Sitting In My Garden

As I sit in my backyard, I can see this golden, cutleaf elderberry (Sambucus racemosa 'Sutherland Gold') illuminating the corner of the yard. I spent about 4 hours in the yard yesterday but that's just scratching the surface of what needs to be done. Regardless, the exhaustion of gardening work well done is rewarding. I've always envisioned having more acreage to dabble on but don't know how I would find more spare time to take care of more plants, lawn, etc.


I took my little girl on one of our weekly "adventures" this Saturday. We hiked around Governer Nelson State Park up in Madison on the north side of Lake Mendota. It was a great day and we saw lots of neat things like the native mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) in bloom and lots of wild geranium (below).

We also saw many colonies of sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis) as well. It was a nice adventure and we certainly like our spring walks. Tomorrow will begin the plant pickup expeditions again and we'll continue to plant and weed vigorously. We'll also have to deal with putting the plant sale "to bed" as well.

A Nice Sunday Off

Aside from typing this blog tonite, which my wife considers work, I put in about 15 minutes of time today at Rotary Gardens when I turned on some automated irrigation to wet down the front of the building. We put in a lot of petunias on Saturday in front of the visitor's center so I wanted to get them some extra water today. As I type, we have lightning, thunder and imminent storms. I always hope for a nice soaker with 2" of precipitation over 8 hours or so. Tonite may be fast and furious but we'll take what we get (as if we have a choice!).

We have thousands of ornamental onions (Allium) in bloom right now at the gardens. What you see is related to common garden onions, chives, shallots, etc. Years ago we "fall planted" (October) about 50,000 of these "puff balls on a stick" for spring color. These are species/varieties that go dormant shortly after blooming although there are many alliums that grow throughout the year and bloom in summer or as late as October (Allium thunbergii 'Ozawa'). The picture above is of Allium 'Purple Sensation' which is the best value for the taller alliums. Look for it from your local garden center in September or from a reputable mail-order source (Van Engelen and Brent & Beckys Bulbs are good). We've planted over 20,000 of these and love their late May/early June contribution in the garden. Some gardeners leave them up as they dry for an architectural statement. I've even seen them spray painted for extended color thru the summer! We cut them to the ground as soon as the color of their flower "sphere" (umbel) fades. Watch out for the sap from cut stems as it will permanently stain your clothes! Although the foliage of these alliums is starting to yellow and look ragged as they bloom, perennial neighbors can obscure this foliage until its time to cut it down. The Allium above (picture taken this past Sat.) will be cut down in three weeks and overplanted with annuals. These are perennials although we're also starting to see some seedlings near the mother plants, whereas we never used to in the past. Global warming!?


Gold in the landscape is so beautiful this time of year. One of may favorite hostas (St. Elmo's Fire') is below. Note the white edge on the golden leaves. This one is a real beacon when first emerging from the soil. Below that image is the golden Norway maple (Acer platanoides 'Princeton Gold'). This tree looks this color thru the year although it might lose some of the real vividness by mid-summer. However, unlike other gold leaved woody plants, it never looks sickly and is a real eye catcher from a distance. Norway maples have some issues but 'Princeton Gold' is worth its weight...get it?

A Half Step Ahead...

Tree peonies (Paeonia suffruticosa) are going bonkers out in the gardens! Years ago, Song Sparrow Nursery (awesome mail order nursery near here started by Roy Klehm) donated dozens of "un-named" tree peonies. These were specimens that lost their tags in the nursery and couldn't be identified and/or sold. Normally we don't like displaying plants that we can't identify to the variety level but we weren't going to pass on such a substantial donation of tree peonies. Well, five years later we have some pretty nice specimens. Remember, don't cut these down in winter! We'll have to have Roy visit some spring and "re-identify" these for us!

Today was another "combo Saturday" of plant sale and work day. Thanks to all the volunteers that helped with one (or both) of those activities. The plant sale was slower than last week but we cleared out more plants and will work on distributing the remainder to worthy causes next week. I was barely ahead of the planters today laying out plants. I had about 25 helpers and we put in 5,000 or so annuals (only 95,000 to go...) We accomplished a lot and had a beautiful morning to enjoy the gardens prior to 1,000 wedding guests decending upon the gardens for four outdoor weddings. I don't begrudge the fact that we host weddings but the gardens can be quite congested on Saturdays and parking can become quite a challenge.

To the right is a close-up of the spring foliage of a relatively new variety of Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum) called 'Samurai Sword' (in our fern & moss garden). So many of the Japanese painted ferns look the same but have fancy names like 'Wildwood Twist', 'Silver Falls', 'Burgundy Lace', etc. There are some subtle differences but the overall effect (and commonality) of silvery fronds with burgundy highlights can't be beat. 'Samurai Sword' has a high proportion of burgundy and is quite noticeable. I wish we had more time to adequately evaluate our 200+ varieties of ferns... Sweet shot of barrenwort (Epimedium x rubrum) foliage below. This perennial is done blooming but continues to contribute.

TGIF (Sort Of) - Another Productive Day

Above is a nice shot of yellow fairy bells (Disporum flavens) taken at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, WI last week. This perennial is from Korea and reaches 30" in height with wonderful spring blooms. Dark berries form in summer and there is a nice yellow fall color as well. This wonderful plant will form a small colony over time. We don't yet have this at Rotary Gardens but count on it for 2009!

Incidentally, in mentioning Olbrich, it's noteworthy to mention all the wonderful botanical resources in this general area. The "must sees" include Olbrich (Madison), Allen Centennial Garden (UW-Madison), UW-Arboretum & Longenecker Gardens (Madison), Foxfire Gardens (Marshfield, WI), Green Bay Botanical Gardens, Anderson Gardens (Rockford, IL), Klehm Arboretum (Rockford), Boerner Botanical Gardens (Hales Corners, WI) and many others I'm sure I'm forgetting. The Chicago area has the Morton Arboretum and Chicago Botanic Garden of course. All of these institutions have wonderful plant collections and a visit is worthwhile and recommended.

'Nugget' ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) to the left. It has wonderful golden, vivid spring foliage. It looks a bit beat up by late summer but is a native North American shrub that is quite durable. There are many varieties of ninebark available. 'Diabolo' is a nice maroon one but can get quite large. Go for 'Summer Wine' for a smaller version of that maroon look. 'Nugget' and 'Dart's Gold' are the most popular golden varieties. I stay away from the green version as it's not too interesting. However, recent crosses between gold and maroon varieties have created 'Coppertina' and 'Center Glow'. I'll try to post some images of these. I love ninebarks but after they get established, we cut them to 12" every winter to encourage fresh new growth.

The title of my blog today refers to the fact that Friday doesn't signal the end of the week this time of year. We got a lot done today; small crew but high productivity ratio as always. Tomorrow is another work day (we'll be planting annuals) and the plant sale continues...!!!

Exhausting & Rewarding Thursday

Sorry. This wont be much of a blog. I'm pretty tuckered out tonite. We had a full day of Grumpies, volunteers, container planting, weeding, watering and finally, the volunteer appreciation dinner. The dinner was very well-attended and just a small way of showing our appreciation for such a great group of people. Notice ornamental onion (Allium karataviense 'Ivory Queen') blooming with not only wonderful umbels (rounded flower cluster) but wide, blue foliage. Lots of Alliums blooming now.
This structure was built in about two weeks as an Eagle Scout project. Nick did a great job and some very motivated helpers were instrumental in the success of this shade structure. We'll put shade cloth over the top and this structure would be utilize to stage/store plant material that needs out of direct sun. This shade cloth provides 60% shade. There are all different "percentages" of shade cloth out there. What a great project, experience for Nick and a cool shade structure for our immediate use.

Another neat shot of mountain silverbell (Halesia monticola) below.

The Spring "Shift" is Looming!

This nice mosaic of creeping veronica looks wonderful this time of year but soon will fade to a green carpet. This was taken in our alpine garden. We have some really neat plants in there but this garden has suffered recently due to flooding, un-monitored foot traffic (kids) all over the rocks and plants, and a lack of more permanent signage that doesn't disappear. We are trying to put more time in to this garden and have actually planted about 1/3 of this garden as a dwarf/miniature conifer collection. A nice grant from the American Rock Garden Society has allowed us to not only purchase plants but to label them in a tasteful fashion (see image) We just planted another 25 choice new conifers in this garden (including the one seen to the left). A portion of the collection can be seen below. We'll see how it turns out. Some of these will grow faster than others so we'll relocate them as needed. Hopefully the bunnies and other rodents wont find them delectable.

We're continuing to accumulate more annuals daily. I picked up about 400 New Guinea impatiens which we like "punctuating" throughout our part-shade gardens. We'll start planting "in earnest" this weekend. I wish we had everything here already. My analogy is that if our designs are like recipes, we don't have all the ingredients yet. Do we start cooking and add those ingredients later or wait? Well, I think we'll start where we can and really hit it hard in June. Things look pretty good but we can't take a break from weeding. I've been spraying Roundup in some larger areas in an effort to control the progeny of some of our plantings last year (amaranth, celosia, etc.). Lots of comments on the perennial forget-me-nots (Myosotis) in the Scottish garden. Blue is our deal this year!!!

Weeding or Planting: What's the Priority?

It's tough this time of year out in the gardens. Although we still have time to enjoy the blooms of the mountain silverbell (Halesia monticola) from the Appalachian mountains. It does well in part shade. No doubt that we have lots of plants to put in the ground, although we've put a pretty good dent in the perennials already. However, in going thru any portion of the gardens, we run in to weeds. Weeds everywhere. The factors affecting their timely removal include time, the # of hands removing weeds, proper identification (to avoid pulling stuff that should be there) and of course, priorities. We try to do a little planting each day and some weeding. Everybody planted today. Jerry and Larry planted trees, Jenny planted irises and Janice planted some hot peppers. We had some kids from Craig H.S. come and plant most of our hot pepper collection. Whenever we plant, we ALWAYS allow enough time to water these new plants sufficiently. We always make time for watering and unfortunately, have to wear those proverbial "blinders" every day as we pass things that we should be doing...but aren't as important as what we need to do. By mid-July, we're in pretty good shape. However, we have 6 solid weeks of planting ahead of us!

Note the nice bulbs to the left. This is a substantial planting of 'Hocus Pocus' tulips and 'Purple Sensation' Allium (ornamental onion) along our terrace garden border. These are both bulbs planted in October. When we had our huge collection of tulips (500 varieties) in 2001, I'll never forget 'Hocus Pocus' as the tallest tulip at a good 36" in height. Here it's showing it's true form and looks great. Notice the cool double grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum 'Fantasy Creation') below that has a nice blue with added visual texture. This should be a neat addition to the border but will also send up late summer foliage. However, this will be obscured by surrounding seasonal plants. Busy week ahead with volunteer dinner, work day and pl

ant sale. Like they say, "What doesn't kill you....."