Tigger here!

[Tigger]

OK, so this first post is a blurb I wrote up about our gardens a few years back for a local hosta society tour/meeting. Most of it remains true, although the gardens in the woods have largely been choked out by red maple roots...

Teagate Gardens

When we moved to this area from the Midwest, we soon discovered Longwood Gardens, and fell in love with the hosta display at the Idea Garden. From the precious H. venusta to the incredible H. fluctuans ‘Variegated’ (now known as ‘Sagae’), we were hooked.

When we bought a house in Wilmington with a shady, fenced-in lot (tall oaks and a southern magnolia), we immediately had the “bones” for a hosta garden. The previous owner even left us some starters: a good ‘Francee’ and a few clumps of ‘Birchwood Parky’s Gold.’ A little research led to a chance encounter with Warren and Ali Pollock; an invite to a DVHS meeting ensued, and… Six years later we had covered the property with hostas, aiming for waves of color and texture rather than for a collection of plants.

Seeking some new digs (pun intended), we happened upon a new development on Deer Meadow Lane, which presented us with a two-acre wetlands lot with woods (shade! or so we thought) and an undeveloped meadow over buried gas lines. We potted up almost all of the hostas, hauling around 150 pots of hostas and companions to the new house. That was three years ago. It took a while for some of the hostas to make their way into the ground, but boy, our neighbors were impressed with our “instant” garden!

Oh, how we missed the luscious topsoil we had built in Wilmington! We were faced with denuded forest soil; basically a few inches of root-filled humus (where the builders hadn’t scraped it away) over rock and blue clay. The “shade bed” we planned facing the front door turned out to get sun from noon to five, so with a load of topsoil we pushed it into an opening in the woods. With a little help, some existing paths in the woods give us ample opportunity for expansion. (We thought they were deer paths, but—knock on wood—the local deer population has barely bothered the hostas; rabbits are a more persistent problem.) The native blueberries and viburnum species make a nice backdrop, and shape easily where more sun or shade is needed.

The real joy of the new home is the meadow, however. Having seen the property after its fall mowing, we didn’t know what to expect when spring arrived. And what a surprise: we don’t know whether the meadow is more remarkable for the invasive exotics that are absent (loosestrife, thistles, roadside daylilies) or the special (to us, anyway) natives that are abundant (penstemon, eupatorium, yarrow, ironweed, asters, and lilium superbum). [edit: anyone have tips on getting rid of chinese lespedeza? this invasive is becoming a problem] We’re helping it out with some natives that we hope will naturalize: lobelia, coreopsis, iris versicolor, monarda, selected grasses, etc. We still do battle with phragmites and smilax, which love the soggy spring weather, but it is all worth it for the blaze of color that arrives each Labor Day when the bidens bursts into bloom. Over time, we’re hoping to frame the back yard meadow with new gardens (who needs lawn, anyway?), hoping to mimic the hot colors and savage habits of the natives. This is balanced by a patchwork Mediterranean garden along the patio, with cool colors and a focus on texture and scent.

We don’t neglect our hostas, however. We have somewhere close to 100 varieties: not a full-blown collection, but a nice variety, I hope [see next post]. We still seek the waves of color and texture, and like to grow our plants big. That huge ‘Sagae’ we saw at Longwood set a high standard; perhaps this year we met it!

Well, witness the picture of that Sagae on the Hosta FAQpage. That was a few years back now, and it just keeps growing!

[Tigger]

Let's see if I can paste in my hosta list...

1 Abba Dabba Do
2 Alex Summers (replacement 04/07)
3 Allan P. McConnell
4 Amber Maiden
5 Ani Machi (aka Geisha)
6 Antioch
7 Aspen Gold
8 Betsy King
9 Big Daddy
10 Birchwood Parkys Gold
11 Blackfoot
12 Blue Angel (gone, if ever had it for real)
13 Blue Cadet
14 Blue Moon NOT (unknown tardiana sold as Blue Moon)
15 Bold Ribbons (lost)
16 Bright Lights
17 Candy Hearts
18 Cascades
19 Cheatin’ Heart (replacement)
20 Cherry Berry
21 Clausa
22 Colossal
23 Dawn
24 Emily Dickinson
25 Feather Boa
26 Flower Power
27 Francee
28 Gay Blade
29 Gloriosa (Fortunei) (lost)
30 Gold Drop
31 Gold Regal
32 Gold Standard
33 Golden Tiara
34 Gracillima
35 Grand Tiara
36 Great Expectations
37 Green Kabitan (lost)
38 Hadspen Blue
39 Hadspen Heron (replacement)
40 Halcyon (ex June)
41 Hedgehog (need to replace from friend's stock)
42 Honeysong
43 June
44 Just So (lost)
45 Kikutii
46 Krossa Regal
47 Little Aurora
48 Little Hobber
49 Little Wonder
50 Liz P-Z
51 Longissima (where is this? lost?)
52 Love Pat
53 Ming Treasure
54 Montana ("by Creech")
55 Montana ‘Aureomarginata’
56 Niagara Falls
57 Nigrescens
58 [Nigrescens] ‘Elatior’
59 Olive Bailey Langdon
60 On the Edge
61 Pandora’s Box (replacement)
62 Parky’s Prize (lost)
63 Patriot
64 Peace
65 Peedee Laughing River
66 Pilgrim
67 Pineapple Upside Down Cake
68 Plantaginea
69 Platinum Tiara
70 Pooh Bear
71 Potomac Pride
72 Queen Josephine
73 Raspberry Sorbet
74 Red October
75 Regal Rhubarb
76 Rohdeifolia
77 Royalty
78 Sagae
79 Scooter (lost, but barely had it to start with)
80 Salute
81 Sea Thunder
82 Sieboldiana ‘Elegans’
83 Sieboldiana ‘Frances Williams’
84 Sieboldii ‘Kabitan’
85 Saint Elmo’s Fire
86 Striptease
87 Sultana (replacement)
88 Sum and Substance
89 Tardiflora
90 Tea and Crumpets
91 Tiny Tears
92 Tokudama Aureonebulosa (lost or nearly so)
93 Torchlight
94 Twist of Lime
95 Ventricosa
96 Ventricosa ‘Aureomaculata’
97 Ventricosa ‘Aureomarginata’
98 Venusta
99 Vera Verde (huh uh)
100 Warwick Curtsey
101 Whiskey Sour
102 William Lachman (no streaks, if alive)
103 Yellow River

Yay! Not all of these have survived; we had some tough years where the dwarfs and minis suffered badly.

Recent acquisitions:
104 Praying Hands
105 Kifukurin Ko-mame
106 Gayfeather
107 Stained Glass
108 Sun Power
109 Wolverine
110 Ultramarine

Edit August 2006, for recent acquisitions:
111 Aristocrat (streaked)
112 Katie Q
113 Dragon Tails
114 Designer Genes
115 Fire Island
116 longipes var. latifolia
117 Blue Sliver
118 Lancifolia
119 Xanadu

Edit April 2007, for recent acquisitions (if I can remember):
120 Remember Me
121 American Sweetheart
122 Queen of the Seas (these three from last fall)
123 Nightlife
124 Ginrei (montana cultivar)
125 Lakeside Cupcake
126 Lakeside Dragonfly
127 Hidden Cove
128 Spilt Milk
129 Prairie Sky

and May 2007
130 Stiletto
131 Change of Tradition (from Hank)
132 Sparkling Burgundy
133 Whirlwind (starter)
134 Fantabulous

So somewhere around 125 good cultivars surviving, including 2 nice seedlings I've kept.

We also have companion plants including a dozen tiarella and heuchera hybrids (heuchera americana shows up native in our woods, too!), a gorgeous paeonia japonica (worth what we paid Barry Yinger for it), a few astilbe, 8 or 10 kinds of epimedium, and ferns and gingers and such. Added in 06-07 are some hardy orchids (one a US native cyprepedium, the other a japanese hybrid calanthe) and some arisaema.

Sunny gardens are more variable, but there are about two dozen varieties of daylily. Dorethe Louise is a favorite for its fragrance!

[newtohosta-no more]

A very nice list of hostas you have there , Tigger! And I enjoyed reading your "article". I wish you continued good luck with your gardens!

[Tigger]

Here's a picture from last June of the front walk. Don't know why I don't have a good pic of the major section of the hosta beds. Anyway, the walk to the front door says Welcome! I think our garden will be an "open garden" during the AHS convention next year (2006) (i.e. not on the bus tour, but available to those with cars).

[Tundra_Queen]

Tigger, what a lovely picture.It sure does look welcoming. What are those blue hostas? I love your house too!

Debbie

[Tigger]

Thanks, Debbie.

The blues there are two different ones: Hadspen Blue and another one that was sold to us as Blue Moon. Certain authorities insist that this plant is growing far to well to be the "true" Blue Moon (and Eric Smith was know to be a bit casual with his plant naming and hand-outs), so we either call it Blue Moon NOT or Bleu Loon (a Franglais pun).

This spring we pulled out the 5 bushy hollies there and replaced them with 3 'Sky Pencil' hollies, so the hosta there have LOTS more room! Transplanted some Abba Dabba Do to fill the space under the windows. I hope it works!

Let's see, turning this post into a journal entry of sorts...
We have expanded the bed to the left of the walk, making a single large curve up to the walk. We took a double-file border of mixed Gold Drop and Blue Cadet and made a long single-file border along the entire new edge. That gives us a good bit of room, I hope, to accomodate a relocated Bright Lights, some new heucheras, and some general rearranging.

The hollies that I dug out have been relocated to give some evergreen structure to the edge of the woods. DH was commenting just last night what a difference it makes, so I guess it was worth the work Moved the gold regals from where those hollies went to the other side of the bed. I hope they can take the sun, but the turkish hornbeam there is growing rapidly and should help.

Other pending rearrangements are to rescue some suffering hostas from the niche (right side of the walk) behind the redbud, and converting that section to a fern glade with some heucheras thrown in (they seem to be doing fine there).

Don't get me started on the back yard gardens, yet. Yikes. Anyone have a trained weeder on staff they could loan me for a few days?

[Tigger]

Here's a pic after the front bed re-do.

(update to remove dead link to pic)

I'll try to make a 2006 update post soon. I see my list above is a little out of date.

[Tigger]

Oy, where to start. Some of these are my "unemployment" projects (I've been on the job market since the end of June, enjoying severance pay). But the first of these jobs was to solve the problem of tree roots in the woodland beds. So we rescued everything there that was salvageable (such a sad contrast to the pic of the earlier St. Fiacre Bed shown on my website), dug down 6–8", lined it with the Spin-Out (copper hydroxide-treated) landscape fabric, and built dry-laid rock wall raised beds. What went into these beds were new plants, rescued plants, and some relocated ones (e.g. the Torchlight and Royalty and Regal Rhubarb that were doing fine but being swallowed by the cut-leaf maple).

This first picture is somewhat sloppily pasted together from three pics (a pseudo-panorama shot).

This is the location of the original Fiacre bed (our garden saint hasn't yet moved back in). It's anchored left, center, and right with Elegans, Frances Williams (nearly invisible here), and Great Expectations (see the theme?). Note that the rock wall peters out to the back, where we mix in natives and ephemerals, in sort of a "ruin" effect.

Here's a brand new bed positioned to take advantage of views of the front of the house and along the side of the house to get a glimpse of the new berm (see below) and meadow.

This is where the red-legged ones mentioned above went, along with some special new purchases courtesy of the AHS convention. This one also has a teeny boxwood and a native azalea for some "woody" interest.

Another project was to create an actual bog garden, where before I had just sunk a big plastic dish planter into the ground in a boggy area of the garden. Given the heavy clay subsoil, I'm betting that it was o.k. to just dig down to the clay, double-line it with the same landscape fabric, and back-fill with crappy soil, peat moss, and sand. That had worked pretty well for the pitcher plant you see in pic #2, who now has some companions and some carex and lobelia growing along. The japanese iris behind had really taken off, just based on natural ground water. The entire area behind the iris got reworked, too (can't see it here) with other moisture-lover, and now backed by a row of arbor vitae 'Green Giant' on a berm structure, to divert the water toward the bog. A dry creek bed (for drainage) of river rock runs off to to the left of this; I extended the drainage trough back from here to keep the water away from the evergreens. Does it sound like I know what I'm doing? I really haven't much of a clue...


This is the sarracenia that has been in that planter for a few years. The iris were making too much shade, hence the need to expand the entire bed.

A mini-project was to split the dry creek off to the left of this (in the back yard) to make a planting spot for a japanese maple that Steve was anxious to have. Hard work, moving river rock that had been living in the dirt for 6 years! But worth it. Not really worth a picture, though.

And framing the other side of the back yard is a new berm, planted mostly with shrubs. It looks like hell now (some of the plants had suffered from not getting in the ground soon enough). This picture is more notable for showing the meadow approaching its peak of bloom, but the main purpose of this berm was to feature some "brutish" plants and some bold combinations of color and texture. To wit: there are three of those Tiger Eye cut-leaf sumacs backed by a purple smoke bush. Also, fragrant azaleas (native/hybrids), a big lespedeza, spiny acanthus, 3 vitex, and a hardy banana (!). Only a few perennials here, for (hopefully) low maintenance.


Next year means a re-do of the patio bed, and maybe another raised bed in the woods. But this has been enough for this year!

(I hope the downloads weren't too onerous for anyone. I'm playing with some new MacOS freebie software that makes it really easy to upload photos to my web space.)

[newtohosta-no more]

Very lovely! You've accomplished quite a bit.

And the downloads were fine. I'm on slow dial up and had no problem at all.

[Willowy]

Tigger, The gardens are looking great. You took on some big projects this summer. I love the bog plant -- I have an extremely dry yard and could not grow something like this without a lot of work. How did the job search turn out?

[Tigger]

Still searching, sadly. Thanks for asking.

Boy, it has been WET WET WET here. It seems that everywhere is a bog these days, and we're supposed to get a full day of it tomorrow. But hey, it's supposed to hit 70 today.

[Willowy]

I know how you feel about the job search. I also have been living on severance since the end of June. However, I was not as productive as you in the gardens.

Not to sell myself short, I did build and semi plant one garden, added about 40 hosta to my collection and spent considerable hours every morning attempting hosta crosses (need to get those seeds planted).

The hosta filled the void. A job search is a lot of work!

[Tigger]

Well, hugs for both of us.

Checked out your wish list. Remind me in spring and i'll send some 'Ani Machi' (a.k.a. Geisha). Grows like a weed for me. Same with kikutii (I could probably still collect some seed if you want). And despite its good name, i don't recommend 'Peace.' Maybe it's a location thing; might fare better in NE.

David

[Willowy]

Thank you David. I will take you up on your offer to send Ani Machi in the spring. It has been at the top of my list for two year. However I have yet to find it at a local plant center.

I would be happy to share something from my list too. Your garden photos suggest that you may have an appreciation for hosta blooms. I have a beautiful late bloomer - h. Sparkling Burgundy. Clearly the hybridizer named this plant for the deep burgundy flower scapes. The dark pinky-mauve flower color is unique. If you are interested, I would be happy to send it along in the spring too.

Spring seems like a long way off at the moment. Wish me luck...I have two interviews next week...and one is a second meeting.

[Tigger]

(btw, exchange completed with Willowy. And I'm still not gainfully employed.)

We put in a third of these raised rock wall beds this spring, so here's a little photo essay. This is right next to where we had two trees cut out (leaving the stumps about 40" high, for a future sculpture or something), letting in much more sun to this area. I laid out the shape of the bed, then dug down (around the edges, anyway) to remove the tree roots. Actually took out a smaller nyssa here to get what I wanted. Then the landscape guys brought the rocks. Took them forever to get completely finished, but that's another story! (it's so hard to get good help these days…) This time I set up level lines, which you might see in the here. (clickable thumbnails this time)



Then we dug out the soil below grade, removing the rest of the roots, and lined the bed with the landscape fabric (see comment below).



Then we backfilled with the original soil and topped up with a mix of good stuff (screened topsoil with mushroom compost). We got everything together that we had planned for the bed, figured out who went where, and it took about 40 minutes to plant it all! Here's just one view. Beyond the bed we filled in a low open space, and are going to plant ferns and some other natives to make a backdrop.



OK, so the final story to add: I was digging out a hosta in one of the other raised, lined beds we put in last year, and was stunned to find… maple roots! Live ones! Digging further, I kept wondering: where was the landscape fabric??? So, I wasn't here when the guys filled in the bed, but they had seen me line them and put in pins to hold the fabric. I assumed they understood that the lining was, well, like a pool lining, and was not to be buried under all the dirt. Well, I kept digging down, and (at least on this end of the bed) found the fabric down around the natural soil grade, so OF COURSE the maple roots had already invaded. Cursing and fuming, I dug around the entire end of the bed to "pull up the covers" to get my barrier where it should be! Had to remove the fragile lady-slipper orchid in the process, making me curse all the more. If I have to dig up the whole bed in 2 years… Good thing I had made REAL sure that the liner was properly placed on this 3rd (the largest) bed. At least i can hope that I have tipped the battle of the roots in our favor… but I had wanted this plan to last for a good 10 years.

Just to show how the other beds are faring, here's a shot, with brunnera 'Jack Frost' and friends:

[newtohosta-no more]

Wow! What a story.....and what a lot of work you 've had to do (and redo)! But I've got to tell you.....I absolutely LOVE what you've done! It looks fantastic and I especially love that last pic. What a great combo of colors and textures! Well done!!!

[wishiwere]

Haven't read many of the others journals, but this was fun. I'll have to get to the others too

Enjoyed the read, thanks for sharing it all!

[baja220]

I can't see any of your pics from Aug. 06 thru now, but really enjoyed the stories. Love you house BTW. It's beautiful!!!!

What kind of Maple is givin you all the trouble?? I'm gonna be replacing trees soon and October Glory is on my 'not eliminated yet' list.

Debbie

[Tigger]

Hi, Debbie. Not sure why the pictures won't work (they're uploaded to my website, but not displayed there). Maybe try again later.

The trees (the worst ones) are native red maples (acer rubrum that were part of the woods when we moved in. They good give structure to the property, so I'm reluctant to take out too many.

Now the river birch I planted… it's starting to be a problem now.

[Tigger]

By the way, I'm employed now. That explains why I haven't been seen around here much at all. It's a job and a half! But DFH left his position with the bank this month, so he gets to do all the playing in the garden this spring.

We're hosting a Delaware Valley Hosta Society meeting at our place on June 7 (along with a Hosta [leaf] Show at a nearby public library). I'll send y'all a link to the newsletter, and be sure to post pictures.

So far, things are looking pretty good this year. Hostas are coming up all over the place, and not a single deer nibble!

Cheers!