White Takes Dominance In the Lodge's Front Garden

The daffodils and tulips with their bold colors have faded from the front garden of the lodge. Now is the time for the whites to dominate. Bridal veil and viburnums will now take their moment of glory accented by zebra grass and the punch of color that the lavendar ground phlox (better known as Eric's favorite) offers up.I added some perennial geraniums with soft pink blossoms last fall, which are barely visible in the picture, but will soon fill in any blank dirt in the garden.  The Kousa Dogwood (foreground right) is usually beginning to bloom about now, but lags behind a bit this year due to the cold temps it endured in the winter and well into late spring. Soon the honeysuckle will be abloom, followed by the climbing rose. I added a ring of gold edger hosta around the ornamental pear to avoid a yearly purchase of annuals to cover up the gone by tulips. Now that a lot of my hostas can easily afford to be divided, I can begin "decorating" with them. Until now, I have concentrated on adding different kinds and allowing the older plants to get to their mature sizes. The oldest ones will turn eight this year. 

Empress Wu

I have always bought established plants when I buy my hostas, but the year that Empress Wu came to my attention, the limited number of plants made them extremely expensive and since none of my local nurseries had them anyway, I decided to mail-order a starter plant. I knew just enough about "starter plants" to not allow myself to get my hopes up too high, and sure enough when the small box arrived holding not one, but two of my precious new plants... they had only two leaves which were about the size of a tablespoon. For three summers I have watched my Empress's increase in size. They now equal or surpass Sum and Substance in leaf size and surpass any of the plants in height. While I still won't buy many starter plants, as I like instant gratification much better, I have drawn a lot of satisfaction watching the Empress grow from something easily stepped on or pulled out as a weed, to a plant which is claiming more and more presence in my garden. 

The Hole Is Dug

June 7, 2014, the digging began. Lawson and Avery really loved Tom's digger! We laughed that they even wanted to have breakfast in "the hole".  Kind of like giving a kid a cardboard box.... You could build a great swingset but if someone shows up and digs a four foot hole... what could be better!

Will We Save the Birches

The birches in the Event Field Garden were horribly crippled by the ice storm we had in the early part of December. Each of their branches were completely encased in ice and the weight of that ice bent all four of the trees to the ground. Even when spring arrived, they came up only a few feet. Two of them were almost uprooted by the weight of the ice, so we decided we had to cut them down. The other two we are hoping to save. We used our truck and a heavy rope and pulled them back to upright position, then ran a cable to a
large pine tree to hold it in that position. We have been told that birch trees have "memory wood" and now we just have to hope it will remember what it feels like to stand straight and tall!

Hostas Reaching Full Potential

June in Maine is an exciting time. The perennials are beginning to bloom and many need to be divided as they have outgrown their proper spots in the garden. Even my latest planted hosta beds are really coming into their own now. Some of the older plants in the newer beds are entering their third year and their size has increased tremendously. The rhododendrons which I have planted in each of the beds are just beginning to bloom and they too have lots of new growth. The bleeding hearts are still in bloom and are just breathtaking,
particularly the Gold Heart. My pine needle mulch is beginning to be thick enough in the newer gardens to help with weed control although some always manage to plant their feet and I methodically try to search them out early in season so they won't invite their friends to join them!

Hostas Emerge, Mother Earth Revels

My beautiful hostas are emerging for yet another season! Some much more timid than others about the chilly nights which still plague us. I love seeing them come up. The brilliant purple coverings of their penis like shafts poke up through the soil as if making love to Mother Nature. The way they unfurl their leaves... the distinctiveness of the way they choose to show themselves in the spring is truly fascinating. These pictures, all taken on the same day, show only a small sampling of how different they can be.

The Much Awaited Spring Returneth

The much awaited spring has finally arrived in all its magnificant splendor at Oak Hill Lodge. Eric and I have cleaned out the last of the gardens. An early snowfall, long before the last of the oak leaves chose to let go their grip from their comfortable branches, trapped them under the winter blanket. The good news is that they are extremely brittle, having weathered a hard Maine winter, so they break into mulch very quickly. The stonewall which runs along the driveway garden was displaced by our snowplow man, but that only gave me the provocation to move it up on the priority list to be rebuilt in my new "large rocks outside, small stones inside" method. Vanessa paid me a huge compliment by saying that she would have thought a landscaper had built the wall! The daffodils are doing just what I hoped. The older clumps have multiplied so that all the "singles" I planted are now good sized clumps of daffodils. I attest to them being just like a "savings account".. the more you plant, the more they multiply. It is wonderful! Eric built me a beautiful arbor for my climbing rose, transplanted from the front of the Lodge garden... It is just what I hoped for. I am hopeful that all of my roses will have survived. I was diligent about mounding the hay around their bases, and they all seem to be showing some green shoots. I am holding off trimming them severely, as I am not sure how much trimming they need. I took them all back by about 1/4 for now an will use the "wait and see" method. The very first buds of the Magnolia opened Mother's Day weekend, as did the first of my tulips. A very nice Mother's Day present indeed. My last big concern is my birches in the Event Field Garden. My four young birches suffered a lot of damage from the early winter ice storm. They were brought right to the ground from the weight of the ice. The largest of them has rebounded quite well, but the other three will need some help. We removed another row of pines from the area behind the lilac hedge hoping to allow more sunlight and more space for them to spring up. The next step will be to cable them to the strong white pines which grow behind them. We will slowly tighten the cables so as to correct their posture. I think most other plants survived unharmed. So far, so good. I have moved a lot of shrubs and perennials which were not in their best spots this spring. These are not called the "Trial and Error Gardens of Oak Hill Lodge" for nothing!