Roses, roses and more roses

Lovely but could use some companions

A previous owner of our house liked roses a lot. They are planted on a stretch of the west fence, along the street, and continuing down the north fence bordering our neighbor on that side. I enjoy seeing them bloom enough to put up with the pruning, feeding and attempts at controlling black spot (which seems inevitable in this climate). But I want to do less mulching and weeding and I think the roses would look better with companions.

West fence and northwest corner

The roses are one of my areas to focus on this year. My plan is to dig out a wider border from the lawn all along both sides, put in plants to create an edge for the lawn, and then a lot of groundcover plants and a few other seasonal interest plants. There are two roses that need to be dug out, they are growing from the roots and whatever was grafted originally is gone. Some of the roses are too close together anyway, so this will help.
The main area gets full sun and is very dry in the summer - but I have a soaker hose run along the roses, and turn that on a couple of times/week in the hottest part of the summer. 

North fence

I planted three peonies in the corner in the fall and am eagerly waiting for those to sprout up. There are also a few tulips, irises and allium scattered in the corner, I'm never sure exactly where until they come up.

I'm planning a combination of lavender and catmint for the lawn edge, with salvia just behind it. I made an impulse buy of ranunculus that will go in there somewhere, columbine seeds to plant, and wild geranium that I can transplant from other areas. Also looking at lambs ear, dwarf yarrow (white or other color, not yellow) and chives. I'll need more groundcover and that's really what I'm weakest at knowing how to plan, so I'm still reading and thinking and observing.

This will be a lot of blue and purple, with a little red (half of the columbine) and silver/grey foliage. I think that will look good with the roses, which are mostly red and pink, and the peonies should be red, pink and white. 

The lower section is already wider and has a solid border with a retaining wall. It's also shadier, the roses don't grow quite as well down there. There are already wild geranium coming up through the bark mulch, which I have always weeded out but won't now, and a few vinca minor shoots that I transplanted last year. I'll probably just let those grow, weed out the dandelions and other plants that I don't want, and see what happens.

Lower section of roses

The juniper and small section of lawn below it, before the retaining wall starts, will probably go - but not as high of a priority as the rest of the rose area.

There is also a strip of mulch along the sidewalk, all along the outside of the fence to the mailbox in the northwest corner. Orange flowered annuals that I believe are zinnias come up around the mailbox, spread from the neighbor's yard years ago. I'm going to plant other types of zinnias all along that strip to keep out the weeds.

The wisteria growing along the west fence between the roses and the driveway is another matter, it is too much work for too little enjoyment. I'm not sure of the wisdom of planting wisteria anywhere in this climate - except in a large pot - but this seems to be a particularly bad location. There's nowhere for it to climb except the short fence, and new shoots grow into the sidewalk if it's not cut back weekly in the summer. But it's not on my list of priorities for this year. I cut the woody part back heavily in early January and hope that will at least keep it from its annual attempt to encroach into the roses. 

An unexpected flood

Bulbs are hardy, right?

The sun came out this afternoon so I spent a few minutes wandering around my yard, focusing on the 'pay attention to' part of minding my garden. I want to see what's growing and what the conditions are in every season. I stayed out of all planted areas to avoid compacting the soil, or sinking to my ankles in mud. Walking on the grass is... soggy, but I didn't sink much.

There was a torrential downpour of rain this morning, and yesterday and earlier in the week. Not unusual for the rainy season, although it is not really 9 months out of the year despite popular perception. So I expected the yard to be wet.
The bottom (east side) of our lot gets the soggiest, especially along the fence where the gate opens. I knew I wouldn't be able to walk through the gate without big rubber boots. But I did not expect a lake in the other corner, right where I planted a bunch of daffodils, tulips and other bulbs in the fall. I'm sure they'll be fine, bulbs are hardy.. right?
Well, I have been drooling over Siberian irises in a catalog, so if the bulbs I planted don't do well, they may be next.

Maybe more a swamp than a lake

In bloom this week: Jan. 25, 2016

I've gotten used to what blooms first every year, but I lose track of when. I find myself thinking 'is it early for the daffodils to bloom, or is that normal?' Not that daffodils are in bloom just yet!... but they are coming up, as well as hyacinths.

Weather note: we've had slightly warm temperatures and it has been very rainy, unexpectedly so for an El Niño winter when the Pacific Northwest tends to be drier. Not as warm as last winter though, which was extraordinarily warm and everything bloomed early.

My chimonanthus, or wintersweet, has been blooming for a couple of weeks. The note from the previous owners said it was a 'winter blooming Asian plum', so I had to hunt online to find out what it really is. It's at least 15 years old now, and we've done very little pruning so it's more a tree than a shrub. It grows on the south side of our house and is partly shaded by the neighbor's house, which it seems to like. The flowers smell lovely, but are starting to turn brown on the edges now.

Wintersweet

Wintersweet, two weeks ago

Rosemary blooms through most of the winter in my garden. This bush is in a terraced bed that is shaded by our house and by overgrown lilacs.

Rosemary

There are also camellias blooming in the neighborhood, but I don't have any in my yard. Perhaps next year...

A few ground rules for 2016

Grass in the public winter garden just down the street

I started the new year by reading Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West, which is all about designing plant communities. That gave me so many ideas for what to do in my yard, and I headed straight for the plant catalogs and websites. I started adding plants to my cart and of course the total price got scary real quick. I had to step back and think about what's reasonable, so I came up with my gardening ground rules for 2016.

Don't take on more than I can finish and maintain.
I have big ideas for every area of the yard, and it is so tempting to jump in and buy all the shiny new plants. But I work a 40+ hour/week job, sometimes have to travel for work, and my husband occasionally likes to do other things on the weekends.

What I plant has to grow well and keep out the weeds, because while I occasionally enjoy pulling a few weeds, it's not something I want to spend a lot of time on.  I have a few favorite vegetables and fruit and berries that will always need water, but I don't want to have to continually water everything else. 

I need to focus on a few areas, think about how much time and energy I will realistically have, make sure what I'm planting will be mostly low maintenance - and plant what I will enjoy! 

Think about a community of plants in each area.
I need to learn more about plants to see what grows well together for the existing conditions instead of planting whatever catches my eye. To keep out weeds there need to be plants that fill each niche: plants that are structural, others that have seasonal interest, and lots of groundcover.
Big seasonal interest plants are what always draw my attention (flowering currant, dahlias, hollyhocks, etc.), but they don't grow in isolation. Good groundcover will keep the weeds out, and that means I need a lot of these plants - which can be very interesting on their own, I've just never paid much attention to them before.
There's still room for impulse buys like annual starter plants, to fill in around everything else.

Observe what grows on it's own.
It's easy to assume that whatever appears in my yard that I didn't plant is a weed, but if a plant is growing on it's own, that means it's suited to the conditions. I don't enjoy weeding, spreading mulch, more weeding, and endless watering in the summer. The plants that grow on their own don't need that. I might want to keep some of them instead of weeding them out, like the wild geraniums that I noticed growing in the shadier part of my rose bed this week. I've always pulled them in the past, but they're pretty little plants, and if they will keep out the bittercress and dandelions, then I won't need to add a lot of mulch every year. Or if I don't like the plants (the creeping buttercup that wants to take over the lower hillside), at least use them to get ideas for what similar plants would appreciate those conditions.

Use native plants where it makes sense.
I like the idea of having a native yard for a lot of reasons, but especially because they grow well here. But I'm interested in a lot more plants than are native here, and it's hard to find some natives, especially many of the groundcovers. Plus, parts of my yard just aren't native conditions, this hill was a forest once upon a time, not a sunny grassland. I'd like to do away with the grass, but I'm not interested in growing a forest. So I'll use what plants fit well together, which will include non-natives from similar conditions - but I will pay attention to what is native and think about those first.

Starting with definitions

Early January sunrise from my deck

Welcome to anyone who has stumbled upon this first post!

The verb 'mind' means to pay attention to, be careful of, to heed, take charge of and take care of. That's a nice definition of what I want to do with my garden.

My garden is a sunny suburban lot just south of Seattle, Washington, which is zone 8B. Most of the yard was lawn when we moved in years ago. We have converted portions to other uses, but without enough attention to what would work well, and there is still more lawn than I want. What I am now working toward is a sustainable yard that needs little weeding, limited watering, and gives me pleasure in every season.

Commonplace books were (and are) a way to collect quotes, ideas, observations - any information that the writer wanted to remember. They are not a list of chronological events such what the writer ate every day, but instead a collection of wisdom to be looked back upon later. This blog will be chronological by nature since a garden grows through time, but is intended as a way to collect information rather than a log of everything I do in my garden.