Category: Summer Garden
Pictures of the Beautiful Japanese Irises Blooming in my Long Border
Pictures of Heirloom Clematis Throughout my Garden
Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day – June 2008 (New Jersey): Roses, Eryngium, Linaria, and More
Here are some highlights from my garden for Carol’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day June 2008:
Star of the Republic is a wonderful rose introduced by Antique Rose Emporium. I usually do not like roses with apricot tones in them, but this one is beautiful. In addition, it blooms generously, is very disease resistant, and grows easily. She is planted in the triangle garden.
An eryngium in the Front Border.
Russell’s Cottage Rose is loaded with blooms that turn from deep pink to white as they age. Within each cluster of blooms you can often see a great variety of colors. This trait is quite common in the rosa multiflora hybrids. This along with their smooth canes makes multiflora hybrids my favorite climbers. She is planted in the Rose Garden.
Lunaria is one of my favorite edgers. The upward spikes add verticals to the garden and the soft colors compliment anything. 
Clematis Julia Correvon with Dortmund.
Violetta and Penelope grow together on an oblesk in the Rose Garden. 
Sea kale is a perennial vegetable that makes a wonderful impact in the garden. It’s flowers reminds one of baby’s brath.
The Apothocary Rose is one of the last old roses to come into bloom. I love the clear pink and light fragrance of the flower. The simplicity of the flower is beautiful also. 
A shot of Goldberry Hill: catmint, foxgloves, roses, and spirea.Damask rose Celsiana.
Poppy Lauren’s Grape edges the pebble path in the Egg Garden.
Poppy Lauren’s Grape edges the pebble path in the Egg Garden.Roses Blooming: Pictures of Rouletti, Louis Odier, Dortmund, Theresa Bugnet
To think before I became a gardener, I always was bewildered as to what time was good to go to the local botanical garden to see the roses. Now I cannot wait for the glorious roses that bloom in May and June. Here are some pictures of some of the roses blooming now.
Rouletti is a small China rose that is always the first to bloom. It covers itself with soft pink slightly fragrant roses each spring and repeats strongly throughout the season. The leaves of Rouletti are very small giving the whole shrub a rather delicate appearance. I find Rouletti has to get good, continuous water or it will instantly begin to drop leaves. If it does, it is also quick to re sprout new ones after it gets more water. I usually trim it back at that point so it looks neater as it recovers.
Louis Odier grows along the fence of the Cutting Garden. It is a repeat blooming Portland that has big, extremely fragrant blossoms. The pink of its flowers is indescribably deep and rich. The spring bloom of Louis Odier is the best. But every year, its repeat bloom gets stronger and stronger. One of my Louis Odier roses is growing with a perennial sweet pea. The performance of that one is spectacular, probably due to the nitrogen fixing ability of the sweet pea. [Click here for a follow-up post with more information and a picture of the sweet pea.]
Dortmund is on the arbor to the Cutting Garden. It repeats strongly throughout the summer, the foliage is shiny and very resistant to fungal disease. It grows with two clematis: Betty Corning and Julie Correvon. On the picture you see the yellow buds of Danea, a hybrid musk, which has woven itself into Dortmund. Dortmund has wonderful sprays of roses which can by themselves create a vase of flowers. The only drawback to Dortmund is that it has big, hooked thorns which makes it unpleasant to prune.
Theresa Bugnet is usually one of the first to bloom. Its a rugosa rose. Each year I appreciate the rugosas more and more. They are great repeaters, strongly fragrant, and very healthy. With prompt deadheading and lots of water, Theresa Bugnet will bloom her heart out until the late fall when her leaves turn yellow and begin to drop.
Container Gardening: Summer Containers
Twelve Months of Garden Color in New Jersey (Zone 6b)
As it relates to color in the garden, one of my goals is to create year-round interest. Looking through my pictures, the year starts with whites and yellows; the middle months have a full range of of bright colors; and the year ends with the deep colors of berries. Here is a brief overview of these colors with one picture for each month of the year.
This post was inspired by the “Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop – Colors in the Garden” at one of my favorite gardening blogs, Gardening Gone Wild: http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=698
January in northern New Jersey (zone 6b) is a hard month to find any color in the garden. Fortunately, whenever the weather warms up into the forties, the forsythia start to show off some of their blooms. Of course, when it gets cold again, they hide themselves away until it warms up in earnest. This is the time when I start to cut the branches off and bring them indoors to force–my favorite thing to do with forsythia.
February is the month for snowdrops. I have snowdrops in the Cutting Garden and, last fall, planted more in the Walled Garden. These small flowers are so cute and the first real sign that spring is coming. Given their size, you really can’t plant too many of them–think hundreds. Since I like to plant a lot, I buy my snowdrops wholesale from Van Engelen. Once they come up, I cut small bunches for vases. Pests do not eat these bulbs.
The March bulb show begins with winter aconite. It is another small bulb that I planted under Prunus ‘Forest Pansy’ in my front border. It took me a couple of years for me to get these established. I was most successful with bulbs from Old House Gardens. I think the difference was that these bulbs dry out very easily and Old House Gardens coats the bulbs in a horticultural wax to prevent this. If you know someone with an established clump, it’s best to beg a few in the green and replant them immediately in your garden. Pests do not eat these bulbs.
April, of course, is the month for daffodils. I plant hundreds of daffodils all over the garden. I plant all sizes and colors, but am particularly fond of the white daffodils. The earliest actually start to bloom at the end of March and they last through April into May. Pictured here is an old heirloom Thalia.
May is one of my favorite months in the garden as tulips explode everywhere. Last year, my combination was inspired by the Granny’s Garden collection from Old House Gardens. I planted a mix of the following tulips, most of which are older varieties: Cum Laude, Glowing Pink, Kingsblood, Maureen, Queen of the Night, Dillenborg, Mrs. John Scheepers, Colour Cardinal, Princess Irene, and Ballerina.
June is the most colorful month in my garden. As the spring bulbs wind down, the garden bursts into bloom with roses, clematis, alliums, peonies, poppies, and many more. In the picture is one of my favorite rugosa roses Frau Dagmar Hastrup. Frau Dagmar is small for a rugosa reaching only about 3 feet tall and about as wide. It begins blooming in May and continures until November. The leaves are a beautiful, quilted, dark green. Frau Dagmar also sets many hips when I stop deadheading. The fragrance of Frau Dagmar is magnificent.
July is when the plants from and reminescent of the American prairie take over. Purple coneflower, the many rudbeckias, joe pye weed, heleniums, helianthus, phlox, milkweed, monarda, erygium, echinops, and shasta daisies all begin their bloom. These plants, despite the heat and humidity of summer, keep going and going while attracting many birds, hummers, and butterflies to the garden. By mixing these with grasses, you have color, movement, and beauty that will carry you well into September.
One of my daughters is in love with hibiscus and has been reminding me I haven’t put a picture of her hibiscus on my blog yet. In August, the huge tropical looking flowers garner lots of attention. The flowers are great floated in a vase and keep coming over a long period of time. Also, the seed pods of the hibiscus are quite beautiful afterward.
September is part of summer in my book. The garden is still in full swing with no sign of winding down. By the end of the month, however, the Japanese anemone ‘Queen Charlotte’ is beginning to bloom, signaling the very beginning of fall. 
October is the month of rose rebloom. In our garden, any rose that is going to rebloom, puts on a very generous display in the autumn even if it hadn’t bloomed since June. The cooler temperatures in September helps to restart the roses after the heat of August. Pictured here is Belinda, an heirloom hybrid musk rose, purchased from Antique Rose Emporium. I deadheaded this rose throughout the summer and was rewarded in the fall with a very generous flush of roses in addition to the many others throught the summer.
The butterfly weed pictured here was a welcome volunteer from a clump of Mexican milkweed I planted in 2006. I did not expect it to reseed for me given that its grown mainly in zone 8 and warmer. But the seedling did come and were enjoyed by many monarch catepillars. The plants came into bloom very late in the season. They, however, made it through many light frosts and only died well into November when we had a hard frost.
Front Border in Summer & Plan for the New Path
To help me plan for this coming gardening season, I am going through some of my pictures from last year. Here are some of the Front Border from last summer. The Front Border is a mixed border.
One of this year’s projects will be to fix the path that runs from the driveway to the front door. The path has two problems. The first is that some of the stones that make up the path have started to sink and the path is becoming hazardous to visitors. This is a relatively minor problem compared to the second. The second problem is that the path is in the wrong place. From the street, you walk down the steps through Goldberry Hill. At the bottom of the steps, you want to walk directly across the driveway, across the grass, and to the front door. This is where the path should be. Instead of this route, the path requires you to make a right turn down the driveway about twenty feet and then a sharp left turn around the light post (you can see this in the last picture).
The solution will be to create the direct path that does not exist with a continuation of the steps and stones that already exist on Goldberry Hill. You can see the steps on Goldberry Hill here: http://heirloomgardener.blogspot.com/2008/01/gardening-on-hill-goldberry-hill-in.html
Follow-up post: Heirloom Gardener’s Four Year Front Garden Makeover, including pictures of the new path
Gardening on a Hill: Goldberry Hill in Summer – Phlox, Shasta Daisies, and Lamb’s Ear Replace Black Eyed Susans
To help me plan for this coming gardening season, I am going through some of my pictures from last year. Here are some of Goldberry Hill from last summer. Goldberry Hill is the name of the garden in the front of my home on the hill between the street and my driveway. Goldberry Hill is made of small trees, shrubs, perennials and grasses.
In the first picture, there are newly planted phlox, shasta daisies, and lamb’s ear. Previously in that space, there were black eyed susans that were prone to a fungus that made the leaves turn black. Because this is right in the front of the house next to the road, I decided to pull them out and replace them. Given that the black eyed susans self-seed, you still see some in the third picture in the middle of the purple cone flowers where no one can see their black leaves.
The heirloom flox are Old Cellar Hole from Perennial Pleasures. The shasta daises are Becky and the lamb’s ear are Big Ears from my local nursery. Unfortunately, the deer started snacking on the flox at the end of the season, so I’ll have to wait and see if they come up again in the spring.
For pictures from last spring, click here: http://heirloomgardener.blogspot.com/2008/01/goldberry-hill-last-spring.html
Heirloom Gardener 
