Bring Back Butterflies

I have, or is it had, the Magnolia Tree, 'Butterfies', a beautiful spring bloomer that is supposed to be hardy in zone 5-9.  I am in zone 6.  This spring only a few flowers appeared on half of the tree and now it only as a few limbs with leaves.  Most of the tree is just a bunch of twigs.  This past winter in the northeast was very cold with little to no snow cover for insulation.  Combine that with extreme temperature fluctuations in the spring, including some days in March in the high 90s and I would suggest that our crazy weather lead to the demise of this tree.

Here it is June and still no leaves.  However there appears to be some life in the stems.  I scraped a little bark away and there is some green.  Hope! 

I was talking about my loss with a fellow gardener and she spoke of having a similar experience.  She managed to bring the tree back to life with large doses of transplant fertilizer.  Transplant fertilizer is designed to stimulate root growth. I figure I had nothing to loose so why not try it.   I am starting treatment today and will pour a couple of gallons of liquid translant fertilizer over the root system.  I will keep you posted ont he results.   

Miniature Hostas

Have you seen the little hostas that sometimes rise only a wee 6” above the soil? They are cute miniature hostas - tiny versions of the big leafy plants most of you know and hopefully love. These little hostas are just too adorable to pass up when I’m hosta shopping and I now have about 33 of these petite hostas in my collection. However, they may not all be minis. Many a hosta has been registered as a mini and bought as a mini only to grows out of its size classification as it matures over a number of years. Did you know it can take some hostas as many as five years to mature and show their true characteristics?

When you own mini hostas, one of the challenges is how to display them. They may be cute, however sometimes they are so tiny that they appear insignificant in the landscape. I originally designed two places to display my minis. I thought if I grouped them together, they would have more impact. Not really so. They were still small and insignificant. 

They are adorable, however after viewing these pictures I believe you can understand why placing them next to their bigger brethren does nothing to highlight their cute stature.  In fact, many an online hosta forum topic has explored options for displaying miniature hostas. The one solution that seems to me to have the most impact is to place these little darlings in a raised bed of some sort to provide closer viewing.

So I finally decided to create a raised area for my mini hostas. I chose to do this with a grouping of containers. The perfect setting for these containers was under a maple tree that casts wonderful shade; however the root system of the tree killed any hosta planted within five feet of the tree trunk.

This display houses about 2/3 of my collection.  Here are a couple of my other favorites that are not shown in the display.

Blue Mouse Ears

Fireworks

Here are a couple of nice mini hostas displays I photographed in other people's gardens.  In both cases, the garden owners created raised beds for their minis using cobbles or stone.

A mini display in the Adams Garden in Rhode Island.

A nice display of miniature hostas in the Apter Garden in Connecticut.

And back to the debate on size. A miniature hosta is determined by the leaf size - leaf length X leaf width. It has nothing to do with the spread of the clump. The American Hosta Society (AHS) judge’s handbook indicates that the miniature hosta leaf size can be no greater than 6 square inches. There has been much discussion about this size criteria for the reason noted above. A recent article in the AHS Hosta Journal suggests that the powers that be are looking to increase the mini leaf size somewhat...stay tuned.

Peony WOW

This is a great year for the Peony. Larger plants - probably from all the water last year, and more blooms than I have ever experienced in the past. The blooms are running about three weeks ahead of schedule here in my northeast corner of Massachusetts. I will let the following pictures speak for themselves.