Slowly, but surely spring is beginning to cooperate…it sure has taken long enough! The two weeks of warm weather in early April really messed things up. Most all the hostas received some degree of frost damage and many froze completely. They are slowly recovering, but it is such a disappointment to wait all winter for the hostas to emerge and then they just don’t look their best.

Our Spring in the Country Open House was a couple weeks ago. It is becoming a bit of an inside joke with some of our faithful attendees…if we plan our open house, the weather will likely be less than ideal! The day started out nice - cool, but sunny. As the day went on, though, the clouds moved in, the temperature fell, and the wind came gusting through. Despite the crappy weather, we had a small, but dedicated group of gardeners listen to the speakers. Visitors flowed steadily through all day and it was great to see friends we hadn’t seen since last summer. All in all, the day could have been worse! Remember our first open house a few years ago???

Even with the weather working against us, the garden as a whole looks pretty good! Now that I have a good camera, my goal is to share photos from the garden on a regular basis.

An old chicken feeder planted with sedums and hen & chicks.	We don’t grow many Clematis, but ‘Josephine’ is definitely one of my favorites. Growing on an old, “transplanted” stump right outside the shop.
An assortment of tiny sedums and hen & chicks growing in the rock garden. An area that is only about one foot square, but just as interesting as a larger bed.	Another rock garden plant, the Saponaria, or Soapwort, is a big mound of pink.

I’ve added more recent photos to the May 2005 gallery.

Most of the main hosta beds are relatively weed free (haha!!) and mulched. The hostas in the display garden actually suffered little from the frost. The shadehouse sets much lower than the garden, though, and the hostas down there really took a beating. Some are still struggling to recover.

‘Bridegroom’ is one of the unmistakable hostas. I love the unique mound it forms.	‘Kiwi Full Monty’ is a sport of ‘Striptease’. Identical in all ways, except it is blue instead of green.
One of the classics, ‘Wide Brim’.	Two gold margined hostas, but distinctly different. ‘Wolverine’ and ‘Queen Josephine’

We’ve been working on building a couple new hosta beds the last two weeks. Come on out and check out what we’ve been up to!