Gardening Archives - Page 14 of 82

Bzzzz April 15th, 2012

Each season around my garden seems to be dominated by a particular color or two. Fall is golden yellows and reds. Winter is shades of brown and grey, occasionally punctuated by the white of snow.

Once spring starts to emerge, yellow predominates, with daffodils spotting the lawn and the edges of the driveway. Later in the spring the purples emerge, with crocuses, irises, wisteria and baptisia blooming. Summer gives way to oranges and reds.

But, as with nearly all gardens, most of the year the backdrop color is green. Thank goodness green is such an interesting color, unlike, say, brown. Brown is, well, brown.

We are blessed to have woods surrounding the sunny, cleared area where our house and potager are situated. Although I didn’t initially know how to deal with the shade from the trees, over the past few years as I have learned more about shade plants, I have become more enamored with the possibilities of the shade garden.

The area near the chicken coop is now one of my favorites. (You may be able to tell, given how often I photograph this particular spot.) It started out as weeds. Then when we had a big dog, it was referred to as the Poop Garden. (Charming, no?) Later, it was just the chicken yard. Now, it is the Green Garden or, sometimes, the Hosta Garden.

In this area I have been collecting dozens of hosta varieties. The possibilities are endless! Blue Angel and Big Daddy hostas. Small Mouse Ears and Stiletto hostas. Lush Sum and Substance and Guacamole hostas. Someday when the Empress Wu hostas are four feet tall, they will be a focal point.

Tiarella, bleeding hearts, ferns and lamiums provide some variety. Flowering quince and deuzia are backdrop shrubs. I am training an edgeworthia into a standard. And although the paint on our kiwi green bench is now beginning to flake, I think I’ll wait another year to decide how to deal with the paint.

One year some golden-colored creeping Jenny escaped from a window box and made itself at home near the back deck. Being a fairly laissez-faire gardener, I let it be—and even encouraged its creepy habits by spreading it around. I rather like the look of it encroaching into the lawn. In fact, two years ago I was horrified when, in a frenzy of weeding zeal, my husband tried to eliminate it! (But that’s not so easy, my friend. So be careful about Jenny before allowing her to roam.)