Ilex verticillata ‘Winter Red’
Garden Trout
Imperata cylindrica ‘Red Baron’
Fargesia rufa ‘Green Panda’; Aspidistra elatior ‘Alahi’; Danae racemosa
Confused forsythia bloom
Gah!
August 27, 2016 by 5 Comments
I’m all for celebrating insect life in the garden, except when it’s something like this:
My son enjoys jumping past these azalea bushes in our front yard on the way to the front door. Luckily he spotted this behemoth before he brushed past it and angered its occupants.
Removing the hive was a scary process, but the denizens (which we surmised were Bald-faced Hornets) weren’t overly aggressive and luckily I didn’t get a single sting.
Later, we opened it up to investigate, and discovered the architecture of the hive: layers upon layers of thin walls protecting the eggs in the middle. We felt a bit guilty at having laid waste to this tiny society.
But sometimes the humans come first.
Franciscan Monastery
April 21, 2016 by 4 Comments
Parents’ House
January 22, 2016 by 3 Comments
Grapevine Christmas Tree
Family Pictures
Hymnal
Balloon Man
Dog Treats
Opening Presents
Cleaning Up
Leftovers
My Trip to Mount Cuba Center
May 10, 2014 by 9 Comments
Mount Cuba Center, in Hockessin, Delaware (near Wilmington), has long been on my garden visit bucket list. It is a paradise of native Piedmont plants, and an inspiration for all of us living in “suburban woodlands” here in the mid-Atlantic.
What I learned: the key to a great Woodland Garden is open shade. They had almost all of their big shade trees limbed way up, plus there were a lot of tulip poplars, which don’t have low limbs anyway. There was plenty of bright filtered light for the wildflowers to bloom in abundance.
Enjoy the photos!
You wish the woods in your neighborhood looked like this, instead of being smothered in invasive vines.
Redbud, Fothergilla, Tulip Tree
Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea), Red Buckeye (Aesculus pavia)
a native herbaceous clematis with adorable little nodding white flowers
Amethyst Shooting Stars (Dodecatheon amethystinum) with Quaker Ladies (Houstonia caerulea)
Allegheny Pachysandra (Pachysandra procumbens)
Dwarf Iris
A patch of dwarf Iris in blue — so cute
Flame Azalea bloom about to open.
Unfurling fern
Ferns emerging from Purple Phacelia (Phacelia bipinnatifida) plus some Wood Poppies and Bottlebrush Buckeye in the back.
They also had fauna.
Great combo! Golden Alexanders and Woodland Phlox (I think Phlox divaricata)
I overheard a very intelligent looking lady say this was Interrupted Fern
They have a lilac allee there, left over from the orginial duPont garden plan. Here is my sister taking a whiff. Mmmmm.
I love these raspberry colored primroses by the stream.
A view toward the meadow with Quaker Ladies in the foreground. I want to come back in the late summer to see the meadow in its glory.
Sculpture of a maple samara that actually moves in the wind — neat!
I believe this is a Southern Red Trillium (Trillium sulcatum) floating over a sea of Rue Anenome (Thalictrum thalictroides?)
Trillium grandiflorum Double Loop form
Trillium grandiflorum
Underwood’s Trillium (Trillium underwoodii)
Twisted Trillium (Trillium stamineum)
Trillium grandiflorum – pink form
A patch of trillium, I can’t remember which kind.
The circular formal garden (another remnant from the original duPont house) was planted out with electric blue delphiniums and the most fabulous array of peach, pink, and yellow tulips of different heights. Awesome!
Looking down at the tulips
Yellow Mandarin (Disporum lanuginosum). A unique perennial with delicate little yellowish flowers that hang down….hard to see with the green background.
Phlox stolonifera with Yellow Lady’s Slipper orchids
Woodland path with Purple Pharecia
Ferns, woodland phlox, trillium
Viola walteri ‘Silver Gem’ — a Mt. Cuba introduction
Virginia Bluebells, Wood Poppies, unfurling ferns
Dogwood path
Aromatherapy
June 6, 2013 by 48 Comments
Things have been rough at work lately. Test scores have plummetted, students are troubled, many teachers are talking mutiny or early retirement. Morale is generally in the toilet.
On the drive home from work, I find that stopping for a large chocolate chip cookie and a Frappuchino from Starbucks is often just the pick-me-up I need to transition from work to home, where I will be greeted by a gregarious old yellow lab and a still-very-wiggly seven-year-old boy, both of whom will be requesting play and attention. (The martini, slippers, and newspaper are nowhere in sight!)
Capability Gray
April 6, 2013 by 11 Comments
I may not be installing giant lakes, building fake temples, or displacing villages full of peasants, but I have been improvin’ my landscape lately, indeed I have.
First, an update on the play structure thingee I started building in February. To refresh your memory, here is what it looked like several weeks ago:
Garden Designers’ Roundtable: Memory and Plants
November 27, 2012 by 28 Comments
I’ll I’ll be honest. I had a hard time figuring out how to approach this topic. As I have mentioned before, I am New Dirt and not Old Dirt, meaning I do not come from a long line of gardeners, but rather picked up this obsession at age 36 with no influence from parents or grandparents. Like Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, my conversion to a life of gardening was sudden and complete. (Whether or not Constantine was pruning Euonymus at the time of his revelation, as I was, is not clear.)
