End of May Glories

The pond gardens are looking (and smelling) nice this time of year, with highly scented dianthus 'Sweetness' that can be smelled at twenty paces, 'Prairie Breeze' Buck roses, boxwood shrubs, and water lilies in the pond. The Garden Shed, Tractor Shed (with the new trellises I installed a few weeks ago on it), and little red Grand Chicken Hotel can be seen in the background.

The End Of May: what a glorious time in the garden! In my gardens anyway, as I think the flowers that bloom now are probably the loveliest possible and therefore I tend to plant many of them. It's not that I don't want anything blooming earlier or later on, but I regard this time as the most beautiful.

It's also the time when I'm usually winding down the spring gardening work, moving from a "making changes" and planting role, to more of a maintenance role: mowing, keeping the weeds under control, watering. And that's good, because it can start to get hot around the First of June, and these maintenance tasks can be done in cooler mornings and evenings, when it's a pleasure to be outside working among the beautiful flowers and lush, green plants.

Here are a few scenes from the past week or so:

Clematis 'Multi-Blue' on the north side of my garage.

One of the iris in my new Iris Border.

Itoh Peony 'Julia Rose'.

A single pink peony in the Rainbow Border.

Poppies and daisies in the Rainbow Border.

Iris 'Red at Night' in the Rainbow Border.

Amsonia hubrichtii (Arkansas Blue Star) in bloom.

'Bartzella' Itoh peony in my Yellow Garden.

'Mary Rose' David Austin English Rose in the West Island. I never got around to pruning this
rose in spring, and it seems to be happy with my neglect.

'Seminole Wind' climbing rose in my Front Border. This is the first year this rose has
bloomed so well, and is starting to get some height.

The 'Zepherine Drouhin' climbing roses in my Front Border are nearly the only plants left there, after my clearout this spring, but they're looking nice this week.

Little Kitty is looking cross in front of 'Blaze' climbing rose and a pink peony on the east side of my garden shed. This also is the first time 'Blaze has bloomed so well. I planted one on each side of the shed door, but the one on the left has died twice now. I have taken cuttings again from this plant and will try one more time, after which I will give up and plant something else -- clematis perhaps.

The view over the east fence and Herb Garden, with Sweet Williams and painted daisies in the foreground. (This bed used to be named the William and Mary Bed, because the 'Mary Rose' roses were here together with the Sweet Williams, but Mary has left William....)

One last look in the evening back toward the house and windmill, together with the Pond Gardens, Rainbow Border and Herb Garden.

The End of May: the loveliest phase, the peak of flowering, the most glorious time of year. I hope you are enjoying beautiful weather and glorious flowering in your own gardens as we enter this month of June. Thanks for reading! -Beth

Book Review: "RHS Chelsea Flower Show: The First 100 Years: 1913-2013"

I read this wonderful book last May, but I didn't finish writing my review until after the 2015 Chelsea Flower Show had finished, and I felt that it was no longer topical to include in my blog at that point. But I found my review in my draft posts recently, now that the excitement of the 2016 Chelsea Flower Show is beginning -- my husband and I just finished watching the first of the many episodes that will cover this grand event during this week for those of us who aren't lucky enough to attend in person.

Being American, until last year I had little idea what the Chelsea Flower Show even was, other than a presumably desirable event included in garden tour packages advertised in magazines like "The English Garden" and "Gardens Illustrated."

But my total ignorance has ended, due to two educational sources: 1. the BBC coverage of last year's show that I watched on YouTube last May, and 2. this book that was published right before the 2014 Show, "RHS Chelsea Flower Show: The First 100 Years: 1913-2013" by Brent Elliott (a review copy of which I requested and received from publisher Frances Lincoln because of my interest in garden history).

For those American readers who still exist in my former state of complete ignorance, the Chelsea Flower Show is a really big deal in England. Chelsea is an affluent district in central London, and every May the Royal Horticultural Society holds a five-day-long Flower Show in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement and nursing home.

The Show in its modern format comprises three main areas:

1. the huge tent known as the Floral Marquee under which plant growers and breeders exhibit amazingly impressive displays of their plants
2. outside the tent are large and small Show Gardens designed by garden designers
3. and a Sundries area has display greenhouses, garden tools and books, and specialist plant societies' displays

The garden designers and plant exhibitors hope to win a gold or silver-gilt award from the RHS judges, and there is great media attention for the winners, particularly for garden design winners. Also receiving much coverage is the visit of members of the royal family on the first day of the show. After the first day, the show is open to the public and over 150,000 people purchase limited-availability tickets each year, and the BBC runs morning and evening television coverage of the Show on all five days. The Chelsea Flower Show is probably most likened to an upscale, national-level version of our American state fairs (in my home state of Iowa, the Iowa State Fair is a pretty big deal, with over a million attending and nightly television coverage of fair activities).

But again, I knew none of this until I read this book, which covers the history of the world's most prestigious flower show. Brent Elliot's book is filled with historic photos that I found fascinating -- I love old garden photos, and those chosen by the author and editors do a great job of showing the gardening and societal trends of each decade. (I have poorly scanned a few representative images from the book in an attempt to show how interesting the illustrations are.)

The first chapter covers the 19th century origins of the show: The Horticultural Society of London held its first flower show in 1827 in Chiswick, which proved to be too far away from London before railroads reached it and the show was eventually a financial disaster which took years to recover from. In 1861, the renamed and re-organized Royal Horticultural Society moved their flower show to a closer site in Kensington. This was successful for a few years, but London's pollution resulted in yet another move in 1888 to the garden areas of the Inner Temple (where English barristers are traditionally housed). This site lasted until 1912, when the RHS finally ended up at the current, much larger Chelsea site.

A painting showing the 1866 International Horticultural Exhibition in
Kensington, a fore-runner of the Chelsea Flower Show.

After staging a successful international horticultural exhibition on the Chelsea grounds in 1912, the first RHS flower show (called the Great Spring Show) was held there in 1913, and after the First World War, the Great Spring Show was revived in 1919. During the 1920s and 1930s, the show grew in size and the gardens and exhibits became more elaborate (rock gardens enjoyed a peak of popularity during this period and drew huge crowds, while a campaign against topiary and traditional formal gardens was waged).

A rock garden under construction for the 1935 Chelsea Flower Show. Looking on are three of the "Pensioners," residents of the retirement home at Royal Hospital Chelsea. 

And probably the most famous indoor exhibit the show has ever enjoyed was shown in 1929, when Mrs. Sherman Hoyt of California staged a tableau of Californian desert plants, which wowed the British audience with its elaborate detail and exotic plant species (Interestingly to Iowans, Mrs. Sherman Hoyt had an Iowa connection; her mother was a niece of Hoyt Sherman, a prominent 19th-century Des Moines banker, and his brother, Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman.)

Mrs. Sherman Hoyt's famous 1929 California desert display with painted backdrops ushered in a new level of plant displays. After the show, the whole display was purchased by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

The Chelsea Flower Show was discontinued after Britain declared war in 1939, when the RHS put its efforts into its Dig for Victory campaign. The Flower Show was not able to resume until 1947, and even then with a reduced number of exhibitors, but by the early 1950s, the RHS was able to afford a larger tent as interest and attendance increased. In the 1950s and '60s, the once-popular rock gardens began their decline and many of the new gardens featured historic garden styles inspired by Spanish courtyards and French potagers.

A Spanish-style garden by the Sociedad de Amigos del Paisaje y Jardines for the 1952 show.

The 1950s also saw the beginning of modernistic garden styles epitomized by the 1959 The Times' Garden of To-morrow, which featured labor-saving shrubs, groundcovers and paving, as well as a futuristic radio-controlled lawnmower. Also demonstrated were developments in the use of plastic containers and stainless steel garden tools, which were indeed truly revolutionary developments that modern gardeners take for granted.

A labor-saving tree and shrub garden designed by Paul Temple for the 1964 show.

By the 1960s and 1970s, earlier amateur exhibitors were being replaced by professional growers and large garden centers, as gardeners were becoming accustomed to buying container-grown plants (made possible by plastic pots), rather than growing from specialists' seeds. Bonsai was on the ascendance in popularity, and garden designers, who had previously not been listed with garden sponsors in entries, were becoming celebrities in their own right.

Professionals preparing the impressive floral displays for a 1960s-era show inside the Great Marquee (tent). 

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Show was forced to deal with overcrowding as attendance rose to new heights. And the 1990s were marked by controversy over garden styles: in earlier years, it had been the garden modernists who complained that traditional styles were boring and irrelevant, but by the turn of the century it was the general public who lamented that many awards were being given to designs that hardly appeared to be real "gardens" (designed arrangements of live plants), but more like natural, uncultivated settings or areas of mostly paved hardscaping.

By the turn of the 21st century, many of the garden designs for the show were centered on demonstrations of sustainability, social conscience or trendy causes. Many are based on "extravagant metaphors which only become intelligible after reading the programme note," according to the author of the book, such as gardens that have attempted to represent the blood circulatory system or shock waves. Gardens now mostly seem to be fairly modernistic in design, although cottage gardens and other revivalism of historic garden styles are also represented.

The Wasteland Garden by Kate Gould for the 2013 show includes such objects as a storm drain, mattress springs, lumps of concrete and pieces of machinery, in her evocation of a "derelict pumping station." Not my idea of a desirable garden, which to me should be a place of beauty, but I suppose it does have some plants in it, and it did receive a Gold Medal....

This 1996 Paradise Garden by Bunny Guinness is more my style, and some of the prettier modern styles filled with lush plantings are beautiful to see.

At any rate, "RHS Chelsea Flower Show, The First 100 Years: 1913-2013" takes readers on a fascinating tour through history -- not just through the history of the Chelsea Flower Show, but also through changes in popular garden styles as well as through the greater cultural history of England in the twentieth century.

Anyone interested in garden history, English gardens or modern British history should be familiar with this cultural icon of the English garden world, and Brent Elliott's book is just the introduction needed by American gardeners. The photos alone are endlessly enjoyable, and Elliot's narration of the story of the Chelsea Flower Show provides just enough background for the photos, but not so much as to prove dull to general readers. Highly recommended for readers who want to know more about the biggest flower show on earth.

And even if you're not interested in the book, many gardeners will enjoy watching a few episodes of the coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show 2016, which can likely be found on Youtube or on BBCi (although the BBC blocks foreign viewers, so an inexpensive DNS proxy service such as UnoTelly, which prevents streaming services from knowing where your computer is located, is necessary for viewers outside the UK).

Here's to the Greatest Flower Show on Earth -- and thanks for reading! -Beth

Mid-May

Lupines and Weigela 'Pink Poppet' on the east side of the tractor shed.

Hello, all! I've been working hard in my gardens for the past week and things are starting to look more under control, after my feelings of panic several weeks ago. I have been completely renovating several of my major garden areas due to issues with thuggish invasive plants and changes I have wanted to make, so there aren't as many things blooming at this time of year as usual, but there are still a few bright spots in the gardens that I'd like to share with you.

This is not one of the bright spots, but it is an area that looks a lot better for being cleared out and raked smooth. I will not be able to plant anything in this main section of my Front Border for the rest of this year due to a nasty problem with Obedient Plant 'Vivid,' but at least it looks like a cultivated area now, not just sprayed, dying plants and large holes from where I dug out plants I was able to save. I'll move the Alliums after they dry up, and leave only the roses until next spring. 

Another part of my Front Border, with a few gaps, but still containing a few blooming plants to cheer me up.

This week I painted and installed these trellises on the east side of our decaying old Tractor Shed, on which I hope the sweet pea starts planted at their base will grow up. Next year I'll get an earlier start planting the sweet peas out with trellises already being in place. Something about these wood trellises reminded me of the "barn quilts" that are painted on the sides of barns here in the Midwest, perhaps the diamond-shaped insert in the center of each.

The tree peony 'Renkaku' that I planted last year had a big,
beautiful bloom on it.

Another tree peony, called 'Hoki', near 'Renkaku'.

Purple bearded irises, verbena 'Shauna Ann' and allium 'Purple Sensation' in the Purple Section of what used to be called my Rainbow Border. (I'm not certain what I will call it now that I am mixing up the colors -- perhaps the "Big Easy Color Border" might work? I'll think on it....)

I was also able to get my cutting garden in order this week and have been working on moving things around in the ex-Rainbow Border. Next week I hope to show some more irises that are just now coming into bloom, but that's it for now.

Hope your own garden work is starting to reach a manageable point as we near the end of May, the busiest month for gardeners. Thanks for reading! -Beth

My New Winter Border

Hello, a few more rainy days this week, which gives me a chance to catch up on everyone's blog posts, as well as another of my own.

I finally got everything cleared out of the original section of my North Border, so that on Friday and Saturday I could plant the growing collection of potted evergreen trees and shrubs accumulating at the side of my house. I have just about finished planting all the major trees and shrubs, and I only have to mulch it and plant a few areas of evergreen perennials and pockets of bulbs.

The photo above shows what the border now looks like from my kitchen window. As readers may remember, the North Border used to be a rectangular strip planted with perennial and annual flowers:

The North Border last May.

I was dissatisfied with it, however, because it gave me nothing to look at in wintertime and it was hard to keep such a large border weeded in summertime. So last fall, I removed the grass from a curvy smaller section in front of the original border and this spring I have been moving many of the plants from the back section into the new section, which I might end up calling my Summer Border.

Here is the border now from a similar angle, with the new curvy section in front, and the newly planted original section filled with evergreen trees and shrubs. The three upside-down pots are standing in for the large stones that I am considering placing in the border.

I have used only relatively common trees and shrubs that I was able to purchase locally in reasonable sizes, as most conifers are fairly slow-growing and I am fairly impatient. I tried to find a variety of colors, textures and sizes, although I mostly tried to avoid very dark green conifers, as I was afraid they would not be visible against the backdrop of the large Western Red Cedars of our windbreak.

Also, I tried to avoid the look of a random collection by grouping the trees and shrubs in small groups by color, trying to repeat the motif of groups of three.

I'll show closeups of each part of the border, starting on the right end, listing the cultivars and showing how I tried to form groups and vignettes that I hope will look nice as the trees and shrubs mature.

This picture does not show the shrub on the very end that can be seen in the last photo, a 'Gold Mops' Sawara Falsecypress that was planted behind my house in my Yellow Garden (I think it will be happier -- and gold-er -- in this sunnier spot). At the far right is the twisty form of a large Bruns Weeping Serbian Spruce that I stumbled across at Costco a few weeks ago and improbably was able to just fit into my Toyota Corolla to get home. To the left of that is a group of three 'Skyrocket' Junipers in front of a 'Saybrook Gold' Juniper that I hope will make the 'Skyrocket' group more visible by contrast, and in front of them is a group of five 'Angelina' Sedums. There is an 'Emerald & Green' Euonymous behind and just to the right of the Dwarf Alberta Spruce in the center of the photo, and the Dwarf Alberta Spruce is part of a group of three green-colored plants including a Bird's Nest Spruce and Mugo Pine at front. Behind these is a '4Ever Gold' Arborvitae, at left is an 'Emerald Gaity' Euonymous, with a 'Moonglow' Juniper at far left.

Continuing on, the 'Moonglow' Juniper can been seen toward the right of this photo, next to the similar blue foliage of a large clump of Dianthus that I moved from the edge of the border. A Juniper procumbens 'Nana' in front looks similar in color to the Weeping Alaska Cedar at center. A group of three boxwoods that I already had is just in front of another 'Saybrook Gold' Juniper and an  'Emerald Green' Arborvitae.

The 'Emerald Green' Arborvitae forms a group of three with two other green plants, a Bird's Nest Spruce and a 'Manhattan' Euonymous that I may trim the lower leaves from as it gets bigger, to expose the branched lower trunk in a Japanese style. To the left is a 'Fat Albert' Spruce and a 'Blue Star' Juniper at bottom (I will probably plant some more blue-foliaged Dianthus near this group too, to make another group of three). There is still a space behind 'Fat Albert' in which I could plant one or two other shrubs.

Just to the left of the space near 'Fat Albert' is another group of three boxwoods, and another 'Emerald & Gold' Euonymous, '4Ever Gold' Arborvitae, as well as a 'Manger's Sunshine' Falsecypress, for a group of three gold-foliage plants. A Chionoides Rhododendron, 'Boule de Neige' Rhododendron and 'Red Head' Pieris are planted in front of  two holly shrubs, 'Castle Spire' and Castle Wall' in this west end of the border that receives afternoon shade. (There is a small patch of weeds that still needs to be removed in the front of this end of the border, after which I might plant a couple more shrubs or evergreen perennials.)

This is the same photo as at the beginning, to show the Winter Border in its entirety to conclude.

I think I've made a good start on designing and planting my Winter Border. I didn't actually plan it out before planting, I just bought a selection of contrasting shrubs and trees and then laid them out and moved things around until it looked right, before beginning to plant from right to left.

There's still a bit more to be done: mulching, and I'll still add a few more groups of perennials that remain evergreen here in Iowa (a pretty short list, to be truthful). I'll also put in a few pockets of early bulbs such as daffodils, crocus, winter aconite and maybe some early tulips. And I also want to add a group of three rocks, and perhaps a statue, if I find a suitable one.

It feels good to have finished the major part of this project that I've been thinking about for the past half a year, and I'm looking forward to putting the last finishing touches on it and then seeing how the trees and shrubs grow over the next five to ten years.

Hope your own projects are progressing well this spring. Thanks for reading! -Beth

On Starting Seeds and Greenhouses

Another couple of rainy, windy, cold days here in Iowa, so I'm inside again, starting a few last seeds and thinking about the process and how I might improve it. The seedlings in the picture above are the petunias I experimented with growing from seed this winter.

I was feeling spendthrift and lazy just going to the nursery and buying flats of petunias and other annuals already started, so I decided to try starting some petunias from seed in mid-March to see how it went.

I have started seeds before and it's usually worked fairly well -- the vegetable seeds I've started for my husband have been quite easy, and I've also started biennials like wallflowers and perennials like the 150 dianthus that edge my four L-shaped pond garden beds (although those are started in late spring and potted up outside until they are planted out in late summer, so they are different than starting seeds indoors under lights in winter and spring).

I bought a soil blocker this spring and used it for the first time with these petunias, and it worked quite nicely. As you can see in the photo, the petunia plants are coming along fairly well, although I had problems with uneven germination and size of plants.

Petunias are not the easiest plants to start from seed and grow inside -- first, they require at least two months of growing in warm, bright conditions, during which many things can go wrong: damping off (I run a small fan nearby to keep the air moving gently), drying out if you forget to water them or go away for a few days, and probably numerous other maladies that can afflict them. And the seeds are quite tiny, so Burpee's (the ones I found locally, so I didn't have to pay for shipping) are pelletized for easier handling, which is fine with me, but that makes them more expensive, and only half of the 50 seeds (2 packets) that I bought germinated, which is disappointing.

I also have some sweet peas and dahlias started from seeds on the top shelf, as well as some freesias just coming up in the pot below. The lights plug into a timer on the wall, and a small fan is on the floor nearby.

To grow them in my basement, I use florescent lights and a heat mat under the flat, both of which cost money to operate (even independently of their purchase cost). I calculated that the 24 petunia plants that I have managed to grow to this point have cost me more than three times as much, per plant, as buying them already in flower from the the least expensive nursery near me:

Cost of 24 Petunia Plants:

$ 3.00    50 Seeds (2 packets @ $1.50 each, only 24 of which germinated)
$ 2.00    Seed Starting Soil
$ 6.50    Cost of running two 32W light bulbs for 14 hours/day for two months
$ 2.50    Cost of running heat mat for two months
$ 3.00    Cost of running small fan (for all seeds)
$17.00

At the Amish nursery near me, a six-pack of petunias costs only $1.29, so 24 petunia plants costs $5.16, less than a third as much as it cost to raise them myself. Even if all 50 seeds had germinated, it still would have cost $17 for 50 plants, compared to $10.75 for 50 purchased plants, which would still be nearly twice as much. Hmmm!

Now, I know that not all plants take as long to start as petunias, and that there are other reasons to start plants from seeds besides saving money: only a limited selection of plants are available as starts locally, so if I want special varieties, I will have to grow them myself. Also, I'm serious about my hobby of gardening, and there's the argument that I really can't consider myself to be any sort of knowledgeable gardener if I don't know how to successfully propagate plants.

So I still want to be able to grow things from seeds, but I might have to re-evaluate how I do it. Much of the cost in my calculation comes from the long periods of running lights, which I would not have to do if I had a small greenhouse.

A Greenhouse?

Now, greenhouses are very common among British gardeners, who can hardly imagine gardening without one. But they're fairly uncommon here in the US, for several reasons: first, it gets MUCH colder here, so it costs a lot more more to heat a greenhouse in winter. (In England, many places hardly get below 20°F, compared to below 0°F here.) Also, it doesn't get as warm there -- in England, many gardeners grow tomatoes in greenhouses, because they just don't get enough heat to grow them outside. Here, a greenhouse is practically unusable in the hotter months (unless it is to sterilize soil).

Many British gardeners can hardly imagine gardening without one of these. (Hartley Botanic)

But this is more like what I'm eyeing: a 4'x8' lean-to style greenhouse.
(EarthCare Greenhouses)

I've been considering getting a small, relatively inexpensive greenhouse for several years now, but I wasn't sure where I would put it, until a few months ago a place occurred to me: The south side of my garage.

I had tried planting sunflowers and iris there to make it look less ugly, but I have realized that I should just consider it a "utility area" and use it as such. I removed most of the plants last week and will at least put a cold frame or two in this spot.

This area on the south side of my garage will never be pretty, with the gas tank, vinyl siding and tiny, ugly window. But it does get full sun and is relatively protected from wind, as well as being near electrical outlets inside the garage.

The eight-foot-long greenhouse would be just to the left of the gas tank, and the garage window could be replaced with a small insulated door, as the inside framing is already appropriate for that. Opening the garage greenhouse door on cold days would release less heat from inside the greenhouse than an exterior greenhouse door would.

I would probably only use the greenhouse in late fall, to protect tomatoes and herbs from frost, and in early spring, to start seeds. I could run a small portable heater on a thermostat in spring to keep the temperature above 50° or so. There would be a cost of heating the greenhouse (I have calculated using an online greenhouse heating calculator that during the months of March and April it would cost about $25/month to keep it at 50°), but the cost could be averaged over a number of flats being started at one time. Perhaps I wouldn't be able to start warm-season flowers and annuals in there until mid-spring, but cool-season annuals and vegetables would probably do well in there earlier in the year.

Of course, I can buy a hundred flats of petunias for the cost of a greenhouse, even the the inexpensive one I'm considering. Realistically, I will probably never justify the nearly $1,000 it will cost me to set up the greenhouse. But on the other hand, it might be fun to have one, and it might make me a more knowledgeable and experienced gardener (or it might just be a place to sit out of the wind on sunny, cold days, or just end up as a place to store pots, like so many gardeners' greenhouses end up...).

I'd like to ask readers, particularly ones gardening in cold climates, whether you have ever used a greenhouse successfully, and for any tips or recommendations on doing so (or not doing so, if you recommend against it).

Thanks for reading, and I hope your own seed-starting efforts are going well this spring! -Beth

The Real Work Begins

 

Greetings! It's been nearly three weeks since my last post, because I have been Busy with a capital "B". Busy in the gardens, which is what most gardeners are in springtime. But this year I'm even busier than usual, having started a massive amount of work in my garden areas, many of which are undergoing big changes.

However, today is rainy, extremely windy and cold, so I'm taking a break from working outside and can post an update. I don't even know where to start (please forgive the length of this post)....

I'm not sure if others feel an occasional panic when walking around their gardens, but I know I had one the other evening. Several of my borders have serious issues dealing with invasive plants that require the Nuclear Option: a total clearing out and Rounding-Up of the borders.

My Front Border, shown in the above photo one week ago, is one example: It has been taken over by the flagrantly-named Obedient Plant, which is anything but well-behaved. (I had the white variety for years without any issue, so I decided the pink kind, Physostegia 'Vivid', might look nice too -- and it did, but it's apparently a near-invasive cultivar, something that only now is noted on the plant tag, I noticed the other day in the plant store.)

Everything has to come out except the roses. Some plants I was able to move to other borders, but only ones with open root areas, so I could be certain that no Obedient Plant was tagging along. Many other plants had to be composted, so as to avoid being "penny wise and pound foolish."

And I thought the Obedient Plant looked so great in the Front Border that a year and a half ago I moved a couple clumps to the Pink Section of the Rainbow Border too -- great thinking! I've been re-designing the Rainbow Border to shorten the length and to mix up the colors more, but there are a couple of sections in it that also need the Nuclear Option:

Here's the Pink Section of the Rainbow Border in late May last year.

And how lovely it looks this year! This is the several days Post-Round-Up look. I was able to save a few of the desirable plants in here, either moving them or hand-clearing around them and flagging them as not to be sprayed by my husband. This area will need to be left empty for at least a year, to be sure that the OP doesn't return.

The former Green Section of the same border. I'd love to be able to plant things here too in my re-design of the border this spring, but the Artemisia 'Oriental Limelight' that I thought would look so pretty four years ago has spread. I'll have to lift the 'Spring Green' tulips and replant them somewhere else so my husband can spray here too. I don't think it's as pernicious as the OP, and I hope it might be safe to plant here later this year.

One more area that needs a total rejuvenation is the pond and pond gardens. First, last year the edge of the pond collapsed and we had to shore up the sides with a 6"x6" lumber frame, but now the liner is too small in the corners and leaks water there. So I ordered a new liner, which is sitting in my garage. I'll have to drain the pond, put the water lilies in a tank of water, remove the (very heavy) liner and replace it, and then re-level the edging stones -- all with the help of my long-suffering husband, because of the heavy nature of this work.

Then, the four L-shaped beds surrounding the pond will need the Nuclear Option: grass has been invading the Dianthus surrounding the edges for several years now, and it has gotten so bad that I can't even laboriously pull it out as I have done every spring for the past few years. So after the Dianthus are done blooming, I'll trim all ~150 of them back and move them to a holding area until next spring, along with the phlox. I'll dig out the declining tulips, but leave the boxwoods and roses in place, and we'll spray the grass, more than once if necessary. I'm thinking about installing metal edging around the pavers to try to keep out grass in future -- any recommendations for metal edging?

Aaggh!

On a more positive note, the garden areas that I planned to change this year are progressing well.

First, I've moved nearly all the plants out of the old part of the North Border into the new curvy section in front of it. Then, the heavy infestation of creeping charlie will be sprayed (I assure you, we don't usually use this much Round-Up, but things are pretty desperate this year). I hope to be able to start planting the purchased evergreen trees and shrubs that are accumulating by the side of our house by the first week in May.

The North Border last May.

I know it doesn't look better right now, but this is actually coming along as I had hoped, with almost everything out of the back section, and the front section slowly filling up with perennials, with spots left for annuals later on. The back part will be planted with evergreen shrubs and trees and heavily mulched to discourage weeds.

Also, the new Iris Bed that I made adjoining the Peony Border is coming along nicely. I transplanted iris clumps from the North Border and other areas, plus I purchased several new varieties. I also moved many of the Asiatic Lilies from the North border for later summer flowers, and planted some poppy plants that I purchased, plus I'll move some alliums from the Purple Section of the rainbow Border that I'm reducing in size.

I hope that there will be a good late May show here next spring when the peonies bloom.

The new Iris Bed next to the already-existing Peony Border is coming along well.

Finally, I'll share a few photos of things that are actually flowering this year, so that this post isn't just dreary scenes of post-Nuclear-Option beds and half-constructed new planting areas:

Spring bulbs in front of the our addition. This has been a beautiful show this spring.

Orange tulips 'Ballerina' in the Orange Section of the Rainbow Border.

The Yellow Garden is starting to come alive with golden hues.

Grape hyacinths and 'Ollioules' tulips next to my east patio.

It's a lot of work, but I've been reading a book about Giverny, Monet's garden in France (Monet's Garden by Vivian Russell), and it makes me feel fortunate in my own garden work load to read about how much work the gardeners have to do there every single year (to spectacular effect, of course).

I hope spring in your gardens is filled with lots of beautiful color (and no invasive plants...). Thanks for reading! -Beth