Each Little World

An entertaining garden

Winter in Wisconsin is glaringly bright and snowy or drearily brown. Thus I saved all my images from visits to local gardens last summer to share this winter. Members of the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society open their gardens in the late afternoon and evening for members to stop by. Many of these are scheduled in advance with a number of gardens in near neighborhoods. Lately members are also sending out broadcast emails for impromptu tours.

These images are from a 2019 early season visit to an urban garden surrounding a beautiful older home on Madison's east side. You know you are in for a treat when the garage sports such a beautiful door — with a large piece of art above it!

Every inch of available space along the driveway was planted and there were containers of foliage and flowers all through the space.

A a woman who collects china and garden tools, I was smitten with all the displays on the back of the house and around the deck. Old brass hose nozzles had pride of place on this windowsill while a shelf was built especially to display these little china flower baskets. 

A vine-covered lattice wall decorated with plates screens the dining area from the neighboring house which is quite close by. You can see it is so early in the season that the vine is just starting to leaf out. 

 

The size of this tree trunk shouts that this is mostly a shade garden!

This view shows more pots and troughs on the deck as well as long curtains that screen out the neighbors. A lovely garden and a perfect spot for entertaining. 

June in the garden

Though it's June and tomorrow is GBBD, my garden is on the cusp of the next great flowering with foliage center stage at the moment. I walked around the garden last evening, enjoying the lushness the rainy spring has brought us, not missing the flowers at all. This is the backside of the slope that is crowned with the Tea House.  

A few steps to the right and you can see the Martagon lilies nearing their bloom time. 

Just past the Tea House is the upper pool with Tricyrtis hirta 'Lightning Strike'.

Adjacent to the Tricyrtis is Rosa glauca, Paeonia japonica and Thelypteris noveboracensis, the New York fern. 

Go past the Austrian pine tree and look back to the Tea House across the upper pool which is now hidden.

The first Thalictrum to bloom is 'Black Stockings'.

The opposite side of the pool from the Tricyrtis. 

This Rodgersia was planted in front of a huge rock which has shifted over the years. It is now half over the crown of the plant but it just curls out from under the rock into this huge specimen each spring.

This is the backside of the view in the fifth photo. 

This area is so full of mature plants, that this spring I put our big ceramic pot on the stump from a tree that came down in a winter storm a few years ago. It was slowly being buried in foliage. 

Aquilegia 'Black Barlow' is one of the few columbines I grow. I let it seed anywhere it wants, so it is always a surprise to me.

The last Peony to bloom is 'Soft Salmon Joy'.

Though we had our share of winter damage, you'd hardly know it looking at these images.

Still hanging around

Yesterday's high was 80°F (26.66 C.). Today it is only going to get up to 61°F. (16.11 C.). I am not complaining as it is raining and the garden looks lovely. This long cool spring has made ephemerals last and last. The big surprise has been Arum italicum 'Ghost'. This is a beautiful foliage plant with white patterns on long, arrowhead-shaped green leaves.

It arrives in my garden in late autumn when the weather cools down and lasts until it warms up in late spring. Our rainy and cool weather has kept it going and growing longer than usual.

Long enough, in fact, that it has sent up two hood-shaped spathes. In the center is a club-shaped spadix.

This rarely happens in my garden so it was a thrill to discover them as I strolled around the garden the other evening. They are reminiscent of Jack-in-the-Pulpit. They will get similar large reddish-orange seeds in the autumn.

Arum is a poisonous plant but I have not had any rashes or problems with it. Plus we don't have children or pets in the garden so that has not been an issue either. In the Pacific Northwest, Arum is apparently on their invasive plant list. In my garden it has been a very slow grower and has not spread.

The merry month of May

Despite what seemed like a lot of cool gray days and 6.21 inches of rain, the garden has been glorious for most of May. One last look before we turn the page to June. 

Paeonia 'Nosegay' is a beauty inside and out (above and below). Not much fragrance but she still makes me swoon.

Geranium macrorrhizum 'Spessart' just started to bloom.

The foliage of Clematis alpina 'Stolwijk Gold' is shockingly bright.

Its blue flowers with a creamy yellow center make for one of the more dramatic moments in the garden. 

I've taken clumps off the edges of this Trillium grandiflorum over the years and they all were star performers this spring. 

Our 'Tina' crabapple. After I took this photo, Mark came along and cleaned up and raked the gravel. 

Tiarella cordifolia 'Running Tapestry' has been in my garden since 1998. It is one of the few Tiarellas that is a running variety and will make significant patches of flowers without being invasive in any way. 

Primula japonica 'Apple Blossom'

Primula japonica 

I am trying to take more wide views of the garden beds as well as close-ups so I can remember if there are any holes or problems to remedy as the season progresses.

I always think I will remember where ephemerals are planted and it is not true! This is one corner of The Sacred Grove. 

Across the path is the other half of the Grove. The black hole is a new Cotinus with a dark ceramic pot sitting on a tree stump behind it. 

The photo below shows the view to the right of the Digitalis in the photo above.

The Wild Time Garden is a mass of Geranium macrorrhizum just beginning to bloom. I intended to call this area the "Wild Thyme Banke" in a nod to Shakespeare; but its name was changed when I realized people tended to throw their beer cans or McDonald's debris out their car windows into the Geraniums. 

Getting a little tired of the rain

GBBD 5.15. 2019: A day late

I spent GBBD in the garden: planting the things that have been sitting in their pots waiting for the rain to stop. I also managed to plant almost everything that arrived yesterday. We had a few gorgeous days at the beginning of this week; so everything flew out of my head except playing in the garden.

Imagine my surprise when I caught up with your blogs last night and discovered what I'd missed. I snapped these photos under a very gray sky early this morning before the next round of rainy weather began.

TRILLIUMS

If a plant does well in my garden, I tend to plant all its variations. This is the mother Trillium grandiflorum that was here when we arrived. I'm guessing it was a gift to the original home owners from their neighbors who often brought back native plants when they went to their cabin up north. I've taken clumps from the edges of this plant to start two others in the garden that are doing well. 

This Trillium is so happy in my garden that it planted itself in the dry clay where the trackhoe drove to create our pond. 

Trillium grandiflorum 'Flore Plenum' is such a slow grower that I may splurge and add a second plant to this little clump. 

Trillium luteum

Trillium sessile with a nameless Primula sieboldii and emerging foliage of Cimicifuga racemosa 'Brunette'.

EPIMEDIUMS

The Epimdiums that have been in my garden since the 1990s are now big swaths which I think I love even more than the pricey specials that I've bought over the years. 

E. rubrum grows along both sides of the driveway.

The flowers tend to appear barely ahead of the leaves but they still make a statement.

This group is mostly yellow and white varieties that have been divided over the years to create this large mass. 

There is quite a variation in leaf size and coloration as well.

E. grandiflorum ssp. koreana 'La Rocaille' from Harold Epstein's garden of the same name is planted with an unknown orange-flowered variety as you go around the corner in the above photo.

E. 'Domino' has barely started to bloom while others are almost finished flowering. 

E. x youngianum 'Pink Star' is a smaller variety which makes it perfect for the front of the border. 

E. grandiflorum 'Lilac Fairy' is a fast grower that I have divided many times over the years. 

PRIMULA

Primroses are one of the plants that I started growing before I kept track of the names of everything in the garden. I have drumsticks and candelabras and the lovely P. veris. This group  includes P. kisoana on the left and P. sieboldii 'Drag Queen' on the right.

A nameless pass-along P. kisoana from a gardening friend. 

P. juliae 'Wanda' which I bought last weekend at the plant sale of Rita Thomas, whose beautiful garden is a local treasure. 

Since Rita's plant had a name tag, I was able to identify this one already growing in my garden as another variety of P. juliae. That's Epimedium 'Crime Scene' in the background. 

On vacation

One of my sisters is in town this week, so we've been running hither and yon. I've barely opened any devices which is why I haven't blogged or answered your comments. Life will be back to my usual pace next week.

We continue to have an abundance of cool and rainy weather. But the rain has been the old-fashioned kind: long drizzly days instead of deadly rain "events." 

The weather is bringing the species Peonies along nicely. Now I need a few dry days so I can get out in the garden and enjoy them. 

Weekend work

What caught my eye as I weeded and worked on my knees in the garden yesterday: Syneilesis palmata 'Kikko', stem bottoms on Paeonia japonica, fading flowers and emerging leaves on Helleborus niger and Geranium phaeum 'Samobor'.

What I learned from this week's weather

Ignore the calendar. 

I have decided that it is no longer possible to judge what the garden or weather should be doing based on past experience. From here on out I need to simply pay attention to current weather reports and hope for the best. April is always a changeable month here in southern Wisconsin. But late snows and frosts may be our new normal, given the big snow storm we had last year on April 18th.

If frost is predicted, I always cover a few plants. But with Saturday's heavy wet snow and possible frost, I covered many more things knowing the weight of the snow could break stems and flatten a lot of tender plants. It was a one-two weather punch, but everything seems to have come through OK. 

The following photos show what I mean about April being a changeable month. 

April 26, 2019

April 26, 2018: The pink Peony and Hellebore from above looked quite different last year on the same date (two photos below).

Stay calm and let the plants carry on. 

I covered a ridiculous amount of plants last Saturday working a couple of hours outdoors while it was snowing. I used 19 containers including a cardboard box to put over plants. I threw two bedsheets and four huge contractor bags over a series of 25 bamboo stakes, mostly covering my tree peony and species peonies. A few kitchen garbage-size bags went over wire cages that were in place to protect plants from the rabbits. And I piled shredded leaves on a few emerging plants.

I've decided it was worth it to cover the Peonies given the number of big heavy buds and the height of the plants. The only Peony I did not touch was still less than a foot high and has already recovered from being flattened by the snow. I covered emerging plants that were new last autumn and not totally acclimated to their new climate having come from nurseries in the Pacific Northwest. But all my native Trilliums, the Epimediums, the Hepaticas, Hellebores and Martagon lilies did not need any special care. I covered the Trilliums because I did not want them flattened by the snow, but the ones that were not covered are just about back to where they were. 

In retrospect, I'm sure that part of the reason I crazily covered so many plants is that our garden is part of a big tour this year. I did not want to start the season with the potential loss or damage to major plants. Now I have to clean up all these containers and get the mud off the bamboo stakes — once the rain stops. Somehow I always forget about all the cleanup from covering plants!

In a Vase on Monday: Snatched out of the snow!

It started snowing fairly heavily about 10 a.m. on Saturday. It let up a few hours later and what was on the trees and the ground almost completely disappeared — until it started again! I wasn't too worried about the snow since I could go out and shake it off the plants where its weight was bending them down. The real problem was the frost warning overnight.

I spent a good two hours covering anything that I was not sure could make it through this radical temperature change. The garden was a mess of plastic pails, pots, cardboard boxes and garbage bags and old sheets draped over a network of bamboo poles on all the species Peonies and my tree Peony. Since I really did not know what would survive, I cut a random group of blooms for the house. 

. . . 

Trillium erectum in a vase by Richard Jones of Studio Paran. Note the red band around the opening of container. This one has a built-in metal frog. 

Another Trillium and another Richard Jones vase.

Trillium sessile with Fritillaria ruthenica. Note the red dot on the front of the vase, which I decided meant it had to have red(ish) flowers. The Frit is quite a bit darker than it appears here. 

Helleborus 'Sympathy' and Paeonia mairei in a vase that belonged to my late mother-in-law. That red tray was just too strong a color contrast for this delicate vase, so I changed locations. When Mark saw where I'd put his mother's vase, he snapped this photo. He liked the fact that my bouquet reflected the floral theme of my collage hanging on the wall above it. 

Helleborus 'Sympathy' is my most impressive and longest-flowering variety while P. mairei is the first of my species Peonies to flower. 

To see what other gardeners have put into a vase today, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this addictive Monday meme.