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How about a little change of pace from the regular parade of bulbular delights? It's not that I don't have more nice shots of the remaining bulbs blooming (I do!) ... I just am short on time for this post due to a very busy day today at work, so I've gotta do a quickie here, and since Hanna didn't do anything cute today, I don't even have a new puppy pic. Ok, I dissemble (as one certain presidential doofus once said: And that means to lie!) ... she did plenty of cute things, I was just busy and didn't get pictures!
Anyway, I thought I'd choose some of these shots Fernymoss took of the Woodland Garden in his last session, so here goes. Obviously the Bleeding Heart (Dicentra spectabilis) is going great guns and getting huge already, and before it's done growing it will likely reach 3-4 feet tall as it usually does. This particular specimen was one of the very first plants that went into the Woodland Garden back in 1999, so it is quite well established. I don't think we could divide it even if we wanted to because its base has gotten so woody that it would probably take a saw to do it, and that would probably kill the plant. Never mind though, this one seems to produce enough little seedlings every year that we always seem to have a few to pass along to other gardeners (my sister won't even take any more because I've given her so many!).
Let's go a bit wider here to get a little more context ... this is a peek into the "inner" part of the Woodland Garden not visible from the sidewalk, a "secret garden," if you will. The obvious plants here are the Bleeding Heart and the Hollies, but if you look carefully, there are three other plants that you'll find in this view: the emerging Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum), Ligularia 'The Rocket' (Ligularia spicata) and Ligularia 'Desdemona' (Ligularia dentata). Regular readers already know that we are huge fans of Ligularia, and for anyone with a shady or woodland garden both these varieties are absolute necessities. Though they bloom entirely differently ... 'Spicata' has a large bloom stalk that towers above the plant (thus the name Rocket) whereas Desdemona's flowers are held close to the top of the plant and will fool you into thinking they're Black Eyed Susans from a distance. Before we knew what this plant was (years ago) we'd see it in gardens and wonder just what it was because it just seemed that flowers like that shouldn't be blooming in shade! Then we found out ... and have been huge fans ever since. We currently have two of them and if we see another nice plant for sale this year, it will be coming home to join its relatives somewhere in this rapidly getting crowded area of the garden....
Finally, here's one of the many emerging Ostrich Plume Ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris) that are beginning to become a bit "thuggy" in this part of the garden. Actually we don't mind, because we want them in other areas around Casa IVG, so when they start encroaching on something we consider more valuable, we just dig them up and move them. With a little babying (extra watering), they quickly dig in and thrive in their new homes, as long as they are in shady places. We plan on moving a bunch of these to the front of the house along the porch foundation this year, because nothing but weeds will grow there, and the few we've already planted there are doing nicely, so these classic ferns make a great plant along foundations where you might need to cover up unsightly areas. We also have them along the Woodland Garden foundation where they blend nicely with Lily of the Valley (which are almost ready to bloom now, just a bit later than it does in France as I noted on May 1). 
The weather outlook for this weekend so far is looking good ... mid 60's and only minimal chances of rain, so we'll need to get busy and get all those plants we got last weekend into the ground or pots before we make any more purchases! Though Fernymoss doesn't have Saturday off, he does have Friday (alas, not me!) off and is going to get at least the new Hellebore and Trillium in in the Woodland Garden. Looks like a busy planting weekend shaping up here, so I'll make sure we have the camera handy to document what we've gotten done.
Last weekend I ordered a bunch of plants from Van Bourgondien, (my favorite bulb supplier), since they had sent a "double your money" sale catalogue that made some things on our wish list actually affordable. So ... I ordered some fancy Caladiums, a couple of fancy Cannas, some giant Elephant Ears to plant in pots, but the most exciting is: we're finally getting a Tree Peony! We've had our eye on Rimpoh for a couple of years now and this sale finally convinced me to shake loose and order one! We've wanted a tree peony for years, but usually they are priced so high that we have to pass them by, but not this time ... we're going to put it just inside the northeast corner of the fence in the back yard with the other new peonies we planted last year, which are already up and starting to put on tiny buds. This is the corner of the yard by the sidewalk so preferred by Pepa and Rolly (for watching the world go by), and where we are going to inter their ashes later this spring or summer. We were discussing this Saturday night and realized what a great tribute it is having the Peonies, especially the Tree Peony, nearby them ... since the Peony is traditioinally a symbol of immortality in Asia, it's only fitting that they will have their final resting place among the Peonies. Sunday we saw some irregular blocks of Obsidian for sale at a reasonable price, so we think if we can find some pieces we like, we are going to get them as headstones to sink into the ground as markers. Fernymoss will use his Dremel to polish them up a bit, so if we find just the right shapes, that's how we'll commemorate these two very special dogs who brought so much happiness to our lives for so many years....
One more fernscape for a quietly spent Memorial Day ... It's a wider shot of the ferns and Dicentra we have in the middle space of the Woodland Garden, just behind the Hollies.
Though it was still pretty muddy today out in the garden, I did manage to spend a couple more hours working on the small bed next to the front steps. (The one with the primroses.) It has been in dire need of a good raking and weeding and general clean up before I could get serious about getting it planted for summer. So now, aside from re-placing the rocks at the front of the border, it's ready to get planting. In fact, my reward to myself today was planting one of the coleus we got over the weekend ... it's a really colourful one with lots of veining ... called "Peter's Wonder" if you happen to see it when out shopping. (For Iowa readers, it came from HyVee.)
This has always been a challenging little bed (about 3'x3') to achieve a measure of success and make it look really good. When we first moved here, there were a few perennials planted there: mainly a small Meadow Sage (Salvia nemerosa), some struggling small clumps of Bee Balm ... everything in it was basically struggling due to a thick overgrown mass of the dreaded 'Privet Lilies' that run rampant across the gardens and yards of just about everyone in our part of town. Well, as soon as I heard from a friend (who lives out in the country) that she was looking for a lot of daylilies to screen her a bit from a ditch, I was wheeling and dealing. (Because we can't get rid of these in the back either because they grow under the fenceline.) Here's where I landed: I proposed giving said friend all the daylilies she could haul or manage to plant (especially from this bed!), but politely suggested that should she ever want to thin her peonies out (I'd heard her mention this before), we'd sure be grateful to give them a new home. You see where this is going now ... a few weeks later at work she said she had peonies for us and had them in a box in her car. Deal sealed and two gardeners came out happy at the end. So the very first peonies we ever planted were Elaine's peonies, since they originally came from her. You'll be seeing them soon, when the peonies finally start blooming, and I'll point hers out.
Currently this little bed is undergoing yet another overhaul of sorts, though we've slowly been adding some more perennials over the past few years to see what would really take off, some Munstead Lavender, ferny red yarrow, an Artemisia 'Silver Mound' that ended up being one of last year's casualties due to the cold. But the real success story is the Primroses (see previous crowing on this subject) and now, apparently, the new Toad Lily I put in last year (a lovely purple one!) is quite happy in its new space as well. So currently, aside from a few snowdrops who are starting to naturalize and that rogue red tulip, that's pretty much the content of this little bed. The trellis is testimony to several past failures with clematis and (supposedly perennial) passion flower vines, but now we're just planting morning glories and Spanish Flag (Mina lobata) on it, which is much less worry and hassle.
So this is what I'm planting soon (probably tomorrow if it's not too rainy): I'm going to add another 'Silver Mound' where it once was doing quite well, I already planted one coleus and I think I'll add a few more. Then come the seeds ... Nasturtiums up front by the rocks, a small patch (on the sunnier, driveway side) of Balsam and a few Cerinthe seeds, just to see what comes of them this year. And, if I happen to find a new Toad Lily that wows me, I might put another of those in by the other one in the hope that they eventually colonize like some of our others have. Other than that, I plan to let this design go and do its thing (hopefully well!) ...
These 'Old Fashioned Bleeding Heart' (Dicentra spectabilis) have quite happily established themselves on the north, Woodland side of the house and represent some of the very first plants we put in that particular area of the garden. (In 1999, hard to believe!) They've since been joined by a lot of other shade lovers, namely ferns of all sorts, Ligularia, Polygonatum (Solomon's Seal), Hellebores, Lungwort and a few others, so this particular area is pretty full, as you can see in the second shot! And if you look way back in the photo, you can see the peonies already up about 3 ft and putting on buds (just in front of the fence to the right ... click for full sized image).
People ask us every year what we do to make these grow so huge, but that's always been entirely up to them! By a happy confluence of circumstances, of light and consistently moist, well drained soil they have almost become garden punks, spreading out a bit further every year, and we often have to dig new plants (from seeds and/or natural spreading) to keep them from taking over entirely. So usually a few people are the lucky recipients of the unwanted offspring each year ... well except for last year when they too were severely zapped by that cold spell. Well, they're back with a vengeance this year and have just flown out of the ground the past couple of weeks, hardly waiting for the leaves to open fully before they started blooming. There is a white one that hasn't been doing as well so far this year, but I'm pretty confident that it will eventually hit its stride soon, and I'll be sure to post it here. But in the interim, just enjoy these first few shots ...
Photos taken by Fernymoss on 6 May, 2008.
I thought that tonight I'd do something I probably don't do enough here, which is to give a more comprehensive look at the garden from a more global (ok, well maybe it should be continental) view. As regular readers know, I've been lamenting the devastating loss of more than half of the masses of tulips we had planted, so here's partial testimony to the extent of the damage caused by that abnormally long and cold few weeks we had last spring.
The tulips are actually performing a wee bit better than we expected them to in these areas, but keep in mind that where you now see a grouping there were once about 20 bulbs, each mass surrounded by a ring of about 20 grape hyacinths as well. A lot of the grape hyacinths seem to have succumbed as well, so overall, this portion of the front boulder bed is looking more than a bit wan this year.
This shot also affords a good perspective on some of the other perennials in this bed (at least the ones currently up). So here's what we have here, from the bottom left to right ... that crowded and happy looking clump of very green leaves just to the left of the tulips are the ever expanding Wood Hyacinths (Hyacinthoides hispanica) you'll in a few more weeks, as it's one of the very last bulbs to join the show in the late spring. To the right of the red tulips, we have an unknown variety (e.g. we lost the tag) of Artemisia, and the closest I've come (not very) to identifying it online is that it may be Artemisia pycnocephala, but I'm basing that entirely on the less than convincing picture in the Wikipedia entry. The blooms they show look pretty much like the ones on this plant. We planted it mostly for garden textural interest than for the blooms, and it's a vigorous grower that we have to cut back in early summer, lest it overwhelm everything around it. We also lost a few of its cousins this year as well, the 'Silver Mound' variety, Artemisia schmidtiana that I've been patiently tucking into spaces in the rocks out front. I will definitely be replacing those, because they've fast become one of my favorites among the Artemisias.
And to the right of the Artemisia in this photo, you'll find yet another clump of Wood Hyacinths. Directly behind it, and more to center of the bed, you can see a (still) very short plant coming up ... well this is some kind of minor miracle that I really hope pans out this year. It's a (reputedly purple) 'Turk's Cap' lily which I had given up for gone as recently as last year. But here it is! I'm hopeful we'll see something out of it this year, because they are a truly beautiful lily, and that's quite the praise coming from someone who's not really a fan of many of the fancy lilies cultivated today. I am hoping that in this case, the old garden adage of: the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps. This is its third year here and I sure would love to see it do some leaping ...
Further back are tulips, of course and that maroon-purply-red mass of leaves is the ever expanding, and soon to be thinned out Lysimachia a friend gave us back in 2004 telling us that it was 'Yellow Bee Balm,' well that didn't quite pan out obviously once it got going, and now we fear that it may try to rule things out there, so it's soon due to meet the shovel or ax! It does have its merits, growing into a shrub like monstrosity with interesting foliage and very pretty proliferous yellow flowers. Beyond that, you can see the beginnings of the Woodland Garden, with that planting of Daffodils and Hyacinths which should look familiar as it is the one I featured in a post last week. Further beyond, you can see our Hollies (1 Male, 2 Female), behind which is an assortment of ferns, Bleeding Hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) and two species of Ligularia dentata, and Ligularia stenocephala which are now up but far from blooming stage yet. There are also several 'Alpine Blue' (Aquilegia alpina) in front of the hollies and when they're blooming you'll see them here. Of course there's a lot more going on than can be seen in this shot, but I'll plan on trying at least once a week from now on to get a 'documentary' shot up here so we can all gauge the progress over the coming months. Stay tuned ...
A favorite species in generations of gardens from probably the Victorians onward, the apparently delicate Bleeding Heart (Dicentra spectabilis) is an absolute must-have for any serious perennial gardener! And as much as I hate to keep repeating it, this is another flower that suffered greatly during the recent deep freeze period ... in fact we weren't sure that they'd even recover, after going from thriving 1-1/2 foot plants to a mass of what looked like limp spaghetti, they have finally re-emerged, a bit smaller, more stunted, but still determined to bloom. Believe me, when we saw them coming back, there was significant rejoicing around Casa IVG! These specimens were among the very first perennials we planted back in spring 1999, and have a bit of a reputation in the neighborhood for their ability to reach nearly gigantic heights... most years they top out at about 3-1/2 - 4 feet tall! I doubt they'll get that big this year, but just seeing them survive a very harsh period is testament alone to the tenacity of this old-fashioned favorite.
Ours are planted among maidenhair and leatherwood ferns toward the back of our Woodland garden, where they create a lush backdrop for the other shade perennials planted nearer the sidewalk. If you look closely at other photos of this part of the garden, you'll likely see Dicentra lurking among the other flora.
Cultivation is really pretty simple ... just give them a mostly shady position (early morning light is ideal) in moist, well-drained loamy soil, and once established they are practically indestructible. (April 2007 was proof of that!) Ours have created such a thick crown of growth over the past eight years that if we even tried to divide them, we'd probably end up ruining a shovel or destroying their territory. So we leave well enough alone, and if we have a few too many volunteers (which does happen, thanks to self-seeding!) we just move them or give them as a gift to another gardener who will appreciate them. As my sister has learned the hard way, the worst thing you can do to Dicentra is to plant it in a too sunny spot (e.g. full southern exposure) where it is subject to heat and lack of moisture ... though it will take a year or two to kill them that way, they will not bloom long each spring and will disappear at the first hint of June heat. Give them the cool shade they crave, and the foliage and even a few sporadic blooms will last well into the summer. Once they start turning yellow and dying back, you can safely cut them back and let them rest until the following spring, where they will come back to reward you with masses of blooms once again.
Let's go a bit wider here to get a little more context ... this is a peek into the "inner" part of the Woodland Garden not visible from the sidewalk, a "secret garden," if you will. The obvious plants here are the Bleeding Heart and the Hollies, but if you look carefully, there are three other plants that you'll find in this view: the emerging Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum), Ligularia 'The Rocket' (Ligularia spicata) and Ligularia 'Desdemona' (Ligularia dentata). Regular readers already know that we are huge fans of Ligularia, and for anyone with a shady or woodland garden both these varieties are absolute necessities. Though they bloom entirely differently ... 'Spicata' has a large bloom stalk that towers above the plant (thus the name Rocket) whereas Desdemona's flowers are held close to the top of the plant and will fool you into thinking they're Black Eyed Susans from a distance. Before we knew what this plant was (years ago) we'd see it in gardens and wonder just what it was because it just seemed that flowers like that shouldn't be blooming in shade! Then we found out ... and have been huge fans ever since. We currently have two of them and if we see another nice plant for sale this year, it will be coming home to join its relatives somewhere in this rapidly getting crowded area of the garden....
Finally, here's one of the many emerging Ostrich Plume Ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris) that are beginning to become a bit "thuggy" in this part of the garden. Actually we don't mind, because we want them in other areas around Casa IVG, so when they start encroaching on something we consider more valuable, we just dig them up and move them. With a little babying (extra watering), they quickly dig in and thrive in their new homes, as long as they are in shady places. We plan on moving a bunch of these to the front of the house along the porch foundation this year, because nothing but weeds will grow there, and the few we've already planted there are doing nicely, so these classic ferns make a great plant along foundations where you might need to cover up unsightly areas. We also have them along the Woodland Garden foundation where they blend nicely with Lily of the Valley (which are almost ready to bloom now, just a bit later than it does in France as I noted on May 1). 
The weather outlook for this weekend so far is looking good ... mid 60's and only minimal chances of rain, so we'll need to get busy and get all those plants we got last weekend into the ground or pots before we make any more purchases! Though Fernymoss doesn't have Saturday off, he does have Friday (alas, not me!) off and is going to get at least the new Hellebore and Trillium in in the Woodland Garden. Looks like a busy planting weekend shaping up here, so I'll make sure we have the camera handy to document what we've gotten done. 
