Planting Day.

4-28-09 SHORT HILLS: Another day in the ninety neighborhood and all the trees and shrubs are on fast-forward. In the last five days we have leaped two or three weeks ahead. Even the rose-of-sharon is showing green buds. Our magnolias which opened about a week ago are done. Bamboo shoots are up. White ash are opening leaf buds.

Yesterday I went to The Farm in Green Village, NJ. http://www.thefarmatgreenvillage.com/ It is an excellent nursery with an extensive inventory and one of the last still around. There used to be many plant nurseries in our greater area, but most of them are now office buildings.

I got and planted two Spirea, Spiraea nipponica ‘Snowmound’, to replace the dead Scotch brooms. They even gave me half-off on the spireas because I brought the brooms back. I also added some ground covers to the bare area around the flagpole—two forget-me-not, Myosotis sylvatica ‘Victoria Blue’, two golden star, Chysogonum virginianum, and four dead nettle, Lamium maculatum, ‘Beacon Silver’, ‘Orchid Frost’ P.P.#11122, ‘Pink Pewter’, and ‘Shell Pink’. Those four lamium are in descending order downwards on the bank. I also put two Aegopodium podagraria ‘Variegatum’ near the back fence behind the pool. In Vermont, we call that Bishops weed. In most of those areas, the deer ate all the ivy leaves during the winter. The ivy does return, but it takes a while to recover. Everything I planted is apparently disliked by deer.

New blooms: apple trees, redbud, snowball viburnum, common [yellow] lamium.


Apple Tree.