Next-to-last "Walk in the Garden" Post

You might think we'd be done by now, but we still have two groups of pots to go.

Here's pot 13, which contains a Japanese Pieris, the sibling of the one in Pot 1.  This one isn't quite as big, but it too has a lot of new red growth.  I need to prune those empty twigs, though!

Pot 14 contains a boxwood, purchased in summer 2018 from Brighter Blooms after I managed to achieve the almost impossible task of killing my previous boxwood.  Also two hostas: Rainforest Sunrise, on the left, and Mighty Mouse, on the right - both purchased in Connecticut in summer 2018.

Pot 15 is an old favorite of mine.  It contains the Jim Dandy winterberry holly, who leans severely to one side and has had several dead branches pruned off over the years - but it's a survivor.  Purchased from Forestfarm in 2016, it's the biggest tree in my garden.

Also in the pot:the American Halo hosta (what is eating its leaves?), the Touch of Class hosta (supposed to be tricolor, but some of the leaves now come up monocolor, a phenomenon I hope to explore in a later post), and the hosta known as "Whee!" (in the second photo below).  Plus lots of ivy.  This has always been a busy pot!

Pot 16 is a Bleeding Heart that I bought last summer, and it's doing very, very well - putting the lie to my frequent claim that nothing blooms in my garden.

Pot 17 contains my other winterberry holly.  I bought these hollies for the red berries.  I got three the first season and none since then - because you don't get fruit without blossoms, and these hollies don't blossom in the shade.

Pot 17A is a new one.  This lovely red tree is the Spring Coral maple, new this season from Forestfarm, and I predict that it will never be this red again.  But I really love the color. 

 

Also in the pot: a new Dancing Queen hosta, and another hosta I'd like to tell you a bit about.  These little shoots were an accident.  I was trying to split the Touch of Class hosta from Pot 15, but the roots in that pot are so entangled that I couldn't do it.  I just ended up breaking off a couple of stems with leaves.  Now, normally a split hosta has to have a bit of root to grow, and there didn't seem to be any root here, but I'm an optimist, so I shoved the broken stems and leaves in Pot 17A - and they're growing!

Pot 18 is the Upright Japanese Yew, new last year.  It still hasn't quite settled in, but it's putting out a little new growth, so there's hope.  Also a Japanese Ghost Lady fern, and some ivy from the Greenmarket that is unstoppable.

And here's a pot without a number.  I bought two pots online last fall, and when they arrived, the enclosed documentation said they were uninsulated and should be brought in during the winter, which makes them unsuitable for perennials.  That would have been nice to know before I bought them.  Still, I can plant annuals in them, since they will die before winter no matter what.  My plan was to go out to the plant store or the Greenmarket to fill the two annual pots, but the plant store is closed.  So I got this little pansy at the Greenmarket, and it's practicing social distancing.

We'll look at the final group of pots next week

Garden Map Part 3

Sorry for the slight delay - it was so rainy last weekend and I had a lot of errands and distractions.  But I want to continue with the Garden Map.

Here is Pot # 8.  It contains a Sky Pencil Holly, purchased from Forest Farm at Pacifica in 2018, and three Blue Mouse Ears Hostas.  The holly is looking a bit grim.  It should have glossy green leaves, but they're not very glossy and a bit brownish and some of them are falling off.  Surviving.  

 The hostas, on the other hand, are vigorously thriving.

 

Pot #9 is a problem pot.  I think there's a drainage issue; the soil appears to be compacted and tends to stay wet long after it rains.  I've removed the one hosta that actually came up this year, and transplanted it elsewhere.  The only other thing in this pot that's not a weed is a willow oak, which self-seeded in another pot last year and which I transplanted here.  It seems to be dead. 

My plan for Pot #9 is to prop it up on tiles to try to assist with drainage; rake the soil to make it less compacted and add new potting soil on top; and try again. 

Here's pot #10.  There's an Oregon Fern Japanese Maple, purchased from Forest Farm at Pacifica in 2018, thriving.  Three Glacier Ivy plants, purchased at the Union Square Greenmarket in 2018, thriving.  And three bare-root hostas, purchased this spring from Michigan Bulb, thriving.

Incidentally, of the eight random hostas I bought from Michigan Bulb this year, four look like they're Blue Mouse Ears, which I already had four of.  You might think I'd be disappointed, but you'd be wrong.  I'm delighted to have received random hostas I can actually identify, and Blue Mouse Ears is a star of my garden, so the more little blue mice, the merrier!

Pot #11 has a Marvelous Marble Heuchera from last year (thriving like mad), a random hosta from last year's batch of random hostas from WalMart (thriving), and a white swamp oak that self-seeded last year.  You can't see the oak (it's by the stake, but hiding behind the hosta), but it's beginning to leaf.  Not pictured: the Delta Dawn Heuchera, which should be back by the little white marker, but isn't because it's dead.

Pot #12 has a Columnar European Hornbeam, purchased from Forest Farm at Pacifica in 2018; a Curly Fries hosta, purchased in Connecticut last year during a visit to my friend Liz; and two random hostas from the WalMart batch. 

The hornbeam is really leafy this year.

Curly Fries has a very distinctive look for a hosta.

The other two?  A nice tri-color hosta that I can't identify.

Pot #13 is a Japanese Pieris, not quite as nice as the Japanese Pieris in Pot #1, but definitely
surviving.  Those reddish leaves up top are supposed to look that way; the brownish leaves lower down, not so much.

Pot #14:  a boxwood (purchased from Brighter Blooms in 2018) and three hostas.  Boxwood: thriving.

 

Mighty Mouse hosta (2018, Acer Farms, Connecticut): thriving.

Rainforest Sunrise hosta (2018, Van Wilgen's, Connecticut): thriving.  Possibly needs to be transplanted to a pot with more room.

 

Random bare-root hosta from Michigan Bulb: this one's a tiny little thing.  We'll call it "surviving" for now.

 

 Pot #14A: an Italian maple tree that arrived as a stowaway last year with a hosta I purchased.  It's beginning to leaf, so I'm going to call it "thriving."

Pot #14B: the Empress Wu hosta.  When fully grown, Empress Wu is one of the largest-leafed hostas around.  Like, leaves 25 to 28 inches across!  Mine is still a baby.  Might need a bigger pot next year.

More to come, later in the week or this weekend.  It's hard to believe I now have so many pots that I have to do this in multiple installments. 

Back from an extra-long hiatus

It's spring in the garden once again.  Little stubby green things are appearing in my pots and will soon turn into hostas.

The heucheras are growing brightly-colored little new leaves - which is especially exciting because often, my heucheras do not make it to a second season.

 

And the trees are budding.

Well, most of the trees.  Maybe not the fig tree.

I suppose I owe you all an explanation for why I blogged only once last year.  There's a one-word answer: fertilizer.  I had asked an employee at a garden center why my Japanese Pieris didn't flower, and he suggested a particular fertilizer.  So I bought the fertilizer, and a companion fertilizer for non-acid-loving plaints, and I fertilized my Japanese Pieris and many of my other trees and shrubs.  Unfortunately, I did so very enthusiastically, and I exceeded the amounts specified by the package directions, and I killed a lot of my plants. I killed the Japanese Pieris. I killed the Upright Japanese Yew that had been in my garden since 2016.  I killed the Orange Dream Japanese Maple that I'd raised from a twig in 2015.  I killed a Boxwood.  And I killed a Mountain Laurel.  Losing so many beautiful plants by my own hand was devastating.

So I didn't have the heart to blog last spring and summer, even though most of the rest of my plants did just fine.  I got some new plants.  I mulched everything last summer and fall, to help the pots retain their heat in the winter, which may be why my heucheras are mostly not dead (though the reasonably mild winter we had could also be a contributing factor).

It's too early yet to play "Who's Surviving, Who's Thriving, Who's Dead," or to show you the garden as a whole, but I thought I'd introduce you to three new plants that arrived this week.  Say hello to the Champagne Heuchera!

Please welcome the Lady in Red Fern!

Yes, I agree, she does look like a Lady in Green.

And I'm not sure what you should say to the Rhino Hide Hosta.

Yes, that's exactly how it arrived.  Looks stone dead to me, but I put it in the ground anyway and will keep you posted.

By next weekend, four new trees and shrubs will have arrived, so that's something to look forward to.  Happy spring from Grey to Green!

Birds and New Trees

I was delighted to have a cardinal drop by my garden this week.

I couldn't get any closer because I didn't want to open the window and scare him. 

In other news, I got a box of plants this week from my buddies at http://www.forestfarm.com/.  They've sold me lovely plants in the past, including my big Jim Dandy holly and the upright Japanese yew.  They also sold me Mr. Bowling Ball, who unfortunately is pretty much dead.

So here's what's new from ForestFarm:

That's two trees in one pot.  The first is another Japanese Maple.

One of the things I really wanted to add to the garden this year was a cut-leaf Japanese Maple.  This is more of a lace-leaf, but it's just a lovely plant.  It's called "Orangeola."  It loves shade, can grow up to 4 to 8 feet tall, and does well in containers.

It's going to have to grow into this one.

The other plant that came packaged with Orangeola is another dwarf - the Pygmaea Dogwood. 

It's barely bigger than the hostas, and it arrived a little droopy, but I'm hoping some water and sunshine will help.  It can grow to be 6 to 10 feet tall, and can thrive in the shade, though we will see if it blooms in the shade.

And then there's another Camellia:

This is not the Camellia I originally picked from their website, but they turned out to be out of stock on the one I wanted.  This one is called Nuccio's Pearl - my other Camellia is Nuccio's Gem, so whoever Nuccio is, he's popular in my garden. 

And then, after making fun of boxwoods on my blog last year, I figured it might be nice to have one.  He's in a temporary pot because I ran out of pot space!

So here's the garden:

Starting to look kind of good!

The Plants of My Neighborhood, Or, Good Grief, Is That Another Boxwood?

Nothing much has happened in my garden since you last heard from me.  It rained a little, and my polka dot plants are looking nice, and the Japanese Maple is merrily budding away, but any photos would look just like Monday's photos.

So instead, today I'm going to talk about the plants of my neighborhood - specifically, the plants in pots and containers outside of restaurants and stores and apartment buildings.  If you think of New York City as nothing but gray, then you might be surprised by all of these plants.  However, if you live in the suburbs, it might make you sad that all of our urban plants appear to be living in captivity.

What I've noticed walking around my neighborhood the last few weeks is a lot of repetition.  For instance, there's arborvitae.

Arborvitae is an evergreen, recognizable for its flat, feathery needles.  (Forgive me if this is all too basic - I don't yet know who my audience is, and I am pretty much a gardening novice myself!)

The arborvitae in the photo below is no more.  It has ceased to be.  It's expired and gone to meet its maker.  But for some reason, it's still sitting in a pot in front of a restaurant.

There's also the holly.

And the ivy.

And the holly and the ivy.

And the yew.  (Only yew and yew alone.)

The yew needles are soft and flat, and the red berries (if any; none in this photo) are poisonous.

But there are two plants that are just everywhere in my neighborhood.  First, the boxwood.

Now, I get it.  The boxwood is evergreen; it is hardy in this region; and apparently any fool can grow it.  It looks fine whether it's groomed into a topiary or just allowed to grow in a natural shape.  Maybe next year, I'll put some boxwood into my garden.  But I just couldn't get excited about it this year.

And then there's the Dwarf Alberta Spruce.  This one is also ubiquitous.

The needles are short and sharp.

It's like a little Christmas tree in a pot.  Again, I get why it's popular.  It's cute and friendly.  It doesn't need any pruning to give it that nice pyramid shape.  But I just can't get excited about it, and so there won't be any Dwarf Alberta Spruces in my garden this year.

So what will be in my garden this year?  I think I'm going to have to leave you in suspense for a while, or I'll run out of blog posts before the plants actually arrive in the mail.

A quick note: I will sometimes be mentioning brand names in my posts.   I have not received anything free from anyone; everything in my garden is purchased at retail.  If I mention store or brand names, it is only so others can find the same thing if they want to.