Cornus Florida | Suite101.com

Autumn Crescendo
The music of autumn is played in a different key than that of spring. Although both begin softly and build to a crescendo, spring's song is sweet and high, while autumn's is a more complex ballad, changing key and rhythm as the music builds. Autumn includes the mellow minor keys, totally absent in spring, as well as a touch of melancholy among the brassy highs. It's a subtle season and spring is not. Spring's changes burst upon us; autumn's are wrought more slowly as our plants descend into winter's sleep. Lot's of images, so please be patient while the page loads for you.
fall • color • colour • trees • native plants

Trees for the White Garden
Trees bring gravitas. Every white flower garden or moon garden needs a special white flowering tree, either nearby or in the garden itself.
white flowered tree • white flower garden • moon garden • tree selection • garden design

Bulbs for Shady Places -- Part 1
Gardening in Shade - Bulbs for Shady Places - Part 1
bulbs • bulbous • minor bulbs • corms • rhizomes

Catalog Shopping for Northern Gardeners
Shopping from mail order plant and seed catalogs requires different considerations for northern gardeners than for those from more southerly regions. Here is the lowdown. Included is a resource for customer feedback from almost any garden catalog you can name.
northern gardening • zone 4 • growing season • catalogs • provenance

Late Color - Part 2
Last week, I shared some late color from my USDA zone 7 garden in the green and yellow range; this week, we'll blaze out! Get out your sunglasses and enjoy the color. <b>Warning! Lots of images - may load slowly for you.</b>
leaf color • foliage color • fall color • fothergilla gardenii • dwarf fothergilla

Late Color - Part 3
Subtle variations in tone and tint add a richness to the sepia of our November gardens and conclude this series on Late Color.
leaf color • foliage color • fall color • cornus florida • dogwood

Planting Under Trees - Part 10
Some plants who are happy and some who are not, growing under an oak (Quercus>) and four dogwoods (Cornus florida) in my USDA zone 7 garden.
hosta sieboldiana • dogwood • cornus florida • oak • quercus

Planting Under Trees - Part 11
Gardening in Shade - Planting Under Trees - Part - 11 - The West Border
maple • acer • cornus florida • oak • quercus

Planting Under Trees - Part 13
Gardening in Shade - Planting Under Trees - Part - 13 - Plants Under The Dogwood
sweet woodruff • galium odoratum • dogwood • cornus florida • boxelder

Planting Under Trees - Part 14
Gardening in Shade - Planting Under Trees - Part - 14 - The New Planting
dogwood • cornus florida • ilex x 'nellie r. stevens' • holly • hollies

Spring Flowering Trees
The right flowering tree can bring great beauty to your spring garden. Here are some favorites to consider for your own landscape design plan.
spring flowering tree ornamental tree landscape de

Subtle Pleasures - Autumn
Despite the brief glory of flaming leaves, autumn is really a subtle season. Flowers change to seedheads, pods and berries. Sometimes these are brilliantly colored but in many plants, these final gifts of the season are tinted with elusive hues only seen on close inspection. There are lots of images, so please be patient while the page loads for you.
shade garden • shade gardening • gardening in shade • autumn • seeds

Official Designated State Flowers
Each state in the United States of America has a formal flower. Some blooms are claimed by more than one place. Check this complete state by state listing.
state flower • list of state flowers • official state flower • flower for every state • united states flowers

Wildlife and Gardens - Part 6
If you want to attract wildlife to your garden, you need to consider plants that will provide food for the critters the year around. You need to use plants that are appropriate for your garden and where you are in the world.
wildlife • planting for wildlife • fall fruit • winter fruit • berries

Weeping Form Deciduous Trees
Six of the best deciduous trees with weeping growth habit and pendulous silhouettes. Is your favorite listed?
weeping trees • deciduous trees • crabapple • birch • dogwood

Selecting Plants: Will That Plant Grow Here? The Reality of Zone Maps.
A synopsis and comparison of various plant zone and climate zone maps available to gardeners. Encourages designers of home landscapes and home gardeners to research plants before committing to choices.
criteria for plant selection • macroclimate • home gardeners • microclimate • plant hardiness zone map

Selecting Spring Flowering Trees
One of the things I really look forward to after a long and often hard winter is the explosion onto the scene of the beautiful flowering trees. Here is some information on varieties that do well in the Great Lakes Region, with some planting and growing tips. Enjoy!!!
flowering trees • spring flowering trees • flowering trees • dogwoods • prariefire plant

Spring - Beauty and Beast - Part 1, Beauty
Spring is my favorite time of year - no question about it - but it's also the most frenzied time of year in my USDA zone 7 garden. Especially in years like this, when the weather doesn't let me get that much needed head start on cleaning up winter's debris. In my garden, spring is beautiful, but it's also a beast in many ways.
springtime gardening • shade gardening

Fall Magic: Dogwood Red
Dogwoods are beautiful any time of the year, and they lead the color procession in the fall, creating some fall magic-their blood-red leaves reminding us once again of the legend of the dogwood!
dogwood • trees • hillsides • glow • color

Kinds of Shade Redux - Illustrated
What kinds of shade are there? Find out here and see what I'm talking about.
shade • light shade • medium shade • dappled shade • filtered shade

Microclimates
Many world-renowned gardens utilize both natural and manipulated microclimates to achieve drama and beauty. Designers of Sissinghurst Castle Gardens in Kent, England and Butterstream Gardens, in County Meath, The Irish Republic exploited existing structures like old brick walls and buildings along with natural influences such as compass direction, water, and large trees. The Isle of Wight surrounded by waters of the Solent is a "working example" of bodies of water influencing a regional or neighborhood microclimate.
environmental factors • environmental features • microclimate • microclimates • altitude

New World Plants
Many of the plants that we take for granted are native to the New World. The plants of the western hemisphere have enriched the world, and have enhanced the lives of people far away from the lands of their origins.
new world trees • great lakes region gardening • shrubs • vines • vegetables

What Kind of Shade? - Part One - Shades of Shade
Definitions of shade aren't an exact science, but it's important to get a grasp on the shades of shade.
shade • shade garden • shade gardening • gardening in shade • perennials

Choosing Trees for a Small Garden
Selecting trees that will fit into a small garden
trees • garden • small • holly • maple

Hunger
It's human nature to want something we can't have and gardeners are no exception.
cold climates • hot climates • gardeners

International Garden Photographs
April: Landscaping at Suite101 "Link of the Month." Away.com offers an archive of travel photographs that includes galleries devoted to international garden landscapes.
garden travel photographs • landscape ideas • residential gardens • garden landscapes • garden history

Nature's Signs of Spring are Everywhere
When spring arrives in the northeast USA, the earliest signs are subtle but incontrovertible. The natural world is waking as the days get longer.
indicators of spring • spring mammals • bird behavior in spring • signs of spring • amphibians in spring

"The Wilderness": A New Garden From Wild Woods
Extending the garden into the ‘Wilderness' is a large project entailing major clearing to turn this weedy, rooty bit of ground into a proper garden and the fun of selecting new plants to take the place of Nature's weedy bits.
shade gardening • gardening in shade • shrubs • trees • perennials

Galanthus - The First Sign That Spring Will Come
The wind may howl (as it's doing as I write this), sleet may fall and ice and snow cover all, but Spring Will Come. The first sign that the season has turned in my USDA zone 7 garden is my patch of snowdrops (<i>Galanthus</i>).
galanthus • snowdrop • bulbs • spring flowering bulbs • shade

In danger: Canada's Deep South
Although I grew up in Southwestern Ontario, I never realized it was once the richest and most diverse habitat in the country, an area known as Carolinian Canada.
ontario • carolinian canada • canada • diverse • habitat

More Groundcovers
A couple of my favorite groundcovers and a couple of lovely thugs.
groundcover • groundcovers • perennials • hardy geranium • cranesbill

Slow Stroll through the Gardens Once More
The slow, therapeutic stroll through the garden continues. This time we make it out of the secret garden and up the [ath to the gazebo. (And no - we're not done YET!)

Unrealistic Expectations
Don't let unrealistic expectations lessen your enjoyment of gardening.
northern gardening • zone 4 • magic bullets • annuals • seeds

What Still Looks Good?
Inspiration for the fall garden! Enjoy some unusual hardy perennials, grasses, trees and shrubs with wonderful fall interest as guest columnist and garden designer Abby Millager describes her zone 5 Massachusetts garden in mid October.
fall • autumn • ornamental grass • shrub foliage • color

My Special Appointment With Spring!
Springtime is just around the corner! My garden has been working hard for me underground as I've wiled away winter reading gardening magazines and books and dreaming about spring. The time is now upon me to pitch in and do MY part to help my butterfly and hummingbird garden thrive. It is finally "seedtime and budtime" again, and I'm excited!
butterfly and hummingbird gardening • spring gardening tasks • blooms and leaf buds • raking flowerbeds • pruning roses

Planting Under Trees - Part 4
Last week, in this series devoted to planting in that inhospitable environment under mature deciduous trees, I talked about some tough groundcovers that grow well with little effort on your part. But, what if you want more than that? In parts of my USDA zone 7 garden, I wanted more, too. This week I'll tell you about one of my mixed borders. There are several photos, so please be patient while they load
borders • shady gardens

Planting Under Trees - Part 5
For those of you just joining this series, it's about planting in that inhospitable soil directly under mature deciduous trees. In previous parts of the series, I've shared my methods of dealing with the soil and some tough no-coddling groundcovers that do well in these conditions.This week, we'll look at a few more plants that I have found, over the years, will tolerate the rooty conditions under these trees - with a bit of extra TLC and water.
planting under trees • shady planting • planting in shade

Acclimation - Why Did My Plant Die? Redux
Plants die for myriad reasons. Winter injuries, of various kinds, are high on the list. We can all understand why tender plants die when it gets too cold for them, but why do our supposedly hardy plants join the list of winter injuries and fatalities? Come with me on a visit to the secret life of plants to find out...
winter injuries • hardy plants • woody plants • bud blast • phloem

Leaves - Shape Part 1
When autumn's high color is past, leaves rain down upon my garden, signaling weeks of raking and vacuuming to remove them from drive, paths and evergreen perennials. Shoveling leaves into a leaf vac by hand offers ample opportunity for close examination. It's also not exactly taxing mentally; the mind tends to wander. Mine started wandering down the path of wondering just why leaves take different shapes.
shade • shade garden • shade gardening • gardening in shade • perennials

Planting Under Trees - Part 8
Gardening in Shade - Planting Under Trees - Part - Mixed Planting, From the Begining
planting under trees • mixed planting

Wildlife and Gardens - Part 3
Gardening in Shade - Wildlife and Gardens - Part 3 - Our Fine Feathered Friends
wildlife • birds • attracting birds to the garden

Growing From Seed
Most real seedaholics have pretty much finished sowing perennial and woody plant seeds until late summer begins the process again. However, I'm always off sinc. I tend to do things when I have the time, not when I'm "supposed" to. As seed is on my mind, I thought some of you may be wondering how to go about growing plants this way. It's a great way to have large numbers of the same plant for making swathes and drifts or sharing with friends. It's also about the only way you can actually get your hands on some plants; those that are rare or slow and are not to be found in nursery catalogs
growing from seed

Where in the World - Plant Provenance
Hardiness zones are only a rough indication of whether a plant will do well in our gardens. If we really want to have a good idea about a plant's suitability for our conditions, we have to know its provenance, or where in the world it calls home.
usda hardiness zones • provenance • plant explorers • climate • alpine plants

Battling Bambi
It's difficult for the gardener to appreciate the finer qualities of Bambi while watching one knee-deep in a flower bed, munching away on precious plants. Success and failure in the battle with Bambi, including plants that my herd has not eaten.
shade • shade garden • shade gardening • gardening in shade • perennials

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