Good morning from the garden!

I don’t think I’m back to regular weekly ‘Sunday mornings in the garden’ posts quite yet, but due to our crazy mild winter I was actually out gardening this week.  I can hardly believe it myself.

Gardening in early March, in Minnesota!  Who woulda thunk it?

I am a full month ahead of schedule with pruning the hydrangeas!  Last year I pruned them mid-April, and there were still patches of snow and ice on the ground.

Since I’m so far ahead of schedule this year I’ve decided to take my time and focus on cleaning up one garden bed at a time.  So far I’ve finished the front garden under the window box, the shade garden alongside the house, and now the garden next to the carriage house.

That is the ‘after clean up’ photo, in case you weren’t sure.

The right corner of that flower bed contains a Vanilla Strawberry hydrangea, a Tiger Eye Sumac and that amazing Roguchi clematis.

I started my clean up with the hydrangea and followed the general panicle hydrangea pruning rules:

• reduce the overall height of the shrub by about 1/3.
• remove any dead, broken or weak branches.
• remove any branches that are rubbing on other branches.
• prune just above a leaf node.

This photo doesn’t do these trimmings justice …

But they were all at least 3′ long, if not more.

The Roguchi clematis went next.

In case you’re new here and haven’t heard me go on and on about this variety, let me just say that right now it’s my favorite clematis.  It blooms from May through October and is absolutely covered in flowers that whole time.  The flowers aren’t particularly showy, but they are pretty sweet.

Clematis plants belong to one of three pruning groups, and these groups have different rules.  This one belongs to group 3, which means that you want to prune it right down to about a foot or two from the ground.  In my opinion, this is the easiest sort of pruning job for clematis.  Just prune all of the stems right above a leaf node, about a foot or so from the ground and then discard everything from above that point.

So all of this …

came off and got discarded.

As for that Tiger Eye Sumac, you may remember that I pretty much thought it was dead last year.  It normally doesn’t die back to the ground, but last year it did.  We cut all of the dead limbs off assuming it was a goner, but then it sent up new shoots from the ground.

Unfortunately those ground level shoots seem to have been a rabbit magnet this winter.  The easy way to tell rabbit damage from deer damage is when the damage only goes up to maximum rabbit height.

I’ll just have to wait and see how the Tiger Eye does this year.  I may dig it out and plant a new one in another spot.  It’s competing with the hydrangea in this location anyway.

But speaking of rabbit damage, you may remember my ongoing struggles with creating a lilac hedge.  I started this hedge in 2011, and after much trial and error, I think only one of the original lilacs I planted remains.  All of the others died off and have been replaced.  Currently I have a tall section of hedge in the middle, with two newly planted sections on either end.

This past fall I decided to go above and beyond with protecting the newer plants from the rabbits by enclosing them with chicken wire filled in with chopped leaves.

And it worked like a charm!  The rabbits weren’t able to get to them, and now they are chock full of buds.  I’m so hoping that their growth really leaps over the next couple of years and they catch up with the rest of the hedge.  Maybe I will finally have a lilac hedge after all!

Who doesn’t love a good lilac?

As for the rest of that garden bed cleanup, I just needed to cut back some perennials and clean out fallen leaves.  I tried to be mindful of where I was stepping because I have bulbs coming up!

Wait, what??  Bulbs up in early March?  And actually, most of these were already poking their heads up in late February before I left to visit my mom.  How fun is that?

I have quite a few more garden beds to work on over the coming week, plus I should really get some chicken wire around my emerging tulips.  I don’t want a repeat of last year when deer completely munched on one whole section of new tulip bulbs.

I purchased some more green chicken wire specifically for this purpose, so I should get it in place now since the tulips are starting to come up already!

I’m really looking forward to seeing whether or not my Darwin Hybrid Pink Impression tulips have multiplied.

Darwin hybrid tulips will supposedly naturalize well.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, have you been back out in your garden yet this year?  Leave a comment and let me know!