Tulips time and more

This week was so cold that I haven't been able to work in the garden.  We were surprised to see the tulips come into bloom as the week progressed.  It was so cold every day! What were they thinking? We are about two weeks ahead of last year if we use the tulips as a time mark.  

To my surprised most tulips appear as last year.  The daffodils being in their year two bloomed way earlier than the tulips and are not as sharp looking as a week ago.
This morning we woke up to 28F. Frost and sad looking tulips.  But the day turned around with temperatures in the low fifties and by afternoon the tulip border was glorious!

Tulips at 8:00am and 28F

Tulips at 1:00pm and 52F

I have the same border of tulips as last year.   I decided to not take out the tulip bulbs last summer and see what happens considering that this border is in a raised bed with good drainage.  Tulips do not like wet summers in Ohio. I didn't think that the summer was terribly wet but wanted to see what happens. I am happy with the experiment!

The tulips border: red is Darwin "Apeldoorn", pink/orange is Darwin "Apricot Impression" and the yellow/orange Darwin "Daydream"

Other flowers are in bloom right now:

Brunnera

Yellow Trout Lily or Dog tooth violets (Erythronium americanum) - wild flower

Epimedium

Narcissus poeticus

Thalia daffodil

End of March garden and TO DO list for early April

This cold is relentless! Yesterday was my first day in the garden for the 2015 season.  It was sunny but cold with too much wind for my taste.  41F would have been nice for work if you take the wind out of the equation.  There is so much to do in the garden and the spring has apparently been condensed from three months to only two. All the work I used to do in March now will have to be shoved in the month of April.
So what did I accomplished yesterday?

• cover the tulips with birds net so they don't become breakfast for bunnies as in other years
• cut down the old foliage of epimedium so that the new foliage doesn't get tanggled with the old and makes for a bigger chore 
• raked and picked-up a large bag of dead leaves off the lawn by the veggie garden..barely put a dent into this kind of task.

Today the temperatures will be a similar with yesterday and something will need to be accomplished. I can't be intimidated by wind, rain or cloudy anymore! I am going all out pretending it is a lovely spring out there! There is too much to do!
We even have some snow piles left to melt! Ugh!

The list for TO DO is long:

• spray the apple trees with dormant oil
• pick-up old leaves off the lawn and veggie garden beds
• cut down all heuchera and lamiastrum leaves to make room for new growth
• cut down dead grasses and the rest of the perennials left from fall
• cover with soil or compost the exposed roots of heaving plants i.e. foxgloves, coral bells etc
• spray for deer
• take cutting of forsythia to forcer indoor for Easter
• breathe!

Witch Hazel blooming right now

Heavenly early June blooms

The most beautiful and active month of the year -May is over but June is richer with larger blooms and nice sunny weather.  Kids vacation starts tomorrow and they are so so excited! I am too as I am tired of waking-up early.
Let me show you some new blooms from the week-end and the beginning of the week. The most reliable and the most popular perennials grown in a garden are blooming now like Irises:

My favorite is the white one:

Japanese Iris

Here is a collage of my entire iris collection:

Counter clock wise starting with the white: Japanese Iris, Siberian Iris, Yellow Flag Iris, 3 German Irises all received as gifts-don't know the varieties, Iris cristata 

Simple Peonies

Double red

Love the red double peony as it transforms in a alien flower at the end of the bloom.

Below is a collage of my individual peonies portraits.  Three varieties are missing as the buds are still closed. If you do not grow peonies, you should!  These are the easiest plants to grow! That is not what I said 14 years ago.  I planted my first purchased plant (without flowers or buds -big mistake) and it didn't flower for 4 years.  Then I pulled it out and threw it in the trash.  It might have been a wild variety or I might have planted it too deep.  Every other one that I tried after that was fine  and grew bigger and bigger every year including dormant roots which is how I started 4 of the 5 varieties shown below.

Lupines

Oriental poppies going and going - Papaver "Princess Victoria Louise"

Tradescantia

Widow's tears or Tradescantia

I left the Clematis known as the "Queen of the Climbers" for the end.  There are so many varieties out there. So far I grow four that bloom at different times of the year. I am sure I will continue to add more as I mastered the pruning of all 3 classes of clematis last year.

Clematis "Marie Louise Jensen" and me

Last year by mid June this clematis got a lot of attention when combined with the red rose climber "Blaze"  I posted that combination here and it is by far the most visited post on my blog.  The roses all suffered after the past frigid winter and died almost all the way to the ground.  I have been lucky that all started to grow again including the climber which has buds on one of the stems.  It will take a couple of years to recover to its former glory but I am sure that it will happen.
What is blooming in your garden right now?  If you have a blog, leave me a link to your last post and I will for sure check it out.
I shared this post with Floral Friday Fotos where beautiful photographs are shared by bloggers around the world.

Tulips time

As I mentioned yesterday, everything is happening so fast in the garden.  Today is going to be a hot day so the tulips will be forced to finish, reason why yesterday was probably the peak for these beauties.  I didn't plant a lot of them last fall but I had to since now I consider them a must presence for my mid Spring garden.

The "Roses Bed" in spring

Daffodils brightening our border

Last year I worked on refining the long flower borders along the main path into the garden.  I was very happy with the results throughout the season with the exception of April when it looked bare and lacking life.  See my past posts  here and here.

 I made a mental note to add more spring bulbs in the fall (which I did).  

The first variety just bloomed for Easter: Tete-a-Tete which is a cute miniature yellow blooming variety brightening at least one side of the path. 

Narcissus "Tete-a-Tete"

On the other path border I added early and late season blooming tulips which the rabbits had for breakfast.

Look at the difference between last April and this April. 

April 16, 2013

April 21, 2014

More to come as more varieties of bulbs will bloom soon.

Other blooms that started since last week are:

 Lungwort or Pulmonaria (zone 3-8)

Depending on the location in the garden, some clumps have more pink and some more purple. These early spring blooming flowers resemble ‘Virginia blue- bell's. 

Cut-leaved toothwort (native ephemere bloomer)  or Cardamine concatenata  (z. 3-8)

This is an Ohio spring ephemeral which blooms in early spring before the leaves emerge on deciduous trees and goes dormant by late spring to early summer.  I relocated it from our woods so that we don't miss its delicate bloom and placed it near a late growing perennial  by the house; it apparently likes the new home because it multiplied since last year.
This plant is still sold by nurseries as Dentaria lancinata. Although the leaves are toothed, the common name probably is in reference to the tooth-like projections on the fleshy rootstock. The toothworts are sometimes called pepperroots in reference to the spicy, radish-like flavor of the rhizomes which can be cut up and added to salads.

Low views of the Gardens

Welcome to a long long tour of our 2013 gardens located in Hudson, Ohio hardiness zone 5b.

I gave you a glimpse of the our gardens in the High views of the gardens post a while back. I will now give you the Low views of our gardens. Pay attention to the names of all the garden beds! There will be a test at the end of this post. And please appreciate the "creativity" (or lack of) in naming all our beds !
Spring

Entering the back yard gardens from the garage -  picture taken 2013

Monday's Favorite Flowers Combination #7

This Monday I will give you a plant combination so bright and rich in colors that is going to knock your socks off. Or so I hope.

May is the perfect month to take pictures in our garden especially if the spring season is a rainy one. The foliage is so rich in shades of green. So crunchy looking. But the flowers in this scene pop against the greens

I think that I am done changing this border

The borders lining the path entering our back yard have been work in progress for 14 years and there was nothing there when we started. We had gravel on the house side and grass on the yard side. We removed the gravel and the grass little by little, spring after spring until it shaped into two long borders along the path.

Eight years ago my hubby Nic and I decided that it is time to re-build our old brick patio and the path leading to it. I was happy with the plantings around it, but the 39 years old rail tires holding the brick in place were collapsing, the brick patio and alley were no longer leveled, grew lots of weeds so it was time to have it re-done. Early May 2006 instead of focusing on planting like in other seasons, I was pulling out all my plants from the beds around the patio and 2 ft on each side of the path. Nic built two new permanent garden beds to store the moving plants: one shade and one part sun bed which we placed strategically in the borders so that we can use them after this project was over. The roses were temporarily relocated to the vegetable garden raised beds. It was a lot of work (not that I didn't have enough with a full time job, a 9 month old and a 3 year old). The contractor finished the install of the interlock concrete pavers path and patio by end of June that year, and during 4th of July holiday instead of relaxing and enjoying the new patio I was planting (wrong time of the year, I know!). It was a great opportunity to re-design and plant new varieties since we brought new soil for beds with extremely good drainage.

Today looking at the pictures taken this year I feel that I am done changing this border! We planted the borders with perennials for shade and part shade blooming from April to October and several plants even stay semi-evergreen through the winter (Carex brunnea "Variegata", Sedum reflexum and Sedum hispanicum minus). The design improvements I've made in the last three years focused on varying the textures, shapes and colors of the plants foliage, and repetition of same or similar plants.

The 10 pictures attached capture the long path beds at about the same angle different times during the growing season. This is how I see my path borders when I step outside from the house.

I am working on another set of consecutive pictures to show how the borders are seen when entering the backyard from the garage south side.

April 16, 2013 - There are only a few blooms at this time: Primulas, Pulmonaria, Grape Hyacinths, and Scilla. The borders are painted with fresh emerging foliage of Astrantia, Astilbes, Brunnera, Carex grass, Creeping Jenny ,and various Sedums.

May 18, 2013 - In only 30 days a complete make-over takes place just from spring's mad growth. White and purple Columbines, Doronicum Orientale (the yellow daisy like flowers to the left), Candelabra Japanese primulas in shades of pink, Cranesbill Somobor (in burgundy), Mysotis (forget me not) and Dicentra "Gold Heart" are blooming at this time. The chartreuse foliage complements the dark green foliage and is given by little hosta "Friends", Lysmachia nummularia "Aurea" and Dicentra "Gold Heart". The large area of blue flowers in the background are Ajuga at their peak of their bloom.

May 26, 2013 - the inside border is dominated by the large foliage of the Hostas: "Sum and Substance" and "Elegans" . The blooms from May 16 continue and the Coral Bells are starting to bloom.

June 1, 2013 - the right border is captured in sunlight (unfortunately) and the soft pink of Astrantia clumps looks almost white surrounding my favorite Hosta "Great Expectations". Geranium cantabrigiense "Karmina" on the outside border is at peak bloom spilling over the path and some of the matching Digitalis purpurea "Camelot mix" are starting to bloom. The arbor at the far end of the view is covered with blooming Lonicera x heckrotii "Gold Flame" . White Japanese iris, "Yellow flag" iris and purple Siberian iris are also blooming by the arbor.

June 12, 2013 - the garden was ready for over one thousand visitors brought by the Hudson Home and Garden tour this year. The borders look their best with the blooms of Astrantia, Astilbe " Peach Blossom", more Digitalis purpurea "Camelot mix", pink Geranium cantabrigiense "Karmina" , and the purple Campanula glomerata "John Elliot". Far by the arbor you notice a yellow orange tall bloom of Trollius.

June 21 - Astilbe "Peach Blossom" are at peak of their bloom. Astilbe "Ostrich Plume" is starting to bloom. The red bloom in the border is Lychnis Arkwrightii. The white taller bloom next to Lychnis is the Pentestemon digitalis "Husker Red" 

July 14, 2013. The borders get "stretched up" with the blooms of pink Echinacea, near white "Joan Senior"  Hemerocallis (z.3-9), the yellow blooms of Ligularia "The Rocket" (z.4-8) and the pink tall Filipendula "Rubra" (z.3-8) at the back of the view. The blue flowers are Platycodon "Sentimental Blue" 

The borders gets painted with the red blooms of the Lobelia Cardinalis (z.3-9) and "Fireball" Hardy Hibiscus (z. 5-9) and the shorter Lobelia cardinalis "Ruby Slippers". The yellow orange bloom in the back view is Ligularia Dentata "Marie-Britt Crawford" (z. 3-9)

August 30, 2013 - The yellow Coreopsis "Moonbeam" (z.3-9), the purple Lobelia gerardii "Vedrariensis" (z.3-8), and two large clups of Chelone lyonii 'Hot Lips' (z.4-8) are now in bloom. The burgundy folliage is Coleus "Mississippi Summer" (annual here in z.5).

September 13, 2013. Various varieties of Fall Anemeones are starting to bloom. The white bloom on the arbor at the back of the view is Clematis terniflora surrounded by Cleomes in white and pink that come back from seed every year.

October 1, 2013 . The white clumps are Boltonia asteroides var. latisquama "Snowbank"(z.3-9) is a native of Eastern U.S. and a favorite for the month of October. The most floriferous fall anemone this year was the double pink Anemone hybrida "Party Dress" (z. 5-9). Near by is the Tricyrtis Hirta "Miyazaki" (Z.4-8) another favorite for late fall due to the interesting orchid-like flowers.

If you want to see these borders from the other end go here.