q is for quandie

Good morning from the garden!

If you’ve followed me for long, you know I like to say ‘never say never’.  I definitely tend to change my mind over time about things that I like … or don’t like.

For example, I once thought I’d never use sparkly gold shoe laces, but I did.  I also thought I’d never wallpaper again, but I did that too.  Well, it was in miniature so maybe that doesn’t count?

I also thought I would never want begonias in my garden.  You know I have a lot of shade, and any list of ‘flowering annuals for shade’ will include begonias.  So it was a bit unfortunate that not only did I not really like the look of them, I also had trouble keeping them from getting root rot.

But that was when I thought the only begonias out there were the old ‘wax begonias’.

I’m sorry, but I don’t think those are even remotely pretty.

Then I discovered rex begonias.

That variety is Shadow King Cherry Mint.

They do flower, but clearly they are grown for their foliage rather than their flowers which are usually hidden beneath the foliage anyway.

I first planted them in my front window box and discovered that they absolutely love it in that north facing location.

This year I tried a couple of new varieties in the window box.  Here is Escargot …

along with a Sea Salt artemesia (on left) and purple heuchera (on right).

I added this fun spotted begonia (sorry, I didn’t keep track of that one’s name) to the front window box too.

I also planted up some pots on the deck with the Cherry Mint rex begonias along with Blueberry Muffin hostas,  and more of that Sea Salt artemesia.

The beauty of these sort of combos is that they don’t rely on blooms to look good.  Also, in the case of these pots on the deck, I have a matched pair on either side of the door and one gets much more sun than the other.  So the sunnier one would always have way more flowers than the shadier one when I planted flowering annuals in them.  This way they look more balanced.

Another huge bonus to rex begonias is that they are easy to over winter as houseplants.

  You also can easily propagate more of them from cuttings.

  So they can be an excellent way to save money by not having to buy new plants every year.

And actually, if you are budget minded, this is the 2nd year for those Blueberry Muffin hostas too.  I pulled them out of the pots last fall and put them in the ground, then when they came up in the spring I dug them up and put them back in the pots.

They are getting a bit too big for the pots now though, so I may not be able to use them there again next year.  However, I can find a spot for them in the garden so they won’t go to waste.

But not only am I now loving the Rex begonias, I’ve also discovered some hybrid begonias that are much prettier than those old varieties like this Elatior begonia …

It’s planted with a Diamond Snow euphorbia and a Summer Breeze caladium.  This pot is in fairly deep shade, but it does get some early morning sun from the east, and that begonia is absolutely covered in blooms.  Not only are the flowers larger and more vibrant than those old wax begonias, but the foliage is prettier too.

I put three more of this variety in the planter on the potting shed too.

I recently read that you can overwinter these begonias as house plants as well, so I may be giving that a try this year.

I could really cut down on the cost of filling all of my planters in the spring!

How about you?  Do you like begonias?  Maybe you even liked those old wax begonias?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Good morning from the garden!

Before I get on with today’s post, I have to tell you all that I totally dodged a bullet in the garden this week.  Storms blew through our area on Friday night, and some areas very near me (including my sister’s house) were hit with large hail.  If you’d like to get an idea of how much damage some gardens saw, check out this video from Laurel Rose Gardens.

Fortunately I only got pea sized hail in my garden and it didn’t do any damage at all.  Thank goodness.

Now on with our regularly scheduled programming.

During the course of my recent occasional sale, I received quite a few compliments on my gardens.  People especially loved the fairy garden.

Everybody loves a good miniature, don’t they?

But my full sized gardens got a few compliments too.

Someone asked me what my secret was for having such lush gardens, and I had to honestly say it just simply takes time.

I’ve been gardening in this space for 38 years.  And really, it has taken that long for my gardens to look like they do now.

Of course, this isn’t the first year that they’ve looked good, but I bet it took at least 20 years or so before they really starting looking pretty good.  It definitely does not happen overnight.

You know the old adage, the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap.  But I would say it takes five years or more for most plants to really fill in nicely.

However, I must admit that the Sun King Aralia (a.k.a. Golden Japanese Spikenard) is an exception (the chartreuse shrub below).

I just planted that last year (replacing the previous one that died during the ‘bad winter’) and it has already filled in.

But most of my best looking plants have been around for a decade or more like this clematis.

Not only does it take time for plants to get established and fill in, it also takes time to learn what plants perform well in your particular space.  There are so many factors to consider; is it sunny or shady, what kind of soil do you have, how harsh are your winters, is it a protected spot, is it wet or dry, what about deer or rabbit pressure, and how about insects?

For example, I’ve given up on roses because I can’t deal with the Japanese beetle problem.  I’ve also given up on tulips because the damn deer kept eating them.

I tried growing fern leaf bleeding heart near one of my fountains and quickly realized that they hated being wet all the time whereas astilbes and hostas love it.

Speaking of astilbes, they are always categorized as a shade plant but in my garden they don’t perform at all in full shade.  They need either morning or evening sun to bloom.  They also need wet shade, not dry shade.  They shrivel at the first sign of drought.

I also tried the Endless Summer macrophylla hydrangeas for years before realizing that they were never going to flower the way I wanted them to.  I would only get 2 or 3 flowers every year.  The paniculatas, like Limelight or Quick Fire Fab, work so much better for me.

Not only does it take time for plants to get established, and time to learn what works well in your garden, it also takes a fair amount of time to maintain a garden.

In my opinion, there really isn’t any such thing as a low-maintenance garden.

True, some gardens require more maintenance than others, but they all require a bit of work … especially in the spring and fall.  But I am out in my garden pretty much every single day in the summer too.

I don’t have a ton of weeding to do since my gardens are really full.  There isn’t a lot of room for weeds to take hold.  I do get out in early spring and try to remove weeds and put down mulch (I like to use Espoma Land and Sea compost as mulch) before the plants fill in which also helps prevent weeds.

But there is a lot of other maintenance to do like deadheading, pruning, treating for pests if they become a problem (those darn earwigs!), pinching things back, and fertilizing annuals.

And then there is the dreaded dividing.

I have to admit, dividing established plants can be pretty back-breaking work.  Especially ginormous hostas …

Which is why so many of mine go undivided.  FYI, from left to right that is Sun Power, June, Krossa Regal (not 100% sure of that one) and Guacamole.

However, I did decide to tackle dividing my purple irises this past week.  You may remember that I said they looked better than ever this year.  Here they are in bloom a couple of weeks ago.

But they were really packed in there.  Plus there was a huge daylily that was growing amongst them (and guess what, deer love chomping off daylily flower buds almost as much as they like tulips).  I also have a short iris in there that has been almost totally taken over by other things.  I really like this one, and it’s one of the earliest to bloom, so I wanted to give it more space to thrive.

So it was time.

It’s actually not that hard to dig up irises, they are very shallow rooted plants.  But the problem with dividing irises is that the garden looks pretty ugly when you’re done.

They will recover, but it will take some time.

In this case, I also pulled out the hostas that were creating a front border in this section of the garden.  As you’ll remember, my neighbor had a huge maple cut down and now this garden has far more sun than shade.  As a result, those hostas were getting scorched.

So out they came.  I’m replacing them with Rozanne perennial geranium and Lady’s Mantle …

But it’s definitely going to take time for this section of the garden to fill in again and look good.  Probably a couple of years at least.  Plus, I’ve never tried Lady’s Mantle, so it remains to be seen whether or not it’s a good choice for my garden.  Time will tell.

In the meantime, I’ll just focus on enjoying other areas in my garden that are still looking pretty good this year and thankfully haven’t been damaged by hail.

So now you know my secret weapon for creating a spectacular garden, time.  Speaking of which, I need to go spend a little time in the garden right now.  I hope you’re getting out in your garden today!

Good morning from the garden!

First up, thank you to everyone who came out to the Carriage House Sale.  It was a lot of fun despite the fact that it rained and the temperature dropped to the mid-50’s.  Brrrr.  I thought it was ironic that we had hot weather (mid-80’s) for our October sale last year, and cold weather for our June sale this year.  Welcome to Minnesota!

Anyway, the rain has cleared away leaving some beautiful, although probably cool by most people’s standards, weather behind.

Personally, I like a sunny day with temps in the upper 60’s and low 70’s.  They are perfect for gardening!

Today I thought I’d share a tour of my clematis.  I know I’ve shared most of them here before, but I do have a couple of new ones.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of my favorite clematis.

This one always looks amazing.  I should knock on wood because I’ve had other clematis over the years that have gone from looking fantastic year after year, to then mysteriously disappearing over the winter.  Fingers crossed that this one won’t do that.

My Roguchi clematis continues to perform its head off too.

This clematis doesn’t have the massive showy flowers that so many do, instead it has these charming violet bell shaped flowers.

But it blooms all summer long, it’s super vigorous and it’s in pruning group 3, ie. the easiest, most fail-proof pruning group.  The rabbits take care of that for me over the winter by chewing them off at about rabbit height.  All I have to do is pull the dead vines off my arbor in late winter/early spring which takes about 2 minutes.  The plant comes back from the bottom and climbs to the top of the arbor again by early June.

That’s it on the right side of the arbor above.  Last year I planted a Rebecca clematis on the left side.

It’s doing OK, but now I kinda wish I had just planted a 2nd Roguchi on the other side so that they could grow up and meet in the middle over the top of the arbor.  Hmmmm.  Maybe I need to keep an eye out for another Roguchi, huh?

I have another bell shaped clematis called Betty Corning (also a group 3 clematis).

This is its third year, or its ‘leap year’.  You know, first year they sleep, second year they creep, third year they leap.

It’s sharing a trellis with another clematis that I’ve had for years.  I’m fairly sure it’s called The President.  Back in 2024 it was absolutely stunning …

It filled out most of that trellis.

The we had what I like to refer to as the ‘bad winter’.  That was 2024/2025.  I lost a lot of plants over that winter, and this clematis barely came back last year, and isn’t looking a whole lot better this year.

Part of the problem may be that it belongs to pruning group 2, which you aren’t supposed to cut back to the ground, however the rabbits don’t seem to realize that.  I’m still hoping it will fill back out eventually.

Another clematis that is finally coming into its own this year is the Huldine that I planted on an old ladder leaning on the carriage house.

This is another one from pruning group 3, are you sensing a theme here?

It has sweet and simple white flowers that work beautifully against the red carriage house.

It is said to be a vigorous climber, growing up to 20′ tall.

This next plant isn’t a clematis, but it’s so gorgeous that I had to share it with you.

This is a Grandpa Ott morning glory, and I also planted it on the ladder together with the Huldine.

You may remember that I planted several clematis under my lilac hedge.  One of them died after the first year, but the other two are doing well.  Both have gorgeous blue/purple flowers.

The first is called H.F. Young …

and the 2nd is called Diana’s Delight.

They are still rather small plants, but I’m hoping that they eventually really take off and fill in where the lilacs look a little sparse.

I still have a few clematis that haven’t bloomed yet this year.  One is an Issey clematis that I planted at the far end of the lilac hedge earlier this spring.

Another is my Jackmanii clematis.  I think of this as the most common clematis out there, you see them everywhere.  Here is mine in bloom last year.

This one took so long to break dormancy this spring that I was sure I lost it.  As a result, I pulled out the obelisk that it was growing on.  When it did finally come up, I quickly popped in another support for it, but now I realize it’s far too small.

Oh well, hopefully I can rectify that problem next year.

How about you, do you have any clematis growing in your garden?  And do you have a favorite?  Leave a comment and let me know.