From this angle it's not too horrible.
Big blank spot where Rheum palmatum atrosanguineum decided to collapse early. It was every bit as beautiful this spring as the one on the cover of Shocking Beauty by Thomas Hobbs. Now, however it's just fallen down and gross. The tetrapanax is a sucker from some far-off bed.
Big empty space once occupied by Euphorbia griffithii 'fireglow' that looked great but then suddenly decided to go dormant which has not happened to this plant in my garden before frost. The roots look good and there are new growth buds underground but for some reason the tops are DYK (dead you know.)
At times like this, it's best to take close ups and forget that the garden is collapsing faster than the stock market in 1929 so we'll end the tour and just look at some things that caught my eye.
On the bright side, the asian pear is producing nicely this year. Not too little and not so much that limbs are falling under the weight of the fruit. I keep wanting to remove this tree but it produces pest free fruit with no spraying or other help from me. It's not a pretty tree and it casts shade and sends suckers up everywhere, though. What would you do?
I brought this coral bark maple with me from my former garden. I had purchased it before they were available at every Lowes, Home Depot, and KMart on the planet & I remember thinking that I wouldn't leave behind such a treasure. the bark is gray and only the new branches on top are coral in color. I threaten to replace it with one that will stay coral barked but it's achieved a certain size and anchors the whole back garden and it's the first tree to start turning in the fall & holds it's color for a long time before the leaves fall.
My current favorite evergreen, Chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'van pelt's blue', is the bluest conifer I've ever seen.
Brugmanisas blooming as if in denial of the changing weather while we actually turned the furnace on for the first time a couple of days ago.
I guess the yard isn't a total disaster...nothing that a few days work with a front end loader couldn't fix. I hope you are enjoying October in your garden!
It's sort of a sad fact in my garden too, that the first rains are almost as destructive as they are live-giving! This year did seem particularly bad, for some reason...not sure why. I'm just jealous that you can grow a Rheum...mine would grow fine during spring, but once summer hit, the leaves would wilt away, one by one :-( I've been culling the grasses in my garden that flop as well. Miscanthus are some of the worst offenders...but it IS hard to give up such large, statuesque plants. I'm alway tempted to replace them with some of the larger Panicums...which, generally, are much sturdier...but the rain-soaked seedheads can still pull them over until they dry out and spring back up.
ReplyDeleteThe huge grasses in this spot in my garden were perfect for many years as they had HUGE phormiums in front of them that anchored the whole bed and provided support for the floppy grasses behind. Then came the Phormium Killing Winters. There is something wonderful about walking by a 15 foot miscanthus floridulus. Very frustrating when it falls though!
DeleteOne of my Brugs is blooming too, for the first time ever! I thought that was pretty weird, considering how cold it's been at night. So I'm glad to see yours is too. I have a lot of horizontal grasses now too. They are so annoying, I can totally understand your desire to just rip them out.
ReplyDeleteWhen the garden does this weird stuff, I start being grateful for the clean-up that winter brings. If we lived in some warm climate where things just keep growing, we'd have to do clean up constantly!
DeleteLooks great, despite all the drooping. And rain makes everything smell so sweet.
ReplyDeleteFor the first little while it smells sweet. Now it's just smelling wet and cold.
DeleteWhen I lived in colder climates the first signs of winter dormancy were always difficult to deal with. If you enjoy the pears, keep the tree.
ReplyDelete"Inappropriate plant horizontality" is a good term. This happens with Salvia madrensis in my garden, every gardener who visits comments on it because it's supposed to be a vertical plant. Glad to have a name for it now.
Thanks for the advice about the tree. It's wonderful in the fall but the rest of the year, it's just a big sun-blocking mass of green.
DeleteHow much you love those pears is the deciding factor for the tree. Love the pears - keep it. Meh on the pears - axe it. Whenever my tall plants become ground huggers, it's time for more sun. Messius prostratus is the Latin for Hot Mess on the Ground. :o)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice on the tree; the pears are really good. Messius prostratus!? Too funny - coffee nearly spurted out of my nose when I read that!
DeleteI'd get rid of the pear tree. You can always buy pears at the farmers market but every square foot in the garden is precious and shouldn't be ceded to a plant that doesn't work aesthetically. Sorry about the rain damage, after every rainstorm I'm gritting my teeth and wrestling with big plants to get them vertical again.
ReplyDeleteI think you might be right about the tree. I like the pears but now that the tree is so tall, I don't usually pick and eat many of them. Don't know if the rain is as much to blame as is the gardener who didn't stake any plants this year. Your wrestling with big plants comment tells me that, like many of us, you may not follow the "support it BEFORE it falls over" wisdom.
DeleteHow interesting to see your onset of winter brings rains and our onset is frosts and freezing. I don't know which is worse. Our first snowfall will knock down all the grasses but I'm usually ready to be done with everything by that point. I still have a gorgeous brugmansia still blooming. I'd brought it into the garage the night we had the hard freeze.
ReplyDeleteWe'll get hard frost sometime late in November or early December. It's always a game with me to see if the banana that I see from my kitchen window is still green on Thanksgiving and many years it is. Once we get the hard frost, the large grasses will be brown for the winter. Our lawns remain green though. We're fairly lucky in that things don't usually look totally gone until December and by late January or early February, the snowdrops, camellias, stachyurus praecox, hellibores, etc. start blooming.
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