Todays Project.

Its that time of the year. I will be heading to the GH and start planting seedlings into their pots. I know what I was doing a year ago. Do you?

Kassia, I still have a ton of stuff to clean up. I'm almost finished my front yard. I finished two sales areas, and started on another. I got my dry garden all cleaned up, the new secret garden area, and along the road in the same area. Still a ton of work to do in the back. I hope I can get it all done before May.

Karen

Karen, what is your "sales area" for. Plants? What is in your "dry garden" sounds like a perfect place for perennial tulips and reticulated iris.

We have been digging our new Japanese maple bed. I am very sore today. No work outside as it is blowing hard with rain. I must get this done by Monday, so I can plant the trees. Patti

Forgot to post the picture.

boy some nice blue dwarf blue spruce or even the juniper blue star would look nice amongst those maples:) HD just got a load of blue star in. i think i'll pick up more - i like them.

Wha, not going there. But I did peek at your new ones. Nice. I already grow a few low junipers in other parts of the yard. We for sure have Juniperus horizontalis 'Bar Harbor' and Juniperus squamata 'Holger' I have a lot of another that I am not sure what it is, as it was planted years ago and the journal that I kept about my garden then was lost when we had water damage to the house. Here is one patch of it last May. Any ideas?

actually if there is an open hole somewhere a dwarf jm would might look good. maybe one on each side.

and i'm only teasing you about the little conifers - you've been pretty adamant about "not going there" :)

Wha, do you mean like this no Id Japanese maple that is already planted there! I am going to plant another one at the other end of this same bed. Not sure yet which one, but a weeping one with fall color would be best. I am about to whack that very over grown Ilex glabra down by half that is behind it in the lower picture. It will look horrible this summer, but by next it would be OK again. Patti

I cant get the stinking dirt wet ! I have a suggestion. If you have potting soil left over - USE IT, dont store it for winter. I have been since 8 am and only have 54 plants done! GEEZE

i guess so patti:)

is this a sunny area?

I interplant my groundcover juniper too. That's also where I scramble my Ramona clems.

Patti, I'm thinking your NOID Juniper might be Juniperus procumbens 'Nana'? http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/92650/ It's used often for Bonsai but also a great ground cover. We have it growing by the front door and it's 'crawled' up over the rock beside it. Over the years the rock has completely disappeared! One of these days I've got to visit you on one of my treks to Maine - your landscape is beautiful :)

And you can drop off that nice oil jar container to me on the way, Debbie!

Debbie, thanks. I know that is the one now. I remember the name having 'Nana' in it. It has grown well for us, with some loss that has to be cut out each spring, but it looks just as I wanted it to, a sea of green. Prickly thing to cut back. Come visit. Thanks.

Nice area that you're working on there, Patti.

My sales area is for selling plants, you're right about that. I don't do a lot in sales, just stuff here and there. More daylilies than anything else. I usually have a sale day the first weekend in June and then 2 in July. I may have more this year. I'm planning on getting an A-frame sign to put up at either end of our street to draw in customers on the days I'm home working in the gardens.

My dry garden has a lot of plants that prefer dry conditions. I have many gaillardia, echinacea, rudbeckia, salvia, veronica, achillea, etc. Also have some daylilies mixed in there, and some TB iris. Oh, and some geraniums. Last year I had a lot of Marigolds and an annual salvia called 'Coral Dawn', which I will probably grow again this year.

Karen

Here's a few pics of my dry garden as it looks now. This is looking at it from what I call the side, looking towards the south side of our house.

This is looking at it from the front. There is a rotten old log there that makes a nice decoration.

Looking to the left of the old log.....

Looking to the right of the old log, towards the house and my driveway.

Again, looking to the left of the old log, towards the Secret Garden area and what my father calls his Anniversary Garden.

it was moving day here - i transplanted a wolfs eye dogwood - lifted a huge bloodgood that struggled last year due to wet feet - moved a viridis JM about 5 feet that the oil man was going to destroy sooner or later - dug out all the arborvitae from the front and transplanted in 2 large kerria and a golden shadows dogwood.

i plopped the arborvitaes in holes out back - they live it ok - they don't not concerned.

Wow, lot done Wha. I assume you got all that topsoil all moved too!

It never stopped blowing, but we battled through it and got a bunch more of the new Japanese Maple bed stripped of sod. We did measure it and it is a lot bigger than I estimated. 47 feet with an average width of 9 feet. But we will be done tomorrow. I did some pruning too. Some roses and some inkberry. I picked up the last of the winter mess in the yard. I still need to to the woods, but that can wait until summer. Patti

Looking good, Patti!

Bill, sounds like you got a lot done.

Today I got more beds cleaned out. I finished the great big shade bed in front, and I also finished cleaning out my sales areas. Just those things alone took a long time to do. Then I raked out the bed around the pond. That's about all today, but I did accomplish a lot. Tomorrow I'm going to work on cleaning out the pond, among other things.

Before I got to work in the yard I went to a local landscape supply place and ordered wood chips, 4 yards, which will be delivered Monday, along with blasted granite, 2 tons, hand picked for stepping stones. I got the wood chips for $18.50 a yard and the stone for $70 a ton. Delivery was $45 on each load.

Karen

Karen, you are doing a mountain of work. I don't envy your back, but do the final look you will have. Your pictures of it are great. I may just have to cruise by some day when I am heading north up RT 3, which is often. I have been known to buy a plant or two.

Wha, I just realized that I use to go right by your house many time until 1999 when our son graduated from school in Groton. We stayed in a B&B just around the corner from you. Too funny. Patti

Patti, I would love it if you stopped by sometime. I'm usually her on Sat. and Sun. Here on Monday afternoons and some Mondays all day.

Karen

I will do that, but I will d-mail you first. Patti

Great!

Just started to germinate 20 rows of stuff. Some from a lot of people on this fourm. May the sun and warmth grow them.

Good night all or should I say Good Night Irene. :-)

Night, Sherrie! And good night from me, as well, as I'm doing an overnight shift and have to get ready to leave now. Toodles!!!

Karen

Everybody is so industrious - good work! I found out one of my dear relatives has blood cancer! He's about 55, white, skinny as a rail, and the risk factors are being over 70, being obese, and being African-American. Go figure.

I'm massaging my fingers, after an afternoon dividing perennials--my very first time doing this, in my innocence. There was the wresting of the clumps from the ground, the shoveling of compost back into the beds, the jumping up and down on the shovel trying to divide the clumps (and the final resorting to using a saw), and finally the planting of the much reduced (because they were seriously overgrown) hunks of phlox, achillea, Siberian Iris, liatris, echinacea, and shasta daisies. Success, I hope.
Gardening is better than having a personal trainer!

Who needs to mall walk or run when you can clear gardens?

I finally got a few gardens cleaned out.
My hellebores, daffs, chinondoxa & few croci are my bloomers

Stuff is just starting here.

here is the bloodgood i "lifted" - heavy tree!

here it is sitting up

and here it is in it's new raised home - didn't that look easy?!

Without a tractor NO !