Autumn at Longwood Gardens

For Christmas last year, J got us a membership to Longwood Gardens. We're nearing the end of our membership year and decided to pop in again to see what was going on at this time of year (we do plan to renew). I am always amazed at how different the place looks depending on the season. The last time we were there, a month or two ago, it was really hot and pretty uncomfortable walking around in the sun. This time, I was taking it all in and reluctant to go indoors as outdoor time is now limited. I won't share all 92 pictures I took, but I would like to share two highlights - the borders on the Flower Garden Walk, which are always tremendously well done, and some autumnal shots.

Flower Garden Walk Borders
The plants on the Flower Garden Walk change with the seasons. They are added and removed and though it's not realistic, everything always looks amazing and nothing is dying (because dying plants are removed!). There are blocks of colors - blues and purples at first, then pinks and reds, oranges and yellows, and ending with white. I always find a plant or ten that I NEED RIGHT NOW in this section of Longwood.

Presented without many comments, as I didn't write down the names of most of the plants:

The purple plant, Mexican Bush Sage (Salvia leucantha) is one of my MUST HAVEs

This is by the vegetable gardens on the other side of Longwood

Autumn's show
In the spirit of stopping to look around and enjoy what is around me, I did my best to appreciate the bounty that autumn has to offer.

Sourwood

Smooth Sumac (Rhus glabra 'Laciniata')

Isn't it all so beautiful? Happy autumn!

More carnage

Walking around this week taking pictures for Bloom Day, I passed by the giant rose bush twenty times at least. This is the rose bush that came with the house when we bought it almost a decade ago. It used to climb an arbor (that rotted and has been removed) but now is just a giant bush that I try to manage.

So I'm walking by, back and forth, back and forth, each time ducking under one of the giant canes that had grown across the pathway. At some point I decided to try to photograph the rose hips for Bloom Day. I looked over and saw this:

Seriously!? This has been the most laid back rose in the garden. I don't water it, I don't feed it, and I only occasionally prune it. And now - now!? - Pinkie has passed on her rose rosette disease.

This one is not going down without a fight. Wish me luck - I think I'm going to need full body armor to take it out.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - October 2013

This will probably be the last Bloom Day for 2013. I enjoy autumn and its tranquility but it also means we're heading into winter, with which I have a difficult time each year. In any case, though this month's blooms are not very showy, their subtlety forces me to take a closer look and take note of the details of the garden. There's something to be said for slowing down. 

Front yard

Mums and Aster oblongifolius 'October Skies'

This aster is a real winner. There is almost no color in my yard right now (or anywhere else on the block) and yet this aster on my front wall is big, bright, and beautiful. I don't know why I don't have more!

More Aster 'October Skies' with a mum in the middle

Aster novae-angliae 'Alma Potschke'

A different type of aster, 'Alma Potschke' (or Poetschke) adds bright color to a fading fall landscape. I do enjoy this plant, but even after chopping it in half in the summer, it's still too leggy. Maybe it needs two chops next year.

Ilex crenata

My Japanese holly must be happy. She didn't have berries last year (her first year here). I just noticed these today while rushing around to take pictures. Clearly I need to slow down and look around some more.

Caryopteris

Abeille allée

As I mentioned in my last post, my allée has recently experienced quite a transformation. Many of the plants are immature but there are still a couple of things in bloom. 

Geranium 'Rozanne' and Coreopsis 'Moonbeam'

The coreopsis is STILL blooming!

Nandina domestica

The berries on my new nandina (Heavenly Bamboo) are already starting to turn red. They'll be a great holiday decoration in the winter.

Back yard

Here is where I will finally show you my great shame - my utterly mismatched annuals against some perennials. Sure, the marigolds are about the only thing still in bloom in the back, but look at what they're next to:

Marigolds and Sedum 'Autumn Joy'

Orange and pink. Together. I don't know what I was thinking! It was even worse during the summer, when the marigolds and pink zinnias were next to each other.

Sedum 'Autumn Joy', spiderwort

The spiderwort is blooming again. Can you see the fantastic seed pods on the baptisia?

Anemone 'Queen Charlotte'

This gal needs a more prominent spot. She's flopping over from the weight of some echinacea and hidden in the back of the flower bed. I'll have to move her next year.

That's it for 2013, I assume! I'm glad I took the time to document different stages of the garden this year. It'll be nice to look back on during the dreary days of winter. Thanks to May Dreams for hosting another Bloom Day.

How my allée came to bee

I've recently started referring to the side yard here and there as the Abeille Allée and I wanted to explain a little further. I'm a huge francophile. HUGE. I started taking French in 7th grade and it was love at first sight. I continued through high school, minored in it in college, and studied abroad in Paris during my junior year. I long to be a Parisienne and I Frenchify everything in my life. Naturally, I can't then just have an English name for part of my garden. Mais non! It has to be in French.

When my back yard was cut in half (see post about it here) and the amount of space I had to garden was therefore reduced, I turned to the side yard to expand upon my garden. I had a couple of bushes and some leftover daylilies there, but it was just a means to travel from the front to the back.

Before

Last year, however, I dug out a small bed on the side in the hopes of starting to realize my vision of a curved bed where you can't quite see around the corner, and then eventually and suddenly, you're in the back yard and a whole new "room". I even have an entire Pinterest board named "Jardin - Paths" (see how I Frenchified the name?) to inspire me.

Summer of 2012

As you can see in the photo above, I only dug out about 2 feet. It was enough to put my free Eastern redbud tree and the new plugs I had bought with some neighbors. It's difficult to tell in the photo but there's quite a downhill slope. It's very, very gradual at the beginning (lower right corner) but gets significantly steeper at the end (toward my neighbor's car). I was concerned about water runoff and wasn't sure if this would be a runny, muddy mess. The slope also poses a challenge because the pathway has to be pretty narrow, unless I send visitors meandering on the hill.

Luckily, last summer showed that the new garden bed wasn't a mess but it clearly needed to be expanded.

Back to front: You can see me using the hose to outline where to dig

Front to back

And so I worked on it, little by little, foot by foot, starting this summer. The process was very slow due in part because I insisted on hand digging everything (like an ass) and there was also minimal room in which to throw away my sod piles. I kept imagining that the garbage men were going to turn away my garbage cans for being too heavy!

Early summer 2013. Slow. 

Mid-summer 2013. Still slow. 

It was roughly around the time that the photo above was taken that it came to me - what to call this garden! See, after reading this great post by Laurrie, I'd been pondering what to name my gardens. I mean, Front, Back, and Side Yard are all super creative and memorable names but I felt like there was a little something missing. Well, on my hands and knees digging out sod I noticed the incredible number of bees on the flowers, particularly the St. John's Wort and the Nepeta siberica. In French, bee is "abeille". And though an allée is often, in the gardening world, a straight path with tall trees on either side, it also means "pathway" or "walk". Abeille allée just came together perfectly and with little thought - it had to be the new name for Side Yard.

The project was abandoned during the high humidity days of July and the frenetic busy-ness of August. Luckily, last month Neighbor M brought home a small rototiller. Realizing it would take me until 2017 to complete this project by hand, I went to town digging out the rest of the grass. It took me all of 30 minutes, and that includes the 6 times I had to restart the machine. With all of that new space, I then went on a shopping spree at my local garden store - they finally put their buy one, get one sign up AND they had a whole table of $3 plants that looked sorry but just needed some TLC.

Hooray for autumn sales!

Pre-planting spree. The path is (mostly) complete. 

Finally, when J and I went to visit my parents in New England a couple of weeks ago, my mom and I took a little trip to the very helpful Cranesbill Nursery, where they helped me pick out three different shrubs that would not grow too wide (a problem in a narrow garden). I also came home with another peony and a bunch of divisions from my mother's garden. Within twenty minutes of getting home from that trip I was planting everything in the ground. Who needs to unpack luggage? I have bushes to save!

Back to front: The new bushes and plants are in the ground.

Front to back.

The curve of the path is not at all as dramatic as I'd hoped, but I'm pretty limited by the slope of the hill in places. I still need to define the path's edges and then lay out some stones or add some pavers, but that will have to wait until after marathon season is over. I'd also like to finally replace the old, rotted arbor that we took out in 2009-ish to define the entrance to the Allée at the front, but that too will have to wait until J feels like helping me install some concrete post supports.

I have hope that by this time next year, some of the plants will be overflowing on to the path and the bushes will be a lot taller, making it more of an "oooh what's around that curve?!" situation.

(I do intend to make a separate post about all of my new plants, if for nothing else than so I can remember what I have and where!)

So long, farewell...

Installing our fence a couple of years ago was difficult - it was making permanent the division of our yard into two (mentioned here).  We were also cutting ourselves off from our nice new neighbors, though I always hoped they understood that we're DINKs and need some quiet time on this side of the fence. But one of the things that made it easier for me was the excitement about growing climbing roses. I had a vision that they would grow up the fence and then trail through the lattice top.

I chose a rosa (Rosa cl. Pinkie) without a lot of thorns in case it trailed down the other side and the neighbor's kids got too close to it. It's also a double-bloomer, so I'd have softly fragrant roses twice a year. In my mind it would (and did for a short while) look like this:

Friends who grow roses tell me they're not that difficult to grow, but I don't really know what I'm doing with them. I didn't have luck with this one (I ripped it out at the end of last fall). This rose came with the house and does well but I don't really know what I'm doing with it so she gets ignored a lot.

So, for months, when I'd see the many new red canes shooting up, I thought - wow! Pinkie sure is an aggressive grower.

If you know anything about roses, you can see where this is going.

In July, I read Jason's post asking for help for his rose and though I was in a bit of denial after reading it, I realized that my Pinkie does, in fact, have rose rosette disease. (By the way, I also diagnosed my echinacea with aster yellows disease after reading Jason's blog last year. I sense a theme here.)

Surely, though, I could control this disease! I read that it can be managed by cutting off the affected canes, so that's what I did in August. I would win this battle! I would still have my dream of cascading roses over my fence!

Please ignore the clover that acts as grass 'round these parts

As you can see by this picture I took today, am not winning this battle:

So long, Pinkie. I enjoyed my time with you and we had some beautiful moments together, but you're going be removed in the next month or so when I can find the time.

I'm going to place a personal ad out in the universe, so if you know of a plant that fits the bill, please let me know.

Wanted: Climbing perennial plant for small city garden. Attractive location along wooden fence with lattice top. Must have flowers. Needs to do well in morning shade and afternoon sun. Fragrance a plus. Roses need not apply. 

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - September 2013

The time since the last Bloom Day has kicked my butt. I don't think I've felt this overwhelmed in a long time, between my job, teaching a night class, training for two marathons, caring for a sick dog, and any other responsibilities I have. Needless to say, the garden has had zero attention beyond my wistful stares in its direction, so no wide shots this month.

The Backyard

Anemone 'Queen Charlotte'

I've seen goldfinches snacking on the echinacea seeds

Can you guess which of these two sedum I pinched back?

Carypoteris - I don't seem to have written down the specific type

The Side Yard (Abeille Allee)

I should rename this the Engergizer Bunny garden. So many of the plants keep going, and going and going...

Like this hibiscus. It's been blooming nonstop since July. It's right outside my kitchen window and provides such an amazing view.

My numerous Coreopsis 'Moonbeam' plants have been in bloom since June. Three solid months of nonstop color. Amazing.

Coreopsis 'Moonbeam'

The newest additions to the Allee are already showing themselves to be worthy. Penstemon 'Delft Blue Riding Hood' and Geranium 'Rozanne' were 1-inch plugs when I planted them in June and are already bloomig.

This silver lace vine serves two purposes - it creates a privacy screen for our front porch from the neighbors, and it provides some nice shade on the porch in the summer months. It needs some trimming, though!

Polygonom aubertii - Silver Lace Vine

Zinnia

Dahlia

The Front Yard

Gaillardia. I love the seed heads after the petals fall off.

These plants are just getting started and will put on a great show over the next month. On the left is  Aster 'Alma Potschke' and on the right is Aster 'October Skies'.

Dahlia

This zinnia is as large as my fist

Caryopteris - this was split from the plant in the back

That's my end-of-summer/early fall show for Bloom Day! Here's hoping I have more time between now and the next one to get outside and have some fun! Thanks to May Dreams