Today I am a happy man, for the tulip season has begun in earnest in our garden. What, you say, tulip season in the middle of April? Yes, indeed. First, Tulipa kaufmanniana ‘Early Harvest’ has come into its own, blooming in both beds and containers. The no neck phase was just a period of awkward …
Downsizing the Yew. When I was a kid, my family sometimes took vacations at a cabins-on-a-lake-in-the-woods sort of resort. I remember that at the gift shop they sold a t-shirt that said “I Pine Fir Yew and Balsam, Too”. Anybody else remember a t-shirt like that? Anyhow, I decided to prune the big Japanese Yew …
There are days when I ponder the deeper questions: Why is there evil in the world? Why is it that in our house 1-2 of my socks lose their mates in the laundry every single week (and I’m the one who does the laundry)? That comes to an average of 78 socks a year – …
The Chicago Botanic Garden’s email newsletter is typically informative and sometimes entertaining, but today’s issue bore grim tidings. That is to say, the Viburnum Leaf Beetle (VLB) has now established itself in the Chicago area. The VLB is originally from Europe but decided to summer in Maine in 1994. Taking up residence, it has been …
Until this year, the Forestfarm catalog looked a lot like the phone book for a small city. This was a testament to the Oregon nursery’s incredibly vast selection of plants, especially woody plants. For me, Forestfarm has been the place to go when I had to buy a tree or shrub that could not be …
Autumn is about fruit. Mists and mellow fruitfullness, as the poet said. In the garden, there’s fruit for people and fruit for the birds. I have lots of the latter. This year I noticed that lots of the fruit that is supposed to hang around so we can admire it for a while has been …
Last week I got a new crabapple tree for the space where the flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) had died. Usually I plant bareroot trees myself, but this time we shelled out for a tree from the nursery that was about 9′ and too heavy for me to plant on my own. In addition to being …
It’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day again, so let’s see which flowers are strutting their stuff at the Garden in a City. This is a great year for Salvia in our garden. Salvia nemerosa ‘May Night’ and ‘East Friesland’, along with S. x sylvestris ‘Blue Hill’ are making a long patch of mixed deep and light …
It’s not always easy to get to the Chicago Botanic Garden for the peak of the crabapple blossoms. It only lasts a few days, and the dates can be unpredictable. The weather is not always cooperative, and a badly timed rainstorm can put a quick end to all the fragile beauty. It’s worth making the …
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