World's Longest Garden Walk Finally Concludes

We've reached the last group of pots in my garden, and I've managed to stretch it out over several weeks. 

Here's Pot 19.  The tallest plant is a Price William Serviceberry, a tree that would blossom and produce berries if it had enough sunlight, which it doesn't.  I've had it since 2016.  Below it, the Key West Hosta, and behind that, the Marmalade Lime heuchera and the Creeping Jenny.  All are thriving - though later in the season, the Serviceberry will develop some weird spots on its leaves.   I've never been able to figure out why.

Pot 14B is next.  Yes, I know it's out of order - I moved it last year, and I don't feel like renumbering it.  This is the Empress Wu hosta.  Empress Wu grows to be a very large hosta, so I may need a new pot sooner or later. 

Pot 20 is the dwarf Alberta Spruce, which I bought from Whole Foods in early 2018.  It will always be a tiny tree, but it's doing very nicely.

Pot 20A contains a new plant, the Beaujolais Heuchera.

Then we have Pot 14A, which is also out of numerical order.  In this pot are two Astilbes, which I bought bare-root from Breck's this year.  They are already beginning to bloom and are clearly going to be somewhere in the red family.  Also in the pot, though you can't see it amidst all the Astilbe foliage, is a small Italian Maple tree that came as a stowaway with a hosta I bought in 2018. It's right in the center of this photo and easy to miss.

The next pot is unnumbered.  It's the companion to the pot I showed you last week with the pansy in it, the pot that I wouldn't have bought if I'd known it's not insulated for winter.  So I plunked an annual from the Greenmarket in this one too - a little yellow snapdragon.

Then there's Pot 21, which is Exhibit A in the "My Garden Wants to Be an Oak Forest" story.  One Cathedral Windows hosta (purchased in 2018) is surrounded by three baby oak trees (self-planted, 2019). 

Pot 22: one nearly-dead Christmas Fern, one new bare-root hosta from Breck's, and one self-seeded oak tree, whose leaves are very yellow for some reason. 

Pot 23: an absurd amount of ivy, the Redstone Falls heucherella, and - somewhere in all that ivy - another baby oak tree.

Pot 24 is a windowbox with three hostas: Restless Sea, Electrocution, and Pilgrim.  All are doing well..

This little terra cotta bowl on the table doesn't have a number, but it's growing a baby locust tree.

And last but not least, Pot 26 contains the Eye Spy heucherella, from 2019, and the Marmalade Lime heuchera from 2018.  Eye Spy is really thriving, and already blooming.

And there you are. 

Garden Map, the Finale

Let's finish up the garden map so that next week, we can talk about plant sex.

Pot 15 -I've always loved this pot.  When I first started container gardening, I read about "The Thriller, the Spiller, and the Filler," meaning that each pot should have something tall and dramatic, something that spills over the sides, and something that fills in the rest of the space. I'm not sure how useful this rule is.  I tried it out only in a few pots, and they're all in the section I'm writing about today.

 

 The Thriller is the Jim Dandy winterberry holly (purchased in 2016 from ForestFarm at Pacifica), who is doing nicely after a bad year or two.  The Spiller is the ivy.  And the fillers are three hostas -Touch of Class, from 2016, which is looking better than it ever has;

Wheeee!, purchased in 2017;

and American Halo, purchased in 2018. 

The entire pot is thriving.  Also, please forgive that all the photos are sideways! 

Pot 16 is empty.

Pot 17 has a Berry Heavy winterberry holly.  Thriving, but not yet blooming.  Also sideways.

Pot 18 has the new Upright Japanese Yew as Thriller, more ivy as Spiller (ivy is excellent at spilling), and the Ghost Lady Fern (purchased from Wayside Gardens in 2016) as Filler.  All thriving. 

The Ghost Lady always looks dead in the wintertime, but then just explodes into fluffy ferny-ness every April.

Pot 19 has the Prince William Serviceberry as Thriller. 

I bought the Prince William Serviceberry in spring 2016, when I was still under the delusion that flowering trees would bloom in my garden.  Prince William has never bloomed, of course, because trees need sunlight to bloom.  Most years, he has some kind of rusty-looking spots on his leaves, but so far this year, he hasn't succumbed to whatever blight that is.  He's a sad little tree who doesn't grow much, and he's not much of a Thriller, but I'm fond of him.

The Spiller is the Creeping Jenny, which at the moment is just ground cover but which may droop over the sides of the pot as the season progresses.  (Creeping Jenny is invasive, so it's fine in containers but could be a terror in a regular garden.)  And for Filler, I have a Key West hosta (2017) and a Marmalade Lime heuchera (split off in 2018 from the plant in pot 26).  I don't know what possessed me to put all these lime-green plants in one pot, but they do look kind of nice together.

Pot 20 is a Dwarf Alberta Spruce that I got cheap at Whole Foods after Christmas 2017.  It's putting out a lot of new needles, which is nice.

Pot 21 is the Cathedral Windows hosta, purchased last summer at Van Wilgen's in Connecticut.  It's not growing as quickly as most of my other hostas, but it's surviving, at least.

Pot 22 is also a Van Wilgen's plant - the Christmas fern.  It's coming back in a small way, so surviving but not thriving.

Pot 23 has another of those self-seeded oak trees, but it's got lots of little leaves!  It's still tiny, but this is definitely my mightiest oak.  Also in the pot: more ivy (it's cheap and easy to grow) and a Redstone Falls heucherella, split off last year from the one in Pot 6.

Pot 24 is a windowbox with three hostas: Restless Sea (Agway, Connecticut, 2018); Electrocution (2017); and Pilgrim (not sure of the year).  Restless Sea is kind of taking over the universe here.

Pot 25 is the other windowbox, with Stained Glass hostas that I purchased bare-root from Home Depot in 2016.

And finally, Pot 26, with a Lime Marmalade heuchera that I bought in Connecticut in 2018.

And that's the garden!

Spring, Finally

I think I speak for us all when I say it was a rough winter.  Many of my little plant friends did not make it through, which makes me sad.  But others are poking up their little leafy things, or bursting out in little buds, and that always makes me happy.  So yay, miracle of spring and all that.

I guess it's time for a round of who's surviving, who's dead, and who's new to the garden.

In the corrugated metal pot, one Japanese Pieris from last season, one new Astilbe, and three old Astilbes.  (The little metal plaque reading "Holly Tone" is a new system to remind me which of my plants are acid loving, and therefore get Holly Tone organic fertilizer, and which prefer Plant Tone organic fertilizer).  I don't think anybody's dead here.

In the enormous blue pot, one of my smallest trees, the laceleaf Japanese Maple that was new last year and is happily putting out new foliage.  Also one brand new Bergenia, and the Cherry Berry hosta that I bought in Connecticut last Memorial Day.  Alas, another plant from the same Connecticut trip, the supposedly perennial Jacob's Ladder, did not survive the winter.

In the medium turquoise pot, three newbies: the Empress Wu hosta, the Happy Hour Lime heuchera, and the Obsidian heuchera.  It's not clear why I keep buying heucheras, since - as you will soon see - most of them die on me.

Here's the fig tree.  It may look like a collection of sticks, but it's budding nicely.  It's not 100% clear yet whether the Carex (that patch of dead decorative grass) is coming back to life. 

Taxus Helen Corbett is thriving.  She's accompanied by the brand new Apple Crisp heuchera, and one from last year that has managed to come back, the Redstone Falls heucherella.  Missing in action are the Toad Lily and the Helleborus.

Welcome to the garden, American Hazelnut tree!  Meet your new friend, the Iris from last season that is actually coming up!

The Dwarf Dogwood is budding, and the Delta Dawn heuchera is coming back to life, as is the Cool as a Cucumber hosta.  The Lakeside Paisley Print hosta, however, appears to be dead.

Another newcomer is the Fullmoon Japanese Maple - so far I'm batting 1000 on Japanese Maples.

This is the newer of my two Camellias, and it looks terrible.  It appears to have new buds, so I am optimistic, but cautiously so.  Also in the pot: one sad little hydrangea, one new Marvelous Marble heuchera, and some dead ivy.  Yes, that's right, I'm so hapless that I can kill ivy, the plant that anyone can grow.  Fortunately, replacement ivy is readily available at the Greenmarket, at a cheap price.

Welcome to the garden, European Hornbeam!

The Mountain Laurel was new last fall.

The Ligularia that Alice gave me has come back to life.

The Patriot hosta, however, is stone dead, along with its ivy. 

The jury is still out on the Winterberry hollies.  There appears to be a little budding activity, but I wouldn't call it overwhelming yet.  The Lamium from Liz that used to surround one of the two little hollies has completely died, which ranks right up there with killing ivy among my gardening accomplishments.  I mean, Lamium is so unkillable it's practically a weed.

In the pot with the big holly tree, the Touch of Class hosta and the Whee! hosta are coming up fine.  Raspberry Sundae appears to be a goner, though.

Oh, Upright Japanese Yew, how I love you.  You thrive no matter what.  However, I do wonder what you've done with your friends, the Japanese painted fern and the two heucheras.  They are gone without a trace.  Perhaps you are meant to stand alone.

 

No casualties in this pot.  The Creeping Jenny is creeping back, the Key West hosta is coming up, and the Serviceberry is budding like a champ.

Love you too, Japanese  Maple, the original plant of my garden, still going strong in your fourth spring in my garden.  Your Blue Mouse Ears hostas did not all come up this year, and I've transferred the ones that did to another pot.  To your right, the brand new Dwarf Alberta Spruce that I got for about three dollars at Whole Foods after Christmas.  To your left, another sad Camellia.

In the window box, there's no sign of the Ivory Queen hosta, but the Electrocution hosta and the Pilgrim hosta are coming up fine.

In the other window box, two of the four Stained Glass hostas have come back, but the purple heucheras are completely dead.

That's almost everything - I didn't get photos of the Blue Mouse Ears hostas, the other Japanese Pieris, or the boxwood.  And I didn't bother to photograph the dead violas or the dead Labrador violet.   Next time, I'll show you my new Sky Pencil holly.