I think it was roughly 10 day ago that the above image appeared in my e-mail. The fellow standing here (for Scale) is Dennis Groh, a past president of the American Conifer Society, a consummate gardener, and tireless promoter of Conifers as well as the ACS. He is also a patient friend and mentor to countless plants people, and was a dear friend of departed giant-of-the-ACS, Chub Harper, without whom the Harper Dwarf and Rare Conifer Collection would not exist. This conifer collection is a prominent feature of the Hidden Lakes Garden (Michigan State University Botanical Garden) located in Tipton, MI.

Dennis and his wife Carol had gone to Hidden Lakes Garden that day to join in the festivities of a Birthday Celebration and Fundraising event for HLG, but he couldn’t do so without first popping over to have a quick look at the Harper Conifers.

What he found was a familiar sight in this “Age of Covid”. Being closed to the public for such an extended period of time, combined with crippling shortage of staff, gave the opportunistic weeds free range.

Once he returned home, Dennis wasted no time in getting the word out.

All that was required, was to post a note of his visit to Hidden Lakes and the opening photo above.

Within very short order, responses came in, and 2 work days of weed pulling were scheduled for the following week. Much of the Canada thistle were about to shed their seed, and quick action was required.

At roughly 8:00 am Wednesday morning 13 volunteers joined in with 5 Hidden Lakes Garden staff and interns. Some quick directions by the gardens director Paul Pfeifer and it was on!

Everyone got right to it and there was no looking back. Pulled weeds were tossed onto tarps, when the piles of weeds was sufficient, the tarps were rolled up and placed onto carts to be hauled off to the burn site.

Some of the beds had previously received an application of herbicide, and those areas got a quick going over as well.

In spite of the 90 degree temperature and high humidity the work carried on thru the morning

Water breaks and short visits gave everyone a chance to catch up on recent events.

And weedy nooks in need attention offered a shaded, if short-lived respid from the sun.

A wonderful, catered box-lunch revived everyones’ spirits.

These determined gardeners went right back to it, while half of my crew said they’d had enough. It must be noted that not only did Carol & Dennis Groh along with Teresa Holmquist & Betsy Turner carry on thru the remainder of the afternoon session (as did many others) but these four dedicated “Cone-Heads” returned the following day, to guide another group thru a second grueling assault of weed pulling. It is said that many hands make for quick work, but I can tell you it wasn’t quick enough for any of those above.

However, the results could not be denied.

Everyone was far-more than pleased with what was accomplished!

No one more so than this guy! Way to go Dennis, this wouldn’t have happened were it not for you!

(Take a moment and compare the last photo with the very first photo)

Looking back it almost embarrassing how much time I’ve let slip by, sense my last post. This is also an all-too common entry that I find myself jotting down whenever I get around to making entries in my Garden Journal.

It’s not that there’s been a lack of things going on in the garden or events to attend. Rather it seems as though the gardening year has been racing past, and I find that I am constantly trying to play catch-up between what needs to be done and the progression of Spring into Summer.

Everything that I’d planned on getting into the ground had been planted. Most all to the woody plants that perished over the past winter (and there’s been a lot, more so than I can recall previously), had been removed. I have kept up with the weeding, at least that was the case until we returned home from the ACS (American Conifer Society) Central Region’s Annual Meeting earlier this month. The rapidity with which the weeds shot-up made it look as though we’d been away for a couple of weeks rather than the 3 days we’d spent in Dayton, Ohio with fellow Cone-Heads.

But the jungle of weeds was tamed, nearly all of the new conifers found a home in the garden (after all I did have a lot of vacancies to fill), and besides, back in early June it was still relatively cool and rains were still plentiful. Then the Summer’s heat got turned on!

Being homeowners of an old house means there’s never a lack of things that need doing, so as Andreas’ school year had ended, she set her sights on organizing the basement (and by she I mean “we”). It was fine really, I mean I’m of an age where I can not work outdoors all-day like I used to. Despite the temperatures being in the mid-to-upper 90’s and matching humidity, the basement was a refreshing mid-60’s, so it was working out pretty well all in all.

Then one afternoon around 3:30 (just when it was really getting toasty outside), and I was walking some trash to the bins I happened upon this:

A Norway Spruce tree, that I’d topped and stripped of branches year’s ago, so that I would have a place to hang another nest-box for the smaller owls (Screech & Saw-Whet’s) had fallen over, and it wasn’t even a breezy day!

Of course there was a large rock that has been laying-in-wait for just this day, as the nest box landed squarely on it, smashing it to pieces! As I gently lifted some of the larger sections, I was surprised not by an owl or owlets but a very strange looking squirrel. Its’ small size, somewhat over-sized, black eyes and fur color, clearly made it a Northern Flying Squirrel. We’ve had Flying Squirrels in other nest-boxes on the property.

The strange part to me, was the very wideness of her body as well as a somewhat clumsy and labored gait as she made her retreat downhill and under the cover of a large Hosta. This was either a very pregnant mom-to-be, or she was making her escape with her young tucked up and under her sail-like flaps of fur. As I stood there trying to think of all of the bad things that could happen to her and young, my eyes were attracted by movement overhead. Papa-F S. came sailing down from above, flared and landed on the trunk of another large Norway Spruce and then quickly scurried up out of sight into the branches above.

OK, I guess I’m putting up another Nest-Box on this tree. Certainly not something on my list of things to do today, but certain calamity awaited this now-homeless family and I wasn’t even sure I had all of the supplies on hand.

First thing was to get out the ladder remove all of the branches from the section of trunk above and below where the box was to be mounted. Ideally the box should be mounted a good 20ft or more up off the ground, however my ideal weight for climbing up that high into trees is years behind me, and they were just going to have to make due with less than ideal.

As I had no plans to preform any tree-topping, that meant I would have to place a metal collar around the trunk several feet above where I would hang the nest-box, in order to prevent out many resident Red Squirrels from climbing down the trunk from above, and making a meal of my intended occupants as well as taking over their new home. After I’d secured the metal flashing, I decided I needed to remove several additional branches (above the collar) to stop marauders from safely leaping from those branches and grabbing the tree trunk below the collar. So down I went, and higher up the ladder got extended, to a height taller than what’s shown here, and off went more branches.

Then I needed to round up the wood and fasteners, haul out the saw horses and required tools and get busy. This nest-box came together rather quickly, and I had a bag of wood shavings on hand (from my Good Buddy Don), so I added a generous 5-6″ worth into the box.

I returned to what was left of the old box hoping Mom might have gone back to her former place of security, and coax her into the new box (I had not attached the roof yet) but there was no sign of her or any youngsters.

Living with Red Squirrels for 3 plus decades, I’ve come to know them as persistent, to say the least. I thought of one more thing I could add as a deterrent, and that was a covering the roof with aluminum This would prevent the “Red Villains”, from gaining any purchase, in the event one felt embolden enough to jump down off the tree trunk (above the upper metal collar) and land on the nest-box roof. A feat probably done only once as they’d go sliding right off!

Confidant that I’d done the best that I could, to give my charming if rarely-seen “Honey-Glider” co-residents, a snug (and Red-Squirrel proof) home, I looped a rope around the new box, and grabbed the drill to rebore the holes to bolt the box to the tree.

And got the new box hung, all in about 3-4 hours. As I said earlier it was a hot day (wicked-hot), and I was completely oblivious about the fact that Andrea had been taking any pictures of any of this. Fortunately she did or as with every other thing of interest that’s transpired of late, I’d have nothing to post about. I did place another metal collar around the lower part of the tree (to keep the Red Pillagers from climbing up the trunk) but by the time that happened Andrea had already had enough of my nonsense and retreated indoors.

The other thing I need to mention, is that I don’t want to convey that I was anything less than thrilled, to be able to watch an actual Flying Squirrel fly! I’ve seen them poke their heads out of a nest box entrance when I’ve rapped on the tree trunk down below. But to see one in action was a lifetime moment for me. I think I’ll have to get a Game -Cam and mount it on a neighboring tree, as Andrea’s never seen one, and such a pic would have added a lot to this post!

I complain a lot about the heavy clay-loam that comprises most of the soil that I have to garden in. There are plenty of wonderful plants that I have given up on as residents in my garden. However I’ve come to embrace those species which thrive here and seed about happily.

One such group of plants (that of special interest to me) are the Trilliums. As long time member of the GLC (Great Lakes Chapter of NARGS), I have benefited greatly from the generosity and guidance of many of our legendary members, most of whom are only with us in the wonderful plants they shared, and I am grateful for this memorable connection.

Decades ago, the GLCs’ sales tables as well as the generosity garden friends, were the only means one had to acquire these special plants found in our gardens today. The greatest driving force in both the dispersal and how to grow trilliums, rests with a pair of our chapter’s founding members; Roberta & Fred Case. To be sure other members contributed as well, but year in and year out most all of the trillium to appear in our Plant Sales, trace their histories back to the Case’s Garden and many of those went into the plant Auction. The bidding was always lively and quickly ascended to a point well beyond my comfort level.

The first trillium to appear in our gardens is the Snow Trillium, T. nivale. which is always snapped up whenever a division appears on our Club’s sales tables.

With each passing year they and their progeny, have increased and improved, some becoming quite spectacular in their own right with near black flowers,

But even before I had any success at the Sales my dear friend and mentor Dick Punnett, had shared countless numbers of the T. grandifloras that he considered near-weeds. So plentiful were these adaptable trillium, in the rich damp woods that made-up most of his one of a kind garden, that almost anytime he wanted to create a new bed he would first start by digging up a dozen or so and tossing them aside. I would gather them up, quick as I could or they’d die in the sun. They may have been weeds to him but they were nothing short of treasures to me. Better still the form that grew in his woods have a wonderful trait in that they quickly grew into sizable clumps.

Today almost every woodland bed in our garden contains some of Dick’s Trillium grandifloras. They are the most plentiful trillium here, but I can’t bring myself to call them common.

Other members have contributed T. grandifloras as well to our clubs’ sales over the years, and I always took advantage of adding to the gene pool in the garden.

Whenever a local woodlot was about to be razed to make way for yet another sub-division, I would always make a quick search and if Trillium were present, a stop at the construction trailer to get permission to remove them was never refused.

A close second to T. grandiflora (in abundance in this garden), would have to be T. recurvatum. The prairie trillium is very happy to occupy sunnier edges of the woodland bed, even venturing out quite some distance into full sun.

There are several forms of trillium recurvatum in the garden. One is stoloniferous and makes massive patches with alarming rapidity, but when you’ve started with acres of empty space this was a plus as I could easily add it here and there and let it do it’s thing.

Other forms were later purchased from nurseries such as Arrowhead Alpines or Plant Delights.

This is Trillium stamineum (another purchase from Arrowhead Alpines), it’s twisted petals distinguishes it from all other trillium. This spring I was surprised to find a single flowering stem over 200ft. away from what has become the original patch, the work of Yellow Jackets and wasps.

This plant remains a mystery to me. It was given to me by Bob Stewart on the day his shipment of trillium came in from a Southern wholesaler. Dick & I happened to be present the day the box arrived. When Bob opened the crate and there were three copies of a plant that looked very different from all of the others. Bob handed one of them to Dick, another to me and kept on for himself.

I planted mine in the garden and it made a clump of a dozen stems in short order. So I dug up and divided the clump, gave divisions to Don and Tony, and scattered the others through out the garden, but only 3 of my divisions survived the ordeal.

My first copy of the following trillium arrived via Southern acquaintance of Dicks, I remember his first name was Ewen but I cannot recall his last name.

This little beauty is Trillium discolor. It had never set seed on its own so I’ve added several more courtesy of PDN.

These also came to be in our garden thanks to the folks at Plants Delight Nursery. Sadly the rain has muted its silvery sheen, and dulled its maroon blotches.

Trillium underwoodii according to the PDN, catalog hales from the dry Alabama woodlands, but has been a reliable performer here in my somewhat dry Michigan woodland bed. Which is more than I can say for T. decipiens, in three tries I have as yet to find a place to make that species happy.

Not too far away from the proceeding trillium, is a thriving clump of another mail-ordered trillium.

Trillium albidum arrived as gifts in an order from Natures Garden Nursery, a mail order nursery run by Frederick Held in Scio, Oregon. They have made the move East and slowly self sown seedlings appear here or there.

I can’t say the following Trillium sessile have seeded about…

…the clumps of the forms I have seem amiable to division. There are at least 2 forms in the garden, one a GLC Sales purchase, the other a gift from Don La Fond.

This unusual 6 leaved form of Trillium cuneatum arrived in the garden via a GLC Sales also. It was donated to the plant auction by Tony Reznicek, who acquired it from Ellen Horning’s ‘Senica Hill Nursery’.

Another GLC Sales purchase (from long ago) was Trillium luteum. Very few seedlings have appear, however I believe the fault is mine, as these plants are located in an area with far too much, other plant competition for seedlings to survive.

I believe the trillium species with the third oldest longevity in our garden belongs to this cultivar of Trillium cernuum.

Decades ago Dick and I went to explore the long-ago, abandoned site of his garden mentor Bob Tucker. The property had been purchased by one of the Big Three Automobile Companies, but hadn’t fenced it in, nor razed the house or garden as yet. This was one of the few rescues from the Bull-dozer

A relatively, more recent purchase via a GLC auction, is this Trillium viridescens. The bidding was so intense between myself and another long-time GLC member (as well as a fellow fanatic of the genus, and dear soul to boot), I simply had to divide the clump to share it with her. I am really over-due in dividing this clump again.

An even more recent addition is this expanding clump of Trillium oostingii, which came to me via fellow, long-time GLC member, Bob Swartz. It is the only one of the more recently-discovered, Southern species that I’ve succeeded in finding the correct placement for in the garden, on the first try.

Within the past decade, I have been one of the very fortunate recipients to have been handed a 1-gallon, plastic zip-lock bag-full, of trillium seed heads that were gathered from the Case’s Garden. There was no telling what they were, but they were sure to be good. I sowed the seed from each capsule into t’sown 4″x4″ pot, and by the third year the pots were chock-full of multiple plants needing to be planted out. Dozens of pot-fulls went into the garden and dozens went onto the GLC Sales tables.

Not only have those pots yielded wonderful species but many hybrids as well, most of which had flowered so early I failed to capture their images. This year there are a second round of mixed-Case- seedlings ready for a place in the garden.

As special and wonderful as all of these species and hybrids are, the trilliums which stop visitors in their tracks are the double-flowered forms of T. grandiflora.

Some were gifts, one a rare plant auction win, others and perhaps my favorites were finds, while out roaming woodlots with very close friends.

All are quite unique.

All of them need to be grown on, divided and shared.

In spite of my attempts, I have as yet failed in getting this green, single-flowered form to set seed.

Hopefully in the not too far future, they will make it into the trade.

In creating this post, I’ve failed to include not only nearly all of the hybrids, but several species as well. However I feel confident this post illustrates how these wonderful and growable woodland plants are, and deserve a place in our gardens.

This is a test but you won’t have any questions to answer, better still Its just a trial run to see if I can still Post.

For the past two weeks things have progressed so quickly that there’s been little time to take pictures, let alone sit down, collect my thoughts enough to produce a post.

One of things that has gotten done is the transfer of a very large industrial sink (one of three) that was given to me along time ago by John Serowitz.

I had intended on snapping a Pic of of the Big “Sink of Shame” prior to moving it, here’s where it rested, slowly sinking into the ground for nearly 20 years.

I’d always thought of utilizing the sinks together as a fountain, or even 3 separate containerized gardens, but it never happened. During the past nearly 2 decades I never could picture these within any of the parts of the garden that I built. As the year’s passed, I’d given the two smaller sinks (30″ diameter by 10 ” deep), to Don, but held onto the big 54″ by 10″ sink (always hoping for some epiphany to come as to how I could incorporate it somewhere where it would fit esthetically in the garden.

But the years kept flying past and more and more of the garden areas were developed, without ever coming up with a place to site the BIG sink. Every time I walked past where it leaned against the back of the garage, I was shamed with guilt for wasting such as prize. Finally I couldn’t bear any longer and I told Don to come and take it away.

So on the appointed day, Don came by and we rolled the sink over to where we had planned to slide it up on timbers into the back of his truck, only to realize the truck bed was too narrow. Don had to go and get his trailer and come back.

It went up and onto the trailer much more easily than our first attempt, at loading it into the taller and narrower truck bed. Here it is loaded up and ready to travel to its new home.

Don will have to post part 2 of this story.

For several weeks I’ve been prowling about the garden, repeatedly scanning patches of ground where something should be showing up. All the while having to count on a handful of the earliest Spring Bulbs to satisfy my plant-lust. The up’s & down’s of SE Michigan’s transition from winter to spring is close to reaching the tipping point, brought on by just a couple of 70 + degree days.

The winter aconites & snowdrops, along with Cyclamen coum, Hellebore tibetanus, and Adonis, have thrilled and delighted for almost a Month now. Each opening flower pushes the winter-blahs further to the back of my mind, while stoking a near-burning desire to see what comes next. Gradually, the once brown, almost blanket-flat mulch of last years leaves, had started to bubble from the push of activity beneath, and now that activity has boiled into an eruption in a colorful blooms and vibrant foliage.

Corydalis solida’s and Iris reticulates have appeared almost everywhere in the garden.

Over the past decade, Corydalis solida seem especially determined to occupy every vacant space they can find. There are several other Corydalis species in bloom but none can match the nearly rabbit-like fecundity of C. solida.

Corydalis ornada has slowly and steadily, increased for us. Sadly we haven’t been successful in keeping any of the electric blues or rich, saturated rose-pinks.

For reasons unknown to me only the white flowered forms of C. ornate seem happy in various locations to the garden. It’s really a shame as this species (if you can keep them) come in some of the most spectacularly- saturated, colors that I have experienced within the genus.

All across the garden Hepaticas are popping out.

Over the years we’ve amassed a number of good color forms.

Although they are not usually the earliest hepatica to bloom, I believe these (pictured above) are all H. nobilis. A species that in this garden are easy to please and happy to seed about.

Several trillium species are up as well. The clay-loam soil that covers nearly all of the property (except for the alpine beds built on-top of it), seems to suit most all of the species that grow . After T. nivale, Trillium cuneatum will be the next to bloom. Although several other trillium species are up including T. recurvatum, T. sessile, and T. stamineum. No doubt. there are another half dozen species whose noses are just beneath the leaf litter, waiting a little longer.

Abeliophyllum distichum as it grows here, spreads slowly by lower branches rooting in where they contact the ground. The thousands of tiny white blossoms flood the lower garden with their sweet perfume.

This early flowering and frost-proof shrub is commonly referred to as White Forsythia.

Among the multitude of plants now coming up, most have not only settled in but have increased themselves to the point of becoming (almost) common. Then there are others that, while they have persisted, have proven to be more reluctant.

Many species of Erythroniums have proven to be difficult to established in my garden (I’m sure this failure is entirely mine) though there have been successes. E. caucasicum seed (from Joseph Halda) sown back in the early 1990’s, yielded two plants that made their way into the garden. It was probably 5 or 6 years before I stopped collecting the seed they set (to try and grow in pots) and simply allowed them to self sow. Three to four years later, their pale pink-violet blooms (the first erythronium species to flower in my garden), were multiplying nicely.

That was before the flower of this Erythronium opens, usually about a week ahead of E caucasicum. Around 2015 I had transplanted the entire contents of a seedpod that contained several, second year seedlings without dividing them. Sadly this is the sole survivor of that batch of Archibalds’ seed from the Kahem Valley, Tuva, Altai ex Russia sown in March of 2011. It’s Flowered every year since, and perhaps that’s a seedling leaf just to the lower right, If so It’ll be the first!

I expect the E. caucasicums to be opening in another week, followed rather quickly by thus Hybrid I have labeled simply as E. ‘Pagoda’.

The common Bloodroot have made their own way into this garden and have demonstrated a great ability to expand their range.

That is not the case with this form of bloodroot. I believe it came from Garden Visions, and its a lovely form that has shorter, wider, petals and appears to be a clumper which sends up bunches of stems. It does seeds about, but only lightly!

In the 90’s I had a not-so-mild Narcissus addiction, One of my favorite dealers who supplied my “fix” was Grant Mitsch Novelty Bulbs. For a host of reasons (none of which were theirs), many of the treasured daffodils they sent are no longer with me. This is one of the exceptions that always makes me smile when I see its mature flowers.

While one might think these Cardiocrinum (widely scattered thru the garden) have a death wish by coming up so early. This form (that I believe came in a Chen Yi order) has proven to be very resilient. None the less, they will all be getting a small pile of dry oak leaves on them this weekend, as the low temperature, forecasted for Easter Sunday, will be in the low 30’s!

There are a dozen more things I could show in flower, and masses of other things coming up. Vast patches of Anemone nemorosa and A. ranunculoides, along with dozens of ever-expanding, mats of Geraniums are greening up chunks of the garden, while Scilla biflora, S. tubergenia and S. siberica, create lakes of blues. Hundreds of Crocuses (the “Chippies” have somehow missed) in a rainbow of colors, Spring cannot be held off any longer.

We are all about to be so very busy in our gardens trying to keep up. So I hope you are as ready, cause ready or not… Here we go!