I bought a small pot of 'Blue Moon' woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata) in 2013. It was kind of over its bloom period when I bought it, so I didn't expect much. The following year, it was nice enough, but nothing to write home about. The following year (which was last year) it bulked up enough [...]
Native/Invasive
My Spicebush Is Blooming! Wildflower Wednesday April 2016
April 29, 2016 – Posted in: Native/Invasive, The Secret Garden, What's up/bloomingMy spicebush is blooming! Only a mother--I mean, a gardener--could be so happy about the blessed event. See: Well--ahem--yes, they are rather small. Try this:Okay, let's really zoom in: I saw my first spicebushes in 2009 in the Mundy Wildflower Garden on the grounds of Cornell Plantation in Ithaca, New York. There were several of [...]
Spring, Rebooted: Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day April 2016
April 15, 2016 – Posted in: Native/Invasive, What's up/bloomingThe early spring that showed up last month went on hiatus as the Arctic Express roared through with six inches of snow and bitter cold--it dropped to -3F on the worst night. It's almost as if the climate had to reboot to get back on track. But that is all behind us now and each [...]
The Earliest Blooming Native Flower
April 10, 2016 – Posted in: Mud Season, Native/InvasiveThe earliest blooming flower in my garden is a snowdrop, Galanthus 'S. Arnott'. The earliest blooming wild flower is coltsfoot. But the earliest blooming native flower? For that, you have to look up. Way up. Because the earliest blooming native flower belongs to the red maple, Acer rubrum. I am always looking down at the [...]
Tartarian Honeysuckle Chokes Out Spring Ephemerals
April 1, 2016 – Posted in: Garden chores, Mud Season, Native/InvasiveOne lesson I learned from Sara Stein, author of Noah's Garden and Planting Noah's Garden, was that non-native (also called alien) plants typically start growing and blooming before the native plants--at least in North America. That is because the climate they originally came from was milder, or warmed up gradually and consistently, and that is [...]
The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden: Book Review
September 29, 2015 – Posted in: Book reviews, Habitat gardening, Native/InvasiveI picked up Roy Diblik's The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden from the library shelf because I knew the author supplied the plants for the Lurie Garden in Chicago, working closely with designer Piet Oudolf, and I wanted to learn more about the naturalistic style of gardening that both of these men espouse. Yes, there is [...]
Keeping An Eye On Hemp Dogbane: Wildflower Wednesday
August 30, 2015 – Posted in: Native/InvasiveThe email from my neighbor to the south was ominous. "There's a plant I've never seen before on the north side of your property along the road. It's already grown into a big patch and I'm afraid it might be swallowwort." I had read that swallowwort was highly invasive, but I had never seen any [...]
Hobblebush, A Native Shrub That’s Easy To Love: Wildflower Wednesday
June 27, 2015 – Posted in: Native/Invasive, Plant infoAt first glance, I thought it was a hydrangea. But I don't know of any hydrangea that blooms with the trilliums. And the large, exquisitely puckered leaves were unlike any hydrangea leaf I'd ever seen. Turns out it was a viburnum--Viburnum lantanoides--to be precise. This native shrub likes it cool and moist--perfect for northern climates. [...]
More Than One Kind of Forget-Me-Not: Wildflower Wednesday
May 29, 2015 – Posted in: Native/InvasiveI have grown forget-me-nots for many years. I even got them to naturalize a bit in the secret garden at our old house. At our new house, I noticed some forget-me-nots intermixed with hostas growing alongside the garage. The hostas loved it there in spring but looked pretty sad in summer's heat, so I dug [...]
Smoke On A Rope: Wildflower Wednesday
October 23, 2014 – Posted in: Native/InvasiveDriving down country roads on the way to town, I noticed what looked like brown fur in many of the shrubs along the road. I finally realized that the "fur" was actually the seedheads of Virgin's bower, Clematis virginiana, which Prairie Moon Nursery fittingly calls "prairie smoke on a rope." Virgin's bower is a native [...]
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