The Wool Merchant's Daughter

The rhododendrons this year were, in a word, spectacular. This was good considering the amount of time and expense that went into installing them!

One new bed was very small but important. This was screening for the firepit area. This is the view looking east; the firepit is on the other side:

I have a fellow who helps with gardening and he installed the section of fence and the crabapple tree to the immediate left of the fence. I put in markers for him to dig the holes and I dropped in the shrubs. We have a great working arrangement this way.  Some of the rhodys in this section are:

Victoria’s Consort:

Victoria’s Consort is interesting because it is billed as a white rhody with a yellow throat. Eventually, you do get a creamy white but they start out a very pale mauve with a darker bud. After a week or so, they go to this:

Next to those are some Capistranos, to carry over the yellow theme:

The Capistranos also get a bit lighter as the blooms age:

One usual rhody with the unfortunate name of “Calsap” is white with a distinctive eye:

Another variety with the colored center was a bit of a mix-up and no one is sure what variety it actually is. It was tagged as an Edwin Beineke, yellow with an apricot throat, but that clearly was a mistake:

Happily, even though this wasn’t the color I was after, I had purchased 3 of these, and they performed wonderfully well, whatever they are. The one in the front yard produced masses of blooms:

Nearby, we added a REAL yellow rhody, Buzzer Beater:

And next to that added a really interesting variety, Percy Wiseman:

We plugged in some azaleas, too, both evergreen and deciduous. Not sure of the variety on this evergreen one:

This is one of the deciduous ones, and it is fragrant:

And this is not fragrant, but who needs fragrance with this color? From the Confederate General series of deciduous azaleas, this is the “Stonewall Jackson:”

Again to the back yard, where I finally finished installing a raised bed. Not just a raised bed, but a two-foot slate wall filled with soil and containing a seating area that you walk up little stone steps to get to. My back will never be the same again:

This bed contains a variety of things, but mainly rhodys and azaleas, due to the shady location.  I think one of the showiest varieties we put in was the “Janet Blair:”

Another variety with a colored throat. This was labelled only as: smirnowii hybrid Sandy/Hank. The beauty of finding a nursery where the breeders can’t stop producing new varieties — this doesn’t even appear to be named yet:

This was another multi-color variety, Trinity:

An evergreen and a deciduous azalea and again, the deciduous one is scented:

And a lovely evergreen variety called “Ben Morrison:”

And that, good friends, wraps up the garden for May and after all these photos, I’m guessing you realize a.) why it took so long to post them and b.) why gardening has cut into my spinning and wheel restoration time!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 16th, 2013 at 5:42 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.