November sun is good.

I stumbled out the door this morning with the dogs to find an inch or so of wet snow on the ground. Then we lost power from 6 to 7:15 a.m. Fortunately it got light enough to shoot some pix before we got lights, water and heat back.

The usual scenes for the time-lapse stack…

The grasses went down in some crazy patterns. (They bounced back by the time I got home from work.)

The 12-foot Miscanthus floridulus came down to around 5 feet.

A normally completely upright willow weighted down.

It’s official. It’s fall. The signs are everywhere.

I can’t wait to add some fall pix to my time-lapse stack.

Love the way this hybrid hazelnut colors up next to the driveway.

The ornamental grasses are coming into their own.

More colchicum. Looks like I have four decent patches, three different varieties.

Aconitum (monkshood) finally flowering, a sure sign of fall.

Elephant ears starting to lose their chlorophyll, with a little backlighting.

Here’s my entry in this month’s Picture This photo contest at Gardening Gone Wild. Click on images for larger view

I almost entered this one, because it’s hard to do justice to an ornamental grass planting in a 500-pixel-wide image.

Here are some more ornamental grass images.

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This afternoon, my garden buddy Lynn from Sin City to Slaterville stopped by for some Joe-Pye weed (or as she prefers boneset) to plant in her ditch.

I’m more than happy to share. It’s not like it’s scarce around here. In fact, the plant defines this place with it’s wet soils along the wetland. I’ve got several cultivars planted around the place. But I’m fond of the wild…

Bowed by the rain, it bounced back just fine.

Plenty o’Joe-Pye out into the wetland.

Eupatorium and Solidago go great together.

Just some pix from the weekend …

I returned the veggie garden to respectability. It had really gotten out of hand. But now the oats and peas I put on the garlic beds two or three weeks ago look great and I cleaned up some bed that were in ‘weed cover crop’ mode and planted some fall greens. Not too shabby.

Grass border coming into its own.

Turtleheads (Chelone obliqua) and more in the wet patch.

Weird leaflet on a young locust tree.

Lots of yellow flower (again, still). Helianthus …

Rudbeckia …

Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Hortensia’ (Outhouse Plant, Golden Glow). The deer hit them pretty hard this year, for the first time. But they still look OK.

Apologies for the sparse posting lately. Life has been hectic. Here are some images from a quick walkaround on Saturday morning.

Heuchera flowers.

Clematis

Pulling back, lots more purple with the clematis: Hosta, Astilbe

South bed: Echiinacea, Daucus, geraniums, amorphophallus, coleus.

Same bed, opposite angle.

Aloe flowering. First time that’s happened to me. Guess it will die and the pups will take over in that pot?

Closer …

Paeonia tenuifolia blooms twice.

Rescued Pepperomia.

Barber-polish.

I don’t like pink all that much. But every year I wait for Filipendula rubra ‘Venusta’ to bring back memories of cotton candy at the fair.

Spotted these in the historic Minns Garden, outside the Plant Science Building.  Am trying to pull a video together about these.  Stay tuned.

Filipendula

Because it grows upon a lattice,
Some folks call it cle-MA-tis.
But Noah Webster will moan and piss,
If you don’t call it clem-a-TIS.

Lots of mid-summer perennials are flowering now …

Ligularia

Monarda and Lysimachia

More weekend pix on the next page.

Come visit the flower research and demonstration area at the Department of Horticulture’s Bluegrass Lane Research facility, featuring more than 1,000 varieties of perennial and annual flowers — many new or just coming onto the market.

Everyone is welcome from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on July 25 and 26. Bluegrass Lane is located off Warren Rd. near the Robert Trent Jones golf course northeast of campus. (See map.)

For more information, contact Melissa Kitchen: mjb239@cornell.edu

For a preview, visit the Bluegrass Lane Annual Flower Trials website.

Wet and stormy week. Those lovely volunteer grass patches I posted about a week ago went down. So did my Scotch thisltes, which has never happened before. (But that happenstance has me working on a Plan B pruning plan that could transform Scotch thistles from an architectural skyscraper of a plant to a prostate groundcover. More on that later.)

A week ago:

Gotta go weed…

Coleus

Astilboides tabularis, tradescantia, Oenothera tetragona.

Whiskey barrel water garden.

Goatsbeard (Aruncus).

Lysimachia.

Japanese tree lilca (Syringa reticulata)

I don’t stake anything other than tomatoes. It rains alot this time of year. The results are predictable.

They’s still fragrant and fabulous, even if you have to get down close to take them in.

Sometimes it’s what you don’t do that counts.

The west edge of my water garden has subsided. That nice patch of lawn you see Jade standing on in my banner image has, for the past couple of years, been soggy right straight through the summer. So this summer, I decided not to fight it so hard and let a couple of patches go unmowed. Now I have a couple of nice drifts of not-too-shabby but unidentified grass growing there. One friend commented about how it enhanced the water garden from a distance by partly obscuring its rectilinear outline.

Shot a bunch of close-ups of the grass. (Can anyone ID it?) But I’m too lazy tonight to decide which I like best.

A couple weeks ago, I picked up a monopod for $15 at a big box store. I finally hauled it out the other day and I have to say that it makes a huge difference. I get much less shake under low light/long exposures.

No, I’m not talking about that little kerfuffle with Kerr-McGee back in the ’80s.

There’s areason that radioactive waste signs are purple and yellow. Purple and yellow are complementary colors — colors on opposite sides of the color wheel — like red and green or orange and blue.

They compete for the attention of the eye, and so accentuate each other when located close together.  On radioactive waste signs, they screem for attention.

If I were a better designer, I’d take advantage of that. But I do notice when it occurs by happenstance.

Euphorbia and allium…

Purple (columbine) and orange (coral bells) have similar effect, though they aren’t exactly opposites on the color wheel.

Tradescantia with its own purple flowers and some columbine nearby …

More purples that I should team up with some yellows. Geranium … [Update: That’s Geranium renardii “Nätnäva”, judging by pix from Ken in Sweden.]

Closer …

Chives and cow parsnip.

As a kid, I used to take chunks of all four glow-in-the-dark colors of Play-Doh and work them in to one lump. I’d keep kneading that lump until the colors formed psychedelic patterns. My very own hunk of Peter Max. But if you worked that hunk too much, the colors all blended together to dull gray.

What’s that got to do with Nectaroscordum siculum ssp. bulgaricum, my favorite flower this time of the year? From a distance, it’s pretty homely. All the subtle colors blend together and the eye turns them to a barely noticeable grayish green. But if you get up close, it’s a mixed sherbet delight. The colors also change dramatically depending on the light.

The structure is a bonus — interesting enough to inspire this sculpture from some pictures I took I took last year.

More Nectaroscordum siculum ssp. bulgaricum than you probably want to see. But hey. It’s a favorite…

Late-spring/early summer has been whizzing by. Life’s been busy and haven’t had a chance to take many pix. And I’ve been slow to get them onto the blog. Here are some random shots to get caught up.

I notice that I’m shooting a lot of ’tilted’ shots. (The house in the background is the biggest giveaway.) Not sure why. I don’t think I’m doing it on purpose. I guess I just don’t feel obligated to level the camera any more.

Lupines and bunching onions in the veggie garden. (No I don’t eat the lupines. They’re joost for pretty.)

South bed, morning light.

Variegated Solomon’s seal, evening light.

Water lilly, Secret Garden outside Plant Sciences

Veronica ‘Royal Candles’, artemisia, verbascum.

Fast becoming one of my favorites as it spreads politely (so far). And I don’t like orange. As with Nectaroscordum siculum ssp. bulgaricum (pix coming later this week), it’s the range of colors in a single plant that amazes.

The usual moving closer series …

Secret Garden outside Plant ScienceBuilding:

Minns Garden outside Plant Science Building:

In my whiskey barrel water garden:

Same in the morning dew:

Late spring (probably too soon to say early summer, what with a light frost in the low spots last night) flowers.

I’m starting to appreciate camassia

Closer

Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’

Closer

Rescued sakurosah primroses in an old enamel bowl.

Front gardens. Chartrusey tradescantia and creeping jenny work the evening light well.

Better late than never.  No lull in the action here. Thanks to Carol at May Dreams Garden for hosting.

Late tulips …

Other late spring bulbs, including cammasia and leucojum ,,,

Primroses (and a little lily of the valley) …

And the rest of the late spring blooms …

Saxton Holt inspired me to move in close to subjects this spring. Now I’m slowly learning to move back as the scenery expands to vignettes and landscapes.

Purple drumstick …

… and yellow.

If memory serves, this is a Paeonia tenuifolia I grew from seed. Ants on the bud already.

Lamium

Mertensia

Violas amongst bulb foliage.

One of my favorites …

Mertensia

Epimedium

Frittilaria

A few years ago, I read an authoritative book on perennials published circa 1955. It panned a plant (maybe Lysimachia punctata) as merely contributing to the ’surfeit of yellow’ that comes with spring. Like Nan over at Hayefield (Hello Yellow) the yellows and ‘ serious chartreuse’ of this time of year are warm and welcome.

Caltha palustris. Note deer that Jade did not chase away.

A patch of artemisia, the maple leafing out, the neighbor’s willow, tulips at the base of the maple, and those things that kind of look like Doronicums (Leopard’s bane) coming up in the lawn.

Close-up of the artemisia. It grows dull as the season progresses.

An annual ritual around here is the open house hosted by Nina Bassuk, woody plant specialist in the Department of Horticulture where I work, and her husband Peter Trowbridge, chair of the Landscape Architecture Department. They’ve planted something like 60,000+ daffodils over the years. And there are always some other interesting things to see at their place.

Another plant that I find difficult to shoot. In the camera, it looks best in the morning with softer light (first images). In the eye, I like it in afternoon light (later images).

Drumstick emerging.

Maroonish finally peaking.

Bonus: Epimediu. Still working on how to capture this plant.

Epimedium

Daffs

Species tulip

Steve Silk’s post on plume poppies at Gardening Gone Wild made me realize how much I take this great plant for granted. Evidence of that: I had to search high and low on my hard drive to find even one picture, the PhotoShop filtered image above of an allium with the plume poppy foliage in the background.

Echoing Steve, I love the leaves with their cut edges. My main patch is across the living room from my desk, where that foliage is framed in a window and helps block the busy road out front.

On the north side of the house, it’s maybe not as aggressive as it might be in a spot with better sun and soil. I pluck a few stray runners early in the season to keep it in bounds. It’s not the rampant hog some told me it would be when I first planted it. (I like a plant that can hold its own.) But the plumes do rise up about 7 feet.

I’ve got a real hell strip about 2 feet wide between the driveway and house with the worst soil on the place where it tops off at about 4 feet. It has a totally different character there.

If anyone wants a start, stop by.

You might want to start with Part 1.

July

July started with a rare vacation away from home, to my brother’s lake house to celebrate my Dad’s 80th. On the boat with my sister Cheryl and wife Elly …

With Cheryl and Alex after a good morning of striper fishing.

Back home, it’s midsummer and there are lots of great serendipitous plant combos to enjoy, in the wet garden …

… and front garden.

Enough plant material to do bloom day scans in four different color schemes.

Out in the garden, lilies …

The rusty favorite, Digitalis ferruginea

Exploring backlighting.

Lots of gaudy flowers to shoot. Hibsicus at Cornell Plantations …

Filipendula.

Lily

Plus my 15 minutes of fame in USA Weekend.

August

Jade rolling under a double rainbow ’bout sums up my feelings about August.

Larger image.

They say things start slowing down in the garden in August. Can’t say I’ve noticed that. There’s lots growing around the patio, but still not much time to sit.

Still plenty of flowers to shoot, including Daylilies, purple …

… and yellow …

… Rosa ‘Princess Di’ …

… buttonbush …

…globe thistle …

… water lily …

One of the bloom day scans for the month.

I also defended heucheras.

August has nice sunsets, too.

September

OK. The pace does start to slow in September. But it’s still one of the best times of year in these parts, if not the most floriferous.

The colors are more subtle, like this anemone.

My favorite bloom day scan featured grasses, not blooms.

I featured my four (that’s a stretch) water gardens in the month’s Garden Bloggers Design Workshop.

And on a rainy day, I discovered blingee.

October

October is the month of frost and fall color. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still some flowers around, like my fall favorites, anemones.

Abutilon pictum ‘Thompsonii’

Grasses carry the weight in October.

Fall colors start coming with Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’

Ivy outside campus store.

First frosts provide great photo opps …
Asian pear in the veggie garden.

Pitcher plant

Backlit grasses usher in brown season.

November

Fall color is where you find it, like this pitcher plant …

… and this bittersweet and borrowed scenery.

When there’s less to see looking down, you appreciate more the view looking up.

January came in November [impressions | the real thing]

I visited the Winter Garden at Cornell Plantations as the light was waning.

December

Check out the student projects from Cornell’s Art of Horticulture class.

Glowing greenhouses make leaving work after dark a little less depressing during these SAD-inducing months.

And I’ve now got a passable scan for December for my planned 2010 garden scan calendar.

Thanks for visiting and commenting. Best wishes for the New Year.

The obligatory (and hopefully entertaining) look back …

January

Not much happening in the garden, so it was a good time to think about ordering seeds and plants (unfortunately, they’re more than 5 cents a pack these days, unlike these old packs) and sharing stories about the great bowling ball accident of 2003.

While there were no blooms (or scans), there was surprisingly much to photograph on a very warm January garden bloogers bloom day.

February

February is for forcing.

And time to fiddle around with PhotoShopping that month’s bloom day scans and chase away the merry blues with Manu Chao.

Had a sunset picture grace a CD cover.

Read and reviewed Tulipomania. Added my two cents (and a ton of pictures) to the Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop – Color in the Garden edition.

March

I love March, if only for its excitement. There are the forced bulbs in flower …

The first of the spring ephemerals …

Then back to winter, hell and high water.

By Easter, plenty of signs that spring is on it’s way …

Then more snow. There’s a reason they’re called snowdrops, you know.

April

Speaking of snowdrops, April brought the open house at snowdrop collector Hitch Lyman’s garden.

And the spring ephemeral peak at my place. Crocus …

Puschkinia.

Hyper-spring also brings scilla …

… and erythronium.

And by the end of the month, a bazillion daffodils, these at Nina Bassuk and Peter Trowbridge’s annual open house.

May

Spring continues full bore. Purple primrose …

Thalia daffs …

Sakuraso primrose …

…an iris from Marcia’s garden …

… and many more in this bloom day scan.

In the world of art, Quilter Lisa Ellis used one of my canna images for this work of art …

… Cornell students built this Turfwork! project …

… and Durand Van Doran built this fabulous floral gate — roots and all — in Minns Garden outside the building where I work.

And we are reminded that there’s nothing new under the sun.

June

Some theme posts in June, because there’s so much to cover you’ve got to do some lumping. One on openings …

,,, another on chartreusey stuff …

… too many blooms on bloom day to fit onto one scan …

… actual bloom day pictures to go with the scans …

… East Digitalistan …

… and decent images of aruncus (finally!) …

… summer songs …

Mussolini was a-shavin’ whistlin’ tarantella,
Stalin was keeping eye on barbeque.
When their fish line bell started to jingle,
Mussolini caught a-nothin’, Stalin caught two.

On the art front, Cornell graduation turf art …

I tried to push back on the bland reporting on leaf casts in the garden media, and reported on the infamous Memorial Day jello contest.

As we head into the second half of the year, these alliums in Minns Garden outside the building where I work are all ready for 4th of July fireworks.

Part 2 starts here …

Just some photos from our pre-holiday snow that got lost in the holiday hubbub.

Snowcapped bottles and phomis.

Snowcapped grasses.

Snowcapped monarda.

Snowcapped sedum — the best reason not to cut it back in fall.

Hat tip to Nan at Gardening Gone Wild for passing along the link to Le Jardin Plume, in particular this gallery.

I have no delusions that I’ll ever have the design sense or level of control they have. But it’s one of the first great gardens I’ve looked at and said to myself, I can grow most of those (or reasonably close facsimiles) on a large scale.

So my 2009 gardening resolutions (a little early) …

• Focus plant purchases on new and interesting ornamental grasses.
• Start dividing and spreading around the grasses that I already have that I like.
• Plant the Sanguisorba tenufolia seed I collected this year instead of leaving it in an envelope for three years like I do with most seed I save.
• See if I can start getting the Verbena hastata (it’s a freakin’ weed around here) to grow kind of where I want it to.
• Start figuring out how I can slam all these into one big planting along with some eupatoriums, various vebascums and some other biennials in one big mass.

Have to PhotoShop some images together to see what it might look like. Can’t wait to get started.

Verbena hastata

Darn close to single digits this morning. What’s a gardener to do? Take some pictures, I guess. Click on images for larger view.

Clump of alders near the stream.

Same clump, closer with old apple in background.

Poplar, apple and maple.

Miscanthus leaves.

Molinia seedheads.

A more abstract view of this morning’s icy conditions.

Not much flowering around here now. A few violas. Thought I should capture some of the foliage and fuzz before they’re gone. Expect mostly seedheads and buds for the next three months.

Ornamental grass (a passalong, don’t know the species) in the bed along the driveway. Up close, then moving out.

I love how ornamental grasses curve and curl as they dry this time of year.

Must. Not. Obsess. Over. Early. Results.

Fortunately, I have a relaxing hobby.

Pix from frosty morning last weekend…

Asian pear. Compare with frost-edged two weeks ago.

Birdsnest spruce.

Verbascum. Rosettes of foliage are a plus for biennials in fall.

Potted violas. These have been flowering continously since early spring.

Grass seedheads look frosty even after the day warms.

OK. Back to gardening for awhile.

These two water-garden plants are at their best now.

Some lingering pix from last weekend.

More backlit grasses.

Filipendula seedheads

Ligularia seedheads

I take the campus colors for granted, but have started carrying a camera around with me.

Ivy outside campus store.

Libe Slope looking south.

Libe slope looking north.

My favorite tree on the slope. I actually took this a few years ago, but it looked exactly the same today.

Grass, Minns Garden.

Hidden garden outside Plant Science.

Dogwood outside Plant Science.

Japanese maple outside Plant Science.

Closer.

And of course, more anemones in the Hidden Garden.

We had our first hard frost last night. (28F on the porch thermometer.) That makes for a busy morning with the camera before and shortly after sunrise.

Asian pear in the veggie garden.

Bottle tree and phlomis seedheads.

Curly willow.

Filipendula leaves.

Filipendula seedhead.

Grasses.

Joe pie weed.

Unknown tree in the nursery bed.

Molinia and Joe-pie weed.

Monarda seedhead.

Monkshood.

Pitcher plant

Ornamental grass.

Dwarf filipendula and heuchera. Lotsa shake. (It was still pretty dark out.) But kinda cool.

Veggie garden. (Rye cover crops, mulched garlic.)

Viburnum.

I like Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’. But I love it when it first emerges and when it starts to die back.

Quick picture purge, mostly of the grassy border yesterday …

Volunteer sumac. Never had much luck with the cutleaf variety. But I’ll settle for the species. They’re a lot cheaper ;-7

A second flower bulb labyrinth went in at Bluegrass Lane last week. Here is a high-angle shot of construction, courtesy of Bob Chiang, Landmark Images.

More of Bob’s high angle shots of labyrinth construction.

Ground-level shot of finished labyrinth.

More from the weekend image dump …

Abutilon pictum ‘Thompsonii’ (I think. Finally looked it up tonight by googling variegated abutilon and mostly got images from my own blog.  And discovered I’d been misspelling it all these years.)

Slightly different view.

Up close.

Bittersweet

Sanguisorba tenuifolia (Burnet)

More image dumps from the weekend…

Monkshood

Monkshood up close

The floating clouds of fall sedums. Piet Oudolf is big on umbel and umbel-like inflorescences. Note to self: I need more.

I’ve got a nice patch of a cute little allium I thought I’d lost in the rock garden. Hard to shoot.

And, of course, some more anemones

A couple of fare-to-middlin’ frosts. It’s starting to feel like fall, what with moving pots to shelter and bulb- and garlic planting.

Water garden in morning sun with mist rising off beaver pond.

The (mostly) grass border along the north edge of the veggie garden.

Wish I remembered the cultivar on this grass.

Frosted phlomis seedheads.

Frost on dahlia.

My favorite mixed container this year. Looks better now that I pulled it out of the weeds.

And the obligatory ridge at sunrise.

Anemones continue to be my favorite fall flower. These are from the ’secret garden’ tucked into a courtyard near the Liberty Hyde Bailey Conservatory on the south side of the Plant Science building at Cornell. Click images larger views.

See also:

• More purples and violets
• Anemones in the hidden garden

A little early.  Because I have time now, and maybe not later.

Having recently posted about managing expectations with heucheras (Graham Rice blogs about some tough new introductions coming next year), I thought it might be nice to try to scan them. (There are some heucherallas in the mix, too.) I didn’t dry them off first, so there’s some harsh reflection off the water on the leaves and scanner bed.

Warm blooms.

Pinks and purples.

Grasses. Tough to capture them on a little scanner bed.

A few shots of early fall flowers from last weekend.

Calamagrostis xacutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ (I think) and Sanguisorba tenuifolia. I’m usually lazy about checking names (heck, remembering names). But tonight I did a google search for Sanguisorba tenufolia and got a video of said plant waving in the breeze in front of my house from last year. I also realized that I again tried to leave out the i in tenuifolia.

Ironweed (Vernonia), goldenrod and Sorbaria, which keeps throwing out flowers.

Up close on the ironweed.

Bee working turtlehead (Chelone). Saw a bunch of white turtleheads along the edge of Owasco Inlet while canoeing there last weekend. I actually think I like the white better.

Over the last weekend or two, I’ve realized once again that I seem to have an attraction for purples and violets. Click images for larger view.

After telling my country neighbor Lynn not to get her hopes up about anemones (due to my experiences with them as deer candy), a couple of forgotten plants snuck out of the thicket and started blooming. Am hoping all those buds break before bambi finds them.

Another hibiscus coming into flower in the bog garden.

A sedum (spp. unknown) in a trough out front.

And of course there are still coneflowers blooming, this one a little later in a little shadier location.

There’s been much gnashing of teeth over heucheras lately. Nan sang the Heuchera Blues over at Gardening Gone Wild recently, concluding, “A few years ago, I tried to change my expectations and think of the fantastic foliage heucheras as just really expensive annuals.”

I’ve changed my expectations, too.

I’ve always been skeptical of catalogs. But for some reason I suspended that disbelief for heucheras (and tiarellas and heucherellas) when I first discovered them. I thought that I could grow bushel-basket-sized plants just like the pictures in the catalogs. But I soon learned that Upstate New York is not the Pacific Northwest. I like to focus on plants that want to grow here. And heucheras are reluctant residents here.

Why? Probably the biggest factor is my heavy clay soil that heaves during our increasingly open and variable winters. Even where I’ve greatly improved the soil, it’s a late-winter ritual to look for heaved heucheras and shove them back into still frosty soil before their roots dry out. I’ve also got some in dry shade which they really don’t seem to like much during summer, since I don’t water ornamentals in the ground once established.

Unlike Nan, I don’t treat them like annuals. But now I look at them as woodland jewels — much the same way I think of minor bulbs. From time to time, I get down on my hands an knees, pluck off a few ratty leaves and behold what’s left and say, ‘That’s really cool.’

And I try not to grow them as specimen plants. They are usually surrounded by sweet woodruff, lamiums or other shade-loving groundcovers. That way, they don’t stick out like a sore thumb when they aren’t looking their best.

This is one of the few whose names I remember, H. ‘Monet’. Though it’s stayes small, it’s hung on for several years now. Looks better in person.

One year, I collected a bunch of seed from the half-dozen or so store-bought heucheras I had in a patch (most long-gone now) and planted the mixed seed in cells. I got a dozen or so plants that I planted in a shady patch I call ‘Craig’s Mix’ on the north side of the house where they usually struggle under the shade of a massive bleeding heart. These are my favorites.

More ‘Craig’s Mix’.

Still more ‘Craig’s Mix’.

If memory serves, this is Heucherella ‘Kimono’. The foliage reminds me of some geraniums.

I’ve also got many heucheras with purple and brownish foliage, though I don’t like them nearly as much as the green ones touched with silver and red.

So even if you can’t grow massive heucheras, do grow some. And get down on your knees and be thankful for what you get.

Some nice light last night, so I tried to shoot some plants that I’ve found hard to shoot. Like some humorous stories, with certain plants, you just have to be there.

Molinia ‘Skyracer’ (I think. Could be ‘Skywalker’.)

Close up of same.

Polygonum amplexicaule ‘Firetail’

Malva errrr Hibiscus moscheutos

Globe thistle (Echinops ritro)

Pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea?)

Just the usual pix from a quick Sunday walkaround …

I don’t normally go in for the ‘vignette’ shot. Mostly because I have a hard time filling the viewfinder with a medium-range subject without having something truly ugly or frightening intruding on the scene. But I looked up and saw this and it was almost garden-worthy.

Bee on globe thistle.

Pink Malva.

Yellow water lilly

And the same up close

In honor of the Olympics and county fair season, Mary Ann Newcomer at Idaho Gardener has organized a kind of online Gardening Olympiad with real prizes. (See Olympic Medal Event: Gardeners face off for Gold-Silver-Bronze!. Hurry. Deadline of entries is midnight tonight.)

I’m not much into competitive gardening — earliest tomato, biggest pumpkin and the like. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the skill and drive of some gardeners to excel. It’s just that the only prize I’d win is weediest garden or worst color combo.

So I wasn’t sure what to enter. I’ve got a lot of pretty stuff that I share here on a regular basis. But I really don’t like to put aesthetics into competition. I cringe at the gymnastic judging at the Olympics. Sure. A stumble here or awkward landing there might make someone think that one performance should be judged better than another. But I think they’re all beautiful in their own way.

So, maybe it’s a guy thing. But if we’re going to actually have a contest, it should be something that can be objectively measured — like in the pool or on the track. With that in mind, below are my three entries for Tallest Herbaceous Perennial, Zone 5.

Keep in mind, we aren’t in the tropics here. Last frost is late May or early June. Falls have been long and warm into October the last few years. But some years I’ve had frost before Labor Day.

Note the 4-foot-tall bronze marker (used to measure snow depth usually) at the base of each. Click images for larger view.

Bronze: Ironweed (Vernonia, V. noveboracensis, I think). It’s topped out between 7 and 8 feet. I’ve had it grow slightly taller in years past. Can’t wait for the purple flowers to open. Most years, Eupatorium purpureum ‘Joe White’ would have easily gotten the bronze here. But I divided it this spring and it’s topping out around 7 feet while it recovers this year. I’d expect it to top 8 feet most years.

Silver: Inula (not sure of species, I. helenium maybe?) This plant easily broke 8 feet this year in part shade. Another patch in full sun is almost as tall. Yeah, those leaves at the base are more than 4 feet long.

Gold: This year and every year, it goes to Miscanthus floridulus (Giant Chinese Silver Grass aka Miscanthus ‘Giganteus’ and Miscanthus japonicus). It doesn’t really start growing until the soil starts warming up in June. But it’s up to 10 feet now and will probably go another couple of feed and start putting out seedheads if the weather stays warm. Makes a nice screen from the road.

Oh, there’s some tired ‘reach for the sky’ or ‘the sky’s the limit’ Olympic-spirit closing line that would sinch me a medal like sticking the landing. But I won’t go there.

Thanks for a fun idea, Mary Ann.

I was in a hurry doing my scans this week. I think they look like crap. (They’re at the end.)

But there are details within each that look OK. So they’re first.

Click on images for larger view.

Cool detail:

Warm detail:

White detail:

And another white detail:

A few real pix before the full (awful) scans. Joe-pye weed (wild patch):

Lily:

Rosa ‘Princess Di’:

Canna:

And the original scans, warm:

Cool:

White:

This is my post for the August edition of the Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop - Trellises and Screens.

We seldom use our front door. But it — and our living room — sit about 35 feet from a busy rural ‘connector’ road. It’s the shortcut for commuters traveling from the east to Cornell University, which employs about 10,000 people, not counting the construction workers.

When we moved in here in 1999, there were three spruces (none taller than I am) between us and the traffic. We lost one in the midnight bowling ball accident of 2003. At that post, you can see the bare ‘before’ pictures from the year we moved in.

Since then, I’ve tried to put up a buffer of mixed shrubs and perennials in a bed along the road and next to the house to separate us visually from the road. Here’s what it looks like now:

Click on images for larger view.

Here’s what makes up the barrier (see numbered image below):

1. Clematis growing on doorstep pole.
2. Plume poppy growing in front of living room window.
3. Bittersweet vine growing on pergola.
4. Filipendula and burning bushes in front of pergola.
5. Hybrid willows along road to the west.
6. 8-foot tall Inula with 6-foot tall polygonum behind it.
7. Shrubby willows.
8. Monarda and Cornus alba transplanted from the woods.
9. Tall willows.
10. The little spruce, all growed up.

Here’s the view from the front door looking slightly left …

… and slightly right:

How does it work? Could be better. The deer have kept the Cornus alba (above) too short to fully block the road and the driveway beyond. Everything in these images is at full height and in full leaf now. But that’s not the case early in the season.

I don’t notice the traffic as much during winter when the house is shut up tight. But that’s probably a rationalization. I was afraid to plant evergreens due to the wet soil out front and the salt spray from the road during winter. But the remaining spruce have done fine. If I’d planted two or three more in ‘99, we’d probably have a solid wall of evergreens out front. Oh well.

Along the stretch of the road to the east of our driveway, I planted a screen of Miscanthus floridulus, or at least that’s what I think it is. It does a nice job blocking the view of the road from our patio behind the house. The bamboo-like stems also make good pea brush and wattle-building material.

Some PhotoShop fiddling with images I posted previously. Click on images for larger view.

… from this morning’s walkaround. Click images for larger view.

Daylilies, purple …

And yellow.

Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’, backlit somewhat.

Wild parsnip. Be careful. I’ve still got scabs on my ankle from mowing this stuff down along the roadside a couple weeks ago. It’s not giant hogweed. But it’ll make you blister.

Buttonbush.

These caught my eye during a quick Saturday morning walkaround.

Coneflowers:

Closer:

Ligularia:

Closer:

Phlomis. I like it as much after it flowers.

This lily is a volunteer in the veggie garden. I don’t know what I’d do with that orange anywhere else.

Veronicastrum and buttonbush.

Some images from the weekend, which included a very short tour of Cornell Plantations with some old family friends in town for a visit. Plantations is worth a visit if only to see the container collections right off the parking lot.

Some hot hibiscus blooms at Plantations.

And some nice lilies.

Every year this border right outside the education building is a little different. And every time I marvel at the skill that goes into its design and execution.

A favorite vignette from the border, including ricinus and beets.

Another view of the containers.

Some scenes from around the home garden. Red astilbe.

The back sunny border.

Allium, artemisia and jewelweed.

Some blooms. Ligularia.

A hybrid hazelnut I got from Phil Rutter close to 20 years ago.

A bunch of filipendula closeups. Cotton candy.

One of the things I like about this time of the year is that I can come home from work, eat a little supper, then pick up the camera and go outside and the light is just about right for picture-taking.

I’m the first to admit that I have a lot to learn about making a good image with backlit subjects. But I have fun trying.

Napaea dioica (Glade Mallow) - another tall (6-foot or more) plant. Great palmate leaves.

Borage

An interesting effect, er flaw.

When looking for good backlit subjects, I always remind myself to put the sun at my back and take a different look at the subject.

Back to the grass.

This plant is more than 6 feet tall. Moving in closer …

I know, bloom day isn’t until Tuesday. But I had some time on my hands last night to work on these and time tonight to post them. Sorry to jump the gun. Holler if you want IDs. There are some weird things in there.

Click on images for larger view.

Whitish:

Pinkish:

Purplish:

Warmish:

I’m not known for purposely putting together plant combos that could grace the back cover of Fine Gardening. (I don’t know how their editors stole that prime real estate from the ad department.)

But if you plant enough stuff and get it mixing around, you can’t help but come up with a few mixtures that don’t look too bad.

Verbascums, albutilon and more off the patio.

Clematis, goatsbeard (Aruncus) and grape vines.

Heucheras, violets, lysimachia, alchemilla.

Hosta, astilbe.

Monarda, lysimachia, volunteer grass and sumac. (Actually, I hate the color of this monarda. But it’s the one that thrives around our place.)

Napaea dioica, geranium, daylily, iris. Flowers aren’t great now. But I like the foliage combo.

Phlomis, Scotch thistle, Bottlis cobaltis, lots of other stuff.

A verbascum species I don’t remember, necteroscordum, coneflowers and more. I like ripe seedheads among other blooms at all stages. Or maybe I’m just too lazy to deadhead.

Stachy, chives, trough sedums and more.

Sorbaria and Asimina (pawpaw).

Bog garden is still a few weeks from peak. Filipendulas, malvas, veronicastrum, monarda, tradescantia, lysimachia, Verbena hastata, buttonbush, willows. Will shoot again.

Telekia — 2007 and 2008.

Banana and Jade.

Back where we started.

The 4th of July holiday is coming up fast. But last week I spotted these early fireworks in Minns Garden, outside the Plant Science Building where I work at Cornell University.

If you want Alliums like these in your garden, find directions at the end of this post from last year.

Finally getting around to posting the rest of the pictures from last weekend. Below is the front garden with the borrowed scenery from the wetland and ridge. One of my favorite scenes, despite the ‘bad haircut’ look from having just weed-whacked.

Ladybug in Japanese lilac.

Scotch thistle bud.

Phlomis further along. Am really starting to like this plant.

And some more foxglove pix…

My quest this late spring/early summer has been to take a great Aruncus picture. This is my last try this year, as it’s starting to yellow and fade. Now I’ve got a year to contemplate how to go from OK to great in this challenge.

Still trying to get a good goatsbeard image. These are better.

And Phlomis looks better from a low angle, if you ask me.

On bloom day/Fathers Day, I found a little time to actually take some pictures. (And tonight I learned I’ve been misspelling Nectaroscordum for years.)

Phlomis, Knautia, Scotch thistle and more ’round the blue bottles.

Umbrella plant and Tradescantia

I’ve yet to take a picture of goatsbeard (Aruncus) that does it justice.

I’ll keep trying.

Nectaroscordum is pretty plain — until you move in close.

I was contacted yesterday by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about using one of my peony bud shots from this recent post to accompany their 6/11 article, The Grounded Gardener: Gray, yes, but there are bright spots.

I was disappointed that the image did not appear in the web version. If you saw the hard copy, could you let me know which image they used from my post?

It might also have been one from this earlier post.

Tradescantia

Lysimachia nummularia

Polygonatum

I like this time of the year because I like to look at flowers opening and plants unfurling as much as I like them when they peak.

It’s the journey, not the destination. Enjoy it.

One of my first posts (Aug. 2005) was about the garden of my friend and coworker Marcia. She needed some environmental portraits shot for a feature about her on another website, so I stopped by for a quick visit a week ago. I couldn’t help but wander around and shoot some more pix after the portraits were done.

While some trees have been removed to let in some light and many small details have changed, the bones are mostly the same. From this angle (above, from a second-story window), it’s a well-designed flower garden with a vegetable garden in back separated by a fence. The new bed on the right was inspired by an article in a recent issue of Garden Design about a Charleston, S.C., garden (see “Southern Classic,” May 2008, image on page 39) that features a lawn area ‘pinched’ by beds at the far end to create some separation between different areas.

From the opposite angle (above), you can see the second face of Marcia’s layout: A functional veggie garden with some funky ornamentation.

This small water garden also provides some separation between the flowers and the food. You need to walk around it to get to the entrance arch.

This column provides a focus in the round bed in the center of the veggie garden, as well as being the anchoring lighthouse at the far end the garden’s axis.

One thing Marcia and I share it the love of the blue bottles …

…and funky ornamentation. (I’m thinking Les Quatres Vents only smaller.)

A closer view of the left border from above.

This nearly black iris came from a small iris farm nearby that went out of business last year. The rhizomes were free for the digging, but not labeled. (I got several buckets too.) Adds to the surprises in the garden this spring, waiting to see what the new irises are going to look like when they bloom.

I don’t know the name of this iris. But it seems like it’s everywhere. I’ve got some that are identical or very similar that came with the last house that I lived in.

Rhodie flowers starting to pop.

A few years ago, I signed up for a fledgling Sakuraso society — mostly because a ridiculously low membership fee got you some seeds and packets of thread-like roots that when planted in pots quickly grew into robust little plants.

I can find nothing about this little society online, so I suspect that it is no longer in existence.

That’s too bad. I wish I could find them and re-up. I love these little primroses, even though I only have one left. I made the mistake of transplanting them into a bed where I greatly underestimated the ability of buttercups to reinvade from what I call ‘lawn’. When I got behind a few summers ago, the buttercups more or less took over. But this sakuraso and a few other tough primroses have hung in — thrived, almost — despite the competition.

I like to see that in a plant.

Some folks have commented that they like the old-timey effect of my bloom day scans. That’s not intentional, I assure you. It’s due to using a crummy hand-me-down scanner and not having good imaging software on my home machine.

I took yesterday’s scan to work with me today and adjusted it with PhotoShop to try to get the colors closer to what the flowers actually looked like.

This is an improvement, but the bleeding heart still isn’t near as vibrant as it is in real life.

Extra large version.

This month’s installment. It’s getting to be a little much for a single platenful.

Update [5/15/2008]: See new and improved version above.

Original.

Some more pix from this weekend …

No, I didn’t write down the variety. But I like these daffodils a lot.

A friend brought us a bucket of cut daffodils. I floated some in this old cow waterer. I played with a longer shot of those here.

The bluer side of bluebells (Mertensia).

Slightly different shot of the daffs.

Mertensia virginica and a primula.

And mad props to Hank for his kind words about my garden footwear review in his garden shoe review.

… and other doings this last weekend in April.

I’m no goose expert. But I think that what we have going on here is a couple of young geese who fly in to the beaver pond daily and honk in hopes of attracting a female. They play king of the hill on the beaver lodge. But so far, no domestic activities that I can see. The prime territory (and the big loud goose fights) are to be had out in the main body of the wetland to our west.

The marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) are probably at peak. Here are two views below the beaver dam.

The reddish blotches are leftovers from ferns from last year.

Hank mentioned that — based on the pix I’ve been posting — that my garden must be looking good. Well the past couple weeks are the time of the year when they really look like crap, or more kindly they’re going through that awkward phase where you have to get down on your knees and look very closely to find the beauty. But I am to the point where I’m starting to step back a little, with this image of a variegated albutilon friends sent as a get well greeting for Elly and containers waiting to be filled with tropicals in the coming weeks.

Alchemilla mollis is back. Dew on lady’s mantle is pretty trite as images go, I know. But I’ll keep shooting it until I get it right.

One of those fancy primulas nearly in full flower.

‘Bout time.

A Landscape in Winter, Dying Heroically

Nice slideshow, too.

Great plants look good dead.

Or as Oudolf puts it in the article, “Normally, people who garden would have cut this back by now.  The skeletons of the plants are for me as important as the flowers.”

… but no scans.

It’s been warm here, with many records broken last week at Binghamton, our closest official weather station. .

• On January 7th the high temperature of 59 broke the daily record. The old record was 57 degrees in 1998.
• Also on the 7th… the average temperature of 53 broke the daily record. The old record was 52 also in 1998.
• On January 8th the high temperature of 63 tied the record for the month and day. The temperature also hit 63 on that day in 1998. In addition to these two dates 63 degrees also occurred on January 25th 1967.
• Also on January 8th the low temperature of 54 was the warmest for the day. The old record was 39 in 1998. This low temperature was also the second warmest for January. The warmest was 57 set January 15th in 1995.
• On January 8th the average temperature of 59 broke the daily and monthly records. The old record for the day was 51 in 1998. The old record for the month of January was 58 on January 15th 1995.
• Finally on January 9th the high temperature of 56 tied the record for the day. The temperature previously hit 56 degrees on January 9th in 1998.

When it was like this last year, I wrote alarming articles about how global warming will affect your gardening. But now, no one seems too upset.

So Sunday was pretty nice, too. So I went out and took some pictures instead of hovering over the scanner like I usually do.

The ridge in January. Everything is kind of muted and somber with the still-low sun. Not the panic of June. But still many interesting things to see if you look.

Some bulbs poking through already.

There’s still some green around, you just have to look low and among the leaves, like for this Asarum patch.

Digitalis ferruginea, my favorite foxglove in part because of it’s nearly evergreen habit.

The hellebores have stayed green.

As have the lambsears.

And the pulmonaria.

There are some interesting red-browns going on out there, too. Heucheras …

and pitcher plants.

The beaves continue to be busy.

And I couldn’t resist a better image of the floating bowling ball from the midnight bowling ball incident.

Kim (aka blackswampgirl) over at A Study in Contrasts recently wrote about ordering plants from Plant Delights Nursery. I have love the plants I’ve purchased from PDN. But I had some advice for her that I will also share (slightly edited) here:

I started reading the PDN catalog in the laundromat Saturday. (Our dryer is down. Can’t help but think how many plants I could buy for what it will cost to replace it.) Two pieces of PDN advice:

First, set yourself a budget before you start through the catalog. You’ll have to eliminate two-thirds of what you want to come in under budget.

Second, when your plants arrive, keep in mind they’re coming out of a Carolina spring into what we call April. (Remember our Tax Day Nor’easter?)

PDN plants are about the best I’ve ever bought. They bring me to tears when I open the box. But they haven’t been happy when I’ve stuck them right into the ground.

Consider potting them up, maybe even growing them in a nice container the first year and then transplant them in the fall. At a minimum, treat them like your tomato seedlings. Put them in a cold frame. Move them in and out based on the nighttime temps.

Perennials from nurseries in a climate similar to ours don’t get any special treatment here. I usually just slap in the ground on arrival or soon thereafter and they do just fine. But with PDN plants, use a little extra care to protect your investment.

My photography mentor, T. L.Gettings, usually refused to take his camera out of the bag unless his shadow was longer than he was tall. That’s pretty much all day around here this time of the year.

The low light (low in the sky, that is) really brings out the best in the tan-and-fuzzy subject matter that dominates most years around Thanksgiving. Here’s a sample:

Grasses and bottletree.

Fuzzy asters.

Fuzzy cattail.

Fuzzy goldenrod.

And a couple more bottletree views.

A few years ago, I attended a lecture by Felder Rushing, who is neck-and-neck with Piet Oudolf in the race for most influential gardener in my life.

At the beginning of his presentation, Felder wanted to point out that not only were we crazy plant people, but we were strange even by standards of gardeners in general. He asked for a show of hands to a series of questions starting with, How many of you grow more than a dozen varieties of a single species of plants? More than half gardeners in attendence raised thier hands

The question that really got me was, How many of you have ever given a tour of your garden by flashlight?

Well, honestly I haven’t. But I wouldn’t hesitate to.

If I wanted to do my usual bloom-day scans, I would have had to use a flashlight because light is pretty scarce around here before and after work. Bloom day scans will have to wait for the weekend.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a bunch frosty and fall-color pix collecting here over the past couple of weeks. So instead of scans, here’s a chance for my usual pix purge.

Really hard frost (~19 F) last Sunday:

Sunrise has hit the far ridge, but hasn’t hit the garden yet.

Frost patterns in the miscanthus.

Frozen monard dots. (Thanks Piet.)

Jade and the plants soak in the sun as it burns off the frost.

Beads of water after the sun melts the frost.

Morning sun on Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum)

Miscanthus floridulus flowered this year, at least 12 feet tall.

At Cornell, ‘We grow the Ivy.’ It turns red in the fall.

Scans this weekend, if I can find some time…

More fall pix from last weekend. Eupatorium purpureum ‘Joe White’. Nice to have something peaking in October.

Oh. And it’s tall too. Maybe 7 to 8 feet this year.

Pam/Digging inspired me with her post Early Fall Grasses. That focused me (mostly) on shooting grasses Sunday morning.

They’re at their best morning and evening when the sun is low, and provide different viewing experiences depending on your perspective, for example looking into the sun (above) or with the sun at your back (below).

They’re easier to shoot in the morning before the wind picks up and puts them in motion. (See videos.)

I didn’t think I’d like this variegated miscanthus when I planted it. It’s now my favorite. It’s backed by M. sinensis ‘Gracimillus’.

I’m always amazed how red Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’ gets, here bent over in the dew.

Another favorite that I incorrectly identified as Panicum ‘Heavy Metal’ in a previous post. (Sorry Kim.) It’s either ‘Dallas Blues’ or possibly ‘Cloud Nine’ according to my less than adequate records.

And a close-up of the seedheads:

Molinia ‘Skyracer’ is a little slow to get going, mostly because I have it too close to some Eupatoriums that shade it some.

A ‘blonde’ sedge in the water garden, and Miscanthus floridulus blocking the traffic from the road.

It’s been a pretty good year for the M. floridulus. It’s about 12 feet tall and hasn’t flowered yet. It’s flowered a couple times in the half dozen years I’ve had it. It’s not as strong as bamboo. But I use it for wattles and pea trellis (in conjunction with metal fenceposts and woven wire).

I don’t have an ID on this grass. But I show it because I like the way that the thunbergia has overrun the trellis next to it and has formed a close pairing with the grass.

And one last morning shot …

Click on most images for larger view.

There’s a small courtyard outside the Plant Science Building where I work at Cornell. It’s bordered on the north and west sides by four stories on stories of stone wall and ivy, to the east by a single story, and is open to the south. Below is a heated basement and nearby greenhouses radiate heat during winter. Talk about microclimates. Several woody plants there are at least a Zone or two outside their range.

I gaze at it from the Men’s room window a story above every time I dry my hands. This time of the year, it’s exploding with anemones that I can’t grow at home because of the deer.

I have no clue what this groundcover is that’s flowering there now, but it’s nice:

When your shake too much or fail to focus on your close-ups, you can always resort to PhotoShop filters.

Actually, the second unflitered wasn’t all that bad:

In the 30s here last night.  It looks and feels like fall outside, and everything looks (as jug band musicians say) ragged but right on the scanner.

Whites, including Sorbaria (reblooming again this year), Eryngium yuccafolium, Eupatorium purpureum ‘Joe White’, Artemisia, Miscanthus.

Dahlia, Solidago.

Aconitum, Ligularia, Physostegia, Achillea, Lantana, Chelone, Verbena bonariensis.

Ditto above with some wild Eupatorium thrown in.

Some heavy showers this weekend and lots of dark, gray weather. Interesting light effects on some plants that are peaking now.  Click images for larger view.

Panicum ‘Heavy Metal’

Hibiscus mosheutos (don’t know the cultivar)

Eupatorium purpureum ‘Joe White’

Eryngium yuccifolium