Onions

We've just returned from a glorious ten days in England to a glorious weekend at home. Our first full day in the Cotswolds we lucked into a village festival that included open gardens throughout the village. Be still my heart - I was practically hopping on one foot and the other all afternoon. Luckily, Kurt and Griffin and John were only hurried by the thought of a pint and pub lunch and like plants almost as much as I do (or love me enough to fake it). All those gardens, and what do I like best? Onions! The Allium giganteum made the most beautiful display - profile, really - in nearly every garden we saw. Like just about everything else in our garden, they bloom in May/June, but I'm determined to have some! Here it appears under an arbor of Laburnum.

We saw cotoneaster used all kinds of ways and it now seems like the perfect plant to me because it blooms in spring, has beautiful berries in fall, can cascade or sprawl - I loved it beside the stairs at Snowshill Manor.

The only garden disappointment in England was that the roses were about one-two weeks from blooming. Columbine was everywhere and forget-me-nots hover about all the gardens. It was absolutely beautiful and green.

Back home, our Ballerina rose, foxglove and peonies are in full bloom, so it's a very pink garden! I'm off to Roxbury for allium and purple after this.

I was relieved to see that the bloodroot, fern, Lenten roses and ginger that Mama gave me are thriving. Either Peter remembered to water or we had some rain.

May at home and in the Smokies

This is always the most lush month in our garden, and after being away in the Smokies, we were amazed by all the bloom and growth in just a few days' time. When we pulled in the driveway, this is what we saw!

The Cecille Brunner climbing rose is at its peak - I think it must have hundreds of blooms. Everything I read about this tells me it should be a repeat bloomer, but mid-May is the only time it's bloomed for us in the last seven years.

Meanwhile, the Zephrine Drouhin is also full of beautiful, fragrant blossoms. This one does bloom several more times in a summer, but it's never as healthy and full of roses as it is in May.

Becky came by for a garden tour one cold morning last week and I blanked on some plant names. Here is Lonicera heckrotti, "Gold Flame," which is finally coming into its own and covering one side of our shed wall this year. I think this is the third, maybe fourth, year we've had it, and I've never carried water to it or babied it during long dry spells (which probably accounts for its very slow growth.)



The Deutzia is "Nikko" (I love this plant and the way it spills over the wall - flowers or no flowers.) The tall evergreen that is not pictured is Cephalotaxus harringtonia (Japanese Plum Yew). Very pretty and positively glacial, it's so slow growing. The plant behind Natalie with the pale blue flowers is Amsonia. I saw it planted amongst jonquils at Lewis Ginter and loved how it hid the dying foliage.

We've come from such wild beauty in the Smokies, that I'm struggling a little with the tidiness and over-the-top color in our garden. How is it that those unplanned slopes of fern, rue anenome, trillium and dwarf iris are so perfect? Mama sent me off with bloodroot, Lenten roses and fern from her "down, down, down" hillside, so I'm going to concentrate on a woodland garden for the front of the house, with lots of little nodding plants that greet you from the sidewalk. If I can just manage not to "arrange" them!

Our biggest finds (my camera failed me this trip) while hiking this week were: a pink lady slipper on Deep Creek Trail (thank you, Daddy, for spotting it!), slopes packed with trillium on Kanati Fork Trail and a Vasey's Trillium on "Tunnel Bypass Trail." Worth every sore muscle!

Spring surprises and regrets

I am finding surprises and old friends every day in the garden now: bloodroot, then bluebells, now epimedium and iris. So many of these plants are low-lying, tentative little things. I feel like crawling around the garden on my knees to inspect every blossom!

Mother gave me the bloodroot last year when we met in the Smokies (from her hillside, not the Smokies - although we were worried someone would think our stash was poached) last year, and she's always talking about it. I just didn't know about bloodroot until it came up right beside our back patio. It was the very first thing to show itself this year and is so clean and simple - I love it!

The epimedium is especially delicate and nodding. I wish I had a terrace garden or an elevated place in the garden for these, so we could pass them and see their faces. Mama suggested the front garden along the street, as that bed slopes upwards towards the house. That might make a treat for neighborhood walkers.

That front bed is one of those garden "regrets" from the past year. I have been saying for two years that we will take out the mulberry trees that are there to give the bed a little sun and earth (that area is just laced with shallow roots from the mulberry trees and the nearby maple). Now I'm really do regret ignoring the project as the sod project of last spring failed on that side of the front walk. Ugh.

If we do get around to taking those trees out this year, I'll plant something large and evergreen as a perimeter plant to block the view of the Nascar flag and flamingos....

The Caroline jessamine is in full bloom now, and there's another "should have" place in the garden. With its pretty evergreen foliage, it would be perfect against the shed wall, which is visible from our back windows. Right now I've got sweet autumn clematis and red honeysuckle there, but the jessamine is hidden behind the shed, climbing the back fence. My intent was to move some of these vines around, and make sure we had the evergreen jessamine covering our homely little shed. Now I'll have to wait for the clematis to come to life for the shed to be less of an eyesore and the fall to move these around.

These are Cheryl's "Butter and Eggs" jonquils from her mother's garden and look at the surprise next to them! I can't believe it. Last year, as table decorations for a conference luncheon, I bought flats of the only decent-looking annual Home Depot had out at 9:30 the night before the conference: dianthus. I gave away all I could (no one was all that interested) and stuck the rest in the ground, figuring they'd die without lots of water. Of course, they flourished in every garish purple and cerise and magenta imaginable all summer long. AND THEY'RE BACK! Mama said "nobody told them they were annuals." Will I have the heart to rip them out this year?

Two more of my favorite plants make me happy every time I see them. The grape hyacinths out front are that intense indigo color and so pretty right now in an otherwise mess of a bed. The other thing that I just love for no good reason is the sweet woodruff that is spreading like crazy under the holly tree. Just look how fresh and green and whole it emerges!