I haven’t posted much about my yarden ‘cause I’ve been pushing like mad on my studio project for months. The yarden is neglected, and it looks it. We had unseasonably hot weather and drought in May and June, and between that and my neglect things are… shabby. I finally spent some time out there Sunday, watering and taking stock.
I’ve completely lost the bunchberry; there’s no trace of it. The deer fern all seem to be dead, despite their shady location – they were getting morning sun, and this year morning sun was too much. I’ll leave them there in hopes of miraculous revival, though. The clasping twisted stalk looks dead, but I’ve been certain it’s been dead before, so I’ll leave it’s dried husk corpse with the deer fern and see if anything magical happens. The one potted snowberry, which had been the happiest, is crisped through, and the potted red twig dogwood ‘kelseyii’ is heading that way – but the two in the ground are okay. Even the vigorous and shade-planted black twinberry is looking tired, but it’ll be fine.
On the success list, the vancouveria (duck foot) is living up to it’s excellent dry shade reputation. I might have lost one of the three plants I had, but they’re all in very dry shade locations, and two are still really happy. The nodding onion is blooming, as is the panther lily. The blue-eyed grass hasn’t shriveled away to nothing, despite preferring some damp, and both the fringecup and the false Solomon’s seal are trucking right along. And the dwarf rhododendron start I bought at the arboretum plant sale last year has five whole leaves, despite being in a pot and appearing to have no roots when I put it there!
So there may have been some losses to the drought (and my remodeling project), but lots of what I added last fall is still doing fine.
You have much sympathy from over here. Our garden looks awful – we’ve had bizarre hot/wet weather which has alternately parched and drenched things. The new clematis down by our garage have are looking quite sad – not aided by the fact that the slugs keep demolishing them. The garden as a whole is almost impassable in places because it’s wildly overgrown or weedy.
On the other hand, there’s just some touching up to do in the house and otherwise we’re pretty much done. It’s that eternal battle between the inside stuff and the outside stuff.
