Yummy Daphne By Front Steps

Daphne is one of my all time favorite shrubs.  It is a fragrant, evergreen shrub with beautiful little snowball blooms.  To call it a Spring Bloomer works this year, though often it is in full bloom in February.  This year, since we had no warm days in February, it waited until March to open but still had the wonderful fragrance.  I love to place daphne by a walkway or entry so people can enjoy the fragrance, even if they have to hurry past in the cold winter!  A few words of caution about daphne . . . it is finiky.  Pick a spot and stick with it.  Daphne does not like to be moved!  And make sure the spot is not too wet – I had one by a leaky hose and it drowned after one day of children running through the sprinkler.  And, finally, don’t be surprised if it just decides to die for no reason.  It just does that sometimes.  Luckily it is a pretty fast grower so you can replace it with a small one and know that it’ll catch up in no time! 

Camellia Japonica in Full Bloom

The Camellia is another favorite of mine.  You just can’t beat the evergreen foliage, the perfect size, and the beautiful blooms.  I try to select Camellia cultivars that bloom a little later in the season . . . if camellias bloom too early, they can get bitten by the frost and you have really well formed brown blooms all over your shrub!  I really try to place plants in the landscape you can cut from to bring flowers and foliage inside . . . the camellia has excellent cut flowers, either to float a single bloom or to cut large branches of flowers.

My lilac is going to break out any day . . . I’ll upload some pictures as soon as it blooms.  The lilac is one of my favorite early spring bloomers, with wonderfully fragrant flowers that can make the whole room smell good through an open window!  Give lilac plenty of room to grow – it does not like to be pruned, prefering to bloom on 2 year wood.  If you must prune lilac, do so right after it blooms.

Time to trim last year's growth

Ready to clean up your evergreen perennials?  Take a look at these hellebores (lenten roses) in my yard.  Now is the time to prune your hellebores.  When the blooms emerge, last year’s growth will begin to lie flat on the ground.  These old, woody leaves are the ones to cut off so the new blooms and leaves can spread out and show their beauty.  Take a look at the “after”

Helleborus (lenten rose) after pruning

Trim your liriope now!

It’s time for garden grooming!  Don’t forget to trim your monkey grass (liriope) so the new growth can push through this Spring! 

Trimming monkey grass:  I only have a little bit of liriope, so I trim it by hand and just cut it back to 2-3″ from the ground.  If you need to trim a lot of monkey grass, go ahead and use the weed eater and whack it all back.  Make sure you trim before the new growth has come in.  If you’re a little late trimming the monkey grass, just be careful not to cut the ends of the new growth off or you’ll be looking at jagged, ripped ends all season!

Beautiful Hydrangea

There’s a foot of snow on the ground.  Come on – how can we be thinking of our hydrangea blooms??  Well, I can’t think of much else.  Sitting here, staring at the fire, I know Spring will be coming around the corner soon . . . So I’m not going to hide indoors much more.  One of the things I love about gardening is the feeling of hope.  I still cross my fingers each year in hopes that my favorite plants will do what I want!  That feeling of hope is what’s getting me through this crazy snowy winter. 

Let me explain – I have been hoping for big, pink hydrangea blooms next year.  The acidity of the soil around Virginia gives us blue blooms naturally, so we have to change the ph of the soil to get the pink ones.  The soil has to be ammended to make it more alkaline.  And this is what I’m thinking as the 16th inch of snow is falling outside my window.  Staring at the fire, thinking of hydrangea blooms.  That takes me to my beauty shot of my little slice of hydrangea heaven.

Ashes, Ashes . . .

Nice, right.  What is that nasty stuff all over those dead canes, you say?  Remember the fire?  The pink blooms?  Those are the ashes from the fireplace, a great soil ammendment to raise the ph of the soil.  Now, this is not something you should do often, but I heaved a nice load of wood ashes around the site and, fingers crossed, they should slowly leach into the soil and start the pinking up my blooms. 

Here’s to Hope!  I’ll keep you posted as the blooms come out.

And, by the way, if you have a few extra ashes, go ahead and sprinkle them around your boxwood.  They like less acidic soil too.  But don’t get crazy.  A little bit each season is all you would want to do – remember I said sprinkle!

And one more note on the hydrangea.  I have the “Endless Summer” repeat blooming veriety, so I trim my canes back in the winter to about 10″ above the ground.  The newer varieties bloom on old and new wood so it’s safe to do this and know you’ll get blooms next summer.  If you’re not sure what variety you have, it’s better to be safe and leave the plants intact. 

Here’s to hoping!

A few words about composting – no, it does not stink.  And yes, it is very, very easy.  And don’t worry, it does not take up much space. 

See how small and simple my compost bin is!

I have very limited space in my garden so I chose a simple composting bin with a bottom drawer to extract the yummy, nutrient rich dirt.  The process I use is very easy.  Whenever I’m cooking or fixing foods with fresh vegetables or fruits, I pull out an extra bowl, put all the scraps into it as I go, add the coffee filter and grounds from that morning, and walk it out to the composter right away.  I don’t want to have a bin on my counter, though there are some really pretty ones.  I know myself well enough to know that if I have a bin, it won’t get emptied often enough and will get yukky fast, so I keep my composter fairly close to the back door (remember, it does not stink) and just fill as I go.  I also have my husband trained to drop any old leaves or clippings into the composter.  No sticks, though.  I caught him trying to put sticks in there on Saturday.  It takes a long time for a stick to break down and I like instant gratification!

Composting is best done in layers of live and dead materials, which is why I mix in the coffee greens (dead/brown material) with the fruit and veggie scraps (live/green material).  It is best to mix more brown material than green material at about a 3:1 ratio.  That’s a lot of coffee, even for me so I work to add dead leaves, old pots of soil, grass clippings, and other brown materials from the yard.  If you’re good about layering the brown and green materials as you go, you really don’t need to mix the compost much.  If you’re light on brown materials, pulling some of the mature compost from the bottom and starting if over at the top of the bin can help.  But no pressure on the mixing, I think that can be a deal breaker for a composting rookie, so don’t let that stress you out if you just want to add stuff into the top. 

Give it a try.  I promise composting is easy.  And remember, it does not stink!  There is no easier way to green up your world a little bit – and your plants will reward you with all kinds of beautiful blooms!

The rear courtyard started as a small yard where no grass could grow.  The only use it had was the sidewalk that went from the rear door to the parking space.  The homeowners wanted a space they could use to entertain and enjoy the outdoors in this city courtyard.  We had to take advantage of every inch of space and really wanted to have plenty of plants to warm the area up.  Every bit of bed space was treated as a container, filled with the lots of plant material.

We created a raised bed which doubled as a seat wall to give more space for guests.  The camellias will grow up a bit more to shield the neighboring courtyard.  The Japanese Maple is beautiful in all seasons – the dissected leaves can be appreciated up close in summer; in winter, the tree’s structure is beautiful and in fall the vibrant leaves will turn and add another dimension to the garden.

Inspiration for curves

Work in Progress

I had to include this shot just because I think it is so neat to watch the stone masons in action.  Something that is so solid when it is complete – and they make it look easy! 

Beautiful Large Container Screens Trashcans

As you can see, the trashcans are in close proximity to the seating area on this lovely patio.  We all have trash, lawn equipment, toys, or some form of gear that we’d like to hide.  A larger container planted with evergreen can provide a screen if your yard does not lend itself to separate storage and relaxing spaces.  All that needs to be changed in this container is the underplanting – seasonal annuals can be added twice a year for about $20. 

While the container does not create a full visual block, it is pretty enough that your eye will stop at the container and your guests can look at the flowers and not the bikes behind!  It’s a lot like putting out fresh flowers at home if you haven’t had time to dust!

The groundcover will fill in to create a lush, green bed

This small city garden has an exact match on the other side of the steps.  The symetrical front gardens on this home will give a nice green buffer between the sidewalk and the front porch.  There is some pedestrian traffic in front of the home so the garden provides a visual buffer and gives a bit of shade to someone sitting on the front porch.  The space is still open and inviting with a smaller variety of crepe myrtle  so the branches will grow up and out of the way of people on the steps and porch but not overwhelm the small bed.

I love the Green Velvet Boxwood for their rounded form.  It gives a nice structure to the bed and the pachysandra will seem like a thick, green carpet that the round boxwoods sit down in.

The walls were existing to the space but I love the simple parge coating on the block with the bluestone caps to give it a feel of formality that matches the brick stoop beautifully.

New Plantings

Most people look at this picture and see lots of cute new little plants. I look at it and think tons of things at once:

• Of the beautiful blooms the redbud will have when the neighboring dogwoods are in bloom
• How happy a visitor will be when they step out of their car and smell the gardenia bushes
• How fun it will be to clip hydrangea from the shrubs, never mind how pretty they’ll look mature, in bloom and spilling around the curve
• How yummy the daphne will smell like when visitors are walking up the front walk in the middle of a February thaw
• And finally, that hopefully a neighbor or the homeowner or someone who walks regularly in the neighborhood will love seeing a different plant in full glory every month of the year.