Am I the only one that has song or movie titles stick in their head? Every time I try to come up with the title for a post, one of them comes up in my mind.
In homage to Clint, I would like to take a few minutes to introduce you to my The Good, The Bad and The Dead (it is supposed to be The Ugly, but I am taking poetic licence.
First, the Good– for me it was my snowdrops. I am sure all my regular readers know how obsessed with snowdrops I am, and my pitiful very small collection of snowdrops doubled from last year. Even better, Jen from Muddy Boot Dreams was kind enough to post me some snowdrops ‘ in the green’. This means I will probably have treble next year, very good indeed.
Unfortunately we have to move on to the Bad. Last year, I bought this gorgeous golden yew from Marion Jarvies open garden. I wanted to bring more conifers into my garden, as well as foliage colours, other than green. It was a lovely pyramidal shape and looked perfect. We do get a lot of now in Owen Sound. Sometimes it is good, as it gives some borderline plants a lot of winter protection, but sometimes, not so good. The very heavy snow and the conical shape of the yew did not a good match make. As you can see, the top snapped right off.
Even worse, we come to the Dead.
When you are planting an allee, or in this case a pleached walk, you want all your trees to match. Nothing is worse then when one of them dies, but that is what happened to me. One of the linden trees in my Lime Walk, did not make it through the winter. Now it will have to be replaced and I have lost a whole growing year. But it could have been worse, the walk could have been planted a number of years ago, that would have been more difficult to match up. Now I only needed a five foot Tilia cordata ‘Greenspire’ and the walk is complete again.
This is what it should look like,
But one of them looks like this,
The good news is that 5 new Tilia are arriving on Saturday, one to replace this one, and I am extending the walk by four trees. After all, can you ever have too many trees.
I am a floral designer living in a tiny condo in downtown Toronto, Canada's largest city. But on the weekend, I am a gardener/frustrated architect trying to keep up with a 3/4 acre garden in Owen Sound, Ontario, a warm (to Canadians, Zone 5b, and a cold (to Americans, Zone 4b) garden.
Green Theatre 