Huzzah! The Irvington Garden Tour today was a resounding success. I'm not sure how many people came through, but I made about 200 maps (see previous post) and we went through all of them. Despite the occasional threatening cloud, we had gorgeous weather: blue skies, light breeze, and temps in the mid-70s. CAS and son came over to help out; Calvin spent a goodly part of the afternoon mowing my sidewalk with his plastic mower. Amy F. volunteered for ticket taking, along with a couple of other lovely women. And the people were wonderful.
Anabelle hydreangea (Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle')
This old-fashioned hydrangea sports giant clusters of white blooms that dry well. It's best in a part-shade setting, since full sun can fry it, but full shade inhibits its growth. Anabelle generally gets about 4 feet tall and equally wide. Best of all, it loves Midwestern humidity. It blooms on new growth, so in late February or early March, whack it back to the ground. You'll get stronger, less floppy stems and more blooms. Here's the Wayside Gardens entry for Annabelle.
Endless Summer Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla Endless Summer)
This relatively new mophead hydrangea blooms on both old and new wood, so you are guaranteed blooms even in the event of a late frost. Don't prune it at all, unless a branch breaks off or something. Full size is about 5 feet tall by 4 feet wide, but my four-year-old plants are still at about 2.5' x 2.5'. These hydrangeas do best with protection from the afternoon sun and a lot of moisture. They'll be pink in alkaline soil, which is what most of us in central Indiana have. If you want them to be blue, you need to acidify the soil. You can use aluminum sulfate, elemental sulfur, or the old-fashioned method, burying rusty nails in the soil. I only need to correct soil pH every two or three years. Here's more about Endless Summer from Wayside Gardens.
Not to brag or anything, but people at the garden tour liked these maps. And given that Illustrator has regularly been kicking my butt over the last ten years, I feel entitled to gloat ever so slightly at finally turning out a good product with it.
It's one more day ("One daaaaaay mooooooorrree!"--sorry, too much musical theatre at a tender age) until the Irvington garden tour. You may have been wondering why I haven't been blogging. Well, I'll tell you.
- Finish weeding and deadheading the front yard borders.
- Prune the front yard lilacs. I finished the viburnum in that border already.
- Set new stones in berry bed.
- Finish spreading the yard of mulch currently in a great hulking pile in my back yard.
- Finish my totally cool garden map. I've dusted off my long-forgotten Illustrator skills to make a map/program. It's not done yet, but you can rest assured that it will rock. I'll post a PDF of it when I'm done.
- Make with the general tidying up and whatnot.
With the Midsummer party fast approaching and the garden tour hot on its heels, I'm starting to feel some pressure to complete garden tasks. I'm not too worried, though, as the BF spent a goodly portion of Sunday helping me in the garden (he mowed the lawn and cleaned the gutters, which were starting to sprout maple seedlings) as well as completing work on my most excellent potting bench (see previous post). Terry and Amy from Spotts have both offered to help with weeding, etc., and both my sister and CAS are on-tap for day of hostessing duties with me. So it's under control. It just doesn't look like it when I examine The List.
- Finish planting berry bed.
- Mulch the berry bed and add some stepping stones.
- Cut back the honeysuckle bush before planting in shade border.
- Plant the ninbebark shrub in the shade bed .
- Plant a coleus container.
- Plant window boxes and pots. The windowboxes are seriously waterlogged thanks to recent heavy rains. I'm hoping with a severe cutback I can salvage most of the plants.
- Figure out a shrub to replace nest spruce in front yard. Found a deutzia 'Nikko'. Planted it on Sunday.
- Finish painting potting bench and place it. It is, as earlier reported, fabulous.
- Clean and repair garden bench.
- Paint garden bench the same turquoise color as my potting bench. Primer and one coat done, one still to go.
- Level out holes where potting bench will go, move it into place, and clean up work area. This is mostly done, but the BF and I agree I could use some pavers under the spigot to control mud issues.
- Label plants.
- Add planting markers to raised vegetable beds. I thought I had finished this one, but the yardsticks I used for this purpose last year look terrible, so I need to replace them with the same kind of wood I used on the other square bed. On the upside, I made a very cute 4' tall bean trellis out of the conduit lengths left over from making trellises.
- Plant summer seed vegetables.
- Plant annuals.
- Plant annual herbs.
- Replace pavers in front of grill .
- Weed and deadhead. A lot.
- Mulch. Also a lot.
- Mow.
- Prune the lilacs and viburnum in the front yard.
- Finish digging up half of remaining hell strip. Plant. I transplanted some very pretty fern-leaf peonies from the BF's farm to that strip and added some divisions of Siberian iris and geranium. But I need to strip some more sod out. I still have strawberry plants awaiting planting, so they may also go in that bed.
- Create map/shameless self-promotion piece for the garden tour.
- Stock up on drinks and snacks for my cohostesses and garden volunteers.
I have mentioned several times the potting bench the BF was constructing from an old workbench located in my basement. It sat in the furnace room for all of my eight years in this house, a useless brown hulk taking up space. But when I mentioned it to the BF, he told me thought he could make me a potting bench from it.
I mentioned in my last post that Terry took me to a local wholesale nursery last week. We needed to pick up shrubs and perennials for customers, as well as annuals to keep on hand for container gardens.With Buster the dump trailer attached to the pickup truck, Terry and I rolled out of Irvington at 7:00 to make it to Brehob's at the 7:30 opening.
Turns out, there is an entire hidden valley in Indianapolis I knew nothing about, and it is filled with plants--rows upon rows of hoop houses filled unto bursting with trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals for sale, to say nothing of the miles of extra plants being fattened up for sale. And because we're "in the trade," we can buy our own plants at wholesale when we buy for customers. It's a good thing we only go very occasionally. Taking me to the wholesale nursery is like holding a Weight Watchers meeting in a chocolate factory. Frankly, my willpower is just not that good.
Naturally, Brehob's doesn't want a bunch of plant fanatics like me roaming the place and messing with their system. After checking in at the office, we drove to the nursery section (trees and shrubs) where we were met by a nice guy driving a miniature John Deere truck ("Gator," Terrry informed me--the truck, not the guy). We handed him our list and followed him around to hand pick our shrubs. I knew from the web site that they were out of the deutzia I wanted, but I did score an excellent ninebark--'Summer Wine.' By the time we left the nursery section, the truck bed was loaded with bayberries, grasses, dogwoods, and my pretty little ninebark.
We headed to the perennial hut, where I spent most of my time loading everything Terry picked out into Buster the dump trailer. Unfortunately for Terry, they were out of black and blue salvia, which means that Amy F will continue to poke at him for bogarting all the available salvia on the last Brehob's trip, leaving her without any. I lusted after a plum-colored geranium, but decided the scorching on the edges of the leaves was a bad sign. I went with a plum-colored huchera instead ('Chocolate Ruffles').
With time growing short and the sky starting to look ominous, we hit the annual hit. I bought about four flats of annuals, plus some enormous coleus. I couldn't find prices for a lot of things, so I did some guessing.
By the time we headed out at about 9:30, we had a trailer and truck bed loaded with plants covered with tarps, and I was in the hole to Terry for about $100. Still, for the number of plants I bought, that's a pretty good deal.My ninebark and huchera have settled into the shade border, and the coleus is planted in a recycled metal container to fill out a bare spot there. The window boxes and porch containers are overflowing with white geraniums, purple salvia, and hot pink verbena.
And a flat of lisianthus awaits planting in the rose bed. The potting bench has been painted and awaits only my BF arriving to help me move it into place. The garden bench needs one more coat of paint, then it too can take its place in the garden. There's still a lot to do, but I may make my party deadline after all!
