Tag Archives: early bloom

drought tolerant, months 04-06: spring, perrennials

Tree Peony Blooms!

05/11/2014 svseekins Leave a comment

It blooms! Woo Hoo!! And just look at how BIG the bloom is!!

young tree peony in bloom cu, Joe Harvey, Victoria BC — photo by SVSeekins

And durable. This bloom is a week old & has endured rain several times. Bonus!

I know Peony as an old-fashioned perennial. There are several in our garden. But Tree Peony? Doesn’t the name sound exotic?? They’re a recent discovery for me.

in February 2012 I bought one from Joe Harvey, a local fellow who develops new varieties of peony. So, this ‘tree’ is still a baby. I’m impressed it produced a bloom in its 3rd spring.

Now I’m excited for the future….

How much longer will the bloom last?… How tall will the ‘tree’ get this year? … Will there be more blooms? … Will the deer leave it alone? (The baby deer are arriving in the garden these days & they’ll usually try a taste of anything.)

So many questions. Always so much to learn. Isn’t gardening grand?

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© SVSeekins, 2014

evergreens, garden visits, months 01-03: winter

Climbing Heather

03/21/2014 svseekins 1 Comment

Perhaps it’s a new species of heather?

Certainly it’s the talk of gardeners in Brentwood Bay & Saanichton.

Now the mystery is solved. Paul, the gardener, was in attendance when we drove past the other day, so I stopped to chat with him.

He says it’s just a regular heather that started to climb the ground wires of the utility pole. He thought that looked kinda cool, so he encouraged it along by tieing the heather further & further up as it grew. The ties wear out & fall off about the same time as the new branches mature enough to hold themselves in place.

It’s famous, says Paul. The local newspaper reporter also stopped by for the photo-op. Pretty cool, eh?

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© SVSeekins, 2014

drought tolerant, evergreens, garden visits, months 01-03: winter, urban deer

Conquering Daphne

01/19/2014 svseekins 4 Comments

It’s a fabulous season for finding my inner guerilla. On my morning walk I noticed a bunch of healthy daphne / spurge-laurel beside a wooded trail.

I have a paradoxical relationship with daphne.
I like it because its evergreen, drought tolerant, and deer resistant…
BUT the Coastal Invasive Species Committee call it invasive.
AND daphne has poisonous berries & wicked toxic sap that irritates eyes & skin.
BESIDES that – – there are less offensive options to replace daphne.

daphne beside trail — photo by SVSeekins

The rainy season & my mood convinced me that today I didn’t like it. So I decided to pull some daphne closest to the trail edge & my gloved hands.

I braced my feet,
bent my knees,
gripped the main stalk,
and PULLED.

Lo & behold the daphne slipped out of the ground easily! Roots and all! Woo hoo!

I felt like pounding my chest & letting out a guerilla roar!

I moved to another… and another. 🙂

tap root of a young daphne ws — photo by SVSeekins

developed root of an older daphne — photo by SVSeekins

A young daphne has one primary root, so in winter’s wet soil it pulls out readily. If it’s a couple of years older, it has more developed roots securing it in the ground . Even so, it comes out without much trouble at all!

In about 10 minutes I pulled 86 daphne!
(Seriously!! I counted.)