Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Spring garden projects

* Revise Lee Valley irrigation system to rely more on soaker hoses and less on sprinklers. This way I will have less damage to floppy plants and/or sulky roses, and less evaporation to boot.

* Mulch of doom, front and back. Would be cool if I could manage to coordinate this and the item above such that I could put the hoses under the mulch.

* Line paths in the back and edge patio with pea gravel, river rocks, or some other decorative non-grass stone product; trench the rest of the back borders.

* Put in concrete "toe" to edge path in the front and hide the concrete under more pea gravel or whatever.
To add to the shopping list:

Threadleaf bluestar (amsonia hubrichtii). Cloud of feathery foliage, little blue flowers, and turns a lovely bright yellow in fall. And they like dry soil, for a bonus.




Miscanthus 'Kleine Fontaine', because I saw a stunning picture of it growing in someone's Montreal garden. Fancy feathery maiden grass, which I already love and have resolved to acquire, only even better because it blooms RED.




I don't think I got around to mentioning, either, that I've managed to identify the prickly thing invading from the neighbour's yard. The neighbour didn't know what it was called, just that it produced bright orange berries if you had both a male and a female plant - and one of my garden magazines had a feature on such a thing. It's a bittersweet vine.

Yep, that looks pretty familiar.

I think it must also be the semi-civilized kind, since it hasn't suckered too egregiously. Helpfully a google image search also turns up a bunch of interesting crafty uses for cut branches of the stuff. Hmmm!

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Catalogs ahoy!! I am valiantly attempting to restrain my wishlist to those items I have not seen in garden centres or that are good enough deals I'll give it a shot anyway.

Vesey's
Mix of giant hardy phlox - 6 for $25
Asclepias - 3 for $14
Bicolour butterfly bush - $15 (although I'm skeptical that I will have much success with a 3" plug)
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$54

Breck's
Purple astrantia (Venice) - $15
Mix of astrantias - 3 for $20
Mix of mulleins - 3 for $26
Hardy cyclamen - 5 for $28
Kirengeshoma palmata - $13
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$102 - $35 discount = $67

Gardenimport
Totally Tangerine geum - $18
First Blush euphorbia - $18
Stinking hellebore (gotta love a name like that!) - $32
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$68