Orange slime balls

The other day I noticed this strange orange slimey blobs on a juniper:

Kinda gross, but kinda cool at the same time.

Turns out it is Cedar Apple Rust -- a fungal disease that can grow on apples, hawthorns, and junipers. On the apples and hawthorns, it can cause serious damage, but doesn't do much more than look funky on junipers. More info here from Kansas state university.

Winter Color Revisited

The snow is finally melting, and all of us Northern gardeners are giddy with joy, and we're all posting about the very same set of plants: Snowdrops, crocuses, witch hazel and helleborus.

Except me.

This post is about an entirely different set of plants.

Back in December I took a stroll through the gardens at Michigan State, and wrote about plants for winter color -- so I thought I would revisit those plants now, and see what I'm thinking.

Some things are decidedly out: The ornamental kale now looks like this:

And smells like rotten cabbage. Yuck. Yuck. Ugh. These might be good plants for a milder climate, but this is NOT what I want to see when the snow first melts.
Another looser are the deciduous hollies -- they looked stunning in December, but every berry is now long gone. They are nice for fall/early winter, but don't go the distance to early spring -- and the same is true of every other berry in the gardens. They simply don't last long enough to qualify for real winter interest.

The winners:

Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard'

This is amazing color anytime -- but for March in Michigan, it is unbelievable. Looks just as bright as it did in the fall.

Sedum rupestre 'Angelina'

The it a LOT of color for something that was under 6 inches of snow just a couple days ago! And wouldn't it be stunning with deep purple crocuses coming up through it?

I'm also still loving: This ornamental grass (whatever it is... I should know, but I'm terrible with my grasses. ID anyone?)

And Sedum 'Autumn Joy' (even though it IS over used, I'm impressed with how it stands up to the amount of snow we get here)

So I'm starting to put together a winter/early spring garden in my head: A backdrop of evergreen conifers, a swath of ornamental grass, and red-twig dogwood, lots of Yucca 'Color Guard' fronted with 'Autumn Joy' and 'Angelina' peppered with splashes of purple crocus and dwarf iris. Wouldn't that be marvelous? What would you add?

Dwarf conifers come from witches!

My recent trip to Hidden Lake Gardens enjoying their glorious collection of dwarf conifers

Made me remember seeing this in a graveyard I bicycle past on my way to work every day:

And what is that? Something perched in the middle of that pine tree... Zoom in a little closer and:

It looks like a little dwarf conifer stuck in the middle of a regular pine tree. Which is exactly what it is -- it is called a witches' broom (I'm serious, that's what they're called -- though not to be confused with the disease of hackberries that goes about calling itself witches' broom too) Every once in a great while, a random mutation in a pine tree causes one branch to start growing all short and squat -- they grow there, a little dwarf conifer stuck in the middle of a full-sized tree, until some enterprising horticulturalist comes by, cuts some of the dwarf branches off, graft them onto a regular root stock, gives is a cutesy cultivar name, and markets it as a new dwarf conifer.

Which is exactly what I'd like to do with this one, only it is some 20 feet up in the air, in the middle of a graveyard... Not sure exactly how to get up to it...

Drooling over conifers

Today's post in a nutshell:
Going to Hidden Lake Gardens

 Has left me saying:
Oh my god CONIFERS!

Inspired by this post by Bert Craig on The Garden Professors blog, I decided to take a trip down to Hidden Lake Gardens -- it is in Tipton Michigan (aka The Middle of Nowhere) which turns out to be about an hour and a half south of here.

And it is spectacular. High on my list of all-time great public gardens I have visited. The lanscape is lovely rolling hills complete with lakes and gorgeous views, there is a marvelous conservatory with tropical, temperate, and arid rooms, but the really highlight is the conifer collection. Absolutely amazing. I came away with a whole list of names scribbled on a scrap of paper.. Lovely rare dwarf conifers I'm sure I'll never be able to afford on what we get paid in grad school, but a man can dream.

Anyway, enough words. On to some pictures:

Just a few of the wonderful colors, textures, and forms in the collection:

A view of the lake

 The cool conservatory that looks like an observatory:

Inside the conservatory:

If you are anywhere near southern Michigan, I highly recommend making a trip. I know I'll be back soon. Maybe this time with my bicycle so I can enjoy the lovely trails through the wooded hills around the lake.