Calendar for 2021

Each year I make a calendar for G. to hang in the rooms in the office he works in. I have found making calendars to be a little harder than I first expected. Sometimes the printing doesn't pick up well on the light and shade, and sometimes the pictures just don't translate well to a calendar page. I've learned to buy a trial calendar to check it before ordering the rest. I use Shutterfly since they seem to have the best picture quality of the companies I've used. The other companies I've tried are Cafepress, Zazzle and Mixbook.


January

We haven't had much snow for several years, so I thought the best way to portray snowy white was in flower form. Clockwise from top: Hymenocallis, apple tree blossoms, an Atamasco lily, and a noid white iris.


February

Our native Jacob's ladder Polemonium reptans


March

Eastern redbud with bumblebee. Redbuds are immensely popular with bees when they bloom in March; they drone like a hive with all the bees buzzing about.


April

A shot of the big perennial bed in late April. Baptisia alba and 'Purple Smoke' with rugosas in the background.


May

Swamp roses from Antique Roses Emporium lining the big perennial bed and the beds beside the neighbor's pasture.


June

'Ada May Musick', with that watercolor blue purple eye that I love in a daylily.


July

A noid yellow daylily, with a now noid peach from Wayside. 'Bleu Celeste' and Monarda 'Raspberry Wine' in the background. I have several yellow daylilies, and while I could in all honestly proclaim practically each one as one of the best, this one really is one of the best. The flower has a lovely graceful form and the sweet fragrance is outstanding.


August

Summer phlox 'Robert Poore' with carpenter bee. Carpenter bees and swallowtails absolutely love summer phlox.


September

Bidens with bumblebees


October

All pictures are of the shrub 'Old Blush' except for rugosa rubra in the bottom left.


November

I made a collage in Shutterfly that I can't easily replicate elsewhere, so I just put up the three pictures that I used. They feature a red maple I nicknamed the apricot maple due to the color of its spring flowers and its fall color. Sadly, we don't have that tree anymore; it had multiple leaders and started to split down the middle. Eventually one trunk was going to end up across our driveway and another across the neighbor's fence, so I had to have it removed.


December

Clockwise from top left: 'Jesse's Song' and noid white; Verbena 'Homestead'; 'Jesse's Song' again; and 'Crimson King'.

Pruning without a clue

There isn't much going on in the garden right now, but there is a lot to do. The caveat to this simple and slightly ominous statement is that it's wet. So very, very wet. We got an additional 2 1/2 inches over the long weekend which we did not need. The water table is very high, making heavily trafficked areas a muddy mess. This fall we got a load of screenings (grit) which G. used to raise up the entrance to and floor of the stalls, but we still need more. That will have to wait until summer. He used our new tractor with a front loader (inherited), which has been worth its weight in gold.

During a wet winter like this taking care of the horses takes about 2 1/2-3 hours a day. That sounds incredible, but that's how long it takes. Currently we're having to hang all of their hay in nets at night as it gets spoiled by putting it on the wet ground. Dealing with farm work in the mud for so long every day is not making me want to deal with my least favorite garden chore, which is clearing vines, blackberries and briars.

 So there is a smaller chore in the garden that I've been working on instead. There are two beds north of the well that are filled mostly with rugosa roses. I didn't plan it that way, I just had a ton of rugosa roses I'd grown from seed that I had to plant somewhere.

Below are a few pictures documenting the beds' early years.

The beginnings of the beds, April 2009. 

Beds March 2010, not yet planted. I used hay the horses didn't finish or couldn't eat as mulch. 

I finished putting the rugosas into the ground January 1st, 2011, but I also put out Bidens seeds since the rugosas were so tiny. September 2011. 

March 2012

April 2012

View across one of the beds, August 2013. I planted seashore mallow along the edges too. 

View across beds, May 2014

In the fall the rugosas have nice color and some have extremely nice color. I've noticed the rugosas with the single fuchsia flowers turn the most vibrant hues in autumn.

Over time the rugosas have gotten a little scraggly, and a few have died out. The only pruning they've received is removal of dead wood. But after 10 years I felt they needed a little rejuvenation, so I cut the top third of the rugosas in the western bed. I may do the same in the eastern bed, or I may leave that one alone to compare. I don't really see how pruning can hurt them, as they still have plenty of cane left and bloom on new wood, but who knows. Certainly not me. I don't know what I am doing. I have always been afraid to prune roses, afraid of opening them up to disease by cutting them. But rugosas are tough and there's starting to be a bit more deadwood than is easy to deal with.

This fall I dug up two Japanese beautyberries I'd planted along with the rugosas, along with approximately two dozen beautyberry seedlings. To fill the void left by the mature beautyberries, I planted a swamp rose. I planted two other swamp roses on the far edge of the western bed to help round it out and give the 3 other swamp roses there more company.

Arrow on left indicates where 2 new swamp roses were planted; the arrow on the right the location of the Japanese beautyberries, now replaced by a swamp rose. The swamp roses are from Antique Roses Emporium and are not the species rose. 

Besides these changes, I want to add more variety to these beds as they are just largely rugosas, but I haven't figured out what I want to do yet. I might even eventually turn one or both of the beds into goldenroad and aster beds, since goldenrod is making itself at home already.

Desert Island Gardens

In Desert Island Gardens, a game started by Noel Kingsbury and Annie Guilfoyle and posted about by danger garden, players choose 5 gardens, 1 book and 1 item to take with them on a desert island. I'm hopelessly provincial so most of my garden choices are local.

1) The sisters' garden in Chapel Hill is the quintessential Southern Garden with dogwoods and lots of azaleas, along with hundreds of tulips and many other flowers. It's locally famous and hundreds of people visit every Easter.

2) Blogger Carolyn Aiken's garden on beautiful Prince Edward Island. It's the ultimate romantic style garden.

3) The Coker Arboretum on the UNC Chapel Hill campus in Chapel Hill. It's a scenic and peaceful oasis in the middle of a beautiful campus. Originally it was a swampy area where the faculty grazed their cattle (I've actually seen pictures in the alumni magazine of this) but the swampy areas have been turned into a stream and the area into a lovely garden with many interesting plants.

4) The NC Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill, set in the piedmont of NC. There are display gardens featuring mountain and coastal plain plants by the older buildings, as well as a medicinal garden with some non-native plants, and more display gardens by the newer buildings. They have a seed distribution program for members (non-members can also buy the seeds for a small price) and it's just a great place for learning about native plants. There are also hilly trails that are great for bird watching and even seeing flying squirrels.

Plymouth Rose-Gentian

Grass pink orchids

Pitcher Plants

5) My own, because I made it and I love seeing all of the wildlife thriving in it.

OK, in case 5 is against the rules, I'd pick somewhere that isn't really a garden but looks like one on a grand scale: Enlow Fork, Pennsylvania. Large glades full of blue-eyed Mary under an open canopy along a river, with Virginia bluebells, several species of trillium, Mayapple, violets, and wild native geraniums.

Picking one book is difficult. Very difficult. But in the end I would choose A Southern Garden by Elizabeth Lawrence, and the item a shovel. If I got off the island I'd want to visit Longwood Gardens because Dirr mentions them often in his Manuel of Woody Landscape Plants.

Some garden plans for the next year

The last year or two I have decided to revamp the garden, as it dawned on me that ten years ago there were aspects of the garden I liked better then than the current one. In the bed east of the house ten years ago there was  bearded iris and marsh phlox,

'Clotilde Soupert',

columbine ('Clotilde Soupert' turns pink as the blossoms age),

beardtongue and foxglove,

spiderwort,

the hybrid tea climber 'Aloha',

'Hansa',

'Crepuscule',

and a found rose named Delia's Purple.

Most of these were swallowed by the rugosa hybrid 'Sir Thomas Lipton'

A young Sir Thomas Lipton

and a mockorange, eaten by voles or faded away. I wasn't expecting 'Sir Thomas Lipton' or mockorange to get as big as they did. Delia's Purple did not die, however, and I was able to pot up several runners for transplant and put them where the Japanese beautyberries used to be. I removed them last year after realizing that they didn't belong there. I don't even think they have good garden value in the Southeast, as they sulk and droop in hot dry weather and they are invasive, seeding in everywhere. Their one moment of glory was the time that the bluebirds went after the fruits during a snowstorm. I kept them for years after that based on that one incident. 

Delia's Purple is a mounding shrub that blooms once a year, grows well in this location when it's not being crowded out by a monster shrub, and has wonderful purple flowers, a nice counterpoint to all of the white of 'Sir Thomas Lipton' and mockorange. 

The flowers open magenta and turn bluer with age.

From left to right: a young mockorange, marsh phlox, beardtongue, Delia's Purple, foxglove, and Hansa. Marie Pavie and a spiderwort are in the foreground. In this picture from 2009 (the house was moved to its current location in 2007) the garden looks quite immature here but I miss all of the different colors and textures and would like to add some back. 

In this 2011 picture you can see how much 'Sir Thomas Lipton' grew in 2 years' time. 

2011

2012

I have added back more foxglove in the drier areas and smooth and Gulf Coast penstemon elsewhere.

Gulf Coast penstemon is short lived but well worth keeping going for its showiness and its ability to tolerate wet feet.

The voles go to town on spiderworts near the house, so I just grow them in the big perennial bed. I think I will try marsh phlox down there too, as it just can't compete with the daylilies.

'Clotilde Soupert' is in a pot and I am hoping it will thrive there. At the North Carolina Botanical Garden there was a CS that was grown in a pot until it got to a good size. I have two 'Hansa' on order with Witherspoon that will be delivered in the spring and planted in the driest places east of the house that I can find. I would love to have bearded iris again but they'd have to be grown in pots with wire mesh at top soil level to keep the voles away, the same with columbine.

'Crepuscule' has been replaced by "Cl. Caldwell Pink', which as it turns out needs a pergola or fence, not an arbor. It is HUGE. Gene gamely replaced the old arbor with a larger, sturdier one but even so, not only is Caldwell Pink huge, the mockorange is hulking on the other side.

The plants in cages are Delia's Purple that were still so little that the rabbits were eating the tender shoots, so I gave them some protection until they got more mature. We have so many rabbits here, but luckily they usually stick to eating the grass and clover. I've even seen does nursing their young on 3 occasions.

To clarify, Caldwell Pink is huge, but not all of that is Cl. Caldwell Pink. There's a shrub form to the right of the arbor. They all just kind of blend together.

While Cl. Caldwell Pink is a once bloomer (with deep red fall color), Caldwell Pink blooms all season. The flowers lack fragrance but the full lilac pink flowers are so beautiful and the plant so reliable I don't even care. The foliage is relatively clean and the rose is a real workhorse. Easy to grow from cuttings too. I've propagated it to grow in some other parts of the garden. 

  There have been sudden recent changes to the garden as well. The 12 inches of rain that we got from tropical storm Matthew in 2016 killed off the oakleaf hydrangea 'Dayspring' on the east side of the house and half of 'Pee Wee' on the northern side of the house.

Hydrangea 'Dayspring' in 2014. Please excuse the unmown grass. I wanted to leave the clover for the bees. The bees just go crazy for it and the rabbits like it better than most of my garden plants.

A picture from 2012. Most of the hydrangea on the left side are gone now.

More diversity in the beds at the front of the house would never be a bad thing, but I'm not sure what to put there. I've added some mapleleaf viburnum, but it's quite a slight plant and you can see directly under the house.  We've never put skirting under the porches. I'd consider it if the Carolina wrens could get through the openings, as they have always nested under the porches, although in recent years they've used the front and back porches too.

Baby Carolina wrens just fledged from their nest on the front porch.

On the back porch the wrens go in and out under the door. lol It always makes me laugh to see them. They are such cute little birds, always checking things out, always finding routes other birds don't, and they are almost always talking to each other. I used to think they were getting stuck on the porch until I realized a female was nesting there! We were just surprising them checking out the porch as we went in and out the back door. 

Mapleleaf viburnum is known for its fall color.  Michael Dirr finds "the range of fall colors (creamy pink, rose, red to grape juice purple) intriguing". I can vouch that the leaves actually turn those colors in my FIL's yard. So far I've gotten one pink leaf for my pains. I'd kind of like to get another Florida azalea to go on the far left side (northeast corner), but knowing how big those get, that's probably not practical. The same with sweetshrub. I'd have to prune them to keep them down to size. 

Florida azaleas in front of the house in its original location. They are probably about half their mature size in this picture but it was lovely having them there, they're so fragrant. Now one of these is on the east side of the house. 

I tried an Alabama azalea there three years ago but it wasn't happy so I moved it to the eastern side of the house. Coast azalea wouldn't work because they seem to like more sun - they always leaned out when they were planted north of the house in its original location, even when the Florida azaleas were small. Now the house faces true north, rather than slightly northwest, so the this bed has more shade than the original one. A dwarf form of sweet pepperbush might work. I don't want Virginia sweetspire or dog hobble there because I think they'd look too informal. I wonder how bottlebrush buckeye would look there. Too coarse? Any suggestions?