Sweet Dreams

My Little Pretties.

Flowers Before Bedtime

Red Silene

Blue Eryngium

Liatris, Calamagrostis and Yucca for later.

Ten Feet To The Right

Even on an overcast and rainy day I could tell there was more sun, or more accurately less dense shade, where I had originally thought of planting the new Aralia cordata 'Sun King'. I'm not quite sure what happened to make me change my mind when I got down there to plant it. So this morning I moved it ten feet to the right.

Now grow, bloom and make berries so I can have more of you.

The False Solomon's Seal, Maianthemum racemosum, is looking to have a very good berry crop this year. Sometimes the deer eat the flowers or they get froze and there are no berries. I tossed seeds of this on the shady slope below the scenic byway a couple of years ago and have successfully introduced them there. I'll toss this year's crop of berries on the same slope. More is better.

Good strong foliage is important in the shade garden. If you can get showy blooms and berries all the better

On the sunnier end of this same slope below the scenic byway, the rooted stem cuttings of Oak Leaf Hydrangea are reaching full on shrub size. They are even going to bloom this year. The evergreen, clumping and cold hardy Fargesia rufa bamboo grows bigger and fatter and faster each year. I'd still like it to be taller, but this bamboo is only ten foot max at maturity. I should have gotten a taller Fargesia specie.

Two new clumps of Rodgersia were planted in the shade garden in the last month. More bold foliage with blooms for the shade. This start came from the wild cultivated gardens next door where it has always been hidden in the Lush. I think this is Rodgersia sambucifolia.

There are now two clumps of this Rodgersia. I have been calling it R. pinnata, but it is more likely Rodgersia aesculifolia. Whatever. I have two kinds.

Yes there are flowers in the garden becoming, plenty of flowers. In the shaded forest of summer they will be fewer and plant foliage becomes more important to the garden.

Over there in the sun of the utility easement, in the tall flower meadow of exuberant chaos, floral abundance will rule the garden. Closer to the byway in the shade of the forest, a different kind of garden will grow.

I'll Take One

You can't do this in the shade in the summertime and a good half of the garden becoming is pretty deep shade. You can get close for a few weeks in early spring with the woodland wild flowers. I have been adding those. I am always on the look out for plants for the shady part of the garden. Today I found one.

I went on a shopping spree for a client's new woodland garden. I love spending other people's money on plants. I was getting the usuals, hosta, astilbe, tiarella, ferns when something different caught my eye. What is this?

It's Aralia cordata 'Sun King'. It's a shade loving herbaceous perennial that can get 3x3, maybe bigger, with big bold chartreuse foliage. It blooms white umbels in late summer and then makes nice purple black berries. I'll take three. Two for the client and one for me.

My online reading says a couple hours of sun is best. The place I chose for it gets early morning sun I think. I'll have to look tomorrow. If not, I'll watch to see how the color holds. Maybe I can find another place for it if need be.

I'll take one or maybe a dozen. I saw the Strawberry Eater in the roadside vegetable garden this morning. Last week I saw one of its tiny offspring while weeding the day lily patch. I need turtle fencing for the strawberries. Then what will they eat? Is that thing eyeing my shelling peas?

I know they have nested at least twice in the roadside vegetable garden. The box turtles it seems are just another garden crop.

Bloom Day In The Garden Becoming

I have been on a weeding marathon all weekend after working a full week. I'm actually a bit over booked and could, maybe should, be doing work kind work on the weekends to catch up. I try not to do that because I have other things that need doing.

The result is me being wore out, a bit crabby and saying something I regret. I know I should rest, but I am a man possessed. My maintenance gardener self wants this place weeded of the unwanteds now. Reality says it will take me a decade. My patience was at a low ebb.

I did spray a number of thick patches of the Clematis virginiana to try and make some extra headway. In the big picture they are just little bits of the garden. The weeding continues unabated.

I weed away the unwanted thugs to give the wanted a chance to fill in. So lets have a look at a sample of the wanted for June's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.

The Ox-Eye Daisies are having a good year.
 

Rose Campion has settled in and has begun to self sow.

This little native, Houstonia purpurea shows up quite a bit on freshly cleared ground.

The Silene virginica that followed me home survived an onslaught of slugs to bloom profusely.

One Kniphofia has been divided into many over the years. Now I will let them get big.

The yellow Louisiana Iris are winding down.

The new Dan Hinkley hydrangea is still a baby shrubbery. It is listed to get to a size of 5x5. I'm liking the bloom. I wonder if it will have fall color.

This Rodgersia pinnata followed me home as a tiny piece of rhizome. Three years later it is big enough to bloom. I added two more patches of Rodegersia into the shade section of the garden becoming in the last month. Big foliage stands out better in the Lush.

The roadside wild flower bed gathers momentum. The Canterbury Bells are in full bloom and more chicory blooms every day. Dashes of daisies and fleabane join in.

I never expected the Canterbury Bells, Campanula medium, to become self sowing biennials that would compete with the Lush. It has been a nice surprise.

A Meidiland Rose blooms at the entrance to the roadside vegetable garden.

The vetching vetch, beautiful and invasive, surrounds the vegetable garden. It invaded one of the strawberry patches and drastic measures were taken to evict it. Now, how to keep it out of the strawberry patch?

We're headed into the sunny utility meadow next where there is more and where I spent my weekend weeding marathon, but this feels like the first year I have been able to do a full Bloom Day post from the garden becoming and have not had to borrow the wild cultivated gardens next door. I must be making progress.

Is this a Japanese Roof iris blooming beside the stream?

More Ox-Eye Daisies.

And there are Foxglove in the sunny utility meadow.

Two colors of Foxglove.

All the way over at the wild cultivated gardens the first of the lilies have started to bloom. I am weeding in that direction now.

Then I will swing back and start weeding again in the garden becoming until only the wanted are left. Patience. Rest. This is the rest of our lives. It should be enjoyed even with the imperfections.

If you have not already been, be sure to visit Bloom Day Central at May Dreams Gardens. From there you can visit hundreds of blooming gardens from around the world.

Bloom Day Post Goes Here

Tomorrow

Because I have run plum out of energy.

Act One Of Exuberant Chaos

What you see is exactly how I had the garden planned. NOT!

I plant things. Nature plants even more things. I edit out a number of nature's offerings and this is the result. Next year it will be very different I am sure. Nature never plays the same hand twice and the gardener's persistence in editing is having an effect.

I was worried for a bit that the Red Hot Pokers were going to be off color wise in the larger scheme of the garden. They have a color companion now in the Silene that followed me home and are currently safe from eviction. Good thing since I grew and divided these over five years into a substantial drift from a single plant in a four inch pot.

They're all wild things. The gardener planted some of them and some not.

The glass is half grown.

Yes, the glass is in the picture above. It is the latest Objet de project in the garden becoming. Invisible art.

The exuberant chaos is creeping further into the garden. Act one of the summer bloom is now underway. It will continue in full swing until mid-September. The gardener entices nature into a collaboration.

But deep in the forest away from the sun, a calmness is taking hold after the riot of spring bulbs and the spring ephemeral wildflowers. The Blue Pot art project becomes more of a focal point with a leafy backdrop.

There is a place to get away from the chaos that is unfolding.

Drumroll Please

The good weeds, the weeds I want are starting to bloom. It only gets better from here as summer progresses.

It will only get better in the years to come as the gardener makes progress.

The gardener is assisted by nature's abundance and willingness to cooperate. It helps that the gardener can appreciate a good weed and knows when to yank them and when to leave them be.