week 6 in the garden: scrambling to be ‘ready’ for open day

OOPS! I left the hose stretched messily across the patio, not coiled neatly by the tap. I never did patch the lawn by the vegetable garden, squiggly mazes of missing turf where moles and voles had at it beneath the snow. Clean-cut edges on all the beds? Not yet—and oh, I never did get to trimming all the bits of brown out of one of the big old dwarf white pines or … the list of undone to-do’s goes on.

But nobody among the 250ish visitors asked about those “oops” moments—such a polite crowd, blessedly—and instead just saw the half-full glass, er, garden. What they did notice and wonder aloud about:

What is that yellow flower everywhere that looks like a poppy?

Good guess. Stylophorum diphyllum, the celandine poppy (above), is a poppy relative that is an Eastern North American native—but not so far east as here; maybe to Pennsylvania. I grow it as a garden plant outside its range, as I have for 20ish years. More on it.

What are those big leaves under that big tree?

In my garden, that question could be asked in many spots, since I am someone who loves outsized foliage. But these questioners (one after another after another) were pointing at the foliage of Rodgersia podophylla, each stem of which will expand quickly now to maybe 3-4 feet tall and a foot and a half across. It’s a first cousin to my favorite large-leaved shade groundcover of all, Astilboides tabularis, which though growing only a few feet away was barely 6 inches high yet on Open Day.

What’s that big, twisted shrub with the furry-tipped branches?

Whatever the season, cutleaf staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) always draws attention for its twisted character and velvety stems (like a stag’s antlers) and later for its dissected foliage. Most of mine are the gold-leaf

flowers plants gardening lawn shrubs ornamental plants Usa state Pennsylvania