Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Early Christmas

  
       Veseys had their usual fall bulb and perennial sale on November 1-4 this year, and as usual Anne and I were there early on the first day! It was not so crazy and busy as it has been in previous years. However! All items were $3 (up from $2 last fall, but it's only money). I took exactly $100 with me, so I was very careful. I got 33 things! They had lots of hellebores, so I got 8 - although they were in plug trays and didn't have labels (next time!!) I think I got mostly from the wedding series - Flower Girl, Confetti Cake, Blushing Bridesmaid. Won't know for certain until they bloom. I also put in clumps of tete-a-tete daffodils and 'elegant' alliums, between the clumps of hellebores. Luckily I had a day's notice so I had a bed prepared for them - along the newly mulched path in the 'hydrangea' area.
          It has been a very 'open' autumn - I have never planted into such warm ground in November before. The only Itoh peony still available at the sale was Cora Louise - but I love her so I got two. I put them in the bed beside the path as well, a little farther back. I had spent a day gathering more sandstone rocks to edge the path, and then I put down landscape fabric and loads and LOADS of wood chippings that we got when the electric company cut down a few of our trees that were under their wires. It was a double blessing, because I am using the branches they didn't chip to edge the beds in the woodland area, and fill in the paths with the wood chippings. And I still have tons of the chippings! I am going to re-do the rest of the paths to the west of the house. They were done a number of years ago and are starting to get quite weedy. The trees they cut down were Scots pines, so lots of eccentric shapes of the branches, and lots more light in the garden in the lower east area.
This is the woodland garden, with most of the beds edged and the paths mulched. The little boat-shaped bed in the middle is going to be my mouse hosta area - I have 'mouse ears', and I bought 'sun mouse' at the Veseys sale. I also got hosta 'curly fries' which may go in the back. that's it. No more hostas. I really don't like them.     
         The beds beside the path have mostly spring flowers and bulbs, and now that the paths are defined I can fill them up to the edge and maybe find some more plants that are happy in the shade. The trees there are mainly evergreen, including larch (which isn't evergreen), but I have a collection of about a dozen fastigiate oaks, some of which I may put in along the fence line to the right. The rest probably will go where the pines came out or were pruned. I think they stay quite small, so I shouldn't have to worry that they will be getting their heads into the wires again. And because they are deciduous they won't cut out the light for the spring bulbs from the east.

There was, until recently, quite a bit of colour in the garden still - this is hydrangea 'Pinky Winky', which was covered in blooms all autumn. Unfortunately, we have had a series of heavy frosts and these lovelies are all a uniform brown now. Oh well. I at least have lots of spring plantings to look forward to...in addition to the alliums, daffs and hellebores, I got Apeldoorn and two species (tarda and peppermint stick) tulips, 100 blue muscari (which I used to edge paths in the woods), white crocus for my blue and white bed,  and some perennials for the same place - I potted them up for the cold frame as I don't trust the bare rooted stuff to survive in the ground so late. So I got platycodon 'Fiji Blue', sedum 'Mr. Goodbud', veronica 'Royal Rembrandt', and a euphorbia 'bonfire'. Also some paperwhites and hippeastrums for forcing. See! Spring can't be that far away.  
 The only one of my crocosmia to survive - and bloom. I assume it's 'Lucifer'. It's planted in the hot bed.

The tiny acer at the edge of the woodland is doing its best, and I can't wait until it's bigger than the Japanese painted fern that it's in front of. There is another, even tinier one on the other side of the path but I usually can't see it in photos so I won't bother. Still very much alive, however!!

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