Sad goodbye to Picea orientalis ‘Bergman’s Gem’
Comments (19)
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
3 years ago
whaas_5a
3 years agoRelated Discussions
Driveway Garden through the Seasons
Comments (55)Enjoyed your Driveway Garden, Deanne. Very generous of you to share your plant list and diagram. It is always so fascinating to actually get photos of the same space in each season. You did a really great job on it, providing something beautiful to look at in every season. Has anything changed since the photos were first taken? pm2...See MoreA winter I want to forget.
Comments (33)We are 2 days away from breaking the ALL time record for snow days. Almost postive we had 50 days of measureble snow and the record is 52. We where close to also setting the record for consecutive days of measurable snow on the ground. Funny thing is that we aren't much above average. Its been nothing but nusicance snow falls of 1 to 2 inches. I'd rather have fewer and get 6" of snow. I actually love snow and say bring it. Its the sub zero weather that is so painful. Average ~15 sub zero days a year and had 40+ this year. Its painful just saying that....See MoreCan you help narrow it down...or maybe I'm set?
Comments (9)all nigra are total dogs in my yard ... WOOF!!! ... even the healthy ones look sickly all the time ... i wish they would die.. but they wont ... which i take to mean they are NOT really sick ... BTW ... new house????? how big is the yard???? pungens will grow about 1 foot to 18 inches per year once they get going [see pic of hoopsi below] ... you will need a 15 to 20 foot circle for the next decade or 2... give them space... if you want a blue one.. get a blue one... or even bluer.. a named variety ... DO NOT BUY A GREEN ONE.. AND HOPE SOME DAY IT WILL TURN BLUE ... sylvestris and strobus are forest trees .... IMHO ... growing 3 to FIVE FEET per year.. inside of a year or two ... they will need 20 to 30 feet of ground space inside of a decade ... is that really what you want ... and picea abies are not that far behind .... google any of them.. and flip to the images side.. to see the gigantic potential of all of them .... i did the same thing you are thinking ... using species as backbone... and i will yell... ON MY FIVE ACRES.. 8 TO 10 YEARS LATER.. SOME OF THEM ARE TOO BIG ... frankly.. i think you are focusing on the BARGAIN.. and missing the point ... there are a lot of very nice named cultivars that will have a much more manageable footprints in the future .... do NOT jump simply because of the bargain ... all of these grow in native mountain ranges.. which have rocky sparse high drainage low fertility soil ... so ignore that variable... but i have no clue about the alkaline soil issue and will defer to others ... IMHO.. sand is the best for any tree .. and conifers are trees .... and throw in shrubs also .. sand is only an issue with water loving annuals/perennials ... and bulbs that need a good deep soil to thrive ... how about some pix of the new moonscape.. that you want to turn into a landscape ... ken a one gal hoopsi planted in 2003 .... Here is a link that might be useful: link --- interchange strobus...See MoreGaren's Garden 2015
Comments (22)Thank you! Thank you! Lu lu is a tiny silver sebright chicken. Yeah, the chickens and the dogs hang out together. They even eat snacks together and drink from the same water bowls at the same time. I integrated them slowly until the chickens simply became fixtures in the yard and part of the pack. For a long time the dogs would only see the chickens through the chicken run fence. Once the dogs no longer showed interest in the chickens I brought them out together except the dogs were on a leash. The key is to get the dogs completely uninterested in the chickens. If the dog was interested in the chickens then I would walk the dog away until they were no longer alert on them. Then bring them closer only if they weren't interested until I could walk them right with the chickens. Every time the dog would so much as raise an ear or look at the chickens I would tell them no. I would hold the chickens and interact with them in front of the dogs to let them know that the chickens are part of the pack. I would even bring our rooster, Cluck Norris, into the house on a regular basis to hang out with us. I think that really helped. Norris would even play hide n seek with us lol. I have wood and tile floors so picking up a chicken poop every once in a while is no prob. They even make chicken diapers. There is nothing like the taste of happy chicken eggs for breakfast every morning. Not to mention using the eggs to make fresh homemade mayonnaise made with coconut/MCT oil. I can't even eat non free range, sad chicken eggs from the store anymore. There is no comparison. It's like tasting a home grown heirloom tomato compared to the tasteless store bought tomatoes. These little friends have so much personality and beauty to offer if you simply get to know them and spend time with them. If you get a rooster you must hand raise it from a chick, take it for walks everyday like a dog to bond, and you'll be best buds. Otherwise you'll have a mean rooster that just wants to beat the crap out of you. Norris, Wonton, and the wife...See More
maackia
3 years agoecholane
3 years ago
tsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
3 years agowhaas_5a
3 years agoplantkiller_il_5
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoecholane
3 years agoplantkiller_il_5
3 years agoecholane
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoplantkiller_il_5
3 years agoecholane
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoecholane
3 years agoTrying again with some photos.
i live on a back lot, sometimes called a flag lot, with a long narrow driveway opening to a rectangular lot wirh my rectangular house 20’ from the front and back property lines and a nice side yard of perhaps 70’ x 60’. I think I have every square inch planted! Well, except for hardscape.
The driveway has a small 2’ wide planting strip along it’s almost 200’ of length and I had roses planted there for many decades. They have looked worse and worse over the last few years with the neighbors increasingly larger plants providing root competition and shade. Then last year they got hit with rose sawfly, a very disfiguring problem. I became a plant killer again and took out many roses. I did it in such a way that I left three planting bays where I planted many Eriogonum fasciculatum var foliolosum and some Eriogonum grande var rubescens which continued a developing trend for planting California natives.
Here are a couple of examples
La Marne
Molineaux (David Austin)
echolane
3 years agoA couple of my favorite grasses or grass-like plants
A big Restio, Thamnochortus insignis. I grow several but this one is a real show off.
On a smaller scale, Little Bluestem, SCHIZACHYRIUM scoparium ‘Standing Ovation’. I’ve just been growing this and the cultivar ‘Blue Heaven’ for three years, but they rival my long time favorite grass Pennisetum alopecuroides and cultivars. They have a gorgeous blue color with burgundy highlights and in the fall they become very colorful with the burgundy highlights turning red and dominating the foliage.
I love ornamental grasses and I have grown LOTS of them. My favorite has long been Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hameln’ but now I have a new favorite among them, the smaller cultivar Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Piglet’.
A third favorite grass is Muhlenbergia dubia. This Photo is not from my garden because I just can’t get a good photo of my several plants, but perhaps you can see why I like it.
One more favorite grass is Calamagrostis foliosa, a California native which never has a bad hair day. Seriously, this is a grass that never needs maintenance. It’s evergreen and looks good all year. It doesn’t need shearing because the old flowers just age away gracefully and the new flowers are show offs for the rest of the year. This photo was taken in mid-spring with the flowers new and I think it is just spectacularly attractive. I have lots growing all around my garden.
echolane
3 years agoContinuing around my garden this is a view just past the entry to the house and this part of my garden contains one of my oldest plants, a Rhododendron and several azaleas left over from when I first started gardening in 1973. It now has mostly dwarf conifers with a sprinkling of other plants like Pieris and Skimmia and Hydrangea paniculata, Manzanita Dr Hurd in a dry corner, Ceonothus Concha in a dry background spot.
Most interesting is an unusual Spiral Aloe, or Aloe polyphylla. Unlike the usual succulent aloes, this one comes from the mountains of Lesotho in Africa. It is hardy and requires regular water. I bought it 25 or 30 years ago for it’s unusual spiral and about 5 years ago it bloomed for the first time. Two years ago, it began to give birth to offsets, three of them, which quickly grew in less than two years to almost the size of the parent plant and very early this summer and much to my amazement all four of them bloomed.
I wish I could find my earlier messages on the Garden Web on this plant to show off what it looks like as a single, which I much prefer. In the photo below you can see the flowers forming.
In bloom late spring/early summer.
Showing off its spiral. Some spiral clockwise, others counter clockwise.
echolane
3 years ago
echolaneOriginal Author