Look up. Look out. New leaves are turning all over the place! I think if you had the patience you could practically sit and watch the births like chicks hatching. I don’t have that kind of patience - or that kind of time! But I’m glad to have taken a look up and out this morning. The Cut Leaf Full Moon Japanese Maple (Acer japonicum ‘Aconitifolium’) was my morning’s favorite and another that sports puppy fur - which reminds me, no one has shared the answer yet to the fur’s-purpose question from the other day - my guess is still for frost protection.

The Kentucky yellowwood (Cladastrus kentuckea ‘Sweet Shade’) is finely fuzzed too. - What a shape! This one was my favorite.

And the Cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea) are also nestled in fur muffs and suprisingly tall all of a sudden! (favorite)

The Katsura (Cercidiphylum japonicum) leafed out overnight - the last I looked it only had flowers and now it’s got leaves the size of quarters. (2nd favorite)

And the Butterbur (Petasites japonicus) is giving me fits because its leaves have grown so much in the last week that I’ve had to move the label further out 3 times. (gah. but, of course - it’s a favorite.)

Aside from watching the leaves grow, strolling through a peak daffodil display and chatting with hundreds of visitors (hurrah for a banner week!) we’ve gotten a lot done the last couple of days and even put some stars on our calendar. -We draw big stars and underlines and color it all in highlighter orange when we’ve passed a major milestone. This week it was planting the sweet peas! We grew 17 varieties (including colors like Royal Wedding and April in Paris - in honor of my March) and planted them on a new fence edging Dick’s vegetable garden.

We also spent time with the Rockettes this morning replanting a muddy bank of Astilbe that have been hurling themselves out of the ground in the last couple of years. We could just pick up the clumps with our hands, they had heaved so much. Some clumps managed to survive such a life (fish out of water) and we’ll replace the ones that died with other things that might like a boggy shade bank that occasionally goes bone dry in a drought. (Is there anything?) This is a really good time, by the way, to move, divide or replant perennials - we try to do all our perennial moving before the end of April.

And could it be time already to hoop the peonies??!! Better check yours - I got our hoops on in the North Garden just in time - I didn’t have to smash and yank!

What have you been up to this week? Any milestones?  Turn over any new leaves?

This is it. This is when it all begins. It’s President’s Day. It’s time to sow the sweet peas! And that means the great rush and push of spring begins this week. I’m taking just a moment at home this holiday to mark the seasonal shift with a small awards ceremony. Then I plan to curl back up with my pestering cashmere cat, a restorative cup of tea and a book.

Caroline at Earth Friendly Gardening awarded this blog an E for Excellent and I’d like to pass it back to her and to a few others. First I’d like to say Thank You to everyone who has been reading and joining the conversation here. Your comments have led me and others to your own E for Excellent blogs. The intention with the award is to single out my favorites but I want to spin it a bit back to you. To start the ball rolling, I’ll send an award to Robin at Bumblebee. I haven’t been a faithful reader but her comment on my last post led me to Bumblebee again this morning. I found this post -and others- recommending that you get out to public gardens and flower shows and bring home whatever useful ideas you find there. I loved reading that because it’s a reminder that Blithewold and all other public gardens are a resource just for you. We need you to visit and are really only gratified if you like what you see enough to try it at home. (Deciding to become a member is gratifying for us too - and keeps us in plants and ideas.) Has anyone else out there written about visiting - and being inspired by - a public garden? Please send the link(s) and take an E for Excellent home with you! (Layanee, Jodi, Pam, and Digital Flower, I know you have many posts about public garden visits - please send your favorites and consider yourselves Excellent.)

Seed catalog shopping is a dangerous business. Even for us. Even with a greenhouse for early spring sowing and 5 good sized gardens to fill we have to be careful to not buy more than we can realistically find space for. And like most home gardeners who are not independently fabulously wealthy, we have a tight budget. So as Gail and I go through the catalogs we also mentally scan the gardens and every time we find something - or are lured by artful photography with a blaze across that shouts NEW! - that we weren’t looking for, we have to figure out exactly where it will fit in the garden. (And that will help justify creating room for the seedlings in the already packed to the gills greenhouse.)

The Rock Garden was short shrifted last year and the Rockettes might be pleased to know that we have been keeping our eyes peeled for diminutive annuals to spark and brighten the midsummer “holes”. The plant we’re most jazzed about so far for the Rock is a teeny Eschscholzia caespitosa (California poppy) called ‘Sundew‘ from Thompson & Morgan.

Last year was the first year the Rose Garden saw much annuals action - this year we’ll branch out there too. (We know there’s more to life than Zinnia ‘Profusion Orange’.) It’s always a challenge to find new things for the Cutting Garden - it’s got to be long-stemmed, prolific, clean, pretty in vase and out - but our list of favorites and good-for-cut worthies is getting longer by the year. Is anyone -besides Julie!- tired of seeing Asclepias physocarpus ‘Oscar’ aka ‘Hairy Balls’ yet? New changes in the Display Garden mean new room for experiment there too.

We like to justify impulse purchases by reminding ourselves that we really have an obligation to try new plants/varieties so we can tell/show people if it’s worth the hype. What do you think about that? Do you want to see new things at your favorite public garden that are possibly difficult to find or grow yourself? Garden bloggers, are you letting yourself budget for things you might not have tried before “going public”?

All good things must come to an end? That’s definitely not my kind of philosophy but it was a little bit true in the Display Garden today. The mansion is closed for the season and it’s time for us to start working on next year’s gardens: Hopefully, if funds and weather allow, Fred and Dan will be able to continue the Display Garden redesign this winter. The Idea Beds are next on their list. Gail and I want to save most of the perennials and shrubs from those beds and decided to move most of them, at least temporarily to the new Display Garden beds (the Ellipse and Stone Bench Beds).

So today we and the Deadheads had the heartbreaking task of ripping the tender stuff out of the still beautifully blooming Ellipse Bed to make room. The Deadheads made the best of it though and cut flowers to take home and some even took a plant or two to winter over. Gail and I chose plants to take in for “stock” and took dozens of last minute cuttings from the garden before the digging, wrenching and hurling started.

We probably should have been more conscious of the resident critters - this mantis found shelter in the chaos but I wonder how many we inadvertently evicted?

Getting started with our first fall project was actually pretty fun and if we think of it as more of a beginning than an end … then all good things must keep on!

Ornamental grasses are coming into their own just now and it’s time to sing some praises (and maybe one dirge). There are reviews here and here with links to more and more about all kinds of grasses in all kinds of places so I’m setting a self imposed limit to speak only about our annuals/tender perennials.

I’ve already shown pictures of everyone’s new favorite this year, Pink paintbrush grass (Melinis nerviglumis ‘Savannah’). We don’t know yet if we’ll find it seeded all over the garden but since we want it pretty much everywhere next year, that wouldn’t be a totally unwelcome thing.

This is our second year for Love grass (Eragrostis tef ‘Ruby Silk’) and I take the blame for this one. I -and the wildlife- love the silky soft inflorescences that begin red and extend to brown. I think it’s handsome, if delicate, in arrangements and deadheading it satisfies the obsessive-compulsive in me. But the plants slouch like bored teenagers. If they weren’t planted en masse and held captive and upright in a Cutting Garden grid, we’d probably have to kick them out of the house for looking like weedy slackers. (Get a job!)
Palm grass (Setaria palmifolia) is another that we use in arrangements although it’s a bit of a pain because the blades are deceptively covered in eensy splintery hairs that lodge in all uncalloused finger flesh. (Where are my gloves?) We keep a couple of stock plants in the greenhouse and have been successful growing it from seed. (It usually flowers for us in the winter after we’ve cut the bulk of the plant to nubs.)
Ornamental millet (Pennisetum glaucum) has been a favorite of the volunteer flower arrangers - its burly black seed heads are very dramatic and the dark foliage is a great contrast for - just about anything! In the garden, we’ve got it stunningly and serendipitously paired with Snow on the mountain (Euphorbia marginata) - can’t miss that combo.

Another favorite of mine, grown for the 2nd year in a row, is Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi). Arching inflorescences dangle shiny seeds that clack like prayer beads. Last year I went a little crazy collecting the black and gray seeds because I thought I’d make jewelry… We sowed some of them instead.

Gail has been growing Fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum - sold by Stokes as Pennisetum ruppelianum) for the gardens since well before my time and it’s certainly a tried and true winner. This year we used it in the Rose Garden and I’m not sure yet if I think it’s a good addition or a clash of cultures. Any opinions??

This new neighbor kitty (who, incidentally, has the biggest paws I’ve ever seen on a tigger) thinks it’s just what the garden needed.

(Hover over pictures for titles/I.D.s and click on for larger images.)

This week, one of the Rockettes (Wednesday volunteers) said to me, “Kris, I finally read your blog … –You’re so chatty!”

I blushed and couldn’t think of a coherent reply…

To prove to any readers who might assume from my “chattiness” that “quiet” is difficult for me, here’s a post of pictures (mostly. pretty much.). Remember, inside every wallflower beats the heart of a social butterfly!

My morning walk took me through the cutting garden first: (hover your pointer finger over the pictures for names and click for a larger image)

A week or so ago I promised a picture of Phlox ‘Natural Feelings’ in bloom:

A hummingbird visited me in the Idea Beds and then lit in the bamboo where I shot its portrait. Can’t find it in the picture though…

Ketzel Levine in her blog Talking Plants says not to plant this. (It does have poisonous seeds…)

In the water garden, every step I took at the pond edge was accompanied by a sound like a dog’s chew toy as the frogs sqeaked and dove for cover.

Yesterday someone asked me, “what’s your favorite perennial?” and although I have a different favorite just about every day, I answered without even thinking about it, “Lavender!”It’s my all-time favorite perennial no matter what other daily favorites grab my attention. It’s got everything: a scent I love so deadheading is a pleasure (even if it does take an age — unless you shear, which I don’t…); it thrives on benign neglect - poor -well draining- soil, no fertilizer and little water, and it’s a honey bee magnet. In a nutshell, it’s my kinda plant! Anyone else out there care to share what’s your tried and true all-time-favorite number-one perennial? (Enquiring minds want to know!)

Now that we’ve relocated all the perennials we had-to-had-to move and frantic spring is speeding along to an early languid summer (can you believe the maples that are fully leafed out already?!), I feel like we’ve turned a corner on the track and gone from a mad dash to a steady lope. We’re placing and planting cool season annuals, new perennials and shrubs and now the gardens are really taking shape. I have renewed energy to just go and go to the finish. We’ve still got self-imposed deadlines (everything planted by the 4th of July) but Gail and I can pace ourselves now. Three weeks ago, even Dick, who plants and tends the Vegetable Garden, said he felt at least a month behind. Now he says he’s not worried and not feeling rushed. (He is here every day though…) — I love seeing Dick in the garden - somehow, all’s right with the world when he’s here.

Yesterday, the Deadheads weeded the Idea Beds while Gail and I placed plants in the Cutting Garden and in the new raised bed by the pond. We’re planting that with our favorite Pennisetum ruppelianum, Salvia, Dahlia combination for old-time’s sake (the dahlia/grass beds around the pond were taken out in the first phase of the Display Garden redesign).

In the Cutting Garden we use concrete reinforcement mesh as a staking system. Planting through the grid is a little tedious but it’s worth it in the long haul because the heavy-on-bloom plants don’t flop over! (we raise the grids up on stakes for the plants to grow through - like a peony hoop).

The North Garden is being planted now with the first round of annuals and a few new perennials and later, Gail and I will place the new shrubs for the Rose Garden re-vitilization project. (I’ll have a lot to say about that as we go)

Here are a couple pictures of my current obsessions. One of the things that’s great about public gardens (whether you work in one or are a visitor) is that you get to look at established plants with an eye for how they’d look in your own garden! (so much better than just looking at a picture on a tag or a runty individual in a nursery pot!). I can’t stop thinking about crabapples and blueberries… Look at those colors!