Good morning from the garden!

As you may remember, last year’s gardening season ended on a bit of a low note.

First of all, I discovered that I had jumping worms, and secondly, my neighbor removed a huge, glorious shade tree and now my back garden feels like it’s baking in the sun (#stillnotoverit).

It probably hasn’t helped matters that I just returned from a trip to visit some of the most spectacular gardens in the U.S. (more on those visits in future Sunday posts) only to find that my own gardens are a hot mess.  Apparently we had a freak heat wave while I was gone that encouraged the weeds to completely take over while I wasn’t looking.

In addition to all of that, I seem to have lost quite a few plants over the winter.  It seems that little to no snow cover and sub-zero temps combined to create a winter that was quite hard on gardens.  According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the frost line was deeper in 2025 than any year since 2019.  Here in Minnesota we need that snow to protect our plants from the cold and we just didn’t get enough of it last winter.

All of these factors have contributed to what has been a rather disappointing spring in my garden.

Most of the perennials that I planted last year have bit the dust including a Lemon Meringue baptisia, a hosta Wu-La-La, a couple of azaleas, several Queen of Hearts brunnera, a Rozanne cranesbill, and some Japanese Forest Grass.  Although I have to point out that the azaleas and the forest grass were iffy propositions in our climate in a good year, so it’s not surprising that they didn’t make it.

But I also lost some things that had been in my garden for years.  One of the biggest losses was my lamium.

I had a lot of this ground cover in both my hosta garden and the front garden.  In the past it has been semi-evergreen, meaning it would retain some of it’s leaves through the winter.  As the snow would melt in the spring it would reveal mostly intact plants that were even still a bit green.

This spring there is little sign of it.  The arrow in the photo below is pointing to one tiny sprout that has managed to survive.

I’m not entirely sure if this loss is a result of the winter, or from the jumping worms, or maybe a combination of both.  However, my neighbor nnK belongs to a local Facebook garden group, and apparently many of the members are complaining about having lost ground covers in particular this past winter.  So I’m hoping it’s that.  Otherwise, I have little hope for replacements surviving in the future.

I’ve also lost a good bit of my ajuga, although it’s trying to come back.  Last year it was finally filling in …

And now it’s quite sparse and barely blooming.

I’ve also lost my gorgeous Aralia cordata, or ‘Sun King’ Golden Japanese Spikenard.

This would have been its 3rd year in my garden.  I may also have lost some of those hostas around it.  In fact, I’m quite baffled by this spot …

As you can see, it looks quite decimated.  I’m taking a wait and see approach for now, maybe those hostas are still going to come up?  Fingers crossed.

Either way, I’ve already purchased a replacement for the aralia, and FYI, I found it at Home Depot.  So this plant is definitely more readily available than it was when I first planted it.

Alright, enough of this dismal reporting on garden failures.  Let’s look on the bright side.

My Pagoda Dogwood looks great this spring.

I planted it back in 2022, so this will be its fourth season.  It’s finally tall enough to really see it above the tops of all of those ferns, so I’m very relieved that it came through the winter.

I’m also happy to see that my lilacs are full of blooms right now.

If you’ve followed me for long, you know that I’ve really struggled with this lilac hedge.

I started out planting all hybrids with gorgeous flowers, and they never took off.  I eventually had to replace all of them.  I replaced two of them with the Common Lilac, and those have grown like gangbusters.  They are over 15′ tall, and they are blooming like mad.  They had a bad case of leaf spot fungus at the end of last summer, so I wasn’t sure if that would affect the spring blooms but apparently it didn’t.

Unfortunately, their flowers are just a bit blah.  So I succumbed to temptation and added a few more hybrids on either end of the hedge a couple of years ago.  Just look at how much prettier the flowers are …

But the hybrids continue to look more straggly overall compared to the Common Lilac and I’m just not sure they are going to fill in enough to provide a screen from the unsightly neighbor’s fishing boat storage area behind us.

I’m incredibly relieved to find that all of the new Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas that I planted to create a hedge have survived.  Especially since I didn’t plant them until August of last year, so they didn’t have a lot of time to establish.  I also underplanted them with some muscari and daffodils, and they look great.

That is Muscari Valerie Finnis, isn’t it the loveliest pale blue color?

The daffodils are an all white variety called Trumpet Mount Hood.

I’m hoping that both of these naturalize (ie. multiply) and fill in all of the space under the hedge eventually.

This area is sunny enough now that the bulbs should do well from year to year.

I’m slowly starting to get over my dismay at the number of plants that didn’t make it this year.  On the bright side, this gives me an opportunity to get some new plants, right?

And as for the jumping worms, I’m going to have to learn what works and what doesn’t going forward.  Leaf mulch is definitely out, but I recently read that using cocoa bean mulch might be a good option.  I used to use cocoa bean mulch all the time, but it is difficult to find around here.  Also, FYI, it is highly toxic to dogs, so if you have a dog that likes to munch on stuff in the garden you definitely don’t want to try it.  Another study suggested that slug bait might work to help control the jumping worms.  Some of you might remember that I had to give up using slug bait because our cat liked to eat it, but now that she’s gone (#stillnotoverit) I can go back to using it.

How about you?  How has your spring been so far?  Did you have many plant losses over the winter?  Are you dealing with jumping worms?  Leave a comment and let me know!