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, 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.