How Does Your Garden Grow?

What a winter we’ve had in the Ozarks, zone 5 cold in our newly designated zone 7. Some plants that survived the past ten winters with no problem may have had a hard time of it this year. Chilly March weather kept us from working in the garden to do our normal spring clean-up and we’re still way behind in April with more cold windy days, so we haven’t yet fully assessed damage. It appears minimal, so far, except for branches broken in the last ice storm.

Most perennials and wildflowers seem to have thrived through the winter, possibly because we had a good snow cover that protected them when temps dropped to below zero; giving them plenty of slow soaking moisture as it melted. A few have heaved themselves partly out of the ground, and need to be replanted or their exposed roots covered with soil. Patches of native hepaticas, trilliums, Dutchman’s breeches and other woods denizens are thicker than ever. Hostas are vigorously thrusting through a thick layer of leaves we haven’t yet touched, except to pick off the dead leaf “caps” that they pushed up as they emerged.  

Hosta Montana Aureomarginata

 

We’ve cut back last year’s ratty hellebore leaves to let the flowers show off. Two year old seedlings that are now big enough to bloom are showing amazing color variations from their parents. I’m really excited about a whole new group of babies that have come up between double-flowered “Golden Lotus” and single “Painted Strain”. If they have cross-pollinated, we might see some really interesting flowers in a couple of years.  

Some plants we weren’t sure would make it have surprised us; the Pink Dawn viburnum that started to bloom in January with its sweet scent put itself on hold when that “polar vortex” hit; now the flowers have reopened, making us exclaim “what IS that smell?” when we go outdoors. Nandina domesticas look pretty sad, but being a Southern plant, they are only semi-evergreen here anyway. They will probably leaf out again so I’ll hold off with the pruners until I actually see dead wood.

 

Mahonias have lost their flowers; the fall-set buds dry and crumbling, disappointing the many bees that usually visit in early spring. We won’t know about pruning blue and pink hydrangeas until they leaf out, as most of them bloom on new wood, but white Annabelles and oak leafs are fine. The tree peonies I’ve been holding my breath over are finally budding out this week.

 

We have resisted planting loropetalums, cold hardy camelias or any of the other borderline zones 7-8 plants that have been available in regional big box garden centers for the past few years, so we don’t know how any of them fared. Not well, I am thinking, though the US National Arboretum states the camelias are hardy to zone 6b. A friend who planted some tells me she lost all of hers. Missouri Botanical Gardens Plant Finder says loropetalum will take temperatures into the lower teens with root mulch protection. I am curious to know if any at all survived last winter’s test.

Time will tell about crape myrtles, butterfly bushes and vitex. They don’t leaf out until May, so I’m not going to prune any of them until we see what died back. We cut back one crape myrtle a few years ago after a hard winter; as it turned out none of them were damaged and it wasn’t necessary. It’s not a mistake we plan to repeat. “Crape murder”, the practice of cutting them back to ugly stubs in spring, is not a crime I care to commit.

I am a bit worried about our zone 7 Himalayan evergreen dogwood, cornus capitata. It wasn’t evergreen this year, but the branches still seem supple and green. It will extend dogwood blooming season into May, provided it lives after surviving drought, browsing deer, and now deep cold.

Japanese maples are all leafing out and look just fine; just a few dead twigs.  Winter-burned boxwoods, hollies and euonymous should be clipped back to new growth, maybe even replaced if they are too badly damaged. 

It’s a good year for our tulip magnolia. Hard freezes get the blooms about three out of five years, but we got to enjoy it for once. The petals are falling now, turning the ground and deck into a pretty pink and white carpet.

 

Azaleas are questionable. Some of them look iffy, having lost nearly all their leaves, but azaleas are tough. A few we planted down in the woods were only labeled hardy to 10 degrees. They may be done for, but I’ll wait and see before I pull them out. Old ones on the north side of the house are undamaged.

Some roses suffered the winter badly and must be severely pruned. We don’t grow hybrid teas, but I have seen them in other gardens with a lot of dead, black canes. Those should be cut back into live, green wood with outward facing buds. Our hardy Knock-Outs are fine. We prune ours back hard; they seem to grow and bloom better if cut back to about a foot above the ground.

A friend tells us this was the coldest winter on record in 12 years.  It certainly seems the longest; it came early, partied hard and stayed late, wearing out its welcome a month or so ago.  We should have learned the lesson it taught about zone pushing, but gardeners never do, at least for long. We’ll soon forget and be back at our old adventurous gambling ways, trying out new plants regardless of hardiness ratings. As plantsman Tony Avent was quoted saying, “I consider every plant hardy until I have killed it myself, at least three times.” We always have great expectations for a wonderful Spring.

 

As the garden grows so does the gardener.
- Popular saying

 
Speaking of Gardens:  by Sandy Parrill  The Joplin Globe, April 12, 2014

Balmy Breezes, Shivery Freezes and Rainy Days

The magnificent flowers of Tulip Magnolia (magnolia soulangeana) are sometimes lost to a late frost--but not this year!

                                                  
March never can seem to make up it's mind. It starts out in the morning shivering in a winter coat, and by noon it's shorts and a tee shirt. Two hours later and you're drenched in a sudden downpour, mixed with 3 inches of pea-sized hail and wind that litters the ground with thousands of tiny twigs and branches, usually just after you've just picked  up all of the debris from the last weather snit.Then the sun peeks out; Mother Nature laughing at her own perverse sense of humor (Not Funny, Mom!) and warms your body and soul , kissing you with fresh breezes and hugging you with the delicious scents of fresh flowers and moist earth.

Miniature daffodils

                                                                    

Tritellia, one of my favorite small spring bulbs

                                              

Peppermint stick (clusiana) tulips

                                                                 
The next day, you wake up to a skin of frost all over everything, the daffodils are shivering and the rhododendron leaves are curled up into slim fingers that makes you want to fit them out with mittens!  There's a promise of 70 degrees by Sunday, but.....are the promises going to be kept?

Butterbur (petasites) flowers come up before the leaves

                                    

Vinca minor atropurpurea with white grape hyacinth

Spores on moss

Woodland walk

                    

Hosta montana aureomarginata

                                                       

Lots of promises to keep.

"And time remembered is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,

And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins."

--Swinburne

Patterns and New Beginnings

The snow has mostly retreated from all the open spaces, but on the north side of the house and the stone wall, there are still drifts in spite of the 70 degree temperatures today. By tomorrow, there will be no sign left that the world was covered with a foot of snow just 3 days ago. It actually was good for the garden; since it has begun to warm up and the moisture has seeped into the earth, flowers have bloomed in just a few hours time. Weeping cherries, magnolias, redbuds and lilacs are all showing us a tease of their spring dresses. Forsythia and flowering quince couldn't wait, they have burst into full flower since this morning. Shade trees are lacy with buds, and the woods has a feeling of eager anticipation.

Weeping cherry

                                                                   

Magnolia soulangeana

                                                              
As the snow melts, I am seeing things that I have never before noticed. Not long ago, my attention was caught by a photo of, I think, bluebells planted in a river in the woods, and I wanted that effect. Not having access to all those thousands of bluebells, I thought to plant a stream of grape hyacinths, which do grow in my garden, literally by the thousands! Transplanting some wouldn't make much of a dent in the 60 year-old swaths of grape hyacinths under the forsythia, so I started it last fall, trying to follow a natural path in the woods, but I couldn't quite see where it should go. Not to mention that it was difficult to find the bulbs when they weren't up. Watching the snow melt this spring, I saw the pattern through the trees, exactly where to follow the lay of the slope. Grape hyacinths are easily transplanted in the spring, even in full bloom, so I am going to work on that in the next couple of warm days. It may take two or three years to get the full effect, but I have patience.

      

Follow the snow trail to the left,and imagine this to be a river of blue blooms! Flowing around the   

young Kousa dogwood in the center of the picture, and down the slope to the bottom of the hill.

Other patterns begin to emerge; when the ground is somewhat bare of foliage it is easy to see where new beds should go, where curves could be made more pleasing to the eye, and in my mind's eye, where plants would give the best effect if I moved them around a bit. Some of my plants spend more time on the end of a shovel than they do in the ground, I think. I have planned a big new hosta and shade bed, where the Virginia waterleaf was removed last week. It has all been nicely dug and prepared with a thick layer of compost, and I spent most of the afternoon planning where the new plants should go, sticking labels in the soil to mark the spots and planting the bare root ones I have already. It is bordered on one side with a mossy path, and on the other with a huge patch of giant Solomon's seal. The whole thing is shaded with a black walnut, and I have left a 2 yr old redbud as an understory tree in the future. I have also left surprise lilies (lycoris) and a few purple violets.  

On the other side of the tree are Jacob's ladder, ferns, wild sweet William (phlox divaricata), a hellebore, a "Paul's Glory" hosta, and here I have spared a few of the Virginia waterleaf. (I may be sorry later!) It is edged with crested irises, ajuga, yellow wild violets and strawberry begonia (saxifraga stolonifera). There are also daffodils scattered about the whole area, and trout lilies transplanted from the lower part of the woods.Stepping stones and a birdbath separate this area from a whitebud (cercis canadensis alba) surrounded by honesty, more daffodils and other spring blooming bulbs, and a colony of Virginia bluebells. This whole area is all part of more extensive plantings that lead down the hill into the woods itself, getting more naturalistic as it goes deeper among the trees where the truly wild things live.

I've left plenty of room for the plants I've ordered, but they won't be here until late April or May, which somewhat distresses me. It usually gets pretty hot here in the Ozarks by mid May, and most perennials should already be in the ground and growing by then, but no one will ship this early to my zone. By mid May, most of the spring bloomers have come and gone. There seems to be a "window" of planting for spring wildflower perennials here, about 3 weeks between mid-March and mid-April, and if it is missed, sometimes they have a difficult time getting established.

Tomorrow I will also be transplanting wild ginger, woodsia ferns, Virginia bluebell babies, hellebore seedlings, trilliums, wild phlox and Jacob's ladder into areas that we've cleared of Japanese honeysuckle and wintercreeper euonymous. I've been doing that for the last couple of years, and they are carpeting the woods floor nicely.

April, 2009

 I also have elderberries, which arrived in the mail the day before the snowstorm, and blueberries to plant in the sunny edges of the trees. We probably won't get any fruit from anything. The birds and animals snap up all the gooseberries and serviceberries that grow here, but at least I will have the flowers. I planted an apple tree for the same reason--because I love the flowers! I expect I'll have to cage them until they get established to protect them from the deer. We planted a row of serviceberries along the edge of the woods last fall, and every one is leafing out this spring. They were suckers from a established bush closer to the house.

Part of my day was spent checking out the nurseries and garden centers in the area, and tho a couple of them don't have any new spring plants in yet, I didn't come home empty handed! I've been lusting after Invincibelle Spirit hydrangea, the pink Annabelle that is being promoted to help fund breast cancer research;  http://invincibellespirit.net/ and I bought one today! Not only does it promise to be beautiful, money raised from the sale of it will help this critical research. This is a cause very close to my heart as I have lost good friends in recent years from breast cancer and several other friends are survivors. If you have room in your garden, please consider Invincibelle Spirit.

I also picked up a wintergreen, gaultheria procumbens; a good woodsy groundcover, and another hydrangea, mycrophylla "Pia", which only gets about 18" tall with pink blooms. It should be pretty in the new hosta bed.

More planting tomorrow!

Grendel, soaking up some sun!