Our gardens are settling into summer mode and other than a bumper crop of silver maple fruits/seeds, now germinating everywhere, adding to the unharvested sugar maple seedlings from last year, things are looking pretty good so far. The neighborhood is pretty quiet this holiday weekend, but with no where to go, and no desire to go there, our primary activity this weekend is to neaten up the gardens and attack the afore mentioned weeds. About this time of year you begin to learn if your plantings and movings last year were really a good idea or not. One good idea was the wisteria that Mrs. Phactor had been wanting to grow upon a sturdy pergola (A previous wisteria basically tore down a not very sturdy pergola TPP had constructed.). The purple clusters of mildly fragrant flowers are just great and here they constrast nicely with the intense yellow of an iris (I. pseudacorus) growing at the margin of the lily pond.
Field of Science
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Change of address1 year ago in Variety of Life
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Change of address1 year ago in Catalogue of Organisms
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Earth Day: Pogo and our responsibility1 year ago in Doc Madhattan
Showing posts with label wisteria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wisteria. Show all posts
Garden views - wisteria and yellow flag iris
Our gardens are settling into summer mode and other than a bumper crop of silver maple fruits/seeds, now germinating everywhere, adding to the unharvested sugar maple seedlings from last year, things are looking pretty good so far. The neighborhood is pretty quiet this holiday weekend, but with no where to go, and no desire to go there, our primary activity this weekend is to neaten up the gardens and attack the afore mentioned weeds. About this time of year you begin to learn if your plantings and movings last year were really a good idea or not. One good idea was the wisteria that Mrs. Phactor had been wanting to grow upon a sturdy pergola (A previous wisteria basically tore down a not very sturdy pergola TPP had constructed.). The purple clusters of mildly fragrant flowers are just great and here they constrast nicely with the intense yellow of an iris (I. pseudacorus) growing at the margin of the lily pond.
Gardening Mistakes
Everyone makes gardening mistakes. A couple of years ago the Phactor planted a plume poppy (Macleaya cordata) in what is by no means a small perennial bed (~30’ x 80’) and it only took two years to realize that this was the biggest, most impressive, most attractive, most aggressively invasive weed I ever purposefully planted. And every tiny piece of root could (and DID) give rise to a new shoot. You almost could not dig fast enough to keep in front of it. Be warned people! Sentence: death.
This past weekend was spent correcting another couple of gardening mistakes, just none as scary as a plume poppy. Ural false spiraea Sorbaria sorbifolia is actually a nice looking, very hardy, non-fussy, summer-flowering shrub, but again you had better have a large place for it. Once it gets going it spreads quite vigorously by means of shallow rhizomes. It filled a 10’ diameter area in a border garden in 3 years. Fortunately it’s shallow rooted and fairly easy to move or remove. Plant parole has been granted and it gets a 2nd chance in a slightly shadier, slightly wilder and bigger place.
The Phactor has not been a great success over the years with flowering vines. A non-flowering wisteria was adding injury to insult by pulling down the arbor especially built for it, concrete anchors and all. Of course, the removal might have been a tad premature because the vine had latched onto the burr oak beyond, and in the long run may have acted as a counter force pulling the other direction to stabilize the arbor. Unless of course the oak was pulled down too. Ah, the power of plants is something to behold. Sentence: death. The search will continue for a kinder, gentler flowering vine.
The jury is still out on a fancy staghorn sumac as it encroaches on bottle brush buckeyes and the rest of the world. Wonder when the neighbors will notice they have a new hedgerow plant?
Let the Phactor know about plants to look out for. Better forewarned than sorry.
This past weekend was spent correcting another couple of gardening mistakes, just none as scary as a plume poppy. Ural false spiraea Sorbaria sorbifolia is actually a nice looking, very hardy, non-fussy, summer-flowering shrub, but again you had better have a large place for it. Once it gets going it spreads quite vigorously by means of shallow rhizomes. It filled a 10’ diameter area in a border garden in 3 years. Fortunately it’s shallow rooted and fairly easy to move or remove. Plant parole has been granted and it gets a 2nd chance in a slightly shadier, slightly wilder and bigger place.
The Phactor has not been a great success over the years with flowering vines. A non-flowering wisteria was adding injury to insult by pulling down the arbor especially built for it, concrete anchors and all. Of course, the removal might have been a tad premature because the vine had latched onto the burr oak beyond, and in the long run may have acted as a counter force pulling the other direction to stabilize the arbor. Unless of course the oak was pulled down too. Ah, the power of plants is something to behold. Sentence: death. The search will continue for a kinder, gentler flowering vine.
The jury is still out on a fancy staghorn sumac as it encroaches on bottle brush buckeyes and the rest of the world. Wonder when the neighbors will notice they have a new hedgerow plant?
Let the Phactor know about plants to look out for. Better forewarned than sorry.
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