed are all drama queens: 'Sagae', 'Inniswood' and the beautiful blue 'Abiqua Drinking Gourd'. 

You exit the circle into the Birch Grove which is home to five single trunk River Birch trees and woodland plants. 

The path will take you past Mark's limestone sculpture, along the west side of the house to the edge of the Tea House garden. 

The history of our house in photographs

In July of 2017, the Indian Hills Garden Club came to see our garden. One of the visitors introduced herself and told us that she'd grown up in our house! We were thrilled to meet one of the members of the Smith family. Linda (we share a name as well as an interest in gardening) said she would send us some photos of the house that she thought we would find interesting. Did we ever!

This is Don Smith, the original owner of our house, with one of his daughters. They are standing more or less on the site of the house. The oak tree on the right is still at the end of our driveway. Not only was it here before the house, but it was likely here before Wisconsin became a state in 1848.

1954

This is what the house looked like when it was built. If you compare it with the magazine picture of the house plan from yesterday, you can see the resemblance. The window to the right of the door is in my bathroom and the pair of windows on the far right are the room Mark uses as an office/computer center. The window on the far left is the one directly above our kitchen sink. Not many years after the house was built, the Smith family added on and completely changed the look of the building. 

1958

The breezeway and separate garage have been removed and replaced with a two story addition. This entailed excavation as you now enter on what is the basement level and walk upstairs where the house opens out. The window to the right of the addition is the one over the kitchen sink. The group of four windows next to it is our dining room and the former front door area. The Arborvita tree to the left of the garage towered above the house by the time we bought it. We took it out to get the equipment into the back yard to build our pond. 

Mark is taking the photo of me standing in the driveway on the day we had our house inspection to make the sale final. You can see the realtor's sign by the curb. And that's the oak tree from the first photo at the end of the driveway. 

1994

I always said that if we could not have changed the color of the house from this bright yellow, that it would have been a deal breaker for me. The house was newly painted when we bought it so I had to live with that yellow for a number of years. We've painted it twice since then — both times the same colors. Gardeners either create a matching house/garden color scheme or you make your house disappear so the landscape is the focus. It's obvious where we fall! And you can clearly see the oak tree has a lot of new trees and shrubs to keep it company in the front garden. 

2011

The house color is the same but the driveway has been transformed. 

2016

Building a dramatic wall with steps leading up into the front garden was in our plan from the beginning. But it took us almost 20 years to find the person who could turn our vision into reality. The inside of the house has had some updating, both decorative (built-in bookcases) and practical (upgraded electric and attic insulation to name two). 

2018

But we bought the property to garden and it is outdoors that the most dramatic changes have taken place. Currently we're trying to figure out how to reduce some of the garden maintenance. Having spent twenty years creating our garden, we're not ready to leave it any time soon!

A green Christmas

November and December have brought us snow and rain and freezing rain and cold, gray days until our recent burst of warmer, sunny weather. But no matter what you throw at them, Carexes are a great plant to provide a serious jolt of color to the winter garden in our climate. The three varieties pictured below all are growing adjacent to the driveway so I am able to enjoy their foliage as I come and go.

Carex plantaginea (seersucker sedge)

Carex platyphylla. This one has beautiful blue foliage and though it is a shade plant, it gets quite a lot of sun and reflected heat from the driveway. But it seems to do just fine. It self-seeds just enough to be able to make a nice ground cover without being problematic. 

Carex morrow variegata, probably 'Ice Dance.' This one had some dieback after last winter but filled out nicely during the growing season. I like the look of this as individual clumps but it sends out a fair number of babies. At this point I'm just letting them grow on until I get the number of big plants I need to create the effect I'm after. 

I grow a lot of different Carexes and the only two that have self-seeded or run to the point of invasiveness in my garden are C. laxiculmis 'Hobb' aka 'Bunny Blue' and C. glauca. Other than those two, I've rarely seen a Carex I haven't liked from the get-go.

Witch hazel shining out

The driveway still has a lot of color: red from the Epimedium rubrum and the leaves on the Korean maple tree and yellows from the clumps Japanese forest grass. The clump in the foreground is Hakonechloa macra, the plain green variety, while the rear clump is Hakonechloa macra 'All Gold.'

Now that it has lost its leaves my fall-blooming common witch hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, is clearly visible and looking lovely. Since witch hazel is an understory plant, I put it under an old silver maple tree where it has been very happy. 

In retrospect, I should have planted it with a dark background to show off the yellow flowers. But that's a concept that I didn't really think about twenty years ago when I planted it. It's rare that I can manage to take a photo of it with this many flowers visible. 

Ready for whatever's coming next

A month ago Mark and I raked up all the leaves that had fallen at that point in the garden and then chopped them up with the lawnmower. I ended up with 11 bags of leafy mulch about half of which I put down on exposed garden beds and on newly planted items.

I decided I did not want to take a chance of extreme cold with no snow cover again this winter. Thus the unusual step of putting down a fall mulch. What did not get used will come in handy next spring. 

This last weekend I went around the entire garden making sure all the evergreens were clear of any fallen and wet leaves. Letting that kind of debris sit on evergreen branches all winter has the potential to kill wherever it sits for any length of time.

While I did that, Mark emptied the hoses and brought them indoors for the winter, took a load of fallen branches and debris to the county drop-off site and then prepped the driveway for the first serious snowfall. We missed the storm forecast for the weekend but more appear to be on the horizon.

The minute the landscape gets blanketed in white, it becomes hard to see where the edge of the paved driveway meets the planted areas. 

Digging into that planted border with our big snowblower will wreak havoc on the dormant plants enjoying their winter break. It's critical to know just how far you can go with shovels and machinery.

Mark made these attractive markers of bamboo and jute last year for the first time. He saved all the stakes to use again this winter and marked both edges of the driveway including the curve where it meets the street. These are also visible reminders of where to drive when I'm backing out of the garage!

Once all the trees and shrubs have lost their leaves, it is easy to see that we garden in the city on a busy road surrounded by neighbors. During the growing season one hardly sees the houses all around us. This view is always a bit of a surprise come November.

Weeded and washed

On Friday — the day before the Conifer Society tour — Mark noted the garden was pruned, polished and weed-free. So he went out between rain showers and took 207 photos to document what it looks like at the moment. He suggested everything looked so good, we should put a "For Sale" sign up immediately. So this is a photo-heavy post but only includes a fraction of the pictures he took.

. . .

Stepping out the back door onto the deck.

The stone path that is parallel to the deck leads off in either direction. The pine needles are marking what used to be a grass square. It's in transition to another look or maybe just to new sod. We're undecided what we want to do here. 

This view is standing at the front edge of the deck and looking right.

You've stepped off the front edge of the deck, turned left and walked on the stepping stone path going east. 

You could have stepped off the east edge of the deck and taken a different path to the get to this same spot. This is the view looking back as you get to the east side of the garden.

Take the bridge across the dry stream and start up the path going under the spreading limbs of the old apple tree. 

Stop half way up the gravel path and turn right to look across the length of the pond. This is the view you get if you sit down on the bench we put under the apple tree last summer.

Follow the path as it curves to the right between the Turtle Mound (left) and the Buddha Mound (right).

Looking left at the backside of the Turtle Mound . . .

and looking right at the side of the Buddha Mound that slopes down to the pond. 

The same view just a few steps further on. I love how woodsy this looks.

Now you've turned right and the back of the Buddha Mound is on your right and the fence marking the back property line is on the left. Straight ahead is the area I call the Sacred Grove, though the original trees that made it a grove have almost all succumbed to old age.

You haven't moved — just glanced over your shoulder at where you've been. The path on the left will take you over the stream while the one on the right will lead you back between the two mounds. The fence and back gate is on your right. 

The gravel path leads you to the stepping stones across the stream while the Grove is "paved" with needles from white pines.

Looking back at the Grove path. You are now at the west side of the garden where the path runs along the fence line. 

Those big green leaves are growing in the upper pool

You've just walked behind the Tea House and are going toward the west end of the house.

Looking back towards the Tea House. For the tour, the doors and windows were all open and a big Japanese textile banner hung across from the roof across the front. We let people go inside the Tea House but they have to remove their shoes. 

If you continue along the west side the path between the house and the fence, the path surface changes material and brings you out to the circular Moon Garden in front of the house. There are four locations to access this central garden. Two of them are visible in this view.

 

Following the gray pebble path as it curves to the right.

Looking back. Our neighbor's property is just on the other side of the sculpture and the hedge.

If you look at the image of the circle garden, you've just walked down those stone steps on the left which lead you to the front edge of the garden. This path goes across the entire front of the property.

Just before you reach the driveway on the left, you see another path that leads to and from the Moon Garden. This was designed as a wheelbarrow access path; one of many without steps or stepping stones so we can easily bring tools and whatever we need anywhere in the garden. 

The view to your right as the front path curves down to the driveway.

The view along the opposite side of the driveway. 

The long driveway border has box, yew and Barberry spheres as well as a row of specimen trees — both deciduous and evergreens.

There you more or less have it. I don't know about you but I'm exhausted after all that walking.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: 4.15.2018

It's another bloomin' winter wonderland in the garden!