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. 

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

A Walk in the Garden, Part 3

We continue our walk through the garden with Pot 9, which has always been a problem pot- until now!

This year, I added a Hellebore (Lenten Rose) that I purchased at Whole Foods back in early March, before social distancing began, and a couple of bare root astilbes that I bought this year from Breck's.  There's also a Breck's hosta in there, but you can't see it amidst the greenery.  Also in the pot: two violets that self-seeded in 2017, and never bloomed before - until this year!

Violets are one of my two favorite flowers (lilacs are the other), so I am thrilled to have gotten some by accident.  Yay Nature!

Pot 10 has the Oregen Fern Japanese Maple (from ForestFarm, like all my trees) and some glacier ivy from the Greenmarket, both in 2018. 

 

 Also three bare-root hostas from Michigan Bulb in 2019.  One is unidentified; two are our old friend Blue Mouse Ears.

Pot 11 has decided to take on the role of Problem Pot this year.  It's supposed to contain the Marvelous Marble heuchera, which looked great last year but is now stone dead.  Also a bare-root hosta from Walmart, and a self-seeded willow oak from 2017, which is also looking dead, but may just be a late leafer.  (See my future post titled, "My Back Yard Wants to Be an Oak Forest.")

Pot 12 is a columnar European hornbeam, from 2018, which is doing very nicely.  So nicely, in fact, that I've decided to try and make a hedge by growing several hornbeams in adjacent pots.

I saw hornbeam hedges in Germany last spring - here's one:

And I thought, "Wouldn't that be a nice way to hid that ugly grey wall in my back yard?"  So - the hedge begins this year.

Also in pot 12, the Curly Fries hosta:

And two nameless bare-root hostas from Walmart (see my future post titled, "Camille Tries to Identify Her Nameless Hostas").

Pot 12A: oh, look, it's another hornbeam, new this year from ForestFarm.

Also two new plants from Bluestone Perennials: the Stainless Steel heuchera and the Waterslide hosta.

Pot 12B: hornbeam #3, plus at least five hostas -

Two of them are the Stained Glass hostas I moved out of my windowbox because they were getting enormous, but then I forgot they were there and planted three more hostas from Breck's.  Probably I ought to move those three to the empty windowbox before their roots get too deep!

Stay tuned - at least two more days of garden walk to come!

More on my garden, 2020

Hi, all.  Before we look at the next set of things in the garden, I wanted to let you know that the "green fluffy thing" in Pot 3 is an Aruncus hybid "Fairy Hair," which I bought last summer in Connecticut.

Moving right along.  Pot 5 was mostly empty last year - it had been the home of the fig tree that died.  So in fall 2019, I moved the astilbes out of Pot1 into Pot 5.  As you can see, they like their new home.

These are supposed to be red astilbes, but according to my Garden Map, when they bloomed last year, they were not red.  What color were they?  I neglected to write that down - so we'll just have to wait until summer.

Here's Pot 5A:

The center shrub is a barberry, which I purchased last year from ForestFarm at Pacifica, my favorite tree and shrub people.  When I got it, it was shaped like an ordinary bush, but it immediately put out that enormous shoot going straight up.  Looking for sunlight, I imagine.  Good luck with that!  On the left is a Champagne Heuchera, also a 2019 purchase, from Bluestone Perennials.  Here's a closer look:

Also in the pot are the Rhino Hide hosta, not shown, and the Lady in Red fern, below.  Both of those are also from Bluestone in 2019.

Pot 5B is new this year, and contains another barberry, this one called the William Penn barberry, berberis gladwynensis.  It's just a baby.

Pot 6 contains the Taxus Helen Corbett, which is this little yew bush I purchased in 2017.  It's still doing just fine.  The light green on the branch tips is new growth.

However, I managed to lose two plants from this pot over the winter, which is not good at all.  One was the Apple Crisp heuchera, and the other one was the Redstone Falls heucherella.  Fortunately, I split the Redstone Falls a couple of years ago, so I still have one in another pot.

Pot 6A has three unidentified hostas, all of them purchased bare-root from Wal-Mart in 2018.  Buying hostas as bare roots is cost-effective, but I'm not always able to identify them by name when they come up.   Still, they're healthy and look nice in the garden, so I can't complain!

Pot 6B contains the Columnar Chinese Poplar, from ForestFarm in 2019; an enormous hosta that I bought in Connecticut last summer, and a new hosta for this year, Neptune.

I can probably find the name for the big hosta if I look hard enough.  It may need a pot of its own!

Neptune has thin leaves, and I'm not sure it's going to last in my garden.  Here's the plant upon arrival in April:

And here it is now, with two empty stems where the wind just blew the thin leaves off.  Of course, judging from the photos above, they may already have been broken in transit.

 Pot 7 has the American Hazelnut, purchased from ForestFarm in 2018, and thriving, though I doubt it'll ever give hazelnuts again.  (I got three in 2018.)

Also in Pot 7, two bare-root hostas from Walmart, 2018 (here's one):

... and a heuchera that I purchased in 2019 but am unable to identify.  I did not do a great job keeping up with my garden map last year!

Pot 8 is easy to identify.  Three Blue Mouse Ears hostas.

We'll continue the walk through the garden later in the week.