One year ago I started writing this blog. Over 150 posts later, I can clearly see that I had no idea where all this would take me. I've been inspired to name my garden, Squirrelhaven, and I've been inspired to try new plants. I certainly never expected to meet any other garden bloggers, much less travel to Austin to do so. I hadn't imagined I'd be conversing on Plurk with so many other like-minded, wonderful people. In short, I had no idea I'd be part of a blogging community. Had I known that I'd end up being responsible for organizing a garden blogger get together next year, I might have been too daunted to start. But, life's the journey, not the destination, and I'm definitely enjoying this part of the ride. Thanks to everybody who has commented here, left suggestions, or corrected me when I've made a mistake or gotten something wrong. I'd also like to thank everyone who has given me an award that I never did anything about. I appreciate the sentiments and the generousity behind them, I'm just too much of a slug to figure out how to work the widgets and write the posts.And now, the blooms.
August is when the front fauxprairie or miniprairie finally reaches its season of interest. Along with the Ruellia humilis that has been blooming for over a month, the show now includes the natives Echinacea purpurea, Allium cernuum, Prairie Dropseed (Sporabolis heterolepis) and Liatris spicata.
I finally got my act together this year and staked the Liatris early. They are the kind of plants for which Blanche Dubois staking (relying on the kindness of strangers) just doesn't work. They're too thin and there's nothing to catch on other plants to hold them upright. In addition to these strictly natives are the quasi-native Phlox paniculata 'David' and 'David's Lavender.'
The Woodland Garden is starting to look a little tattered and worn down. Thank goodness for such stellar performers as Phlox paniculata 'Laura,' Geranium nodosum 'Svelte Lilac,'
Geranium 'Rozanne,' and the Lobelias, 'Monet Moment'
and the native species syphilitica.
Still churning out the blooms are the Campanulas, persicifolia 'Alba' and 'Telham Blue,' 'Sarastro,' and this Campanula, 'Samantha.'
For sheer wow, there's the combination of 'Black Beauty' Lilies and Lobelia 'Sparkle DeVine.'
While Hostas aren't usually grown for their flowers, Hosta plantaginea is an exception with it's strongly fragrant trumpets.
It's also hard to ignore the flower power of Hostas 'June' and 'Halcyon.'
Nearby these Hostas, the Astilbe pumila is in full bloom.
More subtle are the flowers of the Toad Lily, Tricyrtis 'Tojen,' which has been aptly described as a Toad Lily on steroids.
The Ceratostigma plumbaginoides (trying saying that five times fast), has just started blooming.
I like it best when the foliage turns red while it's still blooming. The big native star of the August shade garden is Actaea/Cimicifuga racemosa a/k/a Bugbane.
Another native August bloomer is Eurybia divaricata/Aster divaricata, seen here with the foliage of Actaea simplex 'Hillside Black Beauty.'
Here's another Aster, but this one isn't a native.
I got it from the late great Heronswood Nursery. I have lost the name and, naturally, the one Heronswood catalogue that I accidentally recycled is the one I ordered it from. If anyone can identify this plant, I'd be very grateful.August also brings blooms to two shrubs, the Japanese Beetle magnet Hibiscus syriacus 'Red Heart,'
and Clethra alnifolia 'Ruby Spice.'
The jury's still out on Clethra. It leafs out so late in the year and looks so spindly, I'm tempted to shovel prune it. But then it has scented blooms in August and yellow fall foliage, so it does have some redeeming qualities.The best performing Clematis at Squirrelhaven is 'Betty Corning.'
This amazing plant has been continuously in bloom since the beginning of June. Two other Clematises are also in bloom now, the continuing blooming of 'Madame Julia Correvon' and the reblooming of 'Crystal Fountain.'Other plants in bloom: Calycanthus floridus 'Athens,' Dicentra 'Zestful,' Heucheras 'Hollywood'and 'Raspberry Ice' (both reblooming) and 'Palace Purple,' Hosta 'Krossa Regal,' Hosta 'Winfield Gold,' Hydrangea 'Endless Summer,' Malva 'Zebrina,' Phlox 'Nicky,' Phlox maculata, Verbena hastata and, as always, Lamium maculatum.
Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day is brought to you, as it is every month, by Carol of May Dreams Gardens.
41 comments:
Yes, your lily and lobelia combo does wow. MMD, congrats on a great year of blogging. From the moment you arrived, breathless but smiling with suitcase in tow, at Matt's El Rancho at the Spring Fling, I could tell you were going to be fun to hang out with. And you totally rock to be planning the next Fling. Go Chicago!
Your blooms are absolutely beautiful. It makes me think of how little diversity I have in my own garden... hopefully over time - and with a little more reading about new blooms! - that will change.
Happy Blogaversary!
It looks really grand!! I'm listening to one of my blog music channels called rain. It was so beautifully appropriate for the display of flowers you showcased today. I thought they had a peaceful affect.
Congrats on your blog b-day. You have always been one of my favorites.
Wow, what a lot of blooms you have for GBBD. Love that clematis Betty Corning, don't think I've seen it around here. Bugbane is a gorgeous plant, isn't it? I have one with purple foliage which is to die for. My Toad Lily is not in flower yet but soon will be. Love that combo of Lilies and Lobelia!!!! They say that August is not the best month for blooms in the garden but your garden seems to be the exception to that rule. :-)
Congrats on your Blogaversary! I don't think any of us had a clue what we were in for when we started blogging about gardening. ;-) I'm glad you decided to blog and always enjoy your comments!
Looking forward to read all about the Chicago Fling and think it's great that you have stepped forward on the organising side of it. Good for you!
First off Congratulations on your Blogaversary! Your mini-prairie garden is really something, I love Liatris & Purple Coneflowers. Your toad lillies are looking especially gorgeous, I hope mine bloom this year. They are looking kind of ragged from our heat & lack of rain. Great GBBD post! Everything looks fantastic as always in your garden. :)
MMD, Congrats on a year of blogging! Seems like you've been a member of the garden blogging community for much longer than that, which is meant to be a compliment.
It likes like a really blooming time at Squirrelhaven. Perhaps our hostas with the big white scented flowers are the same species? Mine is a passalong, so I don't know what it is, and haven't tried to figure it out.
And I need to check into those toadlilies, because the ones I have won't bloom until nearly October.
Thanks for joining in for bloom day and have a great day!
Carol, May Dreams Gardens
Wow happy blogaversary! Your garden is beautiful.
Happy, happy blogaversary. I didn't know you'd only been doing this a year because you do it so well. Love your blog, loved being car buddies at the spring fling in Austin, grateful you're taking on the spring fling next year. Beautiful flowers. Can't wait to soon see your garden too.~~Dee
Happiest of days MMD! I was under the impression that you were a long time blogger...Your bloom day post is wonderful! I am impressed with the long blooming clematis and just a bit jealous that your lilies are still flowering! Hostas have not been happy here of late and I miss the fragrance! Thank you for the tour and for taking on The Fling.
Gail
Pam - thanks for the encouragement!
Daisy - sometimes I think I've got too much diversity & not enough of the sweeps of plants, but I like having lots of different things going on.
Thanks, Anna! I didn't include any shots of the ratty looking parts of the garden because they weren't relevant.
Yolanda Elizabet - thanks! I know Clematis 'Betty Corning' is available in England, as I've read that their form of it is fragrant. I have 3 kinds of dark-leaved Bugbane, but I can't seem to get them all to bloom every year.
Perennial Gardener - it's too bad the Toad Lilies don't take the heat too well. I love them & am afraid I could become a collector.
Carol - thanks! To me it seems like less than a year, the time has whizzed by so fast. I'll bet your Hosta is plantaginea. It's been a staple of Midwestern gardens for so long & is so common. This Tojen plant has started blooming before a second one nearby, which is much smaller. My notes also show that it has been blooming a couple of weeks earlier the past several years, so I think plant maturity has something to do with it. But also, it does always bloom earlier than Gilt Edge. Tojen's a great Toad Lily, you should get it.
Laurie - thanks!
Dee - nooo! My garden looks so much better in photos than in person. You should see (or rather shouldn't see) the ugliness of the browning Mayapples. It's funny, I had thought you'd been blogging for a lot longer too.
Lovely parade of stars! Just lovely!
Happy Blogaversary! Wow your garden is looking wonderful. What a great collection you are amassing. Lovely to have so much blooming in late summer, you must have done quite a bit of planning. The photography is immpresive.
That clematis is going on my "list".
Oh I can't wait for spring! LOL
Jen
Congratulations on a year of blogging! You have set the standard for many of us late joiners.
So much blooming in your garden right now--wow! I'm jealous, though, of that beautiful astilbe. Mine are disappointing me once again. And a clematis that has bloomed since June? I'll have to think about adding a "Betty Corning."
MMD: The blog community is all the better for your wonderful posts! Congrats on your first anniversary! I forgot it was bloom day! I am up in Canada on business so I will have to post late but your blooms are glorious.
So beautiful! In fact, today I'm going to pretend it's my garden instead of what I actually have!
I think I am going to echo the other commenters sentiments that it seems you have been a blogging fixture WAY longer than one year. A very HEARTY congratulations on your Blogiversary! So exciting!! I am also pleased to see your Betty Corning and hear such good praise. I purchased one in Maine this summer. Haven't planted it yet but have a good spot once we get some rain. I hope it gives me as much pleasure as yours does. It is lovely. Lots of great blooms. I am also having problems with Ruby Spice; which is currently in a pot. Your bugbane is great! I love it. Any good tips? What a great garden.
Your gardens are beautiful! I love all the diversity you have-something blooming all the time. I didn't know I would have to stake the Liatris til after it fell over.:) Will have to remember that next year. You have certainly put your mark on the blogging community in a great way. I always enjoy coming here to visit and your posts have brightened many of my days. Conratulations on your first year of blogging. May you have many more!
One year of blogging - that calls for a celebration! And with all those gorgeous plants, I guess you're celebrating in your garden!
-Blogging has changed my life quite a bit - to the better!
/Katarina
Congratulations on your Blogaversary MMD! Yours was one of the first garden blogs I discovered, and I was excited to find a fellow Chicago-area garden blogger with similar shallow roots, dry shade gardening conditions.
The diversity of your gardens is simply delightful. How lovely, and what a neat contrast, to have a mini-prairie in front and a cool, peaceful woodland in the back yard.
I can relate to gardening with more specimens than large sweeps. A local gardening friend calls this a "gardener's garden" (note the unnecessary quotation marks. :~)
Being responsible for organizing a garden-bloggers get together sure could seem daunting, and hopefully there have been plenty of offers to assist. I'll be happy to help in any way possible. My former life in corporate America included special events planning and project management.
I'm so looking forward to meeting you and other area garden bloggers, as well as the rest of the garden blogging world coming to Chicago next year.
Happy Blogiversary!!! :)
You have such great bloomers in August... I miss the lobelia syphilicata that I grew at my old house, and love the bright Sparkle De Vine next to that lily, but I know lobelia would not be happy in this new dry garden of mine.
Prompted by your picture, I went out to look at my toad lilies to see if any were at least in bud... nothing. I'll just have to admire yours for now. :)
Congratulations on the anniversary, it's a great accomplishment. Looking forward to what the next year brings.
Happy Blogaversary! My garden will never be as beautiful as yours and the other wonderful bloom day blogger gardens. At least not for many a year while I try and tame my yard little by little.
At least I can stroll through your garden from time to time - thanks for that!
Congratulations! Your garden is lovely!
Hi MMD, You did seem like an experienced blogger from the beginning, I thought you had been around awhile until I got to know you better. Your garden looks lovely in the photos and I'm sure it is in person as well. No one is as harsh a critic as the gardener herself on how things look at any given moment. You are quite the spunky miss to offer to host the fling next year. Looks like you are off to a good start with the help of a former event planner, hooray for Linda! I can't wait to see you garden in person. Be sure and pick the time that it is at its best, since you get to pick the date! ;->
Your bloom-day post is full of so many flowers!
I like your combination of Black Beauty lilies and Lobelia.
Happy Blogaversary
Regards
Karen
Only a year, MMD? I too thought it must be longer than that. Congratulations! And congrats on your beautiful Bloom Day images, as well. The way you caught the light in that picture of the fauxprairie is truly lovely. And that shot of the lilies and lobelia: mmm mmm mmm!
I was totally delighted to read your post. All of my garden(s) qualify as as "woodland" and, just as yours, they're looking depressingly tired and worn. Already. In mid-August.
I've had a toad lily blooming for the last 1 1/2 to 2 months -- totally aberrant in my experience (although in its defence, it is a newcomer to my garden as of this spring -- it's toad lily predecessors have yet to bud).
My geranium, although valiantly sending up a few flowers, is looking leggy and sprawling -- nothing like the thriving bushy growth I'd like to see...
My Cimicifuga is roughly in the same stage as yours -- the ones in the front yard bloomed several weeks ago, the ones in the back yard are just starting.
My phlox is just in the process of opening up.
And, my asters haven't yet come close to flowering. I typically have several varieties (all self-seeded). I'm looking forward to photographing them as they bloom to document their existence in my garden...
Great GBBD post. So much to show. Your garden looks amazing. Ist't funny to see that in such different gardens/climates we still have some plants in common? My ceratostigma plumbaginoides (actually one of my favorite latin names hehehe)is also blooming, but my echinaceas are only now starting to look good (they don't like all the hot weather and start blooming and looking good as the temperatures drop). Congratulations on your blog anniversary.
Gail - thanks! Sounds like you need to get some late blooming Lilies.
Barbee - I like that phrase "parade of stars." Makes me hear Joan Rivers in my head saying "And look, here comes that Fabulous Clematis 'Betty Corning.' I don't know how she does it."
Muddy Boot Dreams - thanks, the gardens are less planned than an acceptance of the reality of where things will grow. If you can't find 'Betty Corning' near you, try Brushwood Clematis. I got mine from there last fall.
Geez, Rose, I'm abashed about setting standards. I've had problems with Astilbe also and I have to say pumila is the easiest of them to grow. You should give it a try. And yes, make room for Betty, she's a great old Clematis.
Layanee - thanks! I'll look for your Bloom Day post when you get back.
GBM - LOL, thanks, but remember that the camera lies. There are some very sad parts of the Woodland Garden.
Tina - thanks! I can't say enough good things about Betty, you're going to love her. In addition to all those blooms, it managed to do it planted at the top of a slope. I'm not sure I'm the person to ask for Bugbane tips, as I can't get my A. racemosa to self sow & I have trouble get A. simplexes to bloom, but here's one: lots of water.
Beckie - thanks! I've strived to have something in bloom throughout the growing season, so I've sought out things that bloom during the dog days.
Katarina - I agree, blogging's great. I'm celebrating in the garden alright, with a shovel as I try to dig out an overgrown Forsythia. But then, I am a gardener, & I like that sort of thing.
Garden Girl - you've put it in writing, so I'm going to hold you to it. I'd love to put your experience to work. It's going to be a fun way for us to spend the winter, planning this stuff. We've got to round up the rest of the Chicagoland bloggers soon for our first meeting of the COSF (Committee to Organize Spring Fling).
Blackswamp Girl - you should give the hybrid Lobelias a try. My garden is generally very dry (see the post "Cracked Up"), and these Lobelias do fine.
Thanks, Megan! Me too!
ICQB - It's taken me 15 years to get the garden to look like this, and there are still corners that need taming and parts that need serious work, but that to me is fun. I'd be bored if my garden were done & perfect (as if!). You've got the right idea, bit by bit. Then when you've got it all tamed, you can start redoing the part you did first, so the fun never ends.
Thanks, Nancy!
Frances - I guess self-deprecation is my way of keeping me down to earth. If I criticize my own or my garden's flaws, hopefully I'll never smug. If I take your advice, Spring Fling would be held on Mother's Day. Hee, hee. It's hard for me to say when the whole garden looks at its best, as the Woodland Garden and the Praire Garden peak at different times.
Artistsgarden - The Black Beauty Lily/Sparkle DeVine Lobelia combo is I think the most successful one I've done, as I finally got the color echo thing right.
Nan Ondra, thanks! When I went out to the get paper one morning this week, I noticed the sunlight hitting the Dropseed just right. I literally ran back in the house for the camera. Oh, how we suffer for our art!
Hi, KD - I don't include in my Bloom Day posts any plants that have gone into the garden this year, as I don't think they accurately reflect how they would bloom here. Rozanne never grows bushy for me. It's a big sprawling mess that I use to advantage by allowing it to scramble over other things, which is why it looks like a mound. In that shot, it's climbing a Phlox, a couple of Polemiums, the Lobelia, and the Epimediums. Most of my Aster haven't even got buds yet, but these 2 are summer rather than fall bloomers. I remember how lame my shade garden used to look in August, which is why I sought out things that bloom now to breathe some life into it.
Gintonio - that is funny, especially as the Coneflowers here don't get going until the hottest days of the year.
MMD, What a nice post! Your plants look so healthy; I love the predominance of the pastel pinks, lavenders & blues... very calming.
And Happy Blogversary! :-) I was SURE you'd blogging much longer than I!
So... if you're hosting a Fling, will you let me come, too?? :-)
Have a great day!
Happy Blogiversary, Mr McGregor's Daughter - your posts had their own voice even when I didn't know you- but they seem even more "you" now that we've met. This is the kind of stuff I love, "I didn't include any shots of the ratty looking parts of the garden because they weren't relevant."
Your bloom day has so many plants I used to grow - and you make me miss them: the white scented hosta, lobelias and perennial geraniums, campanula and bugbane, astilbe and clethra. Squirrelhaven looks wonderful.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Wow! You have an incredible number of flowers blooming in your garden. The front prairie garden looks spectacular with the Liatris. I like the Prairie Dropseed - really pretty. The Toad Lilies and Hosta blooms are gorgeous. And what a beautiful sight is the Black Beauty Lilies and the Lobelia. The Bugbane always cheers me. I love that plant!
Congratulations on your first year. May you have many more.
MMD, I hope you find this note. I've just nominated you for an award. Check it out at "my place!" ;-)
Shady - I'd be disappointed if you didn't come to the fling! An award nomination? But I haven't made any films yet!
Annie - I bet this is the time of year when you're most nostalgic about Chicago. I suppose my writing does have a "voice," but I'd be hard put to describe it.
Hi, Kate - I think Dropseed is my favorite grass, it's such a neat little plant. I wish I understood the Bugbanes needs better, but I'm just happy that they're still alive in my garden (most of them anyway).
Nancy - thanks for the good wishes!
Happy blogiversary! Has it really been a year already? I'm really glad we've "met" and thank you for the reminder to check on the toad lilies!
Thanks, Kris! Yes, those Toad Lily blooms sneak up on you. We always think of them as fall plants, but some start blooming in summer.
Aha! Thanks for the reminder that the bugbane is now called Actea. Now if I could just get mine to bloom! Is yours in a fairly moist setting? My woodland is under cedar trees that suck up water like mad.
Lovely site, and let me add my congratulations to the mass of 'Bravos!' already posted here.
Happy blogiversary MMD! You certainly have a wonderful variety of blooms to show us for August. I'm amazed to see Astilbe blooming this late.
Your lily/lobelia combo really is WOW! Truly gorgeous!
I like the liatris spicata too, and your Betty Corning Clematis is a beauty.
Squirrelhaven is looking very pretty!
Hi, Ricki - the native Actaea seems to handle drier soil better than the Japanese ones. This plant is right next to a Cottonwood, so you know the soil's pretty dry there. I think they need a couple of years to mature, & the Japanese ones seem to need more sun than advertised.
Kerri - the beauty of the garden is fleeting. With no serious rain in a couple of weeks, the garden is rushing into autumn as things are starting to turn early & die down.
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