Lament for Lost Plants

It doesn't seem to matter how well I garden, every new gardening season brings a few losses. This year I lost a garden staple: my centranthus ruber (aka red valerian). It was a centrepiece in my back centre garden since we built the garden. See the red patch below:

While this garden has changed a bit the last couple of years, I expected the red valerian to remain. It's beautiful dark pink blooms started in June and continued all summer. Now that it's gone, I'm discovering that apparently it's really quite common - so common in fact that I can't find anywhere to buy it!

Another loss this season was our agapanthus which, despite being zone 7, had survived for 6 years and bloomed for 2 of them.

Maps!

I have a myriad of notes and records of my gardens. I have more than one notebook, stapled together stacks of sketches, drawn maps with legends and plant lists plus a folding file of plant tags by category... each with a description of location planted and date notation. Yet, with all of this over-achieving record keeping, I can never find the map I am looking for. So this is my new map option. In hope that I can find things easier if they are handy on my computer and I can see where the plants are exactly. My sketches never do that for me. I hope this is finally the solution or I will soon be buried in maps of many varieties.

Battling Slugs

It's not a very exciting picture but what it represents is very exciting, at least for us. I've posted about our problems with slugs in the past and about a solution we tried with some success last year. This year we're trying coffee instead. Apparently slugs don't like coffee so we've been saving our used grinds and spreading them around the dahlias. Not all the dahlias are up yet but the ones that are show no signs of slugs at all. Since our dahlia selection has dropped from 20+ to 7, this is great news!

Mini Botanical Tulips

Puchella Easter Star

Of all the early spring bulbs, mini botanical tulips are my favorite. In zone 3, spring bulbs have a difficult time of it. They tend to try and come up when the snow is still everywhere and often do not bloom until they are well established. My puchella was planted in 2010 and this is the first bloom I have seen. It is a single bloom but gives me hope for the future.

Tarda Patch

My tarda, on the other hand are very well established and seem to be the one variety that I can count on to bloom every year, no matter what. They form huge patches very quickly here for me. As an example, I divided the boardwalk garden patches last year and they still doubled in size in that single year. I was commenting yesterday that I might need to divide them again! Not only reliable, they are real stunners. With a pale purple translucent bud that opens to a bright yellow flower with white tips. They look great with turkestanica, which has the opposite colouring. One caution though... turkestanica is much taller than tarda in my garden so it is best to plant them in patches beside each other rather than all mixed together. Puchella and tarda are the same height and could be planted together to form bright patches of multi-colours. I don't plan on trying that until the puchella are much more abundant here so maybe check back in 2050!!

Turkestanica

First Food

The first food is ready to come out of my 2012 garden! Rhubarb 'Strawberry Red' is up and almost completely red. I planted two in 2010 but today I can only find one. One is enough for us though and the second was really bought as back up. I plan to make rhubarb vinegar, rhubarb freezer jam and if I am really lucky, rhubarb crisp. Of course, that is all assuming I can get the stalks from the garden to the pot without eating them all. Hmmmm, maybe I need to look harder for the second plant after all...

Favourite Spring Combo

dicentra spectabilis with brunnera macrophylla 'Hadspen Cream'

One of my favourite combos - bleeding heart and variegated brunnera. The bleeding heart is just starting to open. The two are planted side by side and grow together as they continue to bloom, with the hearts arching above the tiny cornflower blue brunnera flowers. These two like a bit of shade from the afternoon sun.

Perennial Containers

I love containers! Eventually, almost anything sitting long enough in my yard becomes a container. I have many that I fill with annuals and move around as the season progresses. Containers are great for moving around for a shot of colour as my perennials stop blooming.

I would need more than double my annual budget, or to start more seeds (which is work and consequently, never happens here) to fill all my containers with annuals. Years ago, I learned that perennial containers are the budget friendly way to go.

Almost all perennials will do well in containers. I wait until I see what is coming up that needs thinning or dividing and dig when they are small. I transplant them into containers and leave them for the season. Shade containers full of perennials are fantastic for filling up spots under trees where you want a garden but there is nothing left in the soil to support the plants. Soil under my trees is all dry and root filled - impossible to plant it and expect the plants to do well.

Next time you are thinning and dividing your perennials, look around and see if you can't find something to pop them into and sit back to enjoy the display!

dwarf iris, golden creeping jenny and hens & chicks sedum 2011, all of these survived the winter in this container so this year, it is coming up again, a nice bonus