Rained Out!

Trillium erectum red form.

I am a gardener who plans out the day in my mind. Sometimes at night while waiting for sleep, or when I awaken in the middle of the night waiting for sleep to return, I imagine my next day in the garden. Where weeding needs me most. What needs to get out of that container and into the garden before it gets too root-bound. This plant would really look a lot better over there and certainly not where it is. That shrub really does need to find a permanent home before summer gets here. My multi-part list forms itself into a time frame and then a schedule forms like a bulleted list or ducks in a row. All in living color.

I usually fall asleep about the time I have it all settled into my mind, knowing what I will be doing and when I will be doing it when I awaken. Such contentment. Then I awaken to rain showers with a forecast of a day of more to come. Now that is frustration. Where do you go, what do you do, when all those expectations you dreamed of run into the wall of reality?

I don't know about you, but I go through a kind of short withdrawal period. I feel a bit like an old seven-day clock all wound up and nowhere to tick or chime. Usually I pick up an umbrella and go for a walk in my rainy garden. By the time I have completed my walk, most of the unsettled feelings has dissipated, new mental notes have formed for the future. With gardeners there is always the future.

My faith in the future gives me the garden I do not have today. There is the imagined move of this perennial over there to brighten a dark corner. If I transplant the shrub over there then I will need an exact ground cover tying it all to the existing garden. There is this bare spot beneath a small shrub, giving me an opportunity to purchase a new perennial I have on my lust-list.

Much of the imagined will never reach reality, but meanwhile it is not raining in my garden created with faith in the future. 
 

Garden Gifts

I, along with most other garden writers, have written about giving gifts to gardeners. Usually the gift giving is about the giving. The topic comes up most often around holidays such as Mothers Day. I have recently been the recipient of a gracious gardening gift that is changing my garden.

A gardening friend gave me a gift of 6 azalea. Not just any azalea, but deciduous azalea that are my passion. All were very nice size and just about perfect in fullness. A mix of Exbury, Northern Lights and native hybrids. He even included an azalea from his private collection that I happen to see and like. What could one say but thank you, then give them all a place in my gardens, and in my life.

They are coming into bloom in my holding area now. The first 3 are not colors that I would have chosen. The rest remain to be seen. So what does a gardener do with plants he would not have chosen, that are not colors of choice? After quite a bit of thought I have reached the conclusion that my gardening friend perhaps knew me better than I knew myself.

As my garden has matured, so have I. As we age together I find myself and the garden needing more color. A shift from the subtle texture and foliage fascination to more bright and a touch more daring in design. My friend's gift fit that need perfectly. Bright colors on my favorite shrubs that force me to rethink and redesign. Both my garden, and I, gain and grow from his gift.

An existing focal point in the center of the garden will get a face lift. Existing plants will need to find other locations or new homes. An existing shrub or two I was not happy with, and now I have a reason to donate them to oblivion. Three of the new azalea with related colors will form a triangle beneath the canopy of and existing red-leaved Japanese maple that will both contrast in foliage textures and provide a touch of toning down to the pinks, reds and yellow of the azalea blooms. Other azalea will lead away from the triangle pulling the eye deeper along a garden path.

A new appreciation of my gardening friend, a new appreciation of color and design. An opportunity for both my garden, and I, to grow. Thanks Frank 
 

Think You Know Clematis?

You may want to think again.
Most of us have become accustomed to seeing large blooming hybrids at the garden center. Often the blooms are the size of saucers, vines 12 feet, and more, in length. All the show and drama of a Vegas stage show. We purchase our prize, bring it home, dig a hole and place it in full sun, then tie it to a trellis or telephone pole like clematis was to be taken hostage.

Species and Small Flowering
A gardener often has to read a book from England to find out about our own native species of Clematis. As with Mr. Dangerfield, our species do not seem to gain much respect from gardeners in their own backyard. There are numerous species of clematis native to the Eastern half of the US that will do just fine in your gardens. The blooms are generally smaller than the large hybrids, but often will be bell-shaped as opposed to the flat saucer form hybrids. Not all clematis are scrambling vines. Some species never get over a foot in height and form tight clumps.

Turn it loose!
Often clematis are more scramblers than robust climbers. In nature, before they were brought into cultivation and hybridized, clematis were happy on the ground or up a tree or shrub. I began using this plant by tying it to a tree along a path in my garden. Wind blew it down and I picked it up, placed it on stones along my path edge with the intent of tying it back up. You know gardeners and good intentions. The clematis remain on the stones after all these years to scramble and bloom as nature intended.
Some species that are what I refer to as "tiny tuckers" as they never reach over a foot in height and are great for tucking into stones along a path where their bell-shaped blooms can be enjoyed close up.

Shady Ideals
Often our native clematis were found growing along rocky cliff edges, scrambling into shrubs and tree at forest edge. An environment where they kept their roots cool, but reached out or up for light. Perfect for a shade garden with lots of high open shade. I grow mine on an old root wadded stump in a clearing-like exposure. Some are along path edges. Next, my intent is to transplant species clematis into my native azalea for two sets of blooms in the same shrub.

Rethink
I find it fun to take the accepted, the "known norm" and look in the background for the "rest of the story", perhaps to retell it in my garden, in my own way.