About a month ago we went to the Lavender Festival in Sequim, Washington. We started at the street fair (where I had lavender ice cream) and then visited three farms. Fun!
Next year I will try to get pictures of the lavender hillside in our yard. The last two years it has been too weedy at lavender-blooming time.
I am using the Latin name as the title of this post–and boy is it a mouthful! I have read that Eleutherococcus sieboldianus ‘Variegatus’ is sometimes called five-fingered or five-leaf aralia. It is a little bit of an obscure plant, and maybe for that reason I will categorize it as “exotic” (something that I can’t do that often). I spotted this shrub at the nursery and loved the variegated foliage and thorns (yes I like thorns for some reason). I see online that it does bloom, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it blooming (we’ve had it two years now).
We have three regular honeysuckles in the yard and one evergreen honeysuckle. I will post pictures of the evergreen honeysuckle separately.
The purple-leaf honeysuckle is on the front of the house, and it bloomed in early June. The variegated honeysuckle and the late Dutch honeysuckle are both on the swing. The variegated honeysuckle bloomed in May, and the late Dutch honeysuckle is blooming right now (it has been blooming since June).
purple-leaf honeysuckle: Lonicera japonica ‘Purpurea’:
variegated honeysuckle: Lonicera periclymenum ‘Harlequin’:
late Dutch honeysuckle: Lonicera periclymenum ‘Serotina’:
We have three willows in the garden: one in the swamp and two in the cat garden area. The willow in the swamp is a black pussy willow, so I’m posting pictures of it from February that show its fuzz. I may add more recent photographs of that willow after I weed the area (but it is in February when it looks interesting). The pictures of the other two willows are from spring and summer.
I see some pruning in the future, especially for the two willows in the cat garden. Actually, I’m not super fond of the shape of the black pussy willow, so maybe sometimes I’ll prune it down too.
You can see other views of two of the willows in this recent post about the cat garden.
black pussy willow: Salix gracilistyla ‘Melanostachys’:
purple willow: Salix purpurea Nana’:
golden curls corkscrew willow: Salix matsudana ‘Golden Curls’:
purple willow: Salix purpurea ‘Nana’ and golden curls corkscrew willow: Salix matsudana ‘Golden Curls’:
I love to see hummingbirds in the garden.
Salvia ‘Amistad’:
Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’:
Just resting on the dying/dead contorted filbert:
Spiraea is the Latin word for these plants, and the English word is spirea. I think that the words are pronounced the same. Generally, I just use spiraea (instead of switching back and forth).
We have six spiraeas in the yard: two spring-blooming and four summer-blooming. The pictures of the two bridal veil spiraeas are from April, and the pictures of other four spiraeas are from June (although I think most are still blooming now in July).
bridal wreath spiraea: Spiraea prunifolia:
Spiraea x bumalda ‘Candlelight’:
Spiraea japonica ‘Bullata’:
Spiraea japonica ‘Shirobana’:
Spiraea x bumalda ‘Flowering Choice’:
I heard Ciscoe Morris say once how to prune spiraeas, but I really don’t remember what he said. I think I will likely need to look it up, because some of these plants are getting somewhat large (or at least I don’t want them much bigger).
The white-variegated jasmine (Jasminum officinale ‘Argenteovariegatum’) suffered a little over the winter, but it bounced back quite nicely. The plant has the lovely jasmine scent and also has really interesting feathery foliage. These pictures are from mid-June and early July.
The Indigofera amblyantha is in the shrubrow, and it has been blooming since early June. It is an airy shrub (the opposite of dense), and it has quite pretty little blooms and leaves.
This post shows what the cat garden looked like in the spring this year, but now it looks entirely different. These pictures are from early July. I will most likely do separate posts for the individual plants in the photos (such as the hostas and willows).
I posted pictures of most of the deciduous azaleas in this post. Two of the deciduous azaleas in the azalea garden are late-blooming and were not included in that post. They are both blooming now (they started blooming in late June).
swamp azalea: Rhododendron viscosum:
‘Millennium’ deciduous azalea:
