POPPING IN ON THE POPPING GARDEN

I’ve been so busy working on various projects around the garden that I’ve neglected showing you what the actual garden is looking like these days.

As usual, there is good news and bad news in the garden. The bad news is that our cold, wet spring has really retarded the growth of many perennials. My hellebores are just showing buds now, a good six weeks late. My witch hazel, which bloomed in February two years ago, is just now blooming. Well, what’s left of it is blooming. The deer ravaged it, and so many other things, this winter.

The good news is that this long, hard winter was less damaging in my garden than in other places. I credit the thick layer of snow that we had all winter for that.

Even though they are slow to come out of hibernation, most of my shrubs and trees seem to have emerged relatively unscathed. That includes the Venus dogwood tree that I planted last year despite it being questionably hardy for my area. The buds are starting to swell on it and while I don’t expect flowers on it this year, I’m thrilled to see any sign of life.

Buds are also swelling on the gingko ‘Gnome’ and I have to say I absolutely love this plant at this stage. It is absolutely perfectly studded with little green buds and I love the architecture of it.

I’m quite happy with the chive hedge on part of the circle garden. The chive divisions I planted last year really took off. I wish I would have planted them a little closer, but they should grow to fill that gap. Here’s what it looked like last year when I planted them about this time.

For reference, this is what it looked like on April 2, 2012. What a difference!

The boxwood mostly did OK, but there is some damage on the stems above the level of the snow coverage. I assume this is mostly sun fading. I look forward to late June when I will be able to cut off those damaged bits and reshape it. I want a really tight meatball this year.

The ‘Blue Magoo’ blue spruce, which is growing slowly but surely, has a pretty severe case of sunscald, but I think it will recover in time. It’s about 30 inches tall these days and I will admit I wish it would start growing a little faster. I think this is its third year so maybe I’ll get a bit of a leap.

 What I didn’t show you was the weeds, which are absolutely loving the rain we’ve been getting. As always, there’s lots to do in the garden. How’s your garden looking?