Size Counts!

What an incendiary title but oh so true. When planning your garden, size most certainly does count. There's a wealth of dwarf perennial plants and giant perennial plants too but most often it's the trees and shrubs that gardeners miscalculate when it comes to size and space.

This is Lilac 'Miss Kim', saddled with the horrendous botanical name of Syringa pubescens subsp. patula 'Miss Kim'. You can see how I broke my own rule and just stuck with the nickname this time :-)

My 'Miss Kim' Lilac and my Physocarpus 'Diablo' (Ninebark) are both in bloom today. 'Miss Kim is just finishing up while 'Diablo' has just begun to burst into bloom. Both are specatular shrubs and wonderful additions to the home landscape.

There's just one problem with these two shrubs. I totally miscalculated the size they would reach upon maturity. 'Diablo' is lucky, it's in a spot where although larger than I expected, I can forgive it's vigorous growth and just hack it back when needed (as soon as it's done blooming it's in for a serious haircut).

Unfortunately for 'Miss Kim', she has to go. Here you can see the bed where they are, Physocarpus 'Diablo' to the far left, Lilac 'Miss Kim' front and center, totally obliviating the entrance to the garden!

Last year I took a similar photo, maybe you can see that on one side of the lilac is a charming mailbox. That mailbox is totally hidden from view now. I also have to add that I've cut this Lilac back quite a bit in the past two years.

Way back in 2005 I took a photo of the garden as it had just been replanted. My design was a square garden with a circular path in the center. It's my favorite plan, one I hope to recreate in future locations.

When looking for photos this morning to see the progression of size, I finally made my mind up. This week the Lilac will go, I'll cut it back hard and if somebody comes here in the next week and is willing to dig it up and transport it, they will be welcome to it. First come first serve!

Hypericum 'Brigadoon'

Two weeks ago when I attended the local daylily club meeting, they had a sale going on. Members brought in plants from their gardens and sold them in the back of the room. Most of the plants were perennials and since I was running late, I missed seeing most of the choice plants.

One member though had a few special things left. Frank and his wife Laura are known to collect unusual specimens so I looked very carefully. There were two pots of Hypericum 'Brigadoon'. Now I've never been too excited by Hypericum but I thought "why not" and decided to bring one home.

The plant is in a one gallon pot and had lots of yellow buds. The Hypericum I have in my garden has small nickle size single blooms and that's what I expected with this one.

Imagine my surprise when the first bud opened up and I saw this flower! Wow!!! It's a "stop you in your tracks" kind of bloom.

This time I vow to do my research and give this beauty the correct location. The sites I've looked at so far show it with golden foliage. The plant I have has a light green foliage but then those sites also say that it needs full sun to get that lighter foliage. I don't think Frank & Laura have that much full sun so it will be interesting to see what happens when I give it a prime spot.

Now I just have to decide if it's going in the long driveway bed or the rock wall around the pool. Right now I'm leaning towards the pool area as it's a summer time bloomer.

I'll take a photo again once I decide where to place this beauty.

And the winner is...

There are two Viburnum plicatum shrubs in my yard. One is planted in rich soil where it gets watered often. The other is in a tough spot, more shade, more tree competition (including Black Walnuts, Juglans nigra) and no water during dry spells.

This is how the Viburnum in the tough spot looks, it's just as amazingly beautiful as the one in the great spot. We put it over the spot our two kitties Olive and Muffin are buried.


When it comes to shrubs I'm no expert. I've only been really paying attention to them for 4 or 5 years now and haven't added too many to our gardens here. Unfortunately there weren't wonderful shrubs waiting here for us, just the usual array of poorly grown yews (Taxus baccata) and one bank of Rhododendrons in front of the house.

This is Viburnum burkwoodii 'Mohawk' which I find lovely. My only complaint might be that the catalog listed it as "more compact than burwoodii" and it is currently towering over 7 feet tall.


Here's a close up of those lovely blooms. This photo was taken last year on June 1st so I have a bit of a wait before I get to see this sight again.


Viburnum dilatum 'Erie' is the winner when it comes to shrub shape. It truly is compact, short and wide, perfect in the semi shade border.

When looking for these shrubs I considered light requirements, soil requirements (we have naturally acidic soil), blooms and highly important was berries to feed the wildlife. While I can't say I've seen enough berries to invite whole flocks of birds, I can say that I'm very happy with the choices I've made.

For those of you who were thinking that my title alluded to the local elections here, I'll just add this, apparently, like my Viburnums, I'm a winner.

1st purchase of the Season

This past week I visited Zaino's Nursery in Westbury. It's a little known nursery and from the front you'd never know it but in the back they have the most wonderful selection of shrubs & trees.
The most delicious scent filled the air as I was walking past the Pieris japonica section. It wasn't hard to make a decision on which one to take home with me. 'Valley Valentine' had the most amazing color blooms and a nice strong scent. I chose the pot with the least opened blooms so I can enjoy it here for the rest of this month.


Just look at these buds and blooms, this shrub is covered with them. By the way, a well accepted nick-name for this plant is Japanese Andromeda. Here in my garden on Long Island they are very happy with our acidic soil and semi-shade conditions.

This weekend is chock full for us so I will only have a quick post on Sunday morning and will be back to visit all of you on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Enkianthus - Who knew?

Enkianthus campanulatus is a shrub that I rarely see mentioned anywhere. Four years ago I saw one for sale, my interest was piqued and I brought it home with me to give it a try.

While neither of my photos do this lovely shrub justice, I still had to share with all of you the beauty and ease I've had growing this specimen.

Google brought me to hort. dept. of UConn where I found out more information on this shrub.

Here in my garden on Long Island, New York, I have never done anything special for this shrub. It blooms heavily in mid May as you can see in these photos.

What I found interesting when researching it is that supposedly it seeds easily. I will have to check the ground for little seedlings now. It also states that soft wood cuttings are highly successful so I will be giving those a try too.

A nice addition is that it has wonderful foliage color in the autumn. This year I see that my local nursery will be carrying a new variety, 'Summer Hill' which grows 15 to 20 feet tall! That would work nice in some of my wooded areas so guess what will probably be coming home with me next month.