Worth a repeat visit

     Last year I posted about my favorite shrub, Spiraea fritschiana, or Korean Spirea.  This year I got some better photos, so I thought it deserved a repeat appearance.
     Michael Dirr, the best authority, says it is "virtually unknown in the United States.  Indeed, I have only seen it twice outside my gardens.  I used to grow it when I was in the nursery business many years ago.  Neither of us can figure out why it is not more common.

A little bit of Arizona

     Last December I was visiting my friends in Cottonwood, Arizona, where I picked up about a thousand pounds of beautiful rocks.  As I drove out there with my Tacoma pickup truck, they made it back to Wisconsin, ready to be used in some new garden.  I finally found a spot last week, and the building sequence is shown in photos.  The moss at the base is Thuidium delicatulum, commonly called Fern Moss.

Moss head

     I have over 300 containers with moss, and here is one of my favorites.  The dainty plant with roundish leaves is Thalictrum dioicum, or Early Meadow Rue.

Only green...but so serene

     Monochrome gardens are boring to some, but my only-shades-of-green Japanese garden never fails to be the most serene place in my gardens.  Of course, my favorite element is the moss garden, or more correctly, gardens.
     The small, rounded plant with roundish leaves is Thalictrum dioicum, or Early Meadow Rue.  It is a shade-loving plant found in deciduous woodlands around these parts.  It looks a lot like maidenhair fern.

Would Leonardo be proud?

     In 2007 I visited a museum in Venice, Italy of the works of Leonardo da Vinci.  One which intrigued me in particular is shown in the first photo.  I though it would be a good feature in my gardens, so I built some.  Foolishly, I never measured it at the museum, so I had to guess at the dimensions.  The first one was "too fat," the next "too skinny."  The last one was pretty close to his scale, and it is shown in photos 2-4.  It is made of cedar.
     The "skinny" one, painted black, is shown hanging in a tree.  Actually, I made two of these.
     Finally, the "fat" one can be seen in the last photo on the right side.

 A never ending quest

     I started my Japanese-style garden some 15 years ago.  It is still not done, as evidenced by the photos showing  me planting 36 boxwoods.  As they fill in, they will be sheared into a mounded mass, known in Japan as a tamamono.  This one will rise about a foot and a half, then descend about nine inches next to a stream.
     Recently, two trees were planted to make the garden look more like a Japanese garden.  In 47 years, I never planted a conifer tree for two reasons.  One, all the trees surrounding my property, including in a 20-acre woods behind it, are deciduous trees.  I believe the contrast in form, foliage, and texture is too strong, similar to the ginkgo tree I once planted, only to cut it down in five years when it stood out like a sore thumb.  Second, conifers have not grown around this area for thousands of years, starting 9,000 years ago when the glaciers melted and white spruce introduced themselves.  The conditions here are simply not well suited to conifers (much warmer than 9,000 years ago).  Therefore, to deal with my aversion to conifers, I call these two trees Psuedopinus parvifolia, commonly known as False Japanese White Pine.  Probem solved.  And I get to name a new species besides.

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Another blue to fend off the blues

      Scilla siberica (Siberian Squill) is a dainty, yet beautiful, spring delight that lasts for a couple of weeks in late April.  It spreads rapidly by seed, showing up in beds and lawns everywhere in a few years.  By the end of May the foliage can either be easily gathered for removal, and often it can just be left to decompose.