The Spring "Shift" is Looming!

This nice mosaic of creeping veronica looks wonderful this time of year but soon will fade to a green carpet. This was taken in our alpine garden. We have some really neat plants in there but this garden has suffered recently due to flooding, un-monitored foot traffic (kids) all over the rocks and plants, and a lack of more permanent signage that doesn't disappear. We are trying to put more time in to this garden and have actually planted about 1/3 of this garden as a dwarf/miniature conifer collection. A nice grant from the American Rock Garden Society has allowed us to not only purchase plants but to label them in a tasteful fashion (see image) We just planted another 25 choice new conifers in this garden (including the one seen to the left). A portion of the collection can be seen below. We'll see how it turns out. Some of these will grow faster than others so we'll relocate them as needed. Hopefully the bunnies and other rodents wont find them delectable.

We're continuing to accumulate more annuals daily. I picked up about 400 New Guinea impatiens which we like "punctuating" throughout our part-shade gardens. We'll start planting "in earnest" this weekend. I wish we had everything here already. My analogy is that if our designs are like recipes, we don't have all the ingredients yet. Do we start cooking and add those ingredients later or wait? Well, I think we'll start where we can and really hit it hard in June. Things look pretty good but we can't take a break from weeding. I've been spraying Roundup in some larger areas in an effort to control the progeny of some of our plantings last year (amaranth, celosia, etc.). Lots of comments on the perennial forget-me-nots (Myosotis) in the Scottish garden. Blue is our deal this year!!!