The Finished Product

Here’s what my new front-yard garden looks like. Kind of skimpy? Well, that’s OK. Plants grow and next year, and especially the year after that, this garden will look full and lush.
Starting from the left, here’s what is planted in it. Those lighter colored mounds at far left are ‘Silver Mound’ artemisia, a softly textured [...]

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Installing a Front-Yard Garden

Last fall, I marked off the area for a front-yard garden, something I’ve been wanting to do for a couple of years. Our front yard faces east and south and while we have planted some big trees, the corner in question gets baked by sun, and consequently, required watering all the time, and still the [...]

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Bloom Tuesday No. 3

Whoa…it must be late May because the blooms are popping–and my hands were freezing when I took these photos. Despite the colder than normal weather and a lack of rain in my area, the lilacs are in full flower (left, and also my new banner photo), the red-twig dogwoods (right) have started to bloom nicely, [...]

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A Bouquet of New Books

I’ve been so busy in the garden and with work that I haven’t had much time for garden-related reading, but four new books worth mentioning recently came my way.
Two of them are part of a series of regional gardening books put out by Lone Pine Publishing, a Washington-based publisher of gardening and how-to books. Herb [...]

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Fancy Plants

My fancy plants have arrived! I’ve had such hit-and-miss luck with plant starts sent through the mail that I pretty much swore off them this year. I’ve either grown things from seed (another hit-and-miss effort, but that’s a different story) or bought them from local nurseries. But when we ran a photo of Phoenix™ series [...]

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Butterfly Bush, R.I.P.

I could have titled this post “I pushed the zone and the zone pushed back.” Last spring, filled with thoughts of permanently warm and wimpy winters, I planted a butterfly bush (Buddleia ‘Nanho Purple’). It was supposed to grow up to 6 feet tall and be covered with long clusters of purple blooms from August [...]

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Bloom Tuesday

The prettiest plants in my garden today are the azaleas. These are ‘Pink Lights’ azaleas, part of the University of Minnesota’s Northern Lights series. The flower structure on these is so striking, like a series of horns playing off the center bud.
In the past, I’ve had trouble with the blooms blowing off the plant, just [...]

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Purple Sensation

The Purple Sensation allium (Allium aflatuence ‘Purple Sensation’) bulbs I planted last fall are starting to bloom. They are a bit shorter than the package promised–maybe 24 to 30 inches high compared to 44 or more. It’s likely they will grow taller in future seasons. They seem to like the spot where I placed [...]

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Cherry Blossom Time

The cherry blossoms–along with crabapple blossoms–are opening up all over Minnesota. My ‘Bali’ cherry tree began blossoming two days ago. It will look fluffy and white for a week or so before the cherries that ripen in late July or August begin to form. Bali (Prunus ‘Evans Bali’) is a variety developed in Canada, [...]

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Containing My Enthusiasm

“Uh, Mom, why is there a garden in our garage?” I heard that question the other day, as my college daughter surveyed the landscape of plants in flats and nursery pots that consumed half of our garage. The truth is my enthusiasm for plant buying–from the church youth group, several nurseries, and two local [...]

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