Bit by bit new plants are being added. The top bed on the right hand side of my drive is actually temporarily full. I say temporarily because I expect it will change over time. My need to garden is stronger than my need to get it absolutely right the first time.
The one pot of Delosperma I bought and planted last fall was sprigged in as five starts. Four of them are amply happy and I will be able to take cuttings to make plenty more.
The spindly Campanula seedlings just wouldn't die, so I planted them as annuals with some of the Hollyhock babies as filler in the front entry beds
A gift from Frances' Faire Garden, a Foxglove was placed in the front bed as well. She brought a whole big pot of choice items on her Mothers Day visit. They have all been tucked safely into the ground and the running days of gray mists and rain have been perfect for getting them settled in to their new home.
Japanese Blood Grass, Imperata cylindrica was planted on the steep eroding hillside on the left of my drive. There is now the beginning of a competition of the fittest, the most aggressive, for control of this slope. I also planted Creeping Jenny, Lysimachia nummularia on this hill. It came from maintenance cuttings from Client # 1's. The two might even look good together. For now they are on separate ends of the slope.
Japanese Painted Ferns went to the obvious shaded location next to my first ever Japanese Maple.
The resident gardeners went to Raleigh and the open house at Plant Delights Nursery a couple of weeks ago and all they brought me was some Mondo Grass 'Bad Hair Day'. They had a wonderful time and were duly impressed, but at $12 for a four inch pot of Mondo Grass you can see why they came home filled mostly with ideas.
In between the rain and mists some plywood siding has attached itself to a section of the wall framing.
A complicated flashing procedure needed to be figured out first to correct for a slight discrepancy between the wall frame and the floor structure. The exterior walls will be Hardie Board, a cement fiber mesh siding and we need a flush surface to carry the siding all the way down to the facing board below the floor surface level. The straps that will hold the cozy cabin together in strong winds had to be moved to the surface after shims were placed underneath to compensate for the offset. Felt paper will cover all the plywood. Then the Hardie Board goes on top.
A collection of Salvias is growing in the second bed on the right of the driveway. Salvia lyrata is a recent immigrant from Tennessee. They have perked up considerably since this picture was taken.
It joins a new purchase Salvia x superba.
They join Salvia nemorosa that was planted last fall. Hooray! They survived the winter and three of the four are already blooming like crazy.
I like this Salvia nemorosa.
Seeds of these were sown and survived my first attempts at growing plants from seed in a strange climate. The baby plants are ready to join the others. When and if it ever really gets warm here, I am going to try to root cuttings of the S. nemorosa. I will have a huge drift of Salvias on my hillside in no time.
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6 comments:
I guess it's inevitable that you'll get more plant gifts from Frances than you will from me. Sigh.
Wow, your S. nemerosa is doing well. I can't believe how big it is from seed already. You haven't even had hot weather yet.
I like Cylindrica. It should form a slope retaining mat. Did y'all grow that in Hawaii?
Hi Christopher, that misty pic of your cabin really represents what life on your mountain is like, a magical place. I do envy you that spot on the earth. Glad to see the plants survived, yours are all looking good too, thanks to the nice cool temps and rain. I have found the blood grass to be super tough, but not a thug here. It grows with the creeping jenny on the top of the wall behind the main house nicely. Also along that forty foot wall are evening primrose and the salvia greggiis, dianthus and other assorted things, but they all are showing respect for one another, a good community of plants. Your sentence of wanting to garden trumping wanting to get it just right is the key to success to everything in life, don't you think? Do it, if it doesn't work out, fix it!
Frances
Oh the tapestry is delicious. I also love your misty picture as work progresses on your home. What a great spot. It is perched like a birdhouse among the trees.
Your garden and your home is slowly coming together. I would like a tapestry just like the one you showed us.
Chuck the S. nemorosa that is big and blooming I bought and planted last fall. My babies from seed are about silver dollar size now. Grasses never were a big item in tropical landscapes in Hawaii. They didn't say "Tropical" to all the mainland transplants.
Who knows why, but the Blood Grass was something I have always been attracted to, wanting, when I would see pictures of it in magazines.
Frances great gardeners must think alike, mixing Creeping Jenny and the Blood Grass. I think they could look good mingled.
Layanee and Lisa, I look forward to the time when, maybe a couple of years from now, when I have that nice tapestry to.
There is a wonderful garden on Long Island, of two partners who also run a nursery. They use the bloodgrass in "rivers" to link up areas of the gardens... it looks amazing.
I would think that you could take cuttings of that salvia nemerosa. And I remember someone posting on another blog that if you lay the spent stalks of 'May Night' along the ground, you'll get sprouts that way as well. (Admittedly, I have never tried it... but since you have to deadhead to get good rebloom, it's probably worth a try.)
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