slideshow: dogwoods, or cornus, i rely on

I have said before that I know what birds like, and have created a slideshow of the variousCornus, or dogwood, species that I grow–all of them good wildlife plants. But since the berries produced by Cornus alba and Cornus sericea, both twig dogwoods, really don’t catch my eye, I was interested to see that gray catbirds and tufted titmice, in particular, are positively wild about the unassuming white fruit.I grow a few varieties of Cornus alba andC. sericea, including the variegated-leaf, gold-twig ‘Silver and Gold,’ the gold-leaf, red-twig sericea called ‘Sunshine’ (above, in fruit; Cornus

I noticed that my friend Bob Hyland at nearby Loomis Creek Nursery is counting his twiggy blessings, too, this week—with an ode on his website to Salix ‘Swizzlestick,’ a distinctive corkscrew willow he grows as a dramatic 60-foot hedge.I’m making myself content with much less, but even a little ‘Winter Flame’ (hardy to Zone 4) warms the winter-weary soul. My young plant hasn’t reached full size of 8-10 feet, though at 4 feet it produces a show of yellow-, orange- and reddish-tinged stems that read as coral to my eye.The Dutch breeder of ‘Winter Flame,’ Andre van Nijnatten, has also developed a smaller-stature version called Cornus ‘Arctic Sun’ that is earning high pr

I N A WEEK OR SO I’LL ENJOY THE BORROWED VIEW of several giant old forsythia, left behind from a long-gone farmhouse that stood just down the road. I love seeing them through the naked woods, giant waterfalls of gold, but I don’t grow forsythia in the garden here, as you may recall.

H URRY, QUICK, RUSH: Get them before they vanish, and before the next pretty face distracts your gaze. That’s May in the garden here, a mad rush of bulbs and then ephemerals, and the first stick-around-awhile perennials, too, all happening beneath a canopy of blooming trees and shrubs. Have a quick look at some current beauties in the slideshow below, and I’ll be back to the computer to write profiles of the ones you haven’t met before.

THEY HAVE THEIR OWN BLOG NOW, but meantime they’re still under contract here at A Way to Garden, the site that made them famous.

Click on the first thumbnail to start the slideshow, then toggle from image to image using the arrows beside each caption. Enjoy!If you like begonias, by the way, some past posts have profiled my favorites:Begonia ‘Bonfire’ Begonia ‘Bellfire’ Begonia ‘Dragon Wing Red’ Categoriesannuals & perennials slideshows

S HRUBS ARE THE PEOPLE-SIZED PART OF THE LANDSCAPE, the middle layer that you cannot make a garden without. If you go and skip the shrubs, the transition from tree to perennial is just too drastic, don’t you think? I tried to pick one kind to profile today—lilacs, perhaps, or twig dogwoods (both in the photo above and both treating me to a show at the moment) or maybe a viburnum?—but I failed to single anybody out.

I N A GOOD SPRING, BELOVED PLANTS COME BACK. Not everybody, of course; some just can’t find their way home.

I REPEAT MYSELF A LOT, AND HERE I GO AGAIN: Think fall (yes, fall) in early spring, when the urge to shop for for trees and shrubs tugs insistently. Think fall, and think winter, too.

My favorite Kousa, the variegated shrublike one called ‘Wolf Eyes,’ looks anything but happy right now, perhaps a combination of an extra-dry May with repeat late frosts tossed in for good measure. That’s it below, in the distance.Mea culpa for not watering it properly, I guess; it looked good early on and then, poof, toast.  No brittle twigs, thankfully; just lots of crisp leaf edges. I’m watching for signs of what it wants to do next before I do anything but keep it well-hydrated (no food, no pruning, not yet).And then there’s the smallest: a weeping Kousa, the one called ‘Lustgarten Weeping’ that I almost tossed, as those of you who were here last year will recall. Despite the fact that my un-beloved yellow bellied sapsucker male apparently moved from the nearby lacebark pine that was his passion last year to the weeping Kousa sometime in the last few months,

THE FIRST REAL SNOW CAME SATURDAY NIGHT, December 5, depositing 4 or 5 inches of heavy stuff on an evening followed by the most brilliant day, the kind where the sun and moon were both in the sky. But all I could see at first when I looked outside: the pots that hadn’t made it into the safety of the shed or barn yet.

NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT YET HERE, so I’m looking back at old photos instead, from spring 2008, our first year online. I know, not very Buddhist or in-the-moment of me, but a lot more fun than looking out at the mud and traces of dirty snow.