Replacing winter-damaged yews and boxwoods
May herb blooms
With the delayed Spring this year, we’ve had the advantage of extended bloom times on spring-blooming bulbs while enjoying the regular festival of blooms at this time of year. Unfortunately, many of the bulbs in my front gardens were only visible next to completely windburned boxwood bushes (an ugly beige color) and horrible orange winter-damaged yews. I know yews will come back from old wood–I renew-pruned these 14 years ago–when I bought the property–from 5′-6′ to 3′. (During that first summer I also removed the 7′ tall juniper bushes by the front door.) The yews took two years to look good and lately they were looking overgrown again. Plus, they were so boring! There was no room to grow anything among them. So, in spite of the expense, I was happy to remove the 13 fully (over-grown) orange yews in front of the garage and wellhead and replace them with more attractive options. That was the good news. The bad news is that I also had to remove the 7 perfect boxwood spheres I have so carefully developed in these same 14 years. I am replacing most of the boxwood since 1) I have a colonial-style house that seems to call for boxwood, and 2) I have boxwood in other areas that I want to repeat for unity in the overall garden design and 3) DEER DON’T eat them and 4) they are evergreen in a soft way.
In the meantime, I am enjoying May deer-resistant stalwarts while I redesign the front gardens. Deer-resistant May bloomers include globemaster alliums and chives. We also have a tree peony that is blooming, along with false indigo, bearded iris, ladies’ mantle, marsh spurge, Virginia bluebells (mertensia), Spanish bluebells, ajuga, columbine and candytuft. All this while the crabapples, pears and horsechestnut trees are blooming with the lilacs, spirea and honeysuckle! Almost as exciting to me at this time of year are ferns that have come back, new leaves on late-to-emerge friends like the autumn clematis and the purple smokebush. May is my favorite because the weeds are still small, the green growth is still fresh and juicy and the insects haven’t put so much damage on leaves that things look tattered.
Winter-damaged shrubs