Dirt Therapy

A nice slow rain today so I took some photos. The roses are just beginning to bloom and will be peaking in a few weeks. I'm having an "Open Garden" the week of May 5-11 so I'm hoping I've timed it right. The white rose on the arch is 'Lamarque' and the pink ones underneath are 'Carefree Wonder' The old popular climber 'Blaze' - this rose suffered for years because I had it in a location with too much shade. I moved it last year to a sunnier spot and look what happened. 'Knock Out' which is all the rage now. It rightly lives up to its disease-free and easy maintenance reputation. I'm wanting the new 'Double Knockout' which are so pretty. Perhaps I can replace the butchered boxwood hedge with it? 'Nearly Wild' around the fountain This rose is called 'Scentimental' 'Westerland' can be grown as a climber or a shrub. I grow it as a shrub. This rose is call...

This is truly a stunning plant that puts on an incredible show for a brief moment and then it is gone until next year. This year the blooms were pretty for about two days. Something always happens to fade their loveliness - they are really sensitive to wind and rain. I forget where I bought mine but I have it planted in a terrible spot for viewing, right in the middle of a border with larger shrubs, but it seems to be happy where it is. I've always heard that they dislike transplanting so I've left it alone. I've had this plant for over 10 years and it is barely 2 feet tall but every year there are more blooms and they seem to be more dramatic with each passing year although this could just be the time of bloom - most plants are just waking up when the tree peony blooms appear (late March) and the bright red flowers are a sight to behold for a color deprived gardener emerging from the winter doldrums. I don't know the name of the cultivar although I wish I did. It b...

Carol at May Dreams invites garden bloggers to show photos of what is blooming in their gardens on the 15th of each month. We were under a freeze warning last night which brought back memories of last year's awful freeze. I covered a few plants but fortunately the temperatures stayed above freezing. I took these photos after I got home from work today. The most spectacular blooms right now are on the Chinese Snowball ( Viburnum macrocephalum ). This shrub is 12 years old and is about 15 feet tall. The blooms are huge. I should have been pruning it to control the size but I did not so it probably needs to be hard pruned. I'm not sure if I can bring myself to do it but I think it needs it.  The next photo is a viburnum called 'Shasta' ( Viburnum plicatum toentosum ).  The blooms are flatter and appear in tiers. It is a beautiful elegant shrub which can reach significant size (8 feet tall or more with an equal girth). It doesn't have enough room in our garden....

I've finished my first major project of the year - redoing a pathway that runs alongside our patio. I had never been satisfied with it. The stones I had initially used were uneven and too thick to walk on comfortably. The dwarf mondo grass planted between the stones was full of weeds. Inspired by Pam at Digging , I decided to do it all over again, this time with large flat stones and making it a solid walk. I removed the old stones, the grass and weeds and dug down about six inches. I spread a layer of sand before laying the rock and used a sand topping to fill in the cracks between the stones. The sand topping (a Quickrete product) hardens after you wet it. Like almost every project I attempt, I soon realized that it was going to be difficult to level because it goes slightly downhill (I am terrible at stuff like this!). I then decided to make the pathway in three sections with step-ups. I replaced the mondo grass between the patio and the path. I think I'm happy with th...

Twenty years ago (gosh, has it been that long??), we lived in a tiny apartment with a postage stamp sized garden and I had just been bitten by the gardening bug. I read everything I could on gardening and I vividly remember discovering Barbara Damrosch’s The Garden Primer at the local library where I worked. It was full of practical advice dispensed in such an engaging manner and I ended up buying myself a copy. Since then, gardening publishing has changed somewhat and books are usually geared toward specific regions of the country. This can be a good thing – I’m sure I rely on The Southern Living Garden Book more than any other book in my library but folks in California and New England won’t get too much out of it. The Garden Primer, however, is a rare exception of a gardening book that can benefit gardeners no matter where they live. It is especially helpful to novice gardeners who want to start a garden but are not exactly sure where to begin. The first chapters deal with the basi...

No, but it looks like it! These are fallen blossoms from the Yoshino Cherry trees that were featured in a previous post. We have had a lot of rain for the past two days and unfortunately the beauty of the trees was short-lived. I'm not going to complain about that though because last year at this time we were experiencing the early stages of drought that lasted all year.

Yellow seems to be the dominant color of early spring. Daffodils, carolina jessamine, witch hazel, Lady Banks rose, forsythia - it seems the list is endless. Here are two yellows that I photographed yesterday. My Lady Banks rose has just started and I will be posting a photo of it later. Kerria Japonica (also known as Easter Rose) blooms before the leaves appear. It is a graceful and dependable shrub. Carolina Jessamine is a fast-growing vine that can be used in a variety of ways. I have mine growing on a low picket fence next to my tiny vegetable garden.