q is for quandie

Good morning from the lush, and very wet, garden!

Today I thought I would share the advice that Laura on Garden Answer gives about foliage color.  She says that to create interest in a garden bed you should include something in green, something in yellow, something in blue and something in red.  Unless, of course, you are going for a monochromatic look, such as with an all white moon garden.

You might initially think that would be easy with flowering plants, but impossible to do with plants grown strictly for their foliage.  Aren’t they all just green?

Well, not in garden terminology.  Obviously there aren’t any plants with truly ‘blue’ foliage. But in plant lingo, ‘blue’ means something like this …

And ‘yellow’ refers to a brighter chartreuse-y green, like the color on this Sun Power hosta.

And red foliage can be found in lots of heuchera.

As for ‘green’, well, that one’s easy.

It’s just green.

Ever since the first time I heard Laura give this piece of advice, I’ve been trying to put it into practice.  I started with my front garden.

And I really love the results.

I think it packs a lot of punch, even when nothing is blooming which is the case right now.

The ‘yellow’ is provided by the varigated sedum, as well as the Lemon Frost lamium.

The ‘green’ is provided by the large swath of astilbe in the back.

Quick sidebar on that astilbe, I divided it early last year and it had a very mediocre season with just a few blooms last summer.  But this year it has more than doubled in size and is loaded with buds right now.  One bonus of delaying my sale is that it just may be blooming by Thursday, if we ever get any sunshine.

I don’t have a lot of blue in this garden, just three large Krossa Regal hostas anchoring the corners.

Well, I guess I can also include the blue that is in the June hosta as well.

In fact, that one can count as both ‘blue’ and ‘yellow’.  Well, and even just a touch of plain old green.  It’s one of my favorite hostas, isn’t it pretty?

And finally, the ‘red’.  For that element I’ve got a Northern Exposure Black heuchera, along with a Palace Purple heuchera.

It’s only been within the last couple of years that I began to appreciate the impact of adding dark foliage to contrast with the brighter colors.  I had planted a May hosta beside a Palace Purple heuchera and it was ended up being a lovely combo.

When I divided those astilbe that I mentioned a minute ago, I also removed some white flowering astilbe from that spot and replaced them with one of the newer astilbes from Proven Winners called Dark Side of the Moon.

They are looking pretty small so far, this being only their second year (plus, I rather tortured them by moving them three times last summer before I decided on this spot).  But hopefully next year they will ‘leap’ and fill out that space a bit better.

I’ve been so happy with the results in this front garden that I’m planning to systematically apply this approach to my other garden beds as well, starting with the shade garden.

I’m doing pretty good with the blue, yellow and green, but I need a bit more red.  So far I just have a few Black Taffeta heuchera (front right corner of photo).

So earlier this week I pulled out the Boston Fern that I had planted in front of my statue, Cossetta, on a whim many years ago (just to see if it would overwinter, and spoiler alert, it did).  I replaced it with some more of that Dark Side of the Moon astilbe (and FYI, I purchased them at Home Depot).

It feels a bit scandalous having revealed Cossetta’s ankles.  Now I have to wait for the astilbe to sleep, creep and then leap.  Gardening definitely requires some patience.

By the way, if any of you locals are planning to come to my sale, please feel free to take a wander around the garden while you’re here.  I won’t mind.

And maybe, just maybe, things will have dried out a little bit by then!

Now, how about you?  Do you try to add all four of these foliage colors to your gardens?  Do you have any favorite plants with blue, yellow or red foliage?

Leave a comment and let me know!

Good morning from the garden.

When it comes to garden ornaments, do you ever ask yourself ‘how much is too much’?

We’ve all seen them, those yards that have more garden ornaments than actual living plants.

At what point do you cross the line from tasteful into tacky?

When I brought my statue home from a garage sale (yes, I purchased her at a garage sale), I was a little worried that might be the moment when I crossed that line.  But I think she works because I have her tucked in among plants that get nearly as tall as she is.

But even without the plants, in winter she looks quite lovely too I think.

Well … maybe that’s not a good example, lol.  She is half buried in snow.

I do have another smaller concrete ‘statue’, this one is of St. Francis and he is watching over the remains of our two dogs, Buck & Sasha (we’ve buried their ashes at his feet).

I also have quite a few metal obelisks scattered about my garden.

Nearly all of them have also come from garage sales.  Whenever I see one at a sale, I grab it.  I think I might be getting close to the metal obelisk saturation point now.

But will you just indulge me for a moment while I admire that clematis once more?

It is absolutely stunning right now.  I just can’t get over what a little fertilizer will do.

I only have one arbor in the garden.

And that’s probably plenty for my space.  The bell shaped flowers on the Roguchi clematis on the right are just starting to open.

I do also have two fountains.  The larger one was purchased at a garden center …

But the smaller one is from a garage sale.

It does have a repaired crack in it, so I have to add more water about every other day.  But the hostas, irises, astilbe and hydrangea planted near it are all fans of moist conditions so they don’t mind having a leaky fountain nearby.

I’m pretty sure that two fountains is the maximum allowance for a yard the size of mine.

I have two pieces of iron furniture tucked into the garden.

They also provide some good winter interest too.

Then there is my buddha and my Japanese lantern (free at the curb), both of which have been given a paint job using Dixie Belle’s Bronze patina paint.

I also have a couple of concrete bunnies scattered about.

At this point they feel a bit like an invitation for the real bunnies.

I definitely have one living under my deck and she comes out every evening to eat the clover in my lawn, and for that reason we are now calling her ‘Clover’.  I’m willing to put up with her as long as she sticks to the clover and doesn’t start going for the hostas!

And I can’t forget to mention my concrete gargoyle.

Fortunately I don’t have any real gargoyles living under the deck.

I have to admit, I also have three vintage iron bed headboards in my garden.  That might sound like a lot, but two of them are barely even visible.

The most visible one is beside the potting shed and I keep trying to grow a clematis on it.  I’ve had little success so far, possible because I suspect this spot was a former sandbox (the potting shed was a playhouse when we moved in), the soil here is really sandy and doesn’t retain much moisture.

I also have a brass headboard out back in the cutting garden, although once the peonies are at full height you can’t even see it.  And then I have one that helps support the Annabelle hydrangea under the kitchen window, although you can barely see it under there either.

Then there are the vintage watering cans.

There are definitely a few of those scattered about.

After seeing this listing of garden decor, you will probably doubt the veracity of my next claim, but I have been working on editing the number of ornaments in my garden.  I’m definitely getting too close to having too many things.  I’ll be parting with a couple of vintage watering cans at my upcoming sale along with a few other garden items.

I’m planning to sell the concrete basket toting dog that I purchased at the Bryn Mawr garage sales, even though I think he’s totally adorable.  I did think about keeping him, but then I might be crossing that line from tasteful to tacky.

The rusty St. Francis has to go as well.

As well as this planter that I rustied up recently.

I’ve also got another larger planter that I used the Dixie Belle Patina Paint on.

Fingers crossed that they all sell so that I don’t have to be tempted to add them to my own garden anymore!

How about you, are you a fan of garden ornaments?  Do you worry about crossing that line from tasteful to tacky?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Good morning from the garden.

Last week I shared some photos of my three earliest blooming clematis, which are doing incredibly well this year.

Especially that one.  Wait, let me back up the camera a minute and show you the entire plant …

See what I mean?  It is spectacular.

Last year it was a bit of a bust, with only a few flowers at the top …

So its performance this year is quite a lot better.

This particular plant is well over three years old, so it’s not just that it finally came into its own.  There have to be other factors at play.

So I’ve been taking note of what I did differently this year (so that I can do it again next year), and there were a couple of things.

First, and probably most significantly, I fertilized my clematis in early spring.  I’d never done that before.  I used the Espoma Plant-tone which is an organic all-purpose 5-3-3 fertilizer.  That’s not precisely the formula recommended for clematis, but it was what I had on hand and I figured something was better than nothing.  To apply I simply sprinkled about 1 cup of Plant-tone around the base of each clematis.

I was also more diligent about helping the clematis climb the trellis this year.  As it was emerging and growing in the spring, I went out every few days and tied stems to the trellis.

According to several sources, the growing end of a clematis vine will stop growing if it can’t find anything to grab onto.  In previous years I left a lot of this plant sprawled into the garden rather than guiding it up to the trellis.  Although, as you can see in that last photo, it still reached the top of the trellis, it just didn’t have many flowers.

So I’m not sure I can attribute its remarkable performance this year to helping it climb.  As an example, here is a clematis in my neighbor Arlene’s garden …

She doesn’t help that one climb at all, it just scrambles over that stump.  And yet, it’s still covered in blooms.

There may some other variables at play when it comes to blooms.  For example, we had a really mild winter and so far lots of rain this spring.

Also, I suspect due to the mild winter, the rabbits must have had plenty to eat because they didn’t nibble on my clematis like they did the prior winter.  That year they systematically chewed through all of my clematis at about maximum rabbit height (a foot or so from the ground).

And that brings me to the subject of pruning.  If you start going down that rabbit hole (pardon the pun) online you’ll find all kinds of info on the different clematis pruning groups.  And if you aren’t sure what clematis you have, or what pruning group it belongs to, you are totally lost.  After a while your head will be swimming.  Or mine was anyway.

But then I found The Frozen North Pruning System from humingbirdfarm.net.  One caveat here, this system is recommended for northern gardeners specifically.  Those of you in the south may not have success with this method.  But here in my Minnesota, now zone 5a, formerly zone 4b, garden I should be OK with this pruning method.

They’ve simplified clematis pruning into two groups; Don’t Bother and Full Prune.

It’s easy to tell which group your clematis belongs to by its bloom time.  Those that bloom in May or early June (the three I have blooming now), are in the Don’t Bother group.  You can prune out the winter kill once you see live buds on your stems, but otherwise don’t bother pruning at all.

All other clematis that start blooming in late June or later , like my Roguchi, are in the Full Prune group.

That photo of the Roguchi is from last year, it does not have any flowers open yet this year.

Jackmanii, a very popular hybrid clematis, is also one that belongs to the Full Prune group (pictured blooming last year below).

For the Full Prune group, simply give them a hard prune by cutting them off about a foot from the ground in late winter or early spring.

In other words, the winter before last the rabbits gave all of my clematis a Full Prune without regard to which group they were in.  That may be why my Don’t Bother group didn’t have nearly as many blooms last year.

Which brings me to the final bit of advice from Hummingbird Farm, no one has ever killed a clematis by making a pruning mistake (including rabbits).  So don’t get too wound up about whether or not to prune your clematis.  Just pay attention to bloom times this summer, and then act accordingly next spring when it’s time to start pruning.  And while you’re at it, give them a little fertilizer in the spring as well.

Do you have any clematis in your garden?  Do you fertilize, or follow the pruning ‘rules’?  Leave a comment and let me know.