Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - June 2010

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As I walked around the garden clicking, collecting photos, I remembered a little of my garden’s history. I’m in the garden every day but I guess I usually don’t take the time to have a really good look. Bloom day changes that. Every plant has a story.

The Heavenly Angels Poppies are now in full bloom. Yesterday I called the friend who gave them to me to thank her for her spectacular gift of seeds. She didn’t answer. I'll try again. Maybe she’ll read this blog.

Roadside Daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) came with the house. It spreads. I dug most of it out and left two clumps near fence posts.

This unnamed deep orange lily adds a pop of color to a sea of green. It was purchased as tuberose. It’s obviously not that.

Hemerocallis ‘Stella de Oro’ daylily – common, everblooming, reliable. It was planted to hide the spent foliage of the daffodils. One plant is now three.

Calendula (Calendula officinalis), another gift from a friend, has been reseeding in this spot for many years. My grandmother grew them. I think of both of them when I see the yellow flowers.

Coreopsis, sold as ‘Moonbeam’, may or may not be ‘Moonbeam’ depending on who you ask. Every year it gets wider and wider. Since 1998, I’ve divided it with an axe, given it away, planted it around the garden and composted it.

Crane’s Bill Hardy Geranium ‘Splish Splash’. I’ll dead head with a hedge shears when it’s finished blooming to minimize reseeding. I have several clumps from the original plant. It doesn’t help to tell it “stay”.

Nicotiana ‘Fragrant Cloud’ has been making an appearance every year since originally planted in 2004. I’ve never gone out in the garden at night to check its scent.

Coral Bells Heuchera villosa 'Tiramisu' PPAF - the first Heuchera to bloom in my garden. It’s a new plant in its third year that I bought on a trip to a garden center with good friends.

Chrysanthemum 'Clara Curtis' - Garden Mum blooms all summer. I’ve shared many pieces of this early blooming mum.

Anthony Waterer spirea - an original shrub. I’ll trim it back when it’s finished blooming and it will re-bloom later in the summer – another reliable old friend and one of my husband’s favorites.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my garden as much as I did.

Many thanks to Carol at May Dreams Garden for hosting Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day every month. It makes me stop and actually look at what is blooming in my garden. Check out other garden blogger’s blooms at Carol’s blog. It should be an exciting month.

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Old Rose

Rosa 'Zephirine Drouhin' (Zeff-e-REEN Drew-HEEN) thornless Bourbon rose


I seem to be enamored of roses this spring. Or maybe it’s a very good year for roses. Or maybe I’m just taking more time to stop and smell the roses.

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This pretty rose is on an arbor at Miller’s House Garden behind the Lukenbach Mill in Bethlehem’s Colonial Industrial Quarter. 'Zephirine Drouhin' was introduced in 1868.

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Jill M. Nicolaus on davesgarden.com wrote, “Sweetly scented, fluffy pink blooms, tough as nails, shade tolerant, and nearly thornless…does that sound like your average hybrid rose?” Jill explains her experience with this rose.

‘Kathleen Harrop’, another old Bourbon rose. grows on the opposite side of the arbor. It is also thornless and a sport of ‘Zepherine Drouhin’.
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Most of the plants at Miller’s House Garden are labeled. You can pick up a plant map in the little message box on the left side of the entrance path. The garden is maintained by the Bethlehem Garden Club.

(More info on 'Zephirine Drouhin' from NC State University here.)

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June Garden Progress

The garden is starting to look good. I have finally spread about half of the mulch that we got at the end of April. A lot of snapdragons and other re-seeding annuals have been pulled or transplanted. The snaps that survived the winter are in full bloom.

Evening Primrose (Oenothera speciosa ‘Siskiyou’) , in all its glory, blooms and oversteps its bounds as usual.

All the pots are planted. I used mostly coleus and fuchsia cuttings from last year’s plants and canna tubers that didn’t fit in the garden.

All seeds are up. Lettuce in the fish box has been cut a couple of times.

Beans are growing.

The tomato is growing but doesn’t have any flowers. It’s a little behind the rest of the neighborhood. The tomato is called ‘Dan’s Favorite’. It thought it sounded interesting. It was labeled “mid-season slicing tomato”. I really don’t know what that means. I’ll have to wait for a taste test to see if ‘Dan’s Favorite’ is also mine.

The first Heavenly Angels Poppy opened. There are many walnut sized buds promising a colorful show.

So far it’s been a busy week. The forecast predicts rain today. I am looking forward to it. So is the garden.

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Lovage

(Levisticum officinale)

I planted this perennial herb last year. It remained a respectable size at about 2 feet all summer. This year it turned into the Lovage monster. At almost 5 feet, it resembles a small shrub.

It’s an attractive plant and flowering now. The flowers are an unspectacular greenish yellow. I’ll cut those off soon. I don’t want seeds. One lovage plant is enough.

All the advice I’ve read says that, in cooking, a “little goes a long way”. I have enough Lovage to feed the second army division.

It tastes like celery I’m told. I haven’t tasted it since cooking isn’t my favorite thing. The best thing I make for dinner is reservations – ba-dum-dum.

If you have any experience with lovage, please leave a comment and let me know.

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More Lovage information from Sharron Coplin, Ohio State University Extension, “No Lovage Lost with Home-grown Herb”.

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Coral Bells

(A piece of ‘Purple Palace’ divided from original plant added alongside new ‘Tiramisu’ in 2008.)


The combination of Heuchera micrantha ‘Palace Purple’ and Heuchera villosa 'Tiramisu' PPAF caught my eye this week. They grow happily without much care. They spread slowly and are easy to divide in spring when needed.

Planted in partial shade, ‘Tiramisu’ has started flower spikes. The ‘Purple Palace’ leaf color is best in spring. It turns deep green with purple undersides as it blooms in July.

('Purple Palace' with Coreopsis and orange impatiens in July 2008.)

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Kathryn Wadsworth, author with David Deardorff PhD of “What’s Wrong With My Plant (And How Do I Fix It?”), relates a Heuchera story well worth the read here.

More Heuchera growing information with a list of varieties at Dayton Nurseries.

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Bethlehem Rose Garden

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This week was a perfect time to visit the Bethlehem Rose Garden. Roses are in full bloom. Rows of color fill the park.

The varieties aren’t marked. This spectacular color caught my eye.

A pretty combination.

Exquisite white.

As I walked through, I stopped at the war memorials around the garden.

With Memorial Day a few days away, I thought of the poem we learned in elementary school.

In Flanders Fields
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below…

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Have a wonderful Memorial day and THANK YOU to the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces.

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Mountain Laurel

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Pennsylvania State Flower

Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia) has been the Pennsylvania state flower since 1933.

This old beauty, another shrub that came with the house, is blooming now in my garden. It’s a shrub worth considering for ease of care if you have the right spot.

The evergreen Mountain Laurel prefers moist, well-drained acidy soil. It will grow in partial shade or full sun in a sheltered area out of winter winds in zones 4 to 9.

I can’t say I do much to make it grow so happily on the west side of the house. I trim it every few years to try to keep it a reasonable size. Some years I feed it a little Holly Tone. This may be a classic case of the right plant in the right spot.

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This old beauty is blooming now in my garden in a bed of azaleas. The pink puff balls will last a few weeks.

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(Mountain Laurel information from Pennsylvania Department of Conservation here.)

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Seedlings

Each spring I'm excited to watch the re-seeding garden come to life. It’s fun to see the garden rearrange itself.

BUT, this year seedlings are everywhere. I’ve been pulling, hoeing, potting and moving seedlings all week. I certainly have a bumper crop.

The snapdragons are the most prolific. (Top photo with Johnny-jump-up.)

The cleome has been productive too. The cosmos and annual poppy join them in their reproductive party. I’ve left most of the poppies because they don’t transplant well. They bloom early so I’ll get them out of the way once they’ve finished blooming. I may be hopping over poppies for a month.

No one needs this many cleomes!

I love the white/green summer look of snow-on-the-mountain (with more snaps, cleome and a few sweet alyssum) – again too many. One nasturtium returned (lower left of center of picture below).

Some of the snapdragons from last year survived the winter and are ready to set buds (upper left of picture below). Under all the snapdragon seedlings are portulaca. I’ll try to pull the snaps and save the portulaca. That may take a bit of finesse.

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I should have a riot of color this summer. And it’s all free! (Note: Labor doesn't count.)

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Canna

Every year I use cannas to help fill the vertical space along the garage wall. (It will take time for the pencil holly (Ilex crenata 'Sky Pencil') that I planted last October to grow tall enough to help fill the space. )

I try to get the rhizomes planted at the beginning of May. They take a few weeks to come up. I’m late but I finally got them planted this week.


After being stored in peat moss since last October and kept in a cool garage to keep them from freezing, the rhizomes were in good condition. I cut some of the larger ones in half making sure there were at least 2 eyes on each piece. I cut off a few dried parts. I dug holes between the existing plants and plopped them in – eyes up - and that was it.

It’s a lot easier putting them in than taking them out. They are tropical plant and have to be dug out if I want to have rhizomes to plant next year. (See November 10, 2007 post. )

I hope they look as good this year as they did in September 2006.

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Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day - May 2010

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My garden is in the tweens – between the end of the rhododendrons and the beginning of the roses. But there are some colorful flowers this month.

The allium (Giant Persian Blue) blooms have quadrupled in number from the five bulbs I planted seven years ago.

Lupine (Russell Hybrid) enjoys a warm spot along a blank wall.

The deep pink rhody and white iris are one of the last of their type to bloom.

A single rose on the arbor holds the promise of more to come.

Bloom day is hosted every month by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. Click on the links to garden blooms around the world. You can also enjoy Carol’s work with a garden designer and watch her vegetable garden evolve on her award-winning blog. Thank you Carol.

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Spring Pruning

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There are consequences to planting a large shrub in a small space. It means that every year it will have to be pruned or cut back. As the lilacs finished blooming, it was time for their yearly haircut.

The white lilacs were planted more than 50 years ago (before we lived here). About 15 years ago they were cut back to about 3 feet. They have continued to grow and bloom. They are trimmed each year. (I've posted before and after pictures.)

Inch by inch they have become too large for the space and too tall for me to reach the top branches. So this year I gave them a major pruning. I reduced the size by 1/3. I pulled/cut/dug the runners that popped up – some as far as 3 feet away from the main shrub.

I also did a major pruning on the huge, old, purple French lilac in the front yard – got rid of some old branches, cut out the tallest branches and the dead wood. That opened it up a lot and may lessen the powdery mildew this summer (maybe). This lilac doesn’t send out runners.
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We pruned and trimmed some other spring blooming shrubs and accumulated a large pile for the city’s compost center.

It will be interesting to see if there are more or less of the fragrant lilac blooms next year but at least now they are a more manageable size.

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Who ever plans for the size a shrub will be in 15 (or 50) years?


(Information on lilacs from Cornell University Extension.)

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